But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct line on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack and bent our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up and it's likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams after we had carried out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out farther to the right flank. Another gun-team was scuppered and all my gunners were knocked out but three men. The enemy now started to pay attention to my ammunition wagons, putting one shell straight in among the lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for the moment and get my wagons away. I then rode forward to where the other guns of my battery were in action and found that they had escaped casualties, so arranged to bring my guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was hit I went to an advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile of stretchers and bandages in a ditch—the living under cover in the ditch, the dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were working in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an anti-tetanus injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post they had no anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to Arras. From there I went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was dressed and got two hours' sleep—from there I travelled on the Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6 a.m., only eighteen hours from the time that I was in the fighting. The hospital I went to was the Number 20 General—the same one that I was in last year. That same morning I was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for an operation which did not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty, but it was the midday of 4th September before I got on the train for the port of embarkation. The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool Street till two in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a cable. In the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I left the Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of pyjamas. Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his lady-clerks, W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes in them—so now I am ready to receive ladies.
3 p.m. I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and skull. Whether the skull is fractured I don't know; I think not, however, as I feel too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after so many night marches, so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the dawn, such agony and courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling seven miles from the Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital at Arras. The roads were packed with transports—ammunition, pontoons, rations—streaming forward, gunners and infantry marching up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the back-going traffic which was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living for—worth doing—that busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up in two months, so that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I've only been out of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.
Don't worry about me at all. I'm all right and brown and strong. Thank God I'm not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.
Note.—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in the attack on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of the Canadians broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that attack and the manner in which he got his wound.
LXXVII
London
September 8, 1918
I've returned from this offensive with a very healthy hatred of the Hun. One of our tanks, commanded by a boy of twenty, got too far ahead and was captured. When the rest of the attacking line caught up, they found him stripped naked and bound to his tank—dead. The brutes had bombed him to death mother-naked. When I tell you that no prisoners were taken for the next twenty-four hours, I think you'll applaud and wonder why the twenty-four hours wasn't extended. The men said they got sick of the killing.
Why we're decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember that I also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we set out to be good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred. All the way down the line the German wounded received precisely the same treatment as our own men—and treatment that was just as prompt. At the Casualty Clearing Station, German officers sat at table with us and no difference was made. On the Red Cross train they were given beds in our carriage and our English sisters waited on them. I thought of how the German nurses treat our chaps, spitting into the food and the cups before they hand them to them. Every now and then you would see a wounded Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them cigarettes. They sat stiffly and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on, looking as though every kindness shown was a national tribute to their superiority. There were so many of us that at night two had to lie on beds made for one. The Germans refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were told they would have to sit up if they would not share, they said they would sit up. Then the sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed her with their obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She told them that if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in the corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had been doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good many of us who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach them manners. It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born a boor and he can never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost upon him; he accepts them as his right and becomes domineering. If any peacemaker thinks that Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for a new brotherhood when peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken. The German is a bully, and the only leadership that he acknowledges and the only righteousness to which he bows, is the leadership and the armed force of a bully stronger than himself. Sentimental leniency on the part of the Allies will only make him swell out his chest afresh.
You may have seen the account of a booby-trap which the Huns left behind—a crucified kitten. They banked on the humanity of our chaps to release the little beast; but the moment the first nail was drawn it exploded a mine which killed our Tommies. In contrast to this is an incident which occurred the night before our attack on the Hindenburg Line. A hare, frightened by shell-fire, came panting through our gun-position. Some of the fellows gave chase, till at last one fell on it and caught it. It started to cry like a baby in a heartrending sort of way. We hadn't had very much meat, and the intention in catching it had been to put it in the pot; but there was no one who could face up to killing it—so it was petted and set free again in the wheat. Queer tender-heartedness on the part of men who next morning were going to kill their kind! Their concern when the little beast began to sob was conscience-stricken and ludicrous.