Books: Now It Can Be Told

P >> Philip Gibbs >> Now It Can Be Told

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It was in another French salon that we waited for the man who
controlled the British armies in the field--those armies which we now
knew in some intimacy, whom we had seen in the front-line trenches and
rest-camps and billets, hearing their point of view, knowing their
suffering and their patience, and their impatience--and their deadly
hatred of G. H. Q.

He was very handsome as he sat behind a Louis XIV table, with General
Charteris--his Chief of Intelligence, who was our chief, too--behind
him at one side, for prompting and advice. He received us with fine
courtesy and said:

"Pray be seated, gentlemen."

There had been many troubles over censorship, of which he knew but
vaguely through General Charteris, who looked upon us as his special
"cross." We had fought hard for liberty in mentioning units, to give
the honor to the troops, and for other concessions which would free
our pens.

The Commander-in-Chief was sympathetic, but his sympathy was expressed
in words which revealed a complete misunderstanding of our purpose and
of our work, and was indeed no less than an insult, unconscious but
very hurtful.

"I think I understand fairly well what you gentlemen want," he said.
"You want to get hold of little stories of heroism, and so forth, and
to write them up in a bright way to make good reading for Mary Ann in
the kitchen, and the Man in the Street." The quiet passion with which
those words were resented by us, the quick repudiation of this slur
upon our purpose by a charming man perfectly ignorant at that time of
the new psychology of nations in a war which was no longer a
professional adventure, surprised him. We took occasion to point out
to him that the British Empire, which had sent its men into this war,
yearned to know what they were doing and how they were doing, and that
their patience and loyalty depended upon closer knowledge of what was
happening than was told them in the communiques issued by the
Commander-in-Chief himself. We urged him to let us mention more
frequently the names of the troops engaged--especially English troops-
-for the sake of the soldiers themselves, who were discouraged by this
lack of recognition, and for the sake of the people behind them. . .
It was to the pressure of the war correspondents, very largely, that
the troops owed the mention and world-wide honor which came to them,
more generously, in the later phases of the war.

The Commander-in-Chief made a note of our grievances, turning now and
again to General Charteris, who was extremely nervous at our frankness
of speech, and telling him to relax the rules of censorship as far as
possible. That was done, and in later stages of the war I personally
had no great complaint against the censorship, and wrote all that was
possible to write of the actions day by day, though I had to leave out
something of the underlying horror of them all, in spite of my
continual emphasis, by temperament and by conviction, on the tragedy
of all this sacrifice of youth. The only alternative to what we wrote
would have been a passionate denunciation of all this ghastly
slaughter and violent attacks on British generalship. Even now I do
not think that would have been justified. As Bernard Shaw told me,
"while the war lasts one must put one's own soul under censorship."

After many bloody battles had been fought we were received again by
the Commander-in-Chief, and this time his cordiality was not marred by
any slighting touch.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you have played the game like men!"

When victory came at last--at last!--after the years of slaughter, it
was the little band of war correspondents on the British front, our
foreign comrades included, whom the Field-Marshal addressed on his
first visit to the Rhine. We stood on the Hohenzollern Bridge in
Cologne, watched by groups of Germans peering through the escort of
Lancers. It was a dank and foul day, but to us beautiful, because this
was the end of the long journey--four-and--a-half years long, which
had been filled with slaughter all the way, so that we were tired of
its backwash of agony, which had overwhelmed our souls--mine,
certainly. The Commander-in-Chief read out a speech to us, thanking us
for our services, which, he said, had helped him to victory, because
we had heartened the troops and the people by our work. It was a
recognition by the leader of our armies that, as chroniclers of war,
we had been a spiritual force behind his arms. It was a reward for
many mournful days, for much agony of spirit, for hours of danger--
some of us had walked often in the ways of death--and for exhausting
labors which we did so that the world might know what British soldiers
had been doing and suffering.

X

I came to know General Headquarters more closely when it removed, for
fresher air, to Montreuil, a fine old walled town, once within sight
of the sea, which ebbed over the low-lying ground below its hill, but
now looking across a wide vista of richly cultivated fields where many
hamlets are scattered among clumps of trees. One came to G. H. Q. from
journeys over the wild desert of the battlefields, where men lived in
ditches and "pill-boxes," muddy, miserable in all things but spirit,
as to a place where the pageantry of war still maintained its old and
dead tradition. It was like one of those pageants which used to be
played in England before the war--picturesque, romantic, utterly
unreal. It was as though men were playing at war here, while others
sixty miles away were fighting and dying, in mud and gas-waves and
explosive barrages.

An "open sesame," by means of a special pass, was needed to enter this
City of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside,
sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up on
pulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in a
red cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to the
occupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers were going
in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to
understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God.
Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged
colonels and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands,
red tabs, and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went
with them on their way.

Often one saw the Commander-in-Chief starting for an afternoon ride, a
fine figure, nobly mounted, with two A. D. C.'s and an escort of
Lancers. A pretty sight, with fluttering pennons on all their lances,
and horses groomed to the last hair. It was prettier than the real
thing up in the salient or beyond the Somme, where dead bodies lay in
upheaved earth among ruins and slaughtered trees. War at Montreuil was
quite a pleasant occupation for elderly generals who liked their
little stroll after lunch, and for young Regular officers, released
from the painful necessity of dying for their country, who were glad
to get a game of tennis, down below the walls there, after strenuous
office-work in which they had written "Passed to you" on many
"minutes," or had drawn the most comical caricatures of their
immediate chief, and of his immediate chief, on blotting-pads and
writing-blocks.

It seemed, at a mere glance, that all these military inhabitants of G.
H. Q. were great and glorious soldiers. Some of the youngest of them
had a row of decorations from Montenegro, Serbia, Italy, Rumania, and
other states, as recognition of gallant service in translating German
letters (found in dugouts by the fighting-men), or arranging for
visits of political personages to the back areas of war, or initialing
requisitions for pink, blue, green, and yellow forms, which in due
course would find their way to battalion adjutants for immediate
filling-up in the middle of an action. The oldest of them, those
white-haired, bronze-faced, gray-eyed generals in the administrative
side of war, had started their third row of ribbons well before the
end of the Somme battles, and had flower-borders on their breasts by
the time the massacres had been accomplished in the fields of
Flanders. I know an officer who was awarded the D. S. 0. because he
had hindered the work of war correspondents with the zeal of a hedge-
sparrow in search of worms, and another who was the best-decorated man
in the army because he had presided over a visitors' chateau and
entertained Royalties, Members of Parliament, Mrs. Humphry Ward,
miners, Japanese, Russian revolutionaries, Portuguese ministers, Harry
Lauder, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, clergymen, Montenegrins, and the
Editor of John Bull, at the government's expense--and I am bound to
say he deserved them all, being a man of infinite tact, many
languages, and a devastating sense of humor. There was always a
Charlie Chaplin film between moving pictures of the battles of the
Somme. He brought the actualities of war to the visitors' chateau by
sentry-boxes outside the door, a toy "tank" in the front garden, and a
collection of war trophies in the hall. He spoke to High Personages
with less deference than he showed to miners from Durham and Wales,
and was master of them always, ordering them sternly to bed at ten
o'clock (when he sat down to bridge with his junior officers), and
with strict military discipline insisting upon their inspection of the
bakeries at Boulogne, and boot-mending factories at Calais, as part of
the glory of war which they had come out for to see.

So it was that there were brilliant colors in the streets of
Montreuil, and at every doorway a sentry slapped his hand to his
rifle, with smart and untiring iteration, as the "brains" of the army,
under "brass hats" and red bands, went hither and thither in the town,
looking stern, as soldiers of grave responsibility, answering salutes
absent--mindedly, staring haughtily at young battalion officers who
passed through Montreuil and looked meekly for a chance of a lorry-
ride to Boulogne, on seven days' leave from the lines.

The smart society of G. H. Q. was best seen at the Officers' Club in
Montreuil, at dinner-time. It was as much like musical comedy as any
stage setting of war at the Gaiety. A band played ragtime and light
music while the warriors fed, and all these generals and staff
officers, with their decorations and arm-bands and polished buttons
and crossed swords, were waited upon by little W. A. A. C.'s with the
G. H. Q. colors tied up in bows on their hair, and khaki stockings
under their short skirts and fancy aprons. Such a chatter! Such bursts
of light-hearted laughter! Such whisperings of secrets and intrigues
and scandals in high places! Such careless--hearted courage when
British soldiers were being blown to bits, gassed, blinded, maimed,
and shell-shocked in places that were far--so very far--from G. H. Q.!

XI

There were shrill voices one morning outside the gate of our quarters-
-women's voices, excited, angry, passionate. An orderly came into the
mess--we were at breakfast--and explained the meaning of the clamor,
which by some intuition and a quick ear for French he had gathered
from all this confusion of tongues.

"There's a soldier up the road, drunk or mad. He has been attacking a
girl. The villagers want an officer to arrest him."

The colonel sliced off the top of his egg and then rose. "Tell three
orderlies to follow me."

We went into the roadway, and twenty women crowded round us with a
story of attempted violence against an innocent girl. The man had been
drinking last night at the estaminet up there. Then he had followed
the girl, trying to make love to her. She had barricaded herself in
the room, when he tried to climb through the window.

"If you don't come out I'll get in and kill you," he said, according
to the women.

But she had kept him out, though he prowled round all night. Now he
was hiding in an outhouse. The brute! The pig!

When we went up the road the man was standing in the center of it,
with a sullen look.

"What's the trouble?" he asked. "It looks as if all France were out to
grab me."

He glanced sideways over the field, as though reckoning his chance of
escape. There was no chance.

The colonel placed him under arrest and he marched back between the
orderlies, with an old soldier of the Contemptibles behind him.

Later in the day he was lined up for identification by the girl, among
a crowd of other men.

The girl looked down the line, and we watched her curiously--a slim
creature with dark hair neatly coiled.

She stretched out her right hand with a pointing finger.

"Le voila! . . . c'est l'homme."

There was no mistake about it, and the man looked sheepishly at her,
not denying. He was sent off under escort to the military prison in
St. Omer for court-martial.

"What's the punishment--if guilty?" I asked.

"Death," said the colonel, resuming his egg.

He was a fine-looking fellow, the prisoner. He had answered the call
for king and country without delay. In the estaminet, after coming
down from the salient for a machine-gun course, he had drunk more beer
than was good for him, and the face of a pretty girl had bewitched
him, stirring up desire. He wanted to kiss her lips . . . There were
no women in the Ypres salient. Nothing pretty or soft. It was hell up
there, and this girl was a pretty witch, bringing back thoughts of the
other side--for life, womanhood, love, caresses which were good for
the souls and bodies of men. It was a starved life up there in the
salient . . . Why shouldn't she give him her lips? Wasn't he fighting
for France? Wasn't he a tall and proper lad? Curse the girl for being
so sulky to an English soldier! . . . And now, if those other women,
those old hags, were to swear against him things he had never said,
things he had never done, unless drink had made him forget--by God!
supposing drink had made him forget? He would be shot against a white
wall. Shot dead, disgracefully, shamefully, by his own comrades! O
Christ! and the little mother in a Sussex cottage! . . .

XII

Going up to Kemmel one day I had to wait in battalion headquarters for
the officer I had gone to see. He was attending a court martial.
Presently he came into the wooden hut, with a flushed face.

"Sorry I had to keep you," he said. "Tomorrow there will be one swine
less in the world."

"A death sentence?"

He nodded.

"A damned coward. Said he didn't mind rifle-fire, but couldn't stand
shells. Admitted he left his post. He doesn't mind rifle-fire! . . .
Well, tomorrow morning."

The officer laughed grimly, and then listened for a second.

There were some heavy crumps falling over Kemmel Hill, rather close,
it seemed, to our wooden hut.

"Damn those German gunners" said the officer. "Why can't they give us
a little peace?"

He turned to his papers, but several times while I talked with him he
jerked his head up and listened to a heavy crash.

On the way back I saw a man on foot, walking in front of a mounted
man, past the old hill of the Scherpenberg, toward the village of
Locre. There was something in the way he walked, in his attitude--the
head hunched forward a little, and his arms behind his back--which
made me turn to look at him. He was manacled, and tied by a rope to
the mounted man. I caught one glimpse of his face, and then turned
away, cold and sick. There was doom written on his face, and in his
eyes a captured look. He was walking to his wall.

XIII

There were other men who could not stand shell-fire. It filled them
with an animal terror and took all will-power out of them. One young
officer was like that man who "did not mind rifle-fire." He, by some
strange freak of psychology, was brave under machine-gun fire. He had
done several gallant things, and was bright and cheerful in the
trenches until the enemy barraged them with high explosive. Then he
was seen wandering back to the support trenches in a dazed way. It
happened three times, and he was sentenced to death. Before going out
at dawn to face the firing-squad he was calm. There was a lighted
candle on the table, and he sorted out his personal belongings and
made small packages of them as keepsakes for his family and friends.
His hand did not tremble. When his time came he put out the candle,
between thumb and finger, raised his hand, and said, "Right O!"

Another man, shot for cowardice in face of the enemy, was sullen and
silent to one who hoped to comfort him in the last hour. The chaplain
asked him whether he had any message for his relatives. He said, "I
have no relatives." He was asked whether he would like to say any
prayers, and he said, "I don't believe in them." The chaplain talked
to him, but could get no answer--and time was creeping on. There were
two guards in the room, sitting motionless, with loaded rifles between
their knees. Outside it was silent in the courtyard, except for little
noises of the night and the wind. The chaplain suffered, and was torn
with pity for that sullen man whose life was almost at an end. He took
out his hymn--book and said: "I will sing to you. It will pass the
time." He sang a hymn, and once or twice his voice broke a little, but
he steadied it. Then the man said, "I will sing with you." He knew all
the hymns, words and music. It was an unusual, astonishing knowledge,
and he went on singing, hymn after hymn, with the chaplain by his
side. It was the chaplain who tired first. His voice cracked and his
throat became parched. Sweat broke out on his forehead, because of the
nervous strain. But the man who was going to die sang on in a clear,
hard voice. A faint glimmer of coming dawn lightened the cottage
window. There were not many minutes more. The two guards shifted their
feet. "Now," said the man, "we'll sing 'God Save the King.'" The two
guards rose and stood at attention, and the chaplain sang the national
anthem with the man who was to be shot for cowardice. Then the tramp
of the firing-party came across the cobblestones in the courtyard. It
was dawn.

XIV

Shell-shock was the worst thing to see. There were generals who said:
"There is no such thing as shell-shock. It is cowardice. I would
court-martial in every case." Doctors said: "It is difficult to draw
the line between shell-shock and blue funk. Both are physical as well
as mental. Often it is the destruction of the nerve tissues by
concussion, or actual physical damage to the brain; sometimes it is a
shock of horror unbalancing the mind, but that is more rare. It is not
generally the slight, nervous men who suffer worst from shell-shock.
It is often the stolid fellow, one of those we describe as being
utterly without nerves, who goes down badly. Something snaps in him.
He has no resilience in his nervous system. He has never trained
himself in nerve-control, being so stolid and self-reliant. Now, the
nervous man, the cockney, for example, is always training himself in
the control of his nerves, on 'buses which lurch round corners, in the
traffic that bears down on him, in a thousand and one situations which
demand self-control in a 'nervy' man. That helps him in war; whereas
the yokel, or the sergeant--major type, is splendid until the shock
comes. Then he may crack. But there is no law. Imagination--
apprehension--are the devil, too, and they go with 'nerves.'"

It was a sergeant-major whom I saw stricken badly with shell-shock in
Aveluy Wood near Thiepval. He was convulsed with a dreadful rigor like
a man in epilepsy, and clawed at his mouth, moaning horribly, with
livid terror in his eyes. He had to be strapped to a stretcher before
he could be carried away. He had been a tall and splendid man, this
poor, terror-stricken lunatic.

Nearer to Thiepval, during the fighting there, other men were brought
down with shell-shock. I remember one of them now, though I saw many
others. He was a Wiltshire lad, very young, with an apple-cheeked face
and blue-gray eyes. He stood outside a dugout, shaking in every limb,
in a palsied way. His steel hat was at the back of his head and his
mouth slobbered, and two comrades could not hold him still.

These badly shell-shocked boys clawed their mouths ceaselessly. It was
a common, dreadful action. Others sat in the field hospitals in a
state of coma, dazed, as though deaf, and actually dumb. I hated to
see them, turned my eyes away from them, and yet wished that they
might be seen by bloody-minded men and women who, far behind the
lines, still spoke of war lightly, as a kind of sport, or heroic game,
which brave boys liked or ought to like, and said, "We'll fight on to
the last man rather than accept anything less than absolute victory,"
and when victory came said: "We stopped too soon. We ought to have
gone on for another three months." It was for fighting-men to say
those things, because they knew the things they suffered and risked.
That word "we" was not to be used by gentlemen in government offices
scared of air raids, nor by women dancing in scanty frocks at war-
bazaars for the "poor dear wounded," nor even by generals at G. H. Q.,
enjoying the thrill of war without its dirt and danger.

Seeing these shell-shock cases month after month, during years of
fighting, I, as an onlooker, hated the people who had not seen, and
were callous of this misery; the laughing girls in the Strand greeting
the boys on seven days' leave; the newspaper editors and leader-
writers whose articles on war were always "cheery"; the bishops and
clergy who praised God as the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies,
and had never said a word before the war to make it less inevitable;
the schoolmasters who gloried in the lengthening "Roll of Honor" and
said, "We're doing very well," when more boys died; the pretty woman-
faces ogling in the picture-papers, as "well--known war-workers"; the
munition-workers who were getting good wages out of the war; the
working-women who were buying gramophones and furs while their men
were in the stinking trenches; the dreadful, callous, cheerful spirit
of England at war.

Often I was unfair, bitter, unbalanced, wrong. The spirit of England,
taking it broad and large--with dreadful exceptions--was wonderful in
its courage and patience, and ached with sympathy for its fighting
sons, and was stricken with the tragedy of all this slaughter. There
were many tears in English homes; many sad and lonely women. But, as
an onlooker, I could not be just or fair, and hated the non-combatants
who did not reveal its wound in their souls, but were placid in their
belief that we should win, and pleased with themselves because of
their easy optimism. So easy for those who did not see!

XV

As war correspondents we were supposed to have honorary rank as
captains, by custom and tradition--but it amounted to nothing, here or
there. We were civilians in khaki, with green bands round our right
arms, and uncertain status. It was better so, because we were in the
peculiar and privileged position of being able to speak to Tommies and
sergeants as human beings, to be on terms of comradeship with junior
subalterns and battalion commanders, and to sit at the right hand of
generals without embarrassment to them or to ourselves.

Physically, many of our generals were curiously alike. They were men
turned fifty, with square jaws, tanned, ruddy faces, searching and
rather stern gray eyes, closely cropped hair growing white, with a
little white mustache, neatly trimmed, on the upper lip.

Mentally they had similar qualities. They had unfailing physical
courage--though courage is not put to the test much in modern
generalship, which, above the rank of brigadier, works far from the
actual line of battle, unless it "slips" in the wrong direction. They
were stern disciplinarians, and tested the quality of troops by their
smartness in saluting and on parade, which did not account for the
fighting merit of the Australians. Most of them were conservative by
political tradition and hereditary instinct, and conservative also in
military ideas and methods. They distrusted the "brilliant" fellow,
and were inclined to think him unsafe; and they were not quick to
allow young men to gain high command at the expense of their gray hair
and experience. They were industrious, able, conscientious men, never
sparing themselves long hours of work for a life of ease, and because
they were willing to sacrifice their own lives, if need be, for their
country's sake, they demanded equal willingness of sacrifice from
every officer and man under their authority, having no mercy whatever
for the slacker or the weakling.

Among them there was not one whose personality had that mysterious but
essential quality of great generalship--inspiring large bodies of men
with exalted enthusiasm, devotion, and faith. It did not matter to the
men whether an army commander, a corps commander, or a divisional
commander stood in the roadside to watch them march past on their way
to battle or on their way back. They saw one of these sturdy men in
his brass hat, with his ruddy face and white mustache, but no thrill
passed down their ranks, no hoarse cheers broke from them because he
was there, as when Wellington sat on his white horse in the Peninsular
War, or as when Napoleon saluted his Old Guard, or even as when Lord
Roberts, "Our Bob," came perched like a little old falcon on his big
charger.