“Good-bye!”

“Good-bye. Don’t forget to send me that Hun helmet!”

“All right! Good-bye!”

The train had long ago recovered from the shock of its initial jerk; a long steady grinding noise came up from the carriage wheels, as though they had recovered breath and were getting into their stride for Folkestone, regardless of the growing clatter of the South-Eastern rhythm;—if, indeed, so noble a word may be used for the noise made by the wheels as they passed over the rail-joints of this distinguished line.

“Don’t believe it’s a good thing having one’s people to see you off,” said Terry, whose people had accompanied him in large numbers to Charing Cross.

“They will come, though,” remarked Crowley very wisely.

“I tried to persuade my people not to come,” said I; “but they think you like it, I suppose. I would certainly rather say good-bye at home, and have no one come to the station.”

And so I started off my experience of “the great adventure” with a “lie direct”: but it does not weigh very heavily upon my conscience.

Six of us sat in a first-class carriage on the morning of the 5th of October, 1915: for months we had been together in a reserve battalion waiting to go out to the front, and now at last we had received marching orders, and were bound for Folkestone, and thence for France. For which battalion of our regiment any or all of us twelve officers were destined, we had no knowledge whatever; but even the most uncongenial pair of us would, I am sure, have preferred each other’s company to that of complete strangers. I, at any rate, have never in my life felt more shy and self-conscious and full of stupid qualms: unless, indeed, it was on the occasion, ten months before, when I had stood shaking in front of a platoon of twenty men!

The last few days I had gone about feeling as though the news that I was going to the front were printed in large letters round my cap. I felt that people in the railway carriages, and in the streets, were looking at me with an electric interest; and the necessary (and unnecessary!) purchases, as well as the good-byes, were of the kind to make one feel placed upon a pedestal of importance! Now, in company with five other officers in like predicament, I felt already that I had climbed down a step from that pedestal; in fact, the whole experience of the first few days was one of a steady reduction from all-importance to complete insignificance!

As soon as we had recovered from the silence that followed my remarks upon the disadvantages of prolonged valedictions, we commenced a critical survey of our various properties and accoutrements. Revolvers leapt from brand new holsters; feet were held up to show the ideal trench-nails; flash lamps and torches, compasses, map-cases, pocket medicine-cases, all were shown with an easy confidence of manner that screened a sinking dread of disapprobation. The prismatic compass was regarded rather as a joke by some of us; its use in trench warfare was a doubtful quantity; yet there were some of us who in the depths of our martial wisdom were half expecting that the Battle of Loos was the prelude of an autumn campaign of open-country warfare. There was only one man whose word we took for law in anything, and that was Barrett. He had spent five days in the trenches last December; he had then received his commission in our battalion. He was the “man from the front.” And I noticed with secret misgivings that he had not removed the badges of rank from his arm, or sewed his two stars upon his shoulder-straps; he had not removed his bright buttons, and substituted for them leather ones such as are worn on golfing-jackets; and in his valise, he told us, he had his Sam Browne belt.

“But you never wear Sam Brownes out there,” I said: “all officers now dress as much as possible like the men.”

That was so, we were informed; but officers used to wear them in billets, when they were out of the firing-line.

“Well,” said Crowley, “we could get them sent out, I expect.”

“Yes,” said I; “I expect they would arrive safely.”

But this infantile conversation is not worthy of record! Suffice to say we knew nothing about war, and were just beginning to learn that fact!

The first check to our enthusiasm was at Folkestone. We reported to the railway transport officer, whom we then regarded as a little demi-god; he told us to report in time for the boat at a certain hour. This we did, signed our names with a feeling of doing some awful and irrevocable deed, and then were told to wait another three hours: there was no room for us on this boat! We retired to an hotel with a feeling that perhaps after all there was no such imperious shouting for our help over in France, such as we had all, I think (save only Barrett, who was cynical and pessimistic!) secretly imagined.

Darkness came ere we started. The crossing did not seem long, and I stood up on deck with Barrett most of the time. Two destroyers followed a little astern, one on either side; and there were lights right across the Channel. We were picked out by searchlights more than once, although all lights were forbidden on board. I felt that I was now fair game for the Germans; and it was exciting to think that they would give anything to sink me! At last I was in for “the great adventure.”

At Boulogne we had to wait a long time on a dismal quay and in a drizzling rain to interview an irritated and sleepy railway transport officer. After a long, long queue had been safely negociated we were given tickets to ——; and then again we had to wait quite an hour on the platform. Some of our party were excited at their first visit to a foreign soil; but their enthusiasm abated when at the buffet they were charged exorbitant prices and their English money was rejected as “dam fool money.”

Then there came a long jerky journey through the night in a crowded carriage. (As I am out for confessions, I will here state that I did not think this could be an ordinary passenger train, and I wondered vaguely who these men and women were who got in and out of other carriages!) At Étaples there was a still longer wait, and a still longer queue; but, fortunately, my signature had not lengthened. I remember sitting tired and dazed on the top of a valise, and asking Barrett what the time was.

“Three forty-five!”

“What a time to arrive!” I replied. But in war three forty-five is as good a time as any other, I was soon to discover.

We walked to a camp a mile distant from the station; our arrival seemed quite unlooked for, and a quartermaster-sergeant had to be procured, by the officer who was our guide, in order to gain access to the tent that contained the blanket stores. Wearily, at close on five o’clock, we fell asleep on the boarded bottom of a bell-tent.

It must have been about 10 a.m. on the 6th when we turned out and found ourselves in a sandy country; behind us was a small ridge, crowned by a belt of fir trees; the sun was well up and shone warm on the face as we washed and shaved in the open. The feeling of camp was exhilarating, and I was in good spirits.

But two blows immediately damped my ardour most effectively. When I learned that I was posted to our first battalion, and I alone of all of us twelve, the thought of my arrival among the regulars, with no experience, and not even an acquaintance, far less a friend, was distinctly chilling! To add to my discomfiture there befell a second misfortune: my valise was nowhere to be seen!

Indeed, the rest of the day was chiefly occupied in searching for my valise, but to no purpose whatever. I did not see it until ten days later, when by some miracle it appeared again! I can hardly convey the sense of depression these two facts cast over me the next few days; the interest and novelty of my experiences made me forget for short periods, but always there would return the thought of my arrival alone into a line regiment, and with the humiliating necessity of borrowing at once. Unknown and inexperienced I could not help being; but as a fool who lost all his property the first day, I should not cut a brilliant figure!

We obtained breakfast at an estaminet by the station; omelettes, rolls and butter, and cafÉ noir. I bought a French newspaper, and thought how finely my French would improve under this daily necessity; but I soon found that one could get the Paris edition of the Daily Mail, and my French is still as sketchy as ever! I remember watching the French children and the French women at the doors of the houses, and wondering what they thought of this war on their own soil; I knew that the wild enthusiasms of a year ago had died down; I did not expect the shouting and singing, the souvenir-hunting, and the generous impulses that greeted our troops a year ago; but I felt so vividly myself the fact that between me and the Germans lay only a living wall of my own countrymen, that I could not help thinking these urchins and women must feel it too! The very way in which they swept the doorsteps seemed to me worth noting at the moment.

In the course of my wild peregrinations over the camp in search of my valise, I came upon a group of Tommies undergoing instruction in the machine-gun. Arrested by a familiar voice, I recognised as instructor a man I had known very well at Cambridge! He recognised me at the same moment, and in a few seconds we parted, after an invitation from him to dinner that evening; he was on “lines of communication” work, he told me.

Sitting in his tent after Mess, I was amazed at the apparent permanence of his abode; shelves, made out of boxes; novels, an army list, magazines, maps; bed, washstand, candlesticks, a chair; baccy, and whisky and soda! It was all so snug and comfortable. I was soon to find myself accumulating a very similar collection in billets six miles behind the firing-line, and taking most of it into the trenches! I remember being impressed by the statement that the cannonade had been heard day after day since the 25th, and still more impressed by references to “the plans of the Staff!”

I left Étaples early on the morning of the 7th, after receiving instructions, and a railway warrant for “Chocques,” from a one-armed major of the Gordons. Of our original twelve only Terry and Crowley remained with me; with a young Scot, we had a grey-upholstered first-class carriage to ourselves.

In the train I commenced my first letter home; and I should here like to state that the reason for the inclusion in these first chapters of a good many extracts from letters is that they do really represent my first vague, rather disconnected, impressions, and are therefore truer than any more coherent account I might now give. First impressions of people, houses, places, are always interesting; I hope that the reader will not find these without interest, even though he may find them at times lacking in style.

“I am now in the train. We are passing level-crossings guarded by horn-blowing women; the train is strolling leisurely along over grass-grown tracks, and stopping at platformless stations. It is very hot. At midday I shall be about ten miles from the firing-line, and I expect the cannonade will be pretty audible. I feel strangely indifferent to things now, though I have the feeling that all this will be stamped indelibly on my memory.” How well I remember the thrill of excitement when I found the name Chocques on my map, quite close to the firing-fine! And as we got nearer, and saw R.A.M.C. and cavalry camps, and talked to Tommies guarding the line, saw aeroplanes, and yes! a captive balloon, excitement grew still greater! At last we reached Chocques, and the railway transport officer calmly informed us that we had another four miles to go. He brilliantly suggested walking. But an A.S.C. lorry was there, and in we climbed, only to be ejected by the corporal! Eventually we tramped to BÉthune with very full packs in a hot sun.

Walking gave us opportunity for observation; and that road was worth seeing to those who had not seen it before. There were convoys of A.S.C. lorries, drawn up (or “parked”) in twenties or thirties alongside the road, each with its mystical marking, a scarlet shell, a green shamrock, etc., painted on its side; Red Cross ambulances passed, impelling one to turn back and look in them, sometimes containing stretcher-cases (feet only visible), or sitting cases with bandaged head or arm in sling. Then there were motor-cars with Staff officers; motor-cars with youthful officers in immaculate Sam Brownes and “slacks”; and as we drew nearer BÉthune, we saw canteens with Tommies standing and lounging outside, small squads of men, English notices, and boards with painted inscriptions, such as BILLETS.
Officers—2
Men—30 or H.Q.
117th Inf. Bde. and in the distance loomed the square tower of the cathedral, which I thought then to be a decapitated spire.

And so we came into the bustle of a French city.

I had never heard of BÉthune before. As the crow flies it is about five to six miles from the front trenches. The shops were doing a roaring trade, and I was amazed to see chemists flaunting auto-strop razors, stationers offering “Tommy’s writing-pad,” and tailors showing English officers’ uniforms in their windows, besides all the goods of a large and populous town. We were very hungry and tired, and fate directed us to the famous tea-shop, where, at dainty tables, amid crowds of officers, we obtained an English tea! I was astounded; so were we all. To think that I had treasured a toothbrush as a thing that I might not be able to replace for months! Here was everything to hand. Were we really within six miles of the Germans? Yet officers were discussing “the hot time we had yesterday”; while “we only came out this morning,” or “they whizz-banged us pretty badly last night,” were remarks from officers redolent of bath and the hairdresser! Buttons brilliantly polished, boots shining like advertisements, swagger-canes, and immaculate collars, gave the strangest first impression of “active service” to us, with our leather equipment, packs, leather buttons, and trench boots!

“Old Barrett was right about the Sam Brownes,” I said to Terry, vainly trying to look at my ease.

“Let’s look at your map,” he answered. Then, after a moment:

“Oh, we’re not far from the La BassÉe Canal. I’ve heard of that often enough!”

“So have I,” I replied. “Is La BassÉe ours or theirs?”

“Ours, of course”; but he borrowed the map again to make sure!

Refreshed, but feeling strangely “out” of everything, we eventually found our way to the town major. Here my letter continues:

“I was told an orderly was coming in the evening to conduct me to the trenches, to my battalion! Suddenly, however, we were told to go off—seven of us in the same division—to our brigades in a motor-lorry. So we are packed off. I said good-bye to Crowley and Terry. This was about 7 p.m. We went rattling along till within a short distance of our front trenches. There was a lot of cannonading going on around and behind us, and star-shells bursting continuously, with Crystal-Palace-firework pops; we could hear rifles cracking too. At length we got to where the lorry could go no further, and we halted for a long time at a place where the houses were all ruins and the roofs like spiders’-webs, with the white glare of the shells silhouetting them against the sky. The houses had been shelled yesterday, but last night no shells were coming our way at all. My feelings were exactly like they are in a storm—the nearer and bigger the flashes and bangs the more I hoped the next would be really big and really near.” Of course, all this cannonade was our artillery; at the time we were quite muddled up as to what it all was! The snarling bangs were the 18-pounders quite close to us, about one thousand yards behind our front line; the cracking bullets were spent bullets, though it sounded to us as if they were from a trench about twenty yards in front of us! Nothing is more confusing at first than the different sounds of the different guns. I think several of us would have been ready to say we had been under shell-fire that night! The “star-shells” should be more accurately described as “flares” or “rockets.” But to continue my letter:

“Well, the next few hours were a strange mixture of sensations. We could nowhere find our brigades, and after ten hours in the lorry we landed here at a place sixteen miles back from the firing line; here our division had been located by a signaller, whom we had consulted when we stopped by the cross-roads! We were left by the lorry at 5.0 a.m. at a field ambulance station ‘close to H.Q.,’ where we slept wearily till 8.0, to awake and find ourselves miles from our division, which is really, I believe, quite near where we had been in the firing-line! Now we are sitting in a big old chÂteau awaiting a telephone-message; we are in a dining-room, walls peeling, and arm-chairs reduced to legless deformities! It is a jolly day: sun, and the smell of autumn.” I shall not forget that long ride. I was at the back, and could see out; innumerable villages we passed; innumerable mistakes we made; innumerable stops, innumerable enquiries! But always there was the throbbing engine while we halted, and the bump and rattle as we plunged through the night. Eight officers and seven valises, I think we were; one or two were reduced to grumbling; several were asleep; a few, like myself, were awake, but all absolutely tired out. It was too uncomfortable to rest, cramped up among bulky valises and all sorts of sprawling limbs! Once, at about four o’clock, we halted at a house with a light in the window, and found a miner just going off to work. An old woman brewed some very black coffee, and we hungrily devoured bits of bread and butter, coffee, and cognac; while the old woman, fat and smiling, gabbled incessantly at us! A strange weird picture we must have made, some of us in kilts and bonnets, standing half-awake in the flickering candle-light.

We were at the ChÂteau all the morning. “The R.A.M.C. fellows were very decent to us; gave us breakfast (eggs, bread and butter, and tinned jam) and also lunch (bully-beef, cheese, bread and butter, and beer). These were eaten off the dining-room table in style. I explored the ChÂteau during the morning; just a big ordinary empty house inside; outside, it is white plaster, with steep slate roofs, and a few ornamental turrets. The garden is mostly taken up with lines of picketed horses; outside the orchards and enclosures the country is bare and flat; it is a mining district, and pyramids of slag stand up all over the plain.”

I cannot do better than continue quoting from these first letters of mine; of course, I did not mention places by name:

“Well, at 2.0 p.m. the same old lorry and corporal turned up and took us back to BÉthune. I gather he got considerable ‘strafing’ for last night’s performance, although I think he was not given clear enough instructions. Then, with seven other officers, we were sent off again in daylight, and dropped by twos and threes at our various Brigade Headquarters. Our “Brigade H.Q.” was in one of the few houses left standing. Here I reported, and was told that an orderly would take me to my battalion transport. In half an hour the orderly arrived on a bicycle, and by 6.0 p.m. I was only half a mile from our transport. We were walking along, when suddenly there was a scream like a rocket, followed by a big bang, and the sound of splinters falling all about. I expected to see people jump into ditches; but they stood calmly in the street, women and all, and watched, while several shells (whizz-bangs, I believe)”—No, dear innocence, High-explosive Shrapnel—“burst just near the road about a hundred yards ahead. We were four miles back from the firing-line. It was just the ‘evening hate,’ I expect. It didn’t last long. Just near us was one of our own batteries firing intermittently.”

This was my first experience of being under fire. I hadn’t the least idea what to do. The textbooks, I believe, said “Throw yourself on the ground.” I therefore looked at my orderly; but he was ducking behind his bicycle, which I am sure is not recommended by any manual of military training! I ducked behind nothing, copying him. This all took place in the middle of the road. But when I saw women opening the doors of their houses and standing calmly looking at the shells, ducking seemed out of the question; so we both stood and watched the bursting shells. Then the salvo ceased, and I, thinking I must show some sort of a lead, suggested that we should proceed. But my orderly, wiser by experience, suggested waiting to see if another salvo were forthcoming. After ten minutes, however, it was clear that the Germans had finished, and we resumed our journey in peace.

My letter continues: “At the transport I had a very comfortable billet. The quartermaster and two other new officers and myself had supper in an upstairs room. The quartermaster seemed very pessimistic, and told us a lot about our losses. We turned in at ten o’clock, and I slept well. It was ‘very quiet’; that is to say, only intermittent bangs such as have continued ever since the beginning of the war, and will continue to the end thereof!

“October 9th. This morning a cart took us at nine o’clock to within about a mile of the firing-line, putting us down at the corner of a street that has been renamed ‘H—— Street.’ The country was dead flat; the houses everywhere in ruins, though some were untouched and still inhabited. Thence an orderly conducted us to H.Q., where we reported to the Adjutant and the C.O. (who is quite young by the way); they were in the ground-floor room of a house, to which we came all the way from H—— Street along a communication trench about seven feet deep. These trenches were originally dug by the French, I believe. I was told I was posted to ‘D’ Company, so another orderly took me back practically to H—— Street, which must be six or seven hundred yards behind the firing-line. ‘D’ is in reserve; I am attached to it for the present. There are two other officers in it, Davidson and Symons. Both have only just joined.”

So at last I was fairly lodged in my battalion. I had been directed, dumped, shaken, and carried, in a kindly, yet to me most amazingly haphazard, way to my destination, and there I found myself quite unexpected, but immediately attached somewhere until I should sort myself out a little and find my feet. I had a servant called Smith. In the afternoon I went with Davidson to supervise a working party, which was engaged in paving a communication trench with tiles from the neighbouring houses. In the evening I set to and wrote letters. I will close this chapter with yet one more quotation:

“Now I am in the ground-room of one of the few standing houses in H—— Street. Next door is a big ‘École des filles,’ which I am quite surprised to find empty! Really the way the people go about their work here is amazing. Still, I suppose to carry on a girls’ school half a mile from the Boche is just beyond the capacity of even their indifference! I’ve already got quite used to the noise. There are two guns just about forty yards away, that keep on firing with a terrific bang! I can see the flashes just behind me. I think the noise would worry you, if you heard these blaring bangs at the end of the back garden, which is just about the distance this battery is from me! We are messing here in this room; half a table has been propped up, and three chairs discovered and patched up for us. All the windows facing the enemy have been blocked up with sand-bags. I sleep here to-night. If the house is shelled, I shall flee to the dug-out twenty yards away. Orders have not yet come, but I believe we go back to billets to-morrow.

A free issue of ‘Glory Boys’ cigarettes has just arrived: two packets for each officer and man. Please don’t forget to send my Sam Browne belt.”