A Rifleman Went to War

by Herbert W. McBride

  Whenever I pass Vancouver Barracks, it always seems perfectly clear to me that we have missed it. The Seventh Infantry happens to be stationed there at the present time. My father’s father served with that regiment – and died with it, in Mexico. It has a glorious record of achievement; it may be a fine regiment now, and quite fit to carry on that record; but the record does not belong, peculiarly, to the present members; the regiment is no longer the Old Seventh Infantry, built of the pride and fine spirit of a particular locality, handed down from generation to generation, a ready atmosphere for the new recruit, with a minimum of racial antagonism and sectional prejudice. General Pershing objected – and rightly – to simply using the various units of the United States Army as feeders for the older and better trained – but strange – organizations of the French and British services; yet that is exactly what was done with our men at home. It didn’t matter whether they came from Florida or Oregon, they were split up and slapped in with men from Maine and Kansas. This action, presumably, was based upon an assumption of national unity. Such a unity is fine from a civic or political viewpoint or as defining the civilian attitude toward the army. But as a basis for building up a fine military organization it is worse than useless. A fine army is not made up of men, but of crack army corps composed of divisions each proud of its own distinctions, distinctions which rest upon the excellence of its command and of the various brigades and services of which it is made up; and the brigades look, not to the men, but to the command again, to the regiments and the several complements of its establishment, and these are matters of pride only as the companies are up to scratch. It is here, and in even smaller units, that the men come in. Men aren’t proud of an army, but of the high standing and smart appearance of their particular section and company. If this gets the Old Man’s eye and stings the other companies to come up to it, then you are in a fairway to having a fine regiment, and so in turn a good brigade.

  Of course, this is more of the painfully obvious; it is the simple fundamentals of organization; it is inescapable. And it is a thousand times more important when we move from this purely mechanical business to the effort to achieve the various abstract and indefinable qualities that go to make up what is esprit de corps. Yet, here we have ignored it, ruled out the essential and set up an arbitrary scheme for something which certainly cannot be imposed arbitrarily. It is not simply a matter of our refusal to allow the military organization to take shape readily and easily from civil life, of disregarding natural sectional feeling and interposing sectional strangeness and antagonism. In doing this we have also destroyed the continuity of the regiment. Soldiers die or are super-annuated, but tradition and history live on and grow with the years, accumulating and solidifying. Let the Second Ohio forever remain the Second Ohio, always recruited from the same localities. A soldier is little concerned with the personal qualities of a soldier in another division, but his own excellence depends to a great extent upon the man next to him. When, of these two, one is a hill-billy from Kentucky and the other an East-side Jew they cannot be expected to get along very well together. In a peace-time establishment they may be counted upon to wear off the edges, come to some measure of appreciation of each other’s peculiar qualities, and overcome the arbitrary and foolish handicap. But peace-time establishments should provide the framework for full war-time strength, and it is here that the value of tradition comes in. If the regiment is always recruited from the same localities, the new recruit, hastily trained in an emergency, fits smoothly and harmoniously into an organization with which he is already familiar; on the part of the old men he is willingly received, and for his own part, anxious to justify this reception.

  The value of this is perfectly exemplified in the organization of the British Army, and I am going to devote a paragraph or two to this, not because I think the British soldier is superior to ours, but because I am convinced that the United States soldier is potentially the finest soldier in the world and that he was not given a chance to realize his potentialities. But first, and in order to illustrate this, I want, briefly to make the comparison a triple one. In the German Army the emphasis was upon orders, carried out by mass formations. They abandoned this, or attempted to, perhaps largely because of the exigencies of trench warfare. But that was the theory; the German soldier was but a unit in the mass, and when the mass was broken up he was inclined to surrender. He did not depend upon himself and his comrades, as such, but upon the mass; the German unit of morale was the Fatherland, the arbitrary and pretentious will of the Kaiser and his henchmen, even though the divisions preserved their sectional integrity. There was little effective unity of action once the mass was broken. The result was German prisoners, in great batches, with their hands up. The Americans were never in danger of doing this. But what is the danger which is being invited by this hasty scrambling together of men widely different in temperament and character, antagonistic as to racial and personal habits, and with no common tradition of achievement back of them? What is the greatest danger to which such an ill-assorted unit, in which half the men mistrust the dependable qualities of the other half, may expose itself when the attack is checked and enemy machine-guns find their targets held up for murderous fire? Well, here is what is being invited: The few men who know each other get together in such numbers as find themselves in touch – two, three or a half-dozen – and proceed to do something about it: “All right, fellows, let’s go; to hell with that gang; we can’t stay here and be shot down with a lot of god damned Kykes.” They may cover themselves with glory. But the company, despite their heroism, may suffer disastrous defeat. In any case, the essential unity of action is destroyed. I have thought this matter over many times since my little period of service. Frequently, it took the form of visualizing just what could be done with a regiment of real soldiers, every man exemplifying those individual qualities that are considered typically American, and all working smoothly together, each depending not only upon himself, but also upon the added strength that comes from the sure knowledge that he can count upon every single man in the company. We are not getting this effect as long as we take pains to destroy this solid sense of mutual dependability in the very outset.

  Precisely here lies the strength of the British Army. The regiments are recruited by localities, availing themselves of all the common associations of civilian life. In war-time, the regiment may send out several battalions. They all belong to the regiment. Their achievements become not only a part of the history of the army but of the locality. The new recruit is not taken into a hastily formed organization; he is admitted to an institution, along with a lot of others whose qualities he pretty well knows. They are raw. While the drill-sergeant is turning them into soldiers, a lot of other things – not forgetting a stirring necessity within themselves – is turning them into a unit. Their first night in barracks, is quite as valuable as their first day on the drill-ground, for it is there that they begin to realize what it means to “belong to the regiment”. The regiment has the names of a hundred battles, the history of three centuries, on its colours. His great-great-grandfather, possibly, died with it. Unity of action cannot be secured by commands in the field, and esprit de corps cannot be imposed arbitrarily. It is a thing of growth.

  The British go much further in their efforts to take advantage of local spirit and pride. The Scotsman wears his native costume. This is a departure for which we have no occasion; yet it may be considered, as illustrating the strength to be gained from sectional prejudice and racial pride. Its allowance is not a mere negative matter, a concession to local feeling. The Scot could probably have been brought to adopt the khaki trousers, and the Gordons would then have appeared in something like uniformity with a regiment from Devonshire. But this semblance of uniformity would do much to destroy the vital unity. The kilt is not a whim, nor merely something that added color, and excited some curiosity, in the British parade.

  It did excite a good deal of curiosity, by the way. Many a good old French woman, sometimes wi
th not six sound teeth in her head, turned out as often as the Jocks passed through the village. Her curiosity might have taken many turns, but it was usually expressed in the not entirely innocent wonder – to judge by the sly smile – if there was anything underneath it. Sometimes she endeavored, with her stick, to lift the skirt in order to find out. With the real Scot, of course, there wasn’t – nothing, that is, in the way of trewes, for although these were issued they were not always worn. Later in the war, I believe, it was considered necessary to order that they be worn in London; or else the gallant Scot, on leave, was kindly asked to take an inside seat in the London bus. The upper deck of these vehicles – in case you don’t know them – is reached by a steep circular stairway from the rear platform. Passengers on the platform, and the nearby crowd on the curb, had no trouble satisfying any curiosity as to the presence or absence of trewes underneath any kilt ascending this stairway. I am told that trewes were a nuisance, besides unnecessary and an affront to Scot hardihood and pride. As illustrating the hardihood – and possibly the pride – a friend told me of one night crossing the Irish Sea during a Northeast blizzard with a good deal of sleet driving along the deck of one of those narrow little packets. A Highland soldier spent the entire passage on deck. My friend did, also, but he was well buttoned up in a nice “British Warm”, which he had bought while on leave. His old coat was at hand, and after a time he offered to lend it to the Scot, who, declining, assured him that he had one in his pack, just in case it should be required when, later, he went to Inverness.

  But to get back to the importance of the kilt: The Scot was not only brought into the army as an individual and allowed to serve with those whom he knew; but with him came the kilt and the sporran and the glengarry and all the associations of tradition and history and racial pride of Scotland for a thousand years. Forcibly deprived of these things, submerged in regiments which were not theirs, not a little of that fighting stuff which established the reputation of “The Ladies from Hell” would have been lost. We have no occasion for anything comparable to the kilt; but we do have sectional feeling and sectional pride, not as sharply defined as that between Scotland and England, but there just the same, and not to be ignored in any scheme to give the American soldier a chance to realize fully his superb qualities as a fighting man.

  We do have bands – and what a hell of a mess we make of them. Again, to take the extreme example, a Scottish regiment would be humiliated if required to march to music made by men assembled from Cockney orchestras. It not only must have bagpipes but bagpipes played by Scotsmen, not recruits from a London vaudeville. Why? Because it is necessary to his pride in his regiment and in himself. All our regiments may have brass bands (though I am partial to the pipes for martial music), but the music and the musicians should belong to the regiment. A band may be excellent in itself, but it is not going to complete the excellence of the organization if it is not in all respects at one with it. A bunch of weatherbeaten Tennesseeans will forever have a thorn in its side if it must forever be confronted with a band composed of Wops, though they might readily concede the excellence of this band with another regiment to which it belonged. It seems absurd to be arguing about this; but the condition exists, and it seems to me equally absurd to have to point out the importance of remedying it. Perfect discipline – a fine spirit in the company – not only imposes a duty and sets an ideal for the soldier; it presupposes that everything will be done to realize the finished ideal. If it is not done, there is a failure on the part of the command, a breach of faith in a tacit compact with the private soldier.

  It is in these things that the British Army won my admiration. That the men come first, was not only a cliché of the newspapers and a honeyed phrase for home consumption; it was a fact. The British soldier groused and grumbled and said all sorts of things about all sorts of Brass Hats; but at bottom he had a good deal of affection for the organization that showed an intelligent regard for his peculiar qualities and feelings.

  Nor was this organization so hide-bound and hopelessly devoted to precedent and custom as is commonly supposed. K.R.&O. (King’s Regulations and Orders) was the Bible for all British soldiers. Yet many of the Colonials took it as a sort of a point for departure rather than strict conformity – and got away with it. We probably distressed a good many dyed-in-the-wool English officers; but on the whole, the system was not so inelastic. It made Britishers of Sikhs and Gurkhas and still left them Sikhs and Gurkhas. And for the most part it allowed the Canadians sufficient latitude to remain Canadians without being very badly hampered.

  A little further word about the Canadians is necessary, for it happens that, during the years since the war, I have frequently been complimented by the remark, usually made in introductions: “Mac went over with the Pats.” and a lot of other stuff along the same line.

  Now; just to set at rest a lot of these “fairy tales”, I want to record the fact that I never, at any time, belonged to that organization – much as I should have liked to.

  The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was the first Canadian organized force to share actively in the conflicts on the Western Front. Membership in that organization, even after it had been whittled down by successive engagements, was a mark of honnor which we, of the other Canadian contingents, fully appreciated. When I left the front, they were incorporated in the Third Division, under command of General Shaw. Another unit of this Division was the King Edward Horse. The others were mostly recruited from India – sort of a mongrel outfit, if you want to consider it that way; but they sure were fighting fools.

  The “Pats” had, during the war: EIGHT commanding officers.

  That is a separate paragraph and is inserted for the information of the uninitiated and the edification of the “soldat”.

  You, the reader, may not understand why I am spending all this time telling about an outfit with which I was never connected. Well, I’ll tell you. Soldiers are soldiers and to all of us who are worth – what’ll we say? Hell room? – anyway, they were our living examples during all the rest of the war.

  Oh, sure; I know some other outfit probably lost more men and all that. And, also, you may rise up to remark that these same “Pats” took a hell of a licking the first time they tried to take St. Eloi. Say, boy, they took a worse one on the second day of June, 1916. But they came back to take Regina trench in October of the same year – didn’t they?

  The Canadian soldier was never licked. Say what we may about our own fine American troops, I, as an American born and with more than twenty years service under the Stars and Stripes, am here to certify that the men from over our Northern border are just as good at this fighting game as we are.

  From the first day Canadian troops went into the line – it was at St. Eloi, that first time – until the end of the war, when they had their front lines East of Mons, they never were licked. About the only time they had to give up a bit of ground was on that June second operation, in 1916. That was a slam, all right, but I’ll tell the cock-eyed world we took it all back, again; didn’t we? Yea boy; we took it all back and plenty more – before Heinie had a chance to even think about it, we had all our own trenches back – all the way from Hooge to Hill Sixty. That was the time I wrote to my father, an old Civil War Officer: “Remember what Kit Carson said at Chantilley? ‘Lovely fighting all along the line: go in anywhere’”. Sure: plenty fighting for all of us.

  The casual American reader of “War Stories”, is very apt to think that the “Pats” were the only soldiers that Canada sent to the war. Well, I’ll tell you something about that, too. It is just about the same as the story that the U.S. Marines won the war at Belleau Wood. The “Pats” were a magnificent fighting regiment. So are our Marines. No man on earth has more respect for their qualities than I have, but, just the same, you want to remember that they were not fighting the whole war by themselves. That Second U.S. Division was composed of two infantry regiments and two of the Marines. Some enterprising war correspondent, writing the stor
y of their fighting during those critical days, forgot to mention the fact that these two Marine regiments were but a part of the Second Division – the others, as I recall it, being the Ninth and Twenty-third Infantry Regiments.

  In my opinion – and after thinking it over for some sixteen years – the men who really won the war (if it was actually won by anyone) were the members of the First Canadian Division. I was not a member of that Division – though I tried hard enough to be.

  Their superb courage in withstanding the initial ordeal of poison gas is, in my estimation, the outstanding event of the war.

  But I don’t want to get excited about this. It was an exciting time – war at its best and worst, its most sublime and most pitiful and horrible; but I was going to give you some idea as to the make-up of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, after those first units, led by the Princess Pats, which were sent out at once to do their bit while Canada was getting ready. A First Division was in action during the first winter of the war. The Second followed in the spring, and later two others, until as the organization was completed and filled out there were in France four divisions, with the fifth constantly in process of filling up in England and as constantly being sent out in small detachments to reinforce those in the field.