I like too, such robust cheerfulness and gay good-humour in face of the horrors of death as sounds through the letter of Sapper Bradley:
I have never seen our lads so cheery as they are under great trials. You couldn’t help being proud of them if you saw them lying in the trenches cracking jokes or smoking while they take pot shots at the Germans.... We have very little spare time now, but what we have we pass by smoking concerts, sing-songs, and story-telling. Sometimes we have football for a change, with a German helmet for a ball, and to pass the time in the trenches have invented the game of guessing where the next German shell will drop. Sometimes we have bets on it, and the man who guesses correctly the greatest number of times takes the stakes.
And surely no less do I like the equally courageous but more sombre outlook of the Scottish Private who complained of the famous retreat from Mons, It was “Retire! retire! retire!” when our chaps were longing to be at them. But they didn’t swear about it, because being out there and seeing what we saw makes you feel religious.
I like that wonderful diary kept by a driver of the 4th Ammunition Column, 3rd section, R.F.A. It was sent over from Paris by Mr. Harold Ashton, The Daily News correspondent, and is as naïvely and minutely realistic as if it were a page out of Defoe. The driver’s interests are naturally centred in his horses, they hold the first place in his regard, the excitements of the war coming second. He records how he went from Hendon to Southampton on the 21st August:
Got horses on board all right, though the friskiest of them kicked a lot. Got to Havre safe. Food good—rabbit and potatoes and plenty of beer, not our English sort, but the colour of cyder. Us four enjoyed ourselves with the family, had a good time, and left ten o’clock next day well filled up. Our objective was Compiègne. We got through all right, watering our horses on the way from pumps and taps at private houses. The people were awful kind, giving us quantities of pears, and filling our water-bottles with beer. That was all right. Our welcome was splendid everywhere. At Compiègne we got into touch with the Germans. Very hot work. We marched from Compiègne about eleven o’clock on the 31st, which was Sunday. The way was hard. Terrible steep hills which knocked out our older and weaker horses. Collick broke out among them, too, and that was bad. We lost a good many.... Slept until 5 a.m. and then marched on again, still retreating. Hot as ——. Nothing to eat or drink. Plenty of tea, but nothing to boil it with. At last we got some dry biscuits and some tins of marmalade. Bill ——, whose teeth were bad, went near mad with toothache after the jam.... No dead horses, thank God, to-day. I hope we have checked that —— collick, but my horse fell into a ditch going through the wood and could not get out for over an hour. I couldn’t go for help, because the Germans had got the range of the place and their shells were ripping overhead like blazes. Poor old Dick (the horse), he was that fagged out by the long march. At last I got him out and went on, and by luck managed to pick up my pals.... The Germans were lambing in at us with their artillery, and poor old Dick got blowed up. I thank God I wasn’t on him just then. Sept. 2.—More fighting and worser than ever. I don’t believe we shall ever get to Paris.... Now we come to Montagny, and fighting all the time. Rabbits and apples to eat gallore, but still no money, and no good if we had because we carnt spend it. Sept. 3.—We progressed this day four miles in twelve hours. Took the wrong road, and had to crawl about the woods on our stummoks like snakes to dodge the German snipers. We had one rifle between four of us, and took it in turns to have goes. We shot one blighter and took another prisoner. They was both half starved and covered with soars. Then the rifle jammed, and we had nothing to defend ourselves with. At last we found the main body again. They wanted more horses, and we were just bringing them up and putting them to the guns when a German areyplane came over us and flue round pretty low. The troops tried to fetch him down, and some bullets went through the wings, but then he got too high. He dropped a bomb in the middle of us, but it exploded very weak and nobody was hurt. Next day we started on a night march, and got to Lagny Thorigny, and camped outside the town, where the people fed us on rabbits again. I said I was sick of rabbits, and me and Bill walked acrost to a farmhouse and borrowed three chickens, which we cooked. It was fine.... Outside Lagny there was more fierce fighting—20 miles of it—and the Germans were shot down like birds. Sept. 3 (continued).—Firing is still going on, but it is not so fierce, though scouts have come in and told us there are 10,000 Germans round us this day. To-night I got two ounces of Navy Cut. It was prime. Sept. 8.—We are marching on further away from Paris. We shall never get there, I guess. Sept. 12.—In the village of Crecy. Plenty of food and houses to sleep into. Here we have got to stay until further orders. Collick still very bad.
The calm matter-of-fact air with which he encounters whatever comes to him, the keen joy he takes in small pleasures by the way; his philosophic acceptance of the fate of “poor old Dick”—the whole thing is so unruffled, so self-possessed, so Pepysian in its egoism and so artlessly humorous that one hopes this phlegmatic driver will keep a full diary of his campaignings, and that Mr. Ashton will secure and publish it.
III
The Destruction of Louvain
“Such food a tyrant’s appetite demands.”