Joe Cassells

“ Suddenly the K. R. R.’s machine guns became silent. For a few seconds the rifle fire became faster and more furious. Then it stopped. Steel bayonets glinted as the K. R. R.’s charged. There was no mercy shown. There were no prisoners taken. Of the five thousand Germans, who had gone out to do murder in cold blood, I do not believe five hundred got away. They were practically annihilated. The bayonets finished the work that the machine guns and rifles had started. What would you have? Men would not spare a nest of venomous snakes. It was a just retribution, but my stomach turned at it. ”

“ I can hear the sudden thrum of the masked machine guns like giant partridges drumming; can hear the singing roar of the Prussian airplanes to which, in those days, [Pg 4] because of the scarcity of British planes, there could be practically no answer; and I can live again the frightful nights when we made our stand upon the Marne, and, sneaking into German outpost trenches, slew the guards with jack-knives, thrusting gags into their mouths and cutting their throats to prevent outcry. ”

“ I have felt in the greatest degree the pride of membership in the organization—and the world knows that the men of the Black Watch have always made much of the name. I feel that tradition had well prepared the regiment for its sacrificial and almost superhuman efforts between Mons and the Marne. For hard fighting and long fighting—in every quarter of the globe and with opponents of almost every race—civilized and uncivilized—no organized fighting force has ever had a record to equal that of the Black Watch. ”

“ From Mons to the Marne lies the bloodiest trail of sacrifice in history. In all the records of war, there stands forth no more magnificent and no more melancholy achievement than that of the British regular army, which bled its heroic way in ever-diminishing numbers from the challenge to the check of the initial German sweep upon Paris. ”

“ We travelled all night, and on the following morning drew up at a junction where a body of recruits joined us. They regarded us with staring eyes, and I suppose we did look like a lot of cave men, being unshaven, long-haired, grimy, and black as sweeps with the coal dust. We did not mind this half so much as the recruits. At the junction, we got a sandwich and a canteen of coffee which had a most exquisite flavour of rum. ”

“ I was firing as fast as I could. On my right was a lad of nineteen, who was one of the 3rd battalion militia of the Black Watch—a detachment sent to replace our losses.
“Pray God they may not pass the wire,” he half sobbed with every breath. He was afraid, but he would not run. Every man is afraid in his first battle. The recruit’s face was drawn and white—his lips a thin, pressed line—but he fired calmly. He did not mind the bullets, but he had not yet the “spirit of the bayonet,” and he dreaded that they should pass the wire.
The first of the thin line was at the entanglement. ”

“ You cannot imagine a more pitiful or a more noble sight. Limping along, supported by their comrades, came scores of men, whose every step was costing them agony but who smiled at us as we cheered them. Straggling down the road, as we swung along, came groups of wounded, each supporting the other as best he could. In one case in particular, a man who had been badly maimed and was using his rifle as a crutch, was also supported by a comrade who had been blinded. ”

“ Miss Campbell, Mrs. Low, or Uncle Sandy.
Every Tommy, every Jock, learns to know and to love his trench mate as a brother. The men in the “ditches” feel as if they all belonged to the one mother, sharing each other’s confidences, both pleasant and sad. There is no selfishness—not even a thought of it—“over there.”
We were all sitting round the fire-steps of our trenches, thinking, ever thinking, and wondering how many of us would live to see the same sun rise on another Christmas Day. ”

“ We lay and “took” the German fire. We had already had some casualties, the wooden steeple of the church in the village on our right was in flames, and several houses had been destroyed by the German shelling—and we hadn’t yet seen a German, except the airplane scouts. But they were not long coming into view.
As we lay in our shallow trenches, a big shell every now and then falling amongst us, another regiment, retreating under heavy fire, broke into view from the woods, a mile or more in front of our line. ”

“ The machine-gun and shrapnel fire was terrific, and for a time we were glad to squeeze ourselves close against the parapet. Then suddenly everything seemed uncomfortably quiet. Wounded were screaming and groaning all about us; men, who had not been struck, were muttering to themselves—driven half mad by the bombardment; but, the instant the roar of the guns and shell explosions ceased, all seemed still. The Prussians were undoubtedly preparing to [Pg 113] charge us, but they must have been slow in getting started. ”

“ We were fighting now. It was different from the waiting and thinking—the thinking of what we may be leaving behind us for always.
I was the first man out of the trench—not that I was brave, but because I had already learned that it was the last man up and the last man down who usually are shot. I sped ahead of all the platoon; for in that lay safety.
It is a fact that men in trenches will fire at the mass in rear rather than stop to aim at a single runner out ahead. Each man seems to feel that he is sure to hit someone if he fires into the mass and that another will pick off the leader. ”

“ At last we saw the Germans who were firing at us over their trenches. Our men were yelling like demons.
Then the German fire stopped as though every man had, on the instant, been struck dead. An instant later, they leaped out of their trenches, with bayonets fixed, and dashed toward us. Every man among them looked a giant. One of our boys was ahead of all [Pg 79] the others. He was a bow-legged little fellow, and, even at that moment, he looked ludicrous with his bare knees and kilts. A big German was over him. The little fellow seemed to drop his rifle. ”

“ It is to me a component and interesting part of the whole, for it goes to the source of the splendid and unique traditions of the regiment in which I have been privileged to serve as a soldier of my country.
A great deal has been written about the Black Watch. Even poets have been inspired to sing of its deeds in stanzas which are undying. Men of Highland birth, glorying in its history, have set down the facts of its achievements under England’s banner. ”

“ Our artillery was pouring shells and shrapnel upon the Huns and their guns were replying. The combat wagons with the ammunition and the wagons with the rations had to reach us through a curtain of fire. One hundred extra cartridges were distributed to every man, also extra tins of “bully.” I was on my way to regimental headquarters with a message, when a shell squarely struck a transport wagon. It was obliterated. Men were torn into shreds. I saw the whole fore-quarters of a horse blown high into a tree and caught there in a crotch. The stretcher bearers picked up some of the men. ”

“ For a time war was entirely forgotten; but only for a time! With a sudden “jerk” we would be brought back to our senses and our present whereabouts by the voice of the orderly corporal asking whether Private McNeil, or Lance-Corporal Watson, or perhaps Corporal McGregor had been seen down the line wounded; or was he dead? It was war, all right, and not football we were playing at!
Jock Hunter and I were still “muckin’-in” pals, sharing our rations and troubles alike. Very soon the party broke, each man making for his allotted place to rest. ”

“ In this day—when it is but a pleasant outing to motor from England into the Highlands—it seems almost unbelievable that the laws, language, customs, and social usages of the Highlanders should for centuries have remained utterly different from those of England and the lowlands, and that the people of the lowlands should have almost no knowledge of neighbours so near. The sturdy and soldierly qualities of the Highlanders of the six companies, however, couldn’t escape the notice of England’s generals, ever seeking new drafts for England’s fighting forces. ”

“ Before a countless superiority of numbers and an incalculable advantage in enemy preparedness, it could only stand, and fall—and stand again, and fall—until the end; when the cause of the Allies was saved for the hour, and of French’s hundred thousand there remained barely a little leaven of trained men for the British forces then assembling to learn the trade of warfare. ”

“ Our officers gave us the encouraging news that we were about to be up against some hard fighting—harder than we had so far experienced. Our commander, Major J. T. C. Murray, expressed the hope that we would keep the name of the “Black Watch” where our predecessors had placed it—in the foremost rank. And so we advanced in darkness, with our minds on serious things.
We were in two lines of skirmishing order, one pace apart. Our object was to reach the flat ground beyond the trees and dig ourselves in before dawn. ”

“ It was all we could do to get ammunition. After shivering all day, I determined to have some clothes. Right in front of our position, about twenty-five yards from the trench, lay a dead member of H company [Pg 103] whose name was Jock Drummond. Under cover of darkness, I sneaked out, and was almost beside the body, when a flare rocket went up. All of No Man’s Land was lit up like day and I had to lie among the dead as if I had been one of them. It almost turned my stomach, but I did not dare to move. ”

“ French’s retreat from Mons has been a topic to inspire the highest eloquence of the patriotic historian and the most profound admiration of the militarist. Everything, from the point of the onlooker, has been said of it. And everything that has been said retires into the perspective of the academic, when one reads, in this volume, the words of a trained British soldier who experienced and survived it. ”

“ You must remember, also, the weight that each man carried during all those long wearisome retreats. Each of us had his heavily plaited kilt; his pack containing great coat, flannel shirt, two pairs of socks, waterproof sheet, extra shoes, and towel; his canteen, rifle, entrenching tool, bayonet, and ammunition—the whole totalling ninety pounds weight.
Immediately after the fight, in shallow, narrow trenches, we began to bury our dead. Before the work was finished, a detachment of Uhlans fired on us, but one of our companies drove them across a rivulet and over the crest of the next ridge. ”

“ It is the feeling that possesses every man that patrols “No Man’s Land.”
I motioned to Lawson, and we crawled away like worms that had been overlooked by a hungry crow. We reached our trenches quickly after getting into the broken ground; it was not until we had actually entered them that he opened his mouth. Then, approaching his friend, Donald, he demanded his fags. In a whisper, he triumphantly announced that we had been near enough to hear the Germans talking in their trenches.
I went to our officer and reported. ”

“ English and Welsh soldiers, too far from home to receive the attention of their own people, were given even more favours than the Scots. Every day, a flock of big motor cars drew up and carried away those who were far enough toward recovery for a ride. We had many delightful hours rolling swiftly through the picturesque city of Edinburgh, along the banks of the Forth and up through the beautiful Pentland Hills.
Our lockers were well filled, and we never wanted for such dainties as chocolates and fancy biscuits, and we had magazines, and—above all—cigarettes. ”

“ Toward evening on the thirteenth of September, I was scouting on our left flank. The German [Pg 87] heavy guns had been keeping up a steady searching fire all day, but little damage had been done.
I had got so accustomed to the roar of the explosions that they did not bother me very much. After a while a man gets so used to the sound of a shrieking shell in the air that he can tell by instinct when one is coming his way in time to throw himself flat on the ground. I had not yet reached this stage of proficiency. A shell did come my way. ”

“ A second later a machine gun began strewing the ground with horses and men. Squads of them threw up their hands and cried: “Kamerad! Kamerad!”—which was not a new cry on the part of the Prussians. A young fellow by my side stopped firing for a moment, but the rest of us knew better. [Pg 32] The Camerons had lost a score of men the day before because they had taken the Germans at their word, and, when they went to make them prisoners, a whole company of Prussians had risen from behind the crest to a hill and shot the Camerons down. ”

“ I could see a few wrecked transport wagons and dead horses. We remained behind a hillock and were told that we were near the enemy. We were about to enter trenches which lay quite close to the German lines our officer told us, adding that we could have reached this point from our billets in half an hour, but that it was necessary for us to make the exceedingly long détour. Most of us knew that this was the direction in which we had seen the sausage balloon, which brought back the memory of the heavy firing. ”

“ We came across scores of dead Germans and a few French. In the midst of a field dotted with a particularly large number of hay-stacks was a farm house. When we were about thirty or forty yards from it and on [Pg 67] opposite sides, we leaped up and dashed toward it as hard as we could run. It is a fact that this is the safest way for patrols to approach a house. If any of the enemy are inside, they become excited when they see men rushing toward them and are likely to open fire—instead of waiting until the scouts get inside and then killing them noiselessly. ”

“ From the high ground to the right, much information of the movements of German troops could be gained. Whenever they saw even a single man “crossing the bar,” the Huns would let loose a salvo of artillery fire.
I usually waited until it was dark enough to see the flashes of their guns before crossing this strip, and whenever I saw the first flash I would sprint a few paces toward it and then flop down. The Germans had the range exactly. By sprinting, I stood a good chance of getting in ahead of the burst, and as shrapnel carried forward, the ruse worked nicely. ”