The battalion already had its complement of company commanders, so I went as second-captain to young Richardson of ‘A’ – one of the best companies I ever served with. He came from Sandhurst, and his men were largely Welshmen of 1915 enlistment. No officer in the company was more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old. A day or two after I arrived I went to visit ‘C’ Company mess, where I got a friendly welcome. I noticed The Essays of Lionel Johnson lying on the table. It was the first book I had seen in France (except my own Keats and Blake) that was neither a military textbook nor a rubbishy novel I stole a look at the fly-leaf, and the name was Siegfried Sassoon. Then I looked around to see who could possibly be called Siegfried Sassoon and bring Lionel Johnson with him to the First Battalion. The answer being obvious, I got into conversation with him, and a few minutes later we set out for Béthune, being off duty until dusk, and talked about poetry.
Siegfried Sassoon had, at the time, published only a few privately-printed pastoral pieces of eighteen-ninetyish flavour, and a satire on Masefield which, half-way through, had forgotten to be a satire and turned into rather good Masefield. We went to the cake shop and ate cream buns. At this time I was getting my first book of poems, Over the Brazier, ready for the press; I had one or two drafts in my pocket-book and showed them to Siegfried. He frowned and said that war should not be written about in such a realistic way. In return, he showed me some of his own poems. One of them began:
Return to greet me, colours that were my joy,
Not in the woeful crimson of men slain…
Siegfried had not yet been in the trenches. I told him, in my old-soldier manner, that he would soon change his style.
That night, the whole battalion went up to work on a new defence scheme at Festubert. Festubert had been a nightmare ever since the first fighting there in 1914 when the inmates of its lunatic asylum, caught between two fires, broke out and ran all over the countryside. The British trench line, which crossed a stretch of ground marked on the map as ‘Marsh, sometimes dry in the summer’, consisted of islands of high-command trench, with no communication between them except at night. The battalion had been nearly wiped out here six months previously. We were set to build up a strong reserve line, and came night after night. The temperature being ten degrees below zero, and the ground frozen a foot deep, we managed only to raise some two hundred yards of trench about knee-high, at the cost of several men wounded by casual shot skimming the trench in front of us. Other troops resumed work when the thaw came and built a thick, seven-foot-high ramp which, little by little, sank down into the marsh, and in the end was completely engulfed.
When I left the Second Battalion, the adjutant let me take my admirable servant, Private Fahy (known as ‘Tottie Fay’, after the actress), with me. Tottie, a reservist from Birmingham, had been called up when war broke out, and fought with the Second Battalion ever since. By trade a silversmith, he had recently gone on leave, and brought me back a gift cigarette-case, all his own work, engraved with my name. On arrival at the First Battalion, however, he met one Sergeant Dickens. They had been boozing chums in India seven or eight years ago, and joyfully celebrated the reunion. The next morning I was surprised and annoyed to find my buttons unpolished and only cold water for shaving; it made me late for breakfast. I could get no news of Tottie, but on my way to rifle inspection at nine o’clock at the company billet, noticed Field Punishment No. 1 being carried out in a corner of the farmyard. Tottie had just been awarded twenty-eight days of it for ‘drunkenness in the field’, and stood spread-eagled to the wheel of a company limber, tied by the ankles and wrists in the form of an X. He was obliged to stay in this position – ‘Crucifixion’ they called it – for several hours every day so long as the battalion remained in billets, and then again after the next spell of trenches. I shall never forget the look that my quiet, respectful, devoted Tottie gave me. He wanted to tell me that he regretted having let me down, and his immediate reaction was an attempt to salute. I could see him vainly trying to lift his hand to his forehead, and bring his heels together. The battalion police-sergeant, a fierce-looking man, had just finished knotting him up when I arrived. I told Tottie, for what that might be worth, that I was sorry to see him in trouble.
The spree, as it proved, did him good in the end. I had to find another servant, and Old Joe Cotterell, the quartermaster, aware that Tottie was the only trained officer’s servant left in the battalion, took him from me when his sentence expired; even inducing the colonel to remit a few days of it. I bore no grudge to Old Joe. Tottie would be safer in billets with him than in trenches with me. A few weeks later his seven years’ contract as a reservist expired. When their ‘buckshee seven’ came to an end, reservists were sent home for a few days, but then ‘deemed to have re-enlisted under the Military Service Act’ and recalled to the battalion. Tottie made good use of his leave. His brother-in-law, the director of a munitions factory, took him in as a skilled metal-worker. He became a starred man – one whose work was so important to industry that he could not be spared for military service – so Tottie is, I hope, still alive.
Sergeant Dickens was a different case: a born fighter, and one of the best N.C.O.s in either battalion of the regiment. He had won the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Bar, the Military Medal, and the French Médaille Militaire; been two or three times promoted to sergeant’s rank, and each time reduced for drunkenness. He always escaped the Field Punishment awarded for this crime, because it was considered sufficient disgrace if he merely lost his stripes; and as soon as a battle started would distinguish himself so conspicuously by his leadership that he would be given them back again.
Early in December a rumour came that we were going for divisional training to the distant countryside. I refused to believe it, having heard stories of this kind too often; yet it turned out to be true. Siegfried Sassoon, in his Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man, has described this battalion move. Our ‘A’ Company had an even more laborious experience than his ‘C’ Company. We got up at five o’clock one morning, breakfasted hastily, packed our kits, and marched down to the railhead three miles away. Here we entrained all the battalion stores, transport, and transport animals. This took us to the middle of the morning. We then entrained ourselves for a ten-hour journey to a Somme junction, about twenty miles behind the front line. The officers travelled in third-class compartments, the men in closed trucks marked ‘Hommes 40, chevaux 8’ – they were very stiff when they arrived. ‘A’ Company was then ordered to do the detraining job too. When we had finished, the dixies of tea prepared for us were cold. The other companies got a couple of hours’ rest; we had only a few minutes.
The march took us along pavé roads and rough chalk tracks of Picardy downland. It started about midnight and finished at six o’clock next morning, the men carrying their packs and rifles. There was a competition between the companies as to which would have the fewest stragglers; ‘A’ won. The village we finally arrived at was named Montagne le Fayel. No troops had been billeted here before, and its inhabitants were pardonably annoyed at being knocked up in the middle of the night by our advance party to provide accommodation for eight hundred men at two hours’ notice. We found these Picard peasants much more likeable than the Pas de Calais folk. I was billeted with an old man called Monsieur Élie Caron, a kindly retired schoolmaster with a bright eye and white hair, who lived entirely on vegetables, and gave me a vegetarian pamphlet entitled Comment Vivre Cent Ans. (We already knew of the coming Somme offensive, so this seemed a good joke.) He also gave me Longfellow’s Evangeline in English. Since I have always been sorry for English books stranded in France, whatever their demerits, I accepted it and later brought it home.
We stayed at Montagne for six weeks. Colonel Ford, known in the regiment as ‘Scatter’ (short for ‘Scatter-cash’ because, when he first joined, he had spent his allowance so lavishly), put the battalion through its paces with peacetime severity. He ordered us to forget the trenches and to prepare ourselves for the open warfare tha
t was bound to follow once the Somme defences had been pierced. Every other day was field-day; we were back, in spirit, to General Haking’s Company Training. Even those of us who did not believe in the break-through thoroughly enjoyed our exercises over quite unspoiled country. The guns could only just be heard in the distance, and every man in the battalion was fit. Days other than field-days were spent on battalion drill and musketry. The training seemed entirely unrelated to war as we had experienced it. Games included inter-battalion rugger; I played full-back for the battalion. Three other officers were members of the team: Richardson, a front-row scrum-man; Pritchard, another Sandhurst boy, the fly-half; and David Thomas, a Third Battalion second-lieutenant, an inside three-quarter. David came from South Wales: simple, gentle, fond of reading. He, Siegfried Sassoon, and I always went about together.
One day David stopped me in the village street. ‘Did you hear the bugle? There’s a hell of a row brewing. All officers and warrant-officers are to meet at the village school-room at once. Scatter’s looking as black as thunder. No one knows yet what the axe is.’
We went along to the school-room and squeezed into one of the desk-benches.
When Scatter entered, the room was called to attention by the senior major; David and I hurt ourselves attempting to stand up, bench and all. Scatter told us to be seated. The officers were in one class, the warrant-officers and N.C.O.s in another. Scatter glared at us from the teacher’s desk. He began his lecture with general accusations, saying that he had lately noticed many signs of slovenliness in the battalion – men with their pocket-flaps undone, and actually walking along the village street with hands in trouser-pockets and boots unpolished; sentries strolling about on their beats at company billets, instead of marching up and down in a soldier-like way – rowdiness at the estaminets – slackness in saluting – and many other grave indications of lowered discipline. He threatened to stop all leave to the United Kingdom unless matters improved, and promised us a saluting parade every morning before breakfast which he would attend in person.
All this was general axe-ing; we knew that he had not yet reached the particular axe. It was this: ‘I have here principally to tell you of a very disagreeable occurrence. As I left my orderly-room this morning, I came upon a group of soldiers; I will not particularize their company. One of these soldiers was in conversation with a lance-corporal. You may not believe me, but it is a fact that he addressed the corporal by his Christian name: he called him Jack! And the corporal made no protest! To think that the First Battalion has sunk to a level where it is possible for such familiarity to exist between N.C.O.s and the men under their command! Naturally, I put the corporal under arrest, and he appeared before me at once on the charge of “conduct unbecoming to an N.C.O.” I reduced him to the ranks, and awarded the man Field Punishment for using insubordinate language to an N.C.O. But I warn you, if any further case of this sort comes to my notice – and I expect you officers to report the slightest instance to me at once – instead of dealing with it as a company matter…’
I tried to catch Siegfried’s eye, but he was obviously avoiding it, so I caught David’s instead. This is one of those caricature scenes that now seem to sum up the various stages of my life. Myself in faultless khaki with highly polished buttons and belt, revolver at hip, whistle on cord, delicate moustache on upper lip, and stern endeavour a-glint in either eye, pretending to be a Regular Army captain; but crushed into that inky desk-bench like an over-grown school-boy. A fresco ran around the walls of the class-room illustrating the evils of alcoholism. It started with the innocent boy being offered a drink by his mate, and then showed his downward path of degradation, culminating in wife-beating, murder, and delirium tremens; but, at least, he never went so far as to call his petit-taporal ‘Jacquot’!
The battalion’s sole complaint against Montagne was that women were not so complaisant in that part of the country as around Béthune. The officers had the unfair advantage of being able to borrow horses and ride into Amiens. There was a ‘Blue Lamp’ at Amiens, as at Abbeville, Le Havre, Rouen, and all the large towns behind the lines: the Blue Lamp reserved for officers, the Red Lamp for men. Whether, in this careful maintenance of discipline, the authorities made any special provision for warrant-officers, and whether the Blue Lamp women had to show any particular qualifications for their higher social ranking, are questions I cannot answer. I remained puritanical, except in language, throughout my overseas service.
At New Year, the Seventh Division sent two company officers from each brigade to instruct troops at the Base. I and a Queen’s captain happened to be the two who had been out longest, so we were given this gift of eight weeks’ additional life.
17
THERE were about thirty instructors at the Harfleur ‘Bull Ring’, where newly-arrived drafts now went for technical instruction before going up the line. Most of my colleagues specialized on musketry, machine-guns, gas, or bombs. Having no specialist training, but only general experience, I taught troops trench relief and trench discipline in a model system of trenches. My principal other business was arms-drill. One day it rained, and the terrifying Major Currie, the Bull Ring commandant, suddenly ordered me to lecture in the big concert hall. ‘You’ll find three thousand men there waiting for you, Graves, and you’re the only available officer with a loud enough voice to make himself heard.’ They were Canadians, so instead of giving my usual semi-facetious lecture on ‘How to be Happy, Though in the Trenches’, I paid them the compliment of telling the real story of Loos, and what a balls-up it had been, and why – more or less as it has been given here. This was the only audience I have ever held for an hour with real attention. I expected Major Currie to be furious, because the principal object of the Bull Ring was to inculcate the offensive spirit; but he took it well and put several other concert-hall lectures on me after this.
In the instructors’ mess, the chief subjects of conversation, besides local and technical talk, were the reliability of various divisions in battle, the value of different training methods, and war morality, with particular reference to atrocities. We talked more freely than would have been possible in England or in the trenches. It seemed to be agreed that about a third of the troops forming the British Expeditionary Force were dependable on all occasions: those always called on for important tasks. About a third were variable: divisions that contained one or two weak battalions but could usually be trusted. The remainder were more or less untrustworthy: being put in places of comparative safety, they lost about a quarter of the men that the best troops did. It was a matter of pride to belong to one of the recognized top-notch divisions – the Second, Seventh, Twenty-ninth, Guards’, First Canadian, for instance. These were not pampered when in reserve, as the German storm-troops were; but promotion, leave, and the chance of a wound came quicker in them.
The mess agreed dispassionately that the most dependable British troops were the midland county regiments, industrial Yorkshire and Lancashire troops, and Londoners. The Ulstermen, Lowland Scots, and Northern English ranked pretty high. The Catholic Irish and Highland Scots took unnecessary risks in trenches and had unnecessary casualties; and in battle, though they usually reached their objective, too often lost it in the counter-attack; without officers they became useless. English southern county regiments varied from good to very bad. All overseas troops seemed to be good. The dependability of divisions also varied with their seniority in date of formation. The latest New Army divisions and the second-line territorial divisions, whatever their recruiting area, ranked low because of inefficient officers and warrant-officers.
We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order list like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh, and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots, with certain higher-ranking exceptions; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portuguese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the
Portuguese.
Propaganda reports of atrocities were, it was agreed, ridiculous. We remembered that while the Germans could commit atrocities against enemy civilians, Germany itself, except for an early Russian cavalry raid, had never had the enemy on her soil. We no longer believed the highly-coloured accounts of German atrocities in Belgium; knowing the Belgians now at first-hand. By atrocities we meant, specifically, rape, mutilation, and torture-not summary shootings of suspected spies, harbourers of spies, francs-tireurs, or disobethent local officials. If the atrocity-list had to include the accidental-on-purpose bombing or machine-gunning of civilians from the air, the Allies were now committing as many atrocities as the Germans. French and Belgian civilians had often tried to win our sympathy by exhibiting mutilations of children – stumps of hands and feet, for instance – representing them as deliberate, fiendish atrocities when, as likely as not, they were merely the result of shell-fire. We did not believe rape to be any more common on the German side of the line than on the Allied side. And since a bully-beef diet, fear of death, and absence of wives made ample provision of women necessary in the occupied areas, no doubt the German army authorities provided brothels in the principal French towns behind the line, as the French did on the Allied side. We did not believe stories of women’s forcible enlistment in these establishments. ‘What’s wrong with the voluntary system?’ we asked cynically.
As for atrocities against soldiers – where should one draw the line? The British soldier, at first, regarded as atrocious the use of bowie-knives by German patrols. After a time, he learned to use them himself; they were cleaner killing weapons than revolvers or bombs. The Germans regarded as equally atrocious the British Mark VII rifle bullet, which was more apt to turn on striking than the German bullet. For true atrocities, meaning personal rather than military violations of the code of war, few opportunities occurred – except in the interval between the surrender of prisoners and their arrival (or non-arrival) at headquarters. Advantage was only too often taken of this opportunity. Nearly every instructor in the mess could quote specific instances of prisoners having been murdered on the way back. The commonest motives were, it seems, revenge for the death of friends or relatives, jealousy of the prisoner’s trip to a comfortable prison camp in England, military enthusiasm, fear of being suddenly overpowered by the prisoners, or, more simply, impatience with the escorting job. In any of these cases the conductors would report on arrival at headquarters that a German shell had killed the prisoners; and no questions would be asked. We had every reason to believe that the same thing happened on the German side, where prisoners, as useless mouths to feed in a country already short of rations, would be even less welcome. None of us had heard of German prisoners being more than threatened at headquarters to get military information from them. The sort that they could give was not of sufficient importance to make torture worth while; and anyhow, it had been found that, when treated kindly, prisoners were anxious in gratitude to tell as much as they knew. German intelligence officers had probably discovered that too.