Next day we travelled through Acheux and hit the British line once more to the east of that place. Our official chauffeur had had his instructions, and so had other people, with the result that as we swung into the broad main street of a village—Mailly, I think, was the name—there was a tall young officer standing with his back turned. He swung round at the noise of the car, and it was my boy Kingsley with his usual jolly grin upon his weather-stained features. The long arm of G.H.Q. had stretched out and plucked him out of a trench, and there he was. We had an hour’s talk in a field, for there was nowhere else to go. He was hard and well and told me that all was nearly ready for a big push at the very part of the line where his battalion, the 1st Hampshires, was stationed. This was the first intimation of the great Somme battle, on the first day of which every officer of the Hampshires without exception was killed or wounded. I learned afterwards that before the battle for ten nights running Kingsley crept out to the German wire and stuck up crosses, where he found the wire uncut, which were brown towards the enemy and white towards the British, as a guide to the gunners. He lay on his face sometimes with the machine guns firing just above him. For this service Colonel Palk thanked him warmly and said he should certainly have a decoration, but Palk and both majors were killed and no recommendations went forward. Two shrapnel bullets in the neck were all Kingsley got out of the battle, and two months on his back in a hospital. However, he was not a medal hunter and I never heard him complain, nor would he wear his wound badges until he was compelled.
An hour later I met another member of my household, for my Secretary, Major Wood of the 5th Sussex Territorials, was Town Major of Beauquesne, where I found him at the convenient hour of lunch. He had done nearly two years of hard active service, which was pretty good for a civilian of fifty, and had led his company at Festubert and other engagements. He was now using his excellent powers of organization and administration in making Beauquesne a well-ordered village, as later he made Doullens a well-ordered town. I expect that the British administration will remain as a wonderful legend of sanitation and cleanliness in many of these French towns of the North-East.
After inspecting Major Wood’s work I went on to Amiens with him and he packed me into the train to Paris, the first part of my task thoroughly done so far as time would permit. I came away with a deep sense of the difficult task which lay before the Army, but with an equally deep one of the ability of those men to do all that soldiers can be called upon to perform. But I saw no end to the war.
I had two days in Paris—a very dead and alive Paris, such a Paris as has seldom or never been seen before, with darkened streets and the shops nearly all closed. I stayed at the Hotel Crillon, where were a few Russian and British officers. It was extraordinary the difference which the public made between the two. A British officer was disregarded, while a Russian General—I took a walk with one—was looked upon with an adulation which was quite comic. Men came up and made a low obeisance before him. And yet it was our Army, our purse, our factories, above all our Navy, which were saving the situation both for France and Russia, to whom we were bound by no alliance. There was certainly not much sign of appreciation or gratitude. It is a very singular thing how the whole world alternately leans upon and depreciates the British Empire.
CHAPTER XXIX
EXPERIENCES ON THE ITALIAN FRONT
The Polite Front—Udine—Under Fire—Carnic Alps—Italia Irredenta—Trentino—The Voice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Two days later I found myself, after an uneventful journey, at Padua on my way to the Italian front. The Italian front seemed to have politely come back to meet me, for I was awakened in the night by a tremendous dropping of bombs, with the rattle of anti-aircraft guns. I thought I was as safe in bed as anywhere, and so it proved. Little damage was done, but Padua and the other Italian cities were having a bad time, and it was a one-sided arrangement, since the Italians can do nothing without injuring their own kith and kin across the border. This dropping of explosives on the chance of hitting one soldier among fifty victims was surely the most monstrous development of the whole war, and was altogether German in its origin. If international law cannot now stamp it out, the next war will send the people flying to the caves and calling upon the mountains to cover them, even as was foretold.
I arrived at last at Udine, the capital of the Friulian Province, where were the Italian Head-quarters—a funny little town with a huge mound in the centre, which looked too big to be artificial, but was said to have been thrown up by Attila. My recommendation was to the British Mission, which was headed by Brig.-General Delme-Radcliffe, a bluff, short-spoken and masterful British soldier, who received me with hospitality. The Mission owned a white house on the edge of the town. On the second floor under a window which proved to be that of my bedroom there was a long dark smear on the whitewashed wall. “That’s the stomach of a baker,” said the soldier-servant with a grin. I thought it was a joke on his part, but it was literally true, for a bomb a few days before had blown the man to bits as he passed the house, and had plastered bits of him on the stonework. The ceiling of my bedroom was full of holes from that or some other explosion.
There was some tendency at this time to cavil at the Italians and to wonder why they did not make more impression upon the Austrians. As a matter of fact they were faced by the same barbed wire and machine-gun problem which had held up every one else. I soon saw, when I was allowed next morning to get to the front, that the conditions were very like those of Flanders in a more genial climate and in all ways less aggravated. I had been handed over to the Italian Intelligence people, who were represented by a charmingly affable nobleman, Colonel the Marquis Barbariche, and Colonel Claricetti. These two introduced me at once to General Porro, chief of the Staff, a brown, wrinkled, walnut-faced warrior, who showed me some plans and did what he could to be helpful.