But, I found that I was weakening. Not that I allowed anyone else to see it but, right down in my heart, I felt that the game was over, so far as I was concerned. And, right here, before I forget it, I want to rise up and propose three rousing cheers for those who stuck it out and played the game all through the full four years. They are better men than I am and I take off my hat to them.
During those last few months, the whole world took on, for me, a grotesque and bizarre appearance. Nothing was normal: we were all just living in some peculiar place, outside the pale of the commonly-accepted conventions. What we did, when back of the lines, was probably contrary to all the generally-accepted rules and regulations of ordinary human intercourse. I make no apologies – not for myself or any of the others – for I feel that none is needed. Men and women were either uplifted to a higher plane of thought or dragged down to a lower – you may take your choice – but the result was just exactly the same, in either case. We were just human beings, endeavoring to enjoy the pleasures and passions of the human race for the short time allotted us before we, too, were cut down by the scythe of the gaunt old spectre – Death.
As a rifleman, I did exactly nothing during the months in between the end of the Somme battle and the time when I was finally discarded as “no longer fit for duty,” in 1917, but I hope that, as an officer, I did manage to do a little good.
For more than a year I had managed to keep out of hospitals. Though several times hit, sustaining injuries which would have been considered good “Blightys,” I just had a notion that I could hang on until the one came along that would finish the whole business for me. Please do not mistake me. This was not any particular bravery on my part – I went back to war to get killed, if you want to know the low-down on it – never had the slightest idea that I would not “go West.” But the joke was on me. It didn’t happen that way and, after taking seven clips on the jaw, I finally found myself in the custody of the R.A.M.C. No, that does not mean “Rob All My Comrades,” as some would have you believe: it is just the “Royal Army Medical Corps” – God bless ’em.
I got to know the hospitals pretty well. From the North Chimneys (dressing station), in Albert, through the Field Hospital at Brickfields, thence through Warloy, Frevent, St. Pol, on to Le Treport and, eventually, to England – Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, Miss Pollack’s – yes: I was quite a well known case. Seemed like, when you got the first one, you were bound to get some more. However, I got back in time to do my little bit in getting the boys ready for the Vimy Ridge affair. On the day they won that fight, I was aboard a ship, sailing for New York. All I did after that time was to mess around a lot of camps – Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Camp Shelby and Camp Perry most of the time – trying to do some good but still laboring under the curse of infelicity that did not leave me for several years after peace had been declared.
I am just a plain, ordinary Hoosier. I do not recall that I had any particularly intense inner feelings while under fire. I was always busy and managed to keep my mind concentrated on the work in hand. There were numerous occasions, however, when the actions of others did awaken within me a feeling – well, I can’t describe it but it is just the same feeling I now experience when I hear a fife and drum corps and see the old flag coming down the street, followed by the straggling remnant of the real “old soldiers”: the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. One such occasion was when the Gordons came in with their pipers; another, during the battle of Sanctuary Wood, when our artillery drivers were thundering down the road past our trenches, in plain sight and under direct fire of the German guns. Oh, man! that was a sight to do your heart good. It was just like the pictures of artillery going into action in the old days and, I suppose, very much like many of the things that really happened during the retreat from Mons.
We were right in front of an old chateau – Chateau Segard it was called – just a little way from the road crossing at Kruisstraathoeck, and the Germans had the range perfectly. They would make a hit now and then, and horses, men and limbers went into the ditch, but that never made any difference with the rest. They continued to “carry on.” Hell bent for ’lection, they went: shells bursting all around them; drivers, standing in the stirrups and lashing the horses and the limbers bouncing up and down over the shell-torn road. We forgot everything else and jumped up out of the trenches and cheered and cheered as they went by. All day that Sunday they kept it up, taking ammunition to the guns that were now far advanced beyond the usual artillery positions due to the fact that the enemy had forced our front line back some seven hundred yards and we were backed up against our G.H.Q. line. (We took it all back a week or so later.)
For my friends, as they fell, I sincerely did grieve but I am afraid that it was mostly a selfish feeling. I grieved at my own loss, not for them. Many times, since the war, have I been sorry that I did not “get mine,” so I could rest peacefully with them under the poppies. This was the old feeling – of being spent. I begin to see, now, what it was about: When the excitement was over, there remained the serious business of winning the war; we had had our fun and I began to see what we were paying for it. How much of the business was bungling – and how many lives sacrificed to it?
Well, this is post mortem. To get back to our feelings at the time: I have said enough of mine. There were some millions of others. They fall, of course, more or less into types: from the naturally nervous member who was probably considerately dropped as “shell-shocked” or, as they had it in the Canadian service, “on compassionate grounds,” to the stolid, phlegmatic individual who never bats an eye or shows any visible evidence that he “cares a damn” what happens to him. Between these two extremes are the great number who, in one manner or another, for one complex reason or another, “carry on” with the work in hand.
Recently there has been published a story in Adventure, written by a member of the Mounted Rifles, which I consider the very best and most vividly realistic war story I have read. However, I must emphatically disagree with the writer regarding one matter. He dwells considerably upon his mental anguish and all that and takes the ground that those who do not feel – and who do not show, by visible signs that they feel – the same way, are more or less dullards, devoid of the finer instincts that sway him. If his story is a true one and he was only sixteen when he enlisted, we can set it down to youthful inexperience.
I have known many men of the very highest mental calibre and fine sensibilities who have gone through the hell-fire of many battles without showing, by word or act, the slightest sign of mental perturbation. In memory of a good friend and a gallant officer, I mention one by name: Lieutenant-Colonel Elmer Watson Jones, D.S.O., killed in action, August 8, 1918, in the Battle of Amiens, after having been previously wounded during the attack on Vimy Ridge, in April, 1917.
To understand anything of the individual reactions of the soldier it is necessary to have lived with him, to have drunk and talked with him in barracks and billets, to have known him in the mass; and then to have experienced the conditions under which he lives – and dies – as he moves toward the front – and takes the front with him. It would be fine to stay in billets for a week, but let us hurry on toward the sound of shells, observing him in the mass as we go.
A very sensitive and active pen long ago wrote the last word about “that man who hath no music in his soul.” The psychologists and psychiatrists who have lately been probing into this universal and little known realm will probably add a great deal to our understanding of it and not much to the truth, save in the way of substantiation; not by condemning, as “fit for treason, stratagem, spoils,” a great many men now considered non-musical, but by disclosing a trifle of music in their souls. They may even succeed in enabling them to liberate it, hot audibly, perhaps, but essentially. That is what the band does, quickening it into rhythm that makes the step as well as the heart lighter. It means a great deal thus to awaken the inner man and bring his strength into unison with the outer on a long march.
And
when there is no band, a lilting song will do it – and did do it. I doubt if there was a single company that did not have at all times the necessary two or three men, at least one of whom was ready when the time came to start a song. And it was not always the songster who did it. Some hard old mug who bore every appearance of having long ago soured on the world might suggest it, or manage to have it done.
“How about a little song there, Scotty,” he would say to the next man.
Scotty, he knew, didn’t sing much, but he would instantly raise his voice: “How about a little song?”
Maybe it came to nothing, then. The time wasn’t quite ripe. There was neither that ebullience of spirit which demanded an outlet in song nor that weariness or monotony which required a song to dissipate it. Perhaps some one would start, but finding no response, he quickly gave up. Had he been articulate, he might have explained the failure of the pious sing-songsters to impose their pretty patterns or to palm off the products of Tin-Pan Alley when that center became active in the military ballad business. All credit to the wise and subtle ones who trained what they found. Songs must be spontaneous.
Half an hour later someone raised his voice:
“Keep your head down, Allemand – ”
With the second measure a dozen voices had taken it up. The wise platoon commander stepped out of line and reviewed his straggling platoon. By the time he had fallen in at the rear, nearly everyone was singing, the files had closed up, the straggler had pulled himself together. When the song was over, a ripple of bantering conversation ran up and down the column. Then another song.
“Madamoiselle from Armentieres, parlez-vous – ”
I have sometimes encountered the notion that this one came with the United States troops. I suspect it originated with the Canadians.
Armentieres was in their territory. It is certainly much older than United States participation. There must have been hundreds of stanzas set to this measure and they sprang from as many estaminets, billets, brothels and dugouts, from Frenchmen, Yankees and Englishmen. It may be that the true origin was known to Frenchmen before the war.
The authorship of many of the most popular songs, I am sure, could not be traced. There was none. An incident was remembered for a phrase. The phrase became a jest; the jest was mended and grew and became a song. I should like to tell you of one called Souvenir. It seems never to have got very far; but it was good, though the words which suited it never found the satisfactory music – at least for marching – and it did not survive. It was a charming bit, and I hope that somebody will let us have it as it ought to be.
It is difficult to say what decided the acceptance or rejection of a song. Some from this side – those inspired by the same sentiment that placed stars in the windows – became popular. Others were adapted, satirized, vulgarized or scorned. God Save The King was frequently heard on the march, largely, I sometimes thought, for the satisfaction it gave the grousing soldier to punctuate it with appropriate remarks. But let me add that His Majesty was popular and respected.
There was a song called West Sandling, by which I best remember singing in England. It is, I suspect, one of those that was bom on paper. A training camp is not the sort of place that produces soldier’s songs. And the efforts of sing-songsters there were largely futile. A canary sings when he wishes and when he has something to sing for. In leaving billets, for example, to proceed toward the line, it was as a rule useless to attempt to start a song. There might be a spurt at the beginning, celebrating events, amorous, convivial and otherwise, of the past few days, and sort of shaking things down. Then, for a time, marching took care of itself. When things became monotonous the songs commenced.
“Sing a song of bonnie Scotland,
Any old song will do – ”
And most any song would do – unless it was one of those definitely rejected importations. So far as the rhythm went, it could nearly always be brought to the proper swing. There was one, I remember, which was popular, but which, as I first heard it, seemed far removed from a marching song, though it exactly suited the steps of the singer at that time – if steps they were. He was drifting about in leisurely search, it appeared, of a fair tide that should take him to his billet; and mumbling in a thin and vague falsetto:
“What a blow to Rotten Row when I go over the sea!
I know I can do without London; but can London do without me?”
It was a sure sign that there was not a place open where one might get another drink. It was the final curfew, the last lugubrious good-night, and it took a long time in the saying. It was a genial proclamation to all that Dad had had a successful evening. He had had many of them, in many parts of the world, and they had left their mark on his gray old face, bleached his hair and removed most of his teeth. But he was happy in the morning when somebody picked up his song, quickened its movement, and kidded him about it a little.
Occasionally a man returning from leave would bring something current in the London Music Halls. Of one such, I remember the injunction:
“Don’t pity a man disabled, find him a job.” and again
“He’s a father for your children, give him a job.”
This came about the time I left, so I don’t know if it was kept alive.
The French national anthem was a good one, but most men had to resort to wordless sounds in lieu of words. Other popular ones were: There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding; Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag; I Want to Go Home, with interesting and infinite variations; John Brown’s Body, or, rather, its illegitimate sister, Mary Ann McCarthy, She Went Out to Gather Clams; also The Pride of Dundee. The endless verses that celebrate the rambling of the bull should not be forgotten; nor, perhaps, should Bang Away My Lulu. The tragic, somewhat sorry, but highly esoteric and agreeable adventures of Christopher Columbo, not commonly known to school-children, are doubtless immortal. Anyone may add a few of the hymns that are his favorites. Then there are Loch Lomond and Annie Laurie and The Irish Jauntin’ Car.
I am always forgetting the best jokes. Possibly I have forgotten the best of these songs. I think they are worth remembering. They have no value, perhaps, to the military strategist; but they make the cobblestones softer for the man with the rifle who wins the wars.
The songs die out when the battalion has reached the vicinity of the G.H.Q. Line, which they do, generally, as soon as possible after dark. If they were early, they have halted at some point beyond observation and waited for darkness. If they have marched very far, the field kitchens will be here and the men fall out and have a hot supper. While, if they are going in on their old front or for any other reason have been billetted nearby, they have had their last meal at the field-kitchens before leaving. The men sprawl about on the sides of the road in comfortable attitudes, chatting indifferently about nothing, much as might a group of them at home awaiting an inter-urban train. If it is raining, some of them pull out their ground-sheets for use as ponchos; others do not. The principal indication that they know that there is a war going on is in the brief remarks by which they take note of the nature of the shelling: “Oh, oh! What the hell’s he after? We must have a battery stuck in the side of that pile of plaster over there.”
The pile of plaster is the remains of the familiar quadrangle which was once a French farm-house. It is about the level of a man’s waist, with a timber sticking up here and there. It is a singular fact that almost no one ever voices any wonder as to where the owners are, or how they live. They do not even think of it as a home, or as having been a home. This illustrates better, than anything I know, the strange impersonality of war, its complete severance from everyday experience, a severance so subtly made that no one knows how or when it was made. In the most advanced “borderland” villages, the strange thing is not that there are soldiers here, in this town which doesn’t belong to them, but that there are a few civilians poking about. A woman or an old man has opened a little shop in the comer of a ruined building. A soldier goes in for a bar of black chocola
te or a few candles for use in the trenches; and it is much as if an explorer had come upon a tiny trading-post far beyond the Arctic Circle in a land where nobody, except explorers, belongs. No; this is a land of men in uniform, and guns and rifles, shells and bullets; there is nothing puzzling about it; but there is something puzzling about coming upon an old woman prodding with a stick among the shell-holes, just beyond a little grayish patch sprinkled with a few red tiles. (This was her vegetable garden, and she has come up to see if she can find a bit of garlic or a bunch of leeks.) There is something funny, incongruous, about this apparition who presently hobbles on to the road and takes her way back to the nearest village still whole enough to shelter her from the rain.
But there is nothing incongruous about the scene a short time later, when the battalion has ceased to move as a battalion; – headquarters has gone to its position and the various companies or platoons are on their several ways to theirs, led by guides, and under conditions and over distances that vary a great deal. The area may be perfectly quiet, or mildly shelled and swept by bullets, much of which they time and localize without difficulty and almost without thinking. But presently there comes an unlucky shell, or, in an overland stretch, someone stops a machine-gun bullet. There is no confusion, no excitement. War is the business here, and death as familiar as it can ever be for the living. It is dark. The few words are spoken quietly, merely for guidance: “This way, stretcher-bearers.” “Oh, you’re all right. I won’t dress it; wait till you get back where they have a light. Tell them to send for him; there is no hurry; half his head is gone.” “Who is it?” “Johnson.” “Give me those candles out of his haversack.”
“Anybody else hurt? All right men, close up. Keep in touch here.”
So they go: Step down. Step up. Hole. Wire here; easy in front; all right, go ahead. Dash across here, forty feet, watch out for little holes. Everybody over? Keep in touch.
A Rifleman Went to War Page 38