George A. Birmingham

“ Another gangway is lowered. In two thin streams the damp men and draggled women struggle on board. Certain officers, the more helpless subalterns among us, are detailed for duty on the voyage. They parade on the upper deck. To them at least the A.M.L.O. can still speak with authority. He explains to the bewildered youths what their duties are. Each passenger, so it appears, must wear a life-belt. It is the business of the subalterns to see that every one ties round his chest one of those bandoliers of cork.
On the leave boat the spirit of democracy is triumphant. ”

“ Trying to get anything of an exceptional kind done in the army is like floundering in a trench full of sticky mud—one is inclined sometimes to say sticky muddle—surrounded by dense entanglements of barbed red-tape. You track authority from place to place, finding always that the man you want, the ultimate person who can actually give the permission you require, lies just beyond. If you are enormously persevering, and, nose to scent, you hunt on for years, you find yourself at last back with the man from whom you started, having made a full [Pg 135] circle of all the authorities there are. ”

“ Parties of men, fully burdened with rifles and kit, march down from the rest camp where they have spent the night. The mud of the trenches is still thick on them. One here and there wears his steel helmet. They carry all sorts of strange packages, sacks tied at the mouth, parcels sewed up in sacking, German helmets slung on knapsacks, valueless trophies of battlefields, loot from captured dug-outs, pathetically foolish souvenirs bought in French shops, all to be presented to the wives, mothers, sweethearts who wait at home. ”

“ Perhaps we may find in the very monstrousness of this war an explanation of the soldier’s unceasing effort to treat the whole business as a joke, to laugh at the very worst that can befall him. With men of other nations it is different no doubt. The French fight gloriously and seem to live in a high, heroic mood. The men of our empire, of all parts of it, jest in the presence of terror, perhaps because the alternative to jesting is either fear or tears. Others may misunderstand us. Often we do not understand ourselves. ”

“ I remember very well the first time that the truism began to assert itself as a truth to me. I was in a soldiers’ club, one of those excellent places of refreshment and recreation run by societies and individuals for the benefit of our men. It was an abominable evening. Snow, that was half sleet, was driven across the camp by a strong wind. Melting snow lay an inch deep on the ground. The club, naturally under the circumstances, was crammed. Men sat at every table, reading papers, writing letters, playing draughts and dominoes. They stood about with cups of tea and cocoa in their hands. ”

“ There are the officers who have failed, proved unfit for command, shown themselves lacking in courage perhaps, and in mercy have been sent down to some safe base. There are the men who have been broken in spirit as well as in body, who drag on an existence utterly dull, very toilsome, well-nigh hopeless, and are illuminated by no high call for heroic deeds. There the observer sees whatever there is to be seen of petty spite and jealousies, the manipulating of jobs, the dodging of regulations, all that is most ignoble in the soldier’s trade. ”

“ Hardly ever do we get the least suggestion of heroic resolve or hint of the consciousness of great purpose. Very often we hear a hope expressed—a hope which is really a prayer for God’s blessing. But this is almost always for those left at home, for wife and children, parents, brothers, friends. It is as if they and not the men who fight had dangers to face and trials to endure.
From his intimate talk we may guess that the soldier thinks very little about himself and very much about those he has left behind. ”

“ The brigadier persuades, exhorts, commands. The Russian shakes his head and intimates that he neither speaks nor understands French. He is a brave and gallant gentleman. Shells cannot terrify him, nor the fiercest stuttering of the field guns make him hesitate in advance, but in a certain stage of seasickness the ears of very heroes are deaf to duty’s call.
A little later I take the cigar from my mouth and crush the glowing end on the deck. I am not seasick, but there are times when tobacco loses its attractiveness. The brigadier becomes strangely silent. ”

“ He was not himself a guardsman, but there was no trace of jealousy in his voice. I have noticed the same thing again and again. There are people who dislike the Guards, accusing them of conceit or resenting certain privileges. I never met any one who refused to give the Guards first place in battle, on the march, in camp. It is a magnificent record to have established in an army like ours, a wonderful record to have kept through a long-drawn war like this, when every regiment has been destroyed and remade of new material half a dozen times. ”

“ Perhaps I am too old for adventuring, or never had the spirit which makes adventures possible. Yet I own to a certain feeling of disappointment when the doctor who examined me in London told me with almost brutal frankness that he would not allow me to be sent to the front. To France I might go, and even that permission, I think, was a concession. But in France I must remain in places where hardship is not extreme. Doctors are powerful people in the army and in certain matters their word is the supreme law. ”

“ From a neighbouring camp comes the sound of men singing as they tramp down the muddy road. Another draft is on its way. From a camp still farther off we hear the skirl of bagpipes. There, too, men have said good-bye to security and are on their way. A sharp order rings out. Then another. The men on the parade ground spring to attention, turn, march. ”

“ Inside, secure behind plate glass from any weather, sits a general. Another motor follows and still others. British staff officers and military attachés from allied nations, the privileged classes of the war, sweep by while humbler men splash and stumble.
But in front of the gangway of the leave boat, as at the gates of Paradise, there is no distinction of persons. The mean man and the mighty find the same treatment there. There comes a moment when the car must be left, when crossed sword and baton on the shoulder straps avail their wearer no more than a single star. ”

“ The little group of [Pg 113] officers, the sergeants, the orderlies with the lanterns, stand and salute the columns as they pass.
Far down the road we hear a shouted jest, a peal of laughter, a burst of song.
In what mood, with what spirit does the soldier, the man in the ranks, go forth into the night to his supremely great adventure? We do more than guess. We know. We chaplains are officers, but we are something more than officers. We are, or ought to be, the friends of men and officers alike. We have the chance of learning from the men’s own lips what their feelings are. ”

“ Here are the great hospitals, where suffering men succeed each other day after day, so that we seem to see a mist of pain rising like a ceaseless cloud of incense smoke for the nostrils of the abominable Moloch who is the god of war. A man, though long inured to such things, may curse the Moloch, but he will bless the sufferers who form the sacrifice. ”

“ Later on an order came out that camp commandants should wear coloured cap-bands and coloured tabs on their coat. It suddenly became a joy to meet a colonel. Certain camps flew flags in front of their orderly-rooms. Very often the weather had faded the colours, but it was a satisfaction to feel that once, at all events, the things had not been drab. The Y.M.C.A., adding without meaning to another to its long list of good deeds, kept its bright-red triangle before our eyes. It seems absurd to mention such things; but I suppose that a starving man will count a few crumbs a feast. ”

“ If religion is really presented to the ordinary man as “tithes,” or for that matter as a “scheme of salvation,” or “sound church teaching,” it is no wonder that he stands a bit away from it. I in no way mean to suggest that all religion in the army is of this kind. But the broadly indisputable result of the preaching to which our men have been subjected is this: They have come to regard religion as an obscure and difficult subject in which a few people with eccentric tastes are interested, but which simple men had better leave alone. ”

“ A padre is not one of the serious things in army life. No such nickname attaches or could attach to a C.O. or a sergeant-major. They matter. A padre does not matter much. Religion, his proper business, is an extra, like music lessons at a public school. Music is a great art, of course. No one denies it, chiefly because no normal boy thinks about it at all. The real affairs of life are the Latin grammar and the cricket bat. There is a master who gives music lessons to those who want such things. He may be an amiable and estimable man ”

“ How the recruiting authorities at home ever managed to send a child of less than fifteen out to France as a fighting man remains mysterious. But they did.
These were besides boys of a certain particularly difficult kind. It is not your “good” boy who rushes to the recruiting office and tells a lie about his age. It is not the gentle, amiable, well-mannered boy who is so enthusiastic for adventure that he will leave his home and endure the hardships of a soldier’s life for the sake of seeing fighting. ”

“ If it is really true that a soldier is more likely to be killed when wearing a scarlet coat, it is plain common sense to dress him in mud colour. If music attracts the enemy’s fire, then bands should be left at home to play for nursemaids in parks and on piers. Yet there is something to be said for the practice of our ancestors. The soldier’s business is to kill the enemy as well as to avoid being killed himself. Indeed killing is his first duty, and he only tries to avoid being killed for the sake of being efficient. ”

“ I am not a painter. If any one had talked to me before I went to France of the value of colour, I should have laughed at him. Now, having lived for months without colour, I know better. Men want colour just as they want liquid and warmth. They are not at their best without it. ”

“ The problem which faces the commandant of a base in France, or a camp at home, must be very like that which a public schoolmaster has to tackle. The business of instruction comes first. Men and officers must be taught their job, as schoolboys must be taught their lessons. Hardly less pressing is the problem of spare time. You cannot keep a soldier throwing bombs all day, and there is a limit to the time which can be occupied in route marching. The obvious solution of the problem is organised games and sports. Most men are keen enough on cricket and football. ”

“ I had seen enough of the professional soldiers of the old army, officers and N.C.O.’s, to know that the men who are now fighting are soldiers with a difference. They do not conform to the type which we knew as the soldier type before the war. Neither officers nor men are the same. Only in the cavalry, and perhaps in the Guards, do we now find the spirit, or, if spirit is the wrong word, the flavour of the old army. The professional soldier, save among field officers and the older N.C.O.’s, is becoming rare. The citizen soldier has taken his place. ”

“ It is not easy to think of Sam Weller or Mark Tapley as the hero of a stricken field. Yet it is by men with Sam Weller’s quaint turn of wit and Mark Tapley’s unfailing cheerfulness that the great battles in France and Belgium are being won. ”

“ It is not the least necessary that the stories should be true, literally. They are indeed much more likely to give us what we want, a glimpse into the mind of the average man, if they are cheerily unconnected with sordid facts. No one supposes that any colonial colonel ever begged his men not to address him as “Sam” in the presence of an English general. But the story gives us a true idea of the impression made on the minds of the home army by the democratic spirit of the men from overseas.
I only know one padre story which has become universally popular. It takes the form of a dialogue. ”

“ The soldier, whatever his position or education was in civil life, is strangely inarticulate. He will speak in general terms of “stunts” and scraps, of being “up [Pg 302] against it,” and of “carrying on”; but of the living details of life in the trenches or on the battlefield he has little to say. Still less will he speak of feelings, emotions, hopes, and fears. I suppose that life in the midst of visible death is too awful a thing to talk of and that there is no language in which to express the terrific waves of fear, horror, hope, and exaltation. ”

“ These have passed, not in a moment amid the roar of battle, but after long bearing of pain, and lonely, with the time for last farewells but none greatly loved to say them to. Yet, standing above the lines of rude coffins, viewing the names and numbers pencilled on the lids, our hearts are lifted up. We know how great it is to lay down life for others. ”

“ Landsmen are more conservative and slower to grasp new ideas. But even in my time in France tents were sometimes covered with broad curves of bright colours. They looked very funny near at hand; but they are—this seems to be established—much less easily seen by airmen than white or brown tents. It seems a short step to take from colouring tents to colouring uniforms. In the next war, if there be a next war, regiments will perhaps move against the enemy gay as kingfishers and quite as difficult to see. Fighting men will look to each other like ladies in the beauty chorus of a revue. ”

“ The private soldier, coming under military discipline, is a prisoner, so this man thought. He did not deny that it may be worth while to go to prison for a good cause. But prison life is as galling and abominable for a martyr as for a criminal.
There is a stir among the men. A lady, heavily cloaked and waterproofed, made a slow progress through the room, staring round her with curious eyes. She was a stranger, evidently a distinguished stranger, for she was escorted by a colonel and two other officers. ”