CHAPTER VIII
THE BARRAGE AND AFTER
The problem of dealing with conditions, at such a time, and under existing circumstances, at the rest camps has always been a most difficult one; but the erection of huts by the Young Men's Christian Association has made this far easier.
The extra comfort thereby afforded to the men, and the opportunities for reading and writing, have been of incalculable service, and I wish to tender to your Association, and all those who have assisted, my most grateful thanks.—Field-Marshal Viscount French.
It was on the afternoon of July 30, 1917, that we reached Bailleul in Flanders. Proceeding directly to the Headquarters of the Y.M.C.A. we had tea, and then set out to visit the huts in the vicinity. It was a novel experience, for every hut was empty. The reason was not far to find. The troops were in their camps formed up in marching order, and later in the evening we watched them march out to take part in the great offensive. We were told that the barrage was timed for 3.50 in the morning, and were asked to have our work for the walking wounded ready at 5 a.m., so we determined to spend the night on the top of Kemmel Hill, the highest hill in Flanders. It was just after midnight when we reached the summit of the hill; and we wondered if the barrage had not already commenced, so heavy was the firing. From our point of vantage we could see the whole of the sector, from Armentières in the south, across the battlefields of Messines and Wytschaete and away beyond Ypres in the north. Silently, close to us, an observation balloon stole up in the darkness, and a few minutes later as silently descended. Involuntarily we ducked as a monster shell shrieked overhead, and some one cried, 'There goes the Bailleul Express!' About 3 a.m. things began to quiet down. Our guns might have been knocked out; they were hardly replying at all to the enemy's fire. Later on we saw a series of signal flashes high up across the battlefield, and then at 3.50 promptly to the moment, the barrage began, and there was no possibility of mistaking it—two thousand guns, as we learned afterwards, all firing at the same time. As one looked at that hell of flame and bursting shell, one felt it was impossible for any life to continue to exist beneath it, and one thought of the boys, as steady as if they had been on parade, creeping up behind that barrage of fire. We had seen them as they left their camp the night before, and we saw them when they returned—some of them—during the two days following the barrage; not in regiments a thousand strong, with colours flying and bands playing, but dribbling back one or two at a time—the walking wounded—and each one came in to our little Y.M.C.A. tents attached to the clearing stations—one was at an island in a sea of mud, near Dickebusch huts in Flanders. There was a queue inside of two or three hundred men. Every man in that queue was wounded, and waiting to have his wounds attended to; every man was hungry until he entered that tent; every man plastered from head to foot with the most appalling mud, and unless one has seen the mud of Flanders or of the Somme, it is impossible to imagine what it is really like. As I mingled with the men in that queue and assisted our workers to hand out hot tea, coffee, and cocoa, biscuits, bread and butter, chocolate, cigarettes or oranges, I thanked God for the opportunity He had given to the Y.M.C.A., and the thing that impressed me more than anything else was the fact that one did not hear a single complaint, not one word of grousing. And why not? Was it because they liked that kind of thing? Don't make any mistake about it—no one could possibly like it, but out there the men know they are fighting not for truth and freedom in the abstract, but for their own liberty, and, what is infinitely more important to them, for their homes and loved ones. They know that what the Hun has done for Northern France and Flanders is as nothing compared with what he would do for the places and the people we love if he once got the opportunity of wreaking his vengeance on us. There is no finer bit of work that the Y.M.C.A. is doing to-day than this work for the walking wounded, which before any great push takes place, is carefully organised down to the last detail. Before one of the great battles, our men took up their positions at thirty-four different centres where they were able to minister to the needs of the wounded, and thus to co-operate with the magnificent work that is being done under the sign of the Red Cross. As in France, so in Italy and in the East, at Beersheba and other centres on the lines of communication in Palestine, records show how efficiently the same type of service is being rendered to our brave troops.
HUT IN WILDERNESS OF DESTRUCTION. CUTTING THE ICE IN SHELL-HOLES FOR WATER FOR TEA—WINTER, 1916-17
RUINED HOUSE USED BY Y.M.C.A., PROPPED UP BY TIMBER
To return to the barrage. It is always interesting to note the effect a scene of that kind has on people of different temperaments. We had been sitting round a huge shell-hole near the top of Kemmel Hill feeling, it must be confessed, a trifle 'fed-up' with things. We were all tired, and had had a very heavy day's work. It was an uncomfortable night, to say the least of it, with drizzling rain, and very cold for the time of year. At the first sound of the drum-fire of the barrage set up by the British guns, we sprang to our feet, wild with excitement. A distinguished padre from the Midlands was lost in admiration for the work of the munitioners whose labours made possible this great strafing of the Hun. The leader of the party, a colonial from far-off Australia, simply danced with excitement which he made no attempt to suppress, contenting himself with ejaculating from time to time expressions to the effect that that was the most dramatic moment of his life. An unemotional Professor from one of our great universities stood with clenched fists, and was overheard to say, 'Give 'em hell, boys!' Another padre in the company began to quote Browning, the quotation referring to the signal flashes to which reference has already been made:
'From sky to sky. Sudden there went,
Like horror and astonishment,
A fierce vindictive scribble of red,
Which came across, as if one said,
. . . "There—
"Burn it!"'
How often it happens that in the greatest moments of one's life, it is the trivial thing that appeals most strongly to one's imagination. So in this case. The thing never to be forgotten was connected with the early dawn. I can see even now that long grey streak on the horizon across the battlefield, as the daylight came. A thrush from a bush close to where we were standing began to pour out its song of praise and thanksgiving, heedless of falling shells and the roar of guns. There was something unspeakably pathetic in that song on the battlefield, yes, and prophetic of the great day that is coming in spite of all reverses; the day of victory and peace, peace purchased at the price of struggle, and of blood.
As one watched the barrage from Kemmel the onslaught seemed to be irresistible. It seemed impossible for the German hordes to hold our men back. Neither could they have held them, but what the Hun could not do, the rain did for him. It just teemed down, and in a few hours Flanders was churned up into a swamp of mud. It was impossible to bring the big guns up and the whole advance was stayed. One thought how often the same thing had happened before, and wondered, only wondered, if we at home were supporting the boys at the Front as they had a right to expect us to support them? It is so easy at a time like this to put one's trust merely in 'reeking tube and iron shard,' and to leave God out of our calculations. After all in this great struggle we are not fighting merely against 'flesh and blood,' but against 'principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places,' and even to-day 'More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.' It was that great soldier, Sir William Robertson, who said, 'Let us never forget in all that we do that the measure of our ultimate success will be governed largely, if not mainly, by the extent to which we put our religious convictions into our actions, and hold fast, firmly and fearlessly, to the faith of our forefathers.' Had the Germans beaten us two years ago every one would have known the reason why—they had more men, bigger guns, and more of them, more aeroplanes, and an infinitely better supply of munitions of war, but by the summer of 1917 we were superior to them in every particular, and yet victory tarried. Why? Can it be that God was waiting for His people to seek His aid?
With Russia out of the war, we were once again to stand with our backs to the wall—the position in which the British are always seen at their best—and the National crisis came as one more challenge to the Nation to turn to the God of our fathers.