Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

In the newspapers that same morning (5th March, 1918) there appeared a report from Sir Douglas Haig, in the course of which he said:

Many of the hits upon our Tanks at Flesquières were obtained by a German artillery officer who, remaining alone at his battery, served a field gun single-handed until killed at his gun. The great bravery of this officer aroused the admiration of all ranks.

The same chivalrous spirit breathes through the letters of Captain Ball, V.C., published in the memoir of the brilliant airman. He was little more than a boy when he was killed after an almost unparalleled career of victory in the air. He fought with a terrible skill, but he had no more personal animus for his opponent than he would have had for the bowler whom it was his business to hit to the boundary. In one of his letters to his father he said:

You ask me to let the devils have it when I fight. Yes, I always let them have all I can, but really I don't think them devils. I only scrap because it is my duty, but I do not think anything bad about the Huns. He is just a good chap with very little guts, trying to do his best. Nothing makes me feel more rotten than to see them go down, but you see it is either them or me, so I must do my best to make it a case of them.

And the gay, healthy temper in which he played his part is revealed in another letter, in which he describes a fight that ended in mutual laughter:

We kept on firing until we had used up all our ammunition. There was nothing more to be done after that, so we both burst out laughing. We couldn't help it—it was so ridiculous. We flew side by side laughing at each other for a few seconds, and then we waved adieu to each other and went off. He was a real sport was that Hun.

That is a pleasant picture to carry in the mind, the two high-spirited boys sent out to kill each other, faithfully trying to do their duty, failing, and then riding through the air side by side with merry laughter at their mutual discomfiture and gay adieus at parting.

And at the risk of hurting the feelings of the man in the corner I shall recall a letter which shows that even among the enemy of to-day, even among that worst of all military types, the German officer, there are those whom the miseries and horrors of war touch to something nobler than hate. The letter appeared in the Cologne Gazette early in the war, and was as follows:

Perhaps you will be so good as to assist by the publication of these lines in freeing our troops from an evil which they feel very strongly. I have on many occasions, when distributing among the men the postal packets, observed among them postcards on which the defeated French, English and Russians were derided in a tasteless fashion.

The impression made by these postcards on our men is highly noteworthy. Scarcely anybody is pleased with these postcards; on the contrary, everyone expresses his displeasure.