I can never get out of my mind the contrast between the individual magnanimity of each Tommy’s sacrifice and the unimaginative callousness with which it is accepted. The self denial of the men in the ranks is always far in excess of the self-denial of their officers. The higher an officer climbs in rank, the greater is his authority and the less his self-denial, yet the stronger grows his contempt for those beneath him. War conducted from a chbteau and a Rolls Royce car is a comparatively pleasant affair; there is no temptation to get drunk or become a deserter. But war conducted from a frontline trench, upon bully beef, shell-hole water and hard tack, in a shirt that has been lousy for a month, with a body which is unwashed, unwarmed and famished for want of sleep—that kind of war is hell. This is the kind of war that the man in the ranks fights with a grin upon his lips and a fierce determination to meet every calamity with a jest. The man in the ranks is the best man on the Front when he’s at his best; there’s no brass hat or red tab safe behind the lines who’s worthy to touch the stretcher which carries him to his last, long rest. The red tab carries out laws for the private’s punishment; he strafes him on review and goes out of his way to find faults; he makes him take to the ditch when his staff-car splashes by; he plans an offensive and sends him over the top to be smashed by shell-fire; if the offensive succeeds, he is awarded decorations for an ordeal through which he has not passed; the fighting Tommy wins the decorations, but the red tab wears them; and if at last the fighting Tommy’s nerve forsakes him, it is the red tab who turns his thumbs down, confirming the sentence that he shall face the firing-squad. Yet the private is the better man every hour of the day and in his heart the red tab knows it—knows it and resents it. If the war is won, it will be won by the sacrifice of simple men who never wore a ribbon or any insignia of rank, but were content to die humbly and unnoticed. I love them, these gunners and drivers of mine—and I marvel at their patience.
We are marching to a life and death conflict in which we take it for granted that every man in our command will live up to the most heroic standards, yet to-day at noon we held office. The prisoners were marched in under escort, their heads bare and their arms held flatly to their sides. Most of the charges against them were paltry. This man had been caught with his candle burning after lights out had sounded; the next had been late upon early morning parade; the next had lost his box-respirator—he said it had been stolen; the next had been found riding on an ammunition-wagon after the order had been passed down the column for the gunners to dismount. Not one of the offences alleged amounted to more than a misdemeanour, yet these men who are the picked storm-troops of the British Armies and whom we expect to face the shambles without flinching within the next few days, upholding the best traditions of the Empire, were marched hatless under an armed guard through the village street, with all the French girls staring at them. Some of them escaped punishment—some were awarded extra fatigues, pack-drill, additional pickets; many of them will be dead before their sentences have been served. We ask too much when we treat them as feudal slaves and expect them to act like crusaders.
Four years ago they were freemen—professional men, prairie-farmers, ranchers, lumber-jacks, surveyors. They willfully forewent their liberty that an ideal might conquer. It is the fact that they were freemen in the truest sense that makes them fight so bravely. They were men accustomed to take risks, to stand upon two legs and confront Nature unafraid. We may treat them as schoolboys, but it is their triumphant manhood that gives them their dash and splendid self-reliance up front.
In other words, we try to crush the very spirit by our discipline which makes us victorious in battle. It seems strange that, knowing this to be the case, we should persist in governing them as people possessed of no intelligence.
Discipline is necessary—it is our stoutest safeguard in action; but it works unfairness in individual cases. Take for example the man unfortunately named Trottrot, who is one of the drivers in my section. Trottrot “got in bad” at the very start of the war; and he was in at the start—one of the first of the Canadian artillery-men to arrive in France. I think the trouble began with his name; some wag saw in it a chance for jocularity. Wherever he went men shouted after him “Where the hell did Trottrot trot?” I suppose his life was made so miserable that he lost his self-respect and did not care what happened. At any rate his crime-sheet became famous throughout the Canadian Corps. A man’s crime-sheet is the record of his punishments from the first day he becomes a part of the Army; it accompanies him from unit to unit and is his reference. His was as long and full of incident as a De Morgan novel. He had bucked authority in every way and suffered about every penalty short of being shot. To read it was a romance and an education. He had been absent without leave, drunk, insubordinate, late upon parade, had struck an officer, kicked more than one N. C. O. in the face and had spent six months of his service in a penal-settlement.
When he was attached to our battery a groan went up. No one wants to have a “bad actor” in a unit—his example is likely to become contagious. We tried to get out of taking him and, when that failed, had him brought before us. He was a slim, inoffensive looking youth, with pale eyes and a narrow, clever face. The Major was seated at a table, fingering his voluminous crime-sheet, while we junior officers formed a half-circle behind him.
When Trottrot had been marched in by the Sergeant-Major and ordered to “Right-Tarn,” and was standing stiffly at attention, the Major looked up.
“Driver Trottrot,” he said, “you’ve got the name for being the worst man in the Canadian Corps. If you go much further, you’ll end by being shot. Of course that’s entirely your own affair, but I’d like to help you to avoid it. I’m going to give you a new chance. I’m going to forget all about this Nick Carter novel you’ve been compiling.” He tapped the man’s crime-sheet and threw it aside. “I’m going to treat you as though you hadn’t a stain on your record—as though you were a white man. As long as you play white by me, I’ll treat you like a white man. The moment you act yellow, God help you. You’re dismissed—that’s all I have to say.”
Driver Trottrot was handed over to me and I had a private talk with him. He would give no assurances that he was going to reform, he distrusted me the way a dog does a man who holds a whip behind his back. Little by little, however, as days went by he began to respond to kindness. Within a month he was the smartest man upon parade, had the cleanest set of harness and the best groomed horses. He was promoted to a centre-team, then to a wheel-team and was finally made lead-driver of the first-line wagon. Beyond this we have not dared to promote him because the men declare that he is not to be trusted under shell-fire. There are two ammunition-wagons to each gun: the firing-battery wagon, which follows the gun into action, and the first-line which brings up the ammunition. The picked drivers of any sub-section are on the gun-teams, as their work is likely to prove the most dangerous; the next best are on the teams of the firing battery; the next on those of the first line; the remainder are kept as spare drivers. The best driver of any team rides in lead. Trottrot ought to be driving lead of the gun by virtue of his work. Whenever an inspecting officer is going the round of our horse-lines, he always stops to praise the glossy coats of Trottrot’s team and to comment on them as an example of what can be done by horsemanship. But we’re afraid to give him his deserts on account of the men’s belief that he lacks “guts.” Trottrot has lived down his reputation for being a “bad actor,” but his reputation for being “yellow” clings. We treat him like a “white man” and he acts as though he were one. Perhaps the carnage towards which we are marching may give him his chance to wipe the slate clean of his old record. I hope so and believe that that’s what he’s hoping. There’s a curious look of determination in his eyes, as though he waited breathless for the commencement of the danger. It’s as though he were trying to tell me: “I won’t let you down, sir, I’ll either die in this show or come out of it lead-driver of the gun.” I lay my money on Trottrot; he’s a white man to his marrow, if I know one.