John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works

by Philip Errington

  Some have said: “Even if the Turks were deceived at Anzac and Suvla, they must have known that you were leaving Cape Helles. Why did they not attack you while you were embarking there?” I do not know the answer to this question. But it is possible that they did not know that we were leaving. It is possible that they believed that we should hold Cape Helles like an Eastern Gibraltar. It is possible, on the other hand, that they were deceived again by our ruses. It is, however, certain that they watched us far more narrowly at Cape Helles after the Anzac evacuation. Aeroplanes cruised over our position frequently, and shellfire increased and became very heavy. Still, when the time came, the burning of our stores, after our men had embarked, seemed to be the first warning that the Turks had that we were going.

  This was a mystery to our soldiers at the time, and seems strange now. It is possible that at Cape Helles the Turks’ shaken, frozen, and out-of-heart soldiers may have known that we were going, yet had no life left in them for an attack. Many things are possible in this world, and the darkness is strange, and the heart of a fellow-man is darkness to us. There were things in the Turk heart very dark indeed to those who tried to read it. The storm had dealt with them cruelly, that is all that we know. Let us wait till we know their story.

  The Cape Helles position was held for twenty days after we had left Anzac and Suvla. On the 8th – 9th of January in the present year, it was abandoned, with slight loss, though in breaking weather. By four o’clock on the morning of the 9th of January, the last man had passed the graves of those who had won the beaches. They climbed on board their boats and pushed off. They had said goodbye to the English dead, whose blood had given them those acres, now being given back. Some felt, as they passed those graves, that the stones were living men, who cast a long look after them when they had passed, and sighed, and turned landward, as they had turned of old. Then in a rising sea, whipped with spray, among the noise of ships weltering to the rails, the battalions left Cape Helles; the River Clyde dimmed into the gale and became a memory, and the Gallipoli campaign was over.

  Many people have asked me what the campaign achieved. It achieved much. It destroyed and put out of action many more of the enemy than of our own men. Our own losses in killed, wounded, and missing were, roughly speaking, 115,000 men, and in sick about 100,000 more, or (in all) more than two and one-half times as many as the army which made the landing. The Turk losses from all causes were far greater; they had men to waste, and wasted them, like water, at Cape Helles, Lone Pine, and Chunuk. The real Turk losses will never be tabled and published, but at the five battles of the Landings, the 6th of May, the 4th of June, the 28th of June, and the 6th to 10th of August, they lost in counted killed alone very nearly as many as were killed on our side in the whole campaign. Then, though we did not do what we hoped to do, our presence in Gallipoli contained large armies of Turks in and near the Peninsula. They had always from 15,000 to 20,000 more men than we had on the Peninsula itself, and at least as many more, ready to move, on the Asian shore and at Rodosto. In all, we disabled, or held from action elsewhere, not less than 400,000 Turks, that is, a very large army of men who might have been used elsewhere, with disastrous advantage, in the Caucasus, when Russia was hard-pressed, or, as they were used later, in Mesopotamia.

  So much for the soldiers’ side. But politically, the campaign achieved much. In the beginning, it had a profound effect upon Italy; it was, perhaps, one of the causes which brought Italy into her war with Austria. In the beginning, too, it had a profound effect upon the Balkan States. Bulgaria made no move against us until five months after our landings. Had we not gone to Gallipoli, she would have joined our enemies in the late spring instead of in the middle autumn.

  Some of our enemies have said that “the campaign was a defeat for the British navy.” It is true that we lost two capital ships, from mines, in the early part of the campaign, and I think, in all, two others, from torpedoes, during the campaign. Such loss is not very serious in eleven months of naval war. For the campaign was a naval war; it depended utterly and solely upon the power of the navy. By our navy we went there and were kept there, and by our navy we came away. During the nine months of our hold on the Peninsula, over 300,000 men were brought by the navy from places three, four, or even six thousand miles away. During the operations some half of these were removed by our navy, as sick and wounded, to ports from five hundred to three thousand miles away. Every day, for eleven months, ships of our navy moved up and down the Gallipoli coast bombarding the Turk positions. Every day during the operations our navy kept our armies in food, drink, and supplies. Every day, in all that time, if weather permitted, ships of our navy cruised in the Narrows and off Constantinople, and the seaplanes of our navy raided and scouted within the Turk lines. If there had been, I will not say any defeat of, but any check to, the navy, we could not have begun the campaign or continued it. Every moment of those eleven months of war was an illustration of the silent and unceasing victory of our navy’s power. As Sir Ian Hamilton has put it, “the navy was our father and our mother.”

  “Still,” our enemies say, “you did not win the Peninsula.” We did not; and someday, when truth will walk clear-eyed, it will be known why we did not. Until then, let our enemies say this: “They did not win, but they came across three thousand miles of sea, a little army without reserves and short of munitions, a band of brothers, not half of them half-trained, and nearly all of them new to war. They came to what we said was an impregnable fort, on which our veterans of war and massacre had laboured for two months, and by sheer naked manhood they beat us, and drove us out of it. Then rallying, but without reserves, they beat us again, and drove us farther. Then rallying once more, but still without reserves, they beat us again, this time to our knees. Then, had they had reserves, they would have conquered, but by God’s pity they had none. Then, after a lapse of time, when we were men again, they had reserves, and they hit us a staggering blow, which needed but a push to end us, but God again had pity. After that our God was indeed pitiful, for England made no further thrust, and they went away.”

  Even so was wisdom proven blind,

  So courage failed, so strength was chained;

  Even so the gods, whose seeing mind

  Is not as ours, ordained.

  Lollingdon

  June 29, 1916

  [source: Gallipoli, London: William Heinemann, 1916]

  An Anglo-American Entente

  To the Editor Daily Chronicle.

  Sir, – Will you allow me to back Mr. Whelpley’s plea for friendship with the United States by a brief account of what America has done since the war began, and is now doing, for the cause of the Allies?

  It is sometimes said, especially by Americans in the belligerent countries, that America should have entered the war upon the side of the Allies. But this course, though it may seem natural to many here, now in the fever of the war, must seem less obvious four, five, or even six thousand miles away, across an ocean and a continent. At those great distances from any part of the war the mind of a nation, as a whole, cannot grasp the war, and the passion of a nation, as a whole, cannot be roused by it. Besides this, the tradition of the nation, always a strong thing in a young community, is against all entanglement in European affairs.

  But though America has not entered the war (and should we enter the war if, say, United South America suddenly ignored the Monroe Doctrine, tore up all existing treaties, and overwhelmed Colombia with fire and rape?), the most thoughtful and feeling of her people have helped our cause with a persistent largeness of generous effort. By their help the funds given for the relief of Belgium and Serbia are administered and applied, within the enemy lines, to the salvation of millions of lives. By their efforts the condition of British prisoners of war in the hands of the enemy, in Central Europe and in Turkey, is made endurable. By their efforts many thousands of our Allies have been healed, helped, and comforted with every circumstance of kindness.

  It is well-known that some thousands of g
enerous young Americans are serving in our Canadian regiments; others, like Mr. Hall, have enlisted in our own Army; others (certainly many) have enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. Among these latter was the brilliant young poet, Alan Seeger, who has since given his life for France. Ever since the war began some hundreds of the finest young men in America, the very pick and flower of the graduates and undergraduates of the universities, have been serving under fire with the French armies in the Field Service sections of the American Ambulance, a devoted service, in which two of their number have been killed, many maimed, and many decorated. The courage and devotion of these young men have been praised repeatedly in the French Army and Divisional Orders. Very nearly half the members of their company have won either the military medal or the cross of war.

  Hospital Work in France

  Apart from this service, there are other American institutions now in France for the healing and helping of wounded men, French and English. There is the Harvard Unit serving with the British Army under the orders of the R.A.M.C. There is the American Ambulance in the Lycée Pasteur at Neuilly, near Paris. This ambulance, or military hospital, has been open since September 1914 to French and British soldiers. It is one of the most beautiful and most thorough of the many large military hospitals now in France. It is wholly the work of American and Franco-American lovers of France. Many of the most famous American surgeons have given their services to its different departments, and have done notable work, especially in facial and dental surgery, face restoration, and in the treatment of gaseous gangrene. This hospital fills a large lycée, an annexe at Juilly, not far from Paris, and several convalescent homes, mostly in the care of sisters of charity, in the district of St. Cloud.

  Besides these hospitals there are several others, at Versailles, Limoges, and near Compiégne, managed by Americans bound to France by long and tender associations. There are others at Valéry-en-Caux, at Passy par Veron, and at Nice. At Ris Orangis an English hospital has a most noteworthy American surgical staff. In the earlier stages of the war there were other American hospitals at Pau and at Aix-les-Bains, but these have now been discontinued. In this country Americans have founded and now support at least three hospitals for soldiers of our own Armies.

  There are now in France many other expressions of American sympathy for the cause of the Allies. There are in Paris alone several distributing centres for the gifts of goods, comforts and hospital equipment which reach France from America daily. One of these centres (in the Alcazar d’Eté) is the depot of the American Fund for French Wounded; another is the truly great business organisation of the American Clearing House, which is now a sorting and delivery business as big as the clearing house of a department store.

  Among other charitable works begun and maintained in France by Americans since the beginning of the war are some private workshops where poor women may earn a living by sewing; some church schools and orphanages for destitute children; a big depot for the issue of clothing to refugees; an association for rebuilding in the devastated districts; a society for supplying delicacies to the severely wounded; a society for providing French soldiers with “marraines,” and an excellent studio or workshop, imagined, planned and conducted by an American lady, for the invention, manufacture and supply of surgical apparatus for the extension and flexion of wounded limbs.

  As this makes a fair record for a neutral country, and may not be well-known here, where there are fewer American institutions than in France, the land bound to America by long traditions of friendship, it may be of interest to your readers.

  JOHN MASEFIELD.

  13, Well-Walk, London, N.W.

  [source: Daily Chronicle, 29 January 1917, p.4]

  The Harvest of the Night

  [PREFATORY NOTE. – This article on the work of the American Ambulance Field Service in France is one of the results of a visit paid by Mr. John Masefield to France for the purpose of studying the work of the corps on the spot. Deeply interested in and grateful for the work done by Americans in this European conflict, which is the struggle of democratic civilization against aggressive and barbarous militarism, the British Government suggested that Mr. Masefield should go and see the American Ambulance men at work. Mr. Masefield had had experience in Red Cross work both under the British Red Cross and under the French Red Cross at Gallipoli, and he went to France as a Red Cross man. He was rarely well-qualified for his task, and he approached it with enthusiasm and devotion. Always a student of our armed services, and the writer of a famous book, The British Navy in Nelson’s Time, [sic] Mr. Masefield approached his work with the instinct of an outdoor man, with the capacity of a scholar and the skill of a poet. Above everything else, thoroughness and sanity, balance and charm, make Mr. Masefield’s study of the American Ambulance Field Service notable and most accurate in description. Mr. Masefield received no instructions from the British Government further than that he was to set down honestly and fairly the result of his observation, and his opinions. It is for the readers of Harper’s Magazine to decide whether he has done it interestingly. I think their answer will be in the affirmative. – GILBERT PARKER.]

  It is perhaps unnecessary to describe the daily life of the members of the American Field Service. It must have been described many times already. One need only say here, that in ordinary times, when there is not much fighting in the sector, a day in camp with an American Ambulance Section is quiet enough. Those men who are not for duty lead, in the main, a life like that of a sailor in a watch below. There is nothing doing; they can wash or mend clothes, sleep, read, write, or work about the camp, as they prefer. Dinner comes at noon and supper in the evening. The real work of the section begins with darkness, when the roads can no longer be seen by observers in the sky.

  After supper, in the last of the light, the ambulance-cars are made ready; the two drivers in each car put on their steel helmets and take their gas masks, and the convoy (or a part of it, according to the need of the service and the severity of the fighting) moves out, car by car, toward the Postes de Secours, where they will find the wounded. Some camps are so far from the front that the first part of the journey up can be done with headlights. All roads leading to the front are crowded with men or wagons going up or coming down. In a little while after leaving camp the ambulances run into the full stream of the relief and revictualing. It is the rule upon all roads in France that troops and vehicles shall keep well to the right, so that there shall be room for the column going as well as for the column returning. The day is busy enough upon the roads well back from the front, though those farther up are quiet. But at night this changes, and in the darkness the life on the real roads begins. It is difficult to describe this night life on the roads, since so little of it can be seen; yet on first moving out with the cars, before darkness has fallen and the headlights are doused, enough is caught to show that in modern war there is no splendour of movement or of position, as in the old wars, when divisions of cavalry charged and the front of a battle advanced as one man, but that there is still something distinctive about it by which it will be remembered. Old wars are remembered, perhaps, for their glitter or their crash, for something big in their commanders or fatal in their results. This war will perhaps be remembered for the monotony and the patience behind the lines. There alone is the imagination struck. There, on the midnight roads, is the visible struggle; there the nations are passing and repassing to the defence of the gates, and, to many, the image of this war will be not, as before, a spangled man or anything splendid, but simply the convoy of many wagons, driven by tired men, going on and on along the darkness of a road, in a cloud of dust or in the welter of a swill of mud, each man seeing no more of the war than the tail-board of the wagon in front, or the flash of faces where men light their pipes by the roadside, or the glow of some lantern where there is a guard to pass.

  So, in moving out of the camp into this life upon the roads, a man passes into the heart of modern war, which is, in the main, a war of supply. Twilight and the dust toget
her make the wagons and the soldiers the colour of a far horizon. Dust wavers and settles on the moving things, the smell of dust is in the breath, and the taste of it on the lips. The old men who work by the roadside night and day, cracking stones for road metal, disappear, as each wagon passes, in a smoke of dust; the dust is thick upon them; when it rains the mud is caked upon them. They work slowly, as all men work who have to work all day. They are all past their prime, but their work is precious, for the safety of their country depends upon the roads, and over the stones broken by them the means of victory go on up to the front. Almost the last things seen in the twilight, as the cars move out, are these men cracking stones by the roadside in mists of dust. Some of them have peaked hoods drawn over their heads; some of them have lanterns by them.

  Soon the light dies. In open parts of the road, where things passing show against the sky, the convoys of wagons, twenty in a section, move and are black. The road is noisy with their rumble. Some of them, driven by men who are perhaps asleep, sway out of line into the middle of the road. Then the ambulance-drivers, trying to get past, sound their klaxons and shout, “A droit!” till the sleeper wakes and turns his wagon aside. Sometimes, as the ambulance shoots ahead of a string of wagons, there is an empty stretch of road running through empty fields and the night is as in peacetime. Then something big, black, and flopping shows ahead, making the darkness darker; there comes a jingling and the snort of horses, and out of the night comes, perhaps, a battery going down, gun after gun, some quickening, some staying, or empty horse-wagons with spare horses tied to the tail-board and the chains rattling on the slats and the drivers riding. They pass and drop down into the night like ships gone hull down; but others and others come, some walking, some with their men walking, calling to their horses, some rattling quick and empty, some slipping or shying or kicking at the passers. At times, as the ambulances go, something like a caterpillar appears ahead, moving slowly with a caterpillar’s humping wriggle, and filling one half of the road. This blackness is lower than the other blacknesses, and unlike anything met with hitherto. At the sound of the klaxon it shogs a little to one side, stray blacknesses break from it, and the humping wriggle pauses in some disorder. It is a column of the relève going up to the front. It is a company of foot-soldiers marching in column of twos, each man bent under his load, which makes him twice the size of a man, and all walking slowly, many of them with walking-staffs, like pilgrims. All men doing hard work welcome an excuse to stop. The passing of the ambulance brings many men of the column to a halt; they turn to peer at the passing cars; faces show up under the helmets, like palenesses with dark marks upon them, and voices come from the column asking for a lift. They drop behind into the night, and then ahead comes a whinny and a clatter and the car runs alongside a squadron of trotting cavalry, and the horses toss their heads and blow foam or shy away from the car, and the men, a little out of breath, speak or curse and cry aloud to the drivers. They, too, drop behind, and on in front are wagons again, many sections together; and beyond them are columns of foot, all heaving forward, not like soldiers in peacetime, but like ploughmen coming home from ploughing, bent under their loads and silent from the labour. Presently the rumble ahead slackens and ceases, and the wagons ahead halt and the clatter of the chains stops. There is a block on the road; wagons continue to come down; the stream up is checked; then the stream down stops, too, and the night becomes suddenly very still but for the noise of the shifting of feet and the blowing or the rattle of the horses.