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A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS 
 
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 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
A PRIVATE 
 IN THE GUARDS 
 
 BY 
 
 STEPHEN GRAHAM 
 
 Author of "The Quest of the Face," "With 
 Poor Immigrants to America," etc. 
 
 j^eto gorfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1919 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
31 b4^ 
 
 Copyright, 1919 , 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1919 
 
 NOV 26 1919 
 
 ©CI.A5358T6 
 
 ^>•\^ C I 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The fortune of war gave me eighteen months in 
 the ranks in the Guards. I have thought I could 
 perform no better service than describe the social 
 life and the spirit in these historic regiments of 
 the British Army. I should explain for those who 
 do not know it, that the Bill Browns are the Gren- 
 adiers, the Jocks are Scots Guards, the Taffies are 
 the Welsh Guards, the Micks are the Irish, and 
 the Goalies are the Coldstream. Amongst the rank 
 and file they are only referred to by their nick- 
 names. So also in this book. An intense rivalry 
 reigns amongst these regiments, and comparisons 
 are nowhere more odious. The presence of the 
 young Prince of Wales in the Grenadiers no doubt 
 gave that regiment great prestige, but the Scots 
 Guards yield to none. The record of each and 
 all for the four years of conflict is most remarkable. 
 However, it has not been the war which has been 
 most interesting for me, but the men. We had 
 amongst us a number of those American volunteers, 
 the advance party of America's great manhood, 
 who were feted in London in 1917, and I have used 
 the point of view of these Americans and their ad- 
 ventures together with my own as a touch-stone for 
 our Army institutions and customs. "Fitz" of 
 
 Virginia, and "Red" and H who yearned to 
 
 charge with the Guards, and "Gurt" who died 
 through ministering to a fallen comrade, and 
 
 B , the Hamlet of St. Louis who was always 
 
 getting punished through his talking so much, and 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 ''Will" who would rather take the medicine of 
 punishment than pay in coin, all were very fine 
 fellows full of character and interest. Two of 
 these boys died, all shone one way or another, all 
 sufifered. The training in England was of the 
 hardest, for Guards' discipline is the most terrible 
 in the world. On the other hand, the pomp and 
 circumstance of Wellington Barracks was a relief 
 to the drudgery. I suppose, by the way, our 
 American volunteers were amongst the very few 
 Americans who have served as sentries at Bucking- 
 ham Palace and St. James's Palace — in the King's 
 Guard. It was a curious experience for them. 
 
 The life in France was very arduous and full of 
 dangers. All was suffered cheerfully in the name 
 of the great cause. After the success of the Ger- 
 mans in the spring of 1918 there was something 
 which almost amounted to despair in some British 
 units. But I well remember the miracle which 
 the appearance of the Americans wrought "in the 
 Spirit." One day in June some thousands of them 
 marched past our dour, war-worn Guards, and they 
 made an immense impression of faith and pluck. 
 On that day, even in the extremity of Allied failure, 
 we knew we must win through at last. I would 
 not put down pen without a word of thanks to 
 America. She was our great bulwark of defence 
 at our worst hour, and again in November 1918 
 through American idealism we were saved innum- 
 erable extra deaths and sufferings. There is so 
 much rivalry in the air now, but all Britain is at 
 heart profoundly thankful to the American nation. 
 
 Stephen Graham. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Notes on Discipline i 
 
 II Little Sparta Barracks 2i 
 
 III Soldier and Civilian 77 
 
 IV Esprit de Corps 104 
 
 V To the Front 120 
 
 VI The Spirit of the Battalion 141 
 
 VII Ways of Thinking and Talking . . . .172 
 
 VIII France Under the Cloud 189 
 
 IX War the Brutaliser 202 
 
 X Bringing Back the Body of Mr. B . , ,212 
 
 XI As Touching the Dead 226 
 
 XII Padres and Officers 238 
 
 XIII The Great Advance 247 
 
 XIV The March to the Rhine 278 
 
 XV The Finest Thing in the Army .... 327 
 
I 
 
 NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 
 
 The sterner the discipline the better the soldier, 
 the better the army. This is not a matter of 
 debate at this point, for it is a well-established 
 military principle and all nations act on it. A 
 strong discipline is the foundation of heroic ex- 
 ploits in the field. In time of necessity, when 
 a thousand men must fight to the last though all 
 be wounded or killed, in order that a much larger 
 number may march into safety, it is only a strongly 
 disciplined body that will not accept prematurely 
 the chance to surrender. When small parties of 
 men get cut ofif from the main body or lose them- 
 selves in the enemy's lines they can nearly always 
 injure or kill a few of the enemy and sometimes 
 many before they themselves are put out of action. 
 It is only men who have been taught never to en- 
 tertain the thought of surrender who will do this. 
 Poorly trained troops are always ready to ''hands 
 up." When in general action of any kind the 
 front-line troops frequently find themselves in face 
 of what seems inevitable death, and the impulse may 
 come to stampede and run for it, causing endless 
 confusion in the rear and giving the battle to the 
 enemy. But sternly disciplined troops know that 
 if they run from the face of the enemy they will be 
 shot down from behind, and indeed they would 
 themselves be ready to shoot down inferior troops 
 
2 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 stampeding through their lines. They do not en- 
 tertain the hope of escape, and consequently their 
 minds are at rest — as the mind of the machine- 
 gunner voluntarily chained to his machine may be 
 said to be at rest. The avenue to the rear is abso- 
 lutely closed up in the mind. Such equanimity is 
 produced by discipline. Stern discipline can 
 manufacture collective heroism. 
 
 Modern warfare is predominantly one of ma- 
 chines. The human element on the positive side 
 is valuable and perhaps indispensable for victory, 
 but the human element on the negative side is 
 dangerous and absolutely out of place. In fact, 
 for the private soldier in action the one thing need- 
 ful is obedience. Imagination, thought, fear, love, 
 and even hate are out of place, and through stern 
 discipline these can be excluded. He needs to be 
 at least as dependable as the machines. The whole 
 army has to work like a machine, and the weakest 
 bit in it will be the first to give way. Discipline 
 is the necessary hardening and making dependable. 
 The best troops, however, have a little bit of energy 
 and movement over for when the machines go 
 wrong. 
 
 A human being is naturally undisciplined. In 
 fact, some animals have much more discipline in 
 them and more obvious capabilities for discipline 
 than a man. Because a man has thought and con- 
 science but they have not. Personal conscience is 
 one of the hardest things to modify or eliminate 
 in any training. And yet it may be one of the most 
 dangerous things that can be left. For it may eas- 
 ily turn a man from obedience to his superior of- 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 3 
 
 ficer at a critical moment. It may suggest pity for 
 a wounded enemy or would-be-enemy prisoner 
 with whom the army dare not encumber itself. It 
 may cause the hand to waver at the moment it 
 should strike without hesitation. In short, it may 
 whisper in the soldier's ear the dreadful monition, 
 "Thou shalt not kill." It may give him sleepless 
 nights and unfit him for duty when, if he had the 
 simple army conscience, which is founded on im- 
 plicit obedience, he might leave all responsibility 
 on the shoulders of his superior officers and sleep 
 like a child and awake refreshed — to kill and fear 
 not. 
 
 Once a Taffy was troubled with his conscience. 
 The sergeant said, "Don't you worry, I'll go to 
 hell for it. You will be found innocent on the Day 
 of Judgment." But the sergeant received his or- 
 ders from the platoon commander, so he should 
 also stand white before the Throne and the young 
 officer be to blame. The platoon commander, 
 however, had it from the captain of the company, 
 the captain from the CO. of the battalion, he from 
 his brigadier, the brigadier-general from a major- 
 general commanding a division, he in turn from 
 the army corps commander, and he from the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. So if there is sin, it is the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief who should go to the fire for it, 
 if not otherwise saved by his Redeemer. 
 
 But the Welshman, who was one of those who 
 pursue Truth ungraciously, found that ultimate 
 responsibility did not lie with the Army but with 
 the Prime Minister, who was in turn responsible to 
 Parliament, and Parliament was responsible to the 
 
4 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 whole people of Great Britain. That brought it 
 back to the unwilling Welshman, and he said, 
 "You see, I should go to hell for it after all." 
 
 I am afraid it is rather a matter for a Socrates 
 or a Plato to decide. 
 
 It is a palpable fact, however, that an army not 
 founded on the responsibility of some one else 
 would fare disastrously in the field and would dis- 
 perse as did the Russian Army at the Revolution. 
 And if the army fared thus, the nation might pass 
 into bondage. 
 
 But the national will is toward victory, and no 
 one wishes to be a slave. Hence the unquestioned 
 sway of discipline in time of war. 
 
 The enforcement of this discipline, however, is 
 often more terrible than the ordeal by battle itself. 
 After what a man goes through when he is properly 
 trained he will sufifer comparatively little in the 
 face of the foe. Or, to put it in another way — the 
 task of the N.C.O. or officer at the front in handling 
 well-disciplined men is child's play compared with 
 the task of breaking them in from civilised happi- 
 ness and culture. 
 
 It has always to be borne in mind that the drill- 
 sergeant is training men, not so much to drill cor- 
 rectly and smartly in the end of ends as to go un- 
 flinchingly to death or murder in war, and for that 
 purpose he has not only to train the muscles but 
 to break or bend the intelligence. In a great war 
 where every class of educated or uneducated man 
 is called up it is a Herculean task. 
 
 The easiest to train are no doubt the youngest, 
 those nearest to school-life, those accustomed to 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 5 
 
 obedience in the family, in the workshop and fac- 
 tory. It is harder to discipline the developed 
 working-man who has "rights" and grievances, 
 who resorts to Trade Unions, and thinks his sor- 
 rows aired in John Bull can bring about a revolu- 
 tion. Clerks are on the whole a little more diffi- 
 cult to handle, though they are inclined to give in 
 sooner than the working-man. Middle-aged men 
 of any class need a hard battering to reduce their 
 pride in self, their sense of being older. Profes- 
 sional men of any age are harder still, and I sup- 
 pose musicians, artists, poets are often hardest of 
 all and belong to a class of impossibles. A squad 
 of the recruits of any regiment at any time in the 
 war presented an extraordinary variety of types, 
 professions, ages. 
 
 But if the comment may sometimes arise: 
 "How unjust and disgusting that a man of refine- 
 ment or of letters or of acknowledged 'position' 
 should be subjected to such verbal brutality and in- 
 sult as I have seen," it must be remembered that it 
 can all be justified on the higher ground of dis- 
 cipline. All manner of substantial men, the most 
 able, proud, well-known, respected in our common 
 life and culture of England, have been reduced to 
 type for the use of the machine. If they had not 
 been thus reduced, where would England be to- 
 day? 
 
 The only legitimate objection that can be raised 
 is that very often the most intelligent were bludg- 
 eoned down to be war-slaves whereas the most 
 stupid got through to places of authority. That 
 is true, but it raises another question. 
 
6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 The general assumption is that a large intelli- 
 gence is not necessary in war. A limited intelli- 
 gence is more useful. No one may go far in 
 original warfare except an army chief. Obedi- 
 ence rules. 
 
 The war, of course, caught Britain unawares. 
 A fighting force had to be provided at once. But 
 the population had not been sorted out, and the 
 Government did not know the resources of quality 
 which it had. It had only time for quantity. It 
 would be agreed that the army could not afford to 
 "entertain strangers" on the assumption that they 
 might be angels unawares. So once you were in 
 the army it has not mattered what you were in civil 
 life, a green youth or a father of ten, the man with 
 the muck-cart or a professor, you were (and are) 
 (if not now incapacitated) a man, an effective, a 
 bayonet. 
 
 As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, 
 Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept 
 All by the name of dogs : the valued file 
 Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, 
 The house-keeper, the hunter, — every one 
 According to the gift which bounteous nature 
 Hath in him closed ; whereby he does receive 
 Particular addition, from the bill 
 That writes them all alike : and so of men. 
 
 The valued file can only come into use again with 
 peace. Then the "bayonets" will turn into poets, 
 ploughmen, philosophers, butlers, gamekeepers, 
 and the rest. 
 
 There must at least be fifty occasions in our war 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 7 
 
 in which the conduct of the Light Brigade has been 
 equalled. But the extra glory remains with the 
 Light Brigade because the army of those days was 
 less disciplined and more individual than the army 
 of to-day. The soldier knew "some one had 
 blundered." But now a charge of the Light Bri- 
 gade is all in the day's work, and it doesn't matter 
 whether some one has blundered or no. 
 
 In this war men have craved wounds to get re- 
 lease, and have jumped for death because it was 
 better than life — life under the new discipline. 
 Rage has accumulated that could never be ex- 
 pressed except in ferocity against the enemy. And 
 such habits of patience under suffering have been 
 formed as could not be exhausted. And whenever 
 one more rash and intemperate than the rest has 
 rebelled against a superior officer, the wiser and 
 more experienced have said to him, "Don't be a 
 fool, if you go against the army the army will break 
 you." 
 
 Or another has said, "Grouse ^ about it. Have 
 a good grouse and you'll feel better for it." For 
 grousing harms no one but your own spiritual self. 
 It is damp anger and will never ignite to action, 
 never flame out in mutiny. It is what all slaves 
 do — grouse together in the gloaming and rage im- 
 potently against their masters. Grousing is not 
 only compatible with discipline, but is an inevita- 
 ble accompaniment of it, and is recognised as harm- 
 less. Even when a private talks of shooting his 
 own sergeant or company officer in the next melee 
 
 1 Grouse, a vulgar word for a vulgar thing — to let oneself be 
 Impotently angry. 
 
8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 if he has a chance — it is nonsense, for he will never 
 do it. Instead he will fight the enemy more bit- 
 terly and put all his humiliation and resentment 
 into his bayonet and his bullets. Even in extrem- 
 ity, when his comrades are perishing all around 
 him and he stands in the gap with heroical aspect, 
 he will have a strange satisfaction and peace of 
 heart in blazing away at the foe, at having his face 
 to him and being in the action of killing him. 
 Then the wide circling arm of the machine-gun 
 sweeps round and he is brought down to earth — 
 one more victim sacrificed upon the European 
 altar. 
 
 I do not know why the various occasions on 
 which battalions have fought till there were merely 
 a few score survivors have not been properly 
 chronicled, but have been veiled in such phrases 
 as "magnificent conduct of the Staffordshires," 
 "grim determination of the Cheshires," "gallant 
 fighting of the London Scottish." It is a laconic 
 way of telling you that certain platoons or com- 
 panies fought shoulder to shoulder till the last man 
 dropped and would not give in, or that they were 
 shelled to nothingness, or getting over the top they 
 went forward till they all withered away under 
 machine-gun fire, or that detail after detail of 
 bombers passed up the communication trench 
 treading on the bodies of those who had gone be- 
 fore. More V.C.'s have gone to the dead than to 
 the living, have they not? Though indeed it is 
 not a fitting token for the dead — the dead have the 
 Cross of their Redemption. But it is perhaps 
 amusing to the gods "who smile in secret" when, 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 9 
 
 a fortnight after some exploit, a field-marshal or 
 divisional-general comes down to a battalion to 
 thank it for its gallant conduct and fancies for a 
 moment, perchance, that he is looking at the men 
 who did the deed of valour, and not at a large draft 
 that has just been brought up from England and 
 the base to fill the gap. He should ask the services 
 of the chaplain and make his congratulations in the 
 graveyard, or go to the hospitals and make them 
 there. 
 
 Still, he means well, and there is no military 
 grievance against him. The war is to be carried 
 on by the living and the whole, and in congratu- 
 lating the live battalion he inculcates in a most 
 powerful way the tradition of the regiment. After 
 all, if half the men have not yet suflfered they as- 
 suredly will soon, and they will deserve congratu- 
 lation in due course. Moreover, it becomes easier 
 to do your bit when you realise you are not the 
 first to do it. The more men die the easier it 
 becomes to die. Death becomes cheaper and 
 cheaper. It becomes a matter of the everyday. 
 
 Still the official class may not soon be forgiven 
 for withholding the desperate details of scores of 
 glorious passages of arms. It is not enough to 
 thank regiments publicly or mention them unless 
 the public can be made to realise that a fine re- 
 straint prevents us from making solemn and na- 
 tional every occasion of great devotion to duty. 
 The common feeling must be that — add together 
 the heroic occasions of all our historic wars, Span- 
 ish Succession, Seven Years, Peninsular, Napo- 
 leonic, Crimean, and they would not exceed in 
 
lo A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 number those of this war of 1914-1918. And in 
 the achievement hundreds of thousands of anony- 
 mous heroes, poor obedient soldiers, have perished. 
 Dead ere their prime — 
 
 Without the meed of some melodious tear. 
 
 I do not know whether the story will ever be told 
 or if it will ever be realised. "A thing of beauty 
 is a joy for ever, its loveliness can never pass away." 
 But the deed of beauty? The candle which once 
 lit can never be put out? Have the candles ever 
 been lit? Are not an infinite series of heroic ac- 
 tions and pathetic if noble human sacrifices swal- 
 lowed up in the darkness of time, still-born in 
 oblivion? The night after night of holding the 
 line, the standing fast against machine-gunnery, 
 against the methodically destructive fire of the 
 guns, against the suffocating streams of poison gas, 
 the men entangled in the wire and killed as in a 
 trap, the men drowned in the mud, the countless 
 series of occasions when a few stood together hero- 
 ically against terrible odds and were mown down, 
 but not defeated, by the machinery of destruction. 
 The frustrate red blaze of artillery over the pale 
 faces of humanity night after night in the despic- 
 able mud-beds of the trenches; the bright eyes of 
 live soldiers, the sodden corpses of dead soldiers, 
 the stars in the remote heavens, the deathless 
 thoughts and impulses in heart and mind. In the 
 living poem of man's life the sacrifice of our men 
 and their triumph swells as an eternal chorus — 
 even though we cannot hear it. 
 
 It was decided in 1917 that after the war a mon- 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE ii 
 
 ument would be raised on every battle-field in 
 France and Flanders, graven with the names of 
 the dead, and that underneath the names should be 
 written some fitting motto. It was regarded as 
 essential that the motto should be the same on all 
 the monuments, but a suitable motto had not been 
 found. A committee was at work deliberating on 
 the details and trying to decide what the motto 
 should be. And one evening in the New Year, 
 shortly after I had come up to London from that 
 "Little Sparta" where I was trained, I met at a 
 friend's house other friends and we discussed this 
 fascinating and (I think) sacred choice. Certain 
 celebrated men had made suggestions — so one who 
 was on the committee said — and he gave us a list 
 of mottoes, such as: 
 
 They died for Freedom, 
 
 and 
 
 What I gave I have, 
 
 and 
 
 My utmost for the Highest, 
 
 and Kipling's happy words: 
 
 Who stands if Freedom fall? 
 Who dies if England live? 
 
 *'Go tell to Sparta" was mentioned, and in putting 
 the choice to the company we were set thinking 
 about the war and the soldier in a special way. It 
 touched each man's heart and made him respon- 
 sive to the great tragedy in France. Some of the 
 suggestions might seem prosaic and ordinary, set 
 down coldly in print, but with the thoughts of the 
 
12 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 heart softening and spiritualising them as they 
 were said, each had a poetry of its own. The 
 truest note of the evening seemed to me to be in 
 words suggested by one of the company: "By 
 their sacrifice we live'' or in "They died that we 
 might live," and I should have liked that to stand. 
 The one that had most favour was: "My utmost 
 for the Highest," a celestial motto for the living, 
 but perhaps too striving for those who now 
 
 sleep, sweetly sleep, 
 Whilst the days and the years roll by. 
 
 One thought that seemed to weigh was that the 
 motto would be equally acceptable to Moham- 
 medans and to Christians alike, and that "By their 
 sacrifice we live" was too Christian an idea. And 
 being fresh from Little Sparta Barracks I thought 
 to myself: If the mystical Christian idea of sac- 
 rifice is not available, why not the Spartan splen- 
 dour of discipline, and 
 
 Tell to Sparta thou that passest by, 
 That here obedient to her laws we lie. 
 
 Since then a motto has been chosen — the one 
 found by Kipling in Ecclesiasticus: 
 
 Their Name liveth for evermore, 
 
 which for us means that their fame liveth for 
 ever, their good name liveth for ever, and mankind 
 will be eternally grateful to those who died to rid 
 us of tyranny and war. Perhaps what the soldiers 
 have done is destined to be more recognised as 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 13 
 
 years go on. As it is, in the war we have thought 
 too lightly of our men in their wounds and their 
 death. There has been too little sense of grati- 
 tude to the man who has laid down his life on the 
 altar. Because it was his duty he was doing, be- 
 cause we knew him disciplined to go to it un- 
 flinching, we have involuntarily discounted his 
 sacrifice. At home munition-workers and civil- 
 ians of all kinds lived in comfort and in money 
 and bought War Loan stock and felt they also were 
 ''doing their bit," as if there were any similarity 
 between their lives and those of the men at the 
 front. The soldier also was doing his duty. The 
 idea of duty rather than of sacrifice has prevailed 
 — something due paid rather than of something 
 sacred made. And yet every man who died on 
 these fields was offered up on the altar for Eu- 
 rope's sins. 
 
 If, however, officialdom which has controlled 
 the Press and other channels of public expression 
 be reproached later on that not enough was made 
 of the many marvellous occasions of the war when 
 our boys stood their ground and perished, the an- 
 swer will allow us to imply that the said boys died 
 in the execution of their duty. Officialdom in its 
 own carefully locked-up mind will reflect that the 
 deaths were sad, but that the men, being under 
 most rigorous discipline, had no option of facing 
 the enemy or fleeing, and that consequently some- 
 what less honour is due to them. It is not worth 
 while sending for the poet laureate to give him 
 special details. He can pick up an idea now and 
 then in the articles in the Press. Moreover, the 
 
14 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 actual facts might cause criticism of military di- 
 rection and of the Government. There political 
 discipline sets in, and that is as binding as the 
 military sort. 
 
 There is something quite sound about the 
 thought. Discipline does discount the merit of 
 certain actions. When it would be so damnable 
 to disobey, obedience becomes matter-of-fact. But 
 there is one thing it does not discount, and that is 
 the sufferings. Though we may not over-praise 
 those who were marshalled to die for us, we ought 
 to remember what they have suffered. 
 
 The later armies have fought as well as the 
 earlier ones. Kitchener's Army was as firm as the 
 "Peace-time Army," the Conscripts were as firm 
 as either, and in the later stages when so many men 
 of poor health and diverse infirmities were sent to 
 the firing-line, they stood their ground as well as 
 any others. Some fell sick more quickly and were 
 sent back as unfit, but as long as they remained in 
 the line, no matter how bad they felt, they kept their 
 faces to the foe and made him pay for any advance. 
 In the newspaper which circulates most at the front 
 we read, about the middle of April 191 8: "War 
 is like the service of the Tenebrae, in which one 
 by one the lights are extinguished. Class after 
 class, generation after generation is receiving its 
 summons to the battle-field and passing that the 
 light of freedom may still burn strong." This is 
 truer than a phrase in the same paper a week later, 
 in which it refers to France as "a tilting-ground of 
 generous youth." In the fourth year of the war it 
 is the last and least soldier-like classes who are com- 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 15 
 
 ing in, the older, the more frail, the men well es- 
 tablished in commerce or in industrialism, the men 
 who could not be spared. It might have been 
 thought that these levies would make indifferent 
 troops. It has often been said of the Germans that 
 their later recruits were of such a miserable class 
 that they were little good in the fighting-line. Per- 
 haps our journalists have been misled, and the worst 
 class of Germans were almost as useful to the Ger- 
 man Army as the best. So also with us. All other 
 deficiencies can be made up by discipline. And 
 never in history have such disciplined armies 
 fought one another. It must have been the Ger- 
 mans who discovered the new scientific military 
 discipline, and all Europe has had to copy her. 
 
 It is not to say that all units of the armies have 
 exhibited a model behaviour under all circum- 
 stances, least of all in the German Army, where 
 often something seems to have gone wrong with 
 scientific discipline when pushed too far. Our 
 British Army has been very mixed. There is a 
 division which is composed of the five most Spar- 
 tan regiments of the British Army, and these have 
 exhibited an iron discipline, one which Germany 
 herself would have coldly appraised at its true 
 worth. But, on the other hand, we have put splen- 
 did troops into the field, such as the first contingent 
 of the Canadians and the Australians, undisciplined 
 and individualistic, destined at first to be wrecked 
 in the conflict and to cause trouble until taken in 
 hand. The latter in course of time came to the 
 level of the very best the British Army system could 
 produce, and many of their units could be com- 
 
i6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 pared with our Spartans for tenacity and obedi- 
 ence. Discipline had been introduced. And al- 
 though the process of being disciplined is hard — 
 hard to enforce and hard to undergo — it is difficult 
 to understand why the discipline and training of 
 our Spartan division (six months instead of three) 
 were not applied to the whole British Army — since 
 we were fighting Germany with Germany's own 
 weapons, and not turning the other cheek or doing 
 anything ''romantic." Indeed if all had been 
 trained like the Guards, it seems probable the Ger- 
 man Army would have been defeated in the field 
 earlier and with greater military calamity than in 
 November 1918. 
 
 It was a platitude of the fighting period that dis- 
 cipline would win the war, as it is now a platitude 
 that discipline has won it. Germany went into 
 battle with Prussian discipline and plenty of brains 
 but without a cause, and without the esprit de corps 
 which comes of a cordial understanding bet\veen 
 officer and man. Britain went in with a splendid 
 cause, not over-much brain, a fair discipline, and a 
 good deal of the esprit de corps which comes from 
 officers and men understanding one another. The 
 German discipline failed. Our splendid cause 
 won. 
 
 Our discipline even at its worst or best, let us say 
 at its harshest, has been upheld by the sense of a 
 true moral cause, and it has been tempered by 
 something which our officers brought into the army, 
 something which the German officers were not al- 
 lowed to bring, or did not possess to bring. Their 
 system was based exclusively on fear. The men 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 17 
 
 hated their officers, but were afraid of them. They 
 dared not disobey whatever they were asked to do, 
 however dangerous. 
 
 Our men are different in this way. They admire 
 their officers, and more readily sacrifice their own 
 lives seeing their leaders sacrifice theirs. 
 
 German intensified discipline made it possible 
 for them to launch attacks led by the men them- 
 selves whilst the officers remained in comparative 
 safety behind. In the large attack of March 1918 
 it supported that fine flower of the system, the ad- 
 vance parties of wonderful wire-cutters absolutely 
 foredoomed to destruction. And in the grand re- 
 treat of the armies in October and November of 
 the same year it could still provide those machine- 
 gunners who won the admiration even of their en- 
 emies. In our attacks, however, the officers have 
 led the men, and though losses in personnel have 
 been disproportionately great, the troops thus led 
 have generally behaved better than the Germans. 
 There has been less surrender. Parties have 
 fought stubbornly after they have been surrounded 
 and when there was no chance of escape. But the 
 Germans obtained a name for themselves by shout- 
 ing out Kamerad, Kamerad, and wishing to sur- 
 render the moment they were cut off or felt safe 
 from the disciplinary shots from behind. 
 
 In our army undoubtedly men who broke and 
 ran might expect to be shot down by those in re- 
 serve, and a party trying to arrange a surrender 
 might be subjected to machine-gun fire. We shoot 
 our cowards at dawn, we shoot also sentries found 
 asleep at their posts, we make an example and give 
 
i8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 the death penalty to officers or men making mis- 
 takes which have led to disaster. The soldier is 
 completely at the mercy of the army, and even 
 though originally a volunteer he has no appeal 
 against any punishment. Punishment and fear are 
 his background. 
 
 But he contrives to forget that negative side of 
 his life, though always aware of it in an habitual 
 sense, and he develops something on the positive 
 side — a patient sense of sacrifice and an under- 
 standing that the nation as a whole is fighting. 
 He forgets all the insults and pettinesses of army 
 life and fights, as one who is in duty bound to fight, 
 for family, home, ideals. 
 
 This, I feel, is achieved by the leadership and 
 kindness of our officers as a whole. Our officers 
 are brave men; from a ranker's point of view they 
 are not themselves particularly disciplined. Their 
 discipline is of a different type from that of the 
 men and refers to higher things. For leadership 
 personality is required, and that the system leaves 
 to the officer. He is a "sportsman," a "good sort," 
 he's "the finest man ever was in this regiment" — 
 these are common ever-repeated remarks about of- 
 ficers. Not that the officers are really near the 
 men : a great gulf divides them socially, and must 
 do so, but the men would not follow so well an of- 
 ficer who was too free with them. 
 
 Then the officer, being presumably rich and of 
 the class of masters, is seen to suffer as much and 
 more on the field of battle, and Tommy realises 
 that we are all in it and have only devised the rules 
 of discipline for the greatest good of all. 
 
I NOTES ON DISCIPLINE 19 
 
 By the way, it is often said that the N.C.O.'s 
 run the army, and that the officers might be dis- 
 pensed with, or at least more promotions be made 
 from the one class to the other. But that is a fal- 
 lacy. We all know that ''the backbone of the army 
 is the non-commissioned man." But those who 
 have been through the mill of the army know that 
 discipline and esprit de corps and justice depend 
 more on the character of the officers than on any- 
 thing else. The officers demand discipline, the 
 N.C.O.'s enforce it. N.C.O.'s are much more 
 frequently hated than are officers. They under- 
 stand how to bully and drive and terrify and even 
 batter soldiers into shape, but they seldom possess 
 the personality and character through which disci- 
 pline can be perfected. There is a point where the 
 deadliness of sergeants must cease and the fineness 
 of the calm officer comes in, enabling the men to 
 go into battle as camarades de guerre, following a 
 brave leader, and not merely as military slaves. 
 
 If we had all understood Christianity as Tolstoy 
 understood it, Germany would have won. If we 
 had all been merely brave and gone out to fight 
 moved by the Spirit we should probably have lost. 
 These facts we knew, and although the seeming de- 
 feat of the ideal might have been more glorious and 
 even more serviceable to humanity as a whole than 
 the prolonged conflict, we chose to fight Germany 
 in Germany's way. We imitated her machines, 
 including the greatest of all, namely, the man-ma- 
 chine, whose principle is discipline. Perhaps in 
 our way we have improved that machine and shown 
 where its defects lie. The curious discovery has 
 
20 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS i 
 
 been made by both sides that men of all ages, 
 classes, temperaments, and states of health can be 
 fitted into it, and the weakest individuals will often 
 fight the best. Now that the war is over, however, 
 we must not forget that for many the greatest or- 
 deal was not the field of battle but the field of train- 
 ing, where men, infinitely diverse in character, 
 originality, and expression were standardised to 
 become interchangeable parts in the fighting ma- 
 chine. 
 
 What our men of all ages, professions, and tem- 
 peraments had to go through to become soldiers! 
 And then how stern and choiceless the road to vic- 
 tory and death! 
 
II 
 
 LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 
 
 "To the Asylum and Barracks" says a finger-post 
 pointing upward to Little Sparta, and you climb 
 the hill to the place where you must serve as a 
 novice in soldiering. The lunatic asylum and the 
 barracks stand side by side, and the ineffable ser- 
 geant-instructor when he has you in his care is 
 bound to inquire whether by chance you have 
 climbed over the wall. 
 
 As you climb the steep hill you inevitably won- 
 der what sort of gruelling you will be put through 
 in the famous soldier factory. It has a fame which 
 is somewhat thrilling, the severest training-ground 
 in England, the place where the most rigorous dis- 
 cipline in Europe is maintained. Not even Prus- 
 sian Guards had a more terrible time in the mak- 
 ing. "If you go to Little Sparta it's kill or cure." 
 "If you don't break down during the training 
 you've got a remarkably fine constitution." "If 
 you get through your course at Little Sparta you 
 can get through anything." 
 
 There is a poor but large village without village 
 life, long lines of poor cottages and poky, mysteri- 
 ous shops; there are sweet-stuff shops, tea-shops, 
 cobblers' shops, diminutive drapers, and crowded 
 little grocers, where the soldiers buy macaroni 
 boxes to make their packs square; there is the 
 Asylum tavern, there is a row of labourers' cottages 
 with lodgings for men who live out, and just out- 
 side the gates the little establishment where a man 
 
 21 
 
22 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 and his wife make a living by selling the soldiers 
 sausage and mashed. At night there is ever the 
 characteristic tramp of guardsmen's feet, the steady 
 beat of army boots as twos and threes stamp past in 
 the style learned upon the barrack square. 
 
 Civilians have a garishly emaciated look beside 
 the robust recruits, there is a curious humility about 
 their ways, a gentleness, a hesitancy. But even the 
 recruit of a week has a self-assurance and resolute- 
 ness which make one feel that khaki has the future 
 with it, and that the men in black belong to an or- 
 der which is passing away. Fallacious thought! 
 
 Little Sparta is, however, the one first-class in- 
 stitution of this place. In the midst of a sort of 
 down-at-heel outer Suburbia it is thorough, and 
 knows it. A fine sentry is pacing to and fro at the 
 gate. A picquet, in voluminous great-coat and 
 freshly khakied belt, is standing to attention with 
 cane in hand waiting to be sent on a message that 
 may break the tedium of his two-hour immobility. 
 There stands the gloomy guard-house, with its cells 
 for misdemeanants. Beyond that, but just inside 
 the gates, is the abortive-looking church, which 
 looks as if religion had with difficulty been 
 squeezed in; after the church is the barrack square, 
 where pandemonium reigns, and all manner of tiny 
 groups of recruits are marching and counter- 
 marching, and yelling numbers at the top of their 
 voices; beyond the square stand the blocks of the 
 barrack buildings, fine and stern and gloomy, high 
 and many-windowed. 
 
 "What a lot of queer fellows come in at this 
 gate," says a Tafify to a Bill Brown as I enter the 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 23 
 
 barracks in civilian attire on the day of enlistment. 
 *'Yes, they come in queer, but they all pass out the 
 same in three months," says the Welshman. 
 
 I realise that I have entered the soldier factory 
 in which you go in at one end civilian and pass out 
 eventually at the other soldier of the King. And 
 this was a very special type of factory, with a very 
 special type of product. The soldiers made here 
 were supposed to be much more deadly to the en- 
 emy than those made at any other depot. How- 
 ever, if you were in any way developed or individ- 
 ualised as a civilian it was a stiff process, being 
 wrought into shape and standardised to type. 
 
 I suppose the British nation coming to the bar- 
 rack-gates did exhibit an extraordinary diversity, 
 a divergency from type that in the long run must 
 have somewhat disgusted the sergeant-instructors, 
 and they must have been pretty well "fed up" with 
 the British people before they had been long at 
 their task. I was such an undisciplined person that 
 I felt I owed the army some apology for myself. 
 Still, the fact of enlistment is the surrender of an 
 individual to the army; the individual has sur- 
 rendered and the army has to make the best of him. 
 He has offered his body and soul and will and mind 
 as so much raw material — the responsibility is not 
 his, however much he may be sworn at in days to 
 come. 
 
 An immense gulf seems to separate the man who 
 wrote from the man who shoulders the rifle. It is 
 as if he had died, as if I who write had once been he 
 and died, and then been born again as a soldier. 
 
24 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 When for the first time after many months I took 
 up the pen again and tried to write, I felt that even 
 my hands had changed. For at Little Sparta you 
 never touch the rifle with your hand in any action 
 of the drill but you strike it. The squad stands 
 with blood streaming from fingers and palms, and 
 the instructor yells for "noise, more noise — ye're 
 afraid of hitting it." So with rough, swollen 
 hands I sit now and try to think and write as of 
 yore, whilst my mind in a gloomy mood seems wait- 
 ing rather for orders. 
 
 My last day in civilian life was calm. I be- 
 lieved that the suppression of my thought in a ma- 
 terial way would cause it to shine forth more 
 strongly by and by. What I dreaded most was the 
 taking away of the marks of individuality. For I 
 knew well that the army hated all distinguishing 
 marks except its own stripes and stars and crowns 
 and patches, and that the general appearance of 
 the ordinary civilian was always somewhat more or 
 less of an offence to a good soldier. I used to think 
 that in the drab, dull way of the modern tailor 
 every one was really in uniform even in peace-time 
 — the bowler hat, the dark clothes, the stick, the 
 newspaper in hand, this was the livery of the com- 
 mercial service, and I rebelled. I wore my distin- 
 guishing marks. However, it soon became clear 
 that the army was the straiter sect. When I came 
 to Little Sparta the whole army seemed to glare 
 at me, as uniformity stares at diversity and disci- 
 pline at freedom. 
 
 I was a day in civilian attire, and then the proc- 
 ess set in: change of clothes, of boots, hair off, but- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 25 
 
 tons polished. The "trained sweat" ^ who cut my 
 hair said it seemed like murder to him, but I'd be 
 hanged if the sergeant-major saw how long it was. 
 I scrubbed floors and tables, blackleaded the grates, 
 shined the everlasting ration-tins. I went out with 
 the scavenging cart and picked up leaves and pa- 
 per; I was on cook-house fatigue, sergeants'-mess 
 fatigue, washed out the floors of the canteens, on 
 sewage fatigue, I with a scoop ten feet long, a com- 
 panion, also a new recruit, with a large muck- 
 holder. And, ''Daddy," said he facetiously, 
 'Svhat did you do in the Great War?" 
 
 A new squad was in formation, and we were set 
 all manner of fatigues. In the midst of these the 
 reality of civilian life seemed to be slipping back 
 and receding like shifting sands under the feet. 
 There were twenty or thirty of us, and we none of 
 us felt sure of ourselves as soldiers, and I had mis- 
 givings that I should never correspond to type. 
 Worse doubts were to come when appearing on 
 parade-ground in the new squad to drill. Mere 
 change of dress does not change a man. Original- 
 ity and individual expression shone through my 
 uniform, and was at odds with it, so that I looked 
 as if I had just put on a friend's uniform or ex- 
 changed clothes with him for a joke. Several 
 others in the same squad were more or less in the 
 same case as I. But I think that for the first week 
 no one came to our squad to drill it or inspect it 
 but his eyes lighted on me particularly, and he 
 asked with some querulousness, ^'Who is that man?" 
 
 1 Trained siveai, slang name for the barrack-room old soldier who 
 trains raw recruits in "cleanliness." 
 
26 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 Temporary lance-corporals seemed to have power 
 of life and death over us, and thought out ever 
 more dreadful oaths and vulgar epithets as we 
 came daily under their notice. 
 
 An oldish fellow, who had broken down under 
 the severe training, and was now held, against all 
 conscience, as an employed man, a tailor, instead of 
 being returned to his family in Perth, warned sev- 
 eral of us not to take what was said to us to heart. 
 "The great process of bullying and intimidation 
 has set in," said he. "They try and break you at 
 the beginning and take all your pride out of you. 
 But it'll be better later on. Never answer any of 
 them back or get angry. It's not worth it." 
 
 Another man also gave us excellent advice. 
 "Never catch the sergeant's eye," said he. "The 
 sergeants hate being looked at." 
 
 The officers had very little to do with us in the 
 initial stages of training. A very great personage 
 to us was the brigade sergeant-major, with the royal 
 arms embroidered on his sleeve. He was kind to 
 the recruits but a terror to the non-commissioned 
 officers. His sharp eye often detected a corporal 
 or sergeant in the act of striking the men. He 
 seemed to regard it as one of the worst offences pos- 
 sible, and he never failed to administer a sharp 
 reprimand to an offender. The men had no 
 greater grievance than that of being struck whilst 
 on parade, and it made the blood boil to be struck 
 oneself or to see men near forty years of age struck 
 by corporals or sergeants of twenty-three or twenty- 
 four without the possibility of striking back. The 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 27 
 
 sergeant-major also tried to stop the more exuber- 
 antly filthy language that was used, but in that he 
 was much less feared by the instructors. Even 
 when he was near them, the latter had a way of 
 standing quite close to you and delivering a whis- 
 pered imprecatory address on adultery, the birth 
 of Jesus, the sins of Sodom, and what not. The 
 instructors, who had a very free hand whilst 
 "knocking civvies into shape," said the sort of 
 things which every man instinctively feels can only 
 be answered by blows. Descriptive justice can 
 never be done to this theme, so important in itself, 
 this particular aspect of the training. For al- 
 though there is a French book in which such ob- 
 scenity as is used has been set down as heard, it is 
 not really possible in English. It is not even de- 
 sirable, except for one reason — that reason being 
 the assumption that bad language, the "hard swear- 
 ing," is only a trait of which we may be indulgently 
 proud, a few bloodies and damns, and that's all. It 
 is much more than that, and it is frantically dis- 
 gusting and terrible. It could not be helped in the 
 middle of a great war, and no one naturally would 
 find fault with the old peace-time professional 
 army, whatever language it found most convenient, 
 but it is different when the whole nation is brought 
 under the military yoke. If conscription is going 
 to survive, let us remind all private soldiers who 
 have come through the obscenity and detested it all 
 the while, lest as fathers of the rising generation 
 they should regard it in a more lenient spirit, and 
 think it harmless for their sons when at eighteen or 
 nineteen they leave the purer atmosphere of home 
 
28 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 or school or factory or office for the training- 
 ground. Army life has many compensations, but 
 there are thousands of quiet youths in every gen- 
 eration who would be corrupted and spoiled by the 
 sort of treatment received during the Great War. 
 And among these quiet youths would be found most 
 of the really gifted and promising. The army is 
 an institution somewhat like a public school, in 
 that each fresh generation going into it inherits the 
 undying part of the language and manners of those 
 who have gone before. The old controls the new, 
 and it is impossible to escape traditions which, be- 
 sides being manifest and glorious, are often secret 
 and evil as well. It is impossible to make a fresh 
 start and train the young nation in a completely 
 wholesome, positive, and ideal atmosphere. It 
 seems strange, however, that ''the red little, dead 
 little army" should now set the way of life and ex- 
 pression for the whole nation in arms, and that we 
 should all have gone through such a miserable eye 
 of a needle. But at the moment When practically 
 all have been brought in, it is possible to look 
 around and see that the whole system is staffed by 
 the survivors of the pre-1914 army. They have 
 made the tone. The hope is that if military serv- 
 ice comes in as a national feature of our life after 
 the war we shall purify the system and make the 
 army a decent continuation school, where a young 
 man can grow nobly to manhood among his fellows. 
 As a squad we were nominally in charge of one 
 very young corporal, but as there were many super- 
 numerary instructors on the parade-ground, there 
 were many sergeants and corporals who tried their 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 29 
 
 arts upon us, and we were drilled day by day not 
 by one but by ten or twelve non-commissioned of- 
 ficers. For convenience I give them numbers, 
 though they had no numbers really, and the num- 
 bers have no reference to their seniority or to any 
 other facts of their military life. 
 
 Sergeant One ("Ginger") was somewhat of an 
 old man on the barrack square. He was not so 
 supple as he had been: his limbs and form had set 
 long since — set in a curious regimental, wooden 
 way. He was senior sergeant and instructor, but 
 it was necessary for him, as for other instructors, to 
 show recruits how the drill ought to be done.' He 
 did the drill in front of us like a wooden-jointed 
 soldier working on strings — his body had set to the 
 type of the toy soldier — wooden, regimental, jerky, 
 correct. He did not, I believe, turn out such good 
 squads of recruits as some of the younger instruc- 
 tors. This was perhaps due to lack of youth and 
 enthusiasm. When alone he could upon occasion 
 be heard talking to himself, giving drill orders 
 and making imaginary ranks of men form fours. 
 Rather an amusing figure in his way, he ought to 
 have risen long since to the rank of sergeant-major, 
 but could never master vulgar fractions, and his 
 long multiplication sums were generally wrong. 
 He had a natural malice against educated men, and 
 was never tired of saying that it did not take a col- 
 lege education to do this or do that. He was the 
 most illiterate of the sergeants, had difficulty in ex- 
 plaining himself in words, and could often be heard 
 saying in his jaunty voice: "Nah, I don't want 
 you to do one of them theres, I want you to do one 
 
30 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 of them theres." When an officer came near he 
 would coo at us like a dove, and be so vulgarly per- 
 suasive that we would grin, so patient and labori- 
 ously illustrative that he must have been thinking 
 that he would be put down for promotion at last. 
 He felt he knew how to manage officers. As soon, 
 however, as the officer would be out of hearing he 
 would blast and damn to make up for his patience. 
 He was capable of frantic fits of anger, when he 
 would use indescribable language, and threaten to 
 strike right and left. He was always going to 
 '^bash your silly head in." When he had us away 
 from the barracks, on a field expedition where no 
 one of higher rank was near to hear, he displayed 
 the temperament of a madman. He certainly gave 
 one the impression of having a mad streak in him, 
 racing us far and wide over the mud, cursing and 
 blinding like some old woman given to drink. We 
 also formed the impression that he taught some 
 parts of the drill incorrectly. When other non- 
 commissioned officers pointed out mistakes that we 
 were making he would say, "The captain '11 never 
 fluff," and that was enough for him. 
 
 Sergeant No. 2 was a fierce, lean Edinburgh lad, 
 who had been at the Battle of Loos and been 
 wounded. He had the dour tone of his regiment 
 developed par excellence. His whole idea in drill- 
 ing and training was terror, and he seemed to get 
 strange pleasure from giving all manner of people 
 the shock of their lives, bursting suddenly upon 
 them in military rage. He would be dressed be- 
 fore reveille, and be waiting at our door for the 
 first sound of the bugle, to dash in and pull down 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 31 
 
 half the collapsible beds in the room, screeching at 
 us as if the enemy had arrived. He struck his rifle 
 so violently in the drill that his hand was always 
 bleeding, never looked any one fair in the face, but 
 growled and snarled in his curious Scottish tone. 
 He was a good instructor, but off parade he was 
 known as the bun sergeant, owing to his proclivity 
 for sharing men's parcels from home. One day 
 when some one had bought a pot of jam he came 
 into the room and said to another recruit, "Here, 
 you, take that up to my bunk, will you?" And the 
 jam was gone. He was reputed to have married a 
 Salvation Army girl, and he neither drank nor 
 swore, but he made a meal of conscientious objec- 
 tors every day, prided himself on having chased 
 some leader of an anti-conscription league round 
 and round the drill square till he dropped in a faint. 
 He would never take a German prisoner, and in 
 general he was a thoroughgoing old army type. 
 
 He had a natural prejudice in favour of men 
 hailing north of the Tweed, and if he found fault 
 with a man in the squad he would ask: 
 
 "Where do ye come from?" 
 
 "Inverness," the recruit would perhaps reply. 
 
 "Don't tell that to me," he would blurt out in 
 gutturals, but he would find no more fault with 
 that recruit. If the luckless wight had answered 
 "Liverpool" or "Tooting" or "Maidstone," the 
 sergeant would tell him he'd got to "brighten his 
 ideas up" and lead him a dog's life. He had a 
 tremendous prejudice in favour of the "Jocks," and 
 was never tired of twitting our brother regiment 
 of England — the "Bill Browns," who, he averred, 
 
32 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 "left us in the lurch at Loos." When he found out 
 that I had been born in his own city he discovered 
 no fault in me, but took a larger share in any par- 
 cels sent me. One evening he called me to his 
 bunk and said, "Ye were a writer or something in 
 civil life, weren't ye? Ah well, and this life doesn't 
 suit me either, I can tell ye. I wasn't meant to be 
 a soldier. Just take my bike and clean it, will ye?" 
 Sergeant No. 3 was the humorous sergeant, a 
 Whitechapel cockney, very fond of beer, and pos- 
 sessing an endless flow of humorous remarks. By 
 the smartness of his salutes he often startled the of- 
 ficers. He did everything in an exaggerated way, 
 and exhibited a whole series of idiosyncrasies and 
 funniosities. Though a most excellent drill-in- 
 structor, a regular "Sergeant Whatshisname" who 
 could drill a black man white, he was illiterate and 
 unskilled and would not have made a decent living 
 outside the army. They say that if a cockney gets 
 into a Highland regiment he makes the best soldier 
 of all. In Sergeant No. 3 the humour, the self- 
 conceit, the natural cleverness and whimsicality of 
 the coster ran riot. He had been turning out 
 squads of soldiers as fast as they could be trained 
 ever since August 1914, had not been interfered 
 with by officers, and had developed a high degree 
 of crankiness. His forte was "about turn and 
 double march," and he broke men in by the most 
 violent exercise. He could make us go faster and 
 faster by accelerating his left-rights till our march 
 was a dizzy madness, and he delighted in giving 
 about turns following directly upon one another, 
 so that the barrack walls spun past us. We 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 33 
 
 streamed sweat, our hearts thumped, our wind 
 went, we fell out and were rushed in again, and all 
 the time the sergeant followed us with imprecations 
 and jokes and commands. He was one of the most 
 successful sergeants on the square and, despite his 
 ways, he was very popular. 
 
 Sergeant No. 4 was a dark young fellow with a 
 bushy black moustache and a most violent voice. 
 To him we were always ruptured ducks or rup- 
 tured crows. He was a most successful drill-in- 
 structor. He was not so original as the rest, but 
 felt it necessary to be funny. This he achieved by 
 scaring the timid recruits. He had absorbed all 
 the brutality of the soldiers' profession, and thought 
 that brutality was humour. 
 
 Sergeant No. 5 was a genial ex-policeman given 
 to drink. 
 
 Sergeant No. 6 was a quiet, careful sergeant who 
 used no bad language, and of whom the men said 
 with real appreciation, "He's a gentleman." He 
 had the name of turning out very good squads. 
 
 Sergeant No. 7 was a boxer, who was also kind. 
 He told us he had once been a religious man but 
 the war had caused him to swear and to kill with- 
 out an idea of mercy. He gave us, as it were, long 
 P.S.A. talks punctuated by bayonet drill. 
 
 Sergeant No. 8, a bayonet-instructor of a brutal 
 cast of intelligence, seemed by his conversation to 
 be sexually mad. He would commonly say to 
 massed squads when they had made a mistake: 
 
 "Wait for it, can't yer? Yer mother had to wait 
 for you before you were born." 
 
 Most of his observations were of this kind, and 
 
34 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 his favourite way of bullying his men was by mak- 
 ing indecent inquiries. It was very tedious, and 
 made the drudgery of becoming a soldier rather 
 worse. 
 
 Corporal 9 was a bayonet-instructor, a Welsh- 
 man, who talked a great deal to us on the ethics of 
 killing Germans. A very good fellow in his way, 
 clean-mouthed, the right type, and similar to Ser- 
 geant 7. 
 
 Corporal 10, who took us a great deal, was 
 young, stupid, foul, given to striking the men, a 
 poor instructor, and very unpopular. 
 
 There were others, of course, but they had less 
 to do with us, and the details of these probably give 
 some notion of our masters. 
 
 The men who were coming in to be trained were 
 those destined to fill the gaps in the army in the 
 late winter and spring of 1918. They proved 
 themselves in course of time to be as firm and brave 
 and as effective as any that had gone before. It is 
 even probable that the ordeal they were destined to 
 stand in France and Belgium was the greatest of 
 the war. In them Little Sparta was justified even 
 more than in the others. 
 
 We were rather the last hundred thousand, the 
 gleanings of British manhood. Not that we had 
 come literally to the last hundred thousand recruits. 
 The forty-to-fifty-years-of-age men had yet to be 
 called up. But we were mostly "hard cases" of 
 one kind or another, and there were a considerable 
 number who would ordinarily have been consid- 
 ered unfit for our Spartan regiment even when re- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 35 
 
 emits were scarce. Some also in a true and sen- 
 sible national economy ought never to have been 
 sent to fight. 
 
 My barrack-room neighbour on one side is a 
 sturdy lead-puddler from Newcastle, nicknamed 
 Wilkie Bard by Sergeant Three. He is a man 
 with a mighty arm earning five or six pounds a 
 week lifting huge weights of molten lead. He has 
 his own wee house in one of those jaded Newcastle 
 suburbs, which when walking through I have 
 thought must be wretched to live in. But his wife 
 and four children are there, and he is proud that 
 he has never had a half house but always a whole 
 house to himself. He enlisted the same day as I, 
 and he looked so miserable that I tried to cheer 
 him up. "Eh, man, but I do feel bad," said he. 
 He has spent many a quarter of an hour telling me 
 domestic details of his home in his broad tongue. 
 The one on the other side is Songster, as some have 
 called him, and he also is married and has four 
 children; he nears forty, and has a daughter of 
 seventeen. He has been taken from "the gas and 
 brake department" of a northern railway — poor 
 old Songster, the scapegoat of the squad. Further 
 on in the room is Sandling Junction, a man who 
 came from east of Kent instead of north of Forth, 
 and suffered accordingly. He had a neck like a 
 tram horse, and I remember one day Sergeant No. 
 8 got hold of it with both hands and squeezed it 
 till his eyes dilated. He looked rather obstinate 
 and dull, though I think he was only a character- 
 istic south of England peasant. He was pointed 
 out to the jocose Sergeant Three one day. The 
 
36 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 two stood facing one another, making a very comic 
 couple. Then suddenly the sergeant seemed to 
 brighten up with an idea. ''Oh, Sandling," said 
 he, "fetch me my entrenching tool — and some flow- 
 ers." The sergeant implied that if he drilled him 
 long a grave and a wreath would become necessary. 
 
 We have also in the room B , a well-known 
 
 musical composer, rather an angel, and certainly 
 of a very charming personality and a temperament 
 unsuited to army life. The training was knocking 
 all music out of him, his hands were like a navvy's, 
 and when he had to go to Queen's Hall to hear one 
 of his pieces performed, he had a nightmare with 
 his fingers worse than that of Lady Macbeth. 
 "The first thing people will notice when I come 
 forward will be my dreadful hands," said he. But 
 he worked hard at the drill. Sergeant 5, who had 
 charge of him, was very kind. I don't think, how- 
 ever, any one realised the strain and torture of the 
 mind in a man whose heart and soul is given to 
 Art, given long since, and the mind and body sud- 
 denly given to the army. I watched it lay this 
 man prostrate. Suddenly he was taken to the hos- 
 pital, and he lay there in a wretched state for weeks. 
 When he came out he was excused all drills and 
 military exercises, but instead was put to do dirty 
 domestic work. He was most conscientious, and 
 used to sit in a corner of the barracks with the ap- 
 palling ration-tins in a cloud of bath-brick dust, 
 and he would scour, scour, scour for hours on end. 
 Watching him one day when he was doing some- 
 thing else, I suddenly saw that his face no longer ex- 
 pressed music but reflected ration-tins; it was ra- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 37 
 
 tion-tins all over — a most appalling physical ex- 
 pression. Even so, however, polishing ration-tins 
 was better for him than the parade-ground, and he 
 visibly relaxed and was always making jokes, slop- 
 ing and presenting arms with the barrack-room 
 broom and imitating the drill. In the army every- 
 thing is done by numbers. On the command One 
 you do this, on the command Two you do that, and 
 
 B coined the delicious phrases, "Winning the 
 
 war by numbers" and "How to win the war by num- 
 bers." It was a stock type of jest by him. One 
 morning after bugle-call he called out from his bed, 
 which was opposite mine, "Look, how to get up by 
 numbers! On the command One you throw the 
 blanket half-way down; on the command Two you 
 sit up in bed; on the command Three you make a 
 half-right turn; on the command Four bring the 
 right leg out, on Five the left." ' 
 
 "Oh," said I. "As you were! Not half sharp 
 enough! Too much of the old man about it!" 
 
 which was rather cruel, but dear B got a real 
 
 "As you were!" from the army later on, and for his 
 low nervous state was returned to his musical avo- 
 cation. Blessed day when he looked last at Little 
 Sparta! But, as I said, artists belong to an almost 
 impossible class. 
 
 B 's chief friend was commonly called Ber- 
 nard, a famous vocalist, whose voice had ravished 
 the ears of the worshippers in fashionable London 
 churches many a time and oft. I think he was by 
 far the cleverest man I met in the ranks, and at the 
 same time he was extraordinarily kind to his fellow- 
 soldiers, and was ready to take endless pains to save 
 
38 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 them from punishment. He never got into trouble 
 himself, being very smart, and having an aptitude 
 for seeing the quick and effective v^ay of doing 
 things. "Everything in Little Sparta depends on 
 time," he told me. "You are hustled from the mo- 
 ment you get up till the end of the day, and unless 
 you learn the tricks you are bound to get into 
 trouble." I think he "worked his ticket," as the 
 saying is. About his ninth week he began to com- 
 plain of headaches, and was "decategoried" by the 
 medical authorities on the ground of neurasthenia. 
 
 I heard a curious story of a violoncellist who 
 was said to have come to Sparta with long hair and 
 beautiful white hands, and he would not cut his 
 hair nor soil his hands, and kept both inviolate till, 
 in despair, the authorities handed him over to a 
 regimental band. He was very rich, and no mat- 
 ter how often he was awarded punishment he never 
 did an extra drill. 
 
 My comrades included also ten American volun- 
 teers, several of whom I got to know pretty well. 
 There had been a rush of American volunteers to 
 our colours in the summer. America was coming 
 into the war, and these volunteers were the first 
 fruits of President Wilson's great decision. It may 
 seem perhaps rather strange later on that there 
 should have been Americans enlisted in the British 
 Army. But this was how it came about. Amer- 
 ica always contains a great number of unassimilated 
 immigrants who, while taking their stand as "good 
 Americans," are not actually and legally nation- 
 alised, and retain their original European nation- 
 ality. Every nation in Europe, to use the con- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 39 
 
 scriptive term, possessed large numbers of "na- 
 tionals" in America — Britain perhaps most of all. 
 So when America decided to take active part in the 
 war she ceased automatically to afford refuge to 
 those European young men who did not want to 
 fight for their respective countries. An English- 
 man in America had to choose between being taken 
 for the American Army or joining the British. A 
 great number of British thereupon volunteered for 
 immediate enlistment in the British Army. Evi- 
 dently, however, no objection was made to ardent 
 U.S. boys who, in the incipient war fever, wanted 
 to get ahead and be in Europe first. Thus large 
 contingents of British immigrants and actual Amer- 
 icans came over to England to enlist. They had a 
 great reception, as some who were in London at 
 the time may remember, marched through the 
 streets, were given a welcoming feast and made 
 much fuss of. Great Britain was very grateful for 
 these young men, an earnest as they were of what 
 was coming later from the United States. Each of 
 these volunteers had the choice of what regiment 
 he would join, and questions of height or chest 
 measurement generally were waived. If one said 
 he'd go to the "Black Watch," to the "Black 
 Watch" he went. If another fancied the "Goal- 
 ies," he was forwarded right away. In this way 
 our regiment of "Jocks" got ten, which was one- 
 third of the squad in which I drilled. 
 
 There was "Red," a clever and observant boy — 
 only nineteen years old — from New York, always 
 getting punished for smiling and for being a "God- 
 damned Yank." He was thought to be an orphan, 
 
40 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 or rather a waif, with no relatives or friends, for 
 no letters ever came to him, nor was he interested 
 in the post as others were, nor did he write letters. 
 I believe he belonged to an unhappy home and had 
 run away. He had been brought up and educated 
 in a monastic institution where, by his account, a 
 most inhuman discipline had prevailed. He had 
 escaped from it as from hell and gone to New York 
 to earn a living by any means that came to his hand. 
 He was quick-witted, and was earning a living 
 composing pithy paragraphs in advertisement of 
 hotels and country resorts when he heard the call 
 of the army. He had had no idea he was entering 
 himself in a new system of discipline perhaps 
 harder than that of the monks, and he was im- 
 pressed with his own ill-luck — thinking he must 
 be destined to be killed in France. Then there was 
 ambitious Fitz from Virginia, a thoroughgoing 
 Southerner, sincerely sighing for Alabama, Tennes- 
 see, or Caroline, anywhere beneath that "Mason- 
 Dixon" line. He was only twenty years of age, an 
 engineer in civil life earning a good living. He 
 was full of exuberance and music. The British 
 sergeants and corporals couldn't understand his 
 speech, but he didn't care, and was for ever hum- 
 ming coon songs to himself. I knew him very 
 well, and his favourite song was the nigger 
 mother's reply to her little girl who wept because 
 she was not white — "You'd better dry your eyes, 
 my little coal-black Rose." He joined the British 
 Army because he thought it likely to be better than 
 the American one, and he wanted to belong to 
 something "first-class." He watched the Black 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 41 
 
 Watch drilling and watched us, and came to the 
 conclusion we drilled better, so he joined the 
 "Jocks." He also wanted to get to France and do 
 heroic deeds, win the war by himself, as it were, 
 before other Americans could get to it. His de- 
 sire was always to be first in everything. He had 
 a passion for style in drill, and was far and away 
 the best man in the squad. Then there was a clever 
 and loquacious actor from St. Louis, who had 
 played Hamlet in many towns of America. He 
 was ready to instruct even his instructors. He 
 could impart to his voice several tones, and when 
 you thought he had finished talking and your turn 
 had come, he would suddenly flow on in a new key. 
 His gift of the gab baffled the sergeants, and I re- 
 member all one of the most terrible could say to 
 him was that he ought to fix a horn to his head and 
 he'd make a damn good gramophone. He should 
 have stayed and got a commission in the American 
 Army; his constitution was unsuited to the life of 
 a private at Little Sparta and in the trenches. 
 However, he stuck it well and made an excellent 
 
 little soldier. Then there was H , a smart 
 
 youth, who told me life had been heaven in New 
 York, dancing every night and sleeping most of the 
 day, and he never thought he was coming to such 
 drudgery as Little Sparta life. He had enlisted 
 and come over to England merely to "charge with 
 the Guards." He told me "the Guards never turn 
 back," and he longed for the front. There was 
 "Gurt," a substantial, bald, industrious, teetotal 
 butler from New York, a simple Christian of 
 Y.M.C.A. type. He made a good soldier, but was 
 
42 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 killed soon after he got to the front; and there was 
 Will, a conscientious and rather noble fellow of 
 forty from the Far West who felt that Germany 
 had to be faced, and that it had been "up to him" 
 to go — one of our best shots and most dependable 
 men, destined, however, to be badly gassed on his 
 first day in the line and to be killed later on. 
 
 There was tall Willie, an excitable Scottish 
 gamekeeper who suffered from rupture, but was 
 nevertheless graded as "A." He came to us pale 
 and broken, but put on health in a remarkable way 
 and became a very redoubtable bayonet-fighter. 
 He was, however, terribly nervous, and was very 
 much baited by N.C.O.'s who loved to see him get- 
 ting more and more agitated. Sometimes every 
 one in the field would be watching him doing 
 Swedish drill and making frantic convolutions 
 through sheer nervousness, but I have always 
 marked him down as the type that gets the V.C. at 
 the front. He was, moreover, the most industrious 
 cleaner of his equipment in the barracks, and he 
 never once went out at the gate for a walk whilst 
 he was at Little Sparta, and could always be found 
 in the evenings sitting in the barrack-room. 
 
 "Now, what was you in civil life?" said Sergeant 
 Four to him one day. He had been bullying him 
 verbally for some time. 
 
 "Rrr obbit cotcher," said poor William, to the 
 intense mirth of the sergeant. 
 
 "Oh, that explains why you're always bobbing 
 and grabbing at something with your hand," said 
 he. 
 
 There was S , the nephew of a peer, and he 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 43 
 
 slept next me at one time, and found a common 
 ground in the fact that we both knew certain fa- 
 mous actors. His specialty, however, was not the 
 stage; he was an excellent accountant and a prac- 
 tical financial expert. He ought not to have been 
 in the army, and eventually suffered with shingles 
 and was employed as a clerk. I think he ought to 
 have been given his freedom. 
 
 Joe was another comrade, the hardest and, some 
 said, the stupidest, some the craftiest man who had 
 ever come to Little Sparta to be trained. He had 
 the face and head of a mediaeval anchoress. He 
 swore frightfully, but from the look of his face 
 there must have been a capacity for piety in him. 
 But he never did anything right on the square, and 
 his punishments were terrible. He made such mis- 
 takes that one would have said he must be mad, 
 and he couldn't be laughed into being any wiser. 
 He was a brewer's labourer from the Birmingham 
 district. However, he made good and was sent to 
 the trenches at last. Some thought he was "work- 
 ing his ticket" like the man who, whenever he saw 
 a bit of paper on the ground, ran and picked it up 
 and gave it to the sergeant, even though a field- 
 marshal were inspecting the troops at the time. 
 But I think Joe was honestly silly. When he got 
 to France he did not put any address on the top of 
 his letters, and explained that his wife did not know 
 he had been sent to the front and he didn't want her 
 to be upset. The motive, as the journalese-writer 
 would say, "was entirely to his credit." But the 
 simplicity of it was characteristic of his ways. 
 
 What a lot of punishment Joe saved the other 
 
44 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 men by taking the sergeants' ire away from them 
 to himself! He was the most talked-of man I 
 came across in the army, and his name had only to 
 be mentioned to N.C.O.'s and it banished all other 
 topics, for he fairly baffled them. I think one side 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race was revealed in Joe. He 
 was an absolute type, and through him much that 
 is difficult in the character of our public men could 
 be explained. 
 
 "Jerry" was another original. His peculiarity 
 was loud singing. He sang all day like massed 
 barrel-organs, or, as Gorky said of Shakro the 
 tramp, as if he were having his throat cut. And 
 some of the songs were of the recherche obscene. 
 I have never come across such bestiality in any lan- 
 guage, screeds about niggers in brothels and incest 
 that might make a devil's hair erect. He was at 
 the same time a good-natured mother's darling, 
 confessed to me that he loved his mother more than 
 any one else in the world. He came from Liver- 
 pool, and was an ex-policeman. After puzzling 
 over him for some time, I said, "Were you ever on 
 duty in music-halls?" "Yes, often," said he. I 
 think that probably he picked up those songs be- 
 fore and after the performances and round about 
 the dressing-rooms. He thought them very clever 
 and amusing. It was very trying, however, for us 
 to listen to him. 
 
 Then there was a charming broken-down old 
 sailor, a ne'er-do-well, wrecked with drink, who 
 had nevertheless a mellow Scottish accent and a 
 sense of the humorous which would have made his 
 fortune on the stage. He was killed when he was 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 45 
 
 sent to France, and that voice which had amused 
 so many became silent. 
 
 There was another Liverpool Scotsman, who 
 used bad language like a machine-gun. He had 
 the most filthy imagination as to what our food 
 might in reality be, and spoilt many a queer-look- 
 ing dish by apostrophising it in Liverpoolese. He 
 was one of our worst characters, and soon got a job 
 on the military police. 
 
 We had a giant from Lerwick, six feet five 
 inches, and he was nicknamed Figure One. We 
 had a tall massive farmer from Inverness-shire, fed 
 not only by the rations but from his own farm. 
 His Scotch was very broad and it was difficult to 
 understand him. 
 
 The best men that we had were from the West- 
 ern Highlands of Scotland and the Isles. Some of 
 these spoke English only with difficulty, and they 
 were bullied a good deal by the drill-sergeants, but 
 they were of a gentle kind, calm, strong, and serene. 
 It was always pleasant to talk with them, for they 
 were without a trace of the vulgarity which now- 
 adays seems to have entered the grain of all our 
 working-people. There were, however, many 
 other quiet Scots and English, though it is impos- 
 sible to mention them here. The tone was given 
 by the noisy people. 
 
 There is one atmosphere of the barrack-square 
 and another of the barrack-room; the one all ten- 
 sion, the other all relaxation. At first I preferred 
 the latter, but later I prefer the former. On the 
 parade-ground we are all silent, we are strung-up 
 
46 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 and intense. We wait in a throbbing expectation 
 for the word of command or the drum-beat that 
 means Eyes front, and wait so intently that fre- 
 quently we are nervously betrayed into "beating" it 
 and fulfilling the order before the order has been 
 given. We strive with all our nerves not to make 
 a mistake, and as we strive we listen to a constant 
 flow of violent language and threats. In the bar- 
 rack-room, however, we seem to care for nobodv. 
 We let ourselves go. At least the others do. I 
 obtain my relaxation differently. But in most of 
 the others it shows itself in an abandonment of re- 
 straint. In cases where self-respect has been 
 sapped on the parade-ground its weakness is quickly 
 apparent in talk. Nearly every one plumps down 
 on to an animal level. Even religiously minded 
 and apparently delicate men allow themselves to 
 talk indecently and to swear and make mean jokes 
 and commit improprieties. It is only shallow and 
 vociferous small-talk, but it is all the same un- 
 worthy of human beings, and there is no indication 
 for the naturalist that we are higher than pigs, yea, 
 dogs, jackasses, sailors' parrots. 
 
 We do not sing well. Our regiment is supposed 
 to shout, and if a man speaks in a sing-song voice 
 he will be told that he ought to have joined the 
 Taffies. Tall Willie whistles lugubriously bag- 
 pipe airs; Jerry sings like massed barrel-organs. 
 But every one is infected with American airs, and 
 whimper now and then that: 
 
 At the table 
 Next to Mabel, 
 There's an empty chair. 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 47 
 
 Many hymns are parodied. ''Holy, Holy, Holyl" 
 becomes "Grousing, grousing, grousing!" Fa- 
 vourite parodies are: 
 
 When this wicked war is over 
 No more soldiering for me, 
 
 to the tune of a favourite Y.M.C.A. hymn, "What 
 a friend we have in Jesus!" And we frequently 
 hear: 
 
 Old soldiers never die, never die. 
 They rot away. 
 
 The last hour before bed-time is the most clamor- 
 ous. There is shouting and swearing and acro- 
 batics, whilst all the most assiduous are equipment- 
 polishing, rifle-oiling, trouser-pressing. In the 
 midst of all this I am rather like one in a dream, 
 but I cannot help smiling at a lusty coster near by 
 who all the while he is cleaning his buttons keeps 
 bawling in a staccato barrow voice: 
 
 "Tuppence a pound plums. Syme pryce figs." 
 
 He had sold them in civil life. 
 
 Night passes, and the morning-bugles break out 
 in the darkness and stillness — far away and doubt- 
 fully at first, then close at hand, urgently and un- 
 mistakeably. We draw on the warm pressed trou- 
 sers on which we've been sleeping, put on boots and 
 puttees, fold our blankets in the correct way, scrub 
 the floor under and about the beds, wash and shave, 
 draw our ration of bread. There are crowds who 
 are shaving, trying to glimpse bits of their faces 
 by flickering gaslight in the tiny looking-glasses. 
 
" 
 
 48 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 Other crowds are swilling the stone stairs and pas- 
 sages with water, and sweeping them clean with 
 heavy brooms. Other crowds are at the cook- 
 house, waiting to bring in the breakfast ration-tins. 
 There is a plentiful breakfast at seven, and then 
 general swabbing till eight — the first parade at 
 eight-thirty. The barrack square becomes an in- 
 ferno of drill orders, and stamping, rushing, yelling 
 — a tumult which is almost indescribable. A long- 
 haired Slavonic friend came down one day to meet 
 me after barracks, and chanced to come whilst the 
 drill was in progress. It almost blighted his hap- 
 piness. He could not see it, he could only hear it, 
 and as he described the sound, " 'Twas like hob- 
 goblins striving against one another in hell." We 
 who w^re in the midst of it were appalled and 
 cowed till we got used to it. Some notion of a first 
 parade with Sergeant Three may be gleaned from 
 the following: 
 
 'Who the is this man? Where did this 
 
 new recruit spring from? Take him away and 
 drown him! Take him round the back and pull 
 the string. Hold him, hold him. He's drunk. 
 Do you drink? That's what's the matter with half 
 you new recruits, you don't drink enough. You 
 haven't got balance, and you're always falling 
 over. Now, then, left turn, right turn, about turn, 
 breaking into quick march, quick march; about 
 turn, about turn, left turn, halt — I say, what were 
 you in civil life? A writer? Bloomin' fine 
 writer, I bet. A writer, hfl. On that scale I'd be 
 king of England. You don't knov^ right from your 
 left. Quick march! You're rolling your body 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 49 
 
 about like a tank. You've got no control of your- 
 self. About turn, about turn, about turn. You'll 
 fall down in a minute and I shan't pick you up. 
 Come on, the writer! You see that house over 
 there? That's the spud-hole, my bonnie lad, and 
 there you'll go. No, it's not the Hotel Cecil. 
 Keep yrrr eyes to the front, will yrrrr! You'll get 
 your dinner presently. And it won't be fried fish 
 from a silver plate and a French waiter, but three- 
 quarters of a pound of meat, including fat and bone, 
 and lucky to get it! The whole lot of you look 
 like ruptured vultures or a herd of mad horses. 
 Halt! Stand at ease!" 
 
 The recruit does not know the Little Sparta way 
 of standing at ease, which is a movement and ges- 
 ture suggestive of defiance and a determination 
 never to budge from the ground whereon you stand. 
 
 The sergeant in mock solemnity explains. 
 
 "Do you understand now?" he asks. 
 
 "I hope so," the recruit replies. 
 
 "You wha-at?" he screeches. 
 
 "I think so," corrects the other, realising that one 
 must not hope. 
 
 "Who are you talking to?" 
 
 "The sergeant." 
 
 "Have you got a mother living?" 
 
 "Yes, sergeant." 
 
 "What would she say if she could see you now?" 
 "I don't know, sergeant." 
 
 "What's the first duty of a soldier?" 
 
 "I don't know, sergeant." 
 
 "Obedience. What is it?" 
 
 "Obedience, sergeant." 
 
50 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 "Well, mind you do. Take that smile off your 
 dial. If you laugh I'll run you to the guard-room. 
 You're in the army now. Not in the Cork militia. 
 No use your coming here and trying your hand 
 on. I'll break yer. I'll break yer blooming heart, 
 I will. I've seen plenty of your sort come in at 
 that gate. I'm not afraid of you, big as you are. 
 Not of twenty like you rolled into one." 
 
 He was not afraid because he had the army be- 
 hind him, and it was no use saying a word in reply. 
 Some weeks later a Canadian backwoodsman was 
 brought straight from his native haunts to this bar- 
 racks and was addressed in the same way. He 
 flared up, and replied, "You can speak like that to 
 Britishers if you choose, but you're not going to 
 pass it ofif on an American. I didn't come four 
 thousand miles to be treated worse nor a dog." 
 And he offered to fight. But the sergeant's course 
 was quite simple. He called for an escort, and the 
 recalcitrant recruitwas marched to the guard-room. 
 There the Canadian tore the buttons off his tunic 
 and stamped on them, and fought the sergeant of 
 the guard, and was thrown into a cell. He de- 
 serted later, but was recaptured, and now I believe 
 the sergeants have him "eating out of their hands." 
 No, no, when you are in you are in — very much in. 
 
 The recruit smiles sweetly, and the sergeant, cal- 
 culating perhaps on rebellion, turns away with, 
 "Thank God we've got a Navyl" Breaking into 
 slow march, slow march! "Right turn! Your 
 military right, not your civil right. Are you on 
 our side? Because if you are, turn with the rest. 
 You look as if you were coming home late at night 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 51 
 
 and your wife was waiting for you with a 
 poker. . . ." 
 
 Sometimes the parade resolves itself into what 
 may be called the sergeant's school. Instead of 
 doing drill the sergeant tells us facts about the 
 army, and we repeat them after him, or he asks 
 us questions and we answer them, sometimes col- 
 lectively and sometimes individually. 
 
 Sergeant Four has us and is putting us through 
 it. 
 
 Sergeant. What is the second duty of a sol- 
 dier? 
 
 All. Cleanliness. 
 
 Sergeant. The third? 
 
 All. Honesty, sobriety, and self-respect. 
 
 Sergeant. How many conduct sheets have you? 
 
 All. Two. 
 
 Sergeant. What is the brigade motto? 
 
 All (vociferously). TRIO JUNCTA IN UNO. 
 
 Sergeant. Trio juncta in uno. And what does 
 it mean? 
 
 All. Three in One. 
 
 Sergeant (softly). Three in One and One in 
 Three. And how many regiments are there in the 
 brigade? 
 
 All. Five. 
 
 Sergeant. Five. Right. And what is the 
 motto of your own regiment? 
 
 All (vociferously) . Nemo me impewn laass- 
 essit. 
 
 Sergeant. Nemo me impewn laass-essit. 
 Right. And what does it mean? 
 
52 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 All. Touch me not with impunity. 
 
 Sergeant. Touch me not with impunity. And 
 if any one says anything against your regiment 
 what do you do? 
 
 All {vociferously) . Knock him down. 
 
 Sergeant {softly, in a Kiplingesqtie tone). Re- 
 member that. Remember, too — that the brigade 
 is the finest in the British Army, and that your regi- 
 ment is the finest in the brigade. 
 
 On Wednesday and Saturday morning we march 
 to music. It is called "saluting parade" or "swank 
 parade." All the squads of the various regiments 
 go round together, and each instructor wants his 
 squad to shine. 
 
 "Make 'em think y're the best squad going 
 round," says Sergeant Three. "Put some bloom- 
 ing swank into it, hpp, hpp. Head up, swing yer 
 canes level, heads up, hpp, hpp." And he blows 
 out his cheeks, bunches his lips, and puts much ex- 
 pression into his knees as he shows us how. 
 
 We march to the hum-drum hubbub of a band 
 which is playing American popular songs. One 
 does not wish to respond to the vulgar incentive, 
 but there is no help for it, the ears prick up, the 
 pulse responds. You may feel humiliated to be 
 marching to the tune of "Snookey-ookums," but you 
 liven your step. Some of the heavy recruits, such 
 as the Inverness-shire farmer, take on a frantic 
 gait under the influence of the music, but we think 
 we must be drilling smartly. Sergeant Two can, 
 however, be heard behind us, as it were, wringing 
 his hands and mumbling despairingly: 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 53 
 
 "Ma pair regiment, ma pair regiment." 
 
 On a barrack-room door three verses of Conan 
 
 Doyle's poem on the Battle of Loos have been 
 
 copied out: 
 
 Up by the Chalk Pit wood, 
 
 Weak from our wounds and our thirst, 
 Wanting our sleep and our food, 
 
 After a day and a night. 
 God! shall I ever forget? 
 
 Beaten and broke in the fight, 
 But sticking it, sticking it yet. 
 
 Trying to hold the line, 
 
 Fainting and spent and done. 
 Always the thud and the whine. 
 
 Always the yell of the Hun, 
 Northumberland, Lancaster, York, 
 
 Durham and Somerset 
 Fighting alone, worn to the bone. 
 
 But sticking it, sticking it yet. 
 
 Never a message of hope, 
 
 Never a word of cheer, 
 Fronting "Hill 70's" shell-swept slope 
 
 With the dull, dead plain in our rear. 
 Always the shriek of the shell. 
 
 Always the roar of its burst. 
 Always the torture of Hell, 
 
 As waiting and wincing we cursed 
 Our luck, the guns, and the Boche. 
 
 When our corporal shouted "Stand to!" 
 And I hear some one cry, "Clear the front for 
 the Guards" 
 
 And the Guards came through. 
 
 We realise that we are expected when we get to 
 the Front, and have hard and splendid work to do, 
 
54 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 as, for instance, at Bourlon Wood or L'Epinette, 
 to behave as we might on parade on the barrack 
 square. No matter what sort of man the old sol- 
 dier or N.C.O. may be, there is a tremendous, and 
 even bullying pride in the regiment. "Man, do 
 ye know what regiment ye belong to?" 
 ''Remember you are Guards." 
 
 The whole foundation of army training is said 
 to be obedience, and officers are told that absolute, 
 implicit obedience must be obtained. It can be en- 
 joined by persuasion or enforced by punishment. 
 Disobedience in the field is punishable by death, 
 and the recruit must realise that his superior officer 
 has a life-and-death hold on him. When obedi- 
 ence has been obtained, esprit de corps must be in- 
 culcated. The first problem seems to be how to 
 get that implicit obedience from men who, it may 
 be, have always been accustomed to consider and 
 discuss or think about a thing before doing it; how 
 to get that obedience from men who, it may be, 
 have been accustomed to have others obey them; 
 and to obtain obedience that is implicit obedience, 
 not abject obedience. 
 
 The defects in the Little Sparta system are the 
 humiliation of recruits by words or blows, the use 
 of glaringly indecent language, the possibility of 
 squaring punishments, the use by N.C.O.'s, even 
 by lance-corporals, of recruits as batmen. I be- 
 lieve these were recognised as defects in peace-time, 
 and some of them had been eradicated, others en- 
 dured in secret. But in war-time the problem 
 of breaking in those who were never intended by 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 55 
 
 Nature to be soldiers was so difficult that some of 
 these ugly things became useful. Constant humil- 
 iation and the use of indecent phrases took down 
 the recruit's pride, and reduced him to a condition 
 when he was amenable to any command. It is im- 
 possible not to think less of yourself when a ser- 
 geant has bawled before a whole squad, "Well, I 
 think you're about the ugliest thing ever dropped 
 from a woman," or "Are you married? Fancy a 
 decent woman having children by a man like you." 
 
 To be struck, to be threatened, to be called inde- 
 cent names, to be drilled by yourself in front of a 
 squad in order to make a fool of you, to be com- 
 manded to do a tiring exercise and continue doing 
 it whilst the rest of the squad does something else; 
 to have your ear spat into, to be marched across 
 parade-ground under escort, to be falsely accused 
 before an officer and silenced when you try to speak 
 in defence — all these things take down your pride, 
 make you feel small, and in some ways fit you to 
 accept the role of cannon-fodder on the battle- 
 ground. A good deal of it could be defended on 
 grounds of usefulness. But of course it doesn't 
 make a Christian army, and it's hell for the poor 
 British soldier. 
 
 On the other hand, the keeping of ourselves and 
 the barracks clean has an excellent influence. Lit- 
 tle Sparta was cleaner than any home, and the only 
 thing against it was the toil it represented. The 
 Americans wondered why labour-saving appli- 
 ances were not in use. ''This place is a hundred 
 years behind," said Red to me. "They'd never do 
 all this work in the States." And he would have 
 
56 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 had tiled floors, enamelled ration-tins and plates, 
 American cloth on the tables, no open grates, elec- 
 tric lighting, cloth or bone buttons instead of brass 
 ones, etc., etc. But the extra work of Little Sparta 
 was in reality part of the training. Its fruit was 
 visible in our personal appearance. And we were 
 the smartest soldiers you'd ever see on a street, and 
 could be picked out of a crowd by that alone. 
 
 We spend hours every day polishing. The five 
 ration-tins have to be shined with bath-brick. We 
 clean our buttons and hat-badge with soldiers' 
 friend four times a day, and bring our boot leather 
 to a high polish the same number. We polish the 
 many brasses of our equipment with ''bluebell" or 
 bath-brick; we polish the table ends and the metal 
 of our entrenching tools. We burnish the handles 
 of our bayonets with the burnisher. We polish our 
 dummy cartridges, our oil-bottles, and the weights 
 of our pull-throughs. For kit inspection we pol- 
 ish the backs of our blacking-brushes, clothes, and 
 hair-brushes with "nutto" or ''sap." We polish 
 the insteps of the soles of our duplicate pair of 
 boots. The eight metal wash-basins which we 
 never use we bring to a high lustre with "globe 
 polish," and the backs of our Bibles which we do 
 not read we diligently bring to a polish with "nug- 
 get" or "sap." Our knife, fork, and spoon are of 
 the sort that rapidly tarnish, so the smart men never 
 use them, but keep a duplicate set for use at table, 
 which set they generally keep dirty. Many of us 
 also use brushes of our own, and we wear also our 
 own socks and shirts, so that the army kit may be 
 always ready for inspection. 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 57 
 
 Every night we carefully soap the insides of our 
 trouser-creases, wet the outsides, and we obtain 
 smartness by laying the damp garments on our mat- 
 tresses and sleeping on them. We carefully fold 
 our tunics in a certain way and no other, and we 
 strap our overcoats on the pegs behind our beds, 
 so that they may show not one slightest crease. We 
 keep rags and dusters and silk dusters, shining the 
 wood of our rifles with them till it glimmers, and 
 gently polishing our hat-bands to a colour matching 
 that of the wood. We scrub our equipment, and 
 then paste khaki bianco on it. We wash our kit- 
 boxes and bath-brick our shelves. Thus it may be 
 understood that if we turn out smart on parade it 
 is not without pain on our part. // faut souffrir 
 pour etre beau. 
 
 It does not come at all natural to men recruited 
 mostly from grubby industrialism. I spent the 
 summer before entering the army lecturing in the 
 canteens of our munition works, and it was a mar- 
 vellous contrast, the grubbiness of the men in the 
 one, the shine and sparkle of the men in the other. 
 There undressed for medical inspection at the same 
 time as I at the depot six candidates for our famous 
 brigade. The body of one was coaly black and 
 of another brown. But they soon became rela- 
 tively white, marched as they were weekly to com- 
 pulsory hot baths, and inspected by officers to see 
 that they were clean. Nothing is accounted more 
 shameful than to be found dirty, and for the offence 
 such humiliating punishment as being washed by 
 corporals with scrubbing-brushes is meted out. 
 
 They come in unshaven and with lank hair, but 
 
58 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 woe betide the Spartan who turns out badly shaved 
 or without the evidence of a weekly hair-cut. 
 They are introduced to the tooth-brush, and al- 
 though it seems taken for granted that metal polish 
 can be applied to buttons with the same brush as 
 the powder to the teeth, the men do certainly apply 
 the latter. 
 
 An officer noticed a strange tint in a tooth-brush 
 one day, learned that it was from metal polish, and 
 asked the man with what brush he cleaned his 
 teeth. "Oh, I borrow one, sir," lied the man in 
 alarm. ''You what? Oh, you must never do 
 that," said the officer. 
 
 The men are lectured on keeping their nails 
 clean. One day I heard the following: "Most 
 of you men are married. I'd be ashamed to sit 
 down to meals with dirty nails. It's such a bad 
 example to your children." None of the men 
 made any comment, but it must have been a new 
 idea to most of them. 
 
 But polish does not end with clothes and appear- 
 ance. The men are expected to walk well. No 
 more slouching and loafing. They must always 
 remember they are Spartans, and are setting an ex- 
 ample to the rest of the army. This has to be 
 drilled into them. They have double as much 
 drilling as the rest of the army, and they are drilled 
 in a sharper, smarter way. Our turnings on the 
 march are clean-cut and rapid. We form fours 
 with the precision of a bolt movement. We never 
 touch the rifle in drill but we strike it. We stamp 
 our feet in a staccato when we turn about, and all 
 the time we are cajoled and encouraged and bul- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 59 
 
 lied to put "bags of swank into it." Above all 
 things we must salute with style. Twice in lec- 
 tures officers pointed the moral of the state of 
 things in Russia as being due to the initial folly of 
 not saluting. When at large, and even when in 
 London, we are supposed to give full and careful 
 salute to every officer we pass. 
 
 One day the King expressed a wish to inspect 
 us. The squad in which I drilled had by that 
 time become senior, and we had the honour of pre- 
 paring for him and receiving him. As the ex- 
 sergeant-major said, rejoicing he was himself out 
 of it, "You'll see wind up in the depot as never be- 
 fore." So it was ; we had a terrific orgy of polish- 
 ing, and if His Majesty could only have seen us at 
 work the day before he came he would have felt 
 more impressed than by all the glittering parades 
 and Royal salutes in the world. We were in- 
 spected at 2 P.M., at 4 P.M., at 6 P.M. And finally 
 at 8 P.M. we laid out all our equipment on our beds, 
 and Sergeant One, who was in charge, passed it as 
 perfect. Mine was one of the first he saw, and 
 even he seemed to look at it with awe. "Now you 
 must wrap it up in one of your sheets for the night, 
 so as none of the cold air gets at it before morning," 
 said he. Next day, what a scene! The officers all 
 going about with drawn swords. All the men 
 drawn up in long ranks, faces tense, bodies breath- 
 less, rifles presented and rigid, with the bright 
 bayonets bisecting the tips of our noses. The wait- 
 ing. The National Anthem, and then the King 
 going by, looking at his soldiers one by one and 
 seeing that they were good. Even the sun seemed 
 
6o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 to have been getting ready overnight, and to have 
 saved himself from damp air. And the officers 
 in attendance on the King had an expression on 
 their faces which seemed to say: "The Spartans, 
 of course; always the same. So it was, so 'twill 
 be." 
 
 But I could not help remembering we were, 
 nevertheless, civilians in khaki, and we came from 
 home life, most of us from poky homes with no 
 bathrooms, and we must return there by and by if 
 we did not fall in battle. How much of all this 
 amour propre shall we carry back? Shall we hold 
 ourselves erect when we get our "civvy" clothes 
 on? Shall we at least remember in a practical way 
 that we have been trained at Little Sparta? 
 
 "What do you notice about civilians when you 
 compare their bearing with that of a soldier?" 
 asked an officer. 
 
 "Why, an absence of self-respect more or less," 
 he replies. "He doesn't care sufficiently to dress 
 himself properly." 
 
 "What is the third duty of a soldier?" asks Ser- 
 geant Four. 
 
 "Honesty, sobriety, and self-respect," we reply. 
 . "And what is self-respect?" 
 
 "Keeping your buttons bright." 
 
 Our smartness increases with very marked 
 rapidity, and it should be remarked that after three 
 months at Little Sparta a standard of smartness is 
 achieved which is not kept up in its entirety at 
 other barracks and at the Front. Squads change 
 from civilians to soldiers before the eyes. If in- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 6i 
 
 dividual recruits don't improve they are harried 
 and baited and given pack-drills, and made to do 
 each parade with a pack on the back, put on heavy 
 patrol work at night, thrown into the guard-room 
 on a slight provocation, sworn at, thumped. Then 
 some one will say to them, supposing they com- 
 plain of feeling unwell, "Why don't you go sick? 
 Go sick and stay sick?" That is why Little Sparta 
 has been nicknamed "Kill or Cure." If you "make 
 good" in the squad your treatment will improve 
 somewhat, but if not, it will get worse and worse. 
 The best thing a man could do in the latter case 
 was eventually to go sick, unless he was intent on 
 being a hero and martyr. The medical staff was 
 very good, and, I believe, viewed with professional 
 disfavour the Spartan process of breaking in civil- 
 ians. If occasionally men were injured physically 
 or dropped dead on the parade-ground it was no 
 fault of the medical authority; the only fault was 
 the original fault of the requisition that men who 
 were in reality unfit should be graded A, and then 
 the sending such men to Little Sparta. Conditions 
 at the Front itself were less arduous than there. 
 
 The story of Songster, our scapegoat, may give 
 an idea of how intolerant Little Sparta was of an 
 ungainly man a little over age and a bit weak. 
 
 Songster prefaced many of his remarks with the 
 explanatory phrase, "Being in the gas and brake 
 department." He was employed on a railway, 
 and we all realised that the man who climbs along 
 the tops of railway carriages with a mysterious can 
 in his hand is really a funny type. Songster was 
 the most bullied and the cheeriest man of us all. 
 
62 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 And he was not merely a new recruit, he remained 
 an impossible one, and permanently took the run- 
 ning fire of abuse oflf us all. He got into trouble 
 with every one. He stood like an awkwardly tied- 
 up bundle, his puttees were tangled round his legs, 
 his hat unstraight. He was short, and he had a 
 curled red nose and wrinkles about his cheery eyes 
 that made him look like Punch, and he very quickly 
 showed a weakness in one hip that gave him a lurch- 
 ing little limp as he marched. So even a new 
 N.C.O. or strange officer looking at our squad for 
 the first time, picked him out, and would ask with 
 a tone of annoyance, "Who is that man?" 
 
 An officer and the sergeant-in-waiting came in 
 one day at dinner and saw gravy being spilt on the 
 table by one of us. "This gravy," said the officer. 
 "Upon my word, you live like pigs. Who is this 
 man?" 
 
 "Songster, sir," was the reply. 
 
 "Got him, sir," said the sergeant, writing the 
 name in the book. 
 
 And it became a catch question in the barrack- 
 room. We all used to shout out, and not least 
 Songster himself — 
 
 "Who is this funny fellow?" 
 
 "Songster, sir." 
 
 "Got him, sir." 
 
 Sergeant Three's favourite expressions for him 
 were "Fred Mayo," "Dosey," and "Basin of death 
 warmed up," or just "Death." "Come on. Death," 
 he used to shout as Songster inevitably took the 
 wrong turning on the march. 
 
 After his first day's gruelling of abuse he said 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 63 
 
 to me with a face puckered by emotion, *'By gum, 
 I never felt so bad in my life." We were sitting 
 together at a table at the Y.M.C.A. hut, and were 
 writing letters home whilst hymns and exhortations 
 raged over our heads, ever and anon having to 
 stand whilst prayers were made for our souls' sal- 
 vation. Finally the "sob-raiser," as the Americans 
 called him, made the following appeal: 
 
 *'Now I've got a lot of little cards here, and I 
 want each of you young men to sign them before 
 you go out. Just write A.C. on them and your 
 name, and that will be enough. A.C. means 'ac- 
 cepted Christ,' and if any one has accepted Christ 
 this day he'll feel so much happier if he writes it 
 down. Just think what a comfort it will be to 
 your mothers, if any of you die, to know that al- 
 though you were not a religious sort, you found a 
 Saviour in the army and booked a seat before 
 going West." 
 
 ''By gum," said Songster, "give me a card." 
 
 I thought Songster was going to suffer a great 
 deal. But after three or four days of it he began 
 to cheer up, and became extraordinarily light- 
 hearted. 
 
 The most insulting remarks were made to him 
 and about him, and the corporal used to say to us: 
 "This man spoils the squad. If I were you I'd 
 take him round the houses and knock hell out of 
 him, so that he never turned up on parade again." 
 But Songster, though undoubtedly he felt such 
 things, never showed it, and the worse his plight 
 the more exuberant his humorous remarks when 
 he got back to the barrack-room. He outswore 
 
64 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 every one in the room and told more shocking 
 stories. The men used regularly to look to him 
 for funny stories. One night he told over and over 
 again by request, after lights out, when we were 
 all stretched in our beds, an atrocious story of a 
 woman whose boy was charged with stealing, and 
 she said to the judge, "Punish him, sir, he always 
 were a thief, he were a thief before he were born." 
 "How's that, my good woman, a thief before he 
 was born. . . ." But truly more funny things 
 were said to him than he himself told. 
 
 We were all dressed for our first sentry duty one 
 evening, and Sergeant Three was inspecting our 
 buttons and bayonets. He stood behind Songster 
 and began giving him solemn advice. 
 
 "Now, Songster," says he. "If there is an air- 
 raid don't you get mixed up in it. Don't you re- 
 taliate." 
 
 Punishments were heaped heavy on him. He 
 did an extra pack-drill every night. He was con- 
 fined to barracks, forced to turn out in full march- 
 ing order at every parade, and had to answer his 
 name at various hours of the night when the 
 "angels whisper" called him. On Saturdays and 
 Sundays he was detailed for the town patrol. 
 
 He was not really fit, and the object of the N.C. 
 O.'s seemed to be to "crock him up" and get his 
 medical category lowered. It was rather a dread- 
 ful procedure, and I felt sorry for him, the more 
 so as he was an astonishingly kind neighbour to us 
 all, and was always on the alert to save us from 
 trouble. He used to take a look round at every 
 man's kit every morning and put anything right 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 65 
 
 that was at odds, and of course inevitably he "lost 
 his own name" for his own kit being wrong. He 
 saved me several drills; on the other hand, I gave 
 him advice and made him report sick several times 
 when he thought of still bearing up. As his hip 
 got worse I consoled him with the thought that he 
 would be able to "work his ticket," as the saying 
 is. And he kept in touch with his boss on the rail- 
 way, for in the event of his category being reduced 
 the railway must apply for him, or else he would 
 remain an odd man about the barracks, doing dirty 
 jobs. 
 
 He was our despised and rejected. When I told 
 him I would some time write an account of our 
 life at Little Sparta, he said to me, "I suppose 
 you'll put me in your book — 'Songster, sir.' " 
 "Oh, I'm waiting for you to die," I would reply. 
 "One must have a culminating point, you know. 
 Then one can begin : 'The most original fellow in 
 our squad has just dropped down dead,' and tell 
 all about him." And he would grin all over his 
 funny red face, so that it was impossible not to 
 laugh with him. 
 
 "You fellows don't grasp Songster," said I. 
 "Because the sergeants speak to him as if he were 
 dirt, and every one laughs at him, you think of 
 him as a negligible quantity. But think of him 
 at home, a respected husband and father, to whom 
 a wife and little ones look up for advice. He has 
 a pretty daughter of seventeen whom some of you 
 might like to marry. He is a taxpayer, a house- 
 holder, he has a vote, his life is insured, he is a 
 valued servant of the North Eastern Railway." 
 
66 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 "But in the army he is just dirt," said several. 
 
 Even so. 
 
 He told me a good deal of his story. He had 
 been in the green-grocery business, and had also 
 sold coal, had prospered for a while, and then, 
 through no fault of his own, had failed. His busi- 
 ness stopped, and he had to cast round for a job. 
 He was unemployed and owed a lot for rent. His 
 landlady was sorry for him and said he need not 
 pay. Then he got a railway job, and he steadily 
 paid off his arrears of rent, much to the surprise 
 and pleasure of the landlady, who seems to have 
 been a kind woman, for she repeatedly endeavoured 
 to help him. Songster, however, was independent, 
 and liked to fight on by himself. Nevertheless the 
 landlady became his benefactress, and undertook 
 the education of his daughter Lily. Lily wrote 
 long letters to her father, which she signed "Black 
 Devil," and had just got a post as a clerk on the 
 N.E.R., as the father had been taken for the army. 
 She signed herself "Black Devil" because Songster 
 had once called her so in a game, and the nick- 
 name remained. His benefactress now lived at 
 Brighton, and he wrote to her now and then. 
 Eventually he felt he'd like to send her a present 
 as a mark of respect, and he hit on the idea of send- 
 ing one of my books. "If I can tell her the man 
 who sleeps next me in barracks wrote it, it will be 
 very interesting," said he. It much amused me, 
 but we sent my latest book inscribed, and the old 
 lady replied she was pleased to think of him among 
 such nice companions. 
 
 As a result of reporting sick so often he was ex- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 67 
 
 cused bayonet-drill, and was then taken off duties 
 altogether and put in the convalescent squad, which 
 does merely gentle country walks. He was for- 
 bidden to do pack-drills, and worked off his pun- 
 ishments in fatigue instead. Although the N.C. 
 O.'s were more and more brutal, the captain no- 
 ticed his plight and was kind to him. He refused 
 to punish him any more. Songster dropped out 
 of our squad and floated into calmer waters, being 
 attached to another regiment that wanted a man to 
 make up. At Christmas only two men were to 
 have leave, and I put him up to the best way to 
 get it. The ruse succeeded, and to his great joy 
 his leave paper was signed and he got clear for 
 eight days. 
 
 On the last day but one he received a damping 
 letter from his wife saying how little food there 
 was in the house, and how hard it would be to feed 
 an extra mouth. But by the same post Black Devil 
 wrote how pleased she'd be to see her Dad. And 
 on the last day before starting off there came a 
 windfall in the shape of fifty shillings arrears of 
 army pay, and our Songster was chirping for joy 
 all over the barracks, and he bought regimental 
 crests and brooches for all his family. Whilst he 
 was away we ''passed out" as a fit and proper 
 squad. Whether Songster will ever "pass out" I 
 know not. But he will never be a true Spartan, 
 though we should love to have him with us just to 
 keep us gay. 
 
 "Who is that funny man?" 
 
 "Songster, sir." 
 
 "Put him in the book." 
 
68 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 "He's already in, sir." 
 
 ''Then put him in again." 
 
 If Songster has played his cards well he has got 
 returned to his railway task, though I believe he 
 had a sort of sneaking inclination to go to the 
 Front, and prove that it was an Englishman that 
 did beget him. If he had been a shirker he could 
 have arranged matters at Little Sparta and got back 
 to civil life. But I don't suppose he would have 
 cared to face his wife and children as an unfit man. 
 Pride intervenes. He has therefore in all proba- 
 bility found his way out to the ditches and the wire 
 and the adventure, and may even have won the 
 D.C.M. before the armistice. It is a notorious 
 fact that the recruits who are most difficult to train 
 often do extremely well when they have to face the 
 real thing. 
 
 We had quite a number of "crocks." "Crocks" 
 are always more serviceable than "duds," be it re- 
 membered. There was a bank-manager with a 
 hammer toe, who had come all the way from South 
 America to join up. He trained and passed out 
 and did splendidly at the Front. We had at least 
 two ruptured men; one of them wore always an 
 extremely awkward instrument, which he hated to 
 expose at the many medical inspections: both men 
 got to France and were as good as any others. 
 
 We had a man who suffered greatly from gas- 
 tritis, a man who had lost half a thumb, a man 
 whose feet were such a mass of corns that the doctor 
 despaired of his ever doing a drill. And we had 
 men with weak chests, with weak ankles, with weak 
 brains, and lung trouble and rheumatism and neu- 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 69 
 
 rasthenia. But they nearly all seemed to make 
 good in time, and they filled up the gaps in the 
 heroic line — which illustrates the point that in this 
 War, out of almost any material, first-class soldiers 
 could be made. 
 
 I saw a great deal of suffering on the part of these 
 men and these boys. And it was patiently and 
 quietly borne. It was theirs to bear it and they bore 
 it. Any physical infirmity you might have was 
 bound to make itself felt at Little Sparta. You 
 drilled to the breaking-point, and then you went on 
 drilling. Respite came at night when we took off 
 puttees and boots from swollen legs and feet, and 
 lay down on our wooden beds and slept. What 
 intense sleeping there was in these barrack-rooms! 
 Men rejoiced that it was evening and that the 
 blessed time was coming. I think for a few min- 
 utes after ''Lights out!" the hidden side of men's 
 personalities suffused their brains, the tender bonds 
 with the women they loved asserted themselves, or, 
 if they knew no women, with that sweet alter ego 
 that abides in each of us ready to comfort and soothe, 
 and, like God, wipe away the tears from the eyes. 
 The image of the wife behind and the faces of lit- 
 tle ones shone in the brain. I suppose few people 
 realise the desperate unhappiness which parting 
 a man from his wife sometimes involves, a silent 
 agony, too, of which men do not care to speak to 
 their comrades. 
 
 Most nights it must be said I slept like a dead 
 man, and yet with a waking ear for the voices of 
 the barrack-room. Men become more lovable 
 when they cease swearing and fall like children 
 
70 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 into Nature's arms in sleep. Again and again 
 some one gives a complaining sigh, or is about to 
 utter a complaining word, but relapses somehow 
 into silence again, comforted. Some one in de- 
 lirium jumps up in bed and cries "Halt!" and an- 
 other cries out, "Oh, oh, where am I, where am 
 I?" The strong man next me from Newcastle is 
 restless too, and I hear him whisper to the un- 
 known, "My poor bairn, my poor bairn, it's aw- 
 fu'." 
 
 A man's first meeting with his wife after being 
 taken for a soldier is one of strange pathos. Pleas- 
 ure and pain and surprise are mingled, and I think 
 pain is sometimes the most. She has not seen him 
 in uniform before, and it makes a great difference 
 in his appearance. She grasps, even if he does 
 not, that the uniform means that he does not belong 
 to her as before, that he belongs to the King. She 
 may admire him in the conventional way because 
 in uniform he already looks "a hero," but there is 
 always a poignant other feeling beneath. She is 
 robbed. And the man she meets is clearly not the 
 same man as went away from her. Something of 
 his personality has been shorn away from him, 
 something of that which made him lovable to 
 her. 
 
 Thus it is. A picquet comes and tells you a lady 
 is at the gate. You know she is coming and are 
 ready to go out. It is perhaps your first time be- 
 yond the portal of the barrack-yard. A corporal 
 inspects you to see whether your appearance is 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 71 
 
 worthy of the regiment before he lets you out, and 
 your wife waits whilst some sergeant or other talks 
 to her saucily. However, out you go hurriedly, 
 silently, trek from the prison walls with the woman 
 of your heart. It is amazingly difficult to speak. 
 Time is your enemy, for you have only an hour or 
 so before the nightly roll-call. Your wife is dum- 
 founded by your appearance, and you, for your 
 part, walk like a policeman showing some one the 
 way. Rain blows out of a cloud — chilling and 
 soaking you both, and incidentally tarnishing your 
 buttons and brasses. It drives you back from the 
 wooded hills to those mean booths and shops which 
 straggle alongside the barrack-walls and the ad- 
 jacent grounds of the Lunatic Asylum. In the 
 darkness somewhere there is a coloured sign lit up 
 from within — "Hot Suppers. Now Ready." It 
 is the inevitable sausage shop. And husband and 
 wife, half-drenched with pelting rain, sit facing 
 one another at a little table, and sausage and 
 mashed is put between. Meanwhile insistent bugle 
 blasts break out from Sparta — the "angels whis- 
 per" and the picquet call, and what not, and the 
 woman inevitably starts at the imperious military 
 demand of these brassy calls. Heavy Guards- 
 men's feet crash past on the road. And duty calls. 
 You have never loved your wife more, and yet you 
 have nothing to say to her, and somehow you feel 
 distant. You are harder and firmer than you were 
 a week or so ago. Your mind is a blank, and you 
 are waiting for orders, so to speak. The woman, 
 alas, has two miles to walk through storm and rain 
 
72 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 to a friend's house, where she is staying the night. 
 And you? You must go. You must say Good- 
 bye and have done, and return to the gate. And 
 it is a case in which: 
 
 Alas, I cannot bless thee, my beloved, 
 May God bless thee! 
 
 And it makes you wish to curse the army, and by 
 the time you reach the barrack-room you are white 
 with voiceless, passionate anger and resentment. 
 
 Another great pain which is suffered is in learn- 
 ing to be impure. It is only a strong character 
 that can resist the infection of impurity. Inevita- 
 bly you say or think things which are obscene and 
 brutal, and many go and do the sort of things they 
 say and think. With what a pang do you relinquish 
 the sacredness of your manhood. You often hear 
 it said in a jocular way: "What would the missus 
 think if she could hear me now!" But oh, the 
 grief in the secret places of the heart when you 
 first begin to swear, when you first say indecent 
 things, when, perchance, in a moment of confra- 
 ternity a man says an indecent thing about his own 
 wife! 
 
 The individual man is better than the army he 
 is in. There are few recruits whose character is 
 worse than the army they enter. And, of course, 
 the reverse is also partly true: no individual is as 
 brave or as patient as the army. I think the 
 splendour of the latter fact dims our eyes to the 
 former. Rightly so, perhaps. But the individual 
 in the army takes the patience and bravery for 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 73 
 
 granted. He feels more deeply the other. Spir- 
 itual suffering and moral defeat cut much deeper 
 than the ordeal in which the nobler instincts tri- 
 umph. 
 
 As the school has a lower moral atmosphere than 
 the homes from which it recruits its children, so 
 the army is lower than civil life. The army (and 
 probably not only our own, but every other army) 
 has a virus of its own. As an institution it is satu- 
 rated with a disease which it communicates in a 
 greater or lesser degree to all who come into it. 
 How to combat that disease must be one of the 
 problems of democracy, how to reform the institu- 
 tion on a cleaner basis. I know there are many 
 who would say: ''Oh, reform it altogether, get rid 
 of it, be as little children and live without it." 
 But that ideal is not likely to be realised soon, and 
 meanwhile it is worth while examining conditions 
 which seem to belong to the past, present, and fu- 
 ture of the army alike. 
 
 There are also many who would deny that the 
 moral atmosphere of the army is lower than that of 
 civil life, and many who admit the low state, but 
 conceive it to be better and jollier and more de- 
 sirable than the higher. 
 
 Be that as it may, none can deny the real suffer- 
 ing of the conscript when he first begins to use foul 
 language. The pang is repeated when he first 
 gives way to drink, and if he succumbs, as so many 
 inevitably do, to sexual temptation, and if he falls 
 in with the wrong sort of girl. A good soldier, 
 however, can keep away from drink and lust, 
 though he seldom can escape from impurity of 
 
74 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 language and thought. Of this he feels the pain, 
 and it is part of the suffering he must endure, but 
 I do not think he has the responsibility. The army 
 itself has that. When he begins to use the army's 
 language without willing it he has ceased to be an 
 individual soldier, and has become soldiery. 
 
 The best part of the training at Little Sparta was 
 the bayonet-fighting, in which for a moment one 
 did feel some glamour of the barbaric nobility of 
 war. To stand on guard, to make our points and 
 parries and lunges, to charge shouting, to place a 
 foot on the prostrate foe, withdraw the blade and 
 rush forward again, watching and threatening, fear- 
 ful and yet terrible — all that was training for real 
 fighting, and made the man in khaki one with all 
 who have ever fought a field. Bayonet-fighting 
 is much less brutal than machine-gunnery, gas, 
 shrapnel, liquid-fire, and even bomb-throwing, be- 
 cause it is more personal, and human responsibility 
 is clear. 
 
 It is more appalling to be killed by the bayonet 
 because of the psychological terror of suddenly 
 seeing your enemy intent on your death, with fury 
 in his face. It seems more polite on the enemy's 
 part to kill you by machine-gun, but in reality it is 
 only more despicable. A bayonet-fight is an hon- 
 est, straightforward fight, and we ought to feel less 
 squeamishness about it than about the other. 
 
 I heard of a curious case lately. A machine- 
 gunner who was a good Christian was for some rea- 
 son or other returned to the ordinary ranks when 
 the M.G. division was formed, and he began to do 
 
II LITTLE SPARTA BARRACKS 75 
 
 bayonet-fighting under a Guards instructor. In 
 the course of actual warfare it might easily have 
 happened that he should never be in a bayonet- 
 fight, but he must be drilled none the less. And 
 as he listened to the actualities of the drill he was 
 much upset — 
 
 "At the stomach point!" 
 
 *'In, out, on guard!" 
 
 "Long point and short point following!" 
 
 "At the left nipple and right groin, point! 
 Cross over! Jab position ready! At the throat, 
 jab!" 
 
 He began to be greatly troubled by a conscien- 
 tious doubt that had not crossed his mind in the 
 swaying of the machine-gun. But a bayonet- 
 fighter of crusader faith is nearer to Christ than 
 a machine-gunner, though both may be far away. 
 The ethics of killing troubled the mind greatly, 
 but these ethics may perhaps be more fitly discussed 
 when treating of religion in the army generally, 
 and in Sparta in particular. 
 
 Matters in which we were like and unlike An- 
 cient Sparta. — We were hardily trained, and a man 
 was a fool if he were found out doing wrong. We 
 sat at public tables (we privates), and whatever 
 our civil degree had been we were equal there. I 
 have read that the inhabitants of ancient Lacae- 
 daemon were allowed to jest at these tables — with- 
 out scurrility. In that we were unlike Spartans, 
 for our jesting was most scurrilous. But we only 
 possessed our wives by stealth, and infrequently, 
 and were punished if we stayed too long. If we 
 
76 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ii 
 
 felt pain we showed it not, and we masked our faces 
 whatever our grief. We did not have the iron 
 money of the Greeks, but what is the same in effect, 
 we had little, and could not import luxuries. We 
 did not read; we were enough unto ourselves and 
 despised all others. A Spartan is supposed to have 
 observed when asked to listen to an imitation of a 
 nightingale's song: "No, for I have heard the 
 nightingale itself," which showed that in an in- 
 tense way the Spartans were not vulgar. We, alas, 
 were excessively vulgar. In much, however, we 
 were like the Spartans, and we were like them in 
 the final thing of all — in battle, where we did not 
 yield. But in much also we were unlike. We did 
 not run in our nakedness, and our eyes were not 
 pure for women. We had not those beautiful 
 Greek bodies, but bodies made ugly with clothes 
 and care. And we had sins, sins, sins upon our 
 brains. We had not the clear intelligence and hap- 
 piness of the Greek — the innocence of the morning 
 of Europe. The sun was not rising in our souls, 
 but setting through storm and fog. All manner 
 of things could be said about us and against us, but 
 one positive thing redeems the rest. We were 
 proved later on in the battle-line, and it was seen 
 that we knew how to die, and that it was ever the 
 same humanity that went down in the evening in 
 France and Belgium as went down in the morning 
 at Thermopylae. 
 
Ill 
 
 SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 
 
 One of the curious pleasures of being stationed 
 in London is the luxurious leisurely first hour at 
 home when, duty being done, I hasten across the 
 Park to the old familiar rooms where so many pages 
 have been written and so many bright faces seen. 
 Now I cannot entertain friends as of yore, and 
 Time, who was always with me, has become against 
 me. But it is possible to sit in the old arm-chair 
 and look lovingly at familiar panels and the pic- 
 tures with which I have lived. 
 
 Still the luxury is not so much in the time of 
 chair repose as in an inevitable procedure which 
 has become my grace before freedom — the pro- 
 cedure of washing ofl the barracks. Indeed a 
 taste for living and being which I had not expected 
 expresses itself in the divesting of puttees and the 
 putting ofif of heavy boots, the peaceful shave in 
 warm water — such a contrast to the hurried shave 
 in the dark with hard cold water at reveille, the 
 washing of close-clipped head so full inwardly of 
 beautiful impressions, yet forced to lie on pillows 
 where dirty heads innumerable have lain before, 
 the warm bath, taking away the poison of the bar- 
 rack-room night that clogs into the pores, the seven- 
 times washed fingers which have gone a shabby 
 grey with the dirty work of washing floors and win- 
 
 77 
 
78 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ill 
 
 dows, cleaning equipment and rifle, the change into 
 fresh white linen, the dab of eau-de-cologne to 
 cheeks and throat, the few drops of perfume to 
 take away, if possible, the barracks smell. All that 
 belongs to the process of washing away the bar- 
 racks, putting it away from me, and making me 
 fit to come into the presence of friends. 
 
 It is deep ingrained, however. The iron of it 
 has entered the soul. How much there is that can- 
 not be washed away by these means! Dirt has 
 come not only to the body but to the other more 
 precious parts. The language which I use, my 
 own especial language, has got mixed with matter 
 in the wrong place, and the rubbishy phrases and 
 torn and tattered expressions of the barrack-room 
 seem fatally entangled with mine. I speak like 
 a soldier, am coarse like one, have, in fact, a sort 
 of khaki brogue, a dialect as cheap as the stuff we 
 wear, and then I remain inevitably peremptory 
 and brusque in reply. I am annoyed that other 
 people do not come to the point sharply in the sol- 
 dier's way, and then annoyed at being annoyed — 
 for in my heart I love most of all the leisurely and 
 charming way of talk and action. 
 
 There is a second process of washing away the 
 barracks, and that is to sit in my arm-chair gloomy 
 and morose and begin to dream, to dream and melt 
 a little, and then perhaps put forth lazily an arm 
 and hand that takes a volume of poems from the 
 little shelf by the fire. There is nothing more hu- 
 manising and sweet to the tired soldier than poetry; 
 it woos him back again and comforts him, it is the 
 soft hands of the woman he loves caressing him and 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 79 
 
 making him once more precious to himself and 
 her. 
 
 The army has enforced a uniform upon the soul 
 itself, a prison uniform, on which is written in 
 cypher: You are nothing and mean nothing, you 
 are no more than dirt; only the army is great, only 
 the army has worth. 
 
 And there is a deep hypnotical effect produced by 
 the great army machine. Moving in its splendour 
 and terror before the eyes it suggests the thought 
 to the heart: You have ceased to be anything 
 or to count for anything in yourself — only the 
 army counts for anything. It suggests it to the 
 heart, and the heart in false sleep accepts it in 
 the army's presence. But when the army is ab- 
 sent the painful process of fighting the illusion 
 begins. 
 
 To wash, to dream a little, to read a poem, to be 
 caressed, and then certainly to sleep, to discharge 
 army from the pores for nights and days, for a 
 whole draft leave, for a special leave, for a sick- 
 leave — how long, think you, would it take to get it 
 out of the system? How long is it going to take for 
 us all? For by now every one alive has got some- 
 what of it. 
 
 I remember after my first three weeks, when 
 I was virtually a prisoner within barrack walls, 
 and I obtained my first week-end leave and jour- 
 neyed twenty miles in Surrey to London on the top 
 of an omnibus, I was mad at the common sights I 
 saw, and drank them in like wine, loved every 
 civilian, grudged no other young man his black 
 attire and precious liberty. I saw the Surrey hills 
 
8o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iii 
 
 and woods as for the first time sparkling like Eden. 
 It was a most intense hour and a half of joy. Joy 
 and pain also — for the heart ached. 
 
 My second week-end was not nearly so intense. 
 My third and fourth were progressively duller, 
 and the 'bus ride was but added boredom, a pro- 
 longation of the curse-sodden bricks of the drill- 
 yard. I only ached to know myself becoming 
 duller, less sensitive to sights and sounds, more a 
 possession of the army, more ready to kill and de- 
 stroy than to be and to enjoy. 
 
 A great spell has been wrought over the earth, 
 and even I have succumbed to it. Yes, you also. 
 You and I and all of us. Not only our bodies but 
 our souls are in uniform and cannot get out of it. 
 And it will take longer eventually to demobilise 
 the souls than the bodies. Soldiers from the Front 
 know the programme of the bath : the first bath 
 and what it will do, the second, the third, the tenth; 
 they know the new odours they still exude months 
 after getting home, and the rashes and blotches in 
 the skin — the war which they have taken in being 
 sweated out of them. That is the physical process, 
 and a kindred spiritual one also goes on, the getting 
 war out of the eyes, out of the spirit. Poetry, love, 
 and Nature will perhaps do it at the last; peace and 
 sleep and the gentle, quiet beauty of the unspoiled 
 universe into which we were born. But I know 
 that years and years after peace has been pro- 
 claimed we shall be doing what I did to-night be- 
 fore taking up the pen — we shall be washing and 
 purging it away. 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 8i 
 
 Wellington Barracks are only twenty minutes' 
 walk from my home. It might have been my lot 
 to have been sent to any other regiment and to have 
 completed my training in any other part of Britain, 
 but instead I am remarkably and romantically 
 near. I can and indeed must lead a double life. 
 Whenever I am free from duty I am free to walk 
 home, and I am called upon to make marvellous 
 quick changes and to re-orient myself spiritually 
 on the shortest notice. 
 
 My day's work is coming to an end, the com- 
 pany has been dismissed from bayonet-drill, the 
 barrack-rooms are full of soldiers, and there is a 
 frantic hurly-burly of talk, swearing, singing, and 
 clamorous working. Jerry with the massed-bar- 
 rel-organ's voice is vocal above all. I am clean- 
 ing my boots again, polishing my buttons and hat- 
 badge, rubbing up the brasses of my belt with 
 priceless bath-brick, laying down my bed to be 
 ready for when I shall return, soaping and damp- 
 ing my duplicate trousers, and laying them under 
 the mattress for to-morrow's crease, tidying up. 
 And all the while my ears are passively receptive 
 of all manner of indecent talk, swearing, and brutal 
 or meaningless nonsense bawled from all sides. 
 But at last I emerge, and with cries of "Good- 
 byee," called after me or called back to them, I 
 make good my escape, pass the scrutinising ser- 
 geant at the gate — ^he will not let you out unless 
 your appearance keeps up the honour of the regi- 
 ment — and I am enfranchised of that dififerent and 
 fresher air which is the other side of barrack rail- 
 
82 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iii 
 
 ings, that good air in which civilians luxuriate. 
 A few minutes' quick walking, which is done me- 
 chanically, brings me to my own door, and it often 
 seems as if I had arrived instantaneously after pass- 
 ing the barrack gate, so lost have I been in my own 
 set thought. And it is difficult to realise that such 
 a slight difference in time and space separates me 
 from the inferno of the barrack-room. 
 
 I have tea. I do my hour of washing ofif the 
 barracks, dream a little, read a little, and then, it 
 may be, prepare to go out to dinner. I may not 
 wear evening-dress, but there are certain changes 
 to make. Then I go forth to old friends and ac- 
 quaintances for love and interest, or curiosity 
 and the need to know certain things, as the case 
 may be. 
 
 But the contrast between being in a friend's house 
 and being in barracks is even greater than that of 
 home and barracks. And it is more difficult to 
 feel at ease. For one thing, civilian life with its 
 different rhythm comes up against the steady, hard 
 beating of army time. And as I listen to the lei- 
 surely way of talk of those who are free, it is in- 
 evitable to reflect that they have all the time in the 
 world, whilst my time is limited and fleeting, and 
 soon, very soon, I must return to the gates. I 
 grudge to friends their sense of time. For indeed 
 the pleasure of their company is most intense — 
 more intense to me than mine is to them, because 
 they have a shallower sense of time. With ac- 
 quaintances it is easier, though because of the army 
 they seem somewhat more distant and accidental. 
 Their life seems somewhat irrelevant. And they 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 83 
 
 for their part are continually being startled by my 
 uniform and its plainness. I warn them before I 
 come. I am a private in the army and must come 
 in khaki — you don't mind? Not in the least — de- 
 lighted. Nevertheless I feel strange. 
 
 I sat all one evening in the gloomy grandeur of 
 Carlton House Terrace and was entertained by a 
 munition manufacturer who despite his trade 
 seemed to nurse ideals and to have been made mel- 
 ancholy by war. We sat after dinner in a sort of 
 ballroom, and a Spanish Count and his wife danced 
 the tango to the strains of a phonograph, and the 
 other guests applauded, whilst the manufacturer 
 with tears in his eyes told me fragments of his 
 soul's tragedy — he was laden with the responsibility 
 of having killed thousands, of having made a for- 
 tune through the death of others, and he saw, as all 
 saw at that time, ideals slipping away from the 
 nations, and the ideal cause for which we fought 
 swallowed up in greed, bitter materialism, and 
 hate. And he could not stop the great machines 
 which he had set up. The shells grew ever bigger, 
 the numbers greater. Yet he felt it was time for 
 peace. He thought that Lloyd George did not 
 treat sufficiently reverently the possible chances as 
 they came along. 
 
 We sat and talked, sadly and seriously, whilst the 
 perfect Spaniard made his wife more beautiful and 
 we never seemed to notice them. My time of re- 
 turning like a Cinderella to dirt and poverty drew 
 nearer, but while aware of the strange contrast, I 
 felt pleasantly peaceful, for somehow the shell- 
 maker had also got something of my sense of time. 
 
84 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iii 
 
 Before we parted he took me down to the basement 
 of his house, stood me before an immense and ter- 
 rible-looking chest, and bade me shut my eyes. 
 When I opened them again he had slowly opened 
 the heavy door of the chest, and I saw in front of 
 me a shell eight feet high, and as substantial around 
 as the girth of a tree, apex upward, grey and sin- 
 ister. ''My tragedy," said he. "This is the latest 
 type which I produce." 
 
 It was already late. I said good-bye. I fled 
 away down the Duke of York's steps and across the 
 mysterious Park, just getting in before the gates 
 were shut. And I entered the erstwhile noisy bar- 
 rack-room, now dark and stertorian, smelling 
 thickly with an atmosphere that could be cut, and 
 I stepped over the many beds till I came to mine. 
 There I stopped and rapidly undressed, to become 
 one with my comrades again. 
 
 I had several invitations to speak in London, 
 which I had to refuse, it being against the army 
 regulations for a private to appear on a platform 
 in the King's uniform, and also against the regula- 
 tions that he should appear in civilian attire. I 
 tested the matter and was expressly forbidden. 
 Nevertheless I could not deny myself the pleasure 
 of accepting one invitation, and that was to give 
 an address every Friday in Lent at Christ Church. 
 I found I could get past the regulations by wearing 
 a cassock over my uniform — comprehending the 
 service of Caesar within the ampler service of 
 God. It was to R. J. Campbell that I owed this 
 opportunity and true pleasure. He had read my 
 Priest of the Ideal, and would have liked me to be 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 85 
 
 Hampden in his church. So I spoke every week 
 on Christian Idealism, and sought in my new life 
 and experience examples in which life's barren 
 metal ought to be converted into gold. 
 
 The contrast again was strange. For Friday 
 is a squalid day in barracks. We use every spare 
 moment to clean our barrack-room, and every one 
 has to take a share down on his knees scrubbing the 
 floor. A huge fire is lit to dry it quickly, every 
 one is angry, and our faces get red, our hands most 
 grubby. There are always shirkers or suspected 
 shirkers. And from an orgy of scrubbing of this 
 kind I would tear myself away, sit down ten min- 
 utes to think quietly of my subject, and then, with 
 knees still damp and face and hands still wet, hasten 
 round into Victoria Street to put on the gloomy 
 cassock, walk with clanking steps up the nave, and 
 give my sermon. 
 
 It must be said that the better part of such a con- 
 trast in living made the worse more bearable. 
 Moreover, it touched a certain sense of the humor- 
 ous and gave some precious salt of wit. 
 
 One night I made one in a joyous party where 
 my neighbour on the one hand was an English 
 princess, and next night I was a sentry at Bucking- 
 ham Palace. Such a fact might, I suppose, be 
 cited as evidence of the war making us more demo- 
 cratic, but it is not so. War makes us less demo- 
 cratic, and many things which were comparatively 
 easy for me as a civilian were distinctly awkward 
 for me as a private in uniform. Being introduced 
 to officers in a drawing-room was always difficult, 
 and whilst some treated me most cordially, others, 
 
86 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iii 
 
 with official decorum, remained amusingly cold 
 and distant, and even disinclined to shake hands. 
 In the latter period of the war to be a private sol- 
 dier was to be of lower social caste, and if a lip- 
 service of honour was paid to the common soldier, 
 there was nevertheless the consciousness that he was 
 without individual power or voice, and was vir- 
 tually a slave. I had curious adventures in treat- 
 ment outside of barracks. One night General 
 A asked to see me, and I went down to Horse- 
 guards Avenue in fear and trepidation, was sent in 
 to him, rigidly saluted, and stood to attention, but 
 he at once put forth his hand, and shook hands and 
 smiled, treating me as an equal. On another oc- 
 casion I met an exalted official who knew me quite 
 well as a writer, and he kept me standing to atten- 
 tion on his door-mat and treated me so formally 
 that I felt most chilled. One thing is certain, the 
 attitude towards the private soldier was a test for 
 snobs and gentlemen. 
 
 One night, after a long discussion on the religion 
 of the soldier, talked out in the arm-chair ease of 
 
 a private club-room, I crossed the Park with C , 
 
 a dear, enthusiastic clergyman, and as we passed 
 the sentry-box at St. James's Palace at midnight a 
 soft voice whispered, "Hullo, Graham." I looked 
 round in surprise, and it was a room-chum on 
 sentry. 
 
 "Don't forget the cake you promised to bring 
 us," said he with a grin. 
 
 The priest was a gentleman in the full sense of 
 the word. He loved the soldiers, and we stood 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 87 
 
 talking to the sentry for about five minutes in the 
 dear, dark dead of night, risking the patrols. 
 
 ''Well, God bless you, my boy, God bless you," 
 said my friend to the sentry as we passed on. In 
 myself I felt a little abashed, because my "room- 
 chum" was in barracks of a lewd and godless con- 
 versation, and here was the padre saying "God bless 
 you." But I learnt afterwards that the padre knew 
 his man, and that the soldier was in reality quite 
 edified at being blessed. He liked it and felt 
 blessed. 
 
 I don't know why it should appear to us that 
 with the poor is reality, with the privates in the 
 army, with the working-man in civil life. The 
 life of the rich, of the cultured, of the officers, of 
 the employers must be reality also. It is, I sup- 
 pose, because everything depends on the poor, on 
 the worker, on the common soldier — the others 
 could be dispensed with, they cannot; the others 
 are few, they are many. And then the others think 
 and talk so much about the life of the soldiers and 
 the workers, and we feel how much, nevertheless, 
 they are divorced from it. 
 
 I am convinced that this vast life of the poor on 
 which rich and lettered subsist cannot be under- 
 stood except from within. On the other hand, the 
 poor themselves, the workers, and the soldiers know 
 nothing, and could not govern the country or be the 
 nation by themselves. 
 
 All that they know who He in gaol 
 Is that the wall is strong. 
 
88 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS III 
 
 It is necessary to belong to both worlds to under- 
 stand and to be able to do anything of positive 
 value. Therefore I would propose to the well- 
 wishers of the masses, and especially to young 
 clergy and literary men, that they give up the world 
 in which they live, and take a job and try to work 
 from within. They will find it appallingly diffi- 
 cult to live what they preach, and they may fail 
 to affect for good the life of their neighbours, but 
 they will learn. 
 
 "Where the people are gathered together there 
 it is accustomed to stink," wrote Nietzsche. Quite 
 so. But the stink proceeds from a ferment which 
 is always going on, and out of that ferment are 
 born forces which have power to change. 
 
 I often wondered whether the great ferment in 
 the ranks meant a revolution after the war. I my- 
 self believe a people embodied under a King, even 
 were he puny in body and dull of mind, or merely 
 his father's son, is as excellent a conception of a na- 
 tion as a republic. It is as liberal, it has as many 
 Christian possibilities, and evolving as it does along 
 the line of limited personal but unlimited national 
 power, is at least as democratic. But I need hardly 
 say how anti-royal our uneducated masses are be- 
 coming. They cannot see the use of a King and 
 Queen when a Premier and his wife would serve, 
 think "royalty" very expensive to keep up, and that 
 it stands in the way of a working-man's England. 
 Even in the rank and file of the Guards there seems 
 little enthusiasm in singing "God save the King," 
 which the soldiers pitifully imagine to be a prayer 
 to God to preserve merely the person, the son of 
 
Ill 
 
 SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 89 
 
 Adam who now wears the crown. And it seems to 
 them that '^God save the People" would be a better 
 thing to sing — "Not Kings, oh Lord, but men!" 
 The ten Americans in our ranks were openly 
 amused at the hymns and prayers for "George 
 Guelph," as they called him. But then, brought 
 up without our traditions and with republican tra- 
 ditions, and not having given much thought to the 
 matter, such mirth as they had at our expense was 
 only natural. Subjects of another State ought not 
 to have been enlisted in our army — but, of course, 
 necessity and the war broke many rules. As re- 
 gards our other revolutionaries, I try to teach them 
 that "God save the King" means "God save the 
 People," but is a nicer way of saying it — better than 
 saying "God save our noble selves"; that the King 
 is a symbolic personality, a living symbol of na- 
 tionhood, that he is like the colours we salute, not 
 valuable because of stuff or pattern, but because 
 of a spiritual significance; that to have a President 
 is excellent for a business State, but not so excellent 
 for a nation with traditions and a complicated in- 
 heritance of feudal nobility, many-peopled empire, 
 and historic Church; that a King stands in the 
 midst of the people, whereas a President goes ahead 
 and leads; that the President wears a crown as 
 much as any King, but that his crown is too often 
 the crown of personal ambition, whereas the King's 
 crown is the crown of the dignity of the people as 
 a whole. 
 
 Such ideas, however, I found difficult to impart. 
 For the world wind was constantly blowing against 
 thrones. The ruin of Russia consequent upon the 
 
90 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iii 
 
 Revolution was the only object-lesson in current 
 history, but the confusion of Press opinions left men 
 too confused regarding Russia to be able to say any- 
 thing of her. The working-man looked forward 
 to an England with a President. 
 
 We held the privilege of guarding the person 
 of the King, and that is why we, above other sol- 
 diers, should have had a simple but sound notion 
 of what royalty means. The officers no doubt un- 
 derstood, being as they are the flower of Britain 
 and of many noble families. In their attitude to 
 the King breathes the atmosphere of Eton. But 
 they are enough unto themselves. That perfect re- 
 straint which marks an officer with his men comes 
 too naturally and is not entirely a virtue. If every 
 officer would only make an effort to teach his men 
 the real things, the value of our five Spartan regi- 
 ments could be quintupled — they could be con- 
 verted into living power. The fact is, the whole 
 system of training needs to be overhauled with 
 reference to higher national values. Already, the- 
 oretically, esprit de corps is accepted as the most 
 valuable quality to be cultivated. The fact that 
 "those who guard the King never retire," the glori- 
 ous military traditions, are duly enforced. But 
 the purely military aspect of esprit de corps ought 
 to be supplemented in many ways. 
 
 "I could not think of a greater privilege than to 
 mount guard over the King. It would always be 
 something to look back upon, to have been on 
 guard at Buckingham Palace," said a friend to me. 
 I agreed. Every one who serves the King loyally, 
 even in the smallest way, honours and preserves 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 91 
 
 something more than the mere person of roy- 
 alty. To be a Guard should be to be consecrated 
 not only to the King, but to the nation through 
 him. 
 
 Kings and Queens cannot themselves save them- 
 selves. And if they could they would not be 
 worth saving. But we can save ours if it is worth 
 while — and not merely as "a golden link of Em- 
 pire," but as the crown of splendid nationhood. 
 
 To be put on Royal guard is the crown of train- 
 ing. As far as parade is concerned, it is the sol- 
 dier's greatest ordeal. No doubt there are many 
 who would rather be in a bayonet charge than 
 "mount Buck," and frequently a man who "bobs 
 on it," as the saying is, gets a comrade to do it for 
 him for a few shillings. For an exchange of du- 
 ties is nearly always allowed. Old hands, how- 
 ever, who have done it five or six times, see nothing 
 difficult in it, for they know exactly what is ex- 
 pected of them. 
 
 There are hours to spend washing and drying 
 equipment, polishing the brasses, squaring the pack, 
 fitting the braces and cartridge-pouches, the belt, 
 the water-bottle, the haversack. Our regiment 
 prided itself on the use of white equipment, which 
 through much washing had become like alabaster. 
 Each strap had a surface as of beautifully ironed 
 linen. The brasses, under the influence of brasso, 
 became like little mirrors, flashing at all points of 
 the person. The rifle had to be luminous, the 
 bayonet unimpeachable, the trousers creased cor- 
 rectly, the tunic without spot, hat-badge perfectly 
 
92 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ill 
 
 poised like a star, hat put on squarely with peak 
 down over the eyes. One must also know some- 
 thing of the ritual of guard-mounting and the mys- 
 tery of open order march. The N.C.O.'s get into 
 a frantic state of nervous tension. The drill-ser- 
 geant who carries the colours and at the same time 
 as he marches shouts the drill orders for himself 
 and the escort — On the left, left form: forward! — 
 had a perturbed mien which caused my eyes and 
 my lips to murmur, "Alexander of Macedon was 
 a great man certainly, but that's no reason for 
 smashing the furniture." Even our R.S.M., a per- 
 fect Malvolio, seemed troubled. The officers, 
 however, take things much more calmly, and even 
 when making mistakes do so with an air that makes 
 good the deficiency. When I did my first guard 
 the inspection was made by the neatest and sharp- 
 est officer who ever took charge of the battalion 
 whilst I was there, and he did it well — there is no 
 doubt of that. It took a long time, and all the 
 while the regimental band played soft music. We 
 were standing like wood, the lieutenant and the 
 R.S.M. looked from one to another with beady 
 eyes, and some one else with the black book was 
 writing down the reprimands as they occurred. It 
 reminded me somehow of the moment of Bassanio's 
 choice, and I fully expected to make "a swan-like 
 end, fading in music." But I passed muster — only 
 Malvolio pulled the peak of my hat a little further 
 down over my eyes as he passed, his object being 
 to make me lift my head higher, I think. One of 
 the Americans was next to me, and he whispered 
 after the inspecting officers had passed by, "What 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 93 
 
 do you think of it, eh, to mount guard over the 
 King? It's the proudest moment of my life." He 
 understood the matter emotionally, and did not 
 talk of George Guelph now. 
 
 It is quite right that the Guard mounting should 
 be taken thus seriously. For the occasion is one 
 where honour is expressed in care and smartness. 
 And the honour is national. It struck me, how- 
 ever, that a great deal of the impression was lost 
 by the cheap airs rendered by the band. 
 
 A crowd of accidental passers-by collects. The 
 old guard at the Palace marches into position to 
 be relieved, the new guard, preceded by the band 
 and the colours of the regiment, marches out of 
 barracks. Off we go to a jingling music-hall air, 
 and a sense of mortification steals into the heart that 
 the pipes have not preceded us. For the pipes are 
 always national, or at least in good taste, whereas 
 these wretched ragtime songs of the brass band put 
 us on the level of some sort of South American Re- 
 public or less. If the music be wrong the whole 
 ritual is wrong, and the other impressiveness counts 
 for nought. 
 
 However, be that as it may, we present arms, 
 we approach in a goose-step, poising uplifted toes, 
 we exchange, and the old guard marches away, 
 leaving us in possession and at our posts. 
 
 We do two hours' sentry-go and have four hours 
 off. It makes four spells in the twenty-four hours, 
 and there is nothing difficult about it. It is quiet 
 duty, affording at least during the night hours time 
 for thought and reflection. 
 
 In the daytime it is merely necessary to keep 
 
94 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ill 
 
 alert, to present arms to members of the Royal 
 Family and to the battalion should it march past, 
 and to salute officers and armed parties. At night 
 nothing happens: one has the company of the stars 
 and the glamour of motor-lights racing through 
 the Park. Fifteen paces to march up, turn, and 
 fifteen paces to march down, turn, fifteen paces 
 again, fifteen paces, halt, order arms, a pace to the 
 rear, stand at ease. . . . 
 
 It is very pleasant to say poetry to oneself whilst 
 marching to and fro. Two lines of Gray's Elegy 
 will take the sentry up and the other two lines of 
 the verse will bring him back again. One verse 
 of Omar will take him up, another will take him 
 down. And at night, when the moonlight dis- 
 guises with theatrical grandeur the shoddy ma- 
 sonry of the Palace, the noble lines of English come 
 aptly to the mind and guide the steps : "Whatever 
 it is your lot to do in this war try to live nobly, 
 make a heaven of hell, go inward." So I often 
 whisper to myself — often whisper in vain. 
 
 Whilst of? duty and lying in full equipment in 
 the guard-house, this night of my guard, the Ger- 
 mans came over and, prom, prom, posh, the ma- 
 roons shot forth, and hard upon them the metallic 
 reports of many air-craft guns. 
 
 "Stand to!" 
 
 We all get up and stand ready with our rifles for 
 any emergency. Every one grumbles. But the 
 guard-room fire blazes merrily, and the guns keep 
 up a joyful hubbub. Suddenly some one says, "No 
 one can persuade Queen Alexandra to leave her 
 bedroom and go down to the cellars. She says that 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 95 
 
 if she's meant to die by a bomb she can't save her- 
 self by going to a cellar." All approve of this fal- 
 lacious argument, especially the old soldiers who 
 have used the formula in the trying circumstances 
 of the trenches. Then another says he hopes a 
 
 bomb will come and blast them all to . 
 
 "What good have they ever done us?" Then 
 comes much more silly talk about revolution, plen- 
 tifully interlarded with that bad language by which 
 a soldier seeks to prove his manhood. 
 
 Just before the all-clear bugles I march out with 
 the relief and resume my post once more. Once 
 more, fifteen up, fifteen down, and the moonlight 
 streaming across the way. In a moment of en- 
 nui I notice some words vaguely scratched on a 
 pillar, done by a sentry with his bayonet on some 
 past night in the dark and empty hours when there 
 is no one to see what is done. And these were the 
 words: 
 
 Roll on the Duration. 
 
 Roll on Peace. 
 
 Roll on the Revolution. 
 
 And in those lines I felt expressed how exasperat- 
 ing and boring the Great War had become. 
 
 However, ho-ho, ha-ha, the bicyclist buglers are 
 tearing past, giving the all-clear signal at last, and 
 the searchlights break across the sky and begin to 
 make mysterious crosses and lettering in the 
 heavens. The flagrant beam stands a long while, 
 as if it has become a permanency, and then sud- 
 denly moves, swings round, whilst another creeps 
 towards it. Certain messages are being conveyed, 
 but none can say what they are. 
 
96 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ill 
 
 En avant, then; fifteen up, turn, fifteen down, 
 turn. . . . 
 
 Buckingham Palace is an ugly building. It 
 is not fit for the King and Queen of England to 
 live in, and if it were not so large and imposing it 
 would be pulled down. But a constant means of 
 grace in our barrack life was the Chapel, opposite 
 which so often we lined up for drill. It is beauti- 
 ful exteriorly, and I wonder why we cannot keep 
 our building in keeping with it. Our barracks are 
 decent, though in need of repair. But in our near 
 vicinity behold Buckingham Palace, Queen Anne's 
 Mansions, and some sort of Diamond Jubilee red- 
 brick commercial horror climbing up to make a 
 background for the Chapel. 
 
 But the Chapel is beautiful. Our religious life 
 ought to have been good with such a temple in our 
 barrack yard. 
 
 I spent most of my Sundays at home, but on the 
 three or four occasions when duty held me at bar- 
 racks, I went to religious service at the Chapel. 
 Once I paraded for Church of England service, 
 but afterwards became officially a Presbyterian — 
 joined the true religion, as the Jocks call it. On 
 free Sundays I went civilly to church. 
 
 The great contrast in the two types of service was 
 that in the military chapel you felt you had Eng- 
 land with you in church, even if the service were 
 dull, but that in the civil church, no matter how 
 full of life the service might be, you felt as if some- 
 how the real base of England was lacking. In the 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 97 
 
 ordinary church in war-time you had a gathering 
 of stray units who somehow did not belong organ- 
 ically to England. But in the military chapel you 
 had, willy-nilly, the physical driving power of the 
 nation. England was present even if England did 
 not sing, and England's knees were in the pews even 
 if England did not pray. 
 
 Nevertheless, I have not the slightest hesita- 
 tion in saying that I would infinitely rather go 
 to any civil church than to any military one, 
 and that for me the Church parade has been one 
 of the unpleasant parts of this enforced military 
 life. 
 
 Still, the military has the national chorus. It 
 has in live flesh and blood what Westminster Ab- 
 bey has in live walls and memories. And our 
 Chapel is vocal from its walls also. It is alive with 
 sacred fresco, and looks more like a Byzantine 
 cathedral than an English church. It is all 
 adorned, all colour, all expression. And all is in 
 memory of the brave who have died. There is not 
 a tint or a figure that has been added in the mere 
 spirit of ornament. All that is in it is conse- 
 crated glory. For that reason it would be good 
 to purge it of the regimental band which supplies 
 the place of organ, but has no true function in it, 
 give the chaplain leave to go, and then try to realise 
 what the beautiful building full of soldiers could 
 mean. 
 
 How many of those who guard the King have 
 died for England, have carried to the Altar the 
 complete sacrifice! How many poor soldiers in 
 
98 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ill 
 
 our many wars have died on foreign fields and been 
 forgotten! These crimsons on the walls are their 
 crimsons. If they could sing, their voices would 
 swell the chorus. Anonymous England! The 
 soldiers' Church! If some one could teach the 
 soldiers to sing the Te Deum or even "Holy! Holy! 
 Holy!" as it should be sung, meaning it, then all the 
 other ranks would sing, behind, on the left, on the 
 right, all who died before we came as well as we 
 who wear the uniform now, and England would 
 have a voice again. 
 
 But there is ever a fettering influence at work. 
 There is one great mistake about these beautiful 
 walls. It is that definite names have been in- 
 scribed on them — ^the names of a dozen or so offi- 
 cers of various generations, and the finer thing has 
 been missed, of leaving it all anonymous — for 
 Jesus' sake. 
 
 It is sad to see St. George and the Dragon merely 
 
 in memory of George M , scholar, sportsman, 
 
 friend, and the rest, instead of all the Georges. 
 Even as I write comes news of a George who has 
 died in the trenches, and the crimson of his blood 
 needs a ray in our memory and in the church. 
 Cannot all these definite names on the chapel wall 
 be erased, or else all the thousands who have died in 
 the Guards be put on? 
 
 But we are all in the pews and the regimental 
 band will not begone, and here comes the large 
 and jovial and rather popular chaplain, a hearty 
 old man of the world who evidently hates cant of 
 any kind, and has no corner in his heart for con- 
 scientious objectors. 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 99 
 
 A light did shine 
 
 In thy rosy rubicund face 
 
 Which showed an outward visible sign 
 
 Of an inward spiritual grace. 
 
 His sermon begins with, "Why halt ye between 
 two opinions?" and ends with, "The service of 
 Caesar is the service of God." 
 
 I think that in the army that is generally be- 
 lieved, but I had never heard a clergyman say it 
 before. 
 
 On parade in the weekly routine we looked so 
 well that no one would have thought it shame to 
 identify us with a service higher than that of the 
 King. Did not the Christians in civil attire look 
 very much down at heel compared with us? And 
 in patience and suflfering the soldier of the King 
 treads a thornier way than the average professing 
 Christian. Lord Hugh Cecil remarks in his study 
 of the army: "The citizen becomes a soldier, and 
 as a soldier thinks nothing too much to do and to 
 suffer, and in all that he gives his country walks 
 not unworthily in the steps of Christ. But when 
 he has once become the State's instrument without 
 independent will or life of his own, the State uses 
 him, not for Christ's work. . . ." 
 
 That is where the cleavage occurs. 
 
 There is much beauty in the symbols of the army; 
 the salute, the presenting of arms, and the rest, and 
 they are expressive of the service of the King or of 
 the State. A salute means: I recognise your au- 
 thority, and we are all bound together under the 
 King. Arms presented, in which, as it were, the 
 rifles are held not as ready to be fired but as ready 
 
loo A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ill 
 
 to be given to some one else, means: My arms 
 belong to you, and though I wield a weapon of 
 ofifence, I do not wield it for myself, but for you 
 and for the King. The colours, crimson as with 
 the blood of those who have died rather than flee, 
 are the symbol of the soul of the regiment. They 
 must not appear without an escort. When the 
 colours are brought on parade the band plays, or 
 should play, low music, as it were the music of the 
 heart; we salute or present arms, and even civilians 
 raise their hats. The colours fly not only for the 
 living, but for all who have died in the regiment 
 for the King, not only as an augury of battles to be 
 won, but as a token of every field of the past. All 
 bugle-calls denote that a soldier's life is a watch 
 and vigil. He does not go by the clock, or claim 
 any time as his own, but gives obedience instant 
 upon the demand of his superior. The bugle-call 
 is the voice of the King. 
 
 The King is a living, moving symbol, and means 
 England. He does not stand for himself, but for 
 all of us. The Queen, being the bride of the King, 
 is the symbol of the soul and the honour of Eng- 
 land. The nation is bound to the King in duty, 
 to the Queen in chivalry. Honour is universally 
 paid to the soldier, because in putting ofif his own 
 clothes and putting on those of the King, he gives 
 up his own free will to be obedient to the country's 
 will, and he sacrifices his birthright of freedom, 
 taking up voluntarily the yoke of sacrifice. When 
 a soldier dies, the Union Jack is laid on his body 
 in token that he died in the service of the State, and 
 that the State takes the responsibility for what it 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN loi 
 
 ordered him to do as a soldier. On the other hand, 
 in the Union Jack may be seen the mingling of 
 crosses, that is, of sacrifice. The reversed arms at 
 a funeral are an acknowledgment of the shame of 
 killing. Death puts the rifle to shame, and the re- 
 versal of the barrel is a fitting sign of reverence. 
 It provides part of the atmosphere of military 
 mourning. The shots fired in the air are fired at 
 imaginary devils, which might get into men's hearts 
 at such a moment as the burial of a comrade-in- 
 arms. An old superstition has it that the doors of 
 men's hearts stand ajar at such times, and devils 
 may easily get in. The Last Post is the Nunc 
 Dimittis of the dead soldier. It is the last bugle- 
 call. As you stand in heavy cloaks about the new- 
 dug grave in which the dead comrade is lying, it 
 seems as if in a sepulchral way he also must hear it 
 — as it were the last voice of all earthly, persist- 
 ently, persistently calling. It is the last, but it 
 gives promise of reveille — of the great reveille 
 which ultimately the Angel Gabriel ought to blow. 
 
 God Save the King! — The National Anthem 
 does not merely mean God save the Monarch, but 
 God save the State embodied in him. It is a beau- 
 tiful way of asking salvation as a nation. 
 
 All these are the symbols of the service of the 
 King, and, rightly understood, show the ideal side 
 of rendering to Caesar the things which are 
 Caesar's. They ought to provide the true atmos- 
 phere of the army, showing the army at its highest 
 and best. 
 
 Beautiful, however, as they are, they ought al- 
 ways to give way before the greater symbols of the 
 
I02 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS in 
 
 Church. Within the church there is no saluting; 
 officers and men are equal at the altar-rail, par- 
 taking in communion. Even the singing of the 
 National Anthem, if over-stressed, may be out of 
 place in church, and nothing is more w^rong than 
 interrupting a man who is kneeling before God in 
 order to make him stand up to sing "God Save the 
 King," For the same reason the idea that curates 
 and young priests ought, against their will, to be 
 made to join the army is mistaken. The sym- 
 bols of God are higher than the symbols of the 
 King. 
 
 Besides the serious aspect of the soldier's duty 
 there is a good deal of humour in the daily round, 
 which begins with "Hey, Johnny Cope," and ends 
 with "Donald Blue." ^ Some one in the army al- 
 lotted hymns to each act in the soldier's life. 
 Thus: 
 
 Reveille "Christians, Awake!" 
 
 First Parade . . . "Art thou weary, art thou languid ?" 
 Breakfast .... "Meekly wait and murmur not." 
 Sergeant-Major's Parade "When he cometh, when he 
 
 Cometh." 
 Swedish Drill (P.T.) . "Here we suffer grief and pain." 
 Route March . . . "Onward! Christian Soldiers." 
 
 Dinner "Come, ye Thankful People, 
 
 Come." 
 Rifle Drill .... "Go, labour on." 
 Officers Lecture . . "Tell me the old, old story." 
 Dismiss "Praise God, from whom all bless- 
 ings flow." 
 
 1 The pipes blow reveille at Wellington Barracks to the tune of 
 "Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin' yet?" For "Lights out" they play 
 "Donald Blue," sometimes parodied in the words, "Oh, good Lord, my 
 rifle's rusty." 
 
Ill SOLDIER AND CIVILIAN 103 
 
 Tea "What means this eager, anxious 
 
 throng?" 
 Free for the Night . . "Oh Lord, how happy should we 
 
 be!" 
 Last Post .... "Safely, safely gathered in." 
 Lights Out .... "Peace, perfect peace." 
 Inspection of the Guard "Sleep on, beloved." 
 
IV 
 
 ESPRIT DE CORPS 
 
 I LISTENED one day to the reminiscences of one who 
 had been regimental sergeant-major. As far as 
 my memory serves, let me record his most interest- 
 ing words : 
 
 "I was born of a Scottish family. As most of 
 you know, I joined the army in the ranks. As a 
 lad of eighteen I enlisted and went to Little Sparta. 
 I had the hard time there which all of you had, 
 and I assure you I did not escape without being 
 once thrown into the guard-room or having to fight 
 one of the old soldiers to show what stufif I was 
 made of. In due course the squad in which I 
 trained 'passed out,' and I went up to barracks in 
 London. I did very well there, and was a pattern 
 of smartness. I very soon got my stripes. I be- 
 came that very hard-worked person, a lance-cor- 
 poral, and was at every one's beck and call — the 
 hardest months of my soldiering career. But I 
 did so well that I was sent back to Little Sparta 
 as a drill-instructor, and it was my task to take 
 over squads of raw recruits such as I had myself 
 but lately been, and teach them and drill them into 
 being soldiers. I 'passed out' many squads with 
 credit, and then again was ordered up to London. 
 I had returned as full corporal, and I was then 
 made lance-sergeant. I was promoted in course 
 
 104 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 105 
 
 of time to be sergeant, and ultimately to be regi- 
 mental sergeant-major. So I've been through all 
 the routine. I have a very large experience of 
 army life and of the main things in it — discipline 
 and esprit de corps. 
 
 "Little Sparta is a place of very hard discipline, 
 the training is hard and no faults are overlooked. 
 But I came from a Scottish home where discipline 
 w^as hard, and I cannot say I found the discipline 
 of the barracks harder than that of home. I was 
 punished, and, as I have said, did some extra drills, 
 and was put in the guard-room. I had a fight, but 
 the only things I really resented were the humiliat- 
 ing personal remarks which the corporals and ser- 
 geants seemed to like to indulge in. And I can 
 say without any reserve that no one should ever ad- 
 dress remarks to a soldier which are humiliating, 
 because it creates a desire for revenge which is 
 fatal to the preservation of a true esprit de corps. 
 Injustice also, of course, is another thing which is 
 intolerable. Instructors ought always to treat their 
 men as if they were men, not as if they were a sort 
 of lower species of animal. The chief fault of 
 those in authority nowadays is that they think too 
 much of themselves and too little of the men under 
 them. Now it should be an axiom that you can 
 never think too much of or do too much for those 
 who are under you. Training recruits is not just 
 breaking in horses. It can be the highest possible 
 work for King and Country. 
 
 "When I came up to our London barracks I 
 must say I was surprised to observe the differ- 
 ence in discipline. Here, compared with Little 
 
io6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS IV 
 
 Sparta, everything was slack. On the first evening 
 I was much struck by seeing a splendid sergeant 
 of the King's guard in full dress playing skittles 
 at the back of the canteen — with a set of privates. 
 Such intimacy I could never have thought possible. 
 I saw here much drunkenness and unpunctuality, 
 squaring of punishments, gambling, and the like. 
 This was, of course, many, many years ago, and I 
 do not know what it is like now. Soon I got my 
 stripes, and I decided to be regimental from the 
 first. On my first morning I told an orderly that 
 he had left the slops which ought to be emptied first 
 thing each morning, and that he must empty them 
 at once. He said 'all right,' and went away and 
 did something else, practically ignoring me. So 
 I had him at once marched to the guard-room, and 
 he was very severely punished. After that it was 
 seen that I was not a person to be trifled with, and 
 my commands were always obeyed. I never, never 
 played cards with the privates in the barrack- 
 room; I kept rigidly teetotal. If comrades drew 
 me into the canteen and they had their beer, I had 
 my ginger-beer, and I kept my temper and smiled, 
 however much I was chafifed. All sorts of tricks 
 were played on other N.C.O.'s, and the slacker 
 they were the more tricks were played on them — 
 such tricks as whitewashing their tunics or throw- 
 ing their clothes out of the window. I don't say 
 that my example improved the state of things, for 
 it is impossible for one man to make much differ- 
 ence, but I was that sort of man by temperament. 
 
 "It was a change for me when I was sent back 
 to Little Sparta as a drill-instructor, to take charge 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 107 
 
 of squads of new recruits and make them into sol- 
 diers. I think the two years I spent this way were 
 the happiest years of my life. I renewed my faith 
 in army life at the fount. I rejoiced in the glitter 
 and sparkle of the N.C.O.'s on parade, in the snap 
 and finish in the drill, in the regularity and so- 
 briety of the men, in the sports, in the emulation in 
 hardihood and smartness, in the absence of corrup- 
 tion and of slackness. Little Sparta suited me, and 
 it was somewhat of a shock again when promoted 
 to lance-sergeant I returned to the easy-going Lon- 
 don barracks. Still, I pursued my old way and 
 was reserved with privates, never gambled with 
 them, was firm and stood no nonsense, but always 
 cheery and happy all the same. In due course I 
 was made drill-sergeant, and was a most popular 
 N.C.O. all the time. 
 
 "All this was in the second battalion of the regi- 
 ment, and at that time we outshone the premier 
 battalion very considerably both in discipline and 
 in drill, and there was a desire on the part of the 
 command to smarten it up a bit. With that in 
 view, a keen and stern adjutant was appointed, and 
 I was brought there as regimental sergeant-major. 
 Then in a way I thought I had my chance. There 
 were five years in front of me as R.S.M., and in 
 that time I would turn a slack battalion into one 
 that was as smart as any one could wish. The ad- 
 jutant was a proper martinet, and I worked in with 
 him, being as regimental and strict as I knew how, 
 remaining, however, always just, though often, I 
 admit, harsh. I know now that in any case the 
 sergeant-major has always to take his tone from 
 
io8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv 
 
 the adjutant, and that a hard adjutant must always 
 mean a hard sergeant-major. And from being a 
 most popular man I became the most unpopular 
 person in barracks. But I made a smart regiment. 
 I had always a very good word of command, clear, 
 stern, far-reaching, and now I cultivated the spe- 
 cial terrible voice of a regimental sergeant-major. 
 I brought the men to a high state of perfection in 
 drill, and could drill them at last without using a 
 word, merely by opening and shutting my eyes. 
 But I had seen other sergeant-majors have as great 
 success on the parade-ground as I, and that did not 
 content me. I wanted to have all the other side of 
 their life as smart, and I took care to arrange mat- 
 ters so that under my authority it was impossible 
 to square sergeants for punishment. I knew what 
 every one in the barracks was doing all the while, 
 and I stopped the intimacies of privates and 
 N.C.O.'s, curtailed gambling, put an end to the 
 unpunctualities at the gate, which could formerly 
 have been squared by a tip to the sergeant of the 
 guard. 
 
 ''AH the while, however, I was thinking about 
 my job, and was not altogether content with the 
 state of my battalion. I was still very unpopular; 
 there was a great deal of ill-feeling. Some 
 N.C.O.'s had got themselves transferred from the 
 battalion in order to get out of my ken. Pressure 
 was brought to bear to get rid of me, but the au- 
 thorities approved of me. I did not, however, 
 altogether approve of myself, and I felt ill at ease 
 watching my perfect battalion do everything per- 
 fectly whilst hating me all the time. 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 109 
 
 "The adjutant left us and a kinder one came in 
 his place. My five years passed, and I was due for 
 a change also. But I asked to remain, and I de- 
 termined on a change of tactics. Whilst remain- 
 ing as hard as ever with the non-commissioned of- 
 ficers, I began to treat the men more kindly. If I 
 saw a man doing a thing he ought not to be doing 
 whilst ofif parade, I looked the other way and 
 *saw nothing,' but I never let the N.C.O.'s ofif. 
 But this policy did not succeed. For then the 
 N.C.O.'s took their revenge on the men, and 
 learned all manner of tricks of deception. In 
 short, my policy begot a great deal of disloyalty to 
 me among the N.C.O.'s. We were not working 
 together at all. The upshot of all was that I had 
 to give up my old point of view entirely — of ab- 
 solute, unquestioned obedience and a regiment 
 ruled as with a rod of iron, and I learned more and 
 more to interest myself in the personal lives of 
 N.C.O.'s as well as privates, and to win them to my 
 side by bonds of interest and affection. I learned 
 that it is necessary to gain the confidence of a bat- 
 talion, and not only to command them, but to lead 
 them. I think perhaps in my lifetime the necessi- 
 ties have all changed. My first way was the old- 
 fashioned way, and was good enough a hundred 
 years ago. But something different is needed by 
 men to-day. They won't stand the old martinet 
 style of treatment, and quite right, too. A correct 
 discipline must be obtained, and you cannot get it 
 without absolute obedience. But a fine discipline 
 needs a warm glowing esprit de corps, and to get 
 that you must also win men's hearts." 
 
no A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv 
 
 The old sergeant-major's experience had a coun- 
 terpart in our own. When we for our part left 
 Little Sparta and came to London we were glad 
 of the easier ways, and it eased our hearts to find 
 the corporals and the sergeants reduced to the level 
 of human beings, sleeping and living in the same 
 barrack-room. And we realised that when a non- 
 commissioned officer had been drunk once or twice 
 in the presence of the privates in the same room 
 he has not the authority over them that he is sup- 
 posed to have, still less when he plays cards and 
 wins or loses money from them. It was amusing 
 to hear them cheeked and flatly disobeyed — in fun. 
 "After you've done your firing you'll be a tofif, my 
 boy," they said. "You'll have your midnight 
 pass. You can go to the halls twice a week and 
 spoon with yer girl in the Park." We were quite 
 ready to be toffs. The relaxed discipline was a 
 considerable relief. I noticed that all the men 
 grew more confident in themselves, and that the 
 cowed look seemed to leave their faces. The mov- 
 ing life of London fused their lives. At the same 
 time, however, most of the men seemed to fall off a 
 little in good looks and bodily health. Excite- 
 ments and late nights undid what the peace and 
 dullness of Little Sparta evenings had achieved. 
 Men slept in the barrack-rooms in the afternoon 
 — "got down to it," and wakened up in time for 
 tea and the razzle-dazzle of the evening. Then 
 we lived in a slacker way. The rooms and the 
 beds were far from the cleanliness of Little Sparta. 
 We were not marched once a week to the Trio- 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS in 
 
 juncta-tn-uno-hath, nor inspected to see if our 
 bodies were clean. And three in a bath is better 
 than no bath at all. In London you bathed when 
 and where you liked. In the barrack-rooms at 
 nights windows supposed to be kept open were su- 
 perstitiously kept shut, and you could taste and 
 smell and handle the atmosphere produced. There 
 were the stale leavings of supper on plates, men 
 with dirty bodies, sometimes men drunk, sometimes 
 men sick, a huge fire burning, an overcrowded 
 room. 
 
 The standard of smartness seemed reduced, both 
 in personal appearance and in the way one kept 
 bed and locker. There was one "sin against the 
 Holy Ghost," and that was having the handle of 
 one's entrenching tool dirty. The metal part of 
 this tool had to be like silver; the wooden part 
 had to be polished with sandpaper till it was white 
 and smooth as ivory. And it was only a pick to 
 be used eventually in digging trenches. Punish- 
 ments were showered thick and fast, but were taken 
 lightly and done lightly. The best men fared 
 equally with the worst. If you did a punishment 
 you felt a bit of a fool realising that sixpence might 
 have got you off. To do an extra drill was called 
 "to pay a drill," and it was not uncommon for the 
 sergeant to say to you just after the sentence had 
 been pronounced by the officer: "Will you pay it 
 now or pay it at four o'clock?" and you could dis- 
 charge the matter there and then. An old sergeant 
 once propounded this pleasant theory: "Wben 
 your name is in the book for a punishment-drill 
 
112 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv 
 
 that in itself is sufficient punishment. There's no 
 need for a fellow to go tramping round the bar- 
 rack-square for an hour." 
 
 When the soldier's weekly wage was raised it 
 came in very handy for paying his way, but there 
 was rather a temptation to N.C.O.'s to bring you 
 before an officer for a trifling offence, and so get 
 you down in the book for a drill, and sometimes 
 when the officer said one you found it had been 
 entered in the book as two. One felt annoyed, but 
 then sergeants and men were on very good swear- 
 ing terms. We all rather admired B , the vol- 
 unteer from the Far West, who insisted on doing 
 his punishment-drills when awarded, and said, 
 "I'll take my medicine; I think it will be good for 
 me." 
 
 Our training was largely a matter of preparation 
 for active service, and some of it, such as the bomb- 
 ing course, was excellent in itself and very interest- 
 ing; others, such as the gas-drill, were not so pleas- 
 ant. The only things I was complimented on 
 were bayonet-fighting and bomb-throwing — which 
 rather tickled me, being of a Christian tempera- 
 ment, and more ready to be killed than to kill. 
 In drill I remained "a dizzy devil," the sergeant- 
 major remarked. But I did not get into trouble 
 whilst doing guards, though I devised several in- 
 genious tricks for reading poetry whilst walking 
 up and down on sentry. Being on sentry at the 
 barracks from two to four in the morning, or at 
 some such time, was always rather thrilling to me. 
 To march up and down and to know the moonlight 
 glimmered on your bayonet and that you and all 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 113 
 
 the circumstances of your post looked larger and 
 grander than by day was somewhat of an enchant- 
 ment. These things, however, appealed to differ- 
 ent temperaments differently. I remember my 
 surprise one night when the sergeant who should 
 have marched us to our posts was fast asleep. I 
 went to relieve my man, and he said, "You'll find 
 a newspaper in a bit of board in the sentry-box, I 
 should get down to it if I were you; there's nobody 
 about." I never found sleep prized so much as in 
 the army; there it is a material commodity like 
 roast beef. You "get down to it" with the solid 
 pleasure of satisfying an appetite or a lust. Sleep 
 becomes a bad habit like the overuse of tobacco or 
 drink. 
 
 I found in London that whilst in charge of a 
 foul-mouthed, unsympathetic, and brutal sergeant- 
 major we were a very wretched company in our 
 drill and general turn-out, but when this man was 
 reduced in rank and we were given to a capable, 
 clean-minded, and sympathetic young fellow, who 
 knew his work well, we made the most extraor- 
 dinary progress. After three weeks, from being 
 the worst we became almost the best, and we made 
 a most pleasing show in the great inter-company 
 drilling competition on the barrack-square. 
 
 Our hours of drill were very light compared 
 with those of Little Sparta. Our day was gener- 
 ally over at three, and sometimes at noon. Those 
 living within a reasonable proximity to barracks 
 could get sleeping-out passes, which enabled them 
 to wash and dress and do many things at home. 
 Those who had no homes had usually their girls 
 
114 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv 
 
 and the Park, or the kitchens or servants' parlour 
 of some great house to which they adjourned. 
 
 The men's sweethearts, and sometimes one man 
 would have several, kept them in cigarettes and 
 sweets, cakes, and often money. So a man would 
 say, "I must meet her to-night, it's her pay-day." 
 When the girl was a munition-worker it can be un- 
 derstood how the tables had been turned during the 
 war, and she was the rich one and could afiford to 
 treat him. When men were on duty their girls 
 would come to the railings and ask to see them, 
 and often the men would return with pleasing 
 presents, which greatly contributed to our suppers. 
 Some of the men walked out with servants from 
 the big houses of the west, especially Park Lane, 
 and I often heard well-known hostesses mentioned 
 by the men. It was rather amusing to think that 
 whilst the quality had been eating dinner up above, 
 a burly soldier had been waiting in the kitchen be- 
 low stairs for his share in the same. He had his 
 share in due course, and was not without his glass 
 of champagne upon occasion. Well certainly 
 those below stairs are as human as those above. 
 One day in the wash-house a man said to me, 
 "Didn't I have the pleasure of waiting on you one 
 
 night at Mrs. C 's?" And he mentioned one 
 
 or two other guests. "Ah, yes," said I. "What 
 a pleasant evening it was I It's curious how we 
 meet again, isn't it?" whereupon we became very 
 good barrack friends. 
 
 Life in barracks during the war exhibited all 
 the abnormalities of a strange time. More re- 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 115 
 
 cruits were rushed through the course of training 
 in a few years than ordinarily passed through in a 
 quarter of a century; whereas formerly the ser- 
 eeants and drill-sereeants and the rest would know 
 infallibly every soldier's face in the battalion, now 
 the faces changed so rapidly, what with new men 
 coming: in and men who had been wounded return- 
 ing, never more than one in three could be recog- 
 nised. The control which before the war must 
 have been more personal was now conventional. 
 No such condition of excellence as prevailed under 
 the sway of that ex-sergeant-major who gave his 
 reminiscences could obtain now. All the weeds of 
 the system were growing; all the weeds that ever 
 showed themselves in the garden. So it was pos- 
 sible to see what were the problems in front of a 
 practical idealist should he wish to make us per- 
 fect within as perfect without. We needed an- 
 other Hildebrand to shake and purify us like a 
 mighty wind, though not a Hildebrand with a 
 mere passion for reform, but a wise and experi- 
 enced one, such as that mellowed R.S.M. who 
 talked so well on what had been and what might be. 
 I have no doubt myself that the best virtue to 
 cultivate in a regiment is esprit de corps. On that 
 and not on fear and punishment and bluster should 
 discipline be founded. A higher sense of esprit 
 de corps would have caused a good deal of that 
 slackness so comforting to civilians in khaki to dis- 
 appear, but at the same time it would have procured 
 more liberties and better social conditions, which 
 would have more than made up for what was lost 
 in the other direction. Of course by esprit de corps 
 
ii6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv 
 
 is not meant that narrow pride in the regiment 
 which at one time caused the Jocks to fight the Bill 
 Browns in every public-house about Victoria Sta- 
 tion. It should acknowledge the splendour of 
 brother regiments. To act under the influence of 
 esprit de corps means to act in the spirit of your 
 regiment, and if you speak of the larger esprit de 
 corps, national esprit de corps, it means to act in 
 the spirit of the nation to which you belong. It is 
 to use the common sense of your battalion and your 
 country, and live according to that. 
 
 When a man has put on the King's uniform he 
 has by that act resigned individual striving after 
 perfection. His perfection has become locked up 
 in his relationship to his fellows. He still wants 
 freedom, but he wants it in a different way. Per- 
 fect freedom does not mean isolation but perfect 
 organisation — a place in a perfect system where 
 every one is free and yet every one is instinctively 
 disciplined, where no one hinders any one else but 
 every one by his very existence is helping every one 
 else. 
 
 The mushroom army of the war was a place 
 where for most of the finer issues every man was 
 hindering every one else. There was only the be- 
 ginning of a fine esprit de corps. Fear and punish- 
 ment were still in control and seemed to be the su- 
 preme appeal for the establishment of absolute 
 obedience. The prison wall shed its baleful 
 shadow on the young soul. The evil of institution- 
 alism was the evil of the army, and whole regiments 
 had the blank faces of institute children, whole 
 regiments were stunted, were dried up, were in 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 117 
 
 corporal decay solely owing to no spirit, or little 
 spirit or a wrong conception of what discipline 
 should rest upon. 
 
 The ideal for a regiment is that every man 
 should amplify every other man's regimental per- 
 sonality. The famous deeds of men in the regi- 
 ment in days gone by should be known equally with 
 the famous deeds of the present war. The story 
 of a bayonet-charge, of a desperate stand, of a pa- 
 tient defence against terrible odds, of a long and 
 arduous march; the victories of the sports field, 
 of the boxing ring, of football leagues, as far as they 
 are known enlarge the life of the regiment and im- 
 prove the spirit. Poems and rhymes written by 
 officers and men, songs sung, lectures given — all 
 these help esprit de corps. But what should help 
 more than all is a true relationship between officers 
 and men and a real understanding. Slack officers, 
 sarcastic, nonchalant, overbearing, snobbish officers 
 are no use in any regiment, and only take away 
 from its common life, as do also cowards, fops, 
 and ladies' men. There is no one so quick as the 
 common soldier in grasping whether in reality the 
 officer in charge of him is a gentleman. And 
 every ranker wants to have over him a man who is 
 a gentleman. Ah, how the army has been pestered 
 and made miserable by duds of one kind and an- 
 other! In the army, allegiance should spring as 
 much from hero-worship as from the rules of 
 discipline. 
 
 Hero-worship and comradeship, pride in one's 
 nation and equal pride in one's regiment, ideals as 
 triumphant as the colours themselves, living in- 
 
ii8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS iv 
 
 terest and enthusiasm in all ranks — these are the 
 true substitutes for fear and punishment and mili- 
 tary law. 
 
 It goes without saying that regard must be had 
 to the clearing away of soldiers' injustices. More 
 care should be given to the cooking and serving of 
 his food, and a private soldier should not go short 
 whilst all those who handle and distribute the food 
 surfeit from too much. And medical officers should 
 be allowed to treat sick men more as they would 
 civilian clients. The washing of linen should be 
 done properly. More care should be taken that 
 a man's pay does actually reach him in its entirety 
 and does not leak into the pockets of other ranks. 
 Men sent on leave should infallibly receive their 
 ration-money. No brutal advantage should be 
 taken of the fact that a man once in the army is the 
 army's slave. Care should rather be taken to give 
 compensatory privileges when unusual demands 
 are made upon soldiers. Officers should be on the 
 alert to learn of anything that the soldier feels to 
 be an injustice, and if the seemingly unjust thing 
 is something necessary, though hard, he must put 
 the soldier into a positive way of regarding it. 
 This can often be done by kindness and politeness. 
 
 What is the matter with the army as a whole 
 is that there is not enough life in it. It is more 
 of a national bondage than a national club. But 
 it could be the most splendid of our institutions. 
 In the army the nation should act and feel as one 
 man. That is why we get into step and try to 
 march as one body and to feel in our veins one 
 loyalty. On the outbreak of a war the national in- 
 
IV ESPRIT DE CORPS 119 
 
 stinct always says, "Close the ranks, forget all dif- 
 ferences and act as one man!" There is a cry for 
 that united front which the army should naturally 
 possess. But the army's grievances make of it 
 rather a collection of warring and grumbling indi- 
 viduals than a warm glowing unity. And the griev- 
 ances can never be got rid of by a more severe sys- 
 tem of fear and punishment — they can be got rid of 
 by the rule of a large national esprit de corps. 
 
TO THE FRONT 
 
 We are living in the cage, and it might be jolly 
 but that Polyphemus comes in every now and then 
 and feels us and considers us and carries some away. 
 Our companions are taken from us one by one 
 and we hear of them afterwards as being dead, hear 
 of them terribly mauled by the monster. It is 
 borne in upon the mind that each and all of us 
 must go in time, you and I as well. And the ques- 
 tion arises in the mind: How shall we fare in the 
 hands of the terrible man-eater? 
 
 There is a polite euphemism for "Polyphemus 
 wants you." It is: "The following are warned 
 to be in readiness to proceed overseas." Ah, the 
 very rumour of that notice raises a tremulous 
 breeze in the whole barracks, a breeze that plays 
 on the wind-harps of men's affections. It causes 
 a consternation among us as if at some bygone pe- 
 riod we had sold ourselves to the Devil for seven 
 years' happiness, and now suddenly we saw the 
 sinister figure appear claiming the execution of his 
 bargain. 
 
 Every one whispers to his neighbour, "Aj-e you 
 for it?" "Yes," says the neighbour reluctantly, 
 "my name is on the list," or "No," says he in a 
 
 120 
 
V TO THE FRONT 121 
 
 whisper, "my name is not on the list." "Oh, that 
 means you re not for it." It is that one-eyed mon- 
 ster who appeared in these parts about the begin- 
 ning of August 1914. He satisfies his appetite on 
 the bodies of young men. It was said that when 
 he died of repletion a League of Nations would 
 be formed to prevent his resurrection. Meanwhile 
 the little victims of the hour sang in mock-pitiful 
 strains: ^\ 
 
 Oh my, I don't want to die, 
 I — want to go home. 
 
 Immediately the warning is given, blood-red tabs 
 with the name of the regiment printed in white are 
 sewn on the shoulders of our tunics. We are 
 marked, as it were, with blood, and are like trees 
 with the gash of the hatchet designing them to be 
 felled, or like rams marked for sacrifice to the idol. 
 "I see you've got them up," says one to the other 
 with the curious hush of awe. "They say you can 
 pick up no new girl in the Park when you've got 
 them up," says another. "They all know what it 
 means." The girls you know already "take on 
 so" that it's better to borrow some one else's tunic 
 till the last moment. Perhaps better still to avoid 
 them and go somewhere up the Edgware Road and 
 get drunk. 
 
 Some of the marked men are new, some have 
 been out before and have wound stripes on their 
 arms. The men who have been wounded seem to 
 take the matter more philosophically than the rest. 
 Of the others there are always one or two who 
 imagine they can escape the hand of Fate by re- 
 
122 ^ PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 sorting to various tricks to avoid it at the last mo- 
 ment, by reporting sick, committing a crime, trying 
 to square some one, or bolting home until the draft 
 has gone. The call brings out the courage in most 
 and the selfishness in some. For it is selfish to try 
 to escape : if one man's name is crossed ofT the list 
 for any reason another's must be put on. And 
 though it is selfishness to want to escape, it is a 
 much-qualified selfishness which can find excuse 
 in the pain of parting, perhaps finally, with wife 
 and family; in the pain which this taking away is 
 going to cause to a loving woman. 
 
 I recall to mind a rather hard type of Scotsman 
 nearing middle age, patient and taciturn, Private 
 
 M . He was warned for overseas. He was 
 
 not very popular, and I remember a neighbour say- 
 ing to him with a sarcastic grimace, "A sore blow, 
 
 eh?" But M did not answer. He sent a 
 
 telegram to his wife, who lived in some remote 
 place near Banff or Nairn, and she came down to 
 him, leaving her bairns in a neighbour's care. He 
 said Good-bye to her — with what suffering! He 
 got the Good-bye over, and went on grimly and 
 quietly disposing of his spare kit, making his will, 
 and doing all those final things that precede the 
 going to the Front. 
 
 Next day he was, however, sent for and told he 
 was not for it. 
 
 To his astonishment he was suddenly free again. 
 We watched him in the barrack-room. Joy curi- 
 ously suffused and transfigured his usually inex- 
 pressive countenance, and a generous flow of life- 
 blood rushed through his veins. He wired to 
 
V TO THE FRONT 123 
 
 his wife again. The unopened parcel which she 
 had brought him the day before he now opened, 
 and distributed among us short-bread and home- 
 baked scones. He was not one who gave away 
 things as a rule. But now a light-heartedness 
 seemed to possess him and smiles flickered across 
 his face. He said, '*I am glad I'm not going to the 
 Front — for my wife's sake. Fve always been quite 
 ready to do my bit, and would only have wanted to 
 get out of it because of her." How true that wasl 
 He was a typical man of duty. Next morning, 
 with pipers and escorting crowds, the draft went to 
 the station to entrain. And he, with a sense of 
 duty upon him, got everything ready to go in 
 case after all he might be wanted. So he was. 
 One of the men had gone out the night before 
 and not returned to barracks. The sergeant- 
 major looked round, saw M all ready, and 
 
 in a matter-of-fact way bade him take the other's 
 place. And he bit his lip and went. Later he 
 was killed. 
 
 Should the warning for the draft synchronise 
 with pay-day there is likely to be a wild night fol- 
 lowing. I vividly recall a night when one man 
 in a raving state wanted to kill people with his 
 bayonet — "It's the twenty-second German I've 
 killed to-night," he kept on saying — and he had to 
 be constantly disarmed and thrown with a whop on 
 his bed; when the men lying each side of me slept 
 "in marching order," i.e. with boots on. One was 
 sick in between beds, another man hung with his 
 head out of a window and, having been violently 
 
124 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 sick, fell asleep thus. Sergeant Five was one of 
 those warned for that draft. He had got into 
 trouble at Little Sparta Barracks, and for his sins 
 was being sent on active service. He came in late 
 that night in a conversational state, and sat by the 
 embers of the fire talking to himself for hours 
 about his wife and little ones: "I believe in God 
 and all that; I'm not afraid to die," said he, "but 
 the question I ask is, If I die, what are they going 
 to do? What will the army do for them? Why, 
 nothing, of course. That's just it. There are too 
 many widows and orphans." 
 
 But what a contrast the atmosphere of the fourth 
 year of the war to that of the first! When the 
 original summons came and the "Tipperary Boys" 
 were called they were happy and excited beyond 
 measure. German cannon devoured their hearts, 
 and there followed Kitchener's wonderful army 
 with their enthusiasm. They knew better than 
 those who had gone first the hell to which they were 
 going, but they were eager. Their ranks were 
 thinned, and the Derby men and the first conscripts 
 went out. And they were cheerful, even with their 
 grievances and troubles. But later came a bitter 
 residue of "indispensables," of men near middle 
 age heavily committed with wife and children, of 
 B men marked medically A, and what not. The 
 first fought for a wage, the second for an ideal, 
 and the rest because they had to. The curious 
 thing in my experience was — to carry the record to 
 the later times in France — that when it came to the 
 point the last fought as well as the first, and the 
 
V TO THE FRONT 125 
 
 lachrymose became eventually, under active-serv- 
 ice conditions, as cheerful, as ardently patriotic and 
 proud of the duty they were performing as any of 
 the rest or of the dead had ever been. 
 
 In the summer of 1917 the war might have been 
 compromised in a peace, but in that summer we 
 entered into a large alliance with America, and an 
 enormous accession of military and financial aid 
 was ensured. Meanwhile, however, in Russia the 
 programme which the Allies had hoped to realise 
 when sanctioning the March revolution failed; 
 Germany succeeded in making peace there, and in 
 buying or taking a large quantity of artillery, ma- 
 chine-gunnery, and ammunitions largely supplied 
 to Russia from the West. She could also call ofif a 
 large number of soldiers hitherto employed in 
 guarding against the Russian menace. A partially 
 disarmed nation, even if capricious in her political 
 tendencies, is not a military danger to a militant 
 neighbour. The autumn and winter on the West- 
 ern Front provided a lull broken only by the "Byng 
 Boys' " victory and the German success of Cam- 
 brai, so heroically checked by the Guards at 
 Gouzeaucourt. The sense of a growing German 
 power crept into the military mind. This was con- 
 firmed by the extent of the Germano-Austrian vic- 
 tory over the Italians, where it was claimed an- 
 other thousand guns fell into the enemy's hands 
 and a corresponding quantity of ammunition. 
 After this no doubt was felt but that Germany 
 would be found to be holding the initiative in the 
 spring. She would again be able to batter herself 
 
126 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 to bits as she did at Verdun. Meanwhile her civil 
 population would starve, and we would hold on 
 till better days, when American reinforcements 
 would enable us to take the upper hand. The lull 
 continued throughout the winter; leave for the men 
 continued. Our training continued in a pleasant, 
 leisurely way. After our gruelling at Little 
 Sparta we had three months more in London; we 
 were just going off for even another month, a 
 month's field-work in the country, when the crash 
 came. 
 
 On March 21, with the Kaiser himself in com- 
 mand, the Germans made their most grand attempt 
 to defeat us, to divide our armies from those of the 
 French and to secure the mouth of the Somme. 
 We know now that if the combustion of the Last 
 Day had set in during the war it would have been 
 described in the Press as a pitiful attempt at fright- 
 fulness with meagre results. But consternation 
 would have reigned nevertheless. So it was in this 
 last week in March. The true significance of the 
 German advance sounded as a trumpet-blast in all 
 the training-camps of England, and every man in 
 khaki knew England had need of him. Was it 
 not shortly after this that the papers all printed 
 articles on what the new drafts had done at the 
 Front? Our hour had come. 
 
 All other arrangements were cancelled. We all 
 fell in, and there was a great clearance. The warn- 
 ings to proceed overseas were soon posted, and it 
 was found they affected a great number who did 
 not expect to be sent. At such a moment of destiny, 
 however, it was not becoming any man to take one 
 
V TO THE FRONT 127 
 
 step to get his name erased from the list, and I 
 think, somehow, all felt in that way, though not a 
 few were advertised to go who would have been 
 omitted had there been time to consider their uses. 
 It was a great moment of national hush and of 
 suppressed excitement. The tragic nature of the 
 moment dispelled the more selfish and sickly ways 
 of looking on the fight, and it was marvellous what 
 a good, quiet, patriotic fervour developed in a few 
 days then. Shirkers became volunteers, grousers 
 and pacifists became patriots, selfish men became 
 unselfish and pessimists optimists. What a change 
 from the atmosphere of the departure of other 
 drafts I had witnessed in time of deadlock, lull, 
 stagnation! As I overheard an officer say at the 
 time, "August 1914 is going to repeat itself." And 
 so it was. 
 
 The time we came up from Little Sparta to the 
 historic London barracks was the night of Christ- 
 mas Eve, but it was not serene. The day we left 
 for the battle-front was Good Friday. The fact 
 filled us all with a tremor which was perhaps a 
 little superstitious. Destiny, in a sort of halo of 
 days, seemed to light our brows and mark us out for 
 sacrifice and service. 
 
 "So we are going to set out on the day J. C. was 
 crucified," said one. 
 
 "Oh, shut up, for God's sake, do," said another 
 nervously. 
 
 "It's the luckiest day in the year," said another, 
 with the consciousness of a lucky star. 
 
 "I shall never come back," says another. 
 
128 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 "If you look at it like that, of course you never 
 will," his companion replies. 
 
 "Are ye glad to go?" some one asks of an Amer- 
 ican. 
 
 ''You betr 
 
 There were many rumours and contradictions 
 and cancellings and re-postings. Notice had been 
 very short. We were rushed hither and thither by 
 sergeants and quartermaster-sergeants. We filed 
 half-naked past the doctor, who passed us fit with 
 great rapidity. We lined up at the tailor's den to 
 have the red tabs sewn on the shoulders of our 
 tunics. We received new metal helmets, water- 
 proof capes, and draft-kit, field-dressings, identifi- 
 cation discs, pay-books. Our wills were filed at 
 the orderly room. We paraded for various in- 
 spections, and all the while there were conflicting 
 rumours as to postponement, acceleration, cancel- 
 lation, which expressed themselves in an oft- 
 reiterated "You're for it. No, you're not for it." 
 
 But all unfolded itself in an apparent fitting- 
 ness. We went on Good Friday, and it was at 
 noon, just when in innumerable churches the Three 
 Hours' Service was commencing, that we stood 
 finally in the barrack-square in full field-service 
 marching order, weighed down by what we car- 
 ried. 
 
 We were all very tense with emotion, and our 
 hands shook comrades' hands in Good-bye with 
 a regularity and continuity that only a practised 
 demagogue leaving the platform could do well. 
 
V TO THE FRONT 129 
 
 Tears stood in many eyes. We knew, however, 
 that it was an ordeal for the nerves of the affec- 
 tions, and steeled ourselves to think of other things, 
 as we stood there, and be hard. But after the 
 colonel of the regiment had inspected us there was 
 a greater trial, when the marching order was given, 
 and our stability upon the barrack-square gave way 
 to motion toward France. Then the regimental 
 band in all its brazenness blared out its melodies: 
 
 If the sergeant drinks your rum, 
 Never mind! 
 
 and the rest. And the civilian population, with 
 the women we knew, flung itself upon us, scatter- 
 ing flowers and kisses, shouting and halloing, or 
 gently sobbing and hurrying to keep step with us. 
 Beads of perspiration rolled down brows and 
 cheeks, our close hair on our heads rose with excite- 
 ment. Men wreathed their service hats with 
 primroses. Girls and wives were inside the ranks 
 walking arm-in-arm with their soldier-boys. A 
 mother held out her baby at arm's length for the 
 soldier-father to kiss, and all the while the band 
 ahead of us blasted away in quick-time — and then 
 the band gave way more happily to the pipes, as 
 all our pipers in gorgeous array took up the slogan 
 and played us to the train. The populace was 
 rolled back by the police, our ranks restored in all 
 their brightness and sparkle, and every man's rifle 
 seemed to be at the same angle across his left shoul- 
 der. So in a fine strapping style, all together and 
 with one step, we entered the stern confines of the 
 
130 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 terminus where the troop-train was waiting, 
 marched past a large draft of silent Gordon High- 
 landers with aprons over their kilts, and past a 
 draft of Dorsets to the far end of a long plat- 
 form. 
 
 We were soon in the train, and then the civilians 
 were allowed to us once more, and then the last 
 tender farewells and embraces. Then the official 
 farewell of the C.O. "Good-bye and spare none!" 
 and then the cry, "All aboard!" and then, "We're 
 ofif, boys!" 
 
 And the train rolls slowly out. 
 
 Fitz opposite me looked frantic with excite- 
 ment. "I kill every German I see," says he. 
 
 H , the American boy who wanted to charge 
 
 with the Guards, put his head out of the window 
 and yelled at every station we passed through in 
 order to get a responding yell from astonished 
 civilians, who nevertheless understood what it 
 meant — reinforcements going into the great battle. 
 
 "I'll never come back," says another, silent and 
 morose. 
 
 "Well, whatever happens," says another, "we've 
 had a splendid send-off." And we all agreed with 
 him. 
 
 We found ourselves on Easter morning on the 
 slope of a heaven-kissing hill, covered with in- 
 numerable tents. The sun shone fair over France. 
 We were at the Base Camp, and mingled with a 
 vast concourse of new drafts of every regiment of 
 Britain. We were there in strength, but there 
 were also large batches, in some cases a thousand 
 
V TO THE FRONT 131 
 
 strong, from the other national regiments that 
 drilled with us at Little Sparta and had been 
 brought up in the same ways. Not a few recog- 
 nised me. I had had all the recruits at Little 
 Sparta collected one night in the Grand Pavilion 
 for a lantern lecture with pictures of things I had 
 heard and seen in foreign parts. In London, ex- 
 cept at the Bombing School, the five regiments had 
 been separated, but now representatives of each of 
 us, Bill Browns, Jocks, Micks, Taffies, and Goal- 
 ies, were present — English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh 
 — and we belonged to one division and would 
 henceforth be more often together, one being the 
 relief of the other in the field, or neighbour on the 
 right or left, or behind in support. We were a 
 Britain in ourselves. 
 
 We heard fantastic rumours, unchecked by news- 
 paper reports: the first that the Germans had en- 
 tered Arras at eight o'clock that morning, then that 
 one division as a whole had been lost and that we 
 would have to take its place for the time being, 
 then that the Germans had broken through at La 
 Bassee. A Labour man told a group of us that 
 the French had surrounded 500,000 Germans. 
 
 "With what?" we asked in amusement. 
 
 "With 30,000, eh?" 
 
 One thing was certain : the great battle still 
 raged, and we should be thrown into it to turn the 
 scale. 
 
 We comforted ourselves with a great deal of 
 naivete in the presence of old soldiers and listened 
 to almost any tale; we inspected the German pris- 
 oner camps from a distance and criticised the large- 
 
132 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 ness of their rations; we ate our own bully-beef 
 with relish and confessed it wasn't "half-bad"; we 
 also ate the army biscuits without complaint, and, 
 besides our bully, at every meal we ate a great num- 
 ber of Germans. My blood was rather curdled 
 by the atrocities we committed in advance and in 
 imagination on fleeing or prostrate enemies when 
 we got them in our power. 
 
 "All that you can do to them they can also do to 
 you," said I. "And when you talk of being merci- 
 less when you have the German in your power, 
 remember that just now it is chiefly British soldiers 
 which he has in his power." But my companions 
 did not go into battle with the Golden Rule em- 
 broidered in their crest. They went out to be ter- 
 rible to the enemy, to be drastic, to put the fear of 
 death into him. 
 
 However, with all our bravado and tall talk we 
 had also the consciousness of going to sacrifice. 
 We talked of killing, but thought more in our 
 hearts of the possibility of being killed. The 
 tragedy of leaving wife or sweetheart, home, par- 
 ents, and to perish perhaps within a week was still 
 the note to which we were attuned. 
 
 Then our orders came quickly to the Base Camp, 
 and even still more laden — for we now carried 
 ammunition and a blanket as well as all the rest of 
 the stuff which we had brought from England — 
 we took the road back to Havre, there to entrain. 
 It took us a long time to march a short distance, and 
 every time we halted and sat down the weight of 
 the stuff on our shoulders pulled our backs down, 
 so that we lay on it and sprawled QUt with our legs. 
 
V TO THE FRONT 133 
 
 What a relief that ten minutes in the hour gave 
 us, what a pleasure it afiforded! It was strange to 
 notice how much recuperated we were when the 
 order came to resume our way. So we sludged 
 along French roads singing any sort of song, glad 
 to have anything that might make us forget for a 
 moment the burden of Europe on our shoulders. 
 
 At Havre we were put into a train. Not into 
 the cattle-trucks we had been led to expect, but into 
 the poky third-class carriages of a ramshackle 
 passenger-train. It was a great crush, and how we 
 squeezed in our equipment as well as ourselves it 
 would be difficult to say. Plenty of army food was 
 handed to us, and in a short while the whole lot 
 of us were pottering to and fro with mess-tins mak- 
 ing tea, and afternoon passed to evening in great 
 gaiety. It was many hours before the train 
 crawled out — the train which was going to the 
 Front cautiously feeling its way at five miles an 
 hour, and always waiting for army orders before 
 it halted or proceeded. 
 
 The movement in the train stirred something 
 in ourselves. It was a very slow progress— noth- 
 ing to alarm — but it meant: IV e — are — getting — 
 nearer. It hushed the noisy thought ever such a 
 little, and related each one of us for a moment to 
 home and his loved ones, for the thread that was 
 between us and home was being extended. It was 
 tugging a little at heart-strings. 
 
 Night set in and we settled ourselves as best we 
 could, lying against or half on top of one another. 
 The boy next to me lay on the floor under our feet. 
 No one knew the point we were destined for, not 
 
134 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 even our officers sitting in the second-class. "It 
 may be like this," said a sergeant: "the train will 
 stop in a field and we'll all have to bundle out with- 
 out our packs and go straight into action; or the 
 train may be struck by a shell, and we may have 
 to get out with our entrenching tools and entrench 
 a position in a wood or on the ridge of a ploughed 
 field. We might then get surrounded by the 
 enemy and have to fight our way through." 
 
 There were many suggestions, which increased, 
 especially when the train passed into the city of 
 Amiens and we began to hear the commotion of 
 the battle. But from Amiens we did not approach 
 nearer to the fray, but passed away northward into 
 quieter country, where not a whisper of a shell was 
 heard, slowly, slowly. 
 
 We could not sleep, for we were in a neurotic 
 and excited state. Mixed with us were many old 
 campaigners, who told their stories of hair-breadth 
 escapes and advanced theories of military be- 
 haviour. "I'm a one-man soldier," a Welshman 
 in front of me kept saying. "I'll do what I'm or- 
 dered to do. I won't do more, but I won't do less." 
 — "Ah, I'd always look after a chum, I would," 
 says another soldier. 
 
 Then the talk gives way to endless songs. And 
 as we again near the zone of destruction we feel 
 that tiredness, pain, death, though more or less 
 distasteful, can nevertheless be viewed indiffer- 
 ently. Only one thinks of the loved one at home 
 and what it may mean to her. But we are in God's 
 hand and His are our destinies. We are fighting 
 in a good cause and ^'can do no other." If we die, 
 
V TO THE FRONT 135 
 
 humanity must do for us all that we would do for 
 her. 
 
 Huddled up in a dark corner of the carriage 
 a-thinking of many such occasions in life when I 
 have parted for the unknown, listening to the sol- 
 diers' tales, it recalled the mood of Clarence's 
 dream when he was pacing on the hatches of the 
 ship at night with the Duke of Gloucester, talking 
 of the Wars of the Roses. The garment of destiny 
 was woven of the substance of the dream. 
 
 There were no lights in the carriage except that 
 given by a guttering candle which kept spilling its 
 grease; toppling over now and then, and having 
 to be relit. The pale gleams showed the faces of 
 the soldiers, and they looked more gentle than by 
 day. 
 
 *'How long will the war last?" asked one. 
 "Five years, perhaps," some one replies. But it 
 was not the years ahead but the present moment that 
 was affecting the soldiers' souls. It was an epic 
 moment for every man who had not gone to the 
 Front before. 
 
 The war had become the condition of our liv- 
 ing. Every one had got to make the war his life. 
 But it was not really life. Perhaps it was not so 
 important as we thought. Still, it was a test of the 
 heart. It was marvellous to feel ordinary working- 
 men brought from the vulgarity and materialism 
 of modern life to the reality that is only tenderness. 
 If only distant London folk could have heard this 
 slow midnight train creeping toward the war, its 
 songs all turned tender and real, if they could see 
 the bright eyes 1 And at about one in the morning 
 
136 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 the whole train seemed to be singing "Home, sweet 
 home!" though no matter what song they sang, 
 however vulgar, something in their tones robbed it 
 of vulgarity. 
 
 "I suppose there must be some of us who will 
 never return," said one to me. 
 
 "Yes, that's inevitable, I suppose." 
 
 "But they say that if you're killed your spirit 
 goes home first." 
 
 "Yes, it's possible to return more quickly than 
 one expects that way." 
 
 "But do you believe it?" 
 
 "It seems true," I answer. "It is a poetical 
 thought, and poetry is always nearer the truth than 
 prose. A shell blasts the life out of you, and you 
 go straight to the presence of the one who is nearest 
 to you." 
 
 "Straight to the bosom of your beloved," I would 
 have said to myself. 
 
 The candle went irreparably to waste and gut- 
 tered out at last, and we were left in complete dark- 
 ness; for the windows of the carriage had been 
 taken out and sheets of iron put in the frames in- 
 stead of glass. With the darkness came also si- 
 lence, long silence, and the train waiting hours, as 
 it seemed, and then creeping cautiously on a mile, 
 to wait again. We lay or lounged or sprawled in 
 uncomfortable positions, and we thought, each man 
 by himself. Some men remained pessimists in the 
 darkness, some optimists, some morbid, others 
 serene. And the serenity of the last emerged like 
 a perfect night sky out of clouds in space — our 
 faith! 
 
V TO THE FRONT 137 
 
 Daybreak was murky, and the dull day showed 
 us a more desolate country, scarred by the upturned 
 clay of new breastworks, and in the grey sky we 
 looked eagerly at rings of smoke of shrapnel, and 
 of high explosive. The detonation of the war 
 reached our ears. We watched many Red Cross 
 trains go past — one way empty, the other way with 
 their precious freight of wounded sons of our coun- 
 try. 
 
 Only in the late afternoon did we come to our 
 particular railhead. By that time the clouds had 
 cleared, and a lively breeze with fresh sunshine 
 blew over the grass-covered ridge where we biv- 
 ouacked. We were rejoiced to get out of the filthy, 
 crowded train, and we made our evening meal with 
 the greatest merriment and happiness. 
 
 Our progress to the line was in stages. In the 
 first stage we marched with many songs to the wet 
 
 camp of B , where we bivouacked on the long 
 
 wet grass and listened to the thunder-storm bom- 
 bardment and the clangour of German attempts to 
 break through. Though we had not come to the 
 battle-centre, we had nevertheless reached the vi- 
 cinity of the greatly extended German advance. 
 
 We lay close to one another to keep warm, slept 
 by fits and starts, and thought and dreamed of what 
 Fate might have in store. We ate corned-beef and 
 biscuits in the morning; we tried to keep clean de- 
 spite the rivers of mud; we were paraded and 
 sworn at and dismissed, and visited the village 
 graveyard where so many bodies of brave soldiers 
 lie — and all the time we thought about Fate. All 
 about us swarmed French-Canadians, jabbering in 
 
138 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 their French patois. They had lost a chaplain, 
 killed by a shell, and the body lay in state in the vil- 
 lage church. It was a moving spectacle to see 
 crowds of soldiers on their knees on the reversed 
 chairs of this Roman Catholic chapel, the candles 
 burning beside the coffin up at the altar, the sen- 
 tries standing on each side of it, motionless, with 
 bayonets fixed. 
 
 Fitz, the Virginian, and Knock, a sailor boy who 
 had been wounded at the Battle of Jutland and 
 discharged from one service and conscripted into 
 another, came in with me and knelt in the little 
 chapel. After that we wandered a great deal 
 about together. One of our quartermaster-ser- 
 geants was killed ; we saw wounded men, walking 
 wounded, come down the line to the dressing-sta- 
 tion. Battle thunders rolled toward us and called 
 us over the mud to the line. 
 
 Then our caps were all taken away from us and 
 put into old sacks. 
 
 "You will get them back when you come out of 
 action," we were told. "Now you'll wear your 
 steel helmets." 
 
 At the bottom of the sacks are many shabby, 
 grubby caps. 
 
 "Whose caps are these?" we ask. 
 
 "They are the caps of the dead — of the men who 
 have not come back to claim them." 
 
 We go to the battalion painter. He paints the 
 regimental crest on every helmet. We shall be 
 distinguished even in the battle-line. 
 
 The next stage is the march to the reserve lines 
 in darkness and rain, a more or less silent trudge 
 
V TO THE FRONT 139 
 
 through the mud. The men are not so heavily 
 equipped now; packs have been left behind, but 
 what remains on the soldiers' backs is heavy enough 
 in all conscience. After a lull in the bombardment 
 the guns take up the tale again, and evil gun- 
 flashes rise out of the horizon; the war-dragon 
 blinks his envious eyes on the living. His terrible 
 voice resounds and echoes over the desolated coun- 
 try. The draft is halted near a shattered village, 
 halted again at a village which is flat. Shell-holes 
 are on all sides and confusion indescribable. What 
 is this strange field, with its tumbled stones and 
 iron posts? It is the cemetery of what was once 
 a large and thriving French settlement, a place 
 which is still marked large on the map, but has 
 ceased to exist. The iron posts are Catholic 
 crosses: they are the only memorials which have 
 withstood the effects of shrapnel; they point at all 
 angles, and the Christs on them are more or less 
 riven and broken again. There is a dull odour — 
 it is that of the dead, even of the old dead, for the 
 shells were but recently tearing up the graves again. 
 
 Red lights go up, great red flares, lighting up 
 one half of the night sky, showing the faint con- 
 tours of grey clouds and the wannesses and dark- 
 nesses of a rainy heaven, reflecting also on the faces 
 of the men. All of us look a little strained, a little 
 tired. 
 
 Then the wan body of men go on, leaving the vil- 
 lage behind, and plunge unevenly on the broken, 
 rutty road, by which in all seasons the rations-carts 
 plod every night to take the food to the men in the 
 line. No civilisation is in front, but only end- 
 
140 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS v 
 
 less barbed-wire, shell-holes, debris, dud shells, 
 trenches. Shells come hurtling through the air, 
 some give a long intense screech, others, seeming 
 to have plenty of time, come chattering idly 
 through the sky, but all crash and grumble in dis- 
 jection with groan of fast-travelling fragments of 
 cast-iron. The gas-shells sneak through the air 
 and go ofif like wet fire-works. All ranks are 
 wearing gas-masks at the alert, and we pass 
 through the sweetish, sickly odour of spent gas 
 from shells that fell in the morning; it is harmless. 
 Nevertheless one shell does come on the track, and 
 explodes beside the courageous old fellow from the 
 Far West. He has no time to adjust his gas-mask 
 on his head, and he gets the gas and falls out — goes 
 back, the first casualty among my friends. 
 
 There is a further halt, and as the tired rein- 
 forcements rest, the moon comes out of the clouds. 
 A party of men passes with rifles slung, puttees 
 torn, trousers and tunic and equipment smothered 
 in mud, faces pallid, haggard, tired. They are 
 men who are coming out of the battle-line. They 
 are going down to rest, and they have not a word 
 to say. Silently, heavily, steadily they march 
 down and past — the men of whom all men talk, 
 England's guardians, the keepers of the line. 
 They pass, and our fellows go on. In ten minutes 
 more the new draft is in the mud and the chalk of 
 
 the reserve lines at B and the reinforcements 
 
 have taken their place. 
 
VI 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 
 
 A CERTAIN literary bent being descried in me, I 
 was asked by an enthusiastic officer, who by his 
 enthusiasm and care for the men was the life and 
 soul of his unit, to look through the battalion 
 records, edit them where necessary, and endeavour 
 to supplement them by stories of the fighting 
 gleaned from the men. This gave me, as it were, 
 a sort of roving commission among the ranks, and 
 whilst remaining a private soldier I obtained the 
 rare privilege of being able to approach any one, 
 from lance-corporal to brigadier, without the soul- 
 freezing formalities of being marched to this one 
 and marched to that. It gave me a unique oppor- 
 tunity, by which I profited, though many of those 
 brilliant young writers who perished in the war 
 would, no doubt, have profited more and have writ- 
 ten a more stirring story at the end. I think of 
 Chesterton and Saki and Brooke and Thomas and 
 the rest. 
 
 In London we had been with the reserve bat- 
 talion. In France we joined a proud fighting bat- 
 talion made up of men, each of whom had his own 
 story of the fighting and of war-terror. There 
 were still a goodly number of 1914 men, but as 
 many or more of the other years of the war as well. 
 
 The battalion was a thorough mixture of men of 
 
 141 
 
142 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 all frays and men of all experiences, and it goes 
 without saying it was fier comme un ecossais, it was 
 justly proud of what it had done and justly awed 
 because of the number of its dead. 
 
 The battalion belonged originally to the *'im- 
 mortal" Seventh Division, and was brought from 
 garrison duty in Egypt upon the outbreak of war. 
 After a short course of special training in the New 
 Forest, it was taken across the Channel and thrown 
 into the scale in Flanders. The transport on which 
 it sailed for Bruges Bay was not in any way 
 memorable itself, but it was a sort of Argo by vir- 
 tue of the flower of manhood which it had on 
 board. The officers were brave young men of 
 noble families, who knew in behaviour and act the 
 meaning of noblesse oblige, the men whom they 
 designed to lead were the seasoned veterans of the 
 old "contemptible little army." They were rushed 
 forward to save Antwerp, or to save the retreating 
 Belgian Army, and then rushed back to Ypres to 
 save themselves and the line, but within three weeks 
 of their landing on the Continent, nearly all the 
 fighting officers and three-quarters of the rank and 
 file were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. At 
 the First Battle of Ypres the commanding officer 
 himself surrendered to the enemy, and the second 
 in command, the hero of all the soldiers under him, 
 was shot dead. Here the war in all its dumb- 
 founding novelty and its nightmare of chances of 
 death and suffering disclosed itself. The "pro- 
 fessional" soldiers little knew when, at an imma- 
 ture age, they signed on for long terms of years of 
 service, that the future held in it such an ordeal, 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 143 
 
 such a confrontment of horror, such a massacre. 
 Else the callow boy who signed away his freedom 
 for the glamour of a uniform might have paused. 
 This was something vastly different from trouble 
 in Matabeleland or mowing down the Fuzzy- 
 Wuzzy in his home in the Soudan. It was no 
 longer the hopeless valour of the Dervish with his 
 spear versus the hopeless efficiency of the machine- 
 gun, but with a sort of poetic justice it was ma- 
 chines versus machines. It might even fairly be 
 argued that in 1914 the machines opposing us were 
 better than those we held ourselves, and that rela- 
 tively we were now in the position of the less scien- 
 tific and educated tribes of the world, and were 
 up against a race who had better machinery for 
 killing men than we had. A devastating thought! 
 And, despite the discipline of our Spartan originals 
 in the battalion, there was a good deal of excusable 
 stupefaction which might even be called by a more 
 unkind name by the ruthless military mind. The 
 First Battle of Ypres was a frantic ordeal. The 
 glory of the battalion lies in the terror of these 
 days and nights in which it was destroyed and in 
 the ever-memorable losses in officers and men, a 
 new type of glory in the British Army, one which 
 was born of suffering and losses rather than one 
 born of the joy in causing losses to the enemy. 
 
 After the battle the numbers were made up by 
 fresh drafts of men from England, more old sol- 
 diers, for the volunteers were not trained yet. 
 These in turn suffered untold privations in the first 
 rainy winter of the war, in the worst trenches the 
 army ever saw. There were no capacious dug- 
 
144 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 outs and comfortable sand-bagging, but our "sea- 
 soned" veterans, with the sun of Egypt deep in 
 their flesh, came from the warmth and drought of 
 Cairo to the frost and penetrating damp of an im- 
 provised system of trenches. They were not in- 
 frequently flooded out, they had no duck-boards, 
 none of the military civilisation which was devel- 
 oped in later years. I have no doubt many a vital 
 string of men's constitutions was snapped that win- 
 ter, though that sad event meant much more to the 
 man personally than it did to his place in the army. 
 Men whose health was lost had to fight on in pa- 
 tience equally with those who kept well. The 
 army could not afford to go sick. 
 
 In December 1914 the battalion took part in an 
 abortive night-operation, in which it suffered 
 heavily, sowing No Man's Land with its dead. 
 Something great might have come of it had all 
 gone well on every hand, but the ''best laid schemes 
 of mice and men gang aft agley." The attack was 
 well conceived from the attackers' point of view, 
 but as became usual in later stages of the war, our 
 executive imagination stopped short of the enemy's 
 designs. The German lines were reached, the 
 Germans met us adequately, parties were lost in 
 the dark, parties perished, parties were left be- 
 hind, and in the end the survivors on both sides 
 were back in their wet holes, conscious of the green 
 bundles, which once were men, lying unrecovered 
 in the dangerous waste between the lines. 
 
 The first Christmas came, and with it the un- 
 official armistice, when British and Germans met 
 and interchanged courtesies where but lately they 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 145 
 
 had fought, and our Tommies exchanged souvenirs 
 with Fritz, and we buried our dead and ate Christ- 
 mas pudding and wondered of home. At that time 
 there was a rumour as if the armies of both sides 
 might ultimately refuse to fight, and the politi- 
 cians be left to settle the war as best they might 
 without any more shedding of innocent blood. 
 This possibility never found much favour, how- 
 ever, in authoritative circles, and soon orders were 
 sent out to discourage fraternisation and to encour- 
 age a greater spirit of hate. A year later a Stafif 
 officer took up his unwonted abode in the trenches 
 on Christmas Eve to see to it that the instructions 
 against making friends with the enemy were car- 
 ried out. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was probably little chance 
 of such an ideal consummation of the war as a 
 peace by mutual consent of rank and file, though 
 it was thought the war might be over by Easter 
 1915, or at the latest by Michaelmas; there was, 
 as we all know now, a long and bitter stupid reckon- 
 ing to make on both sides before the game was to be 
 thrown up. 
 
 The battalion went into all the bloody adven- 
 tures of 191 5 — Neuve Chapelle and Festubert and 
 Loos and Hohenzollern Redoubt — and was rein- 
 forced repeatedly from the large and gallant body 
 of Kitchener's men. Instead of being a time of 
 ending and of winning, it was a time of making 
 and consolidating. The British Army was being 
 hammered into shape. The new discipline, the 
 only discipline fitting for the new stress of war, 
 was being introduced. That Prussianism which 
 
146 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 had obtained currency in the continental govern- 
 ments — that "the army is founded on the death- 
 penalty; remove the death-penalty and the fabric 
 of the army falls to pieces" — was gaining practical 
 hold of the mind of the new army builders. The 
 year 191 5 saw probably the greatest number of 
 cases of capital punishment in the war. For of- 
 fences which seem slight enough to the civilian in- 
 telligence, and indeed to the intelligence of the 
 civilians in khaki, many were shot, and appalled 
 regiments heard so often the terrifying volley at 
 dawn and knew that another weaker brother had 
 paid the price of efficiency. A man shot does not 
 help to fight the foe ; could he not have been sent 
 to the base to do clerical work or into a labour bat- 
 talion to mend the roads? Would he not at least 
 have helped a little in these capacities, though by 
 temperament he be no use as a fighting man? 
 The army answer would be: He had to be shot 
 as an example. If we let him go, others would 
 play the coward and so save their skins. But if 
 we shoot him, every man knows what is likely to be 
 his fate if he fails at his post. He knows also that 
 the army has absolute power over him, and that it 
 is not the least use rebelling or mutinying or en- 
 deavouring in any way to oppose his puny strength 
 to its complete power. 
 
 It is greatly to the credit of our regiment that 
 in the whole of the war it only lost one man who 
 was sentenced to death by court-martial and shot. 
 Nevertheless, I suppose the fate of that one man 
 showed to what an extent it has been sought to 
 found the discipline of the army upon fear. Pri- 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 147 
 
 vate X was shot for cowardice. It was after the 
 battle of Neuve Chapelle, and the sentence was 
 procured largely upon the evidence of a certain 
 dour sergeant-major, who himself was killed not 
 long afterwards by a German shell. The spirit of 
 the army finds its most practical expression in the 
 non-commissioned man. He has no imagination, 
 or if he had it when joining the army, he gener- 
 ally puts it away and becomes a subordinate limb 
 of the body-politic of the army. The brain of 
 the army works through him. The men hated 
 Sergeant-Major Y for his doing to death of the 
 private in his company. The company was morti- 
 fied beyond words at the imputation of cowardice 
 to any one in its ranks, and felt that they in a way 
 were disgraced by the sentence. They therefore 
 swore a sort of oath of comradeship to redeem their 
 name at the next battle. They would fight on, no 
 matter at what cost, and never surrender them- 
 selves, and take no prisoners. Every man was to 
 win a virtual V.C. And they did make an ex- 
 traordinary fighting display some weeks after- 
 wards at Festubert — one-half of the company died 
 fighting, earning for itself the title of the "Im- 
 mortal Eighty." The papers at home resounded 
 with their praise, and several poets of the bat- 
 talion have written verses concerning the occasion. 
 The battalion has had many poets, good, bad, and 
 indifferent. Extraordinary how fighting and 
 rhyming go together. Most of the poets were 
 uneducated, and, like Byron, did not care for 
 grammar at a push, but they were in nowise de- 
 terred. 
 
148 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 Bayonets lunge — and gory red return on guard again, 
 
 As many a coward, tyrant Hun falls numbered with the slain. 
 
 For all that stern and rugged field was drenched with blood 
 
 that day 
 By men who'd rather bleed and die than go the coward's way, 
 
 writes one. 
 
 They close again, a smile is on each brow 
 
 Ye Gods! is not this valour sans compeer? 
 
 Death, Glory, Life clasp hands together, now 
 
 'Tis over, and they are gone, and foemen murmur. How? 
 
 writes another. 
 
 I was much interested in the stories of the shoot- 
 ing of Private X and the subsequent heroism of 
 the immortal eighty. Every man who belonged 
 to the time had something to tell of his impressions 
 — all sentimentalised the poor private soldier and 
 made a hero of him, and equally sentimentalised 
 the sergeant-major, making of him the villain of 
 the melodrama. Here is my impression taken 
 from the men. 
 
 There is a tavern in Laventi where a bygone 
 Derby winner is supposed to have been born, and 
 an old race-horse called Calais was still to be seen 
 when our men were there in 191 5. It had had its 
 day and won its corn. Over the bar where the 
 beer and vin rouge are served was a life-size pat- 
 tern of a horse worked in the wall in coloured 
 bricks. In this tavern there would break out char- 
 acteristic rags upon occasion, when the officers 
 quartered upstairs would begin aiming butter at 
 one another, pouring champagne down one an- 
 other's necks, breaking the furniture, and so rous- 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 149 
 
 ing the Belgian women who slept in the cellars 
 below. It was at this tavern that the immortal 
 eighty used to meet, and here they vowed never to 
 take any prisoners or to surrender, no matter to 
 what extremity they might be reduced in battle. 
 The misanthropic sergeant-major had his meals at 
 this tavern, and after the recent court-martial and 
 subsequent execution of Private X at dawn, he had 
 become a shunned man. He was felt to be doomed, 
 and it was as if the brand of Cain had come out 
 on his brow, and he too seemed to know in some 
 sort of way that a German shell was waiting for 
 him. He himself belonged to the same company 
 as the Immortals, but he was one of the sort who 
 never miss an opportunity of doing you harm, of 
 working against you and getting you punished. 
 He sat apart, and Private A, sitting among the Im- 
 mortals, rather a character in his way, would 
 glance at him in the midst of the potations and 
 whisper impressively to his comrades the lines of 
 Burns: 
 
 Man's inhumanity to man 
 
 Makes countless thousands mourn. 
 
 So it was at Festubert. Quite early in the fray 
 Sergeant-Major Y got a shell to himself, and he 
 lay on the battle-field in mortal agony, and no one 
 would give him a drink of water, though he kept 
 asking for it. Some even spat on him as they 
 marched past. The immortal eighty, to whose com- 
 pany, as I have said, both X and Y belonged, went 
 by — went, indeed, too far and were surrounded, 
 fought to the very last man, and their bodies and 
 
I50 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 those of their foes, pinned by their bayonets, lay 
 in heaps together in No Man's Land. The army 
 retired, and no one was able to bring the bodies in 
 and bury them. But night-parties went out months 
 later to search among the dead for valuable papers 
 and maps which had been in possession of one or 
 other of the sergeants, and they found sodden 
 masses of decay and skeletons full of flies, which, 
 when the corpses were disturbed, came flustering 
 out in clouds, even in the darkness of night. 
 
 "O would that I had seen them lying there!" 
 
 wrote Henderson Bland in the Graphic. 
 
 A dauntless few amid the German dead 
 With twisted bayonets and broken rifles spread, 
 Let some one mark the place whereat they fell, 
 And hedge it round, for in the after-time 
 Their fame will draw the many who would dwell 
 Upon those deeds that made an hour sublime. 
 I hear them shouting there, "Surrender! Never! 
 Take the last cartridge here — Scotland for ever!" 
 
 Y's body was, I believe, found, and buried with 
 due ceremony, and a "decent" cross, with name 
 and rank printed thereon, was raised above it. It 
 is in one of those military cemeteries behind the 
 lines where each dead man abides in his rectangle 
 and even ranks are maintained. But the eighty 
 are become "lonely soldiers," with blank crosses, 
 because nobody knows them, or can tell one from 
 another, friend from foe. They are one in death, 
 as they were in life. Their heroism was a matter 
 of esprit de corps, and Y, had he lived, would prob- 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 151 
 
 ably have blamed them for going too far, for he 
 was a believer in a discipline to which esprit de 
 corps should always be subservient. A fine esprit 
 de corps and a discipline founded on fear will, how- 
 ever, often clash. It was so in the attitude of the 
 men toward the shooting of Private X. 
 
 The court-martial and this execution, which 
 seemed to bring the curse on Sergeant-Major Y, 
 and made him finally hated, was occasioned by a 
 circumstance in the battle of Neuve Chapelle. It 
 should be explained that in those days shell-shock 
 was not a recognised type of casualty. The pre- 
 sumption is that X was suffering from it; a shell 
 had burst near him and left his brain in a dazed 
 condition. For he was one of the bravest boys in 
 his company, and at the same time one of the most 
 eager. He was lost sight of in the battle, did not 
 turn up when the men were rearranged in their 
 ranks and marched away, but straggled in later, 
 and was unable to give an account of himself. 
 Sergeant-Major Y accused him of cowardice in the 
 face of the enemy and intention to desert, and had 
 him placed under arrest at once. Y, through army 
 training, had become the sort of man who pre- 
 sented every fault in the worst possible light, and 
 he was capable of pursuing a case with persistent 
 malevolence. During the time of his authority 
 he got many men greater punishment than would 
 normally have been thought due, or than could 
 have been expected, blackening and accusing men 
 when brought before their officers. The case 
 against X was the crown of this course of action. 
 
152 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 It had often procured extra pain, fatigue, and sick- 
 ness for men in his company, but in this case it ob- 
 tained for him a young man's death. 
 
 In the light in which Sergeant-Major Y con- 
 strued X's conduct, and the absence of explanation 
 on the part of X, the colonel saw the matter in a 
 very serious light, and decided it was not one he 
 could himself settle suitably, and the case was set 
 down for district court-martial. Afterwards, 
 when the matter had been discussed considerably 
 in the battalion, opinion changed somewhat in X's 
 favour, and Y, on whose evidence the boy's life 
 depended, was given the hint to soften things down 
 at the trial. Y, however, was not a relenting type, 
 and insisted on his personal opinion that X had dis- 
 played cowardice, and that the discipline of his 
 company would go to bits if such behaviour were 
 allowed to pass without exemplary punishment. 
 The judges were men of another regiment; they 
 took the sergeant-major's word as against Private 
 X's obscurely-written, verbose defence. X was 
 found guilty, and sentenced to be shot. He was 
 the only man before or since who in this crack 
 regiment in this war has suflfered the extreme 
 penalty. 
 
 What the regiment has done in the war cannot 
 easily be set down in words. It has gone into the 
 midst of terrible slaughter many times. In re- 
 cruits it has consumed six times its original number. 
 When the roads have been full of a disorganised 
 rabble they, with a few kindred regiments, have 
 alone been found facing the other way, and going 
 to avenge dishonour and defeat. The regiment 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 153 
 
 was proud of itself. How it stomached the hu- 
 miliation of having one of its members shot may 
 be imagined. 
 
 From the moment the sentence was known a 
 new note prevailed in the battalion. The men 
 were not in the trenches, but in the shine and 
 sparkle of a resting-time behind the lines. Stern- 
 ness increased. N.C.O.'s grew angrier and 
 harsher. The artificial bawls of the parade- 
 ground were more intolerable than ever. Drill, 
 which should be a pleasant thing, was terrible and 
 straight and merciless, as if each man were being 
 tried for his life. Nothing flattering was once 
 said to a platoon or company; but instead, frowning 
 displeasure reigned. 
 
 X was seen by the chaplain, who found him quite 
 cast down because of the disgrace, but angry be- 
 cause it would come to his father and mother also 
 that he had been shot for cowardice. The com- 
 passionate minister thought to fortify him to meet 
 death, but that matter did not seem to trouble the 
 prisoner in the least. They knelt down and prayed 
 a little together in the quiet of the informal prison. 
 "Don't be too miserable about it," said the padre. 
 "They were hard on you. Though you've been 
 condemned, it doesn't necessarily mean that you 
 deserve to die. You've been made an example of 
 for the good of the army as a whole. We've got 
 to beat the Huns ; it's a terrible ordeal, we all know, 
 but every one must be made to feel that it's impos- 
 sible to escape death by running away." 
 
 There was a pause; the minister asked if he had 
 any doubts in his mind about salvation. 
 
154 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 "You don't expect me to forgive my enemies?" 
 asked the boy. 
 
 "Not if they are Prussians," said the chaplain 
 staunchly. 
 
 "Well, I don't forgive Sergeant-Major Y," said 
 he. "And what's more, he v^on't be long following 
 me. My case isn't settled yet." 
 
 "Ah, I'm afraid there's no appeal, my poor lad," 
 said the comforting parson, "unless you mean on 
 the other side, where I've no doubt if there's any- 
 thing wrong it'll all be tried over again." 
 
 Sergeant-Major Y, however, was harsher than 
 ever. But there was a marked coldness toward 
 him, even among those of his own rank. The time 
 of execution was fixed for Friday at dawn, the 
 whole battalion to be on parade to witness the same. 
 
 Reveille was an hour earlier than usual, and the 
 men dressed in the dark. They were to be in full 
 fighting order, with their packs on their backs. 
 Private X and his guards dressed also, and he alone 
 was in "walking-out attire." He had spent a good 
 night, and was calm, even cheerful. During the 
 preliminaries of ranging the battalion around three 
 sides of a square and fixing places for CO. and ad- 
 jutant and other officers, X was comparatively free, 
 and he talked with several of his old companions, 
 and said "Good-bye," very happily and calmly. 
 
 Volunteers had, I believe, been asked for, out of 
 the battalion, to shoot him, or the idea of volunteers 
 had been mooted. For of course if X had really 
 disgraced the regiment it would have been easy to 
 find volunteers. But volunteers could not be ob- 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 155 
 
 tained in this case, and so the battalion snipers were 
 ordered up to make a firing-party. 
 
 "Don't miss! Fire right through my heart," 
 said X to them. Then he asked for a cigarette, 
 lit it, and strolled easily and politely across the 
 green to the tree against which he would be shot. 
 He did not wish to have his eyes bandaged, but in 
 that he was overruled. The battalion, with arms 
 at the slope, stood to attention, the snipers stood and 
 loaded. The victim, with the white bandage over 
 his eyes and feet and hands tied, stood against the 
 tree. Pale dawn light of mist crept over the scene 
 of punishment, encroaching on horizons and mak- 
 ing the scene of punishment the world itself for a 
 moment. 
 
 The military police took charge of the whole 
 ceremony, and then in the tensity a perfectly- 
 dressed sad officer read the sentence, and then up 
 went the rifles to firing position. "Good heavens, 
 they are going to shoot him!" The idea dawns on 
 those of dull imagination. There is scarcely a dry 
 eye in the battalion. Captain C, who is X's com- 
 pany commander, looks to be in a terrible state of 
 nerves. Popular Jimmy, the R.S.M., is melan- 
 choly beyond words. Vigilant police in the back- 
 ground are keeping strangers away from the scene. 
 Then zupp, zypp, pp, crash, the ten shots are fired 
 all at once, and X falls dead. 
 
 Captain C on his horse wheels about and sud- 
 denly takes charge of the whole battalion. "Or- 
 der arms, unfix bayonets, form fours left, quick 
 march!" And the men with their officers march 
 
156 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 out on a long route-march, leaving the limp fallen 
 body behind at the foot of the tree. 
 
 And not a man has mutinied. Such is the force 
 of the discipline. The mutiny has only been in 
 the heart. 
 
 Y, however, remains a marked man. And he 
 sits alone in the tavern of the horse. A special 
 shell is waiting for him, stacked for the time being 
 in a German ammunition dump, but coming into 
 action in the early part of the battle of Festubert. 
 His company, uncowed by discipline, gain — 
 "through death immortal fame." 
 
 It is a matter of esprit de corps. 
 
 After Festubert a bombing company was 
 formed, and this contained all the worst characters 
 in the battalion, the intractable spirits. It was in 
 charge of a dare-devil young officer, and he loved 
 these bad characters and proved them one and all 
 to be heroes. If any sergeant-major could not 
 manage any one in his company, he had to send 
 him along to the "Suicide Club," where he was at 
 once welcomed. And the bombing company prac- 
 tised hard with fearful and wonderful bombs, 
 which caused as much terror to friends as to 
 foes. 
 
 The regiment then marched to Loos, where every 
 one blundered but the soldier did as he was told. 
 On the road the battalion spent a whole day march- 
 ing in a circle, and one soldier was heard to ex- 
 claim in undying phraseology: "I don't mind 
 damn well fighting and I don't mind damn well 
 marching, but this being damned about all the damn 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 157 
 
 time's what damns me." And we arrived late, 
 late, at Loos, when for twenty-four hours the Ger- 
 mans could have broken the line if they'd only 
 known there was nothing in front of them. The 
 kiltie lads lay asphyxiated in gas, the supporting 
 division was in indescribable rout and confusion, 
 and then at last a string of our splendid Spartan 
 battalions was let loose at the foe, and swept into 
 action with a verve and a style that are never to be 
 forgotten. 
 
 After Loos the bombers had their great show, 
 when between dawn and breakfast-time something 
 like 18,000 bombs were flung upon the Germans 
 in the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and the bad boys 
 who formed the bombing company were all killed 
 or wounded, and the teaching of bombing was pro- 
 ceeding with novices in the trenches whilst the 
 actual fight was going on. Never did any one see 
 so many dead at any time in the whole war as in 
 the foreground of this terrible redoubt. The 
 shadows of the crowds of the dead invaded men's 
 consciousness, and left in not a few a lasting sadness 
 and melancholy which even victory could not cure. 
 
 Death, moreover, had eaten deep into the bat- 
 talion by now, and had taken from each man 
 friends, acquaintances, men he admired, men he dis- 
 liked. The colours of the regiment were kept un- 
 frayed, unsoiled in London, but the human colours, 
 the body and soul of the regiment, were torn and 
 ragged, crimson, bloodstained, scorched with the 
 fire of battle, bleached by the death-dealing odours. 
 
 In the winter of 191 5 the battalion was sent to 
 Calais and to its frosty shores and brutal pleasures 
 
158 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 for a rest — one of the hardest times of all its suffer- 
 ings, when the men lived in open tents on a snow- 
 swept, icy shore. And then the battalion went to 
 guard the ruins and the battle-lines of Ypres. Be- 
 cause it had defended Ypres in October 1914 upon 
 first coming out and had had such a tragic and 
 heroic history there, it saw the ruins with some 
 emotion. In course of time the battalion even be- 
 gan to associate itself specially with the little town, 
 as if it alone were the protector of it. In how many 
 other regiments has not a similar sentiment pre- 
 vailed! Ypres in its ruins came to be regarded as 
 a sort of spiritual treasure of the British Army. 
 "Oh, I think I'd shoot myself if Ypres were taken," 
 said a blaspheming old soldier to me, the sort of 
 man you'd say would do nothing for an ideal. 
 "Ypres was the most beautiful little town you 
 could ever wish to see at the end of a day's march," 
 said another. Again our poets consecrated many 
 thoughts and rhymes to Ypres. 
 
 From out the ruins I think I hear 
 The sleeping dead give one great cheer, 
 
 wrote our wonderful orderly of the CO. I think 
 he wrote a poem on every place and every fight 
 in the war. 
 
 In the grim salient of Ypres we shed much 
 blood; wherever the battalion went it bled plenti- 
 fully, and must have wasted away but for the new 
 blood continually coming in. To many the time 
 at Ypres was the most terrible in the war, but per- 
 haps to all the most poetical. It was, neverthe- 
 less, despite the poetry, a marvellous relief when, 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 159 
 
 late in the summer of 191 6, the order came to 
 march south, and our fighting-men left the grey 
 zone of ruin and destruction and plunged into the 
 peace and verdure of the France which was out of 
 range of the shells. The unsullied greenery was 
 sanctuary to the eyes. Virtues were discovered in 
 the quiet French provincial folk that the men were 
 confident did not exist in any Belgians. It was a 
 long route-march, and at the end of it the concen- 
 trated horrors of the prolonged battle of the 
 Somme. But the men did not look far ahead ; they 
 were content to live in the present when the pres- 
 ent was good. The battalion was even then a 
 strange mixture of men who had just come into 
 the war, and men who had been more or less in all 
 of it up till then. It marched in the sunshine and 
 fresh air and followed the gay pipers, and no one 
 more was killed for a whole month. For a while 
 its life and its strength were stable, though each 
 man knew, as a matter that had become usual, that 
 here and there, in this rank and in that, men were 
 invisibly marked for destruction later on, many 
 were certain to disappear even within the very next 
 month when they fronted the guns once more. 
 What a life! Happy they who have no imagina- 
 tion and no ever-articulating growth of thought! 
 They say the bad characters had generally a bad 
 time in the war. But I imagine those who could 
 think most suffered most, and the bad boys were 
 generally pretty thoughtless. We had about that 
 time one of the worst and bravest, the despair of 
 officers and N.C.O.'s, who nevertheless got his 
 worst offences and punishments forgiven him for 
 
i6o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 his deeds of daring in time of action. During this 
 progress from Ypres to the Somme he refused to 
 march, and burnt his army boots. As a punish- 
 ment the adjutant had him made a pair of sandals. 
 He had to wear his gas-mask, and he was tied to a 
 limber and dragged along. So he went most of 
 the way to the Somme with these absurd goggles 
 on his face and his bare feet in sandals. It did 
 not make the least impression on his character, I 
 am told. He was so wild the army had to get rid 
 of him at last. It could not tame him, and, tied to 
 the tail-end of a limber, he was a symbol of the 
 failure of old-fashioned discipline. 
 
 In the current sinister slang of the army, if the 
 mortality was high at Ypres, the Somme, never- 
 theless, was not a health-resort. The autumn bat- 
 tles which gave us Grandecourt, Les Boeufs, and 
 the rest were possibly the easier part of the ordeal. 
 It was the winter in the bad Somme line of which 
 the most terrible tales are told. How men stood 
 by one another and endured the mud, the frost, the 
 incessant bombardment makes us wonder at human 
 endurance, will always make men wonder. Curi- 
 ous that in London, in Britain as a whole, the suf- 
 fering should have been taken so much for granted, 
 the heroic and splendid side always spoken of, the 
 other denied, the cheerfulness of the men always 
 affirmed as a sort of proof that conditions after all 
 were not intolerable. Those soldiers, however, 
 who went through the Somme campaign saw even 
 in that enough, and would never desire of them- 
 selves to march another step or fire another shot. 
 It was one vast chamber of gloom and horror. 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION i6i 
 
 As a holiday in '17 when the Germans had ex- 
 ecuted their retreat to the Hindenburg Line the men 
 were taken from the Somme trenches and given the 
 task of building the Peronne railway. It was nav- 
 vies' work, but they took to it as if it were a task 
 of the heart's dearest choice, so greatly was it bet- 
 ter than the mud and the frost and the shells of the 
 line. After the railway they were sent to build 
 an aerodrome, and only when that was accom- 
 plished were they given a genuine rest, something 
 of a real change and a relief. 
 
 On April 12, with pipers playing, the battalion 
 marched from Clery to Peronne and from Peronne 
 some five miles farther east, to what had once been 
 the pleasant town of Cartigny, now the wilderness 
 the Germans had left it when retreating to the 
 Hindenburg Line. All that was left of what had 
 once been a fair town was a mass of ruins, and 
 when the battalion arrived in the snow and pitched 
 its tents on the mud, the prospect was not cheer- 
 ful. But it proved to be the prelude to a delight- 
 ful holiday and a most unexpected development 
 from the drudgery of the war. 
 
 The King's uniform covers a multitude of vir- 
 tues and gifts, and there lurked in our battalion 
 an unsuspected talent, which was presently to mani- 
 fest itself in a surprising way, transforming the 
 misery of Cartigny as by a fairy wand into the love- 
 liness in which we left it. The hidden hand, I be- 
 lieve, was Armstrong's, for the joy of his life had 
 been gardening, especially artificial gardening. 
 In that mysterious state of life to which it had 
 pleased God to call Armstrong, he was an arti- 
 
i62 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS VI 
 
 ficial gardener on the estates of Lord B in Scot- 
 land, and his handiwork had upon occasion fig- 
 ured in photographic efifect on the glazed surfaces 
 of Country Life. He was the genius of Cartigny, 
 and in his quiet, sweet way wrought for beauty — 
 one of the strongest men in the battalion, an ex- 
 pert wrestler, but also one of the most gentle, one 
 of the few men in our careless, violent crowd who 
 did not use bad language. Of course he found 
 kindred spirits, and the other gardeners of the bat- 
 talion shone out through their camouflage of khaki. 
 "Gardeners camouflaged as soldiers," I hear the 
 hard voice of the R.S.M. a-saying. But before 
 long every man had become a gardener, and was 
 co-operating to work the miracle amid the ruins. 
 And since they worked in mid-April, a month be- 
 yond the solstice, they had one greater than all co- 
 operating with them, the great god of gardens 
 breathing radiant life and energy over their bended 
 backs. 
 
 The railway to Peronne is not yet absolutely per- 
 fect, and what is called "railway-fatigue" will en- 
 dure all the while the battalion is at Cartigny. 
 The men will be employed in shifts, and there will 
 be no drill or musketry or practice bombing — only 
 a roll-call in the morning and the leisure time in 
 the encampment. A bright idea comes to birth 
 in the battalion — to make gardens. 
 
 All the men were on wood-fatigue to make 
 bonfires, so as to get dry after the soaking march, 
 and also, if possible, to dry up the mud on which 
 our seventy-seven tents were pegged. There is 
 not a Frenchman on the scene, not a sentry or a 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 163 
 
 prohibited area, but without let or hindrance 
 the ruins are at the disposal of the soldiers. It 
 is not difficult to find wood. There is wood for 
 the preliminary and trivial matter of fires to get 
 dry, but there is also wood to floor every tent, 
 wood that can be used for all manner of building 
 purposes, and brick also, and stone and iron. 
 ^'The men will have to stir and make this place 
 generally habitable," an officer is overheard to 
 say to the sergeant-major; ''if they can build a 
 railway they can also build houses. What we re- 
 quire is an orderly room, headquarters, officers' 
 messes, a fitting habitation for you, my dear ser- 
 geant-major. . . ." 
 
 The news soon went along the lines of the tents, 
 where the men, dry and warm, lay on the flooring 
 which they had just put down, and a hum of joyful 
 anticipation grew on it. They would not need to 
 be driven toward that kind of work. It was just 
 what every one instinctively craved — to make, to 
 build, to create again, the reaction from the spirit 
 of destruction. 
 
 Cartigny is on the river Cologne, which flows 
 into the Somme at Peronne. The road runs paral- 
 lel with the river, and the Germans have cut the 
 river-bank extensively in order to produce a perma- 
 nent flood. In this, however, they have proved 
 unsuccessful, for the road still holds, and it is of 
 the ruins at the entrv to Cartigny that the Orderly 
 Room and Right Half Mess are destined to be 
 made. 
 
 In three days the Orderly Room, company and 
 battalion messes, sergeants' mess, and cook-houses 
 
i64 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 are all complete, and a really fine piece of work 
 has been begun on a house of brick, with every 
 convenience, for the CO. and the adjutant. The 
 Orderly Room, roofed with corrugated iron 
 brought in a lorry from Clery, stands on one side 
 of the Peronne road. On the other is rising 
 ground, which slopes sharply upward to where 
 Headquarters Mess is being built. An army of 
 bright boys from G Company is about to begin cut- 
 ting steps in the bank, so that it may be easier for 
 officers going up and down between Headquarters 
 and the Orderly Room to do so, when a happy 
 thought comes to some one: Why not bring a 
 stairway from one of the ruined houses and fit it 
 in? A large staircase is soon found, and removed 
 intact from the house to which it belonged — the 
 absence of two walls and roof had left the staircase 
 nakedly exposed to view, and it was removed with 
 very little difficulty. Fitting it into the clifY is 
 more difficult. The earth has not only to be cut, 
 but in places where it falls away too abruptly 
 earth has to be supplied. At length the work is 
 accomplished, and there is a polite wooden way 
 from the Orderly Room up to the small tableland 
 where Headquarters is rising out of the wreck of 
 a farm-house. 
 
 There is a space of a few yards between the top 
 of the staircase and H.Q., and, being continually 
 trodden over, the grass begins to look shabby and 
 wear through to the brown earth. This begets the 
 second idea of Cartigny. The sun is now shining 
 and the weather set fair. Why not a pathway of 
 carefully arranged white bricks? That is done, 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 165 
 
 and then Armstrong devises a few rockeries along 
 the borders, "so that the place might not seem so 
 bare." And he begins to transplant from the gar- 
 dens of the abandoned and ruined villas. He finds 
 narcissus, pheasant-eyed narcissus, and tiger lilies. 
 He never calls the latter tiger lilies, but always 
 tigrum lilium — by that you may know he is a gar- 
 dener — and when he wants to tell you how and 
 what he planted and arranged, he keeps making 
 tiny circles in faint pencil on the paper before you. 
 He finds auriculas and pansies and violas, trans- 
 plants even a rose. 
 
 The officers, in all their perfection of glimmer- 
 ing brown boots, trip along the white bricks and 
 up and down the wooden way, and as they see the 
 formal garden grow it strikes them as fine. "By 
 Jove, that's fine," says one; "could we not start the 
 men making gardens all along their lines and round 
 the messes?" The CO. and the adjutant cast ad- 
 miring glances at the work going on, and the 
 former decides to offer prizes for the best gardens 
 the various companies can produce, and he names 
 a judging day far away in the loveliness of May. 
 There ensues one of the most delightful springs of 
 recent years, with unbroken sunshine and warm 
 air, and Cartigny hums with work and happiness. 
 
 The plan of the encampment ought to be re- 
 alised. There runs the pleasant little river, where 
 every day the men bathe and where the pensive 
 anglers sit, some with drawn threads from kit-bags 
 and bent pins, others, such as the famous character 
 
 Paddy K , with veritable line and hook baited 
 
 with worms for the timid little dace below, who 
 
i66 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 probably did not realise there was a war on till 
 they saw the many khaki reflections in the water. 
 Parallel with the little river runs the road going 
 into the flattened town. There stands the Orderly 
 Room. Opposite it runs the wooden stairway up 
 the cliff to Headquarters Mess. Beyond the mess 
 is the charming residence of CO. and adjutant; 
 at the back are cook-houses. These buildings are 
 on the right of the white brick road ; on the left are 
 the pavilions of the various officers, each with its 
 garden, and some way beyond them is Captain 
 
 C 's wonderful summer-house, brought intact 
 
 from some once beautiful French garden. The 
 young Guards' officers sitting about in deck-chairs 
 give the idea that one is at some beautiful resort in 
 the South. And what is pleasant luxury to them 
 is the joy of life for the men. 
 
 Each company has marked out the pattern of 
 its formal garden, each platoon has its special care. 
 A platoon of A Company has enclosed a tent in a 
 heart; a border of boxwood marks out the pattern 
 of the heart — the plan is that the crimson of many 
 blossoms shall blend to give a suggestion of passion 
 and loyalty and suffering. Another platoon en- 
 deavours to embody in floral contrast the blended 
 patterns of the regimental crest — the cap-star. 
 Armstrong produces wonderful thistles, the green 
 part of which he obtains by just cutting the pattern 
 in his turf, and the blue heads by thickly sown 
 lobelia. One thistle is on each side of his gentle 
 rose. F Company makes an elaborate and ambi- 
 tious figure, an imitation of the floral clock that is 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 167 
 
 to be seen in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh. 
 Each man has found or improvised trowel and 
 basket, shovel or hoe. The bayonet is forever in 
 use, cutting lumps of chalk to right sizes, making 
 holes in the earth, cutting and slicing wood. Pet- 
 rol-tins with holes in the bottom serve as watering- 
 cans. How eager the men are seeking the plants 
 and then in watering and tending them. Cheerful 
 water-fatigue parties are to be seen every evening 
 going to and from the river. 
 
 Primroses and daffodils and narcissi are soon 
 blossoming in plenty. Lilies followed, arums and 
 Solomon's-seal, and then forget-me-nots, pansies 
 and violas. At the same time the perfecting of the 
 designs of stones and glass, bricks and chalk, goes 
 on. Armstrong's rockeries become the wonder not 
 only of the battalion but of our many visitors and 
 guests in this time of qualified rest. The work 
 also on the railway still goes on; the garden is only 
 the expression of a leisure which might otherwise 
 have been spent in card-playing and noisy gregari- 
 ousness. Each man on the railway knows he has 
 something like a home to return to — those won- 
 derful tents, some of these, too, camouflaged with 
 hand-painted designs, and all of them named — 
 "Auld Reekie," "The Hermit's Rest," "The Home 
 from Home," "The Wigwam," "The Hotel Cecil," 
 "Th' Auld House," and so forth, the names being 
 sharply printed in white chalk outside. So on the 
 ruins of Cartigny a new Cartigny is growing, the 
 collective expression of soldiers' love of home, but, 
 alas, the day of judgment is soon at hand when the 
 
i68 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 prizes will be given, and then, before the June sun 
 shall look on the horizon, we must off to the wars 
 again. 
 
 "The inexperienced ones do not know which 
 flowers to cut and which they ought to leave, ye 
 see," says Armstrong, "and they haven't chosen all 
 their flowers to bloom on the right day. But those 
 who know are more likely to be successful for that 
 reason." His thistles in any case are perfect on 
 the judging day, but indeed all his works are so 
 much apart in their skill and success that he is 
 ruled out of the competition and has a prize to 
 himself. Those who made the floral clock get first 
 prize, and our right flank company with its heart 
 comes second. The CO. is sole judge and arbiter, 
 and he says that he is delighted beyond words at 
 what the men have done, and he thanks them. 
 
 What else happened in Cartigny? Why, in- 
 numerable little things. Another unit began 
 building and fitting up a hospital in the neighbour- 
 hood. And, oh scandal! were not some of the new 
 collapsible spring beds found in the tents of our 
 intrepid gardeners? Did not the general make 
 some very scathing remarks about Scotsmen? Be 
 that as it may, our men in their digging came across 
 a good deal of treasure-trove, things which the 
 careful French had buried before fleeing in 1914, 
 and they nearly always respected these finds and 
 closed the earth over them again. That was not 
 the case when a party of explorers came upon a 
 cellar of champagne. 
 
 There was one night when the quartermaster was 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 169 
 
 showing lantern-slides of battalion history, and 
 Harry, one of the smartest fellows, came up from 
 the champagne cellar and staggered past the lan- 
 tern screen in front of the officers. The picture 
 being thrown was one of a certain captain, who had 
 been named the sand-bag king because of his ter- 
 rible passion for sand-bagging in the trenches. 
 Harry pointed to the figure, and ejaculated in a 
 comic happy voice, "Three . . . million . . . 
 sandbags," and the whole audience roared with 
 laughter. 
 
 "Shut up, that man!" said a captain in front. 
 
 And he wandered down to a place among the 
 men looking on. 
 
 No officer shared in that champagne. The men 
 kept it for themselves with pardonable secrecv. I 
 told the story of this wonderful find to an officer a 
 year afterwards. "Dear me," said he, "how ex- 
 traordinary! I don't think any of us had any no- 
 tion that the men had found champagne in the 
 course of their digging." 
 
 They had, though. But that was their secret. 
 
 The serene holiday at Cartigny ended with a 
 Sports Competition, for the greatest encourage- 
 ment was always given to all men to run and to 
 jump and to surmount obstacles, to box, to wrestle, 
 to play football, and the rest. There were races 
 for the men and races for officers also, and then 
 officers versus sergeants, and other amusing items. 
 But the chief events were an open competition in 
 wrestling and walking, and Armstrong undertook 
 to throw any man of any regiment inside of ten 
 
170 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vi 
 
 minutes, and our pet walker out-walked everybody 
 else. 
 
 "Is there a war on?" one soldier asks of another 
 at such festivals. 
 
 "Too true there is," answers his companion with 
 some grimness. 
 
 Soon the battalion returned to Ypres and fought 
 at Pilkelm Ridge, at Boesinghe, and other starting- 
 points and halting-points of fatal memory, till late 
 autumn, when it marched away to take large share 
 in the winning of the Byng Boys' victory at Bour- 
 lon Wood and to stop the rot of other units in 
 which indiscipline had at last set in in the waste 
 time before Cambrai. 
 
 There was a point when it was "touch and go" 
 with British discipline, when in fact it had worn 
 very thin. Then it was that in our regiment and in 
 the brother regiments our Spartan training told. 
 November Thirtieth, December the First, that bit- 
 ter St. Andrew's-tide of 191 7 will always be re- 
 membered by the Guards. It was then they 
 stopped the rot at Gouzeaucourt. After the ordeal 
 of the Bourlon Battle they were "out to rest." 
 "They were sleeping," as one story has it, "when a 
 messenger came to say that the Germans had broken 
 through. In less than an hour the whole division 
 was up again and marching forth through Metz 
 and Gouzeaucourt. One of the strangest sights of 
 the war was the mob of panic-stricken infantry on 
 one side of the road and the stubborn and tenacious 
 Guards marching past in the opposite direction to 
 repair the breach. 
 
VI SPIRIT OF THE BATTALION 171 
 
 Said an A.P.M. as they marched along, 
 "Get out of the road, you funking throng; 
 They'll put to rights what you've done wrong 
 — The Guards Division!" 
 
 {And they did.) 
 
 There was never the slightest wavering among 
 our boys — indeed they constituted some of the 
 worst and most relentless enemies of the German 
 Army in the great attempts at victory in the win- 
 ter of 1917-18 and in the spring and summer of 
 the year of victory. 
 
 In the great story of one battalion it may be 
 seen that the accumulation of battles and of suffer- 
 ings from month to month and year to year begets 
 a spiritual atmosphere. Each new man posted to 
 the battalion is posted to the historical and spiritual 
 inheritance of the battalion also. The regiment 
 has left its memorials in every place where it has 
 been. There are its crosses in every military acre 
 of God ; there are its dead, its lonely soldiers, buried 
 in No Man's Land; there are its lost dead too. 
 He comes to new faces, hard eyes, set lips, patient 
 jaws, faces that have seen, the faces of those who 
 have killed many and lust to kill more, the lined 
 faces of those who have been wounded and are still 
 in the fighting ranks. The battalion gives him its 
 style, its stamp and impression, and as he breathes 
 the regimental air he swears the regimental oaths. 
 The spirit, however, is born of many sufferings and 
 endless patience. 
 
VII 
 
 WAYS OF THINKING AND TALKING 
 
 There is a disparity between the splendour of 
 the army and the manners, life, and ways of the 
 individual soldiers. Because of the famous deeds 
 and sacrifice of men the name of the regiment is 
 whispered with awe. The march past in the 
 streets thrills the heart with national pride. But 
 look at a group of men off duty, with their caps 
 off, so that you can see the narrow foreheads lined 
 with suffering, the blank eyes, and the look of 
 dwarfed mind in each! Off parade the warriors 
 are not only quite human — they are our familiar 
 and much-criticised friends, the working-men. 
 
 The social tradition of the old little army, how- 
 ever, prevails over them, and they do not desire 
 to enter Unions and strike for higher wages, shorter 
 hours. They think in the army way, and talk in 
 the army way, and drink in the army way. The 
 traditional nicknames are taken and given by them 
 as of old, and the slang-expressions of the army, 
 mingled with all the current Americanisms, are 
 adopted. The volunteer or conscript whose name 
 is Smith becomes inevitably "Dusty Smith" and 
 then "good old Dusty"; the man whose name is 
 Clark becomes "Nobby Clark," and that also is 
 infallible ; Wood becomes "Timber Wood" ; White 
 becomes "Knocker White"; Wilson becomes "Tug 
 
 172 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 173 
 
 Wilson"; Fraser, "Spot Fraser"; Weston, "Kidney 
 Weston," and so on. And the bread is called 
 "rooty," and the jam is called "pozzy," and the fat 
 is "jippo," and the porridge is "burgu." The 
 guard-room is the "spud-hole," and gaol is "clink." 
 If you are looking smart you're looking "very 
 posh." To have nothing to do is to "look spare." 
 Redundant pieces of kit are "buckshee." 
 
 "You talk about doing a Jesus," says the cook. 
 
 "Whatever do you mean?" 
 
 "Why, with all you fresh lot o' fellers," says he; 
 and he goes on to explain that feeding the five 
 thousand is nothing to what he is being asked to do. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir. I beg leave to speak, 
 sir," says the culprit before his officer. 
 
 "Shut up," says the sergeant-major. 
 
 "What have you got to say?" asks the officer non- 
 chalantly. 
 
 "I was going to say, sir, as how this wasn't alto- 
 gether my fault." 
 
 "That will do," says the officer icily. "Two 
 drills!" * :f-. 
 
 "Fall in," says the sergeant-major. 
 
 If you quarrel with the prize-boxer of the bat- 
 talion he'll tell you that he'll "batter yer gums fer 
 ye." If you tell him playfully that you'll batter 
 his, he says solemnly, "No, you wouldn't, now. 
 Not in Christ's creation." 
 
 Jesus Christ is very commonly brought into talk 
 for emphasis. 
 
 "Jesus Christ couldn't escape punishment in this 
 battalion." 
 
 An officer's servant is speaking: "Mr. A 
 
174 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 asked me to bring the polish up on his boots with 
 heel-ball." 
 
 His crony replies: "If a man heel-balls boots 
 for an officer out here, he wants something to do, 
 I say. I wouldn't heel-ball a pair of boots for 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 "Oh, I don't suppose He'd ask you to," says the 
 servant glumly. 
 
 Malapropisms abounded in common talk. The 
 war was often referred to as a war of "irritation." 
 One man thinks less of another because "he's done 
 time for embellishment." When the influenza 
 plague was at its worst, a young stretcher-bearer 
 was put in charge of an isolation hospital into 
 which our cases were led. "Fancy putting a young 
 feller like that in charge," said one to me. "As if 
 he could di-agonise." 
 
 A recalcitrant was telling how he defied the of- 
 ficer. "I sez to him, 'I'm a private soldier, yes, 
 but I'm a mother's son, same's you, and I refuse to 
 submerge myself any more.' " 
 
 During the German advance on Chateau-Thierry 
 and their frustrated efforts near Rheims, a com- 
 rade looked over my shoulder at the map in a copy 
 of the Paris Daily Mail. 
 
 "Thank God, they haven't taken Epernay, that's 
 where the Plinketty Plonk (vin blanc) comes from. 
 That would have put the lid on it! And I see 
 they haven't got Meaux; that's where the beer 
 comes from, isn't it?" 
 
 The atmosphere of this war has had a good deal 
 in common with the atmosphere of the other old 
 wars on the Continent, and despite all the new- 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 175 
 
 fangled machinery there was more similarity in 
 conditions than most people have imagined. The 
 drinking, the women, the gambling have been much 
 the same in the old days, and men who were fairly 
 decent in their home-life became curiously rakish 
 as soldiers of the King. The soldiers talked in a 
 diflferent way. The public shibboleths were dif- 
 ferent, but the men pronouncing them meant the 
 same thing. A wit of 1745 records the conversa- 
 tion of Tom the Grenadier and his friend Jack 
 who lies in gaol: 
 
 Who should pass in martial Geer 
 
 But swagg'ring Tom the Grenadier: — 
 
 "Hollo! — now Thomas — what's the Crack?" 
 
 Cries Thomas — "Bad enough. Friend Jack: 
 
 They say — (damn him!) — the Young Pretender 
 
 Bids fair to be our Faith's Defender; 
 
 And that the Rebels have great Hope, 
 
 To bring in Charley and the Pope." 
 
 Quo' Jack with lengthened rueful Face, 
 
 "Good Heav'n forbid: — If that's the case 
 
 Our liberty is gone, — and we 
 
 Must, Frenchmen-Wkt, bear Slavery." 
 
 "Our Liberty!" cries Tom, "What's worse, 
 
 A thousand Times a greater curse. 
 
 If the Pretender mounts the Throne 
 
 Damme — Our dear Religion's gone." 
 
 The wit thinks it very ironical that the man in gaol 
 should prate of freedom, and that a Grenadier, of 
 all persons, should be concerned about religion. 
 Tom the Grenadier of 1745 would have fitted 
 fairly well into the social life of the soldier in 
 France in 1918. He would have been drinking 
 the bad beer and cursing its quality, and his Ian- 
 
176 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 guage would not have been more lurid than that 
 of a Bill Brown of to-day. He would have made 
 as free with French feminine charm. He would 
 have staked his poor wages on the cast of the dice 
 as easily as then. 
 
 The atmosphere of Wellington's army was ad- 
 mirably reproduced in those tableaux from 
 Hardy's Dynasts, which we had in London some 
 years ago. Hardy was proved somehow to have 
 penetrated in his poetry to the eternal nature of 
 the army. 
 
 That eternal nature was realised again in France, 
 and possibly nothing was more characteristic than 
 the widespread playing at dice and the game of 
 Crown-and-Anchor. The same game, or versions 
 of it, must have been played in the wars of Queen 
 Anne and the Georges, and on the camping- 
 grounds before Waterloo itself. When we were 
 waiting for the transport, with men of all manner 
 of other units in the great covered quay at South- 
 ampton, there must have been a dozen Crown-and- 
 Anchor boards out, and eager crowds at each, and 
 when we got to France nearly every estaminet had 
 its game going on. 
 
 There is a board divided into six sections, each 
 section marked with a different emblem: 
 
 The Heart. 
 The Crown. 
 The Diamond. 
 The Spade. 
 The Anchor. 
 The Club. 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 177 
 
 The man who owns the board has dice, which 
 he rattles in a wooden dice-cup, and on each facet 
 of the little bone cubes which he shakes is a repre- 
 sentation of one of the emblems. 
 
 9 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 # 4> ♦ 
 
 The owner ought to have a certain amount of 
 money to show as "the bank," from which he can 
 pay if luck should go in favour of the players. 
 EsLch man playing puts what money he wishes to 
 stake on the emblem of his choice, if, after being 
 shaken, the dice shows his emblem, he wins back 
 his own stake and as much more again. On the 
 other hand, if his emblem does not come up, he 
 forfeits his stake. There is generally a crowd try- 
 ing their fortune at the same time, and most of the 
 emblems are covered with notes. The experience 
 of a soldier's life in escaping death and wounds im- 
 presses him with the idea of lucky chance. War 
 breeds gambling as a natural and inevitable fruit. 
 Many soldiers are devotees of luck and have their 
 theories of chances, and believe one night they'll 
 break the bank, i'hey watch the dice and the 
 board intently, and wait until some emblem has not 
 come up for seven or eight times, and then they 
 back it tor all they are worth, believing in a law of 
 chances — some fantastic notion which reigns in 
 their simple mind that chances are bound to work 
 out even in the end. A young fellow who used to 
 be very hard up and suddenly became affluent, ex- 
 
178 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 plained to me that he was now working on an in- 
 fallible system. He explained that he would start 
 by putting a franc on the board; if he lost, he put 
 on two francs; if he lost again, he put on four 
 francs; if again, sixteen francs. It was incredible 
 that he should not by then have a lucky turn. But 
 I remarked that even if he won then he only made 
 a net gain of one franc. 
 
 "That's the worst that can happen," said he. 
 
 Where there is no theory of chances there is often 
 a sentimental bias; young soldiers stake on the an- 
 chor and the heart, ambitious ones on the crown, 
 dare-devils on the diamond and the spade. 
 
 It should be explained that each of the emblems 
 except the heart has its nickname. Thus the crown 
 is the sergeant-major; the spade is referred to as 
 the shovel; the diamond is called the curse; the 
 anchor is the meat-hook. Any one putting money 
 both on the crown and the anchor is supporting 
 the name of the game, though the commonest name 
 of the game is Bumble and Buck. 
 
 The man who holds the board keeps up an 
 extraordinary stream of patter, to which it is 
 amusing to listen. Men are evidently spurred on 
 and excited by this chatter, as if it were evidence 
 of fortunes being made. 
 
 "Here we are again. The Sweaty Socks! Cox 
 & Co., the Army Bankers, badly bent, but never 
 broke, safe as the Bank of England, undefeated 
 because they never fought; the rough and tough, 
 the old and bold! Where you lay we pay. Come 
 and put your money with the lucky old man. I 
 touch the money, but I never touch the dice. Any 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 179 
 
 more for the lucky old heart? Make it even on 
 the lucky old heart. Are you all done, gentle- 
 men? . . . Are you all done? . . . The diamond, 
 meat-hook, and lucky old sergeant-major. (He 
 shakes the dice again.) Now, then, will any one 
 down on his luck put a little bit of snow (some 
 silver) on the curse? Does any one say a bit of 
 snow on the old hook? Has no one thought of the 
 pioneer's tool? Are you all done, gentlemen? 
 Are you all done? . . . Cocked dice are no man's 
 dice. Change your bets or double them! Now, 
 then, up she comes again. The mud-rake, the 
 shamrock, and the lucky old heart. Copper to 
 copper, silver to silver, and gold to gold. We 
 shall have to drag the old anchor a bit. (Rattles 
 the dice.) Now who tries his luck on the name 
 of the game?" 
 
 And so on for hours! Piles of notes and coin 
 are taken and stuffed rapidly into an old cigar-box. 
 The crowd round the board never slackens. 
 Every now and then the owner of the board sorts 
 out from his winnings twelve of the worst-looking 
 francs, and orders a bottle of champagne for his 
 hangers-on and the good of the estaminet and the 
 company. This sets the winners buying drinks, 
 and is so profitable to the public-house that they 
 accept the bad notes for the champagne without a 
 murmur. 
 
 I always felt a curious prejudice against taking 
 part in the game myself, even for the fun of it. I 
 always felt I could win heaps if I gambled, for 
 I've always been so lucky in life, such a good Provi- 
 dence has had charge over me. 
 
i8o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 "Why does Steeven never gamble? Did ye 
 never make a gamble, man?" 
 
 "Oh, no. I think it would be unfair. I'm so 
 fearfully lucky at all that sort of thing." 
 
 This very much impressed some of them, and 
 they used to beg from me to go and gamble so that 
 my money should give them luck. I used to save 
 those torn and defaced notes which the French re- 
 fused to accept in payment for their eggs and for 
 what they called coffee, and give them to a few 
 devotees of the game. 
 
 I noticed, however, that they never won anything 
 with my money, but sometimes even were reduced 
 to risk some money they had not gleaned in this 
 way. The good luck was changed to bad luck in 
 their hands. 
 
 I asked our chaplain one day what he thought 
 of the Bumble and Buck game. But although it 
 was in full swing in every village, he had never 
 seen it, and I had to explain. I thought that an 
 interesting illustration of the way the chaplain's 
 rank of captain was a hindrance to him. The 
 game was illegal, and therefore no officer must see 
 it being played. 
 
 But certainly there was not much harm in the 
 gambling. Money was lost, but then money was a 
 lighter article out there than at home. There was 
 nothing much to spend it on. 
 
 Bumble and Buck, cards, cigarettes, and when 
 out of the line beer, vin blanc, and flirtation with 
 French girls made the chief mental relief of the 
 men, And somehow it seems natural in the army 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING i8i 
 
 to be on the level of these pleasures. I opened 
 boxes of camp library stuff several times and saw^ 
 it distributed, but of reading and thinking in a 
 serious way there was little. 
 
 In the fighting battalion there were few men of 
 any education or of studious nature. The edu- 
 cated men got broken by the training in Little 
 Sparta, or in some other way "escaped drafts," 
 and the working-men remained. I do not know 
 what it was in other regiments, but at the front 
 ours was absolutely a working-men's regiment as 
 far as the men were concerned. The officers were 
 aristocracy and the men proletariat. If my health 
 had broken, I think it would have been easy for 
 me to have got away — had I so desired. And, as 
 it was, I could have obtained a commission had I 
 wished. Generally speaking, any one of education 
 could get away from our ranks. But I remained, 
 and all about me were the British working-class in 
 khaki. 
 
 These men who were so alike, so indisputably 
 one as soldiery, had been recruited from every 
 shape and form of industrialism. They were 
 taken from the factory and the loom, from the 
 mines and the docks and the yards, from builders' 
 ladders and trestles and the artisans' tables and 
 tools, from the plough and from the fishing-boats 
 and the nets. Though they were our cannon-fod- 
 der or our "bayonets," they were also the vital stuff 
 of our vast democracy, the men who drive the great 
 machine of our civilisation — perhaps the most sig- 
 nificant people of the time. I was among them 
 and not of them, but heart and mind never ceased 
 
i82 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 to be occupied with them and their problems, and 
 with our England which they make and may re- 
 make. 
 
 Every one looking from above downward has 
 said : The men are splendid! That formula is 
 the only fitting one for those who have suffered 
 and done so much, bearing the frightful physical 
 burdens of war with a cheerfulness which was 
 never extinguished. But there is something more 
 to be thought about the condition of the men — if 
 not said. Even if they make ideal soldiers they 
 have not had ideal conditions of life in our civilisa- 
 tion, they have not had the chances of education 
 which they merited, and many of them live or- 
 dinarily in a state of ignorance and immorality 
 which tarnish the real glory of Britain. 
 
 Doubtless when a man has died in battle it does 
 not matter whether he knew who Shakespeare was 
 or whether he was a customer of the woman who 
 lurketh at the corner. He is sped, and God will 
 forgive him and give him another chance to get 
 the glorious things he missed. The army point of 
 view would certainly be that ignorance or immor- 
 ality or anything of that sort was no drawback to 
 good soldiering. Many would incline to the view 
 that these things generally characterised a better 
 soldier than did their absence. But besides look- 
 ing at the matter from the point of view of war 
 and death we can and must look from the other 
 point of view — namely of peace and life. 
 
 I made at one time a review of our situation and 
 endeavoured to provide an answer to the question, 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 183 
 
 What is the ignorance of the working-man as re- 
 vealed when he is taken away from his trade and 
 put into khaki? 
 
 I found that no one knew anything of literature. 
 Our national glories of the word were naught to 
 my mates. They were deaf to the songs which 
 should thrill and inspire. Shakespeare was a mere 
 name. Tennyson and Browning and Keats were 
 unknown. If you quoted to them from Keats you 
 must explain that a man called Keats wrote it. If 
 the soldiers opened the books they could not grasp 
 what the poems were about. Our prized language 
 when used in a noble way was like a foreign 
 tongue. If you spoke to them in normal correct 
 English they did not quite understand and you had 
 to re-express yourself in halting working-man's 
 English, full of "you see" and "it's like this" and 
 expletives and vulgarisms, or the working-man 
 would be rather offended at the way you spoke and 
 imitate you in a drawl when your back was turned. 
 Dickens and Scott, again, were little more than 
 names. Occasionally one found a lover of Dick- 
 ens who craved in the trenches for Pickwick Pa- 
 pers but found it not; occasionally one met a man 
 who loved the tales and romances of Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 I met one day an old soldier who had read 
 Gray's Elegy and had visited Stoke Poges Church- 
 yard to feel again what Gray had felt, and he told 
 me with pride as if he alone knew it, how General 
 Wolfe had said he would rather have written the 
 Elegy than take Quebec. 
 
184 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 "Tell me," said he, "there was a feller th'other 
 day had a dispute with me. How d'ye pronounce 
 the word p-i-a-n-i-s-t?" 
 
 "Pianist," said I. 
 
 "What?" said he. "Not piannist! Oh, well, 
 you're wrong, and it doesn't matter. The proper 
 pronunciation is piawwist." 
 
 He was quiet for a few moments, deeply morti- 
 fied. "Oh, well," said he at last, "I don't think 
 pronunciation is so important as some make out." 
 
 "Oh, no," said I. "To care for Gray's Elegy is 
 much more than correct pronunciation." And we 
 became friends from that day. 
 
 One man knowing the Elegy was good. But 
 who knew Campbell? The simple beauty and 
 pathos of Campbell's soldier poems, whispered as 
 it were to the soldier's heart, were as if they had 
 not been written. "Our bugles sang truce for the 
 night cloud had lowered," "Few, few shall part 
 where many meet." 
 
 The most hackneyed quotations known to the 
 middle and upper classes were mysteries here, and 
 having a habit of saying such words in jest I have 
 often had to explain to a comrade, much to my 
 own astonishment, what I mean when I say "Oh, 
 Cromwell, Cromwell, had I but served my God 
 with half the zeal I served my King, he would not 
 in mine old age have left me naked to mine en- 
 emies." 
 
 Or, 
 
 Charge, Chester, charge ! 
 On, Mr. Boffin, on! 
 
 quotations which so often rise to the mind as com- 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 185 
 
 merits on incidents in army life. It is no use re- 
 proaching your fellow-soldier, "Et tu Brute," or 
 exclaiming, "What, can the devil speak true!" for 
 he won't understand what you're talking about. 
 On expressing my surprise to a companion on this 
 count one day he replied: 
 
 "I'm sorry and all that kind o' muck, old pally, 
 but ye see I just wasn't taught any o' that stuff when 
 I was at school." 
 
 Not one in a thousand knows the watchwords of 
 the war, such as the words which Kipling gave : 
 
 Who stands if Freedom fall? 
 Who dies if England live? 
 
 One finds such a historic monition as "Nelson ex- 
 pects that every man this day will do his duty" is 
 only known by a few, and that in a false way. But 
 when some general perverts those lines to "Eng- 
 land expects that every tank will do its damndest," 
 "doing its damndest" rather hits their humour and 
 "catches on." 
 
 And if the working-men are deaf to what is na- 
 tional, they are almost as deaf to the transient great- 
 ness of our times. Not for them did Rupert 
 Brooke write the most beautiful sonnet of a dec- 
 ade. I was at pains to find out who had read Mr. 
 Britling Sees It Through. Not one could I find, 
 and though that clever novel was so astonishingly 
 popular it was not so because the working-man was 
 reading it. It was not providing the working-man 
 with a voice about the war and life. Hall Caine is 
 read, and I once heard a superior recruit speak of 
 his writing as good healthy literature. But even 
 
1 86 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 Hall Caine is too intellectual at times. Our ardent 
 writers such as Masefield, Chesterton, Conrad, and 
 Bennett find their readers among what Russian 
 revolutionary soldiers and workmen call indiscrim- 
 inately the bourgeois, but not among the rank and 
 file. 
 
 I canvassed a room one day and found that only 
 three in it had heard of H. G. Wells, and one 
 thought he wrote for John Bull and had a ''flashy 
 style." The name of Bernard Shaw was better 
 known because of the greater number of newspaper 
 remarks concerning him. 
 
 I met one day a man called Shaw and asked him 
 if he knew anything of his namesake the dramatist. 
 
 "Yes," said he, "I named my little boy Bernard 
 after him so that when he grew up he might have 
 some bloomin' luck perhaps." 
 
 "Did you ever read any of his plays or see one 
 acted at a theatre?" 
 
 "No. I saw one of his books once, but I never 
 read it . . . yes, yes, Bernard Shaw the great au- 
 thor — there's a statue of him somewhere in the 
 West End." 
 
 One day a sergeant came to me and said : "You 
 used to write for the Times, didn't you?" 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 "I sent two jokes to Answers last week," said he. 
 
 "Then we are colleagues and fellow-workers," 
 said I ; and I always was on speaking terms with 
 that sergeant. 
 
 What the men do read is Florence Warden and 
 Charles Garvice, and books with such titles as 
 "The Temptress," "Red Rube's Revenge," "The 
 
VII THINKING AND TALKING 187 
 
 Lost Diamonds" — gaudy adventure stories which 
 can be torn for cigarette lights later on. All pre- 
 fer, however, to look at pictures rather than read. 
 Some even seem a little troubled when they receive 
 long letters from their wives or sweethearts. 
 
 They read such papers as London Mail, London 
 Opinion, and Ideas, and voraciously devour John 
 Bull, which has the art or the knack to express 
 grousing in print. Many newspapers are pro- 
 vided for them free, and I used to find it rather 
 strange in reading-rooms and libraries at Little 
 Sparta and in London, that the Express and the 
 Sketch and the Mirror got dirty and torn each day, 
 whereas the Times and the Morning Post remained 
 comparatively untouched. 
 
 Then though we possessed many splendid old 
 national songs, you'd listen in vain to hear one 
 sung by the soldiers. Or if the old airs were sung, 
 they were merely the accompaniment of modern 
 words or parodies. The imitation of music-hall 
 humour and music-hall singing was most wide- 
 spread. In fact they had the culture of the music- 
 hall. 
 
 They are called to fight for their country in the 
 latest of a series of historic wars, but they know 
 next to nothing of our history or even of its fa- 
 mous names. Who was Henry the Fifth? What 
 did Henry the Eighth do beyond having 
 wives? Wolsey? Raleigh and Drake? Crom- 
 well? Marlborough? Pitt? They know the 
 Duke of Wellington overcame Napoleon, but I 
 heard an officer ask a man for the date of the battle 
 of Waterloo and he could not say. George the 
 
i88 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vii 
 
 First, the Second, the Third, Fourth and Fifth — 
 they don't know much about that series. Edward 
 VII. meant more, and they generally refer to the 
 present King as Teddie. 
 
 "What did Teddie say to you?" they asked of 
 me after the King's inspection of us. "Was Teddie 
 looking at our kit?" they asked. 
 
 Yet each and every one of these men in khaki 
 had some technical knowledge with reference to 
 the use of some tool. It might be a very limited 
 knowledge and a very small tool, but it earned his 
 living and made him a part of the great industrial 
 machine of England. 
 
VIII 
 
 FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 
 
 The vast concourse of the new drafts was dis- 
 tributed along the line. Most went to the de- 
 fence of Amiens from the onslaught from the 
 north; we to the defence of Arras from encircle- 
 ment from the south. The position was briefly 
 this: The Germans, following up their immense 
 initial success of March 21, were advancing along 
 the whole line from before Amiens to Albert and 
 from Albert to Arras. British units were retreat- 
 ing before the face of the Germans, following 
 partly their own inclinations and partly the orders 
 of the Staff. Our division, I believe, acted to a 
 great extent on its own responsibility in going for- 
 ward when every other unit was going back. It 
 marched forward to meet and stop the Germans, 
 and it found that the real defenders of the line 
 had quitted the field. There was some difficulty 
 in locating the enemy, and whilst seeking him the 
 division was shelled by its own artillery. When 
 at last we found the German, he also found us, 
 and coming forward in mass formation endeav- 
 oured to stampede our men as he had stampeded 
 so many units before us on that and other parts of 
 the field. By all accounts the enemy was most 
 enraged to find the Guards in his way. But, con- 
 
 i8q 
 
I90 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS viii 
 
 fident in his numbers and in the impetus of vic- 
 tory, he did not doubt but that he could force a 
 way over and through. The discipline of the di- 
 vision permitted of no retirement, and the men 
 stood to their guns and fired rapidly at the great 
 living target of the enemy sweeping down upon 
 them. All the time the men were firing they 
 knew that if the enemy's numbers got the upper 
 hand there would be a terrible hand-to-hand strug- 
 gle in the trenches, and that in the end most of 
 them would be lying killed or wounded on the bat- 
 tle-ground. But all the great hostile attacks with- 
 ered away under the hand of death, and the line 
 was held. It was a great service, for if the Ger- 
 mans had broken through there also. Arras would 
 have fallen and the whole position might well have 
 proved irremediable. 
 
 Though in our draft only one was wounded and 
 none was killed, it was a terrible impression of the 
 reality of war for the new men. 'Tm going to 
 make my peace with God before ever I go up to 
 the line again," said Fitz when he came out of it. 
 "Each Minnewerfer coming at us was like a row 
 of houses rushing through the air," said another. 
 
 "Poor old K was bobbing like a baby," said 
 
 another. All seemed surprised by the war and 
 scared, as if they had never imagined the thing 
 before they saw it. In each man's eyes there was 
 the sign of shock and strain. One very dull boy 
 of eighteen, who had astonished me once by telling 
 a questioning CO. that the South African War 
 was fought in Egypt, seemed suddenly to have been 
 
VIII FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 191 
 
 wakened though not to have become articulate. 
 He now laughed like Charley Bates, and said "00- 
 hoo" and "not 'arf" when asked what he thought 
 of the front and did he find it bad. 
 
 However, after this initial flutter all became 
 quiet. The Germans had taken large measure of 
 the discipline of the Guards and wanted no more 
 of it. The success was pronounced and remark- 
 able: already by the 30th of March the French 
 newspapers were very congratulatory. So we read 
 at that time in Le Journal these flattering words 
 about our division: 
 
 Ces grands gaillards, tallies en athletes, ne orient ni s'agitent. 
 lis courent a la melee avec ce meme flegme et cette meme 
 fierte que je notai void trois ans, un matin d'hiver ou, sur un 
 plateau au sud d'Abbeville, j'allai les voir passer en revue par 
 le due de Connaught. lis incarnent la tenacite britanniquc. 
 Ce sont les machoires carrees. Ou la garde est engagee, la 
 frontiere de guerre ne recule jamais. 
 
 So remarkable was the discipline of the division 
 that certain battalions were detached from it and 
 sent to stiffen and give backbone to other parts of 
 the army, and they helped to gain the brilliant vic- 
 tory of Ayette. From Ayette they were taken and 
 thrown into the scale on the Ypres Front when the 
 second huge German attack was launched. The 
 new drafts from Little Sparta went straight into 
 the battle-line, and many a man was killed before 
 he was properly registered or known in the bat- 
 talion to which he was posted. They participated 
 in the most heroic and terrible exploit of the war, 
 and fought to the last man near I'Epinette on the 
 
192 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS viii 
 
 Hazebrouck road. Nothing that was written 
 then or that can be written afterwards can do jus- 
 tice to their tenacity and brilliance and to their 
 sacrifice in Belgium. Units on both flanks gave 
 way, and they were enveloped and outnumbered 
 by an enemy who had brought field-guns up to the 
 positions of machine-guns and fired point-blank at 
 them. There it was that the nightmare circle of 
 Germans enveloped the heroic Captain Price and 
 his men, and encroached upon them with the visage 
 of inevitable death or bondage, and he led his men 
 out and drove them back at the point of the bay- 
 onet, and extended the area of the circle, which 
 nevertheless again encroached and encroached. 
 Three times he charged them and then died fight- 
 ing. One wounded corporal lying in a ditch 
 crawled back at night and told the tale, the only 
 survivor of a whole company. The captain was 
 awarded a V.C., and every man who perished with 
 him earned a sort of deathless glory. There never 
 was in any annals a more marvellous stubbornness 
 or a greater example of what discipline will do. 
 Among those who fell were men who had but just 
 set foot in France — some in fact of the last hundred 
 thousand. And such a deed, though it could not 
 save those who performed it, must have gained an 
 enormous victory over the German morale and 
 have put also a great inspiration into all the other 
 troops in Flanders. The enemy's onset was 
 brought to a standstill, and that meant the ruin of 
 his vast designs. I was invited one day to go over 
 and talk to the colonel and some of the men who 
 survived, and I saw to what dimensions this heroic 
 
VIII FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 193 
 
 fourth brigade had shrunk, all that was left of 
 three battalions, in tents in one field near La Cau- 
 chie. I think it proved impossible to find recruits 
 to make up the numbers of these battalions; they 
 were sent to the coast to recuperate and wait. In 
 the autumn campaign most of the survivors were 
 drafted to other battalions in the brigades which 
 remained. 
 
 On the Arras-Ayette Front, where most of us 
 lay, the line became serene and no one ever saw an 
 enemy. Probably all the troops except patrols 
 had been withdrawn. Only the artillery method- 
 ically shelled our lines and the roads. There was 
 current among us a quaint parody of Browning: 
 
 God's in His heaven, 
 The Guard's in the line, 
 
 which was whispered from man to man, though 
 probably no one in the ranks of our battalion could 
 have quoted the original. However, the fact was 
 true: the Guard was in the line and all was right 
 with the world. There ensued on the Arras Front 
 a halcyon summer which was not to be interrupted 
 until late August, when the great advance of the 
 autumn campaign began. 
 
 So we were left not so much with the war as 
 with France, and we both lived with her and con- 
 sidered her in her aspects of partial destruction and 
 love among the ruins. It was in a region that had 
 suffered greatly during the early campaigns. The 
 eye ached to look at the ruins, and was continually 
 preoccupied building them up again. It was the 
 region of Berles-au-Bois, where the antique church 
 
194 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS vill 
 
 is a forlorn ruin beside the debris of the homes of 
 its parishioners. It was beyond the flat misery of 
 Monchy and the wreckage of charming Blairville 
 and the sinister gas-stricken woodland of Adinfer. 
 
 From these places the war had receded, but with 
 the onset of March 21 they were engulfed again. 
 The peasants and villagers had come back after 
 their first exile and now were driven into a second. 
 One of the most pathetic phenomena of the whole 
 region were the new shacks put up by the Ameri- 
 can Relief Committee for the returning homeless 
 ones now wrecked in turn by shells, these shacks 
 lying wrenched and torn and yet so obviously new 
 and clean, having been lived in such a short while. 
 
 The peasants, loath as ever to leave their lands, 
 clung to their farms and their cottages to the last 
 possible moment, and they were to be seen every- 
 where, cheerfully working even under fire, the in- 
 stinct which rooted them to the soil they knew be- 
 ing much stronger than any instinct of fear. The 
 women in the fields greatly won the admiration of 
 our men for the life of toil they led, and they re- 
 flected how few women at home would be ready to 
 live the hard life of a French peasant woman. 
 Whether they would have cared to see their own 
 mothers and sisters thus enslaved to the earth is 
 not so certain as that they admired it in the French. 
 
 The seeming piety of the French home with all 
 its sacred pictures and relics was rather puzzling 
 to the Tommy, but he realised that it did not make 
 any difference to character, and that the reli- 
 giously-minded girl was as accessible to his love- 
 
VIII FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 195 
 
 making as if she had no religion, and that the piety 
 of the old wife did not cause her to charge less for 
 her eggs. The conventionality and conservatism 
 of the people's lives were very remarkable, and not 
 what one would have expected in the land of so 
 many revolutions. There was on every hand a 
 curious simplicity of mind, and many were "stupid 
 to the point of piety." The atmosphere, especially 
 on Sunday, when the people overloaded with 
 clothes crept sluggishly and obediently to church, 
 was mediaeval. 
 
 I was billeted for a while in a farm-house where 
 the husband was at the war and the wife and wife's 
 mother had an antediluvian intelligence. They 
 had had a shell through their roof one day, but to 
 them everything was funny — the shells, the rain, 
 the mud, the drilling in the yard. The two girls 
 of fifteen and thirteen deceived mother and grand- 
 mother all the time, smiled on us always, and were 
 kissed and squeezed by all the soldiers who came in. 
 
 "I suppose you'll marry an English soldier," 
 said I to Marie one day. 
 
 "Oh, no; Mamma doesn't think it would be good 
 to marry while the war is on. Nothing arranged 
 in these times is binding. But afterwards I'll 
 marry a Frenchman." 
 
 "But you love So-and-so very much. Won't you 
 be sorry when the battalion goes away?" 
 
 "Oh, no, it's nothing." 
 
 I said I was shocked. 
 
 "C'est la guerre," said she, and waved her hand 
 and smiled. 
 
196 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS viii 
 
 "What do you think of these French girls? 
 Aren't they astonishingly forward with us?" I 
 asked a fellow-soldier. 
 
 "They can't help it, it's their blood," said he. 
 
 I wondered whether Mamma and Grandmamma 
 who were and looked so phenomenally stupid, had 
 the same wiles and smiles as Marie when they were 
 young. 
 
 There was a great deal of mixed war life and 
 village life in the region immediately behind the 
 lines. The villages swarmed with troops. Every 
 mother who possessed a pretty girl seemed to use 
 her as an innocent lure to sell bad coffee or wine 
 to the soldiers who crowded in to flirt with her and 
 say things to her they could never have said to an 
 English girl. I think the French girls who re- 
 peated and threw back at the men all the bad lan- 
 guage they heard had little notion what it all 
 meant. 
 
 What gay scenes there were in those large square 
 yards in front of the farm-houses: the girls 
 on the verandah, the men in and out of the barns 
 where they were billeted! The roads were con- 
 tinually possessed by a swirl of motor-lorries and 
 horse-limber waggons, and now and then a com- 
 pany of men marching to or from parade-ground 
 would appear. In the evenings the band played 
 beside the church — sometimes a first-class military 
 band from London, containing many excellent mu- 
 sicians; more often our pipers or the pipers of the 
 Micks. 
 
 April mud gave way to May sunshine and 
 drought. There was a respite and sanctuary from 
 
VIII FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 197 
 
 the war in the development of spring. The 9th of 
 May, Ascension Day, was an especially lovely one, 
 which I well remember. May must be twice May 
 to be perfect. 'Twas so this day. I had been sent 
 to a neighbouring headquarters with a message, and 
 at noon I sat for a while beside a high hawthorn 
 on a daisy-covered bank. The war ceased to ex- 
 ist; only beauty was infinitely high and broad 
 above and infinitely deep within. Birds again 
 sang in the heavens and in the heart — after a long 
 sad silence, as it seemed. On the road below me a 
 never-ending stream of Indians with dusky brows 
 and brown turbans went riding by, and lorries and 
 limbers plunged and struggled — the long caravan 
 of war. Sulphurous splashes of smoke and sharp 
 buffeting concussions broke from a camouflaged 
 battery in a ravine, and it seemed as if the verdure 
 of spring threatened to put hands over the cannon's 
 mouth and stop its male voice, as a wife might 
 stop her husband saying words she did not wish to 
 hear. Beyond the ravine was a wood, over which, 
 flying low like an owl staring for mice, the aero- 
 planes crept through the atmosphere, screening 
 from enemy observance their exit and entrance 
 from battle air. In another direction a deflated 
 khaki-coloured observation-balloon wallowed in 
 bright dandelion fields. Coming down the road 
 appeared chains of artillery traction-engines with 
 negro drivers, and squads of Lewis gunners with 
 their fatal iron tubes. Yet all the while in five- 
 acre fields the quiet peasants with bent backs looked 
 as if they had stolen out of Millet's pictures. On 
 the right in the distance was the wonderful spire 
 
198 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS viil 
 
 of the village church of P , on the left were the 
 
 staggering ruins of the tower of B au-B . 
 
 In the evening I was in P , and the pipers 
 
 were playing at the foot of the beautiful church. 
 Huge disjected lumps of stone lay about; they had 
 fallen when the church was last hit by a shell. It 
 was Ascension Day and the band played well, but 
 it could not cause the stones to rise up to their 
 places. The flare and stridency of the pipes 
 thrilled the blood in the veins and made one feel 
 that the something in honour of which they played 
 must be splendid and important, but the grey stone 
 wall of the church seemed nevertheless wrapped in 
 its own silence and remote from all of us as if ex- 
 isting in another plane. The spire above seemed 
 to be invested with a power which was more than 
 our human power of which we were so proud. 
 However, the pipers and drummers fulfilled their 
 programme, and a haphazard collection of earthy- 
 looking peasants stood and stared and listened. So 
 the vulgar war went on, but the fourteenth century 
 still pointed a sharp forefinger to the sky. 
 
 One day whilst stationed at Sombrin the alarm 
 of a German "break-through" was given, and the 
 division was rushed up toward the line to save 
 the day. It was only a test, but it was exceedingly 
 well carried out. Each company cheered when 
 it was told it had to go and stop the Germans. 
 With us a brigade of the new American troops was 
 co-operating, and our fellows saw the "Yanks" for 
 the first time. They were a magnificent body of 
 men and marched with wonderful verve, singing 
 all the way. "John Brown's body" seemed to be 
 
VIII FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 199 
 
 the most popular air, and the words they sang were 
 amusing: 
 
 All we ever do is sign the pay-roll 
 But we never draw a God-damn cent. 
 
 They shouted to us, "You can go home now" and 
 "We've come to win the war," and we believed 
 them and were glad. 
 
 The summer, as I have said, was serene. Never- 
 theless the menace of another great attack hung 
 over all the region of our front like a cloud. The 
 French were told that we had come, and that 
 therefore they were absolutely safe from a further 
 attack. For we never retired. The Americans 
 were pointed to as another guarantee of safety. 
 Still, it did not need sharp eyes to see that every 
 imaginable precaution was being taken in case 
 Fritz should drive us out. On many wells began 
 to appear the notice "Prepared for Demolition," 
 and on bridges, "Warning : this Bridge is mined/' 
 On the trees alongside the roadways were gashes 
 where explosives had been inserted in the trunks 
 for the purpose of readily blowing them up and 
 bringing them down across the road — thus to ob- 
 struct the enemy transport in the course of his ad- 
 vance. Buildings were mined. Long stretches of 
 the highway ran over sleeping cordite which but 
 a touch would awake. Traps of all kinds were 
 prepared for the enemy by our ingenious engineers. 
 One read on detachable posts such notices as W \ 
 D No. QQ. Booby Trap. About the villages for 
 leagues back, tens of miles back, the Chinamen and 
 Labour men, "camouflaged heroes," as we sarcas- 
 
200 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS viil 
 
 tically named them, were busy digging breastworks 
 for delaying actions. All inhabitants were offi- 
 cially warned that they stayed on at their peril. 
 Meanwhile our "intelligence" reported large con- 
 centrations of enemy forces at points upon our line, 
 and we were ready for a destructive retreat on the 
 lines of the model retirement of the Germans in 
 March 1917, when they abandoned the battle-fields 
 of the Somme. It is perhaps doubtful whether 
 we should have chopped the fruit trees as they did. 
 But we should have made a desert for the enemy to 
 dwell in. 
 
 How good that it all turned out to be superflu- 
 ous, that victory should favour us instead of him, 
 and that instead of his over-running our lines we 
 should penetrate far into his! Yet so it was, and 
 the story destined to begin August 191 8, was one 
 of advance and of relief. 
 
 None of the precautionary arrangements were 
 destined to be used, and when the reinforcements 
 and the transport left to follow up our victorious 
 advance a curious stillness and peace seemed to be 
 born in the villages. The notices on the wells, the 
 tickets on the breastworks — B-support, C-switch, 
 etc. — seemed as unwonted as did the clay-cut 
 trenches themselves. With relief every one re- 
 alised that the trees would not be blown up and 
 that a certificate of immunity had been handed by 
 destiny to all manner of bridges and roads and 
 homes. The whole atmosphere changed, a new 
 light was shed on whole countrysides. Yes, be- 
 cause the cloud had lifted. Into this new light ex- 
 iles returned once more to try and continue the old 
 
VIII FRANCE UNDER THE CLOUD 201 
 
 life as they felt God had intended it always to be 
 led. 
 
 But if peace crept into the land from which we 
 advanced following the enemy, what madness and 
 calamity of destruction poured into the land to 
 which we advanced and from which mile by mile 
 we drove the Germans! There, as if to be re- 
 venged for some baulked prey, the spirit of the war 
 expressed itself with all the rage of its possession. 
 
 Peace settled down upon the stones of Monchy- 
 au-Bois and the ridges of Ransart; the menace of 
 the occasional shell was lifted from the Arras- 
 Doullens road. The railway resumed its service 
 to Arras, and from the heights of Blairville engines 
 could be seen puffing along a new stretch of coun- 
 try. Arras itself crept away from the fires of de- 
 struction. The receding tide of battle foamed 
 backward to Bapaume; and whilst Ayette and 
 Achiet gained the sanctuary of peace, the intensi- 
 fied rage of the war descended upon Croisilles, St. 
 Leger, Riencourt and many another staying-place 
 of enemy power. Dead men once more lay un- 
 buried in the tumbled villages, for there was no 
 time to bury so many. Our arms went on, and 
 still the clouds went on lifting from France — not 
 now, however, from half-destroyed homes and pa- 
 tient peasants, but from totally destroyed country 
 devoid of home and habitation. The complete 
 absence of civilians gave the rescued ruins of vil- 
 lages the aspect of cemeteries and ancient ruins of 
 cities — as if in the far past a civilisation had ob- 
 tained and been destroyed. That is what we saw 
 when the fire-curtain lifted. 
 
IX 
 
 WAR THE BRUTALISER 
 
 There is more experience in the private soldier's 
 life than there is in that of the officer. The reality 
 of the army and the war is more sharply felt in 
 the ranks. It is not possible to deceive oneself so 
 much about war or to be deceived by events and 
 actions themselves. You escape from the conven- 
 tional and from a certain artificial form and style. 
 Indeed, to serve in the ranks is an unique oppor- 
 tunity to get to know the working-man. Perhaps 
 there are not many people who want to know him; 
 they only want him to do his job and keep them 
 comfortable. But if any one desires to know him 
 as he is in his natural strength and weakness, with 
 his foibles and his charms and also with all his 
 repellent deficiencies of grammar and taste, the 
 private's uniform in the war afforded a short way. 
 
 It was a great experience. You learned about 
 yourself and your neighbour what you never knew 
 before. You shed many illusions about both per- 
 sonalities, and through all the bullying and petting 
 and camaraderie you learned much of human na- 
 ture. 
 
 I was undeceived a great deal. I used to think 
 too lightly of men going to war and of the sacrifice 
 they make and what they undergo. I used to think 
 
 2Q2 
 
IX WAR THE BRUTALISER 203 
 
 courage and verve and human idealism made the 
 real driving power of the army in time of v^ar, 
 and it seemed that in putting on the King's uniform 
 one put on the ideal. But we all of us soon learned 
 that the uniform betokened hard duty and bond- 
 age, a durance such as that of slave or prisoner. 
 Though men were generous in offering themselves 
 to fight for their country, or even in agreeing to 
 fight when called upon to do so, there was no at- 
 mosphere of generosity and national gratitude, but 
 rather an atmosphere of every man expecting his 
 neighbour to shirk what he could. Private sol- 
 diers were all passive. Non-commissioned officers 
 were active and drove privates to do what was re- 
 quired. The real driving power lay in brutal 
 thought and word and act. The open sesame of 
 the army was the characteristic of brutality, and I 
 noticed that men who were not in themselves bru- 
 tal cultivated brutality to get the army tone. 
 
 The characteristic word of command was not 
 merely enforced by firmness, by peremptoriness, 
 by loudness. The vital thing in it must be menace ; 
 it must be an intimidating bawl, and must not only 
 be heard, but must act on the nerves. Soldiers 
 must be drilled as a Tartar drives his horses — by 
 frightening them all the way. 
 
 The regimental sergeant-major is like a big yard- 
 dog. He rushes forward and barks menacingly 
 at any one who appears on his line of vision. He 
 waits outside billets and pounces on luckless sol- 
 diers, snarling, "What're you on?" Rarely by any 
 chance does he exhibit a kindly interest in any one. 
 He does not act the part of a father to the soldiers. 
 
204 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix 
 
 His position forbids it. He is paid to be terrible, 
 and whatever he may have been whilst unpromoted, 
 he is due to take up this role of being terrible 
 when he gets to be R.S.M. He then cultivates the 
 voice. And he soon learns to love his authority. 
 He ought really to devote his attention to checking 
 the ways of N.C.O.'s, and have no appetite for such 
 small fry as privates. I have seen a very clumsy 
 and broken-down drill-sergeant rise to the dizzy 
 height of R.S.M. probably through sagacious 
 toadying to officers, and such a man, whilst easy- 
 going as a drill-sergeant, became at once a Tartar 
 as sergeant-major, and set out to take down the 
 pride of the really smart men whose appearance 
 was perchance an ofifence to the "funniest man who 
 ever wore a bumble and buck board on his sleeve." 
 I remember how he brought up a wonderful C.O.'s 
 orderly for insubordination, and the latter was re- 
 duced to defending himself before the CO. 
 
 ''It's like this, sir, if it's a choice between offend- 
 ing you and the sergeant-major of my battalion, 
 I'd rather ofifend the sergeant-major." 
 
 "Admonished," says the CO. 
 
 "Fall in," says the R.S.M. in rage, and then, as 
 the defendant orderly is dismissed, he rushes after 
 him and calls out, "You've got too much to say for 
 yourself, you have. Take his name for hair- 
 cut." 
 
 So next day the orderly will be brought up be- 
 fore the adjutant. 
 
 However, a sense of humour dilutes any bitter- 
 ness which such petty tyranny might produce. I 
 
IX WAR THE BRUTALISER 205 
 
 remember listening to the orderly. He was one 
 of the cleverest natural wits I have come across in 
 the army. 
 
 Says he: "Once there was a fisherman fishing 
 on the west coast of Scotland, and he brought up an 
 unclean thing. Who would have thought that that 
 unclean thing would have survived to become the 
 sergeant-major of this battalion?" 
 
 Of course this R.S.M. was not the famous Jimmy 
 nor the immortal Dan. Not he. 
 
 Of "Jimmy" our colonel once made a remark 
 which might serve as the epitaph of a famous 
 R.S.M. : "He was the deadly foe of humbug; his 
 touch remained long after he was gone." 
 
 I was rather amused to read the C.O.'s marginal 
 note to a minute which had been prepared on the 
 subject of sympathy: "Sympathy does not con- 
 sist in listening to yarns. Sympathy becomes prac- 
 tical when an officer takes a hell of a lot of trouble 
 to know his men and his work." 
 
 Very true. But it is these "deadly foes of hum- 
 bug" who are the sympathy-killers. 
 
 Well, the regimental sergeant-major is the big 
 bow-wow. All the lesser N. C.O.'s are the lesser 
 fry, with the lesser barks and the lesser snarls. 
 
 Even private soldiers, when they think they can 
 try it on, will bark and growl at one another, and 
 "give a steady one" in regimental style. Snarling 
 provides the atmosphere of the ranks. 
 
 "Ain't I a great hand at putting the wind up, 
 eh?" said a sergeant to me in pride, fresh from a 
 bout of cursing and swearing at his platoon. 
 
2o6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix 
 
 I did not show much sympathy with him. 
 "You'd get better results if you encouraged them 
 more," said I. 
 
 "What's the matter with you, Steeven," he re- 
 plied, "is you're too soft. You'd never get on in 
 the army." 
 
 I confessed I had been brought up always to try 
 to put people at ease. If I lived to a hundred I 
 should never be able to taunt and damn and terrify 
 in the regimental fashion, and so get things done. 
 
 Nevertheless, the men of our regiment, cursed 
 and driven into every fatigue or fight, behaved as- 
 tonishingly well from a military point of view. 
 They did better than men in other regiments where 
 the sergeants did not so constantly "put the wind 
 up 'em." The method seemed always justified. 
 
 That the driving-power of the army arose from 
 courage and voluntary sacrifice was the first illu- 
 sion to fall. The second was that of chivalry. It 
 seems that in former wars one granted to the enemy 
 a great deal of human dignity. Though he was 
 a foe, he was a fellow-creature, and was saved by 
 his Redeemer as much as we were. But the opin- 
 ion cultivated in the army regarding the Germans 
 was that they were a sort of vermin like plague-rats 
 that had to be exterminated. Although the British 
 soldier had a "sneaking" admiration for the Ger- 
 man as a good fighter, this admiration was gener- 
 ally eliminated through the inspiration of officers 
 and N.C.O.'s. The regimental tone absolutely 
 forbade admiration of anything in connection with 
 Germans. "Killing Huns" was our cheerful task, 
 
IX WAR THE BRUTALISER 207 
 
 as one of our leaders once told us. The idea of 
 taking prisoners had become very unpopular 
 among the men. A good soldier was one who 
 would not take a prisoner. If called on to escort 
 prisoners to the cage, it could always be justifiable 
 to kill them on the way and say they tried to escape. 
 Did not So-and-so get a D.C.M. for shooting pris- 
 oners? "Thank God, this battalion's always been 
 blessed with a CO. who didn't believe in taking 
 
 prisoners," says a sergeant. Captain C , who 
 
 at Festubert shot two German officer-prisoners with 
 whom he had an altercation, was always a hero, 
 and when one man told the story, ''That's the stufif 
 to gi' 'em," said the delighted listeners. That 
 
 this preyed on C 's mind, and that as a sort of 
 
 expiation he lavished care and kindness on German 
 prisoners ever after, till he was killed at Cambrai, 
 was not so popular a story. 
 
 It was curious, however, that in battle itself there 
 was more squeamishness about brutality in actual- 
 ity than there had been in conversation. The old 
 hands, the men who had the regimental tone, were 
 equal to their words, but the younger and newer 
 ones hardly liked it. I remember a characteristic 
 case in the first advance. A German machine-gun 
 post had been holding up the British advance and 
 inflicting murderous casualties. The machine was 
 enveloped and rushed, and the Germans held up 
 their hands and surrendered. An old-time ser- 
 geant goes up to his officer, who, by the bye, was a 
 poet, and wrote some very charming lyrics and had 
 a taste in Art, and salutes: "Leave to shoot the 
 prisoners, sir?" "What do you want to shoot them 
 
2o8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix 
 
 for?" says the poet. "To avenge my brother's 
 death," says the sergeant. I suppose the poet tells 
 him to carry on. He pinks the Germans one after 
 one, and some of our fellows say, "Bravo!" and in 
 others the blood runs cold. In the same battle the 
 sergeant himself perishes, and a sort of poetic jus- 
 tice seems to have overtaken him. But it is the 
 stufif of which he was made that makes us terrible 
 to the enemy. The enemy knows about it, gets to 
 know infallibly, and having no great moral cause 
 to help him, does not flame with noble anger, but 
 is merely afraid and wishes the war were at an 
 end. 
 
 I remember the disgust of one of our American 
 volunteers at this episode. For a few days it 
 caused a reaction in him, and made him quite 
 warm-hearted toward Germans. But when he had 
 been in one or two more frays he also caught the 
 regimental point of view, and was ready to "kill 
 Huns ad libitum." 
 
 There was a characteristic way of speaking to 
 the Tommies: 
 
 "The second bayonet man kills the wounded," 
 says the bombing-instructor. "You cannot afford 
 to be encumbered by wounded enemies lying about 
 your feet. Don't be squeamish. The army pro- 
 vides you with a good pair of boots; you know how 
 to use them." 
 
 ". . . Don't go wandering down deep dug-outs 
 in search of spoil or enemies, but if you think 
 there's any Boche down below, just send them 
 down a few Mills bombs to keep 'em quiet." 
 
 ". . . At this point the Germans come out of 
 
IX WAR THE BRUTALISER 209 
 
 the machine-gun nest holding up their hands, and 
 the man with the Lewis gun forgets to take his 
 fingers off the trigger." 
 
 No one said to the men, "By refusing to take pris- 
 oners, by killing prisoners, ill-treating them, or 
 killing wounded men, you make it only the worse 
 for yourselves when it may be your lot to fall into 
 the enemy's hands. Remember he holds as many 
 British as we do Germans." The stories of our 
 brutality inevitably got across to the Germans, and 
 made it worse for our poor fellows on the other 
 side. No one said, ''It is good to take prisoners; 
 take as many as you possibly can. That tends to 
 end the war. But by ferocious habits you are only 
 making this war into a mutual torture and destruc- 
 tion society for all men between eighteen and forty- 
 five. Out of cruelty comes cruelty. Out of mercy 
 comes mercy." 
 
 The young ones dimly understood this in them- 
 selves, but it did not obtain currency; the older 
 army types, with standardised regimental point of 
 view, kept all new recruits staunch. 
 
 In enforcing and excusing brutality it was com- 
 mon to recount the known atrocities the enemy had 
 committed, the regimental stories of his tricky 
 ways. And it was possible by enumerating his 
 crimes to seem to justify any cruelty or barbarity 
 on our part, and to let us assume that if we thought 
 of him as devil, that was just what he was. But 
 a fair mind knew that atrocities and barbarities 
 and cruelties of all kinds had abounded on both 
 sides, and that both enemies (ours and theirs) had 
 behaved in ways unworthy of man. 
 
2IO A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS ix 
 
 The mind is curiously ready to think evil. An 
 incident in the course of the great advance will 
 illustrate "thinking evil" and "being brutal." 
 
 There w^ere a number of us in B the morn- 
 ing after it had been captured. We were sitting 
 by a fire in a farm-house. The sound of rifle-fire 
 in the village street was noticed, and suddenly a 
 man bursts in and says that a German has come out 
 of one of the cellars and has been sniping civilians. 
 That seemed to account for the rifle-fire. Three 
 or four men snatched their rifles from the wall and 
 rushed out at the door, calling out: 
 
 "The dirty bastard, we'll teach him to snipe 
 villagers!" 
 
 The others in the house did not stir. But pres- 
 ently the would-be executioners of Fritz came back 
 and clanked their rifles down again. It was a 
 "wash-out." The German was dead. A Taffy 
 had shot him. "Did the German wound any of 
 the French?" we asked. No. He wasn't sniping, 
 but was lying on the floor of a cellar. The French 
 had discovered him, and had run out to tell our 
 fellows. A Taffy had come and peered down the 
 cellar-stairs. There in the gloom lay the enemy 
 soldier in his greyish-blue uniform, apparently 
 sleeping. The Welshman fired a shot at him. 
 Then the German sat up. He fired seven more 
 shots, and then dragged the body upstairs and 
 threw it on the dunghill in the yard, searched the 
 pockets of the uniform, and went away. The in- 
 cident was closed. 
 
 I went up then with some others to look at the 
 German soldier. There he was, on a dunghill in 
 
IX WAR THE BRUTALISER 211 
 
 the squared yard of the farm-house. To my sur- 
 prise he was still alive, not yet dead. He had ap- 
 parently been wounded the day before, for his 
 right arm was swathed in linen and had been in a 
 sling. His face was pink and white, very white 
 and livid pink, and his little waxy eyes stared at us 
 without expression. His white breast heaved up 
 and down. So we looked at him and pitied, and 
 went away. And he lay on the dunghill and the 
 rain washed down, and I suppose he died in a few 
 hours. 
 
 "Can he stand on his spindles?" asked the kind- 
 est man at our Red Cross post. "No? Then let 
 him lie where he is. The Taffies ought to have 
 carried him in; he's not our case." 
 
 Some weeks afterwards I heard the story re- 
 told. It had grown like the proverbial rolling 
 snowball. Thus it ran: The German had crept 
 out of a cellar and killed and wounded half-a- 
 dozen women and children before one of the Taffy 
 snipers put a bullet through his neck and ended 
 him. 
 
 "And serve him right, the dirty dog. I hope he 
 had a lingering death," said some one. 
 
 When the true story was told, some one made 
 an obscene remark. But that was the way until the 
 soldiers got to Germany and saw the Germans for 
 themselves. 
 
X 
 
 BRINGING BACK THE BODY 
 OF MR. B 
 
 On the evening of the first day of the great battle 
 a party was sent with Captain E to the line. 
 
 There had been the first advance, the battle 
 shadow had lifted off the villages in the rear, bath- 
 ing them in the new atmosphere of peace; the 
 curtain had risen to disclose the ruins of the vil- 
 lages in front after the guns had spoken. For four 
 months we had sat facing one another in trenches 
 on the ridges, but now at the end of August our 
 army had left its front line behind; it had crossed 
 the smashed and devastated German line, upon 
 which so methodically our artillery had played, 
 and then the second German line, preceded by 
 planes overhead and tanks on the ground; it had 
 entered one after another the vast white stone vil- 
 lages of Artois, tumbled in ruins from end to end, 
 and it had sought a retiring and fleeing enemy, 
 who seemed to intend to retreat for a great distance, 
 though he remained capable, nevertheless, of hold- 
 ing up for a time, when he desired, three times his 
 strength. 
 
 We had learned earlier in the day from men in 
 dressing-stations that small posts of machine-gun- 
 ners were holding up the advance, that Lieutenant 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 213 
 
 B , a popular officer, who had been through 
 
 the East African campaign before he came to us, 
 was killed, and that several well-known sergeants 
 had been brought down in the fighting. 
 
 The whole brigade, the whole division, many 
 divisions were in movement, some progressing 
 here, others and parts of others held up there. 
 The designed course of the battle was in process 
 of being realised point by point, though in places 
 and for a time the plan broke down. Contact be- 
 tween the advancing units was generally kept up, 
 though occasionally contact was lost — as when our 
 brothers-in-arms in the brigade went forward un- 
 supported on their left, and were surrounded and 
 lost. "Intelligence" knew where every unit was 
 and where it ought to be. The half-blasted woods, 
 ruined villages, and indestructible hills and ridges 
 did not hide the army from its eyes. Nevertheless, 
 the task of marching over the broken ground and 
 finding the point which our battalion had reached 
 after the day's advance was no easy task. "I ex- 
 pect it to be the devil of a job," some one was heard 
 to say. 
 
 We left at six o'clock, Captain E and a 
 
 brother officer riding in front; a limber with some 
 water for the battalion and some whiskey to be 
 left at brigade headquarters went between; a ser- 
 geant rode one of the limber horses, and five or 
 six men marched behind. 
 
 At the outset we were confronted with a grand 
 jam of traffic, caused by the slow progress of a 
 queue of tanks over an awkward ridge of the road. 
 Groups of officers, including some in gay uniforms 
 
214 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x 
 
 with epaulettes of steel, including also clericals 
 with their unwontedly white collars and their deli- 
 cate hands, still yellow with the clay which they 
 had been throwing on to corpses all the afternoon, 
 stood on banks and looked down on the scene with 
 evident relief and pleasure. The bare-kneed tank 
 officers rushed hither and thither in their cotton 
 knickers, and with irritation written on their sun- 
 burnt faces. Troops of all kinds swarmed about 
 the scene, and we stood posed as in a Graphic pic- 
 ture. 
 
 "Turn the limber about; we can't wait here 
 
 longer," said Captain E , and the fat sergeant 
 
 on horseback laboriously obeyed, cursing his officer 
 the while for pretending to teach him his business. 
 So we made a detour, all grumbling, the two of- 
 ficers silently going ahead. 
 
 It was evening. Twilight was descending on a 
 broad moorland which was intersected with roads 
 and old trenches. Dust on the road was more than 
 ankle-deep, and we beat it up in clouds, so that it 
 whitened us all and entered eyes and nose and 
 mouth, and lay in a crust in the moustache; and 
 the same dust hung in curtains over the moor; it 
 was high in the heavens like a mist, there were 
 columns of it in the atmosphere, and the sun set 
 strangely and pallidly because of it. 
 
 We passed the extraordinary ruins of a sugar 
 factory, all tormented and twisted, still eighty feet 
 high, but terribly dilapidated, as it were warped, 
 the body of the place disembowelled and the ruined 
 machinery of the interior exposed, mingled with 
 congealed liquescence. And at sinister angle out 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 215 
 
 of all this, at a great height, the undamaged shoul- 
 der of a crane. "A madman's design," thought I. 
 "There is an idea in it, that is clear, but a maniacal 
 notion of misshapenness instead of symmetry has 
 found expression." 
 
 We passed the well-dug but battered British 
 lines, which we had been long convinced as sol- 
 diers no enemy could take, and then in No Man's 
 Land we saw the spectral figures of giant tattered 
 aerodromes, long coveted as complete possessions 
 by both sides, used by us constantly for night bomb- 
 ing-fliers until the German armies had flooded over 
 all the country in the spring. Now we had them 
 again. 
 
 We began to be a little unsure of the way. Still 
 there was with us Mountjoy, who had come down 
 from the line some hours before, and though there 
 had been a further advance, he could still guide 
 us with some surety. Nevertheless, we began to 
 ask questions of passers-by. At late twilight we 
 came to cross-roads, where but lately death had 
 claimed his own, and now there was a traffic of 
 motor-lorries only to be compared to what is seen 
 at a street artery of a large city. Every lorry was 
 white with dust, the horses' hoofs were deep in 
 dust, and the drivers' faces and backs covered with 
 it. There was an unwonted absence of talk. 
 
 Our road led across the German front line, 
 which lay in indescribable confusion without a 
 soldier, without even a sentry, but with the odour 
 of yellow-cross gas and of corruption. The stars 
 came peeping through the dusty sky; the great 
 moon gained luminosity, whilst the eye, which had 
 
2i6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x 
 
 ranged far and wide over the battle-field, instinc- 
 tively searching for dead, was narrowed in its scope 
 to wayside border-lands. 
 
 Wounded men, in twos, helping one another, 
 straggled past us to the rear. Exhausted men sat 
 silent and limp on banks at the side of the road. 
 Submissive, eternally patient German prisoners 
 passed us, carrying stretchers with wounded on 
 their shoulders, one armed guard for each squad of 
 bearers. There was a rare simplicity about them, 
 and seeing them in sharp silhouette against the 
 sky, they looked like the sculptured figures of some 
 marble tomb. 
 
 Darkness set in, but the moon above the battle- 
 ruin illumined all and increased it in grandeur. 
 Traffic grew less and less. Enemy bombing-ma- 
 chines droned overhead, and their bombs glared 
 crimson and resounded in explosion far away in 
 the darkness. The great guns were silent, but the 
 aeroplanes, being little opposed, came down to- 
 ward us, and swept the roads with machine-gun 
 fire. So as not to be seen, we halted till the firing 
 ceased. 
 
 We then entered a vast area of demolition, where 
 
 the village of H had been razed to the ground, 
 
 and, kicking through the dust, went down its main 
 street, on which once many windows had looked, 
 but now nought looked. It was as if God had 
 visited it, and every man had fallen backward and 
 broken his neck, and every house and home had 
 fallen flat. No, not a wall stood, but hideous male- 
 faction had boshed and bashed even that which 
 was already useless. In contrast to all this, a small 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 217 
 
 undamaged parlour-chair stood in a drift of dust 
 at the cross-roads at the far end of the village — 
 taken, who knows from where, and placed there 
 in pity for the wounded. 
 
 We had been three hours on the road. We stood 
 some minutes at that memorable crossing, and ques- 
 tioned various horsemen who arrived and went. 
 There passed us a regular caravan of supply-tanks, 
 much larger than the fighting size, but containing 
 rations of petrol and water and supplies of ammu- 
 nition. When we took the next road we found the 
 ''Brigade," and two of our men were detached for 
 duty there. And we obtained a runner who had 
 the name of being an infallible guide, and his duty 
 it was to lead us to where the battalion lay. With 
 him we followed a column of machine-gun trans- 
 port, and there began the most empty period of 
 our march, empty because we were tired, and were 
 haunted by the idea that we were going wrong. 
 What happened to the transport ahead of us it is 
 impossible to say, but we were indeed going wrong, 
 and when we at length halted, there were only a 
 few posts between us and the Germans. The in- 
 fallible guide had led us amiss, and we retraced our 
 steps several slow kilometres. It was now nearing 
 eleven, and the enemy's guns and ours opened fire, 
 and the shells overhead screeched through the air 
 in both directions. Various ammunition dumps 
 were hit and burned up in red glares to the sky; 
 twinkling Very lights shot up and wavered in 
 miniature constellations, and silver snake-lights 
 hung a few moments and went out. Away on our 
 left we heard the deliberate repetitions of a Ger- 
 
2i8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS X 
 
 man machine-gun. But we plodded on and cursed 
 and grumbled: 
 
 "The horses will be nearly dead before we get 
 back. . . . What's the use of a hundred tins of 
 water when the supply-tank can take four hundred. 
 
 . . . Old man R must be working for another 
 
 bar to his medal sending us up with water. ... I 
 knew before we started out we'd get lost with that 
 long devil taking us. And I've been twenty years 
 in the army, and he thought he could teach me my 
 business. . . . We're not on the right track. I'm 
 damned well sure we're not on the track. . . ." 
 
 But we were going right this time, and in half 
 an hour came to a huge box-shaped standard of 
 netted camouflage, two Red Cross waggons, stacks 
 of petrol-tins, and a confusion of captured Ger- 
 man arms. These marked the entrance to a vast 
 hollow chamber in the earth, dug previously by the 
 laborious Germans, and now used as our battalion 
 headquarters. Twenty or thirty well-cut clay 
 stairs led down to this great cavern, and on every 
 step some one was stretched, asleep, while down 
 below, where but lately German sabres had 
 clanked, lay our colonel and other officers sleeping 
 too. 
 
 Captain E went down these many steps, 
 
 and we with the limber continued our way by an 
 exposed road to the point where one of the centre 
 companies lay. The enemy shelled the road, and 
 five minutes after we had started three of our men 
 mechanically threw themselves flat in the road as 
 a shell came right at us. But the shell did not ex- 
 plode. Another exploded to our right, sending 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 219 
 
 a shower of smoking metal over us, and almost 
 stunning us with the concussion. So we hurriedly 
 dumped the cans at the side of the road, and the 
 horses galloped back to headquarters as fast as they 
 could be urged. There we sat and drank water 
 from gallon petrol-tins and watched the wounded 
 arriving at the Red Cross waggons. The full 
 moon poured its light and its splendid midnight 
 silence over all. 
 
 However, whilst we were waiting, an orderly 
 came out to ask us to take a stretcher and bring 
 down a dead officer lying where he had fallen. 
 
 This was Lieutenant B . We were not very 
 
 eager because we were tired, but a guide came out, 
 and we found a stretcher and followed him — first 
 along a ravine and then over an exposed ridge 
 where trenches had been partly dug. We all sat 
 down and rested in an empty trench, and it was 
 just midnight. A wounded man limped piteously 
 up to us and asked the way to the aid post, and it 
 was an old squad chum. "Hullo," said he, the 
 
 light of recognition in his eyes. It was C 
 
 again, the boy who thought the South African War 
 was fought in Egypt. He had got a ''Blighty one" 
 from a fragment of shrapnel. We told him where 
 to go, and then for our part went on, threading the 
 empty trench till we came to that part held by our 
 men. Here were several dead, and we took the 
 coverings off their faces and looked at each to find 
 
 out which was that of Lieutenant B . Last 
 
 time I had seen the face it was pleasantly flushed 
 with wine, and there was a glitter in the eyes; his 
 pale yellow moustache veiled rather witty lips. 
 
220 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x 
 
 But now it was smeared with red dry blood, and 
 the moustache was heavy in death. A fine tall 
 fellow and a great weight dead. 
 
 For a moment our attention was diverted to a 
 souvenir lying in the dirt, a small anti-tank rifle 
 with a one-inch bore and one wanted to put it on 
 the stretcher with the dead man. But it was too 
 heavy. So we shouldered the dead body of Lieu- 
 tenant B and began our slow journey to the 
 
 limber. We changed hands and positions at least 
 a dozen times whilst carrying it, and as German 
 shells burst near us there was danger of the 
 stretcher capsizing, for one of us was very nervous 
 and wished to fall flat to earth every time the men- 
 acing buzz of a projectile assailed his ears. So 
 the heavy, ill-balanced body swayed and lurched, 
 registering the nervous tension and fatigue of those 
 who bore it. We perspired and gasped. At 
 length, at the entrance of the ravine, we halted and 
 sat down. Since last we passed, a gas-shell had 
 exploded, and as we sat with open mouths, panting, 
 our throats burned with "yellow-cross." Perhaps 
 we ought to have put on our gas-masks, but with 
 them on we could not have found sure footing 
 among the many holes, and no one wished to fall 
 whilst holding the dead body. 
 
 At length, however, to the limber. And the 
 dead body was roughly transferred from the 
 stretcher to the wet bottom of the cart. The men 
 had thought to sit themselves in that cart, but the 
 dead had dispossessed them. There was no longer 
 any talk of the tiring of the horses. A second 
 small cart, the rear half of the limber and the size 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 221 
 
 of a barrow, was yoked behind the first, and into 
 it we cramped and crowded our tired limbs. The 
 officers reappeared and rode ahead, we followed. 
 And now we must retrace most of our steps and 
 recross once more the battle-fields and trenches over 
 which we had come whilst night was young. Hap- 
 pily we knew a good deal more of the way than we 
 had done on coming. But we were not troubled; 
 we were resting. It was a marvellous summer 
 night. There was time to appreciate that now — 
 the moon remained over us in extraordinary 
 splendour. 
 
 We developed a fair pace, and it did not seem 
 to matter into what pits the limber fell or how it 
 lurched, we righted ourselves and went on. The 
 body in front of our eyes lay head lower than the 
 feet, and the feet were upturned before us. We 
 looked at the nails and the earth on the soles of the 
 boots, and the thought flickered in the brain, ''He 
 trod that earth in, he will never tread on it again; 
 instead, earth will press on him." The body lay 
 on its back and moved ever so little, and yet seemed 
 to be trying to make itself more comfortable now 
 and then. And the horseman in front and we in 
 the carts behind plunged among the gaunt silvery 
 ruins of the village of H . 
 
 "How pathetic it is!" I thought, ''that in peace- 
 time this magical night would express itself in 
 such a warm comfort of the soul, in the liquid 
 music of the nightingale in the wood, in the chirp- 
 ing of crickets in the grass, in happy, peaceful ham- 
 lets. How dififerently the serene stars would have 
 spoken to us then!" And I thought of nights in 
 
222 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS X 
 
 the past, and of nights in the radiant pages of 
 books. 
 
 One house wall standing by itself amid the ruins 
 took my eyes. It was a large tattered fragment 
 of wall, and where an upper storey had adjoined, 
 and once, perchance, a woman's bedroom had been, 
 was a six-foot round hole, splintered and rough- 
 ened, as it were, by the knuckles of the ogre who 
 had struck it. All about us were ruins, and our 
 passage was as through Nineveh or Tyre in a per- 
 fect Eastern night, with the barren desert all 
 around; but the ruins were so new that one saw, 
 as it were, the malice of the destroyer written over 
 them. One smelt the comfort of homes that had 
 been lately blasted away. What negation! No, 
 not the hand of God! Here was expressed no 
 wrath, but wantonness, ugliness, suicide, mania. 
 To think how all would have been placidly slum- 
 bering at that hour, but instead, heaps and wilder- 
 nesses of stones! 
 
 The fat sergeant who had cursed so violently 
 came and sat on the side of the rear cart with his 
 legs dangling down, and he looked at the corpse. 
 
 "For two two's I'd take those boots off and 
 change with him," said he, considering intently the 
 quality of the boots of the dead officer. 
 
 "Why, that's what I've been thinking this last 
 half-hour myself," said the other sergeant who ac- 
 companied us, "only it's a bit risky." 
 
 "Why should he be buried in such good boots? 
 An old pair of boots is just as good to be buried 
 in. It's a damned waste, and a waste to the coun- 
 try, too!" 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 223 
 
 *'Yes, it's a waste ; a pair of boots like that would 
 cost five pounds, not less." 
 
 "Somehow you can't help feeling sorry for him," 
 said the second sergeant, who evidently had some 
 qualms. 
 
 "Oh, it's come to him as it's got to come to all. 
 Just the same as any other man. I'm not sorry for 
 him," said the other. 
 
 So we passed on out of the village into the moor 
 beyond, and saw in a vale all the long line of green 
 and yellow tanks carefully disguised, and waiting 
 for dawn and the resumed attack. We entered 
 once more the old German lines, with all their 
 signs of war and desolation. 
 
 The man called Mountjoy, sitting crouched in 
 a corner of the limber, began telling us his story, 
 how he was a South American, a volunteer from 
 Buenos Ayres, but consumptive, and repeatedly 
 refused by doctors; how he had gone on his knees 
 to doctors and officers to get himself passed as fit, 
 and at last, when standards were lowered, he man- 
 aged, by telling the story of his enthusiasm, to get 
 taken in the army. But once in France, how bit- 
 terly he repented! How he knew what a fool he 
 had been! And his shadowy eyes burned with re- 
 gret in his large, pale face. He described in 
 broken English what a beautiful life there was at 
 home; told us his sorrows about his mother, whom 
 he had grieved, and how he had wished to send his 
 photograph to her but the Censor always refused 
 it. He it was who had come down from the line 
 earlier in the day and was doing double duty be- 
 cause he had known the way. 
 
224 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS x 
 
 "I ought to have four or five days clear after 
 this," he lisped hopefully. 
 
 "Well, you must look after yourself, for nobody 
 else will look after you in the army," said the ser- 
 geant morosely. 
 
 "Yes, that's true." 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "I don't suppose he ever travelled in that pos- 
 ture before," said the sergeant reflectively, looking 
 at the dead body. It now lay diagonally across 
 the cart. And he smiled at the contrast, at the 
 fine style of the living officer and this poverty- 
 stricken way in which the same ofiicer, now dead, 
 was travelling. 
 
 "... A heavy fellow . . ." 
 
 And once more we were in a village where the 
 hand of the maniac had been at work, and I thought 
 of the ruins in the hearts of men. Oh war, the 
 brutaliser! I thought of a contention of a very 
 drunken soldier: "The war has reduced men be- 
 low the level of the beasts that perish. To be un- 
 concerned at death is lower than the animal. 
 War, I tell you, knocks all the religion out of a 
 man." 
 
 I had held an opposite point of view. 
 
 Captain E told us as we lay in the cart 
 
 that we must have some food before turning in. 
 Then he galloped ahead, and we followed labori- 
 ously and creakingly through the stone-heaps of 
 
 B to the flushing, flooding water-point, where 
 
 we watered the patient and mute beasts who had 
 carried us. I shall always feel kinder toward 
 
X THE BODY OF MR. B 225 
 
 horses in memory of the many dead beasts we saw 
 'by the way that night, and for the fact that we were 
 too tired not to ride. 
 
 So we brought the body of Mr. B to the 
 
 lines at B . Worthy M'K , a barber of 
 
 Perth, greeted us as we came in, and though it was 
 not his task, he had taken charge of the kitchen 
 for awhile, and had made tea both for the officers 
 
 and for us. I put an arm round M'K as we 
 
 walked to the kitchen. It was four in the morn- 
 ing, and the long, strange night ended in gaiety and 
 talking. 
 
 The body of our poor lieutenant lay outside. 
 Next day it was carried further still, and buried 
 where lay many others of our regiment in the grow- 
 ing graveyard of Berles au Bois. Curiously 
 
 enough. Captain E was thrown from his horse 
 
 and badly injured; the other officer got gassed; 
 Mountjoy, who pined for South America, died of 
 pneumonia; the sergeant who was so callous to- 
 ward the dead officer died of influenza, and the 
 driver and the other sergeant were suffocated in a 
 cellar — all before armistice day. 
 
XI 
 
 AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 
 
 "We were fighting in a rose-garden which was 
 
 strewn with men who had been dead for some days. 
 
 The pink roses and the green corpses were a strange 
 
 combination," said L , the young poet who 
 
 wrote charming lyrics and had such a taste in art. 
 
 He was fresh to the work and looked on the dead 
 
 for the first time. The memory was distasteful, 
 
 and yet it inevitably recurred to his mind. He 
 
 strove to banish it as an elegant person in civil life 
 
 would naturally banish from the mind something 
 
 evil and repulsive, such as, for instance, say, some 
 
 beggar woman's face that his eyes by chance had 
 
 seen. I met the same L a month later; we 
 
 were discussing impressions of the war, and he 
 
 confessed that he felt no interest in the dead as 
 
 such ; they were just so many old cases of what had 
 
 once been men. He had seen so many dead that 
 
 already the instinctive horror had gone. 
 
 "They say Madame Tussaud offered a reward 
 
 to any one who would sleep a night in the Chamber 
 
 of Horrors, but I think I could do it," said Dusty 
 
 one night by a camp-fire, "I've slept in dug-outs 
 
 with dead men and been too tired to throw them 
 
 out, and I've wakened to feel rats' breath on my 
 
 cheeks. I think no wax-works could have terrors 
 
 for me." 
 
 226 
 
XI AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 227 
 
 The greatest number of the soldiers had become 
 indifferent to the horror of death, even if more 
 intensely alive than before to the horror of dying 
 themselves. In many an extraordinary callous- 
 ness toward dead bodies was bred. They could 
 kick a dead body, rifle the pockets of the dead, strip 
 off clothing, make jokes about facial expressions, 
 see waggon-wheels go over corpses, and never be 
 haunted by a further thought of it. Only if the 
 dead were British, or if it were known to you, the 
 dead body of some one in the same regiment, there 
 seemed to be a sadness and a coldness, a sort of 
 presentiment that you yourself would perish be- 
 fore the end and lie thus in trench or battle-field, 
 cold and inanimate, soaked with rain, uncared for, 
 lost to home and dear ones. 
 
 But the German dead had no interest. They 
 lay about everywhere unburied, for our own dead 
 had precedence with the burying-parties. All 
 along the devastated village streets the Germans 
 lay dead as they had been shot down in action of 
 flight, the look of running in fear was still on the 
 brown faces, and the open mouth and white teeth 
 seemed to betoken calls to their comrades as they 
 ran. In the debris of the houses to which men 
 rushed for souvenirs the dead lay too, with gentle 
 empty faces, and ever so shabby, shoddy tunics, and 
 their little round caps beside the subdued and 
 thoughtless heads. Germans lay in the dusty gut- 
 ters like old parcels, and men would turn them 
 over to see the face that was biting the dust. 
 When we were in the long ravine of Noreuil and 
 Vaux-Vraucourt, the ridges, and indeed the hoi- 
 
228 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi 
 
 lows of the ravine itself for miles round, were 
 strewn with dead. The air was heavy with putre- 
 faction, and on either hand extended the battle- 
 field, covered with wreckage and dug out with 
 huge shell-holes. Discarded rifles, equipments, 
 ration-tins, clothes, mouldy loaves of German 
 bread, tins of corned-beef, drums of ammunition 
 lay everywhere. Unexploded German bombs lay 
 about in scores, and likewise packages of explosives 
 for mining. The roads were scattered with unex- 
 ploded cartridges, with hundreds of thousands of 
 them, and shells of many calibres lay about in ex- 
 traordinary promiscuity, and amidst all these the 
 miserable dead lay where they fell, British and 
 German, friend and foe. The long trenches that 
 traversed the green fields were inhabited by corpses, 
 and it was a pity to think of them lying long un- 
 buried, and of the souvenir-hunters handling them 
 day by day and leaving them ever more bare. 
 
 I lived at that time for a fortnight in the midst 
 of this wreckage of war. The dug-out which I 
 had appropriated had been used by a German be- 
 fore me, and there was a half-finished, sodden let- 
 ter in it to a German mother, and there was a box 
 of revolver ammunition. It was eight feet in 
 length and a little deeper than a grave, and it was 
 dug out of bright yellow clay at the side of a sunken 
 road. Parties of men went to and fro all the day 
 along the way, and the way was one of running 
 mud. The roof was made of planks thrown across, 
 two German blankets, and a waterproof cape de- 
 tached from a set of equipment lying on the moor- 
 land above. There were five steps in the mud of 
 
XI AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 229 
 
 the bank leading up to the dug-out, and these were 
 made of German ammunition boxes full of ma- 
 chine-gun ammunition. There was a shelf w^hich 
 was an iron sleeper from the German light rail- 
 way, a fireplace made of a provision-tin; for table 
 a German stool, and for seat two petrol-tins filled 
 with dirt. Outside there were hundreds of strands 
 of loose telegraph-wire which were wandering 
 from their shattered posts, and on one of these, 
 pegged down by two "buckshee" bayonets, a sol- 
 dier's washing could be hung out to dry. Every 
 morning there was enough water in the sagging 
 waterproof cape on the roof to wash in, and some- 
 times for a regimental shave. The sense of being 
 surrounded on all sides by the dead never left one, 
 and as I sat and looked out on the scene I saw dis- 
 played on a hillside a hundred yards distant the 
 red and grey silhouettes of the ruins of Noreuil 
 looking like some village in Palestine. 
 
 From this point I used the privilege of liberty 
 which I had, and made expeditions to Queant and 
 the Drocourt switch and to Bourlon Wood and 
 Bourlon village, pulsating with the life of the Brit- 
 ish and French-Canadians who had just taken it, 
 to Pronville and Moeuvres, and to the trenches 
 known as P and Q and R where our battalion lay. 
 The fascination of going from dead to dead and 
 looking at each, and of going to every derelict 
 tank, abandoned gun, and shattered aeroplane was 
 so great that inevitably one went on further and 
 further from home, seeking and looking with a 
 strange intensity in the heart. I saw a great num- 
 ber of the dead, those blue bundles and green 
 
230 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi 
 
 bundles strewn far and wide over the autumn fields. 
 The story of each man's death was plainly shown 
 in the circumstances in which he lay. The brave 
 machine-gunners, with resolute look in shoulders 
 and face, lay scarcely relaxed beside their oiled 
 machines, which if you understood you could still 
 use, and beside piles of littered brass, the empty 
 cartridge-cases of hundreds of rounds which they 
 had fired away before being bayonetted at their 
 posts. Never to be forgotten was the sight of the 
 dead defenders of Ecoust lying there with all their 
 gear about them. On the other hand, facing those 
 machine-gunners, one saw how our men, rushing 
 forward in extended formation, each man a good 
 distance from his neighbour, had fallen, one here, 
 another there, one directly he had started forward 
 to the attack, and then others, one, two, three, four, 
 five, all in a sort of sequence, here, here, here, here, 
 here; one poor wretch had got far but had got 
 tangled in the wire, had pulled and pulled and at 
 last been shot to rags; another had got near enough 
 to strike the foe and been shot with a revolver. 
 Down at the bottom of deep trenches many dead 
 men lay, flat in the mud, sprawling along the duck- 
 boards or in the act of creeping cautiously out of 
 holes in the side. In other parts of the field one 
 saw the balance of battle and the Germans evi- 
 dently attacking, not extended, but in groups, and 
 now in groups together dead. One saw Germans 
 taking cover and British taking cover in shell-holes 
 inadequately deep, and now the men stiff as they 
 crouched. I remember especially two of our fel- 
 lows in a shell-hole; fear was in their faces, they 
 
XI AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 231 
 
 were crouching unnaturally, and one had evidently 
 been saying to the other, "Keep your head down!" 
 Now in both men's heads was a dent, the sort of 
 dent that appears in the side of a rubber ball when 
 not fully expanded by air. There were those who 
 had thought their cover inadequate and had run 
 for something better and been caught by a shell 
 on the way — hideous butcheries of men ; and there 
 were men whose pink bodies lay stripped to the 
 waist and some one had been endeavouring to save 
 them and had abandoned them in death — men with 
 all their kit about them, men without kit, men with 
 their great-coats on and men without great-coats. 
 The nearer one approached to the battle-lines 
 the less touched the dead appeared. But those 
 near our encampment at Noreuil all lay with the 
 whites of their pockets turned out and their tunics 
 and shirts undone by the souvenir-hunters — which 
 brings me once more to the general relationship 
 of the average living soldier to the dead. I re- 
 marked that though those in the battle-line were 
 very swift in the pursuit of the so-called souvenir, 
 in other words, in pursuit of the loot, it was those 
 behind, such as the artillerymen and labour corps, 
 who were the authentic human crows. I used to 
 walk a mile or so every evening to the five derelict 
 tanks which lay on the sky-line on the way toward 
 Queant and I got to know the dead on the way, 
 and I watched them daily grow more and more 
 naked as successive waves of souvenir-hunters went 
 over them. There was a handsome German some 
 six feet three, very well clothed, and the first time 
 I saw him he was as he had fallen. Then his 
 
232 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi 
 
 boots went — he had a good pair of boots. Then his 
 tunic had been taken ofif. A few days later he was 
 lying in his pants with many parts of the dead 
 body exposed. 
 
 I came home late one evening and fell in with 
 a man from one of the sixty-pounder batteries at 
 Queant. He was grubbily but methodically ex- 
 amining the corpses of the German machine-gun- 
 ners and hoping to pick up a revolver. I watched 
 him examine one without success and he gave the 
 dead body a kick. "The dirty barsted," said he, 
 as if he were accusing the corpse, "somebody's bin 
 'ere before me." 
 
 The revolver or automatic pistol was the best 
 prize of the souvenir-hunter. Money was sought, 
 and watches and rings. There is something grue- 
 some in the act of taking a marriage ring or even 
 an ordinary ring from a dead man's hand and then 
 wearing it or giving it to be worn in England. 
 But very few German dead were left with rings 
 and the Roman Catholics were despoiled of their 
 crosses. The legitimate tokens to take were the 
 brightly coloured numerals from the shoulders of 
 tunic or great-coat, the officers' helmets (not the 
 saucepans but the Alexander-the-Greats), field- 
 glasses, pocket-books, etc. But the hope of each 
 seeker was the pistol. 
 
 I was wandering through a shattered and de- 
 serted military camp one morning and a questing 
 major burst upon me. I saluted, but he brushed 
 formality aside. "Hullo, hullo," says he, "is it 
 true that your regiment has a special privilege to 
 look for automatic pistols?" 
 
XI AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 233 
 
 I looked demure in the presence of such exalted 
 rank and the major regarded me searchingly. 
 
 *'I'm out to give fifty francs for every automatic 
 pistol I can pick up," said he. And that was a 
 plain hint to me that if I could sell he would buy. 
 
 He was major in a regiment impolitely referred 
 to by our haughty Spartans as a ''grabby mob." 
 
 There must have been many men who were not 
 as lacking in imagination and impressionableness 
 as the majority who ranged o'er the battle-field 
 seeking for treasures. But I did not myself meet 
 these. Even the best saw nothing in taking away 
 any property which might remain with the dead. 
 Such property was no good to corpses. It was 
 curious what a great number of letters, both Brit- 
 ish and German, lay on the battle-field. These had 
 been taken out of the pockets and pocket-books of 
 the dead and since they were no use had been 
 thrown to the winds — literally to the winds, for 
 when the wind rose they blew about like dead 
 leaves. There were photographs, too, prints of 
 wife or sweetheart, of mother, or perchance of 
 baby born whilst father was at the war — the price- 
 less, worthless possessions of those whose bodies 
 lay on the altar. 
 
 It never seemed to me worth while to collect 
 lurid mementoes such as helmets or bombs, but I 
 often designed to make a representative collection 
 of the letters both German and British which were 
 lying about one's feet. I read many of them; 
 though there was something almost intolerably 
 tragic in the hopes and fears and boasts and pre- 
 sentiments of those who had written to men who 
 
234 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS XI 
 
 were in truth destined to be killed. Many, many 
 of the letters said some one was sorry that letters 
 had not been written, but promised to write longer 
 and oftener. Many letters were full of admoni- 
 tions to be careful, not to take risks. Others prom- 
 ised "leave soon," ''home for Christmas," "the war 
 over." Some told stories of the air raids on Lon- 
 don; others were full of domestic details and never 
 mentioned the war. Some obviously endeavoured 
 to keep cheery because it had been said the men 
 needed cheerful letters, but others refused to be 
 reconciled to the separation which the soldier's go- 
 ing to the Front had meant. Perhaps they might 
 have sounded trite and ordinary, but as being writ- 
 ten to those who were about to die, it seemed as if 
 Fate read them also and smiled in malice. 
 
 I had a suspicion that many of the dead who 
 lay unburied for so long were not reported dead 
 — but simply as "missing." So in one case where 
 several letters lay strewn round a corpse whose 
 pockets were inside out, I took one crumpled mis- 
 sive and sent it to the writer of it with a carefully 
 written note about the young lad's fate. In an- 
 swer I received a letter from the father asking for 
 definite news of his son if I had any, as he had not 
 been heard of for a long while. Whatever reply 
 I sent, would I please send it to his business ad- 
 dress, not to his home, as the mother was so anxious. 
 By that time, however, the boy's body with seven 
 others had been put into one hastily dug grave, the 
 names but not the units nor the numbers had been 
 printed on the one cross. I then informed the fa- 
 ther of his son's death and of the exact locality of 
 
XI AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 235 
 
 the grave. In due course of time the father re- 
 plied that I must be mistaken, for his son had been 
 reported as wounded and missing. I wrote no 
 more, but I formed the opinion, which was after- 
 wards completely confirmed, that "missing" very 
 often meant dead and unburied, and that an un- 
 buried British soldier if he belonged to a unit 
 which had passed on was almost inevitably reported 
 "missing." Burying was such a tedious job when 
 it had to be done as a fatigue by a party not really 
 responsible for burying, that it was done in the 
 most rough-and-ready way. 
 
 War robs the individual soldier of reverence, of 
 care except for himself, of tenderness, of the hush 
 of awe which should silence and restrain. War 
 and the army have their own atmosphere in which 
 some one else being dead, as much as killing some 
 one else, succeeds in being trivial and even upon 
 occasion jocular. Two sergeants going out for a 
 stroll came upon a German corpse with the steel 
 helmet right down over the eyes. One of them 
 lifted up the helmet in order to see the face prop- 
 erly. A saturnine gloom was on the lips and this 
 had been intensified by the masking of the eyes. 
 When the sergeant lifted the helmet it pulled up 
 the flesh with it, and the upper lip rose from over 
 the ivory teeth with a ghastly grin. "Take that 
 smile off your face," said the sergeant, and let the 
 helmet drop back over the eyes again. And they 
 laughed. In these and in so many, imagination 
 and sensitiveness were swallowed up by war. But 
 another soldier, new to war's horrors, came upon 
 a Royal Scot lying dead on a ridge. Beside the 
 
236 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xi 
 
 corpse was a packet of note-paper and envelopes 
 which some souvenir-hunter searching his kit had 
 forgotten to take. The soldier was just in need of 
 note-paper and envelopes to write home, and he 
 took this packet away from that dead man. 
 
 All that night and for many days he seemed to 
 hear the tiny, tiny voice of the corpse saying or 
 rather whining in his ear, "You've stolen my note- 
 paper and envelopes," grudging them and demand- 
 ing them back, — as if the dead were misers. 
 
 But the soldier did not return the stationery to 
 the place where he found it, and after a while his 
 mind seemed to harden and take on a sort of crust. 
 He had been haunted by the faces of the dead, and 
 then these faces ceased to haunt him, and he had 
 obtained the soldier's peace of mind. 
 
 The greatest and perhaps the only consoling 
 truth which can be learned from the expression 
 of the dead is that a corpse has very little to do with 
 a living body The dead body is sacred, but it is 
 not the person who died. That person has mysteri- 
 ously disappeared. The look of the dead body, 
 its shrunken individuality as compared with that of 
 a live man, must have partly caused the great vogue 
 of spiritualism — ^that look might be taken as part 
 of the evidence of immortality. That was the 
 chief positive impression which I obtained. For 
 the rest, the whole matter was infinitely pathetic. 
 There were one or two of us who felt there would 
 always, ever after, be a cast of sadness in us because 
 of what we had seen. I felt how inhuman we 
 had been to one another. How could we come at 
 
XI AS TOUCHING THE DEAD 237 
 
 last to Our Father with all this brothers' blood 
 upon our hands? 
 
 "Europe, Europe!" I thought; "what a picture 
 might be painted of Europe, the tragic woman, 
 with bare breasts, anguished eyes, but no children. 
 — Oh, Europe, where are thy children?" 
 
XII 
 
 PADRES AND OFFICERS 
 
 Our battalion possessed one Church of England 
 priest who was serving in the ranks, Sergeant 
 L , who afterwards became the quartermaster- 
 sergeant of the company to which I belonged. 
 He only came to France in August, and when I 
 saw him first, whilst I did not know he was a priest 
 or an educated man, I took him merely to be a 
 quiet sergeant with rather less personality than his 
 exuberant confreres. He had a passion for the 
 game of chess, and used to ask each new person 
 he met whether he played. When he discovered 
 that I knew the moves — I was perhaps the only 
 man in our ranks who did know them — he felt ir- 
 resistibly drawn to inventing the means of playing. 
 There is no greater social enemy of man than the 
 chess fiend, and I watched him with apprehension 
 mark out a chequer work of sixty-four black and 
 white squares on the three-legged stool in my dug- 
 out at N . But the game of chess was the 
 
 means of my knowing much about his character 
 and history. 
 
 We had an original set of pieces. The white 
 rooks were white buttons from the pull-strings of 
 stick bombs ; the knights were part of the detonators 
 
 of hand-grenades; the perfect bishops came out of 
 
 238 
 
XII PADRES AND OFFICERS 239 
 
 the internal structure of German egg bombs; the 
 queens were the unscrewed nosecaps of shells. It 
 seemed natural to refer to the white queen as the 
 "mobled queen" in the player's phrase. The 
 kings were anti-tank cartridges; the black pawns 
 were the black cordite tablets used as charges for 
 heavy guns, and the white pawns were the bright 
 yellow circles of material sometimes discoverable 
 in unexploded star-shells. Sometimes revolver 
 ammunition or parts of German respirators did 
 duty, and the pieces in general were a motley crew. 
 We took a great interest in evolving a set of men 
 for both sides, and changed the personnel so often 
 it was somewhat of a mental feat to keep in mind 
 who was who upon the board. 
 
 So we played chess and he told me his story. 
 He had been a volunteer at the time of the Boer 
 War, and when that war was over had remained 
 in the army for some time. Being of a religious 
 turn of mind he was always a man apart. He left 
 the army eventually to study, but he had by that 
 time had six years of army life and had attained 
 sergeant's rank. He went to college and had rapid 
 success in study, but he told me he found the atmos- 
 phere of the theological college very much less 
 pleasant than that of the army. In the army there 
 was much coarseness and brutality of thought and 
 conversation, but men were more or less ashamed 
 of it. But at college the men prided themselves 
 on their nasty stories and a sort of coarse and 
 cynical point of view, which nevertheless they did 
 not quite attain, and they were ashamed of their 
 respectability. He was more lonely among the 
 
240 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xii 
 
 students than he had been in the army. How- 
 ever, he progressed very v^ell in theology, took a 
 good degree, and was ordained. He obtained a 
 living in Surrey and had a full life there. But 
 when the war with Germany commenced he felt 
 the call of the army again, and at once gave up 
 his clerical duties and volunteered for the Front. 
 Then, as often happened in the army to enthusi- 
 asts of his kind, he was kept in the training bat- 
 talion at home and not sent to France until the ini- 
 tial enthusiasm had cooled. Though he had been 
 practically the whole of the war in khaki it was 
 only August 191 8 that saw him in France. 
 
 I soon learned that he was very much pained 
 at the brutality of the conversation, which was so 
 much worse at the Front than at home, or than it 
 had been in the Boer War, and he found difficulty 
 in accommodating his mind to the flow of brutal 
 talk which assailed his ears day and night. He 
 was also much horrified at the way men spent their 
 Paris leave. Leave was being granted regularly 
 at that time for men to go to Paris to enjoy them- 
 selves, and such leave was often little more than a 
 trip to the houses of ill-fame. For an illiterate 
 soldier there was little other interest in Paris ex- 
 cept low pleasure. 
 
 L was known generally by the nickname of 
 
 "Creeping Barrage," for he habitually looked out 
 of the top of his eyeballs through his lowered eye- 
 brows, and had a sort of spectral glide forward 
 when he walked toward you. It was really a 
 clerical gaze, and his face had set in it and would 
 not change. 
 
XII PADRES AND OFFICERS 241 
 
 His adventures with us were interesting in them- 
 selves. Being a man of education he was not likely 
 to be popular, and being also, as every one knew, 
 a clergyman in civil life, most thought he must be 
 a bit of a fool. With the private soldiers, as he 
 was stern though just, he did not have much 
 trouble, but his colleagues of the same rank were 
 more difficult, and set out to make a fool of him. 
 The officers with whom he came in contact gener- 
 ally assumed that because he was a clergyman he 
 must be incompetent, and gave him a great deal of 
 blame when anything went wrong. I think he 
 gradually won them over. When he first ap- 
 peared, several thought he was a Baptist minister. 
 When they found out he was Church of England, 
 it made such a difference. He was, however, in 
 himself a fine man in most ways; very athletic, an 
 indefatigable marcher, ready to carry any amount 
 of stuff, his own and other people's, on his back. 
 He was not afraid of anything, he neither drank 
 nor smoked, and did not use bad language, and 
 he lived according to his religious principles. 
 
 Those who had known him in England, said 
 that he knelt every night by his barrack-room bed 
 in prayer before he lay down to sleep. 
 
 Though he was laughed at for many things, he 
 was, in secret and sometimes also openly, greatly 
 admired because he lived what he had preached. 
 
 'T will say this about the Creeping Barrage," 
 said one: "He lives the life." 
 
 "The only Christians we ever had in this bat- 
 talion," said an old soldier, "were Q.M.Sgt. L 
 
 and M . As for L , he lives the life of a 
 
242 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xii 
 
 Christian, which is what cannot be said of many 
 
 who are paid to live it. And M , when he was 
 
 ordered to place his own brother under arrest, re- 
 fused to do so, preferring rather to lose his stripes" 
 — another battalion story. 
 
 I could not help feeling that L was a great 
 
 spiritual gain, and that his life, though he never 
 preached or "saved souls," or betrayed by any act 
 that he was a priest, nevertheless made a deep 
 impression on men's minds. 
 
 I do not think that he regarded himself as in 
 any way a priest whilst he was in khaki. He was, 
 I believe, somewhat of a sacramentarian and 
 ''High Church." His Christian character was 
 natural, it was not a priestly matter. But to the 
 men character was everything in religion. I re- 
 member my astonishment one day when a man 
 next whom I slept in a tent told me he was not a 
 Christian — he drank and smoked and used bad 
 language, he was sorry to say; he'd often wanted 
 to get clear of these bad habits, but he confessed 
 they were too much for him, so he was obliged to 
 remain "not a Christian." 
 
 "But a man can drink and swear and still remain 
 a Christian," said I. 
 
 "Oh no," he insisted; "it's not going to church 
 that makes the Christian — it's living well." 
 
 And that was the general army point of view. 
 Christianity was character and it was conduct. 
 
 Now our padres did not exhibit character. 
 They preached, they spoke to the men, they were 
 saluted and respected. But whilst the men lived 
 a hard life, and each, as it were, carried a cross, 
 
XII PADRES AND OFFICERS 243 
 
 the padres, being officers, lived at ease; and 
 whereas the men had poor food, they ate and drank 
 in the company of the officers. I could not help 
 feeling how badly handicapped the padres were. 
 
 We had had one chaplain who had done ex- 
 cellent work: he had comforted the wounded and 
 the dying, been often under fire and in danger, and 
 yet never turned a hair; a man who cared little for 
 his rank as such and was concerned exclusively 
 with God's service. He was by no means the fight- 
 ing parson or the sporting padre that the men are 
 supposed to like, but his name was never mentioned 
 without affection and admiration. This was Cap- 
 tain M . There were others also who won 
 
 the men's esteem, but my impression was that in 
 the war chaplain's work had failed of its object. 
 
 They could not preach the Sermon on the Mount 
 because they thought loving your enemies con- 
 trary to the spirit of the war. They could not in- 
 veigh against lust because the medical officer was 
 of opinion that Nature's needs must be satisfied. 
 They could not attack bad language because it was 
 accepted as manly. They could not attack drunk- 
 enness because it was the men's relaxation, and a 
 good drinker was considered a good fighter. 
 What was there for a poor padre to say to the 
 men? 
 
 But life at the Front exposed men to many more 
 temptations than did the old life at home. The 
 men succumbed to them. Sexual intercourse was 
 regarded as a physical necessity for the men. Be- 
 sides being the medical point of view, it became 
 the official army point of view as well, and we 
 
244 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xii 
 
 were often told in lectures that it was natural, and 
 all we had to do was to use the safeguards and 
 preventatives which were at our disposal to save 
 us from disease. The padre could not go and 
 reason with the men who upon occasion were to 
 be seen in queues outside the houses with red blinds. 
 Hundreds of thousands of men who had led com- 
 paratively pure lives until they saw France learned 
 and were even encouraged to go with impure 
 women. As many learned to drink and to get 
 drunk. I know purity has little to do with religion, 
 and that the first thing to obtain is a loving and 
 humble heart, but the British working-man can 
 only apprehend religion from the point of view of 
 moral behaviour, and in his opinion "religion is a 
 wash-out." 
 
 I met whilst I was in France some ten or twelve 
 chaplains. They all had pleasant personalities, 
 and it was a relief to converse with them after the 
 rough-and-ready wit of the men. I saw them 
 from a different angle from that in which they were 
 seen by the officers. What struck me most about 
 them was the extraordinary way they seemed to 
 make their minds fit to the official demands made 
 upon opinion. They always rapidly absorbed the 
 official point of view about the war, and often the 
 officers' point of view as well. 
 
 They based their opinions on the leaders in the 
 Times, and they thought the Morning Post a little 
 bit wild and the Daily News bolshevik. They ate 
 Germans for breakfast, tea, and supper, and were 
 often more bloodthirsty than the men. One or 
 two of them drank whiskey with gusto, and spoke 
 
XII PADRES AND OFFICERS 245 
 
 the gaudy language of the army. "Graham," said 
 one, "if there's one thing more than another that 
 is important in this war, it is that the whiskey supply 
 should not get low." One whom I knew well was 
 an extraordinary believer in discipline, quite a 
 Prussian in his way, and liked men to stand to at- 
 tention when speaking to him, and say "Sir" and 
 the rest. He told me he had a physical loathing 
 for the Hun, and was ready to see the whole race, 
 man, woman and child, exterminated. I pro- 
 tested that God made the German, that though he 
 was our foe he was human and was entitled in our 
 thoughts to human dignity. Thereupon ensued a 
 conversation made bitter on his side, and I had to 
 withdraw as gently as I could. 
 
 The men, whilst they liked those who talked to 
 them of home, were cold toward them in the mat- 
 ter of religion. For the chaplains did not live the 
 Christian life in any pictorial or dramatic way. 
 The men no doubt thought that as servants of God 
 they should be angels of mercy and light. They 
 expected them to stand out in extraordinary con- 
 trast to the ugliness of war. The man like L 
 
 in his silent service and duty did far more to give 
 the battalion a sense for religion. 
 
 That brings me to a conclusion, and it is that 
 in any future great organisation of our manhood 
 I think more could be done if it were decided to 
 abolish the military rank of chaplains. They are 
 not captains. And such titles as Colonel the 
 Reverend or Brigadier-General the Reverend are 
 almost ridiculous. I know there would be a ter- 
 rible ordeal to go through, but it seems the spir- 
 
246 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xil 
 
 itual needs of the army would be better served if 
 candidates for chaplaincy were trained in the 
 ranks, and did duty with their brothers, only being 
 excused and given special privilege when they 
 were needed in the special function of priests. 
 Then they might be brought out to take a service 
 or to bury the dead, and might be made stretcher- 
 bearers during a fight. It would perhaps be a 
 test of professing Christianity too terrible to ask 
 nowadays. And yet I am convinced that the priest 
 in that position would find himself nearer to the 
 heart and soul of the soldier than he can be as an 
 officer. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE GREAT ADVANCE 
 
 The final great advance was caused by the defeat 
 of the Germans in mid-July on their Soissons- 
 Chateau-Thierry flank, consequent upon the abor- 
 tive bid for Paris. In that victory of Marshal 
 Foch, the French general not only won a battle but 
 a war, and he demonstrated to the mind of the Ger- 
 man Stafif that Teutonic resources would not 
 stretch to Paris, and that in fact there were not 
 enough German soldiers to hold the greatly ex- 
 tended battle-lines which then obtained. It must 
 suddenly and for the first time, and yet finally, have 
 become indisputably clear that the vast German 
 dream of victory could not be realised. The op- 
 tion constantly before the German eyes had been 
 World-Power or Downfall. Now only downfall 
 began to be left to them. 
 
 Not only was the hope of victory lost, but sud- 
 denly the danger of complete defeat confronted 
 the German. His armies were perilously insecure. 
 His skill in the rapid transfer of troops from one 
 sector to another became of no avail; for when he 
 had brought the Franco-American advance to a 
 standstill on the River Vesle, his line immediately 
 gave way in the Montdidier sector. He there- 
 fore made a large decision — to evacuate his newly- 
 
 247 
 
248 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 gotten gains and return to the Hindenburg system 
 of defences. Such a retreat as ensued was very 
 trying to the morale, and it gave birth to the Spar- 
 tacus movement in the army — the revolt at last of 
 the military slaves. However, from a military 
 point of view the decision to go was creditable to 
 the German mind, and the skill with which the 
 operation was carried out won a good deal of 
 praise, though neither the decision nor the skill 
 with which it was realised could rob the whole 
 matter of its intense significance in change of for- 
 tune. For with it the Allies entered upon their 
 victorious role. 
 
 The German retreat began in the southern sec- 
 tors of the line and spread northward. The 
 enemy's guns were moved back and also the main 
 bodies of the armies. Once the Germans were 
 well under way with their plans for evacuation lit- 
 tle was done to harass them. Each sector seemed 
 to wait until the enemy had to all intents gone, and 
 then our troops made an advance. A telling at- 
 tack by our division could no doubt have been 
 made weeks earlier, but they were held back till the 
 main body of the enemy had got away. Three 
 months' more or less continuous fighting ensued, 
 and all these three months we fought delaying 
 parties and isolated machine-gun posts, or we 
 stormed fortified villages or strongly-held sections 
 of dominant trench or half-constructed pill-boxes. 
 As far as our section of the advance was concerned 
 we were never near obtaining a general engage- 
 ment with the enemy or a large capitulation of his 
 forces. Our progress was a taking over, after 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 249 
 
 rather bitter encounters with enemy rear-guards, 
 what the Germans had evacuated. 
 
 The proceedings opened in late August when a 
 test raid was carried out under the charge of Mr. 
 
 B , who perished afterwards in the early days 
 
 of the advance. It was a remarkably noiseless 
 raid, and was said to have been perfect in its way. 
 Volunteers had been asked for, and many fellows 
 were found eager for the afifair, though none could 
 say how much or how little danger there was in it. 
 My bold Fitz of Virginia volunteered — saw him- 
 self winning a V.C. or in any case distinction of 
 some kind. The party was twenty-two in all. 
 They were to go out armed mainly with clubs, like 
 savages. These clubs were made specially for 
 them by our pioneers. They were made of the 
 iron part of Mills hand-grenades clamped to en- 
 trenching-tool handles. One sharp blow on the 
 head from one of these and your enemy needed 
 no more. The raiders carried no rifles. There 
 was no artillery or machine gunnery helping them 
 from behind. They wore no helmets or service 
 caps, but tight bags of stockingette over their hair; 
 their faces were blackened so as not to catch the 
 light of the stars, their hands also.^ All were prac- 
 tised to stealthy silent movement, and all thirsted 
 for German blood in a particular sort of way, and 
 felt themselves curiously at home in this adventur- 
 ous tribe which had been formed. 
 
 Shortly after midnight they crossed No Man's 
 Land together and started on their eerie quest, all 
 
 1 Also for the purpose of readily recognising an enemy. If you see 
 a white man you know at once he's not on your side. 
 
250 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiil 
 
 together, all silent, all nursing short clubs and 
 ready to beat down an enemy at the slightest alert 
 — over the dark, shell-torn ground, under the pale 
 stars, silence and stealth. . . . 
 
 If they had been detected by the enemy ahead 
 a German machine-gun might have mown all down 
 in one revolution. So in the tense minds of the 
 raiders ranged constantly the possibility of mis- 
 chance. But they made no mistakes, they carried 
 the raid out perfectly, and reached with great 
 trepidation the German wire. But if occasion- 
 ally a man got caught on that and stirred the rusty 
 barbs no sniper brought him down from the van- 
 tage ground beyond. For the Germans whom we 
 had believed to be there all the summer were gone. 
 They had stolen away to the rear leaving behind 
 them only isolated sentries and runners. 
 
 The whole length of the shell-stricken gulleys 
 seemed empty; the dug-outs were all dark. It was 
 impossible to be sure in the night whether there 
 were not enemies hidden away in the depths of 
 the dug-outs, and our black men with their clubs 
 dare not explore such places. But as they had 
 been charged to bring prisoners in they went on. 
 
 They crept silently over the back of the German 
 front line and went on till at last they discovered an 
 enemy post. There was a sentry and his relief 
 waiting silently, but seeing and suspecting nothing. 
 Six men flew at them and pounded their heads with 
 the clubs and down went one Fritz all of a heap. 
 One was killed, the other bruised and over- 
 whelmed. They stripped the former of "souven- 
 irs," each of the new men being eager to get a token 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 251 
 
 to take home by and by; the other German they 
 dragged along with them: he must suffice as pris- 
 oner and be interrogated for intelligence. Poor 
 fellow, he was too near dead to go straight, and he 
 whimpered as they kept prodding him on with 
 their clubs. They got him entangled on the wire, 
 moreover, and had difficulty in pulling him off. 
 They brought him to Headquarters, but he seemed 
 too exhausted to speak and they carried him to the 
 medical officer who made some acid remarks, for 
 Fritz was dead. 
 
 However it was considered a highly successful 
 raid; there were no casualties on our side, and 
 
 Mr. B , who by God's will was not destined to 
 
 live another month, was very much praised. I 
 was told this type of raid was introduced by the 
 Canadians who had the instinct and the idea of it 
 from the North American Indians. 
 
 The secret was then thoroughly out — that the 
 Germans had gone and were going back every- 
 where. Very soon all the transport accompani- 
 ment of fighting on a large scale began to throng 
 the roads, and the decision to attack the enemy 
 had matured. Had the main body of the enemy's 
 troops confronted us it is unlikely that we should 
 have been allowed to advance. But the situation 
 was guaranteed against accident, and the first day's 
 progress was more in the nature of a picnic than a 
 battle. Still the enemy knew also that we had be- 
 gun to move forward as he retired. He also had 
 his "intelligence," and had devised means for our 
 delay at critical points in the country. It was said 
 that his rear-guards were composed entirely of vol- 
 
252 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 unteers or in any case of picked men. They cer- 
 tainly comported themselves very well and saved 
 innumerable lives to Germany. It seems, however, 
 difficult to believe that they had volunteered. 
 There was so much indiscipline and discontent in 
 the German Army that one could hardly have ex- 
 pected that many would have been ready to ofifer 
 themselves for such heroic service. 
 
 These rear-guards were met with the utmost 
 ferocity by our troops who made short work of 
 them whenever they got near them with the bay- 
 onet. But on the other hand the soldiers of these 
 rear-guards, skilfully posted as they were, behaved 
 in a very gallant manner and caused a great deal 
 of slaughter and delay before they perished or sur- 
 rendered. Perhaps with more military skill our 
 armies could have accounted for them more speed- 
 ily and with less suffering. The exploits of the 
 autumn of 1918, whilst they redound to the hero- 
 ism of our soldiers, did not seem to show great 
 military genius at work behind us. We had a 
 good cause and our morale was good, and we had 
 large numbers and many guns, but did not trust to 
 brain. The organisation of the transport was ob- 
 viously weak and the enemy was never pressed. 
 On the German side there was a bad cause, a weak- 
 ening morale, not large numbers, and compara- 
 tively few guns, but a good organisation of trans- 
 port and plenty of brain work. The whole autumn 
 campaign was Brain versus Cause and the Cause 
 won. No matter what blunders our leaders made 
 the common soldier always felt the cause was good. 
 But the German did not believe in his cause, was 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 253 
 
 not ready to suffer for it any more and lapsed into 
 indiscipline. There was a steady decline in disci- 
 pline throughout September and October. Had 
 the Germans been able to resist with as much indi- 
 vidual tenacity on the ist of November as on the 
 ist of September there had been no armistice. 
 
 The methods of attack employed by our boys 
 were quite straightforward; we were first held up 
 by the machine-gunners in the formidable Banks 
 Reserve. The Germans ought to have been sur- 
 prised by rapid night assault or gassed or en- 
 veloped or raided by tanks, but it was more or less 
 left to our brave fellows to rush in broad davlight 
 a fully-prepared enemy. The tanks were evidently 
 the machine-gunners' worst enemy. Not that they 
 feared a solitary tank or an isolated one, for by the 
 concentrated fire of several machine-guns on one 
 tank the latter could always be put out of action. 
 But a whole series of tanks moving forward in a 
 crocodile queue was the worst menace the machine- 
 gunners knew. But the distribution and supply of 
 tanks was not nearly adequate for a true economy 
 of lives. There were not enough, or they got lost, 
 or couldn't be got up in time. There was, there- 
 fore, no rapid success for us at those prepared po- 
 sitions. The enemy held on two days and thus en- 
 abled his main army to get beyond the canals (Du 
 Nord and St. Quentin) and to organise further de- 
 laying action there. There were heavy losses suf- 
 fered by the attackers, especially by the Bill 
 Browns, whose discipline, courage, and fame com- 
 mitted them then, as ever, to doing the impossible 
 in human heroism and endurance. I lost a whole 
 
254 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 series of comrades and friends wounded or killed. 
 
 C , who had filled up a blank file next to me at 
 
 Little Sparta, was killed; S , recruited from the 
 
 S.E. Railway, a jolly, happy, middle-aged man, 
 who always hailed me as Steve and had a cheery 
 
 word, was killed. H , the American boy who 
 
 used to dance all night at New York, was wounded. 
 Six sergeants with whom I was more or less ac- 
 quainted were killed, and several other old soldiers 
 and new recruits. The division went out of ac- 
 tion to obtain reinforcement and reorganise. The 
 Bill Browns could not make up their numbers and 
 were therefore partly repleted from the survivors 
 of the battle of Hazebrouck road, the heroic 4th 
 Brigade. 
 
 Of those who came through the fight unhurt a 
 
 word might be said of B , the American actor 
 
 from St. Louis, who played the part of Hamlet. 
 He came up against the military machine in France 
 and was continually in the guard-room for in- 
 subordination or the like. It began with the sub- 
 ject of his wife's death in America. A dour ser- 
 geant said to him one day on parade, "I suppose 
 you know your wife's dead." And in that way he 
 learned the sad news. He took offence at this 
 piece of brutality and got the sergeant into trouble. 
 Then the sergeant became acting sergeant-major, 
 and B could do nothing right, and was pun- 
 ished, punished, punished — never out of punish- 
 ment. But he did well whenever the battalion 
 went into action and distinguished himself at Banks 
 Reserve. He was extremely quick-witted and cer- 
 tainly brave. It was his tongue and his lack of 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 255 
 
 patience that got him into trouble. But he knew 
 German, and obtained intelligence in the line, and 
 was very serviceable. 
 
 However, the very fact of his knowing German 
 and talking it volubly caused him to be eyed with 
 suspicion by the illiterate old soldiers. 
 
 Fitz and I were talking together afterwards, 
 and a knot of others came near us and began dis- 
 cussing B . 
 
 ^^All he is, is a dirty spy. What he wants is the 
 firing-party, and put him up against a wall." 
 
 Fitz jumped up as if shot. "What's that you 
 say? He's no spy. Damn it, who said he was a 
 spy?" 
 
 And he was ready to fight. But the canny old 
 soldier who said it looked sour and was silent. 
 
 No, B was a fine fellow. A bit too fond of 
 
 talking, but an interesting boy all the same, and I 
 was sorry for him. 
 
 We rested in the old reserve lines near R , 
 
 now become strangely calm since all our guns had 
 gone ahead. A week later our progress was re- 
 sumed, and we marched back to Banks Reserve, 
 through St. Leger, north of ficoust and Noreuil, 
 to within sight of Bourlon Wood, and the approxi- 
 mation of two great highways to Cambrai. It was 
 an easy advance over a conquered wilderness. 
 Here the calamity of war showed its worst. The 
 villages were flat or pounded to heaps of brick- 
 dust and mud; conical rubbish heaps marked the 
 sites of churches; by garden flowers growing wild 
 amid debris you realised that homes had once been 
 beautiful there. The land lay uncultivated for 
 
256 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 leagues, and had degenerated to moorland. And 
 it was wilder than any moor, pitted by shells and 
 gnarled with rusty wire. The atmosphere of 
 France seemed taken away, and a new atmosphere, 
 as of some vast waste continent, had been supplied. 
 Thus possibly France looked in the time of Caesar's 
 wars or before. But the neat, tended, civilised 
 land of to-day had disappeared. There was some- 
 thing strangely depressing about this part of our 
 advance. Perhaps it was the odour of so many 
 unburied dead. The Germans lay tumbled all 
 along the way, some biting the dust with their sod- 
 den faces; others lying on their backs and showing 
 gleaming teeth to heaven. Our own British dead 
 also lay around, and could not be buried for lack 
 of labour. And possibly more horses than men 
 lay dead and decayed, and were eaten by the rats, 
 and shrank in rain and sun and could not get bur- 
 ied. Noreuil, Lagnicourt, Moeuvres were all in 
 that state, as were also Queant and Pronville, and 
 many other war ruins into which our boys adven- 
 tured. It seems surprising now what good health 
 every one enjoyed despite the general decay. 
 
 Meanwhile the Germans retired, and we were in 
 light engagements near Moeuvres and the Canal 
 du Nord, and held the line in alternation with our 
 brother regiments. 
 
 We all thought there would be a great battle 
 for Cambrai, that we should make a vast attack, 
 something resembling the large German offensive 
 of the spring and summer. We were harassed by 
 the German defence, and felt we must at all costs 
 break through the system — heap confusion after 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 257 
 
 confusion on our enemies — or else a winter stagna- 
 tion would set in. An opinion began to be current 
 that we should chase the enemy all the autumn and 
 all the winter too. 
 
 We took the Canal du Nord, and it was observed 
 that the enemy had no intention of holding Cam- 
 brai, and we took the Canal de St. Quentin. In 
 this latter action "Gurt," the New York butler, 
 met his death. As I have said, he was an honest 
 and industrious and simple Christian, never using 
 bad language and always ready to help a friend. 
 He did not arrive at the front till September, yet 
 with so little time to go before the armistice he per- 
 ished. His platoon was moving in single file over 
 
 dangerous country. One of his comrades, D , 
 
 had fallen, and Gurt going back to try and ban- 
 dage him and stanch his wound, found his com- 
 rade (one of the same old squad) was past all help, 
 and therefore returned. On his way back a 
 sniper's bullet sped through his brain. So he went 
 past us with one clear, noble action. I always felt 
 a soft spot in my heart for Gurt. When I got to 
 France at Easter, I found written on the inside of 
 the chin-strap of my steel helmet, "With the best 
 of wishes for your safe return," signed by him. 
 When he died I felt somehow that "coming after 
 me he had been preferred before me." He was 
 the right sort. We could do with more "Gurts" 
 in this world. 
 
 Whilst we were in the canal some visited the 
 grey ruins of Moeuvres. I went up to Bourlon 
 Wood and saw the wonderful village with its long 
 red chateau like a palace, and the enigmatical 
 
258 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 church showing exposed its inwards of lath and 
 plaster and the decayed vitals of its altar. Terrific 
 effects had been wrought by the artillery; whole 
 frameworks of roofs seemed to have been removed 
 as by one blast and deposited in the streets — such 
 streets, one mass of red-brick debris and grey splin- 
 ters of wood and iron. 
 
 The battalion was accommodated in and about 
 the Canal du Nord as a place of rest, though but 
 lately it had been the line of battle. It was now 
 entirely in our hands, and was a mass of military 
 debris. Our neighbours among those red-brick 
 canal walls were the Highland Light Infantry, a 
 party of whom had but lately at Moeuvres held 
 this ground so heroically, attracting universal com- 
 ment and laudation. It was rather touching to see 
 this canal, which had never held water, made into 
 a series of barracks divided by the demolished 
 bridges and locks. A series of grand iron bridges 
 had once spanned it and each had subsided, crum- 
 pled and torn, into the canal bed. In the canal 
 walls were German dug-outs and destroyed ma- 
 chine-gun nests. Over the "parapet" were many 
 brick-kilns, where the German industrial company 
 which had been building this canal previous to the 
 outbreak of war had been baking their bricks. 
 
 One of the Americans got a "Blighty one" at 
 this time. This was a policeman from Philadel- 
 phia, sometimes called Bigsey and sometimes Mrs. 
 
 Wiggs. He, Fitz, and H had come over on 
 
 the boat to England together, and sworn to remain 
 inseparables in the war. But Mrs. Wiggs got wor- 
 ried by the tales of horror, and volunteered to take 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 259 
 
 a signalling course, so postponing his going to the 
 front. By this means he escaped the Easter drafts. 
 
 He only joined us in the reserve lines at R . 
 
 But he did not stay long. A new man was knock- 
 ing in a tent-peg with an unexploded German 
 bomb. It went off and wounded three. Mrs. 
 Wiggs got a fragment in his hip, but it was enough ; 
 it served, and Mrs. Wiggs was soon back in Lon- 
 don again at the reserve battalion. But it was not 
 a time of many casualties, and the number of pris- 
 oners coming in suggested the cheaper gains that 
 we were making through the falling-off of enemy 
 discipline. German prisoners kept streaming 
 down along the great highway, and these were ac- 
 commodated in the reservoirs of the canal a thou- 
 sand at a time. We stood high above the reservoir 
 near our lines, and looked down upon a thousand 
 Germans all waiting — ^as if for a train to take them 
 out of it all. 
 
 On Sunday there was a church-parade for our 
 fellows and service in the canal itself. 
 
 During this period Bulgaria surrendered, and 
 the overwhelming victories over the Turks were 
 obtained. Our men had little reliable news, but 
 rumour was rife. Numerous talks with German 
 prisoners disclosed a more dispirited state of the 
 enemy. We heard much of the chances of revo- 
 lution in Germany; of Turkey and Austria, both 
 having ''thrown in their mits" as the current jar- 
 gon phrased it. And it is true we felt we were 
 w^inning. Still, the soldiers were far from re- 
 alising or believing in the near chance of obtaining 
 
26o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 complete victory. It was left to the next stage in 
 our advance to kindle a genuine flame of hope in 
 which to live, instead of the glimmer of the old 
 will-o'-the-wisps of the war. 
 
 When on October 7 wc marched forward once 
 more one of the most romantic moments of the war 
 was at hand. 
 
 Havrincourt, near which we spent the night of 
 the 7th, was complete desolation; Ribecourt was 
 no better, but Marcoing was a trifle less smashed, 
 and gave the impression of having been a rather 
 pretty town in peace-time. We spent the night 
 of the 8th on the ridge between Marcoing and 
 Masnieres. It was very cold, with a hoar frost 
 on the grass, and the men, expecting to go into ac- 
 tion on the morrow, slept as best they could in old 
 machine-gun emplacements and ditches. On the 
 Qth we heard that Germany had accepted Presi- 
 dent Wilson's fourteen points, and on this day, too, 
 we began to see new types of landscapes. We had 
 passed through the zone of destruction, and were 
 emerging into the comparatively unharmed re- 
 gions which had remained in German hands since 
 191 4, where the fields were ploughed and harvests 
 had been taken, where the villages had red roofs, 
 and the spires were on the churches. 
 
 The last village to show signs of being badly bat- 
 tered was Crevecoeur — Heartbreak Village — and 
 there also were many German and British dead, 
 the latter being chiefly New Zealand men. All 
 the way to Seranvillers there had been hard fight- 
 ing, and the German gunners lay piled on their 
 machines. On October 10, however, we swung 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 261 
 
 clear of the old desolation altogether, coming to 
 Esturmel. We learned that Cambrai had fallen 
 and that the whole campaign was going well, and 
 the enemy on his knees seeking for peace. The 
 battalion did not need to go into action, for the 
 tentative objective marked out for them had been 
 abandoned without a shot. It was billed for the 
 next day instead. The hour of setting ofif for the 
 line was fixed for one in the morning. But, housed 
 in a jolly village, the men made a most joyous 
 night of it with feasting, singing, and merriment. 
 Lights shone in all windows, and from end to end 
 of the village was music and hilarity. Indeed, 
 out in the middle of the main street one fellow was 
 sitting at a piano, and a crowd was round him sing- 
 ing catches. Near by the pipers were playing. 
 In another billet there was a whistling chorus. 
 Those who wished to rest reclined on mattresses 
 on spring beds. Supper in the cottage with a sec- 
 tion of a platoon round a regular family table, the 
 fire burning merrily in the stove, the wall-clock 
 ticking and striking, the faces of French villagers 
 looking out from faded portraits on the walls, made 
 a strange impression, but a good one. Next day 
 the battalion went into action from St. Hilaire. 
 
 On Friday, October 11, at one in the morning, 
 the battalion marched forth out of Esturmel, and 
 with the usual impedimenta of "fighting order" on 
 their shoulders, swung through the prosperous 
 coal-mining and weaving villages and townlets of 
 Carnieres, Boussieres, St. Hilaire. At St. Hilaire 
 they loaded rifles and fixed bayonets at the centre 
 
262 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiil 
 
 of the town — ^at the much-shelled square. The 
 village of St. Vaast in front of us on the high-road 
 was taken by the Taffies, who, however, were un- 
 able to proceed, owing to the division on the right 
 being held up. 
 
 The field of our advance lay north-eastward 
 from St. Hilaire, and was part of an encircling 
 manoeuvre for the taking of Solesmes. The dis- 
 trict is somewhat heavily populated, with the vil- 
 lages approximating to one another, and there are 
 some half-dozen lines and branch-lines of railway 
 radiating from Solesmes. It was therefore a 
 neighbourhood which served the German cap- 
 itally for delaying purposes. He was able to make 
 a stubborn resistance, whilst on his far northern 
 flank he evacuated Ostend, Zeebrugge, Bruges, and 
 Lille, Roubaix, Turcoing, and the rest. The re- 
 tirement marked time ten days, therefore, in the 
 centre, whilst it quick-marched in the north. 
 
 Our fellows soon came into touch with hostile 
 power. Two companies were held up on the Fri- 
 day by machine-guns posted on the first strand of 
 the Solesmes railway. At midnight the other two 
 companies relieved them. The "fighting" com- 
 pany, to which most of the Americans belonged, 
 sent out a patrol to reconnoitre, and I heard after- 
 wards from H , who had already recovered 
 
 from his wound and hastened back, how, about a 
 mile along the line, seven of them got cut ofif and 
 nearly fell into enemy hands. But they rushed the 
 machine-gun post that constituted their chief dan- 
 ger, and got back with the gun and two prison- 
 ers. 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 263 
 
 The enemy, however, slackening as usual to our 
 impetus, was slowly withdrawing, and with that 
 knowledge the two companies were able to cross 
 the railway and ''dig in" on the other side. They 
 held the line all night on the Saturday, and on Sun- 
 day the 13th were relieved and returned to St. 
 Hilaire. 
 
 The great adventure of this stage, however, was 
 the entry into the village of St. Python, in which 
 three platoons participated. Toward midnight 
 on Saturday a railway bridgehead was taken with- 
 out the enemy knowing it. Another patrol sur- 
 prised and captured a machine-gun post in silence. 
 Various sentries were disposed of silently, and an 
 entry into the village was effected. 
 
 It was found next morning that the sleeping and 
 silent settlement which they had wandered about 
 by night was full of Germans and of French civil- 
 ians, and our men therefore marched into a melee 
 of mingled hostility and hospitality. 
 
 A cheery old Highlander, called "Fergie" by 
 us all, one of my original squad, told me how em- 
 barrassed he was by the women trying to throw 
 their arms round his neck, whilst he, with fixed 
 bayonet, crept forward, watching every corner of 
 a wall for the shadow of an enemy. The villagers 
 were entranced by our appearance on the scene. 
 It must be said these were the first civilians we had 
 seen for two months. The enemy had been evacu- 
 ating the French population with his guns and his 
 ammunition, and now, because we had come fur- 
 ther than he had expected and had surprised him, 
 we came upon civilians en masse. Whether these. 
 
264 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 during their four years' stay with the enemy, had 
 been ill-treated or not, it would be difficult to say, 
 but they were well-fed and cheerful, and at the 
 same time extremely joyful in greeting us. A 
 captain and a sergeant-major entered one of the 
 houses and received a very warm greeting, and sat 
 down to have coffee, whilst the women asked ques- 
 tion after question about the advance. Wherever 
 our men went indoors and encountered the French, 
 they were regaled with coffee and eggs and soup 
 and what not. But the clearing of the village pro- 
 ceeded all day under heavy machine-gun fire, and 
 much sniping by the enemy. The German com- 
 manded nearly all the streets, with his machine- 
 guns posted in the houses on the other side of the 
 river. 
 
 The position was such, and remained such, until 
 our relief by the Bill Browns. We held the half 
 of the village up to the River Selle. The enemy 
 held the half which lies beyond. All bridges were 
 broken, and we were not of sufficient strength to 
 attempt to bridge across the river under fire. 
 
 Then Ensign K with his platoon endeav- 
 oured to reconnoitre the river-bank, with a view to 
 finding some means of crossing, A corporal who 
 went out with him volunteered to go along the 
 bank to examine the timber lying adjacent to a 
 demolished bridge, and see what could be done 
 with it. He at once came into heavy machine-gun 
 fire, but threw himself into the river, and thus 
 saved himself from being killed. The fire ceased, 
 but whenever he put his head up above water it 
 commenced again. Nevertheless, he continued his 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 265 
 
 progress, and achieved his object and returned. 
 His coolness and daring were much admired, and 
 he became the hero of the St. Python incident. 
 His equipment was shot through in several places, 
 and his escaping all wounds partook of the mar- 
 vellous. 
 
 The rest of the platoon, sheltering behind a 
 house, had a very hot time. The machine-gun 
 bullets threshed the road and the brickworks, bul- 
 lets burst right through the house walls, and there 
 were not a few casualties. Of five who attempted 
 to get away to a safer cover only one succeeded 
 without wounds. And as regards the rest, the very 
 slightest chance given was taken by the enemy. 
 Thus Will, the fine fellow from the Far West, one 
 of my best friends, was peering round the wall in 
 such a way that it would have been said no enemy 
 could see him. But a sniper's bullet passed, never- 
 theless, through his left tunic pocket, through his 
 cigarette-case and books, and through his heart, 
 and he settled backward with a smile on his lips, 
 but dead. And the survivors, who knew him well, 
 went mad with rage for a moment. Fitz of Vir- 
 ginia, now a corporal, even wanted to lead the rest 
 of the party out to do or die in a big rush on the 
 machines. But the cannier spirits reflected that 
 he was a little bit mad in thinking of such a thing. 
 
 A curious feature of the fighting was the way 
 civilians were walking about the streets, some of 
 them wounded and bleeding, but all comparatively 
 unconcerned. One or two of our men were shot 
 by German soldiers disguised as civilians; one of 
 them, denounced by the rest, was shot in turn by 
 
266 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 one of our sergeants, for which action the sergeant 
 was much commended by every one. 
 
 As time wore on the Germans could be seen 
 quietly and methodically withdrawing from the 
 other half of the village, and moving over to their 
 next standing-ground at Solesmes and on the ridges 
 beyond. When the Bill Browns took over from 
 us, they had little difficulty in making good the rest 
 of the village. The French civilians were there- 
 fore joined once more to France. Many belonged 
 to Boussieres, St. Hilaire, and other villages in the 
 rear, and had been marched off when the Germans 
 had evacuated these places. They were now re- 
 turned under escort to their homes. 
 
 Meanwhile the acting quartermaster and eight 
 men were gassed in one and the same cellar in St. 
 Hilaire, and all perished. Amongst the men were 
 two bandsmen, an old soldier who played bass and 
 a very gentle-natured young one who played the 
 tenor-horn. No one put his gas-mask on, and the 
 captain himself, whilst mortally gassed, was going 
 about giving orders, not knowing that every move- 
 ment he made was stirring the fatal poison into his 
 vitals. He was removed to the hospital at Car- 
 nieres and died shortly after daybreak, purple 
 through asphyxiation, and foaming at the lips. 
 The gas-shells of the time seem to have been more 
 deadly than usual, though the close atmosphere of 
 the cellar accounts for the terrible fatality in this 
 case. The gas was "green-cross," chiefly phosgene, 
 but was thought to be a blend hitherto unused by 
 the enemy. An impressive funeral service took 
 place at Carnieres in the twilight of a murky Sat- 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 267 
 
 urday evening, when ten of our Spartans were bur- 
 ied side by side in one grave, and the pipes played, 
 and the services were read in succession by Angli- 
 can, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic chaplains. 
 The acting quartermaster had been one of our more 
 amusing officers till he died, but the tragic circum- 
 stances of his end changed the opinion of all the 
 men about him. All became sorry for him, and 
 for most he became a hero. 
 
 So the advance progressed, punctuated by the 
 death of several brave and gallant fellows. The 
 battalion rested at St. Hilaire, which the enemy 
 still shelled fairly steadily, though without causing 
 us loss. The lesson of the late tragedy of gas- 
 shells in cellars was fresh in most minds, and the 
 men were ordered to sleep with their respirators 
 tied at "the alert." For the rest the rumour of 
 peace was in the air; Germany had accepted the 
 fourteen points of President Wilson, and had 
 agreed to evacuate France and Belgium by mili- 
 tary arrangement. Not that due weight was at- 
 tached to such news. Incredible rumours of the 
 kind and of other kinds were always in the air, 
 and were indulgently received. Germany had ac- 
 cepted the peace conditions, yes, and also Hinden- 
 burg was dead; the Kaiser had committed suicide; 
 sixteen thousand German soldiers had broken the 
 neutrality of Holland, and the Dutch had declared 
 war. The Americans had taken Metz. With all 
 that was unlikely, the prospect of peace did not ob- 
 tain much credence. 
 
 The billets of St. Hilaire won every one's ap- 
 
268 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 probation. The homes of the exiled villagers were 
 unreservedly in the hands of the soldiers, as were 
 also the strange hoards of potatoes, carrots, and 
 turnips, which the Germans had accumulated in 
 every cellar. The cellars had been dug out mar- 
 vellously, and contained considerable supplies, 
 which the enemy had been unable to remove in 
 time. Thus every evening there were unusually 
 good suppers simmering on the French stoves, 
 vegetable soups, strengthened by bully, and occa- 
 sionally by the presence of a rabbit which had been 
 found. On Thursday, October 17, however, the 
 battalion marched back to Boussieres, which was 
 crowded with other brother battalions. An atmos- 
 phere of festivity and happiness reigned there also, 
 and though rooms were more crowded, the comfort 
 was as unusual as at the former village. And 
 whilst the men sang and gossipped of the war, the 
 chiefs were busy with the details of the next ad- 
 vance. On October 18 a practice moonlight attack 
 was carried out, and on the 19th the battalion 
 marched forward to its new battle positions for the 
 next stage of the advance. 
 
 The 19th was a Saturday, and that evening, in 
 a large house on the St. Vaast road, a battalion din- 
 ner was given, and all the officers who were going 
 into action after midnight sat down together and 
 
 dined. The colonel presided; Captain R 
 
 acted as host, and his cook prepared the dinner. 
 It was a characteristic occasion, when each, even 
 in conviviality, knew that a few hours hence he or 
 his friend might be dead. At midnight the battalion 
 marched out in the pouring rain to the cross-roads 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 269 
 
 at Arbre de la Femme, and in what was otherwise 
 an almost bloodless advance the youngest of the 
 subalterns met his death. 
 
 All that was encountered were rather lonely Ger- 
 man posts and slight garrisons in little villages. 
 Prisoners were sent down in the course of the night. 
 The advance was generally notable because of the 
 flaming thermite shells used to indicate the bound- 
 aries of the barrage, and also to give the signal 
 when every four minutes the fire-curtain lifted and 
 swept clear of a hundred yards. 
 
 It would probably have been more interesting 
 for the units concerned if each could have carried 
 its attack a little further than was planned; if each 
 attack, instead of being touch and go, could have 
 become a sort of hunting-party. But there were 
 a great many troops available, and when one divi- 
 sion had done its little bit, it could stand bv and 
 watch others successfully carry the good work fur- 
 ther after them. We rested at St. Vaast. In these 
 davs the Germans still sought peace, and President 
 Wilson had pointed out the futility of such seeking 
 accompanied bv brutal deeds on land and sea. 
 The inhuman practice of deporting the civilian 
 populations of the villages in the battle area was 
 denounced. The humbled enemy, therefore, 
 changed his policy, and relinquished his grasp 
 upon civilians. The latest villages taken had 
 villagers in the cellars. Liberated peasants and 
 peasants' wives began to appear on the roads, 
 tramping from the German lines. The plight, 
 however, of these soberly clad folk of France was 
 
270 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 often a fearful one — between two fires — left in ig- 
 norance as to whether they were approaching 
 
 friend or foe. Captain R records the sight he 
 
 witnessed on the sunken road near Haussy. A 
 queue of poor people in black struggled slowly 
 along the road with heavy bundles; there were 
 children hanging to the women's skirts; there were 
 old men hobbling on sticks, patiently and slowly 
 returning to the homes whence they had lately been 
 driven. Suddenly, with a long wail through the 
 air, came a German shell, and burst on the road, 
 and following it another and another, menacing the 
 little band. Some were hit by fragments of shell, 
 but they did not flee, only the children clung to 
 their mothers, and the old men tried to hobble a 
 little faster. Captain R remarked the mar- 
 vellous patience of the French women, but he was 
 greatly incensed with the Germans, and like many 
 another at that critical time he felt less than ever 
 disposed to spare the Germans the bitter dregs of 
 utter humiliation and defeat. 
 
 Carrying on our offensive, the 2nd Division 
 was now in the line, and numbers of blue-clad 
 Germans streamed back to us along the highway. 
 The cages at St. Hilaire filled several times with 
 Germans, strange, unwashed, ill-shaven, dirty men 
 in shoddy uniforms, with broken boots and 
 weather-beaten hats — all sorts and sizes of men, 
 Prussians, Westphalians, Bavarians, Alsatians, dif- 
 ferent types of faces, all relieved, all "out of the 
 war," and yet all depressed. With the failure of 
 Germany's fortunes in the field the last vestige of 
 dignity seemed to have departed from the faces of 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 271 
 
 the prisoners; they were creatures that once were 
 men; human beings who had sufTered three suc- 
 cessive kinds of degradation — they had been indus- 
 trialised, then militarised, and finally captured by 
 an enemy. Nevertheless, a considerable amount 
 of curiosity reigned among us regarding them, and 
 we lined the road in numbers to look at them come 
 in, and crowded about the barbed-wire cages to 
 stare at them. After nightfall friendly Tommies 
 brought cigarettes and handed them through the 
 wire, and talked with those who could speak any 
 English. Such conversations were mostly friendly, 
 but I was highly amused to listen one evening while 
 a little fellow in the Royal Scots recapitulated in 
 a loud voice all the atrocities the Germans had 
 committed, and especially those with regard to 
 British prisoners. The captured German kept 
 mildly protesting that it was not true, but the Scot 
 outvoiced him firmly and terribly. 
 
 Whilst we were billeted at St. Vaast there was 
 considerable increase in the civilian population. 
 From the villages liberated by the 2nd and 
 3rd Divisions the evacues of St. Vaast and St. 
 Hilaire came slowly, with their bundles, over the 
 shell-pitted roads, and found their old homes 
 amongst us. They were a very quiet and humble 
 folk, and the children much astonished us by lift- 
 ing their hats to the officers, even upon occasion to 
 the sergeants — the Prussians had taught them to. 
 The returned villagers took over the living-rooms, 
 and the soldiers went to the barns and the cellars, 
 or they waited for our next remove to take over 
 their property then. Certainly those first to re- 
 
272 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiil 
 
 turn to their property were luckiest. The Ger- 
 mans during their occupation had moved chairs, 
 beds, tables, clocks, from house to house to suit the 
 requirements of rank and comfort. Each officer 
 had made up his apartment, according to his taste, 
 from the furniture and belongings of neighbouring 
 houses. The consequence was that the returned 
 villagers had to go from house to house with bar- 
 rows to make up their belongings. Thus, whilst 
 having tea, two women would come in at the door 
 of the billet and look around whilst we saluted 
 them and addressed gallantries. They would se- 
 lect one chair perhaps, or throw loving eyes upon 
 the much-scratched piano. Then our fellows 
 would give them a hand to shift the furniture. 
 Whether in every case these returned villagers had 
 an unbiassed vision of what was their own and 
 what belonged to less fortunate neighbours I can- 
 not say, but I imagine some lively disputes would 
 eventually arise as to whom exactly belonged cer- 
 tain arm-chairs which had appeared in an un- 
 wonted way in houses that used to be more bare, 
 and whose was the covetable wall-clock that now 
 hung on the wall? 
 
 The joy of returning home must have been not 
 unmixed with grief. Although it was the custom 
 in our battalions always to clean up billets and 
 leave them in a brighter and more habitable con- 
 dition than that in which we found them, yet some 
 interiors were in indescribable confusion. 
 
 The new villagers, however, set to work to clear 
 and to clean, and to render barracks and billets into 
 homes once more. They lived on potatoes and 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 273 
 
 carrots, augmented with army rations; their fires 
 burned, their wash-tubs outside their houses 
 steamed. For themselves they had a strange, un- 
 wonted look to us, these first civilians. They were 
 decidedly different from the French we had left 
 behind in the old Arras and Albert regions; in 
 their faces were reflected the German; they were 
 more humbled and depressed than the French 
 refugees who had lived with the French. And 
 they did not speak the curious talkee-talkee pigeon 
 English which our old friends in the background 
 used to converse with us. When we said to them 
 ^'Commang ally plank?" and ''Tout de suite and 
 the tooter the sweeter," they seemed mildly sur- 
 prised. They even brought Germanisms to us, 
 such as the word kapoot, unheard by us till then. 
 These apparitions in black seemed like ghosts of 
 people who had died in August 19 14. Neverthe- 
 less, one felt that Europe was resuming being her- 
 self. 
 
 Our plans matured for another large onslaught 
 upon the retreating enemy. The line which was 
 within ten miles of Mons in the north halted some- 
 what at Valenciennes and along the confines of the 
 great forest of Mormal. It was planned for our 
 regiments and for another division to contain the 
 forest, to capture the road-junction of Bavai, and 
 press on for the prize of the fortress of Maubeuge. 
 
 Of all the attacks since August 21 this was the 
 largest and the most ambitious. It was entirely 
 successful. It turned out to be the final battle of 
 the war. With our victorious Spartans in the cen- 
 tre and splendid advances on the right flank and 
 
274 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 on the left, victory in its completest form was 
 granted to the Allies. 
 
 So the battalion marched through rain and mud 
 over the old battle-ground of St. Python to Escar- 
 main. At Escarmain, at the cross-roads, the 
 French had put up a stuffed cock on a pole — em- 
 blem of victory, and no doubt existed in French 
 minds as to the issue. We were billeted for a day 
 under very crowded conditions at Escarmain. 
 
 At dawn on November 4 we set out for the line, 
 passing out of the village with pipers playing. 
 The sun rose over the misty valleys and ridges 
 below, and fresh breezes and clear skies enveloped 
 the first morning of the fight. We made our first 
 halt, and rested below our batteries on the Sep- 
 meries road, most of the men with their fingers in 
 their ears, whilst the gunners, with their sixty- 
 pounders and 8-inch howitzers, kept giving us the 
 warning to "hold tight." When the march was 
 resumed we began to see the first wounded. We 
 passed a dead German lying with his head in a 
 pool of blood, and then batches of German prison- 
 ers carrying stretchers. The wounded of our own 
 comrades began to come down, and told of an easy 
 progress, stopped now and then by isolated ma- 
 chine-gun posts of the enemy. 
 
 In the afternoon we marched into Villers Pol, 
 and most men, after sweeping and cleaning the 
 billets, lay down and rested a few hours before the 
 march to the line. Hot suppers and rum-rations 
 were dished out after midnight, and then at 2 A.M., 
 with all the extra fighting impedimenta of shovels 
 and bombs and sand-bags, and what not, the bat- 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 275 
 
 talion marched cautiously on, scouts reconnoitring 
 each stretch of country in front, and reporting all 
 clear before we crossed it. It was a dark and 
 windy night, and crossing the scenes of the day's 
 fighting, we remarked here and there in the dark 
 the vague shapes of the dead. 
 
 The situation on the night of the 4th-5th No- 
 vember was that our ist and 2nd Brigades had 
 come within 300 yards of their objective, the "Red 
 line" drawn beyond Preux au Sart. The task of 
 our brigade was to pass through the ist and 2nd 
 Brigades, take the "Red line" position, and press 
 on to Amfroipret near the Belgian frontier, to 
 Bermeries, Buvignies, and the outskirts of Bavai. 
 That done, the ist Brigade would push on next day 
 following to Maubeuge. Thus, just before dawn, 
 we reached the position before Preux au Sart, and 
 went into battle formation there. The barrage 
 broke out like a tempestuous drum announcement 
 heralding the dawn, and our men marched on. 
 The ''Red line" was passed at twenty to seven, the 
 second objective at ten minutes past eight. Am- 
 froipret was taken in the course of the morning, 
 though the attack was temporarily stayed by ma- 
 chine-gun fire from the village cemetery. The 
 enemy retirement, however, continued, and at nine 
 o'clock the battalion, preceded by tanks, was ap- 
 proaching Bermeries, from which desultory ma- 
 chine-gun and trench-mortar fire was proceeding. 
 
 Some difficulty was found in locating the enemy 
 in Bermeries, and progress slowed down till after 
 noon. At 12.30 the village was still held by Ger- 
 mans. Tanks were, however, exploring the posi- 
 
276 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiii 
 
 tion, followed by our advance companies. A fur- 
 ther German retirement occurred, and Bermeries 
 proved empty of the enemy. An enemy line was 
 located 400 yards beyond it, in the low scrub along- 
 side an orchard. At 1.30 a sharp encounter took 
 place between one of our companies and a number 
 of German machine-gunners. The enemy was in 
 deep slits, and his positions cleverly hidden. It 
 took about an hour altogether to locate him cer- 
 tainly and dispose of him. Our men made a bay- 
 onet charge, and all the Germans were either killed, 
 wounded, or taken prisoner. This was all the ac- 
 tive fighting there was for our fellows, though that 
 is not to say it was all the privations they endured. 
 The men wallowed in mud all night, and it rained 
 and rained, never ceased raining. The German 
 artillery was very active, though firing largely at 
 random. There were a number of casualties from 
 stray shells. The last men to fall in the war fell, 
 as it were, by accident; strolling back from the line 
 toward Headquarters; they were being brought 
 back to Bermeries for a few hours' rest, and were 
 lighting cigarettes and chatting in little knots when 
 two heavy shells came in their midst, tore one 
 man's face ofif, ripped up another's stomach, and 
 the like. 
 
 The day after this advance we rested, and the 
 ist and 2nd Brigades ''carried on" and took Mau- 
 beuge. In the dead of night the "Bill Browns," 
 with rifles slung, filed into the town of Maubeuge 
 by the only way left (all bridges being blown up), 
 by stone steps to the moat, which they crossed with 
 the water half up their legs, and then they entered 
 
XIII THE GREAT ADVANCE 277 
 
 by a stone archway the ancient and formidable 
 fortress. All was silent but for the sound of their 
 feet. And they marched along the empty streets 
 to the grey parade-ground of the Place des 
 Casernes. The Germans had gone; the French 
 slept. Only in the morning did the civilian popu- 
 lation realise that the tyrant had vanished. So 
 Maubeuge came into our hands. Many men who 
 in 1914 had retired through the Maubeuge region 
 at the time of the retreat from Mons felt a special 
 pride and pleasure in their making good the land 
 from which they had been obliged to retire. 
 
 Meanwhile at Versailles the anxious delegates 
 of ruined Germany were fretting over the armis- 
 tice terms. We learned that delegates had passed 
 through the lines when we rested a night at La 
 Longueville, coming into Maubeuge. On No- 
 vember 10 all of the division were in or around 
 Maubeuge, and were prepared to go on. It would 
 doubtless have been our battalion's turn to push 
 forward, but the Angel of Peace intervened. On 
 the morning of the nth came from Headquarters 
 the barely credible intelligence that the Germans 
 had signed the treaty of surrender, and that from 
 1 1 A.M. hostilities would cease. Thus the impos- 
 sible intervened, and as by miracle wrote finis 
 across the four and a quarter years of bloodshed 
 and strife which we are accustomed to call the 
 Great War. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 
 
 We had dwelt too long in darkness to accustom 
 ourselves readily to the new light of peace, and 
 when on the morning of November ii, 1918, the 
 strange announcement of armistice was made, we 
 merely felt confused and incredulous. It was such 
 a common event in the army for the desired thing 
 to be invented in rumour that the authentic and 
 official news of complete victory was merely ac- 
 cepted in the same category as "The Kaiser has 
 taken poison," and the rest of the optimistic tales 
 of the hour. I was first to get the news, for the 
 brigade runner came with the message, and could 
 not find to whom to deliver it. Guessing what it 
 was, I opened his missive and read — An armistice 
 has been signed with the Central Powers a a a. 
 Hostilities will cease as from 1 1 o'clock this morn- 
 ing a a a. Directly he had gone I took the news 
 to my comrades. Some believed, some did not. 
 Most asked me what it meant, but some with 
 imagination caught my right hand in both theirs, 
 and expressed themselves as bursting with joy. 
 Half an hour later most of the battalion was drill- 
 ing, and the officers calmly and politely told the 
 men the war had ended. Then men began to go 
 about like owls disturbed at mid-day, and kept 
 
 278 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 279 
 
 saying to one another without any particular ex- 
 citement, "What do you think of it, eh?" 
 
 The first thought of those who understood and 
 believed was, ''No more bombs, no more shells, no 
 more bullets; we are safe, then, after all, we shall 
 get back to our homes, to our wives, to mother and 
 father, and all we love in Blighty." The immeas- 
 urable relief of escape from the daily menace of 
 death! The pulse of some, even of the bravest, 
 beat more freely. They were spared. Their 
 wives, mothers, children, and friends were re- 
 prieved. For dying was not the hardest thing; 
 the hardest thing was plunging one's home in sor- 
 row. 
 
 Two days after the signing of the armistice there 
 was a men's concert in one of the many French 
 steel works. There was a platform on which were 
 ranged our instrumental band and pipers. In a 
 vast shadowy hall the troops were accommodated. 
 Quartermaster-sergeants were dishing out rum 
 punch, which the officers had afforded us. A new 
 good humour had come into men's voices. The 
 verity of victory had suffused the surface of all 
 minds. The soldiers sang in chorus to the band, 
 they sang even to the pipes. Singers had an un- 
 precedented reception, and when as answer to en- 
 core the band struck up "Take me back to Blighty," 
 the whole vast audience of Tommies seemed to 
 melt and fuse in its enthusiasm. The theme of go- 
 ing back home touched their hearts as never be- 
 fore. For now suddenly, after years of hope and 
 hopelessness, it had become a practical matter. 
 
 The day after the concert there was a lecture by 
 
28o A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 a Divisional Staff officer on Demobilisation, on 
 that first scheme of slip-men and pivotals and one- 
 man-business-men which proved so slow and 
 worked so ill. Said the officer, "I know perhaps 
 you won't agree, but I'd like to say to you men that 
 you might do worse than think of going into the 
 army as a means of living after the war. Condi- 
 tions of service will be much improved." Where- 
 upon there was a roar of laughter throughout the 
 whole audience, and we felt somehow that was the 
 best joke of the whole armistice time. 
 
 The Demobilisation scheme dashed the hopes 
 of some of the forward men who thought of being 
 home in a few weeks, but it nevertheless contributed 
 to confirm the impression in backward minds that 
 the war was really over. We remained a week at 
 Maubeuge and ruminated on the new time. The 
 mysterious silence of no shells had set in, and when 
 it was broken by the distant rumble of an exploded 
 German mine or ammunition dump the men won- 
 dered nervously if the war had not broken out 
 again. Returning French prisoners appeared on 
 the road, and also civilians with their household 
 goods. At night, even on the night of the nth of 
 November, motor-cars had come up with great 
 headlights and windows began to be left unshut- 
 tered and unscreened again. The nights of wait- 
 ing at Maubeuge were still and cloudless. And 
 one realised the night once more was pure. The 
 trouble that had obscured her innocency was gone. 
 There was no longer any sinister doubt when the 
 moon 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 281 
 
 Unveiled her peerless light and o'er the dark 
 Her silver mantle threw. 
 
 An assurance of peace calmed the heart, and it was 
 good to walk at night and reflect on what had been 
 and what would be no more. 
 
 Two days before setting out we marched to the 
 barrack square in Maubeuge to a General Thanks- 
 giving, and as was very fit, our voices joined in 
 
 O God, our help in ages past, 
 Our hope for years to come. 
 
 In the secular mind, however, the question of 
 the future was uppermost, and a new crop of ru- 
 mours arrived, the most widespread being that we 
 were going to Paris to be reviewed by Jofifre and 
 were then going to London. But the simple fact 
 was that we were detailed for garrison duty in 
 Germany, and must first fulfil a long march — 
 through Belgium and Rhineland to the banks of 
 the great mother river of Europe, the Rhine. The 
 battalion commenced to do practice route-marches. 
 The men had to wash their equipment and shine 
 up brasses and clean boots in their old training- 
 barracks style. Discipline became more severe, 
 and we understood that we had got to dazzle the 
 Belgians and impress the Germans by our smart- 
 ness and by the austerity of our fulfilment of duty. 
 
 The first week after the armistice therefore was 
 one of ardent preparations to shine. New cloth- 
 ing was brought up and the old discarded. All 
 kits were revised, and if any man was short of any- 
 thing which he could not make up from the sup- 
 plies he was warned to pick it up somewhere, and 
 
282 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 if any one of any other unit left the desirable thing 
 about, ''looking spare," he had better "see it oflf." 
 
 Whilst the battalion had to "dump" a great 
 quantity of impedimenta, such as for instance, its 
 dulcetone piano, boxes of books, and bits of furni- 
 ture, it had also to make up deficiencies. Bicycles 
 were short, and they were needed as an absolute 
 necessity for the billeting parties who went ahead 
 each morning to take billets for the rest of us. We 
 had been originally supplied with eight bicycles. 
 We now only had three, and the number had some- 
 how to be made up. 
 
 The adjutant was anxious, and I remember his 
 coming into the orderly room on the night of the 
 1 6th of November. 
 
 "I hope something's being done about these bi- 
 cycles," says he. 
 
 "It's all right, sir," says a drill-sergeant. 
 "We've got the four best robbers in the battalion 
 out to-night, and I shall be surprised if the num- 
 bers are not all right by morning." 
 
 "You have? . . . Right oh!" says the adjutant, 
 and he goes away. 
 
 Presently one of the "robbers" comes in with a 
 bicycle, and is hailed with joy. The bicycle is 
 placed up against a wall. It belongs to a despatch- 
 rider. He has jumped from his seat and gone into 
 a house to deliver a message; directly he had got 
 inside the house the "robber" had seized the ma- 
 chine. 
 
 However, the owner being a sharp boy sees the 
 back wheel of the bicycle disappearing at our 
 door. He runs across the road and comes in also. 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 283 
 
 ** 'Ere, wot's the gime?" says he. "Who's 
 pinched my bike?" 
 
 The drill-sergeant then pounces upon him. 
 
 "Don't you know how to come in to an orderly 
 room?" asks he in his harshest regimental style, 
 "What do you mean by it? Stand to attention 
 when you are being spoken to. How should there 
 be a bicycle of yours in here?" 
 
 The despatch-rider is cowed, apologises, and 
 thinks perhaps he has made a mistake. 
 
 When he has gone the bicycle is wheeled out at 
 a back door for safety. But the original owner, 
 still suspicious, is watching through the window 
 and therefore sees this operation, goes round to 
 the back and meets the man with the bicycle in the 
 yard, claims it, and rides ofif. 
 
 I expect he cursed us, but did not think very 
 much of the matter. For it's a way they have in 
 the army. 
 
 During the march my name was taken one day 
 for the deficiency of an entrenching-tool handle. 
 There were some others in the same case, and we 
 were marched before a charming young officer 
 who had only been a few months with us, but had 
 nevertheless absorbed the army way. 
 
 "Now look here, you fellows," says he. "It's a 
 lot of bally rot your not having entrenching-tools. 
 You know jolly well you dumped them some time 
 or other. But you've got to have them, and there's 
 lots of Taffies and Bill Browns about. See each 
 of you has one by to-morrow morning or there'll 
 be trouble." 
 
 "I want the battalion to be the very best upon 
 
284 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 the road," said the colonel, and every one of us was 
 intent that it should be so. 
 
 It was bright, frosty weather, and the battalion 
 in a new glitter of peace looked very well on the 
 march. It was not too unpleasant an ordeal for 
 the men, though some were ready to criticise when 
 they saw they had still to carry gas-masks and steel- 
 helmets and a hundred and twenty rounds of am- 
 munition as well as heavy packs and well-oiled 
 rifles and equipment with every brass a-glitter. 
 But most of the sensible ones understood that it 
 would be best to enter Germany in full fighting 
 trim, and with all the reinforcement of moral in- 
 fluence which training and discipline and style 
 could afiford. 
 
 The load to be carried was heavy, and so a med- 
 ical inspection was ordered, and men likely to fall 
 out on the march were separated ofif and kept be- 
 hind. Bad characters who might be expected to 
 run amuck in Germany were also ordered to be 
 held back, but I do not think our colonel found any 
 bad enough for that. General Rawlinson's mani- 
 festo was served out to each of us, and we read that 
 whereas Prussian discipline was founded on fear 
 ours was founded on mutual trust between officers 
 and men, and we wondered if that was so, but we 
 did not wonder much. A cartload of new boots was 
 brought up for the torment of our feet should our 
 soles give way; all the last preparations were made 
 for departure, and on the morning of the i8th No- 
 vember we set out from Maubeuge. 
 
 It was misty and frosty, and it threatened to 
 snow as we marched out in our long files, keeping 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 285 
 
 studiously to our right on the way to the last vil- 
 lage of France, Villers Sire Nicolet. The road 
 was hard after several days' frost. We were all 
 provided with gloves, which kept our fingers from 
 being chilled, and the march was pleasant. We 
 must have afforded a strange contrast, all rosy- 
 cheeked, well-equipped, well-set-up, marching 
 with decision and style, we and the returning Brit- 
 ish army of prisoners we met on the road, the hag- 
 gard-faced soldiers, worn out and emaciated, who 
 in fives and sixes came straggling in from Namur 
 and Charleroi where they had been liberated in 
 accordance with the armistice conditions. They 
 were dressed in parts of old German uniforms. 
 Some had black trousers with broad white stripes, 
 some were wearing shabby Prussian blue, nearly 
 all had German caps decorated with little Union 
 Jacks and French and Belgian colours. They car- 
 ried bits of equipment, such as gas-masks or haver- 
 sacks; their boots were worn out; on their chests 
 large numbers were printed, in convict style. And 
 they walked slowly and lamely, being absolutely 
 worn out, their arms and legs wasted away, their 
 eyes sunken and with flabby folds of flesh hanging 
 beneath them. No recruiting officer, even at the 
 hardest time of the war, would have enrolled such 
 specimens of humanity in an army. Yet they had 
 all been stalwart fellows when they fell into Ger- 
 man hands. Doubtless their condition and appear- 
 ance would be much improved by the time they 
 got to England — thanks to the care of French and 
 English in the rear — but for us who saw them as 
 delivered from captivity the sight is unforgettable. 
 
286 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 The French prisoners seemed to be in much bet- 
 ter case, and they had evidently been treated with 
 more consideration by the enemy. But after the 
 returning British soldiers the most pitiable picture 
 was presented by the returning civilians who, with 
 improvised barrows but no horses, oxen, or mules, 
 were wheeling the indispensables of home from one 
 territory to another. Many of these civilians came 
 from remote places and had chalked on the bar- 
 row-sides the names of the towns they had passed 
 through. Large flags flew from the front corners 
 of the barrows giving them a very picturesque ap- 
 pearance. Young men walked in the shafts, old 
 men and women pushed behind, children lay on 
 confused heaps of mattresses and furniture above. 
 When questioned we found these people made such 
 great distances as fifty or sixty kilometres in a day. 
 They were pitiable, but were in wonderful spirits, 
 being free and going home, and they frequently 
 gave us a hearty greeting, and bade us make an end 
 of the German. 
 
 Such passers-by formed the main interest of the 
 day's march, and in the afternoon we came to our 
 first halting-place, an extensive but desolate old- 
 fashioned village called Villers Sire Nicolet, and 
 in the rainy evening we went into rather dark and 
 cold billets, redeemed here and there by the bright 
 fires of the hospitable French. 
 
 Before dawn on the morning of the 19th the 
 pipers were playing "Hey, Johnny Cope." It had 
 rained all night, and the morning was dark. We 
 paraded in the gloom of a wet dawn, and with our 
 somewhat heavy impedimenta stamped out toward 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 287 
 
 Belgium along the heavy and broken roads. Pos- 
 sibly the few miles of borderland were nobody's 
 care, and so the roads were not in repair. That 
 was the impression we obtained. And the people 
 in the infrequent farm-houses seemed all poverty- 
 stricken. However, we climbed on and crossed 
 the frontier line near Givry. Here a queue of 
 poor villagers turned out to stare at us, the women 
 bundles of cotton, the men in capacious muddy 
 sabots and the baggiest of old clothes. Not a word 
 from them, not a smile. 
 
 At this point, coming as we did from the suffer- 
 ing regions of the north of France, we did not ex- 
 pect much excitement on the part of the villagers, 
 and so we accepted the silence of the first poor Bel- 
 gians and were somewhat surprised at the flags and 
 bunting displayed at the next point on our road, 
 Estinne au Mont. Now rather better-looking 
 crowds turned out to see us and chattered volubly 
 about us. ^'They'll be cheering in a minute," 
 somebody exclaimed incredulously, and surely 
 enough there broke out a will-o'-the-wisp of a hur- 
 rah and a ''Vive les Anglais!" from several lips. 
 From there onwards our reception grew warmer 
 and warmer until our progress took its foredes- 
 tined guise of a triumphal procession. We passed 
 under floral arches and strings of bunting, and 
 alongside streams of smiling men and women who 
 greeted us more and more happily and readily as 
 we approached the large town of Binche. We 
 realised then we were inside Belgium and were go- 
 ing to be feted by the people. So our packs, which 
 had been heavy enough in the morning in the mud 
 
288 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 of the frontier, grew lighter in the warmth and 
 excitement of noon amid a cheering populace. 
 
 In the afternoon we were conducted to billets 
 in the best places in Binche, and every one seemed 
 pleased to see us. In windows everywhere were 
 paper posters which had possibly been printed by 
 some propaganda department of the Allied Gov- 
 ernments, and these conspired with the more real- 
 istic greetings in French to produce many tongues 
 of welcome. Thus we read : 
 
 WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU 
 and 
 
 CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HEROES OF 
 PERONNE AND BAPAUME 
 
 and 
 
 and 
 
 HONNEUR A NOS LIBERATEURS 
 
 ENGLAND IS SATISFIED: YOU HAVE DONE 
 YOUR DUTY. 
 
 The last notice, which was very widespread, trou- 
 bled our minds a little. Perhaps it accounted for 
 one corporal saying to a sergeant who found fault 
 with him: "I have completed my contract. I 
 am not a soldier any longer, but a civilian," a re- 
 mark on which the colonel made many judicious 
 comments with regard to the continuance of disci- 
 pline. 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 289 
 
 However, the cheery faces of the townsfolk and 
 the breezy welcome of posters and banners, the 
 brazen trumpetings of the civic band, the Lord 
 Mayor's show in which our major-general 
 marched to the plaudits of the crowd, probably 
 moved us less than the rumour of beer, of which 
 commodity we soon found the estaminets to be 
 full at a not exceptional price — and good beer of 
 the old pre-war standard. The sight of rows of 
 shop-windows was gladdening in itself after the 
 desolation we had passed through, and we went 
 into these expensive shops of Binche and spent for 
 the sake of spending. There was a fair amount 
 for sale. One could buy a Bath bun for three 
 francs, and a penny bar of chocolate for one franc 
 seventy-five centimes. Soap, in need of which we 
 stood at the time, was four francs the tablet, black- 
 ing a franc a tin, bootlaces two francs a pair. 
 Then the shopkeepers, although their wares were 
 priced in francs, had only German currency, and 
 they still reckoned one mark as one franc twenty- 
 five centimes, though it must have been doubtful 
 if the mark was worth much more than half a 
 franc. There were some warm disputes over 
 change, but they generally finished with our men 
 accepting marks and pfennigs. Our pockets were 
 soon full of the black war money of our enemies 
 and the wretched zinc coinage of Belgium. Not 
 a few astute townsmen began exchanging money 
 for our men, telling them their francs were now 
 no good and it was better to have marks. 
 
 At Binche we nibbled at the joys of liberated 
 Belgium. It was left for next day to taste them 
 
290 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 to the full when we reached the neighbourhood of 
 Charleroi and were welcomed by the hearty popu- 
 lation of Marchiennes au Pont. 
 
 On the 20th we marched off at nine in the morn- 
 ing with the abundant rub-dub-dub of the drums 
 and the joyful clamour of the pipes and took the 
 high-road that runs due east for Fontaine I'Eveque 
 and Charleroi. We were all in a good humour, 
 and when the music of the pipes died down we car- 
 ried on with whistling choruses and songs whilst 
 the thickly populated region through which we 
 passed was decked with signs of welcome. We 
 were on good roads, and our hearts were lighter, 
 realising that the first part of our march was in 
 any case not so much duty as festivity. Joyful 
 crowds of liberated people saluted us, and we 
 shouted back to them as we passed. About two in 
 the afternoon we reached Marchiennes. 
 
 We put down the heavy packs from our shoul- 
 ders and laid aside our rifles, cleaned our boots 
 after the long march, and still a little lame in the 
 feet and racked in our backs, stepped nevertheless 
 eagerly forth into the gay Belgian town hung with 
 bunting and flags and flocking with a joyful, ex- 
 cited populace of civilians. We were in that mood 
 when the apparition of the first electric tram glid- 
 ing into view gladdened the eyes, when the smell 
 of locomotive smoke and steam across the grimy 
 railway lines reminded of home, when the sight 
 of young men in numbers in civilian attire made 
 the heart beat faster with anticipative joy at our 
 own coming release. The town was posted with 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 291 
 
 joyful greetings: ''Honneur a nos liberateurs!" 
 ''Honneur mix Heros!" "Madame la Guerre est 
 morte." And on blue paper in many windows 
 was printed "Welcome, Tommy! We never 
 doubted you would come again." 
 
 The eyes of men and women looked gladly at us; 
 there was a tenderness in the gaze which was a little 
 puzzling after the sternness and desolation of bat- 
 tle-fields. The people were really glad. The 
 heart had been touched, and in all faces there was 
 that trembling as on the waters at dawn, the emo- 
 tion of human tenderness suddenly awakened not 
 in one but in all. The women and the children 
 caught our hands as we passed, and lisped up at us, 
 "La guerre est finie" or "Apres quatre annees, 
 apres quatre annees!" as if to suggest their relief, 
 their infinite relief, at the flight of the enemy and 
 the entry of our army of liberation. 
 
 On the Friday the last German battalion with- 
 out horses but with men in the shafts of the wag- 
 gons passed through the town. On the following 
 Wednesday the first British infantry arrived. The 
 English soldier was a novelty, a hero and a saviour 
 at the same time. There was hidden virtue in 
 khaki, and even to touch the common soldier was 
 good. There was magnetic contact between us and 
 the crowd. The girls smiled on us, men shook 
 hands with us promiscuously, and children reached 
 up to be kissed. Great numbers of little children 
 were in the street, some with their mothers, some 
 without, and all were radiantly innocent and wel- 
 coming. It was common to see five or six little 
 ones hanging on to the sleeves of one of our stal- 
 
292 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 wart fellows, much to his pleasure though also to 
 his astonishment. We had not been treated in this 
 way before. 
 
 At three in the afternoon two of us entered a 
 smart cafe where stout Belgians in frock-coats and 
 silk hats were standing free drinks of cognac at 
 two marks the petit verre. Other fellows in an- 
 other part of the town found a brewery where beer 
 was free, good beer served out as fast as arms of 
 buxom maids could serve it. It was one of the 
 rare occasions in the life of the soldier when one 
 of his ideals is realised. 
 
 "The brewery gates stand open and they are giv- 
 ing away beer." 
 
 "Never!" 
 
 We spoke with the benign and somewhat grand 
 Belgians who were treating the Tommies to cognac 
 and paying for it from sheaves of spotless German 
 notes. "Every one in Marchiennes seems excited," 
 said I. "It's a wonderful welcome." 
 
 "But there's more to come," replied they, finger- 
 ing the civic medallions on their watch-chains. 
 "At six o'clock there will be a procession de flam- 
 beaux." 
 
 "Yes, and a band of a hundred and fifty instru- 
 ments. There will be a fete. We shall all dance 
 in the streets." 
 
 Six was sometime after nightfall, but the town 
 was lit up from end to end. The crowd of civil- 
 ians and soldiers thronged the roads. For my part 
 I stood and waited in the town square for the 
 emergence of the band and the procession, and was 
 curious. Several comrades were within hail. All 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 293 
 
 felt a little tired and stiff after the march. They 
 did not dream they were going to dance for hours 
 that night without a sigh of tiredness or a twinge 
 of stiffness. 
 
 Out came the band at a jaunty stride, and every 
 bandsman wore a silk hat, out came the town ban- 
 ners, and then strings of coloured lanterns of paper 
 with glimmering lights inside — and then the mur- 
 murs of the crowd and a swaying toward the poles 
 on which the lanterns hung. Old folk were in the 
 crowd and young, gay girls and cheerful matrons, 
 and there were our soldiers, and, besides all, an 
 inordinate number of clinging laughing chil- 
 dren. 
 
 I was suddenly grasped by two middle-aged Bel- 
 gians of a prosperous commercial type; each took 
 one of my arms, others took their other arms, and 
 with a palm on each neighbour's back we started 
 to dance after the band, shoulders down, head up, 
 knees and toes kicking out in a pas de joie. I had 
 not been in an orgy before, but good-humouredly 
 fell in. We plunged after the band, singing the 
 ''Marseillaise," the "Brabangonne," and what not 
 as we went. 
 
 I broke, however, with my sedate companions, 
 got to one side and began to watch the tumultuous 
 joy-crowd go past. Here my real adventure com- 
 menced. I saw a poor woman beside a lamp-post 
 trying to comfort a little child that was crying, and 
 stooping down to give my aid the youngster grasped 
 my hand. Another standing by took my other 
 hand, and in less than a minute I had rejoined the 
 dance with six wee children. We danced with a 
 
294 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 will all along the fringe of the throng between the 
 main body and the shop-windows, and gradually 
 worked our way from the back to the front of the 
 procession and the immediate vicinity of the won- 
 derful lanterns and the triumphant blare of the 
 quick-stepping band. Thus we traversed the 
 whole town twice, and then when the band stopped 
 in the town square we joined hands in a circle as 
 did so many other strings of folk, and danced there. 
 And the children had words for every song, street 
 words generally, the favourite being a parody of 
 some song to which the German soldiers had 
 marched: 
 
 Margarita, si tu veux 
 Faire mon bonheur, 
 Casse la gueule 
 A I'empereur, 
 
 and every time a tune was ended all broke off and 
 threw up their hands and cheered. 
 
 We went to a sweet-shop and bought packets of 
 peppermints, and then to a pastry-cook's and 
 bought big slices of gingerbread for all and each. 
 The pastry-cook gave me a cup of coffee, for which 
 she said I might pay after peace had been signed. 
 Then we walked slowly through the streets munch- 
 ing cake — much to the amazement of soldiers and 
 civilians alike. 
 
 We joined in the dance again, and the children 
 never seemed tired. They were Madeleine, Ma- 
 rie, Marie, Rene, Albert (le roi), Marguerite, and 
 the eldest was only nine. Their enjoyment of the 
 fete was pure and complete. It possessed the 
 whole of their little bodies. Round and round 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 295 
 
 we went in a circle till we were dizzy, and back 
 and forth, approaching and retiring, whilst all 
 about us was the whirl of other circles mostly of 
 British soldiers and Belgian girls but often of 
 sedate matrons and the fathers of the community. 
 We had some collisions but no casualties, for the 
 children held hands so tightly that they never got 
 knocked down. At one point little Marguerite, so 
 low down and far from my face, kissed my fingers 
 as she danced; at another point all these little ones 
 were down on their knees saying their prayers in 
 chorus. Onlookers cried out in pauses of the 
 dance, "A bas les Boches!" and we replied, "A has 
 les sales Boches!" or rubbish of the same kind, 
 without, however, meaning anything sinister. 
 Ours was a dance of pure joy, an infection of the 
 time. For us the Pied Piper was playing, and 
 we had left the bourgeois fathers and mothers be- 
 hind. What a wonderful happiness was that of 
 the children who followed the piper, for I believe 
 they always remained children and danced to the 
 music whilst the rest of the world sat with scored 
 brows and calculated and judged. 
 
 "I see that in Rome you believe in doing as 
 Rome does," said a fellow-soldier to me in barracks 
 afterwards. 
 
 ''You were well away," said another. 
 
 "You were drunk all right last night, my boy," 
 said a third. 
 
 If so, not drunk with the portly Belgians' cognac 
 or the beer, but drunk with joy, with the spirit of 
 peace. The vast human emotion that had sent 
 mad London, Paris, Brussels, New York, had 
 
296 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 come to us at last, and we were swimming amidst 
 its waves. 
 
 And the children? They understood in their 
 little hearts what was in the air. Marchiennes 
 was theirs. It was a children's festival. 
 
 At last we parted. The mother who somehow 
 had been struggling after us through the crowds 
 and keeping us in view claimed little Madeleine, 
 and then each one kissed me good-bye and claimed 
 me for that morrow that never comes, and I 
 marched off, just in time to enter barracks by tat- 
 too. And I washed and changed and lay down to 
 sleep and did not feel tired in any limb. The won- 
 derful refreshment of happiness! 
 
 The progress into the obscurer parts of Belgium 
 was like rediscovering a lost place, unearthing 
 again a countryside after a great landslide. We 
 had lost sight of the main part of Belgium in 1914, 
 and we only recovered sight of it in these last weeks 
 of the armistice year. It was a curious impres- 
 sion. Belgium had not gone on after the German 
 eruption. But her life had paused where it was 
 and the hours remained where they were. All that 
 the people knew of the bloodshed and fire of the 
 strife related to the days of August 19 14; the bat- 
 tles of the later times did not have for them the 
 substantial reality they had for us. We could not 
 talk to them of the Battle of the Somme or the 
 German spring offensive of 1918, but had perforce 
 to dig up the half-forgotten facts of the first month 
 of the war and talk of them. 
 
 We marched away into the Ardennes and were 
 billeted in such obscure places as Bambois in the 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 297 
 
 commune of St. Gerard, Wierde, Faulx, Tharout, 
 Bende, Ernonheid, Zhevigny, Petit Thier, villages 
 or hamlets far from the centres of life, far even in 
 little Belgium where one would have thought no 
 place could be far. 
 
 "One night as I lay abed I heard a strange 
 sound," said a Walloon farm-wife in her antique 
 patois, "as if many horses were neighing in the 
 fields in the distance. It was so disturbing that 
 I awakened my husband." He went to find out 
 what it could be, and he learned from neighbours 
 that it was the Germans who had arrived. They 
 came on horseback and not by the road, but 
 streamed across the fields and through the woods 
 in an endless array. All the sleepy hollows were 
 invaded with brand-new warriors. 
 
 In some places one met old folk who, besides 
 their impressions of this war, remembered listen- 
 ing to the cannonade in the Franco-German strife 
 of 1870: they told me how they bent down to earth, 
 listened and just heard it. And they listened and 
 heard the bombardment in this war also. How 
 staggering was August 1914 to these quiet people! 
 The women wept, the men were nonplussed, the 
 Prussians swaggered and bullied. The natives 
 were so dumbfounded that they evidently amused 
 the German soldiers, and the latter made sport of 
 them, tying old folk together, back to back, and 
 making them dance; tying priests to the altars of 
 their churches, ducking old women in wells, firing 
 barns, shooting almost at random and at sight. 
 We listened to hundreds of tales of the behaviour 
 of the enemy coming in and of the brutal things he 
 
298 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 did, and then again we listened to the story of the 
 way he went out of the country in November 1Q18, 
 humbled, dejected, with eyes which could look no 
 one in the face. 
 
 Most of the villages had their graves of German 
 dead — one here, another there, and sometimes one 
 would discover (where opposition had been met) 
 large collections of graves and military cemeteries. 
 There was a large enclosure of stone graves at 
 St. Gerard — a sad memorial of the grand style of 
 death and war in the braver days of that tragical 
 first August. 
 
 There had been resistance at St. Gerard on the 
 part of the rear-guard of the Belgian Army rein- 
 forced by French. About five hundred friends 
 and foes had perished, and the Germans, with a 
 touch of that sense of honour and valour which 
 distinguished them until the gospel of necessity 
 ate into their morals, gave to each and all an equal 
 place in the memorial of their death. Thus at the 
 head of the graveyard, instead of the suffering 
 Jesus on the high cross that marks the cemeteries of 
 the French, they had erected an obelisk of granite 
 thirty feet high and eight feet in thickness, and on 
 the height of this massive column was printed in 
 Latin: 
 
 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; 
 
 and under that in German: 
 
 ZUM GEDACHTNIS 
 AN DIE KAMPFE BE! 
 ST. GERARD 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 299 
 
 IN DEN ANGEHORIGE 
 DER DEUTSCHEN GARDE 
 FRANZ OSISCHE UND 
 BELGISCHE KRIEGER 
 AM 23-24 AUGUST 1914 
 DEN HELDENTOD FUR 
 IHR VATERLAND STARBEN; 
 
 and under that again was written in French: 
 
 A LA MEMOIRE 
 
 DES BRAVES SOLDATS 
 
 ALLEMANDS BELGES ET FRANQAIS 
 
 TOMBES 
 POUR LEUR PATRIE 
 DANS LES COMBATS DE 
 
 ST. GERARD 
 LE 23-24 AOUT 19 14; 
 
 and under that again, on the ground, lay three 
 huge, heavy, withered wreaths. 
 
 Facing this obelisk were rectangles of perfect 
 lawn, smooth black cinder-paths, and ten massive 
 slabs of granite placed at intervals along the outer 
 edges of the lawns for seats from which to look at 
 the graves. The latter were ranged along four 
 borders in a perfectly symmetrical design. The 
 crosses were all of the same grey granite, smaller 
 than graveyard crosses usually are — as if shorn of 
 individuality — and all were the same in size and 
 appearance. French were together, Belgians to- 
 gether, Germans together. All was perfectly dis- 
 ciplined, and as the design ran to 500 graves, 
 whereas there were only 497 dead, three dummy 
 stones had been put in that there might be no 
 blank files amid the crosses. The rigid obedience 
 of Prussia reigned also amid the dead. 
 
300 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 I walked from cross to cross and read the names, 
 lingering longer where instead of names was writ- 
 ten all that could be said of poor, maimed, indis- 
 tinguishable bodies : 
 
 Un frangais. 
 Un soldat. 
 
 Un artilleur frangais. 
 Un tirailleur algerien. 
 Ein deutscher soldat. 
 Deutsch Pierre. 
 Herve Desire. 
 Petit Maurice. 
 Pochet Louis d'Arras. 
 
 There were many such, which spoke of a battle 
 that must have been terrible in its way. I thought 
 of the fate of the men to die so soon in the ad- 
 venture, to be cut off then, such a wan fate, but bet- 
 ter perhaps than to go through it all, through all 
 the fields of blood, and perish at the last. There 
 was one grave that broke up the symmetry and the 
 discipline of this graveyard, one crooked cross of 
 new unpainted wood in the midst of the grey stone. 
 On it was written in German : "Here lies in God, 
 Heinrich Widding, who died on the nth Novem- 
 ber 1918." 
 
 He died on the day of the armistice, the day 
 which marked the failure of the great discipline 
 of Prussia, and a weak, ordinary wooden cross 
 marked the progress of humanity on this back- 
 ground of grey stone. 
 
 Not far from this scene were miles and miles of 
 new-set wire before the trenches of Namur and the 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 301 
 
 line of its mighty stream. And as we marched we 
 thought how men might have died again in these 
 fields and how by God's mercy men were spared. 
 We crossed the majestical even-flowing Meuse on 
 German pontoons beside the great heights of 
 Wepion and Dave, and were ever on the trace of 
 the insubordinate hurrying and retiring army. By 
 many a German helmet and abandoned rifle, by 
 many a broken-down, dismantled lorry or gun, 
 we slogged on in mud and rain, noticing all the 
 signs, but saying little to our neighbours as our 
 feet pulsed to the drum-beat of the march and our 
 hearts lifted to the strains of our questing and ex- 
 ploring pipers. Always the peasants said: The 
 Germans passed through so many days before; 
 they marched with their officers under arrest; they 
 marched silently, no songs, no more shouting of 
 Nach Paris as of old. We began to see in nearly 
 every village, and often along the road, effigies of 
 the enemy set up by the inventive Belgians, regular 
 Guy Fawkes figures, German soldiers' tunics and 
 breeches stuff^ed with straw, a bunch of rags for a 
 head, a casserole on that, and a gas-mask dangling 
 from where the ears should be. Below all an 
 ironical inscription: "Nach Paris" or ''Kapoot." 
 
 *'How did he pass? Was he humble?" we 
 asked often concerning the enemy. 
 
 "When he came he was too grand for words, 
 but when he returned he was petit, petit," said the 
 Belgians, laughing gleefully. 
 
 The same Belgians were not all so happy if one 
 mentioned the subject of cows to them. "He drove 
 away all our cows. The procession of his cows 
 
302 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 was much longer than the procession of his men. 
 Whenever they want meat they kill another cow." 
 
 We passed often the pitiful remains of but lately 
 slaughtered cows — heads of cows with faces fresh 
 and pleading, entrails of cows in horrible grey 
 heaps, all along the way. And then all billets, all 
 fields where the enemy had camped, were left in 
 indescribable filth. There were the evidences of 
 a complete breakdown of discipline. 
 
 The country people showed us the black debris 
 of great bonfires where the retreating soldiers had 
 piled rifles and machine-guns and stores of all 
 kinds, and set fire to them before crossing the 
 frontier to Germany. Over most of these bon- 
 fires sentries were placed, and the Germans were 
 sufficiently German to shoot down any Belgian who 
 attempted to steal from these funeral pyres of the 
 war. 
 
 At Bende a farmer told how a German officer 
 received the news of the armistice. He was sitting 
 at the table with a bottle of cognac and a German 
 novel. A corporal came in with the communique, 
 read it out, and handed it to the officer. The lat- 
 ter, reading it, gave a deep groan, rose from his 
 chair and threw his helmet with a crash upon the 
 stone floor. Then he took a terrible draught at 
 the cognac, omitting to pour it into a glass, but put- 
 ting the whole bottle to his lips. He picked up his 
 helmet and was quiet for a while, buried in thought. 
 Then suddenly once more he started up, groaned 
 again, flung down his hat and ran his fingers 
 through his hair in an agony of grief. 
 
 Later in the evening some of his men came and 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 303 
 
 turned him out of his bedroom at the farm-house 
 and said, ''Up till now you have slept in a bed and 
 we in lousy straw. Now it is your turn to sleep in 
 the straw." And so it was. 
 
 Our way was rather uncertain, we had no fore- 
 ordained plan of progress, but waited each night 
 for the name of the village of the morrow. 
 Rumour would have sent us a score of ways: to 
 Paris to welcome King George at the Arc de 
 Triomphe, to Brussels to be inspected by King Al- 
 bert, to London, to Edinburgh, to Bonn, to Cob- 
 lentz; it sent us by train and it sent us by lorry; it 
 told us we should neither go to Germany nor re- 
 turn home, but be held on ''lines of communica- 
 tion." We approached Namur, but did not enter 
 it; set off for Liege, but were turned away from it; 
 were going to enter Germany by Aix-la-Chapelle 
 and then by Stavelot and then by Beho. Nearing 
 Huy we turned south-eastward, and crossing the 
 Ourthe at Hamoir plunged into the Belgian Ar- 
 dennes and came near to the Grand Duchy of 
 Luxembourg. 
 
 In all these wanderings the pipers were our com- 
 panions, leading us and exploring the way. Two 
 days, indeed, our instrumental band shared the 
 honours with the pipers and we took our step to 
 the solemn chanting march of "Sambre et Meuse," 
 but the general intervened. We must not march 
 to instrumental music and this band must cease. 
 So before and after this instrumental blare of brass 
 it was the slogan alone that we followed. 
 
 The various companies of the battalion took it 
 
304 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 in turn to be first in the march, to be second, to be 
 third, to follow up the rear, and when the company 
 was in front it heard the music in all its immediacy 
 and splendour, but when it was behind it only heard 
 it far away like a child's voice sobbing or calling 
 now and then. Passing over the crest of a hill the 
 music rose with the height and then became silent 
 as the vanguard dipped into the hollow beyond, 
 rising however again from the basin of the valley 
 and resounding back in increasing volume and hap- 
 piness. When the road turned half-right skirting 
 a hill the whole rear-guard was enlivened by the 
 pipes coming as it were toward them. When the 
 road lay even over marshes and plains the music was 
 deadened, but when we entered forests it sprang 
 to life as if the woodland were full of pipers — a 
 clamorous, exulting, echoing music, that of the 
 woods! And in the gorges and ravines Nature 
 responded also from the rocks. 
 
 Wonderful pipes! The men are inclined to 
 grumble and fall out, but the pipes make a unity 
 of them. Invisible tendons and muscles seem to 
 connect the legs of all files, and all move as one, 
 mechanically, rhythmically, certainly. The strong 
 are reduced to the step, the weak are braced up to 
 it. All bear the strain and share the strain. So 
 we go on, and the miracle is in the power of the 
 music. 
 
 The first weeks of our journeying were punc- 
 tuated by long halts, but the last ten days in the 
 wettest of the weather were continuous marches. 
 They made the most trying time of our experi- 
 ence. Boots wore out. Clothes got wet through 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 305 
 
 and could not be dried. Rations were often de- 
 layed, and from continuous wearing of our heavy- 
 packs our shoulders were galled. But the curios- 
 ity to see Germany, the sense of an adventure, and 
 the music kept our spirits up. At each new turn 
 of the road the evenly pacing Highlanders in the 
 vanguard of our column felt the way, explored the 
 new way, playing as they went. 
 
 Thus on the morning of the 12th December, 
 parading in the wet before dawn, all in our water- 
 proof capes, we left the last forlorn village of the 
 Belgian Ardennes and climbed out to the mysteri- 
 ous line which we all wished to see, that put 
 friendly land behind and left only enemy country 
 in front. One asked oneself what Germany would 
 be like. But only an hour was needed to bring us 
 to the custom-houses and the sentry-posts. We 
 marched to attention, the rain streamed off our 
 capes and trickled from our hats, but the tireless 
 pipers played ahead, and by some one's inspira- 
 tion the word went to the pipe-major, play "Over 
 the Border"; so with a skirl that no weather could 
 suppress we came up to the line to the strains of 
 
 March, march, all in good order. 
 
 All the blue bonnets are over the Border. 
 
 Then the pipers separated from the main body 
 and took up their stand in a phalanx by the side 
 of the road beside the familiar figure of our 
 brigadier, and they played "Hieland Laddie" 
 whilst we marched past at the salute. Thus we 
 entered Germany with no formalities and no enemy 
 in view. We felt much cheered though the time 
 
3o6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 was cheerless, and we were full of curiosity to see 
 the people we still called Huns, and men still talked 
 of bayoneting and cutting throats. Presently we 
 began to pass cottages, and we stared at them, but 
 could see no people. Some of us shouted, "Come 
 out and show yourselves" and "Come out of hid- 
 ing," forgetting that "Jerry," as we called him, 
 was hardly likely to be properly awake yet. 
 
 When we began to see Germans they paid no at- 
 tention to us whatever, but the woman at the well 
 went on drawing water and the man with straw in 
 his arms continued his way to his barn without 
 vouchsafing a glance. We saw women talking 
 with their backs to us, and they did not turn round 
 to look at us as we passed. The children were as 
 nonchalant toward the gay figures of our kilties 
 as if they saw pipers every day of the week. It 
 must be said we were a little taken aback, a little 
 mortified. But it rained and rained and the drums 
 became silent, sodden and soaked with the water, 
 and we splashed patiently and mechanically on 
 through the mud and over the broken roads. Our 
 fours became twos, became long threads of single 
 file as we picked our way amidst great holes and 
 ruts and gliding rivers of yellow ooze. When 
 there would otherwise have been a view of Ger- 
 many, trailing mist, liquefying in the wind to bit- 
 ter rain, swept hither and thither across our faces. 
 On the sides of the roads was desolation, and oc- 
 casionally still, as in Belgium, the sinister grey 
 heaps of the entrails of cows which told of the in- 
 disciplined German Army which had retired be- 
 fore us. 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 307 
 
 And with every one wet to the bone we climbed 
 the excruciatingly broken road over the hill from 
 Amel to Moderscheide. In this wretched Ger- 
 man village we were billeted, and the men made 
 huge bonfires in the barnyards, and stood round 
 them to dry themselves. The Germans seemed 
 to be rather afraid of us, and servile, but very poor. 
 Tottering old men insisted on shaking hands with 
 us. The girls of the place seemed to be carefully 
 kept out of our way. Billets were wretched, and 
 the men, still fire-eating, hunted for better ones 
 which, when they found, they intended to take by 
 storm. Those who had revolvers expected to have 
 to use them. But we only discovered that the na- 
 tive inhabitants slept in worse places than we had, 
 and that every one was of the mildest disposition. 
 Our blankets and reserve rations were in the wag- 
 gons stuck at the bottom of the Amel hill. There 
 was only one thing to do — ^to get dry and make the 
 best of it. 
 
 Next day, with the skies still streaming, we made 
 the longest continuous march, some thirty-six kilo- 
 metres, and by that effort got well into Germany. 
 The roads improved as we got further on, but the 
 tramp through the forest of Zitter was long, 
 marshy, and melancholy. Our company was first 
 after the pipers, and had the full benefit of the 
 music all the way. And we wandered inward, in- 
 ward, with our seeking and haunting Gaelic melo- 
 dies, into the depths of the hanging silent wood. 
 It was strange how aloof Nature seemed to these 
 melodies. In Scotland, or even in France, all the 
 hills and the woods would have helped the music. 
 
3o8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 But in this German land all were cold toward us, 
 and those endless pine-trees seemed to be holding 
 hands with fingers spread before the eyes to show 
 their shame and humiliation. There was a curi- 
 ous sense that the road on which we trod was not 
 our road, and that earth and her fruits on either 
 hand were hostile. 
 
 And how tired the men became, with half of 
 them through the soles of their boots and with rack- 
 ing damp in their shoulders and backs from their 
 rain-sodden packs! But we listened still, whilst 
 voluminous waves of melody wandered homeless 
 over German wastes and returned to us: 
 
 I heard the pibroch sounding, sounding, 
 O'er the wide meadows and lands from afar, 
 
 or to the stirring strains of the "March of the Bat- 
 tle of Harlaw," or to the crooning, hoping, sob- 
 bing of "Lord Lovat's Lament," and so went on 
 from hour to hour through the emptiness of south- 
 ern Germany. I thought of the wonderful theme 
 which this march ofifered to the musician, and knew 
 in anticipation that some day the world would 
 possess some great musical composition on the 
 March to the Rhine — an "1812" for Western Eu- 
 rope which some Tschaikowsky would compose. I 
 thought of its nature. Would it not begin with 
 the blare of brass obscuring the tremulous hopes 
 and fears of March 21, 1918 ; it would be noisy and 
 ambitious and terrifying and vulgar. But this 
 vulgarity would fail, met by the will of Britain, 
 France, America, Italy, Serbia, the will of the rest 
 pf humanity. The fears would gain ground till 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 309 
 
 the point of surrender arrived. Then would com- 
 mence the music of our strange march. No, not 
 one in which "Deutschland iiber Alles" faded into 
 "Rule Britannia" and the "Marseillaise," not one 
 of exultancy of victor and utter rout of fleeing foe. 
 But it would be sad, penetrating music, questing 
 music, haunting music, all subdued and, as it were, 
 prostrated. The voices of the German dead would 
 rise into it, not exultantly, nor menacingly, but in 
 curious sadness, as if they were unreconciled with 
 their own sacrifice; the German land and the Ger- 
 man forests would speak their shame in it, the Ger- 
 man gods would grow small and abase themselves, 
 and all that the proud Wagner ever conceived 
 would die away to a piping of birds in one note 
 over wildernesses. The fall of Germany was a 
 greater event than the victory of those who strove 
 against her. 
 
 The pipes seemed to express the thought, the 
 Gaelic wailing in the rain and the steady march 
 through the ancient woods. 
 
 Still we swung along the way to the Rhine, and 
 knew our halt could not be far. However, when 
 we thought we had just about reached our camp- 
 ing-ground for the night, we came to a guide-post 
 which showed it still to be seven kilometres on. 
 But that was at the top of a long hill, and the road 
 ran gently down through woods the whole way. 
 The colonel sent a message to play the light- 
 hearted song of the "Men of Portree." The rain 
 had stopped, and an evening sky unveiled a more 
 cheerful light. So with an easy, inconsequent air 
 we cast off care and tripped away down to the sub- 
 
3IO A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 stantial and once prosperous bit of Rhineland 
 called Hellenthal, well on our way to Cologne. 
 
 I had serious misgivings before entering Ger- 
 many. My comrades vowed such vengeance on 
 the people that I anticipated something worse than 
 war. In theory, no treatment was going to be bad 
 enough and cruel enough for the German. We 
 were out to wreak on him four years' war-weari- 
 ness; we were ready to settle all the old scores of 
 treachery on the field and mischance in the fight. 
 What, therefore, was my surprise to find, after two 
 or three days in Germany, all our roaring lions 
 converted into sucking doves. 
 
 It was an extraordinary lesson in psychology — 
 how, without too much prompting from officials, 
 a whole nation comported itself to a victorious 
 enemy army, and how that army, without any 
 prompting whatever, took up an unexpected atti- 
 tude of friendliness after vowing intense and ever- 
 lasting hatred. Our authorities certainly expected 
 a different attitude, for commanding officers had 
 been asked to leave behind any specially bad char- 
 acters who might be likely to get out of hand in 
 enemy country, and we were all warned to stick to 
 one another and not quarrel amongst ourselves, as 
 we should need to preserve a united front in the 
 country of the enemy. Every man in a billeting 
 party was obliged to carry a revolver. Some units, 
 I believe, made their entry into all towns and vil- 
 lages with fixed bayonets. But public opinion and 
 atmosphere was different from what had been ex- 
 pected. 
 
 No, there was not much craft or cunning calcu- 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 311 
 
 lation in the German attitude to us. The same at- 
 titude was to be found in the smallest and remotest 
 villages as in the large towns. And in our army 
 the reaction was the same in all the various units 
 which I met afterwards at Cologne. 
 
 It is true that the German was rather afraid, 
 though he seldom showed it in any of his actions. 
 The German is rather reserved and secretive by 
 nature — a great contrast to the Frenchman, who 
 is nervous and expressive. After living years 
 among the talkative and excitable French and Bel- 
 gians, Tommy Atkins did not probe beneath the 
 exterior calm of his German hosts. 
 
 Nevertheless fear was not very deep in the Ger- 
 man either. His strongest feeling was one of re- 
 lief that the war was over — on any terms. Our 
 coming in was a secondary evil only. Then as re- 
 gards his sensitive national pride, was he not able 
 to nurse in secret the remembrance that he had held 
 the world at bay, and had only given in at last be- 
 cause the odds were too great! 
 
 When we entered into the German houses we 
 saw on many walls and shelves the photographs of 
 German soldiers, and as we asked of each we 
 learned the melancholy story — wounded, dead, 
 dead, wounded. Death had paused at every Ger- 
 man home. The women brought out their family 
 albums and showed us portraits of themselves as 
 they were before the war, and asked us to compare 
 that with what they looked like now. And they 
 showed us portraits of many German girls of whom 
 we asked, "Where are they now?" and nearly al- 
 ways received the answer, "Todt, grippe" (dead 
 
312 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 from influenza) ; so every soldier realised that Ger- 
 man families had at least suffered equally with 
 British families, and the thought rested in the 
 mind. 
 
 We were soon seated at table with young Ger- 
 man men who but a few weeks before had been 
 enemies in the field. They were cold to us at 
 first, but our engaging warmth soon cheered them 
 out of their apathy. Though our fellows knew 
 no German they set to work to make Fritz under- 
 stand their questions by expletives in pigeon 
 French, and all manner of gestures and mimicry, 
 punctuated by gufifaws of laughter and asides to 
 one another. 
 
 We were all agog to find out where Fritz had 
 fought against us, where we had faced one another. 
 
 "You at Ypres?" 
 
 "Moi aussi at Ypres." 
 
 "Compris Bourlon Wood? Moi at Bourlon 
 Wood." 
 
 "Bapaume? Yes, I know that fine, M'sewer. 
 He's been at Bapaume. Wounded, M'sewer? 
 Twice? Moi three times." 
 
 Our fellows would unloose their tunics and show 
 the scars on their bodies. The German boys would 
 do the same. Then, being unable to express them- 
 selves, both would grin in a sort of mutual satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 At Hellenthal we talked till late at night with 
 ex-soldiers of the Kaiser. I found a young man 
 who had fought on the Russian front, and we com- 
 pared places we both knew, the German diving 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 313 
 
 into his memory for the Russian phrases he had 
 picked up, such as chai peet (to drink tea) ; 
 nitchevo (that's all right) ; and Ya ne poni mayii 
 (I don't understand). At Call, near Schmidt- 
 heim — terrible name for a place — we met a young 
 man who had actually been opposed to our very 
 unit in the Cambrai fighting of a year before. 
 Wherever we went we made our exchanges, and, 
 if anything, we found the private soldier of the 
 German Army had had a more adventurous ca- 
 reer than we had, and any man who had served 
 any length of time had seen Russia and Macedonia, 
 as well as both French and British battle-fronts in 
 Western Europe. This testified to the mobility 
 of the German Army, and to its restless energy in 
 the devil's dance of conquering Europe. At 
 Ermulheim a demobilise, in answer to our persua- 
 sions, put on his uniform again to let us see what he 
 looked like as a soldier; but the uniform was a new 
 one, and he seemed to look too smart to be the real 
 thing. We had never seen German soldiers in the 
 smartness which no doubt they possessed well back 
 behind the line, but were familiar only with the 
 down-at-heel misery of prisoners, the sinister grey- 
 ness of the enemy in front of us, or the shabbiness 
 of the look of the dead. 
 
 We no longer referred to them as Huns now 
 that we were in Germany. Innate goodness of 
 feeling prevented the use of that name, though in- 
 deed the German was never Boche nor Hun to the 
 rank and file, but always "Jacky" or "Jerry" or 
 "Fritz." We soon learned that the Germans 
 
314 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 greatly disliked the appellation of "Boche," which 
 apparently was not absolutely meaningless but 
 meant "ill-begotten," or something of the sort. 
 
 Racial affinity certainly greatly contributed to 
 bring about this reconciliation between the rank 
 and file and the German people they met. The 
 cleanliness of German towns and villages and of 
 the people, the fair complexions of the women, 
 the first-class state of German civilisation from an 
 artisan's point of view, all attracted after France. 
 In the small shops the German women did not 
 charge us three times the price and hand us out 
 bad change. In the public-houses beer was two- 
 pence a jug and wine five marks the bottle: there 
 was not one price for Germans and a much higher 
 price for British soldiers. In places where we had 
 to draw water there was every convenience for that 
 end, and in any case, if there were pumps, the Ger- 
 mans did not take off the pump handles and make 
 us walk half a kilometre for every pail of water. 
 The Germans never offered us water at twopence 
 a glass. Certainly the Germans were under watch- 
 ful eyes and could not have played many tricks 
 had they tried, and they were not left to their own 
 devices and to the free exemplification of their 
 character, as were the French and Belgians. 
 
 "Well, Stephen," said a dour Scottish corporal 
 to me at Zulpich, "I have been four and a half 
 years out here, and have lived in France and in 
 Belgium and now in Germany, and I can tell you 
 the people I feel nearest to me are these. They 
 are honester and cleaner, and somehow I feel I 
 understand them better." 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 315 
 
 He was ordinarily a very reserved fellow, but 
 I know he had hated the Germans. 
 
 I smiled, but I did not offer any comment. It 
 is very fair to allow men to obtain a natural opinion 
 and a first impression without the poison of war 
 talk and propaganda. My corporal would mod- 
 ify his opinion later without the help of a reminder 
 of Germany's war crimes. 
 
 In another talk to which I listened I heard also 
 the following notable remark: "We don't hate 
 them; we leave that for the politicians and the peo- 
 ple at home." The remark was followed by a 
 hearty laugh. 
 
 In all this, however, our officers took little part. 
 Attempts were made to stop fraternising, but it 
 could not be prevented. The army cannot live in 
 air-tight compartments on the Rhine. It is bound 
 to live in the houses and shops and beer-halls and 
 trams and cinemas, and to mix with Germans. 
 
 Some notion of the new atmosphere got to our 
 padre. The padres had for four years been 
 preaching, "I came not to bring peace, but a 
 sword," but now they realised that since armistice a 
 larger message was available. Said our padre to 
 me one day with relish: 
 
 "Next Sunday I am going to be very daring and 
 preach a sermon on loving your enemies." 
 
 "Not a bad idea, sir," said I. 
 
 "The padre is going to give us a sermon on 
 'Love your enemies,' " said I to a knot of fellows. 
 
 They smiled. 
 
 "Tell him, 'Before he joined,' " said they. 
 "Tell him, 'Before he fluffed.' " 
 
3i6 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 Hate is an impurity in the blood. It is intended 
 to be discharged from the system. But there was 
 never, even at the vv^orst moment, much of it in the 
 British composition. 
 
 It was not part of their blood, 
 It came to them very late, 
 
 as Kipling says. Our Christianity does not yet 
 extend to forgiving our enemies at once. The 
 British way is to clear off old scores first, and then 
 forgive, but all in a cheery spirit — not with bile 
 and malice. Endeavour was made to cultivate 
 hate in our ranks as a useful aid to fighting quality, 
 and many stories, as we know, were circulated 
 about the enemy with the idea of working up a 
 useful hate. No doubt some hated. But when 
 the armistice was signed and we got away into Ger- 
 man territory, that hate passed easily away, leav- 
 ing behind the good-humoured Tommy. 
 
 So we undoubtedly felt better in ourselves as we 
 marched on to Cologne. We were more obstrep- 
 erous, more noisy and wild in our ways, but also 
 lighter in our steps, gayer in our hearts. We 
 marched with a will — an army of optimists on the 
 way home! 
 
 In the whole British Army our division marches 
 the best. Other units will always turn out with 
 respect to look at us going by, and it is possible that 
 our battalion was as good as any in the division, 
 at least in the march to Cologne. We marched 
 the whole way; we were not given the doubtful 
 privilege of going part of the way by train, as some 
 battalions were. Boot leather was very scarce; 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 317 
 
 the weather was wet and the roads broken, but very 
 few men fell out on the march, perhaps no more 
 than three the whole way. On the road, at least 
 when the weather was fine, we were a pleasure to 
 the eye — all sparkling with polished brasses and 
 bright buttons, all moving as one man, all platoons 
 squared and trim. 
 
 We were thoroughly proud of ourselves, as if 
 we ourselves had won the war, and we entered each 
 German village with that air of conscious pride 
 and with that elan which might well characterise 
 the first British troops to enter. We believed al- 
 ways that we dazzled the Germans, and that they 
 were rubbing their eyes and asking in surprise, 
 "Are these the English whom we once despised? 
 We believed they had no soldiers who could make 
 so handsome a turn-out." And in this we were 
 confirmed by our colonel, who kept regarding us 
 always on the march as if we were the apple of his 
 eye and greatest spiritual treasure. How angry 
 he became when motor-lorries or stafif-captains' 
 cars came alongside us, spattering us with mud and 
 breaking the long straight line of our external files. 
 It gratified us intensely whenever he stopped a car 
 and made it wait till we had all passed by. 
 
 Our songs broke forth whenever the pipers 
 ceased to lead us, and in merry mood we accom- 
 plished the last stages of our way. From Hellen- 
 thal we marched to the picturesque village of Blu- 
 menthal, with its castle on the hill, thence to Call, 
 where the lager-beer was greatly appreciated. 
 From Call we marched to the old town of Zulpich, 
 with its fine towers. From Zulpich by Weiler to 
 
3i8 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 Erp, where the children watched us come in, hat 
 in hand; from Erp to Lechenich, and through a 
 very sodden wood to the briquet factories of Her- 
 mulheim. Hermulheim is an outer suburb of Co- 
 logne, and but a few kilometres were needed to 
 bring us to our billets in the German city. And 
 we entered one morning in the sunshine — with only 
 the eclat of our own smartness and our own tri- 
 umph, having been over a month on the road since 
 we left Maubeuge. 
 
 Some were billeted in schools, some in an old 
 beer-house and theatre, and some found their way 
 to the houses and the flats of the Germans, and 
 made themselves comfortable. At first the centre 
 of Cologne was out of bounds, and then it was made 
 obligatory for us always to go about in twos in case 
 of attack. But these restrictions quickly fell away, 
 and we had the freedom of the city. 
 
 The streets were packed with our boys at night, 
 with them and with the well-dressed Cologne 
 crowd. There was no intercourse in the streets, 
 no soldiers walking with civilians, but, on the other 
 hand, no friction. Both seemed very pleased to 
 see one another. Food was scarce, but everything 
 else was in plenty and not dear to buy, and it was 
 the season of Christmas, and every shop had its 
 soldiers within it, buying souvenirs and gifts. We 
 were paid our wages in marks, reckoned as seven- 
 pence each, and thus most objects exposed for sale 
 seemed cheaper to our eyes than to the Germans. 
 
 "If you see a thing in a shop," said an officer, 
 "don't enter into long discussions with the shop- 
 keeper, but fix a price yourselves and buy it." I 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 319 
 
 believe this worked very well. I never heard of 
 any trouble in the shops. Nobody in our rank 
 
 and file could speak German. B , the actor, 
 
 who would have been at home with the Teutons, 
 was in hospital, gassed. When I used the few 
 words and phrases I had picked up on my travels, 
 the others looked up to me admiringly, and often 
 brought me in to interpret their desires. 
 
 However, it was in the various homes and back- 
 parlours where we met the Germans more freely 
 that our real exchange of thoughts and sentiments 
 with them began. 
 
 Whilst the rank and file of all units rapidly es- 
 tablished themselves on terms of comfort with the 
 enemy, and were even ready warmly to defend him 
 in argument, it was possible for one more cool in 
 judgment to observe some curious facts concern- 
 ing the psychology of the German in defeat. 
 
 The German reception, by reason of its warmth, 
 was very baffling for Tommy Atkins. "Tell me," 
 said one, "is it true that German mothers are bring- 
 ing up their children to hate the English; are they 
 not teaching them that England is the enemy, and 
 they must fight her when they grow up?" 
 
 The question was put to a very intelligent Ger- 
 man engineer, who spoke English perfectly, a man 
 who had supervised his own engineering contracts 
 all over the world. We were billeted upon him, 
 and he and his wife certainly treated us very 
 kindly. 
 
 He frowned over the question, paused a moment, 
 and then answered emphatically: 
 
320 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 ''No, it is not true. German mothers are only 
 teaching their children that there must never be 
 another war." 
 
 He began a discussion of the merits of the war. 
 He said he was glad we had won and so put an 
 end to the strife. He did not think the private 
 soldier at all responsible. 
 
 "You are commanded to fight," said he, "and 
 you obey. It is the same with us. We are com- 
 manded, and we obey. I imagine it is much the 
 same with you as with us: 'You pay, you obey, 
 but you have no say.' " 
 
 "Quite right, mister, quite right," said a chorus 
 of fellows, whose simple minds saw no guile in 
 such a thought. 
 
 "We lost, and so we must pay," the German con- 
 tinued with a smile. 
 
 At Christmas every German house had its Christ- 
 mas tree, even houses where there were no chil- 
 dren. Many hours were spent elaborately decking 
 them. 
 
 "I suppose you'll have a good spread at Christ- 
 mas, anyway," said a Tommy. "In England they 
 are going on double rations." 
 
 "No," said the German, "we shall only have a 
 Christmas tree and a few glass balls." 
 
 "Oh, I'm damned sorry to hear that," said 
 Tommy. 
 
 "Don't be sorry," said Fritz. "You won the 
 war; we lost it. Had we won and you lost, 
 then we should have had double rations, and you 
 would have had a Christmas tree and a few glass 
 balls." 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 321 
 
 At a large house at another part of Cologne, a 
 questing sergeant of Newfoundland arrived with 
 a platoon of his men. The owner, a Westphalian 
 millionaire, addressed the soldiers in this wise: 
 
 "Yes, you may come into my house. All I ask 
 is that you keep away from the women. Including 
 my wife and daughters and the servants, there are 
 twenty-one women here, but everything else is at 
 your disposal. And I am under no illusion about 
 the war. You won, and I expect you to behave 
 as men who have won. It is no small thing to have 
 defeated Germany in the field. In fact, gentle- 
 men, I congratulate you on your victory, which 
 has saved Germany. To show that I am sincere, 
 I have sent to my cellar for champagne, and with 
 my own hands I propose to pour for you whilst 
 my wife and daughters shall wait on you." 
 
 Thereupon he suited the action to the word, and, 
 as the sergeant said touchingly, he would not al- 
 low a man to drink twice from the same glass, but 
 always had a clean glass provided. 
 
 The adventures of the various units of the Army 
 of Occupation have been manifold and curious and 
 rare. A quartermaster-sergeant of Canadians bil- 
 leted the whole of his company in a new hospital, 
 and every soldier had a new bed and virginal sheets 
 and palliasse, and the nurses cooked for them and 
 looked after them, and generally bewildered them 
 with kindness, though they were in themselves bit- 
 terly indignant at the use to which the hospital was 
 put. Our wild boys responded to the treatment 
 like doves. 
 
 "How do you account for it?" I asked the ser- 
 
322 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 geant. "If any hated the Germans more ruthlessly 
 than others it was you." 
 
 "Well, I don't know," said he. "They just 
 knocked us off our Gawd-damned feet." 
 
 And that was so, I suppose. 
 
 If Tommies are seen marching out with Ger- 
 man girls, both parties are put under arrest. But 
 in the houses and in other private places the 
 women are exceedingly forward. They do not dis- 
 play the hate or coldness or bitterness which one 
 would naturally expect from women toward those 
 who had killed husbands, brothers, sons, sweet- 
 hearts. The young girls are all bringing their 
 albums, and, generally speaking, hanging round 
 Tommy's neck, and the elder ones are fussing about 
 fires and beds and chairs to give him comforts. 
 For themselves, they have little food and little hope 
 of any kind, but they are not in any way depressed. 
 The sense of guilt, of moral wrong, is absent. All 
 they know is they have played a game; they have 
 lost, and they are giving up what is forfeit — that 
 is all. And there is one great compensation — an 
 Allied army is saving the community from a Spar- 
 tacist revolution. 
 
 "Honour to the victors and to the liberators of 
 Germany! That's all very well," said a hard- 
 hearted captain one night. "But I must have this 
 matter out with mine host." 
 
 So he sent for the owner of the house, who ap- 
 peared suave and smiling in the mess. 
 
 "I'm pleased to see you," said the captain, 
 "though, of course, you understand me, not really 
 pleased in any way. But take a seat. Now, I 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 323 
 
 want to ask you a lot of questions. You've been 
 treating our army here in Cologne pretty well, I 
 admit, and there is no complaint. But how was it 
 that you allowed our prisoners to return home so 
 unfriended, uncared for, unfed? How do you ac- 
 count for the treatment of our men in the prison- 
 camps and in the places where they were forced to 
 work? How do you account for the atrocities 
 your people have committed? Your women are 
 very friendly to us, but will you explain to me the 
 stories of what you did to French and Belgian 
 women during your occupation of their; towns? 
 You are very polite, but how do you account for the 
 behaviour of your submarine commanders? You 
 say you believe in a League of Nations, but how 
 do you account for your Government's deliberate 
 encouragement of Armenian massacres, etc., etc.?" 
 
 The German shrugged his shoulders, and grew 
 more and more pale and taciturn. He could not 
 answer. 
 
 "Well," said the captain, "you'll have to pay for 
 it all now, to the last farthing and the last brass 
 button on the soldier's coat." 
 
 The German seemed slightly relieved. 
 
 "How much will it be?" he asked. 
 
 "It is estimated at twenty-four thousand mil- 
 lions sterling," said the captain. 
 
 "Twenty-four thousand millions sterling," said 
 the German deliberately, and with that he stood 
 up, for it was late at night. "Twenty-four thou- 
 sand millions — very well. We will pay it, and 
 the account will be cleared." 
 
 With that he waved his hand comprehensively. 
 
324 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 "Good-night!" said he with dignity, and walked 
 out. 
 
 I often asked myself the question in Cologne, 
 Why has the German a good conscience? He 
 had a bad conscience during the war; he has no 
 right to a good conscience now. Our soldiers 
 gaily marching from street to street, our soldiers 
 singing in beer-houses and billets, had good con- 
 sciences. But they, with duty done and a good 
 cause, had every right to them. The Germans 
 ought to have been obsessed with the wrong they 
 had done humanity. 
 
 I think possibly the German sang-froid was due 
 to the manifest way in which British, French, and 
 Italian Governments in the hour of victory were 
 showing themselves false to the great ideals of the 
 war. The Germans could take to themselves the 
 consolation that their enemies were showing them- 
 selves every whit as greedy and materialistic as 
 they themselves had been. Germany had evolved 
 the great selfishness and injustice of the Treaty of 
 Brest-Litovsk, but at Paris we were preparing a 
 "Victory Peace" beside which Brest-Litovsk would 
 be altruism. I noticed that whenever we spoke to 
 a German about the war from an ideal point of 
 view, he seemed uncomfortable and uneasy. He 
 was most anxious to deny an ideal point of view 
 as existing in the Allies. His favourite point of 
 view was of the European powers as gamblers risk- 
 ing their fortune in the chance of war and diplo- 
 macy. Germany had lost, and as in "honour 
 bound" would pay the forfeit. If President Wil- 
 
XIV THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 325 
 
 son was favoured in German minds, it was because 
 the German thought that he would fool the Allies 
 into a gentler settlement or that he would cause the 
 Allies to quarrel among themselves. 
 
 And whilst we were at Cologne the British Gen- 
 eral Election, which practically left the soldier 
 without a voice in the State, accomplished itself in 
 all its dishonouring vulgarity, with its cries of 
 "Make the German pay!" and "Hang the Kaiser!" 
 Thanks to that election, Great Britain came to the 
 Conference Table at Paris with no moral voice, 
 no ideals — only with a notion of bargaining and of 
 sheltering herself from responsibility behind either 
 Clemenceau or President Wilson. Was it not a 
 disgrace to our political and governmental sys- 
 tem — to come to Paris without Christian principle 
 or national dignity, after all the sufferings, all the 
 deaths for the cause? 
 
 The army, that is, the rank and file, was more 
 honourable, and knew better what it wanted. 
 
 "I am a married man," I hear one of our griz- 
 zled veterans saying. "I have four children. 
 Fve been out here three years, and it has been hell. 
 But if the armistice were called oflf to-morrow, I'd 
 gladly go on fighting. Why? In order that we 
 might make a clean job of it. All I care for is that 
 my boys shall not have to go through what I've 
 gone through. We don't want to fight it all over 
 again in ten years' time — we want to make the 
 world safe once for all. Else what are we fighting 
 for at all? Germany ought to be shown that force 
 of arms does not pay. Her army ought first to be 
 crushed and then completely disarmed. And 
 
326 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xiv 
 
 Krupps' factories at Essen and elsewhere ought to 
 be destroyed. . . ." 
 
 How often have I listened to such talk. That 
 is what the soldier-in-arms has thought in his heart, 
 without prompting. 
 
 The greatest indemnity dreamed of would not 
 add up to the demilitarisation of Europe; nor is it 
 decent to talk loudly of the payment of our expenses 
 when the largest part of such expense is the men 
 who in millions have been killed in the war. To 
 arrange a sort of bargain-peace between the Allies 
 themselves, and with the Central Powers, the sort 
 of peace which leaves Europe an armed camp, 
 would be the foulest injustice to those who have 
 fought and to those who have died in the fight. 
 
 Moreover, the Europe we are coming back to 
 in peace is going to be a miserable place, where 
 lies and cynicism and greed will be the main char- 
 acteristics of public life, if our ideals are not rati- 
 fied in the results of the victory. Public virtue 
 will become a laughing-stock; democracy will con- 
 tinue to be stampeded as by war-loan publicity 
 campaigns and the election rampages of ambitious 
 demagogues; there will be more evil standards in 
 politics, literature, art, morals, finance. 
 
 That does not deeply concern us, however, at 
 the moment of our arrival in Cologne. The sig- 
 nificance of the moment for us is victory and the 
 justification not only of our own sacrifices, but of 
 the sacrifices of all, and of all who lie buried by 
 the way. 
 
XV 
 
 THE FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 
 
 For most people Cologne is the river Rhine and 
 the Cathedral. The rather imposing commercial 
 splendour of modern Cologne only testifies to Ger- 
 man commercialism. But the Rhine is a great na- 
 tional river and the cathedral is a great Catholic 
 temple, a monument, if not of to-day's religion, at 
 least of religion past. So on Christmas Eve I 
 looked upon the river, and acknowledged that, 
 though we came as victors, we did not come vain- 
 gloriously, but rather with a great thankfulness to 
 God that through us Germany and Europe could 
 be free. Whilst the shops blazed with light, and 
 the advertisement toys revolved in shop-windows 
 of the city, attracting the gaze of the Christmas 
 crowd, I was, with many other lads in khaki, in 
 the quietude and dim light of the cathedral — ex- 
 pecting somehow that this year in Europe a Child 
 should be born. 
 
 The fifth Christmas had arrived, and with it the 
 victory of the cause, and a happy issue out of all our 
 afflictions. Some twelve million English-speaking 
 men had worn the uniform of the soldier and borne 
 his heavy burden, and it might be said of many a 
 battalion and regiment that more of its number 
 lay now buried beneath the white crosses in France 
 than were alive to regard the mild star of hope and 
 
 327 
 
328 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xv 
 
 peace. And of those who survived, who was there 
 who had not suffered in the war? On a mountain 
 of suffering our ark had come to rest. Neverthe- 
 less, it was not of the suffering but of the victory 
 that we thought. Christmas was a first Christmas 
 again. We would not put on mourning on Christ- 
 mas Day and go to the graves, but we should under- 
 stand that if it was a glorious day for the living it 
 was a more glorious one still for the dead, for they 
 were justified in their sacrifice, and they had not 
 died in vain. 
 
 It has seldom worked out so happily in history 
 before. Endless sacrifice for the ideal has been 
 made throughout the ages, and the page of the his- 
 tory-book records ever how wickedness has thriven 
 on virtue and greediness has grown after unselfish- 
 ness. But behold, in one of the grandest episodes 
 in our human history that which men have died 
 for and suffered for in largest number has swiftly 
 come to pass. This Christmas of victory we re- 
 joiced, not by ourselves, but with all those who had 
 passed the bounds of our vision, yet who, neverthe- 
 less, were with us now as they were with us then. 
 
 We felt it should be an altogether-Christmas, 
 when we should try to bring to festal hearth and 
 camp-fire the spirit and the presence of all the ab- 
 sent ones, not only those from whom for a few 
 weeks and months we might be still separated, not 
 only those we knew of whom Omar wrote so lov- 
 ingly, 
 
 Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best 
 That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest, 
 Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, 
 And one by one crept silently to Rest ; 
 
XV FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 329 
 
 not only these, but those we never knew face to face, 
 the thousands of "lonely soldiers" of humanity, 
 who with few friends have fought with us for one 
 and the same great cause. Let us be one with 
 them! 
 
 In the summer and autumn we marched over 
 the great zone of the destruction which marks the 
 old battle-fields, and as the German relaxed his 
 grasp on ridge after ridge and horizon past hori- 
 zon, we saw that which we desired to see — la belle 
 France liberated. We came to the virginal, little- 
 touched interior country, where the red roofs were 
 on the cottages and all around the spires of parish 
 churches pointed heavenward, where the fields 
 were not pitted with shells, but carefully ploughed 
 or harvested. We slogged along the road, foot- 
 sore and gay, and one commonly heard the remark, 
 "We don't mind how many miles we go this way." 
 The delight at seeing the happy valleys of the be- 
 yond-country was intoxicating. I heard one man 
 exclaim on one occasion with true emotion: 
 "What price this for the Promised Land!" 
 That was an expression of our first impulse of 
 excitement; but we camped there and got used to 
 it, and read the papers and hung on President 
 Wilson's words for many weeks, and perhaps for- 
 got what it had been to come there from the heaps 
 of decaying bricks and stone and the smell of the 
 dead in the old "Somme Country." But my mind 
 recurred constantly to the growing groves of white 
 crosses where our dead lay buried, and to the thou- 
 sands of graves where the unknown lay. What a 
 number of these we passed on our way ! Wretched, 
 
330 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xv 
 
 broken-down crosses, with their legends written, or 
 rather scrawled, in copying-ink pencil : "Here lie 
 1 6 British heroes." "Here lie two officers and 
 twenty men, British — names unknown." "Here 
 lies an unknown British soldier"; or in German, as 
 was often the case, "Hier ruht in Gott ein Eng- 
 lander," or simply "Ein Englander," or "Englisch 
 soldat," or "English unbekannt," or as I saw one 
 grave, German dug, "Anonymous England, 3 — 
 21. 3. 1 91 8." What an enormous number of graves 
 bore that fatal date, March 21! Such crosses, 
 without particulars, are generally called "Lonely 
 Soldiers," and much love is always lavished on 
 them by the private soldier bringing wild flowers 
 to them, making formal gardens round them of 
 glass and chalk. There is a feeling that the un- 
 known dead have made a deeper and a sweeter sac- 
 rifice than even those who perished and were known 
 and were buried "with name and number." 
 There is a pathos about the dead who have neither 
 number nor name, and in reacting to it the soldier's 
 instinct is true. Theirs has been that holiest sac- 
 rifice, and it is fitting we should carry the brightest 
 tokens of victory and put them on the grave of — 
 Anonymous England. 
 
 What the war has done! It has brought us all 
 closer together, though it has separated beloved 
 from beloved. It has made us intimate with many 
 strangers. As a nation we are more "altogether" 
 than we were before — there are more faces rather 
 than less round our happy tables at home, and look- 
 ing over one another's shoulders at the gleaming 
 hearth. And at humanity's board, perhaps, the 
 
XV FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 331 
 
 nations themselves are nearer one another in friend- 
 ship. 
 
 The hardest lesson of army discipline is the sup- 
 pression of individuality, the unconditional sur- 
 render of the individualistic ego to the will of the 
 nation. It is true that when that surrender has 
 been made peace is at hand. But what a chapter 
 of sufferings, mental and physical, before the mind 
 and soul are willing: to make that surrender! Yes, 
 the uniform of the King, if it enlarges and increases 
 some, does narrow and straiten others, cuts them 
 down, reduces them to humble equality with those 
 whom in the old days they had long outstripped in 
 the life-race. And yet, as a whole is greater than 
 its part, the reduction is only an illusion. The 
 contrary is really true, and the uniform makes one 
 larger— bigger altogether. But that one can only 
 know — after peace has been obtained. One has 
 become part of the great chorus of the army, with 
 the sense of a large number thinking and doing 
 altogether. There is a good French word for be- 
 ing individualistic; it is gauche, and gaucherie 
 means a sort of left-handedness, a being out of step. 
 The march and the sufferings come easier, too, 
 when one is in step. The army as a whole, the na- 
 tion as a whole, helps to bear your sufferings. 
 For indeed men have suffered things in this war 
 which no individual ''on his own" could possibly 
 endure. But our men have endured them because 
 others were suffering with them, all around them, 
 and there was a common power of strength sustain- 
 ing them all. The nation — that beautiful invisible 
 being we sometimes call Britannia — has sustained 
 
332 A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS xv 
 
 each and everyone of her children, and has fed our 
 soldiers with mysterious strength as they had been 
 babes" at her breast. 
 
 The hardest thing for the nations also has been 
 to hear the drum-beat of Christianity and self-sac- 
 rifice, the long process of learning to fall into line, 
 and to march in step together. As with the in- 
 dividual soldier, so with the individual rebellious 
 nation, unconditional surrender alone gives lasting 
 peace, and allows humanity to feel itself whole. 
 Thus the honour and the splendour of mankind is 
 sustained. 
 
 Some soldiers from the first had a greater sense 
 of .the honour of their regiment and of the army 
 and of the nation for whom they fought than others. 
 They were ready to die for the greater body to 
 which they belonged and for the greater cause to 
 which all were dedicated. They had the patience 
 and the spirit of self-sacrifice which this sense de- 
 manded. They had the forbearance not to tread 
 with too rough foot upon a grave or to touch with 
 less respect the bodies of the fallen. They had that 
 daring which prompted them to outbid their com- 
 rades in the doing of dangerous tasks. It was 
 sometimes called "Camaraderie," the sense of com- 
 radeship; sometimes "Devotion to Duty," some- 
 times "Valour." It was most truly Christianity; 
 for does not Christianity mean the suffering of the 
 One that All may have more life, the bread and 
 wine of the New Testament which makes us all 
 one Body and one Spirit? It was most commonly 
 called nothing at all, and passed unnoticed. But 
 it is Esprit de Corps, the honour of the regiment, 
 
XV FINEST THING IN THE ARMY 333 
 
 the spirit of the whole; Esprit de Corps, which at 
 its highest and best and widest and profoundest 
 becomes Saint Esprit, 
 
 the one spirit of the mighty whole, 
 The spirit of the martyrs and the saints. 
 
 Those vile camping-grounds, those disgusting 
 trenches and bloody frays, the bullying, the bludg- 
 eoning of the heart — not much of the Spirit in all 
 that I can hear some of the wearier ones remark. 
 But they too will in days to come look back and 
 realise the Spirit that was in their midst, the finest 
 thing in the army and in the war. As yet they re- 
 member all too well the brutal aspects of it all, the 
 cruelty and sordidness, the petty tyranny and the 
 impurity, but the time will come for many when, 
 recalling the way and the march and the Spirit in 
 the midst, they will ask of their old war-comrades 
 as did one apostle of another at Emmaus, "Did not 
 our heart burn within us while He talked with us 
 by the way!" 
 
INDEX 
 
 A.C. means "accepted Christ," 63 
 
 Adinfer, 194 
 
 Adjutant: a hard adjutant means 
 a hard sergeant-major, 108 
 
 Advance of August 1918, 212, 247 
 seq. 
 
 Air raids, 94 
 
 Alexandra, Queen, 94 
 
 "All the blue bonnets are over 
 the Border," 305 
 
 "All we ever do is sign the pay- 
 roll," 199 
 
 American Relief Committee, 194 
 
 Americans, 38 seq., 55, 92, 126, 
 198; opposed to work, 55 
 
 Amour propre, 60 
 
 Ancient Sparta, comparison with. 
 
 Angels whisper, 71 
 
 Arbre de la Femme, 269 
 
 Ardennes, 296 
 
 Armistice Day, 277, 300 
 
 Arms presented, 99; reversed, 
 
 100 
 Armstrong, the gardener and 
 
 wrestler, 161 
 Army, conditions, 28, 72-73, n6, 
 
 145, 146; like public schools, 
 
 regular, 13, 28, 142 
 Arras, 189 
 Ascension Day, 197 
 Atmosphere of barracks, 45 
 Atrocities committed in advance, 
 
 132, 310 
 Atrocity stories, 211 
 Attitude to the dead, 222, 223, 
 
 226 seq., 238 seq. 
 Attitude to the enemy, 205 
 August 1914 repeating itself, 127 
 Australians, 15 
 
 B , the actor of St. Louis, 40, 
 
 254-255 
 
 B , the musical composer, 36 
 
 Banks Reserve, 253 
 Baths, 57, 80, III 
 
 335 
 
 Battle-fields, 228 seq. 
 
 Bavai, 275 
 
 Beer, giving it away, 292 
 
 Belgians, 159 
 
 Belgium, entering, 287; joy days 
 in, 290 seq. 
 
 Bernard, the vocalist, 37 
 
 Bigsey, the policeman from Phila- 
 delphia, 258 
 
 Bill Browns, 22, 31, ii6, 131, 176, 
 253, 264 
 
 Boesinghe, 170 
 
 Bombs and Bombing, 74, 112, 156- 
 
 157 
 Booby trap, 199 
 Bourlon Wood, 54, 170, 229, 255, 
 
 312^ 
 Boussieres, 261 
 Brain versus cause, 252 
 Brass band, vulgarity of, 93, 129 
 Brooke, 141, 185 
 Browning, 193 
 
 Brutalizing effect of war, 202 seq. 
 Buckingham Palace, 96 
 Bulgaria, surrender of, 259 
 Bullying, 26 
 Bumble and Buck, 177 
 Burns quoted by men, 149 
 Byng Boys, 170 
 "By their sacrifice we live," 12 
 
 Calais, 157 
 Campbell, R. J., 84 
 Campbell's poems, 184 
 Canadians, 15, 50, 137-138, 321 
 Canal du Nord, 257 
 Carnieres, funeral at, 266 
 Cartigny, 161 seq. 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, quoted, 99 
 Cemeteries, 139, 298, 329 
 Champagne, discovery in cellar, 
 
 168 
 Chaplains, 86, 97, 98, 137-138, 
 
 153, 179-180, 238-246, 315 
 "Charge, Chester, charge!" 184 
 
336 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chessmen, original pieces made 
 on battle-field, 238 
 
 Chesterton, Cecil, 141 
 
 Chivalry, 206 
 
 Christians, 241-242 
 
 Christmas at Cologne, 320, 327; 
 in the trenches, 144-145 
 
 Civil Church, compared with 
 Church parade, 96-97 
 
 Civilians, 22, 60, 77 seq. 
 
 Cleavage between Christianity 
 and military service, 99 
 
 Clery, 161 
 
 Cockney, best soldier in a High- 
 land regiment, 32 
 
 Cologne, 316-326; cathedral, 327 
 
 Colours, the, 100 
 
 Common sense and esprit de 
 corps, 116 
 
 Conan Doyle's poem on Loos, 
 
 53 
 Conrad, not read by rank and file, 
 
 186 
 Conscience and Duty, 75 
 Conscience of the Germans, 324 
 Conscripts, 14 
 C.O.'s orderly, 204-205 
 Crevecoeur, 260 
 Crown-and-Anchor, the game of, 
 
 176 seq. 
 
 Danse de joie, 292 
 
 Dead, the, 226 seq. 
 
 Death, cheapness of, 9 
 
 Death penalty, army founded on, 
 146 
 
 "Decategorying" a musician, 38 
 
 December i8, 1914, raid of, 144 
 
 Delivery of the French popula- 
 tion, 263-264 
 
 Demobilisation, first lecture on, 
 280 
 
 Derby men, 124 
 
 Dickens, 183 
 
 Dirt, removing, 77-78 
 
 Discipline, 1-20, 145 seq., 281 
 
 "Doing one's damndest," 185 
 
 "Donald Blue," 102 
 
 Drafts, 121 seq., 189 seq. 
 
 Drill, 24, 45, 48, 58, 106, 153; 
 competition, 113 
 
 Drill-sergeants, 4, 203 
 
 Drocourt, 229 
 
 Dusty Smith, 172 
 Duty, 13 
 
 Easter at Havre, 130-131 
 
 Ecoust, 230, 255 
 
 Editing battalion records, 141 
 
 Effigies, 274, 301 
 
 England, 97 
 
 Entrenching tools, in 
 
 Escarmain, 274 
 
 Esprit de corps, 90, 104-119, 150, 
 
 333 
 Estinne au Mont, 287 
 Esturmel, 261 
 
 Example, making an, 145 seq. 
 Exiles returning to their homes, 
 
 269-273, 286 
 
 Fergie, 263 
 
 Festubert, battle of, 145, 147, 207 
 Fier comme un ecossa'ts, 142 
 Fighting Germany in Germany's 
 
 way, 17 
 Fitz of Virginia, 40, 130, 190, 
 
 249, 255, 265 
 First parade, 48 
 Fontaine I'Eveque, 290 
 Forgiving enemies, 154 
 Fourth Brigade of Guards, 192- 
 
 193 
 Fraternising with Germans, 144, 
 
 311-324 
 French Canadians, 137, 229; 
 
 girls, 194 seq.; peasants, 159, 
 
 194, 269; women, 194 
 Frontier of Germany, 305 
 Funerals, 100, 266 
 
 Gambling, 176-178 
 
 Gardens of Cartigny, 162 seq. 
 
 Garvice, 186 
 
 Gas, effects of, 266 
 
 Gaucherie, 331 
 
 General A , 86 
 
 George and the Dragon, 98 
 
 German girls, 322 
 
 German rear-guards, 252 
 
 Germanisms, 273 
 
 Germans, 14, 227, 300 seq.; com- 
 pared with French and Bel- 
 gians, 314 
 
 "Getting down to it," no, 113 
 
 Girls, 113 
 
INDEX 
 
 337 
 
 "Giving a steady one," 205 
 
 Glory, new type of, 143 
 
 "God's in His heaven, the 
 
 Guard's in the line," 193 
 "Good-bye and spare none," 130 
 Good Friday, 127-128 
 "Go tell to Sparta," 11 seq. 
 Gouzeaucourt, Guards saved day 
 
 at, 125, 170 seq. 
 Grandecourt, 160 
 Gray's Elegy, 183 
 Grievances, 118 
 Guards, 16, 189, 316; Chapel, 96; 
 
 Guards never retire, 199 
 
 H , who wished to charge 
 
 with the Guards, 41, 130, 252, 
 262 
 
 Hackneyed quotations, 184 
 
 Hall Caine, 185 
 
 Hardy's Dynasts, 176 
 
 Harlaw, March of the Battle of, 
 308 
 
 Hate, 316 
 
 Haussy, shelling the returning ex- 
 iles near, 270 
 
 Havrincourt, 260 
 
 Hazebrouck Road, battle of, 192 
 
 Hellenthal, 310 
 
 Hermulheim, 318 
 
 "Her pay-day," 114 
 
 "Hey, Johnny Cope," 102 
 
 Highlanders, 130, 157, 263 
 
 Highland Light Infantry heroes, 
 258 
 
 History of battalion, 141 seq. 
 
 History, soldiers' ignorance of, 
 187 
 
 Hohenzollern Redoubt, 145, 157 
 
 Humiliation, 54, 55 
 
 Hymns, applied to duties, 102- 
 103 ; parodies of, 47 
 
 "I don't mind damn-well fighting 
 
 ..." 156 
 "I heard the pibroch sounding, 
 
 sounding," 308 
 Ignorance, 182 seq. 
 "Immortal Eighty," 147 
 Impressions of war's ruin, 139, 
 
 193, 214 seq., 255 
 Impurity, 72, 75 
 Indecent language, 54, 72 
 
 Indemnities, 326 
 
 Inhumanity, man's, to man, 149 
 
 "Innocent lures," 196 
 
 Inspection, at barrack-gate, 70; 
 
 by the King, 59 
 Institutionalism, baleful shadow 
 
 of, in Army, 116 
 Instructors, 26, 28, 63, 105 
 
 Jerry, who sang like massed bar- 
 rel-organs, 44, 46, 81 
 
 "Jimmy," the deadly foe of hum- 
 bug, 205 
 
 Jocks, 31, 41, ii6 
 
 Joe, the stupidest man in Little 
 Sparta, 43, 44 
 
 Justice, 19 
 
 K— — , Ensign, at St. Python, 264 
 
 "Kidney," 173 
 
 "Killing Huns," 206 
 
 "Kill or cure," 2r, 61 
 
 King, his inspection of us at Lit- 
 tle Sparta, 59; King's Guard, 
 90, 91 seq., 106; loyalty to the 
 King, 88-89; understanding of, 
 88, 100, 187 
 
 Kitchener's Army, 14, 124, 141; 
 
 "Knocking civvies into shape," 27 
 
 L , nicknamed Creeping Bar- 
 rage, 240-242 
 
 Labour men's credulity, 131 
 
 Lagnicourt, 256 
 
 Last Post, loi 
 
 Laventi, 148 
 
 Les Boeufs, 160 
 
 Letters on the battle-field, 233 
 
 Life below stairs, 114 
 
 "Little Sparta," 21-76, 105-106 
 
 "Lonely soldiers," 330 
 
 Loos, 30, 53, 145, 156 
 
 "Lord Lovat's Lament," 308 
 
 Loving one's enemies, 243, 255, 
 315 
 
 Luck, 177 
 
 Machine-gunnery, 74 
 Machines versus machines, 143 
 March 21, 1918, 126, 330 
 Marchiennes au Pont, 290 
 Marching, 132, 159, 281 seq., 316 
 Maubeuge, 275, 281 
 
338 
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Men of Portree," 309 
 Millet, 197 
 "Missing," 235 
 Moeuvres, 229 
 Monchy-au-bois, 193 
 Monuments to the dead, 10 seq. 
 Mormal, forest of, 273 
 "Morning of Europe," 76 
 Mottoes for soldiers' graves, 11 
 Mr. Britling sees it through, 185 
 Munition manufacturer, sorrows 
 of, 83 seq. 
 
 Nails, keeping them clean, 58 
 
 Names of the dead, 98 
 
 N.C.O.'s, 109, 147, 204 
 
 "Nelson's last signal," 185 
 
 Neuve Chapelle, 145, 151 
 
 "Never catch the sergeant's eye," 
 26 
 
 New Zealand men, 22 
 
 Nicknames, 62, 172 seq., 178 
 
 Night, in the barrack-room, 47, 
 69; over the ruins, 222 
 
 Nobby Clark, 172 
 
 "No, for I have heard the night- 
 ingale itself," 76 
 
 Noreuil, 229, 255 
 
 Obedience, 54 
 
 Occupied area, 260, 268 
 
 Officers, 16, 85 
 
 Officialdom, 9, 13 
 
 "Oh, Cromwell, Cromwell . . .," 
 184 
 
 "Oh, Europe, where are thy chil- 
 dren? " 237 
 
 Paris leave, the way it was spent, 
 240 
 
 Peace, by mutual consent of rank 
 and file, 145 ; rumours of com- 
 ing, 267; treaty, 324-326 
 
 Peronne, 161 
 
 Pilkelm Ridge, 170 
 
 Pipes, 93, 303 seq. 
 
 Poets of the battalion, 147, 207, 
 226 
 
 Polish, 55 seq., 91 
 
 "Polyphemus wants you," 120 
 
 Presbyterianism — the true reli- 
 gion, 96 
 
 Presenting arms, 99 
 
 President compared with King, 
 89 
 
 Price, Captain, V.C, 192 
 
 Pride in the regiment, 115 
 
 Prisoners, 3, 31, 131, 207, 209, 
 259, 270, 285 
 
 Private X, court-martial and exe- 
 cution of, 146 seq. 
 
 Pronville, 229 
 
 Punishment, 17, 57, 64 
 
 Purity, 27, 244 
 
 "Putting the wind up the men," 
 205 
 
 Queant, 229, 231 
 
 Queen, the, 100; the "mobled," 
 239 
 
 Rags, 148 
 
 Railway, building a, 161 
 
 Reading, 186 
 
 Red, the American volunteer, 39 
 
 Retreat, precautions for, 199 
 
 Revolutionary propaganda, 95 
 
 Ribecourt, 260 
 
 Robbery, 168, 282-283 
 
 Roman Catholics, 137-138 
 
 Rumour, 131, 267, 278, 302 
 
 Russia, 125, 313 
 
 S , the financial expert, 42-43 
 
 Saki, 141 
 
 Saluting, 59 
 
 Sand-bag king, 169 
 
 Savages, imitation of, in raid, 
 249 
 
 School, sergeants', 51 
 
 Scott, 183 
 
 Scottish prejudice in favour of 
 Scots, 31 
 
 Second Division, 270 
 
 Self-respect defined, 60 
 
 Sentries, 112 
 
 Sepmeries, 274 
 
 Sergeant-majors, 26, 92, 104 seq., 
 113, 148, 203-204 
 
 Sergeants, 26, 28 seq., 106 
 
 Sergeant Three, the humorous 
 instructor, 32-33, 48-51 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, not avail- 
 able for chaplains during the 
 war, 243 ; but available after 
 armistice, 315 
 
INDEX 
 
 339 
 
 "Service of Caesar is service of 
 
 God," 99 
 Seventh Division, 142 
 Shakespeare quoted, 6 
 Shav?, G. B., recruit's ignorance 
 
 of, 186 
 Shooting at dawn, 154-155 
 Slang, 172 seq. 
 Sleep, 69 
 
 Smartness, 56 seq., 59 
 Snookcy-ookums, 52 
 Soldiery, 74 
 Solesmes, 262 
 Sombrin, 198 
 Somme, battle of, 159 
 Songs, 46, 121 
 Songster, the scapegoat, 35, 61 
 
 seq. 
 Souvenirs, 145 
 Spartacism, 322 
 Spot Fraser, 173 
 Squaring, 54, 108, 122 
 State and Soldier, 99 
 St. Gerard, German cemetery at, 
 
 298 
 St. Hilaire, 262 
 St. Leger, 255 
 St. Python, 263 
 St. Vaast, 262, 271-272 
 "Stupid to the point of piety," 
 
 195 . 
 Stupidity promoted, 5 
 Surrender, 17 
 Swank-parade, 52 
 Swearing, 26, 27, 72, 171 
 Symbols of the army, 99 
 Sympathy-killers, 205 
 
 Taffies, 3, 22, 46, 131 
 
 Taking no prisoners, policy of, 
 207 
 
 Tanks, 253 
 
 Taverns, 148 
 
 "Teddie," present King referred 
 to as, 188 
 
 "Thank God we've got a Navy," 
 50 
 
 Thanksgiving service at Mau- 
 beuge, 281 
 
 "Their Name liveth for ever- 
 more," 12 
 
 "The men are splendid," 182 
 
 "There must never be another 
 
 war," 320 
 Thermopylae, 76 
 Thinking evil, 210 
 Thomas, 141 
 "Thou shalt not kill," 3 
 Timber Wood, 172 
 Time, 82 
 Times, not read by rank and file, 
 
 187 
 Tolstoy and War, 19 
 Tom the Grenadier, 175 
 Tommy's French, 273, 312 
 Toothbrush, 58 
 "Touch me not with impunity," 
 
 Trade Unions, 172 
 
 Train for the Front, 133 seq. 
 
 Trenches, the, 10 
 
 Trio juncta in uno, 51, in 
 
 Tschaikowsky's 1812, 308 
 
 Tug Wilson, 172 
 
 Uniform, 79, 116, 161, 202-203, 
 330 
 
 V.C.'s, 8, 42, 147 
 
 Veterans, 144 
 
 Victory, emblem of a stuffed cock, 
 
 274 
 Villers Pol, 274 
 Violoncellist who would not cut 
 
 his hair, 38 
 Voice, the, 204 
 
 Walloons, 297 
 
 War's ruins, 139, 193-194, 214 
 
 seq., 255 
 Washing off the barracks, 77 seq. 
 Wells, H. G., 186 
 "What price this for the Promised 
 
 Land," 329 
 Wiggs, Mrs., sometimes called 
 
 Bigsey, 258 
 Wilson's fourteen points accepted, 
 
 267 
 Winning the war by numbers, 37 
 Wire-cutters, 17 
 Wives, 70, 75, 122, 124 
 Wolfe, General, 183 
 Word of command, 203 
 Working-men in khaki, 5, 35, 57, 
 
 65, 172, 181 seq. 
 
340 INDEX 
 
 Worst characters put in bombing You're for it, or you're not for it, 
 
 company, 157 120 
 
 Wounded, killing the, 3, 208 Ypres, 142, 158, 312 
 
 Y, the ruthless sergeant-major, 
 
 147 seq. Zitter, marching through forest 
 
 Y.M.C.A., 63 of, 307 
 
 "You pay, you obey, but you have Zulpich, 314 
 
 no say," 320 
 
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