A Rifleman Went to War

by Herbert W. McBride

  Much of this variety was lost sight of, unless we scan the makeup of brigade or division, or remember the various special and service organizations. But the more populous colonies contributed and maintained their own army corps, as the Anzacs and Canadians. Of the Anzacs (Australian-New Zealand Army Corps), my impression is that there was a decided difference between the men of these two neighboring colonies. It seemed to me a quite obvious difference; yet, one that is by no means easy to define. In my case, it may have been due to the initial impression made by particular individuals; though I can’t see that this has anything to do with it, for my first contact with the Australians leaves me with nothing more – nor less – than a very agreeable memory of a lot of good fellows who gave us something to eat at a time when we needed it very badly. Among the New Zealanders I was always fancying that I could recognize something of the Midlands or of Perth; they seemed closer to the British Isles than did the Australians, despite the fact that in their ranks was to be found now and then the strong close-knit figure of the Maori, a diverse element to which I remember noticing nothing similar or comparable among the Australians. This impression was heightened by the difference in uniforms; though in this connection I must say that I am not specifically familiar with the uniform of the corps and of the various branches of its service, and it may be that I am contrasting the Australian supply service or artillery with the New Zealand infantry. Anyway, for me, the uniform of the Australians was dark and was not cut on the rigid and severe lines dear to the heart of the old British drill-sergeant. And if it had been so cut I doubt if it would have been worn so. It ran more to loose-fitting careless comfort and was topped by a somewhat soft broad-brimmed hat turned up on one side against the crown. I remember the New Zealanders for a uniform of cut, color and material more like our own.

  Whatever be the truth of the matter, the men from these neighboring islands are in my mind differentiated by their uniforms and general appearance in a manner which somehow agrees with differences in temperament and personal characteristics. I fancied that in civilian dress I could distinguish between them. Most Canadians will wonder why I am coming at this so gently. They will tell you in a minute that there was a difference – a hell of a difference. Whenever the average Canadian thought of the corps, he thought of the Aussies. He accepted the New Zealander as a quiet, efficient soldier; he knew him; he understood him as a man not unlike himself despite the fact that he lived in a land where September is spring and apparently spent most of his time shearing sheep. But the Aussie was an anomaly, or something worse. What he thought of the Canadian, I don’t know. But they didn’t get along. Either of them, I think, would have been glad to have the other on the flank in battle; but back of the lines they were antagonistic. Frequently, when they encountered each other there, there was trouble. I never had much personal experience of this, but the stories told at first hand were numerous. Even if some diplomat smoothed things over and blended antagonism into a semblance of conviviality, it was not enough; the evening, more likely than not, would bring disturbance to the quiet of Madame’s respectable estaminet. I never heard of trouble with the New Zealanders. That with the Australians was probably of the same sort that results in the instantaneous bristling when two excellent dogs come together in camp. It disappeared when they had something else to do, and neither side was the worse for the antagonism.

  Of all the colonials, the Canadians most closely resembled the soldiers of the United States, though there were among them a great many who were English or born of English parents. Except for this element the two were much alike in physique, carriage and physical characteristics, as well as in temperament, habit of mind and other qualities which determine the response to discipline, and which, therefore, should decide the methods of training. But of the Canadians, as of all the colonials, it must be remembered that they were, first of all, British. Even those far-flung possessions, and near-possessions, of the Empire which were inhabited by peoples of alien race found something in the British character (not in the British bayonet) to which they quickly and whole-heartedly responded. I am not well informed in the various particulars, but I do know that this response was something upon which the Germans had not counted. They had, in fact, counted upon something quite to the contrary. Their contempt (hardly real contempt) for the British army sprang not only from its small numbers and its deprecated fighting qualities, but from the belief of the German High Command that Britain would not always be free to use it on the Continent. Much of its effectiveness would be dissipated in scattered efforts to keep order in the various colonies and dependencies. It didn’t happen that way. The dependencies, generally, not only didn’t require the presence of English troops; but they and the colonies proceeded at once to take care of the Marshall Islands and other German possessions in the South Seas. Southwest Africa ceased to be German Southwest Africa without appreciably hampering England in its Continental activities; and German insurrectionary intrigue in British South Africa didn’t prevent this colony from sending troops to France.

  I think it is something more than a fancy with me that the bearded Sikh sergeant had a good deal about him that was decidedly and staunchly British. There is a great significance in the fact that a Colonial three generations removed from the British Isles frequently refers to England as “back home.” This feeling of close kinship throughout the Empire is but a large expression of a peculiar sense of solidity in England itself. An understanding of this sense of solidity is necessary to an understanding of the Englishman and to an appreciation of the British Army and its methods of training.

  Someone has said that an Englishman’s house is his castle. This is commonly taken – and was so intended, I believe – as expressing his love of home and his disposition to shut himself up within it. It is a just observation, but to the uninformed outsider it reveals very little of the Englishman or his home; for the castle is England; it does not exist for and by itself. Aside from its comfort and privacy (and the absence of heat) it is filled first of all with the consciousness that there are thousands of others like it, all sharing in the vast and powerful accumulation of English tradition and in the intimate necessity for importing tea and in maintaining contact with a cousin in Jamaica and an uncle in New Zealand, in Hampstead Heath and Hyde Park and in the Horse Guards at Whitehall. This is what I mean by solidity. It is closely related to another characteristic commonly called English stolidity. The Englishman is stolid because England is solid and has proven herself so throughout so many generations that she has acquired a quality of inevitability. She has grown up, emotionally, and the homeward bound Londoner accepts with equal unconcern the cries of alarm on the part of some excitable individual and the figure of Nelson atop his monument in Trafalgar Square. The one is quite effectually canceled by the other, and the Englishman, who doesn’t love war and excitement, goes on his way home. It takes a lot to disturb him, and when he finally is disturbed he fights that he may be undisturbed again. He resents being disturbed and is likely to do a lot of grumbling about the failure of the government or the opposition to protect him forever in the peaceable enjoyment of his tea and port, beef and plum-pudding, and England’s inexorable schedule of holidays. But these things must be protected, and he accepts the necessity. There is nothing of la patrie impersonated by a woman, a woman insulted or in danger or suffering, or (and this is enough) beautifully and imperiously calling on him for service, which moves the volatile and quick-witted Frenchman; nothing of the excitement of parade and display which inspires the Italian; no welcome opportunity for individual exploits which is at the heart of the typical American. It is simply a matter of moving again to protect his island and his castle and the trade-routes of Empire on which they depend. War becomes his business for an indefinite time and he settles down to it in a business-like way, making himself as comfortable as possible. Anyone who has seen him in the trenches will testify to this. A redoubt is Piccadilly Circus; a funk-hole becomes Marble Arch; somewhere near, along The Strand, To
mmy can be found in his dugout, The Three Lions, making a cup of tea. It is this characteristic which is responsible for the observation that an Englishman is at home anywhere.

  In all this I do not mean to imply that Tommy is conscious of fighting to protect his supply of tea and to maintain English institutions. He is not; he is fighting because it has become the business of England and he has been ordered to fight. He grumbles and does what is required of him, not troubling to inform himself further, any more than at home he informed himself of the policies of the government. The government is an ephemeral sort of thing, a matter of speeches, and of elections and cabinets which come and go. But England is a fixed and enduring condition, the result of a long process of accumulation and integration in which Tommy, and the King, fit as stones in a building. It is, and will continue to be; though now and then the government finds it necessary to order Tommy out with a rifle in order to make others realize this. He must go in his place; the thousands of him comprise the base of the structure, and it is not in the nature of things for them to rise to the top. The whole is nicely articulated and must move together. This is what makes it invincible. Willingly and unwillingly, war-party and anti-war-party, Cavalier and Roundhead – but never a revolution that hasn’t yielded to and strengthened the traditional order of things.

  Tommy would not know what to do outside of his place, because to take him out is to destroy the structure – and Tommy. He is not an individual; he is first an Englishman. With a full realization of this fact, we will, I think, cease to worry about his lack of imagination and self-reliance or his failure to possess the necessary quick resilience and adaptability to overcome the unexpected or to take advantage of it. He doesn’t lack self-reliance, and few men more readily adapt themselves to conditions. What he does lack is a feeling of independent self-sufficiency and aggressiveness and the concomitant impulse to push on alone, defiant of danger, glorying in individual achievement. Instead, it is instinctive with him to stand with his fellows. He is disposed to attach a great deal of importance to orders, and to conform strictly to them, because the issuing of orders is the business of the higher-ups, and all his life he has been accustomed to obeying orders or the decrees of government. Orders are a sign that everybody is on the job and things are being done in the correct manner.

  But this doesn’t mean that the English soldier is demoralized and helpless when the officer is killed or momentarily absent. If leadership has been sound and inspiring it outlives the officer. The officer is a symbol, just as at home the King is a symbol, the crown of this graduated structure which is England. I do not mean that the intelligent officer, schooled by birth and breeding in poise and self-command and trained in the essentials of leadership, is not missed in a difficult situation. He is missed, and would be missed with any body of soldiers, else we shouldn’t waste training on officers. If his leadership has been good, the men will carry on in response to it after he is dead, and even more ardently. This is more strictly true of the English, I think, than of any other soldier, because no other is so proud of a really fine officer; he is a justification of the English system and of the soldier’s habit of obedience; for the English soldier does not aspire to the officer’s place, but only to serve under the best sort of officer. He is, in this manner, peculiarly dependent upon leadership.

  This imposes a great responsibility upon the officers, and I think it is here that the British Army was weakest. I don’t mean to indict the British officer. Far from it; the British officer at his best – and there were many of these – was a remarkably fine soldier. He was intelligent, and schooled by birth and breeding in the first essential of command: self-command. The old, regular officers were, of course, highly trained at Sandhurst (the British West Point). There were some who held commissions without having undergone this course of training; but, still considering the best, they rapidly acquired an acceptable substitute. They fell in with the traditions of the regiment, with which they probably were already familiar, and with the fine traditions of the British officer, which leave nothing to be said. They were a fine lot, distinguished at all times by something which perhaps may be called aplomb. They were always right side up, unruffled under the most harassing and disconcerting conditions.

  The weakness to which I refer has nothing to do with them – except that, if it obtains, as I think it does, it resulted in their numbers being shot through with a lot of men not all of this sort. It is a weakness which seems to me to inhere in the British system – though I think it can be, and perhaps is being, overcome. The line between officers and men in England is not drawn by military decree. It has been determined by the circumstances of birth, habit, custom – all that goes to make up the English social system – through a thousand years. It is recognized in the broader authority of the sergeants as compared to ours. The sergeants, under the sergeant-major, attend to nearly all matters of camp and drill routine, and any special orders are executed through them, the officers merely indicating to the sergeant-major what is to be done. The idea is that the soldier may put on “company manners,” bring out his best just as he would like to do at home, however poor it is, if he were to be visited by someone of a station above him. The distinction may be made clearer, perhaps, by saying that it is not the business of the officer to train men, but to command and lead them. They are to be presented fit to respond to command. This is what is wanted. The ranks are not filled, as they are likely to be with us, with men who believe that they would be better officers than the lieutenant in charge of them. They do not aspire to lead, but to be well-commanded. The line between them marks the class distinction about which developed the weakness to which I refer.

  The officers came from the classes, the higher-ups – of traditional necessity. But the traditional line is maintained more or less in defiance of the procreational methods of Dame Nature who goes on, indifferently, producing above the line a fair number of freaks with a minimum of grey matter. Many of these find their way into officers’ uniforms. The Chinese have a proverb: “You can’t carve rotten wood.” These fellows have the manner, but no way has been discovered to give them the matter; and the manner thus becomes a caricature; hence the stage-Englishman. On the stage he is all right, except that, in the United States, where the genuine article is not so well known, he reflects upon a lot of the finest fellows in the world.

  But the battlefield is no place for a joke of this sort; though even here, so far as the manner goes, they carried it off pretty well. They could carry a “stick,” and many of them had the necessary self-command and calmness of manner. But that, of course, was not enough. In the hands of the real and splendid officer – and they were splendid – the stick was a symbol of his business to lead, to command, not to fight. It was a glorious sight. Armed with nothing else, they walked out ahead of their men into almost certain death, for they were easily spotted and picked off. Because of this, it was forbidden. Officers were required to remove the distinctive braid from their sleeves and to substitute dull bronze insignia on the shoulder, and were encouraged to carry a rifle. In the hands of the “dud,” the stick was not only a symbol of the right to command; it became also a symbol of his failure to possess anything more than the arbitrary right. He was fittingly armed, and if nothing more than his own life had depended upon it, his conspicuousness would have worked out well enough. The order to remove conspicuous insignia and to carry a rifle was a triumph of common sense over tradition. The officers who possessed this rare commodity appreciated the order, not for their own safety, but because they realized they were more valuable alive than dead – and I think, too, they realized that there were too few of them. But orders could not confer common sense upon the dud.

  He should, of course, have been in the ranks but this was not always possible. After all, tradition is a hardy growth; and, though it couldn’t outwit Nature, it could and did outwit the High Command. It was not only difficult to get rid of him; it was difficult to replace him. For, although, while producing the duds above
the line, Nature produced the same fair measure of fine material below it, this could not always be used. Tradition again. The English upper classes have among them a goodly number of families only a generation or so removed from the condition of poor bakers, brewers, soap-makers and distillers, and these have somehow and in some acceptable measure managed to acquire the approval of tradition. A generation and a lot of money can do wonders. But in England you can’t take a man from the ranks and make him an officer – generally speaking. He has the common sense, but he can’t carry a stick. Again, the High Command is helpless. In this case it has at hand the common sense, but can’t impose the manner; it can’t disguise this fellow so that the men will not recognize him as somebody who has been taken out from below and stuck up into a higher place, a violation of the order of things: “Aye; I knew the bloke when he was a bloomin’ sergeant.”

  This, I think, marks a real weakness in the English Army. It is a situation with which the United States will not be faced. The qualifications here pertain more strictly to the individual, and we have no limited officer-class to be depleted. There is such a class in England. It contains some of the finest men in the world – and some of the greatest asses. This class was sadly depleted of its best during the war. I suspect (and would very much like to have firsthand information about it) that if along in the spring of 1918 the war-weary Tommy (whose ranks were also shorn of their best) showed signs of flagging morale, this condition had much to do with it. It is a pity; for Tommy, if he has the right sort of officer – even if this officer is killed in the first minute of the attack – is damned near invincible.

  This insistence upon the importance of the officer should not be taken to mean that in the British Army it was held that battles were won by orders, by masses of men trained to strict obedience and sent forward as a machine to conquer by sheer weight. On the contrary it was an axiom with the British that the greatness of an army rests with its men, not in the individual exploits of the men, but in closely organized action. This, of course, is not to be secured by constant direction by an officer, however efficient and ubiquitous he may be; it is not a matter of strict obedience to orders. It depends to a great extent upon the various qualities covered by that convenient blanket-term, esprit-de-corps. It is through this that any real unity of action is secured. This, of course, is a truism; yet it is often the obvious that is missed, and, if seen, is quite likely to be unappreciated and inadequately understood, its very obviousness making it seem a simple effect to achieve.