The Regiment

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘You probably know that President Poincaré of France has been on a state visit to Russia; well, the Austrian ultimatum was timed for delivery just after his departure, by sea, from St Petersburg, which meant that he could not be contacted and that therefore there would have to be a delay in any concerted Franco-Russian response to the Austrian move. But I’m afraid no one has any doubts as to what that response will be; Russia has made very clear her intention of opposing any infringement of Serbian sovereignty, which was what the Austrians were after. And now, of course, the ultimatum having expired, the balloon has really gone up.’

  He paused to look over their excited faces.

  ‘But does that necessarily involve us, sir?’ Billy Hobbs asked. ‘Even if Russia and Austria go to war?’

  ‘No. Everything depends upon what the Germans do. If they refuse to get involved, well, then, the whole thing may simmer down. But the Kaiser’s record in recent years hardly suggests that he will not want to become involved.’

  ‘And if he declares war on Russia in support of Austria, then France will certainly come in,’ Murdoch said.

  ‘Oh, quite. The froggies are dying for a scrap, as usual, in any event. Especially with Germany.’

  ‘But that still doesn’t necessarily involve us,’ Hobbs insisted.

  ‘Agreed. But the Government feels that it must be prepared, we must be prepared, for whatever happens next. It may interest you to know that the Royal Navy, which has just completed its annual manoeuvres, has not been returned to a peace footing as is usual, but has been ordered to remain in a state of partial mobilisation. That is, the reservists are being kept with the fleet. Nor are the territorial battalions which are here with us being disbanded.’

  ‘It all happened before, over Agadir,’ Peter Ramage grumbled. ‘Then it just fizzled.’

  ‘Well, let us hope and pray that it just fizzles again this time,’ the colonel said. ‘Unfortunately, shots have been fired this time, and they weren’t over Agadir.’

  And there was hardly a man who actually wanted it to fizzle, Murdoch knew. They had been playing at soldiers for too long, watching the months and the years rolling by, performing duties which were as distasteful as they were unpleasant. They wanted to fight. Even more they wanted some relief from the unbearable tension of Ireland, the feeling that they were aliens in a part of their own United Kingdom.

  And himself? He could not be sure of his own emotions. He wanted as much as any of them to be rid of Ireland, and manoeuvres, and peacetime soldiering. And yet he was haunted by everything he had studied over the past ten years, by South Africa, by the opinions of Harry Caspar—and by the feeling that once the tremendous latent force that was European militarism was unleashed against itself, it would not be a simple matter to confine that evil genie into his bottle again.

  ‘Is there any chance of leave?’ he asked Walters, when the meeting had been dismissed.

  ‘I’m afraid not, as things stand at the moment. I am under orders to be ready to embark from Dublin at an hour’s notice. Nor can I grant leave to any officer when there can be none for the men.’

  Murdoch nodded. ‘I accept that, I was actually thinking of the men. Some of them haven’t seen their families for six months, and if we are about to be sent to Europe...’

  ‘It may not happen. In any event, they’d be separated from their families for longer than six months if we were sent back to India.’

  The question was, what to write to Broad Acres, how much could he put on paper? Before he could decide, a telegram, arrived from Bath:

  WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON STOP ALL MANNER OF RUMOURS STOP ARE WE AT WAR OR NOT STOP WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME STOP HELEN HAS WHOOPING COUGH STOP DON’T TELL ME YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO FIGHT FOR SOME BALKAN COUNTRY WHICH I CAN’T EVEN FIND ON THE MAP STOP HARRY IS CROSSING ON THE NEXT BOAT STOP SAYS HE WANTS TO SEE YOU STOP WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME STOP I LOVE YOU STOP LEE.

  He smiled at her mixture of ebullience, indignation and concern. Theirs had been an odd marriage. They had been more fortunate than a good many army couples in being able to spend six years together instead of being immediately separated by an overseas posting, but even with three children under her belt, as it were, Lee had remained very much a bride. Presumably that was because she still found so much about English life, certainly as lived by the wife of a well-known and reasonably well-to-do Army officer, utterly strange. She always seemed to require to screw herself up to the required pitch before she could give orders to any of the staff at Broad Acres, and he would catch her looking at herself in the downstairs mirrors when she was wearing evening dress and awaiting guests for dinner with that quizzical expression of hers, as if asking herself, is this really me, standing here doing this, mistress of all I survey?

  Equally she was given to gazing at him, when he was in uniform, clearly asking herself, am I really married to that handsome, famous man? She had never had to accept the fact that the uniform was for a purpose, that it might one day have to be taken away from her admiring gaze, and might return to her soiled with blood.

  Now she would have to. And he had to tell her that, if he could. He cabled back: LETTER IN MAIL, and then settled down to try to explain the situation. He was worried about Helen, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, save tell her to trust Dr Williams and Sister Anderson. Having sent the letter, he waited and read the newspapers with the rest of the officers, and wondered what was going to happen next.

  The situation ground on in a kind of inexorable dénouement. On the day Belgrade had been shelled, 29 July, there were the most frantic diplomatic manoeuvres, with all sides—except the principal protagonists, the Russians and the Austrians—calling for a conference and with Bethman-Hollweg, the German chancellor, cabling Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, offering to guarantee French territorial integrity, whatever the outcome of a war, if Great Britain would remain neutral. This was ignored, but by now the Kaiser, apparently thoroughly alarmed, was himself trying to bring about a meeting between Austria and Russia, and telephoning the Tsar Nicholas II, who was after all his cousin. This had the effect of delaying the threatened Russian mobilisation. But only delaying. The next day the Tsar, whose ministers had been in cabled consultation with Paris, hardened his attitude and decreed a general mobilisation, and at five in that afternoon Austria did likewise. On 1 August, both France and Germany ordered mobilisation, within minutes of each other, and later that evening Germany declared war on Russia.

  The British Cabinet promptly responded by promising France to protect her coastline against naval violations, and a ‘stand-by’ order was received by all regular army units, but still the British carefully refrained from stating what their attitude would be to a general war. This developed within forty-eight hours, when Germany declared war on France as well. By then reports were already coming in of German violations of the Luxembourg frontier, and that they had demanded passage for their troops across Belgium. This being refused, the German army crossed the Belgian frontier anyway on the afternoon of 3 August.

  Amazingly, it was not until two days later that Austria, who had instigated the entire crisis, finally declared war on Russia.

  *

  It was the invasion of Belgium which was the most serious aspect of the situation, from a British point of view. So far, nothing had happened to oblige the British to go to war. Germany and Austria-Hungary were preparing to fight France, Russia and Serbia. The odds in manpower were all against the central Powers, and so long as the third member of the Central Alliance, Italy, did not come in on the German side, Britain had every reason to sit on the sidelines—as she had during the Franco-Prussian War—and see how things went.

  Except for Belgium. Great Britain had been one of the several Great Powers, which included Germany and France, who had in 1839 signed an international guarantee of Belgian neutrality, for all time. This had been all to the advantage of the British, for occupation of the Low Countries—the nearest part of Europe to England—by a
ny hostile army was seen as posing a direct threat to the security of the British Isles; almost all the famous British European campaigns since the days of Elizabeth, and through Marlborough and Wellington, had been fought in Flanders—even Crecy and Agincourt had really been fought in support of a Flemish alliance. Thus since 1839 the possibility of having again to send troops to that rich, flat little country seemed to have ended forever.

  But perpetual Belgian neutrality was also of the greatest value to France, now she was no longer the dominant military power in Europe. Her Belgian frontier was the only truly vulnerable part of her defences. Her eastern border was everywhere lined with high mountains, and even where the mountains ended, in the Belfort Gap, there was still very difficult campaigning country. The casualties suffered by General von Steinmetz in mounting a frontal assault upon the heights of Spicheren at the beginning of the war of 1870 had led to the removal of that officer from his command, and no one doubted that had the French been resolutely led the Germans would have been repulsed on the frontier and the unforgettable débâcle of the surrender at Sedan would never have been suffered. The French certainly had a resolute leader on this occasion, in Marshal Joffre. North-west of the Belfort Gap was the Forest of the Ardennes, which had proved difficult enough country to the Duke of Brunswick in 1792, and had been ignored altogether by the Germans in 1870, and was not going to be any the easier for them now. West of the Ardennes was neutral Belgium. It therefore had seemed apparent that the theatre of combat in the event of a fresh Franco-Prussian war would have to be the narrow north-eastern corner of France, the Belfort Gap, where the two armies would meet head on, and where German superiority in numbers would count for little.

  Unfortunately, it now became obvious that the German general staff had determined not to become embroiled in one gigantic frontier battle in the east, but risk world opprobrium and violate Belgian neutrality, thus enabling their armies to sweep across the Flanders plain and invade France from the north. That this might well bring England in was hardly a matter for concern; the expeditionary force being prepared to move to France if necessary—in effect, the entire regular British army available in England—consisted only of five divisions, four infantry and one cavalry, which considering the scale of the German invasion, undertaken with some fifty divisions in several army corps, hardly seemed relevant. It would be a campaign like that of 1870 all over again, the French armies would be rolled aside, the British expeditionary force crushed flat, and peace would be dictated in Paris before the end of the year, at which time the Belgians could be paid compensation for any damage done and the matter forgotten. Similar frontier violations had long been part of military history, only to become important when the violaters lost.

  Thus Martin Walters was in a grave mood when he called an officers’ conference in the morning of 4 August, after he had attended a commanding officers’ conference at the headquarters of General Allenby, commander designate of the cavalry division.

  ‘I have to tell you,’ he announced, ‘that the Cabinet has issued an ultimatum to Germany, demanding the withdrawal of all troops from Belgian soil within twenty-four hours, or Great Britain will consider herself at war with Germany.’ He paused, looking over the tense, expectant faces. ‘I have further to tell you,’ he went on, ‘that the Cabinet does not expect that Germany will comply with this ultimatum, and that this regiment, and indeed the entire division, is under orders to embark for Le Havre at the earliest possible moment.’

  Once again he paused, and Peter Ramage cried, ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Hurrah!’ the rest of the officers shouted.

  Walters smiled. ‘I am glad you feel that way, gentlemen. I have to say that I agree with you. Now, here are some details which may interest you. The entire regular establishment, less only training cadres, will be forming the expeditionary force. Sir John French will command. This is great news for me, and I know for all of you. General Allenby will command the cavalry, and the infantry divisions will be divided into two army corps, led respectively by Generals Smith-Dorrien and Haig. General Wilson has been made quartermaster, and will have responsibility for our arrival in France. And gentlemen, General Byng has been promoted to divisional rank, and we are to have a new brigadier.’ He smiled. ‘Well, not a new one. Brigadier-General Gough has been restored to his rank, and will command this brigade.’

  ‘Hurrah,’ Murdoch cried. ‘Oh, hurrah.’

  Again the command tent rang with cheers.

  ‘There are two other pieces of information I have which I know will interest you all,’ Walters continued. ‘One, it is reported that when it was suggested to the Kaiser that invading Belgium might cause Britain to fight him, he remarked that he was not afraid of a nation of shopkeepers with their contemptible little army…’ He paused to grin at them. ‘I hope you will remember those words when you see a grey uniform in front of you. The other news is that Field Marshal Lord Kitchener has been appointed Secretary of State for War, with the duty of coordinating all military activities.’

  This time there was a gasp. Kitchener had been virtually in retirement for several years.

  ‘So you will see that we are deploying our maximum strength,’ Walters told them. ‘I may say that even Lord Roberts is going to play his part, old as he is. Now, as I am sure you all understand, there can be no embarkation leave, in this situation. Nor can we even tell our loved ones precisely where we are going, and when, as it is understood that there are several German submarines at sea which may well attempt to interfere with our transportation to France. I regret this as much as you, but there is no help for it. If all goes well, and we give the Germans a drubbing, then the whole business will be wrapped up by Christmas, which is certainly what the staff expects to happen. The regiment must be prepared to march to Dublin for embarkation the moment our transport arrives, except, of course, in the unlikely event of a German compliance with our ultimatum. As of this moment, even local leave is cancelled. I understand that our ammunition will be awaiting us in France. Are there any questions?’

  ‘How soon can we hope to see action, sir?’ Ramage asked.

  ‘We will see action just as soon as we can get from Le Havre to the front line. Thank you, gentlemen. You may repeat everything I have told you to your men. Dismissed.’

  The officers filed out, talking excitedly amongst themselves. Billy Hobbs hurried to his desk to start clearing up the various files and accounts, while Walters and Murdoch looked at each other. ‘Well, Murdoch,’ the colonel said. ‘The big one. This time, really and truly, it would appear. Pleased?’

  ‘I can still hardly believe it,’ Murdoch said. Indeed, he was feeling a sense of shock. For all the Kaiser’s sabre-rattling, the artificial hostility whipped up between the two nations, and, at a personal level, his own antagonism for Reger, he had never really expected Great Britain and Germany ever to find themselves at war. The two countries had been allies in many wars over the previous couple of centuries, and in fact, as far as he could remember, no British soldier had ever fired a shot against a German wearing his country’s uniform: yet now they were going to face each other in battle.

  Reger? Oh, he knew Reger would be there, with his Uhlans. Thank God little Paul was too young. But would this war lessen, or increase, the hatred the boy had been taught to feel for the British?

  Walters, who of course knew nothing of Paul even if he knew something about Margriet, misinterpreted his expression. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I know you are not Kitchener’s favourite soldier...’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Murdoch agreed.

  ‘But on the other hand you are very nearly French’s, so the two should cancel out. And French is in actual command in the field. If anyone can lick the Germans, he can.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ Murdoch agreed. And wondered why he felt so suddenly sceptical. That Field Marshal French could indeed beat the Germans? Or that anyone was going to beat anyone, in this war?

  Predictably, that afternoon there was a telegram from Bath:
>
  EVERYONE SAYS WAR MUST HAPPEN STOP ARE YOU COMING HOME STOP OR GOING TO FRANCE STOP PLEASE COME HOME FIRST STOP REALLY MUST SEE YOU STOP HARRY IS HERE ON HIS WAY TO PARIS STOP SAYS YOU AND HE MUST HAVE MEAL TOGETHER AT MAXIM’S STOP MAY COME ACROSS TO JOIN YOU STOP HELEN MUCH BETTER NOW STOP DO LET ME KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING STOP REPEAT DON’T REPEAT DON’T GET YOURSELF SHOT AGAIN STOP I LOVE YOU LEE.

  He replied in his usual style, LETTER IN MAIL. Then the men and horses filed on board the transport in Dublin, watched this time by cheering crowds, all antagonisms forgotten in a common desire to fight the Germans. The letter would have to wait until after they had disembarked at Le Havre. In any event, thoughts of Broad Acres and the dogs, of the children and his mother and sisters, of Lee herself, had to be subordinated to concentration upon the business of fighting and killing.

  So now, he thought, to war. To that European war everyone has expected for so long. To the sound of machine guns and rifle fire, the shouts of brave men, the screams of dying ones. But a war to be fought, in contrast to Somalia or India or the veldt, in totally familiar surroundings, against men as civilised as oneself, with the same essential values, the same general historical backgrounds, the same hopes for the futures of themselves and their families. That was a reassuring thought. Less reassuring was the thought of having to kill any such men. He felt almost like a novice subaltern again; then he had wondered what he would feel like when he saw a bearded Boer face in his sights. Tommy Holt’s death had ended that. Which one of his present comrades would have to die before the killing instinct, dormant now for seven years, would again be -aroused?