We had some dinner in a very hospitable house. At 8 o’clock there was some very fierce fighting; the Coldstreamers had been ordered outside the town. The Germans came up, talking French, and called out to Monk, a Coldstream officer: ‘Ne tirez pas; nous sommes des amis,’ and ‘Vive les Anglais.’ A German knocked Monk under a transport wagon. Then our men grasped what was happening; they charged the Germans and the Germans charged them, three times, I believe. They brought up machine guns. Afterwards one of our medical officers said that we lost 150 men, killing 800 to 1,000 Germans. It was there that Archer Clive14 was killed.
Just before dinner I met an officer of the regiment. I asked him if he had a billet. He told me he could not get one, and I said he could have mine and that I would find another. However, I found that my kit had already been put into the estaminet, and took him up to the market-place to find a lodging. We first went to an empty café, where all the liquor was left out, with no master or servants. We left money for what beer we drank. I then found a room in a tradesman’s house. After dinner I went down to the main barricade with Jack. Wagons, including one of our own that carried our kit, had been dragged across the road and defences were put up like lightning. We loopholed the houses and some houses were pulled down. It was an extraordinarily picturesque scene. The town was pitch-black except where the torches glowed on the faces and on the bayonets of the men, or where shells flashed and burst. I thought of the taking of Italian towns in the seventeenth century. The Germans shelled us very heavily. It did not seem as if there was much chance of getting away, but no one was despondent. At about 1 a.m. there was a lull in the firing, and I went back to lie down in my room. There I fell asleep, and the shelling of the town did not wake me, though the house next to me was hit. About 2.30, in my sleep I heard my name, and found Desmond calling me loudly in the street outside. He said: ‘We have lost two young officers, come out and find them at once. The Germans are coming into the town and we shall have to clear out instantly.’ I said to him: ‘I don’t know either of the officers by sight and if I did it is far too dark to see them.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you must do your best.’ I went out and walked about the town which was still being shelled but I was far more afraid of being run over in the darkness than of being hit. Troops were pouring out in great confusion; foot, artillery, transport mixed, and there were great holes in the road made by the German shells. I met Eric Gough who said: ‘Come along with me to Guise’; also the driver of a great transport wagon who said he had no orders, and begged me to come with him; he felt lonely without an officer.
It was quite clear to me that it was impossible to find these two officers. I met Desmond by Headquarters and told him so; he said: ‘Very well, fall in and come along.’ The regiment passed at that moment. Hubert and Tom told me to fall in, but I would not leave Moonshine, though there did not seem to be much more chance of finding her than the officers. My groom and servant had both disappeared. The houses were all locked and deserted. I battered on a door with my revolver. Two old ladies timidly came out with a light. They pointed to a house where I could find a man, but at that moment a Frenchman came up, whom I commandeered. I went off to Headquarters to see if a sergeant was left.
There was nobody there. The dinner left looked like Belshazzar’s feast. I had a good swig of beer from a jug. My saddle and sword had gone. I went out with the Frenchman and saw that the troops were nearly out of the town. I determined to stay, if necessary, and hide until I could find my horse, but the Frenchman turned up trumps and we found her. We were terrified of her heels in the dark. I thanked the old ladies and apologized for having threatened them with my revolver. There was no question of riding Moonshine bareback. I went back to get a saddle, below Headquarters, but the Germans were there, so the Frenchman swore. It was too dark to see, but they weren’t our men. I took her back to where the medical officer was billeted. He had been waiting with a dying man and was about to leave the town. I asked him to let one of his men lead her, and went forward to see if I could get a saddle. In this I failed. As I got out of the town dawn was breaking. For some obscure reason one of our gunners fired a shell. Everybody said: ‘I suppose that is to tell them where we are.’ We all thought that the German artillery fire must catch us going out of the town. For the second time they let us off. By that time we had grasped the fact that they could outmarch us, but we did not know that they had come on motorcars, and ascribed their greater pace to what we believed to be the fact – that we were entirely unsupported by the French. My regiment were a good long way ahead. I joined an officer who was leading a detachment, and he was anxious that I should stay with him. As I walked along, pretty footsore, an unshaven man came up and asked me if I liked this sort of thing better than politics. I didn’t say much, as I heard the soldiers discussing politicians in the dark at Landrecies, cursing all politicians every time a shell fell, and saying: ‘Ah, that’s another one we owe to them. Why aren’t they here?’ He offered me a horse. He was the Colonel of the Irish Horse, Burns-Lindow15. I took the horse gratefully, which had a slight wound on its shoulder and was as slow as an ox, poor beast. This drove me almost mad after Moonshine, and, meeting another officer, I fell into conversation with him. I asked if he saw anything wrong in my taking the saddle off this horse and putting it on to Moonshine when I found her. He said it was certainly against the rules. He told me he was the Commander of the Division and I then recognized Douglas Haig16. I got away from him as soon as possible and finding another officer of the Irish Horse persuaded him to help me to take off the saddle and put it on to Moonshine, whom I had regained, fairly chastened. I found the Colonel, and we rode on to Etreux. Here we brought down an aeroplane after it had dropped a bomb on us. The officers tried to prevent the men shooting, but the noise made their commands useless. The CO was very angry. He said: ‘I will teach you to behave. Off you go and dig trenches.’ One of the men said as we marched off: ‘If that was a friendly aeroplane, what did it want to drop that bomb on us for?’ He was quite right. It had done this, and the shell had fallen about thirty yards away. Our fire prevented us hearing it. Stephen came down in a Balaclava helmet and said that officers were the best shots at aeroplanes because pheasants had taught them to swing in firing.
At Etreux we were ordered to dig trenches, which we did. After this I slept under a hedge, where Bernard, the Frenchman, gave me some rum, which was very welcome, as it was raining. At about 9 o’clock I felt Hubert, very angry, thumping me, as he thought I was a private who had taken his haversack to lie on.
The next morning everybody was in tremendous spirits. They had slept very well in the trenches and those outside had been housed in nests of straw. The officers were called up and spoken to by the Colonel. He read out a message from Joffre to say that the British Army had saved France. He told us that the retreat had been inevitable and had given the French time to take up adequate defensive positions. The impression I think most of us had was that we had been used as bait. Then we were once more ordered to retire.
As I rode along in the morning going to La Fère an aeroplane passed fairly close over us; everybody fired at it at once; thousands of rounds must have been fired, and I found it useful in teaching Moonshine to stand fire. She took her first lesson well, though she broke up the formation of half a company. We often saw aeroplanes, and they were nearly always shot at, whether they belonged to friend or foe.
That day we marched to Origny, where we camped below a hill with a steep cliff to it. I went into the town and bought eggs, brandy, etc. There was every kind of rumour about: that we were completely surrounded by the Germans; that there were millions of them in front and behind; also that there had been a great French defeat at Charleroi.
We were all very jolly. At night the artillery poured past with the sound of a great cataract. We lay down on the hillside, and every man going to get straw to cover him walked over Tom’s face, who swore himself almost faint with rage. All our kit had been lost at Landrecies, and many of us had not gre
at-coats.
We started at dawn; but had to wait to let other troops pass us. I was sent back to look for communicating files of the regiment that had been lost. I found them with difficulty and brought them on. The Germans were too near to us. That day we marched through great avenues of tall poplars and through a pleasant smiling country to La Fère. Moonshine began to grow lame. I stayed behind to get food for my company and lost the regiment, only finding them again after long wanderings and with the greatest difficulty. We camped near La Fère.
The regiment forgot its tiredness in a hunt after a strange horse which strayed into our camp and which Eric finally captured for transport. Both Desmond and he tried hard to take my saddle from me; for the saddle which I had first put upon Moonshine was Hickie’s harness. Then Hickie was invalided, and I lost his saddle at Landrecies and then got the saddle from Burns-Lindow, Colonel of the Irish Horse. I beat them in argument, but thought they were quite capable of taking the saddle in spite of that.
We stopped some time to smoke and rest. The men were drawn up on a torrid cornfield. Valentine was overdone. He volunteered, like the man in the Bible, to get water. Finding that he would have to wait in a long queue, he returned without the water. Tom’s anger beat all records. A deputation from another regiment came and asked him to repeat what he had said. They were surprised to find that it was his brother-in-law who had provoked these comments.
I saw John Manners and George Cecil, and gave them cigarettes. Near a great factory of some kind we marched past Sir Douglas Haig. I hurried past him.
La Fère was an old fortified city. We were told we were to have a rest and the next day’s march was to be a very short one. We camped near Berteaucourt. It was very hot. I hobbled up to the village to get provisions, and found a French girl, the daughter of a farmer, who talked fair English. Near the village I spoke to a number of people. I told one peasant I thought it was a mistake that everybody should fly from their houses if they did not mean to clear out altogether, and that it was an invitation to the Germans to loot and burn. He said: ‘Monsieur, I quite agree with you. Moi, je vais agir en patriote quand ils viendront. Je vais tout bonnement descendre dans ma cave.’ The next day (the 29th) we camped above the village of Pasly. On the road I got boracic cream for my horse’s cracked heel. We passed through a big town, Coucy, crowded with curious, frightened, silent people. It had a very fine castle. I bought some cigarette-holders, with cinema pictures inside, for the Colonel. People pressed chocolate and all they could into my hands, taking payment unwillingly. Moonshine lost a shoe, but I managed to get her shod there. Reluctantly at Pasly I lent her to Robin, who went off to post his men in the village. The moment he had gone the OC sent for me and told me we had got outside the area of our maps, and asked if I could get him a map. I started off at once to walk to Soissons. When he discovered where I was going he said it was out of the question; so I walked down to Pasly either to get a map there or to take the Maire’s carriage and drive to Soissons. In Pasly there was a tenth-rate Maire and a schoolmaster. They provided me with an ancient map, the date of which was 1870. It did not even mark the monument of the schoolmasters whom the Germans had lightheartedly shot on their last visit to the village.
I found a half-wit, and paid him to carry up some wine, bread and eggs.
We camped above a quarry and talked of what was going to happen. There seemed only two alternatives. One was that we should get into Paris and take first-class tickets home to England, and the other that we should stay and get wiped out. For we still saw no French troops; we still believed ourselves to be 100,000 against a force of anything from one to two millions.
Eric had met a Lancer who had been full of German atrocities. I met him and talked to him afterwards. His stories sounded improbable. Eric had also seen an extraordinary thing happen that morning. He had seen an aeroplane which we were bombarding. It was flying in the blue sky when it was struck. It was there, and then it was not. It just disappeared.
August 31st. We got up fairly early, and I rode with Eric past caves in which there were houses and quarries down the steep hillside to the plain of Soissons. It was a beautiful morning, very peaceful, and the air was scented. There was bright sunlight over the marching soldiers and the fields of green, tall grass. The CO told me that our camping ground was at Coeuvre. I asked leave to ride into Soissons and see if I could not get clean shirts and handkerchiefs to replace what we had lost at Landrecies.
Soissons was like a sunlit town of the dead. Four out of five houses were shut. Most of the well-to-do people had gone. It was silent streets and blind houses. The clattering which Moonshine made on the cobbles was almost creepy. I stopped first of all at a saddler’s shop and tried to get a proper bridle. The saddler was a rough democratic Frenchman, not a bad fellow, the sort of man who made the Republic. He took me to a boot shop which was my first need, where the people were very kind, and I bought a capital pair of boots for twelve francs. I went into the ‘Lion d’Or.’ they refused me a stall for Moonshine on the ground that the landlord and all his family were going. I insisted and bought her some fodder, also some food for myself. They drove hard bargains.
Out of doors I met some English officers having breakfast. They had only just arrived. I left a man called Gustave to look after Moonshine and went out to spend a most laborious morning of shopping. After going to many different shops I found a bazaar like a mortuary, with two old women and a boy. They said to me: ‘Take whatever you want and pay as much or as little as pleases you. If the Germans come we shall set fire to this place.’ They pressed every kind of souvenir on me, but it was extraordinary, with plenty lying round, how difficult it was to get what one needed. I was buying mostly for other people. It was like being turned loose in Selfridge’s – boots, scissors, pocket-knives, electric torches, watches, bags, vests, etc. I also bought an alpenstock, as I had lost my sword and thought it might be useful as a light bayonet.
I then went and had a bath, the first proper one since England. The heat was very great. I felt dirty and wanted to shave my beard, as the men said every day that I became more like King Edward. I then intended to go to the Cathedral, but found the few English soldiers in the town moving out hurriedly. They said the Germans were coming in an hour. So I gave up the Cathedral and went and had lunch in a jolly little inn. There were some very excitable Frenchmen, one of whom asked me if I would sell him a lucky sixpence for a franc which he could wear round his neck. I suppose he was really pathetic; at the moment he only irritated me. He said: ‘J’ai confiance – même s’ils vont à Paris j’aurais confiance.’ ‘But,’ he said, ‘where is the French Army?’ They were all saying that by this time.
I went back to my boot shop. All the women there were crying. They insisted upon giving me some wine. At the hotel I found the hotel-keeper and his family going off, squeaking with anger at the ostler, Gustave, who was helping me to carry all I had bought in two great bags. The weight was very oppressive in the heat, and I was afraid of making Moonshine’s tender foot worse on the hard road. Before I had got outside the town I had to get off and readjust everything, with the help of some very kind French people. While I was doing this, Westminster17, with Hugh Dawnay18, drove up in his beautiful car. I suggested his taking my things on to Coeuvre. He said, unfortunately he had other orders, and wanted to know where to lunch. I told him where I had lunched, but said that he would probably have to share his lunch with the Germans if he went into the town, as they must now be close behind us.
Riding on, I met some French troops, evacuating the town and with them a man of my regiment, who had hurt his knee. He could not walk, so I put him under the charge of a French sergeant. While I was talking to him two other men of my regiment came up. They had fallen out on the previous day and had had nothing to eat since yesterday’s breakfast. I took them into a French house, where the people were very hospitable; gave them food at once and insisted on giving them champagne, which they said was ‘déchampagnisé.’ The men ate like wolves. On
e of them was a splendidly built fellow, called Sheridan.
Then we marched slowly on in the heat, for about two hours, when Sheridan said: ‘What is it is happening yonder, sir?’ pointing to the horizon about a mile away. Soon rifle fire broke out, and Sheridan said: ‘There are Uhlans coming down the road.’ There was a wood on our left, and we made preparations to get into this; the other man had fallen behind. They were both very done, but Sheridan was like a different man at the prospect of a fight. Our people, however, or rather the French, drove the German cavalry back at this moment, and we went on quietly. I was glad to be able to turn to the left, as the fighting on our right was pretty hot and I was weighed down with all the extra things I carried.
I fell into conversation with a medical officer, and asked him if he knew where Coeuvre was. Then an RAMC Colonel came up and looked at my kit very suspiciously. He asked me who the General in command of the Division was. I said I had forgotten his name; I could not keep my head filled with these details. He said to me: ‘You don’t seem to know who you are.’ I said to him: ‘I know who I am; I don’t know who you are, I don’t want to. I hope to God I shall never see you again. Go to hell and stay there.’ This made him angry, and he said: ‘Your regiment is ahead on the left, but the Germans are in front of you, if you wish to rejoin them,’ pointing in the direction from which I had come.
All this time I had been waiting for Sheridan and other numerous stragglers behind me, and at this point I turned round and rode off to see what had happened, thoroughly irritated with the RAMC Colonel. This apparently convinced him that I really was a German, as the engagement in the rear was going on fairly close, and he came after me with a Major of the KRR, who was unhappy. He said: ‘Will you come with me to my Colonel?’ I said: ‘I will go with you anywhere to get away from this fussy little man, but if you think that a German spy would come on a racehorse, dressed like the White Knight, with an alpenstock, you are greatly mistaken.’ He promised to have my stragglers looked after, and then I rode up to his regiment with him, when Blank came up and shook hands. We had not met since Eton. He cleared my character. After that I went on as fast as I could. I picked up some more of my regiment, including a sergeant who had sprained his ankle. I told him to ride, but found a motor and put him in that.
Mons, Anzac and Kut Page 4