Harold Baldwin

“ The riot of noise, the never-ceasing hell-hiss, the scream and roar of shells, everywhere blazing buildings and everywhere writhing or ominously still figures.
Star shells were beginning to flare up as it was almost twilight, the weird green lights glinting on the bayonets of the oncoming Germans. Firmly the Northumberlands waited, quietly and confidently, and then I learned what disciplined courage really is. With wild shouting and trumpeting and a kind of prolonged "Ah-h-h" the mass of Boche infantry came steadily on. ”

“ The Huns fire on everything that moves, and every time a flare rises, down your bearers must drop or run the certainty of being sniped. Sometimes in a big action men will lie for days, some with desperate wounds, sniped at if they show the slightest movement, and then comes the journey from the dressing station along a road raked with shell fire. Just try and imagine it, and if you see a soldier back from hell kicking over the traces, and going a little bit wild, just think of what he has been in and endured. ”

“ Stealing away from his ranks, he sidled across, like a good soldier, stooping to get a better skyline, and just at that moment a series of bursting flares from up the line lit up the square for a second, but it was long enough for the keen-sighted Tommy to see who the other battalion was and what they were carrying. In a half-whispered, half-hushed shout he turned to his comrades ejaculating, "Well, strike me pink, mates, if those blokes ain't carrying their own bloomin' tombstones." ”

“ Shell fire will destroy the morale of any soldier, for when a man is fair enough to look facts in the face, he will acknowledge that courage is common to any nation. No nation has a monopoly of it, and the German has his share.
In these days, perhaps, he gives in rather easily; but he is getting hell from the Allied artillery—at least on the Western Front. And, who knows, perhaps doubts of their ultimate triumph have begun to assail them. I have seen them fight well with the bayonet, and a clump on my head from a Hun no bigger than myself I well remember. ”

“ A massed band at our immediate rear did much to give one a curious feeling of elation. I shall never forget the sight. The huge Union Jack directly to our front surmounting the reviewing platform streamed grandly out in the breeze that was steadily blowing across the plain. A curious contrast between the dull drab of the ordinary infantry and the gay attire of the Highlanders struck me most forcibly. To our right the artillery in perfect formation seemed to stand like figures of adamant; there seemed something sinister and threatening in the dull color and lean appearance of the guns. ”

“ Yet, thank God, I hold the respect of my surviving comrades, and those in Valhalla will welcome "Bobbie," when he joins them.
A letter from one of my officers that reached me in the hospital—just a short pencil-written message—is my greatest treasure on earth. Knowing to the full how fearful I always was in action, and how that constant dread was ever present, I show it to few. I am utterly undeserving of such a message from such a man.
Courage is no greater in one nation than in another. Among French, Italian, Russian, Canadian, Anzac or British, human self-sacrifice is about equal. ”

“ Yes, you may be horrified, good people who read this, but that rum is a God-send, and so you too would think if you had been standing with feet that you did not feel you possessed, shivering, plastered with mud and wet to the skin, standing with rifle ready an hour before dawn, expecting that any minute you might have to line the trenches and fight for your life. Under those conditions you may understand why a man needs something to warm the blood in his veins.
One of the Tommies, my sentry chum, stole out under cover of the fog and returned with a jar of water. ”

“ It was all quiet in front, but occasionally a burst of fire would wake the echoes and bullets would whiz over our heads. A few of them fell around us, but no one was hurt. It is a peculiar sensation to find yourself under fire for the first time. A man feels utterly helpless and at first he will duck his head at every whiz he hears. Of course ducking is useless, because if you hear the whiz of the pill, or the report of the rifle, you are still untouched, but every man who has ever experienced this will tell you that he could not help ducking even knowing how useless it was. ”

“ Do not, dear reader, call the Boche coward because he surrenders. For you, it is easy to say you would fight to the death rather than be taken prisoner, but consider a man who has endured a week's bombardment—crash! crash! crr-r-r-r-mp! Roaring, blasting, one hideous din, for days; everything being smashed to smithereens; the smoke, the fumes, the stench, and last, but not least, dead and mangled comrades lying around. ”

“ Once when passing a huge shell crater, the pain not yet having robbed me of my senses, I asked to be left till night-time in its shelter. It was broad daylight, and there was that little bunch of men risking utter annihilation just that a stricken chum might live.
They cursed my groans; they cursed the Huns; in fact, their language was sulphurous, yet I noticed I was saved from all jar or jolt, as far as they could prevent it; and when I asked to be left in the shell hole they cursed me for a blankety-blank fool, and profanely refused to do it. ”

“ Once during that weary day, the Germans put over such a terrific barrage of shrapnel, that I, for one, thought it impossible for any of our wounded to survive. Such is the mercy of the Hun. Hour after hour passed, casualties mounted steadily up, but those laddies held. As time went on, the pain in my wounded leg became excruciating, and, forgetting the etiquette of the Western Front that a man must not squeal too much when he is hit, I groaned aloud. I shall be ashamed to meet many of my comrades in later days, for they remember my whimpering. ”

“ And for all his profane mouth and caustic tongue, he was one of the best and bravest comrades a man could find with whom to share the trials and pleasures of active service. Marching with his usual air of detached boredom is Captain Innis Hopkins, the most ridiculed and, later, the best loved officer of all the gallant men who cursed us and nursed us and finally led us into France, as fine a bunch of men as ever stepped from a deck of a transport. ”

“ Who was it first published the scurrilous lie that the British sacrifice their Colonial troops and save their own? No fouler slur on those quiet tenacious warriors of the Old Land was ever cast. If Tommy Atkins fails in taking or holding a position, no other nation on God's earth can take it or hold it.
On, on, we tramped! God! Would we never halt? One after the other, exhausted men would fall and sleep, sleep, sleep. On and ever on till legs moved mechanically, all sensation of movement having left them. Men dozed as they walked, fell as they dozed, lay where they fell. ”

“ I could see nothing but inky blackness except when a flare went up. I would search the ground in front of me while the light lasted, then duck as the inevitable snipers took a pot shot.
For an hour I stood sentry, then was relieved. Five of my companions and myself huddled into a partially completed dugout in a vain effort to keep warm. While getting up to the trenches the weight of the equipment kept us warm, also the heavy traveling, but standing still in that trench was a different matter. The mud rose to my thighs in places. ”

“ Marching over rough cobbled roads, pock-marked with shell holes, is not conducive to conversation. We met small groups of Tommies on their way to rest. The wonder of it! Plastered with mud, scarcely able to walk from sheer fatigue, they joshed us unmercifully, telling us with grim humor what we were in for. Whole platoons from the regiments of these men lay out in No Man's Land, never to hear the word of command again, yet their comrades who survived had the stomach to crack jokes at our expense. And then came a bunch of the guards. ”

“ By all that you hold dear, do not go through life branded with the abominable taint of slacker. Even if death should befall, it is unutterably more worthy to die serving the cause of all men, than to live in the ever-present consciousness of duty undone, solely because you are a coward.
If it should be your lot to receive a wound, serious or slight, or come through the fire unscathed, you will not then have to "hold your manhood cheap whilst any speaks" who fought with us in France. ”

“ Up in the air goes a flare and the faces of everyone take on a ghastly green tint, accentuating the expression of suffering. It is a wonderful experience, and only a soldier can realize the heroic stoicism of a wounded comrade. ”

“ All this time the fight increased in intensity, the Germans putting over a fearful bombardment, both on the front line and away to the rear. Casualties were coming by our location in an endless stream. Some were being carried to the dressing station, but those who could walk or hobble at all, were making their way back as well as they could. It was a pitiful, yet a wonderful sight. Their battered uniforms, plastered with mud and filth, bandages of various hues on their heads, and dressings on their limbs and bodies. Some were being helped along by their comrades ”

“ It is almost incomprehensible to think that any man, or set of men, who have made not only a comfortable living, but amassed fortunes in this land, and have enjoyed the freedom of our institutions and our laws, should avail themselves of the protection given them by that very freedom and those very laws to undermine the power of the land they have sworn to defend. Yet, such is the fact. They are so short-sighted and their skulls are so thick that they cannot discern the difference between freedom of thought and action, and German Kultur or German efficiency. ”

“ Up through that wondrous green country side we sped, and oh, how I persisted in lifting myself from my cot, in spite of the protests of the nurses, to look out on that smiling land. What a change from the utter devastation of that hell's land from which I had come. At Birmingham we stopped for a space, being met by a party of nurses, doctors and Red Cross people. Oh, their wondrous kindness! In spite of the pain, I considered myself the luckiest man alive to be so spoilt. I often wish I was wounded again. ”

“ As the ground sloped away toward Ypres we could see for some distance down that way and our hearts bounded as two thin lines of men came toward us in skirmishing order.
"Can it be reinforcements?" asked Milliard.
"It can be nothing else," said I, and then we witnessed a sight that made us want to cheer with all our might. The coolness of those men was wonderful; steady as a rock they came. They were British regulars, and now you will know why all of us who have been at the front have such an admiration for the British soldier. ”

“ The stalwart Highlanders gazing neither to right nor left, swaggering up and down on the old cobbled square, Tommies, Canucks, Frenchmen, Gurkhas, Sikhs, Pathans and French Colonial troops would gather round and a babel of tongues would soar skywards. Just at the minute of six all would be hushed and a silence uncanny would hang over the place. The "Retreat" would sound, and the Highlanders would start their tatoo.
I have mentioned, I believe, the irritating parasites who so lovingly crowd in the seams of a man's shirt. ”

“ The curious sustained roar of fire and answering fire fills a soldier with awe, much the same feeling as of a man viewing a mighty cataract for the first time. The very ground shakes and if a man is standing on a hard road, he will be repeatedly lifted from the ground by the shock. Gun crews suffer from gun-shock and men are often sent down to recover from, not so much the bursting shells of the enemy, as from the effect of the deafening voices of their own pets. ”

“ Everywhere were shell craters, both on the road and on each side of us. In every shrine, where the Belgians placed their crucifixes, men in agony from the gas had crawled and died there; dead bodies, dead horses, wrecked ambulance cars, gun limbers, ammunition limbers, and in one place were six of the very finest horses I have ever seen, with their drivers, dead. Villages, where the people had been living when we went up, were now utterly desolate ”

“ Next day at about twelve o'clock we fell in, joined the remainder of the battalion in Hazebrouck, and the march to Armentieres commenced. This march will long be remembered by all who survived. Everyone was in great spirits, and songs and jokes were the order. Along the cobbled roads we swung in full marching order, and the first part of the journey was accomplished with ease. But those awful cobbled roads began to tell their tale. They are paved with rough, uneven cobbles, and when a little rain has fallen a man goes slipping and sliding all over the place. ”