Mr. Coleman joined the Expeditionary Force in August, 1914, about the time when the retirement from Mons and its neighbourhood began. His account of this operation is deeply interesting. It would be altogether premature to discuss, and still more to criticize, the strategy of which this movement was the outcome. Moreover, the British commanders were in no way responsible for the early strategy of the campaign. They merely had to make their military dispositions conform to the requirements of the plan which had been already elaborated and partially executed by the French General Staff, and that plan necessitated a withdrawal from the advanced position originally occupied by the British troops in Flanders. A retreat does not necessarily connote permanent defeat or irretrievable disaster. When the Duke of Wellington withdrew within the lines of Torres Vedras, he did so deliberately in order to prepare for the advance which eventually drove the invaders from Spanish territory. It is greatly to be hoped that the history of Torres Vedras will be repeated at Salonika. Nevertheless, retreat generally involves at least a temporary check. It disheartens the rank-and-file of an army, more especially if it is the sequel of some local success in one portion of the field of operations. Describing the situation at St. Quentin on August 27th, 1914, Mr. Coleman says: "An orderly, well-disciplined army had been through a great fight. Its infantry, unbeaten by the infantry that opposed it, had been ordered to retire. 'Gawd knows why,' hundreds of Tommies were saying.... Everything tended to discouragement." Retreat, in the presence of an advancing enemy, flushed with the full confidence of victory, is one of the most delicate and difficult of military operations, and one also that affords a crucial test of the discipline and morale of the retreating force. To such an extent has this been recognized that the successful retreats recorded in history have shed a very special degree of lustre on those in command and on the troops whom they conducted. After a lapse of twenty-three centuries, the account of the retreat of the famous Ten Thousand after the battle of Cunaxa is still read with undiminished interest and admiration. The operations of Jovian after the crushing defeat inflicted on the Emperor Julian in Persia are still cited as an instance of what can be accomplished by a highly trained and well-disciplined army. Sir John Moore's retreat to Corunna is another case in point, and the heroic action of Ney's rearguard during the retreat from Moscow, although it could not avert disaster, nobly redeemed the honour of the French Army. The retreat of the British force from Mons should find an honoured place side by side with these celebrated episodes.
Good leadership was not wanting. Smith-Dorrien, Haig, and others deserved well of their country. But the honours of the day lay mainly with the regimental officers and men. "The very air," Mr. Coleman says, "was full of unostentatious heroism." He was told to "cheer the men up" as they straggled, ragged, muddy, and footsore, past him. He soon found that "many of us had been labouring under a great delusion. It was not that some one was needed to cheer up the Tommy; it was that most of us needed the Tommies to cheer us up." An Irishman came by with a hole drilled through the lobe of his ear by a Mauser bullet. "Close that, I'm thinkin'," said the proud owner of the damaged member, "and I niver knew how close me ear was to me head till that thing come along." The following story also illustrates the spirit of the men, and shows what a capable officer with an innate genius for leadership can do in very difficult circumstances. Major Bridges, of the 4th Dragoon Guards, found a couple of hundred men of various detachments seated on the pavement in the square at St. Quentin in a state of complete exhaustion. They had been for thirty-six hours without food or sleep. He at once recognized that "no peremptory order, no gentle request, no clever cajolery would suffice." He therefore went into a toy-shop and bought a toy drum and a penny whistle. Then he asked the trumpeter whether he could play "The British Grenadiers." "Sure, Sir," was the reply. So the trumpeter whistled, and the gallant Major drummed vigorously. "The spark caught! Some with tears in their eyes, some with a roar of laughter, jumped to their feet and fell in. The weary feet, sore and bruised, tramped the hard cobbles unconscious of their pain. Stiffened limbs answered to the call of newly awakened wills.... 'Go on, Colonel! we'll follow you to hell,' sings out a brawny Irishman behind, who can just hobble along on his torn feet."
Instances of this sort, showing "the indomitable will and the unconquerable power of the Anglo-Saxon," abound in Mr. Coleman's pages. A wounded officer with a shot through his shoulder murmurs "'Only a scratch,' with an attempt at a smile as he passes on." Major Budworth, of the Royal Horse Artillery, visits his wounded men. "'Promise, Sir, that I can come back to H Battery when I am right,' was the one thing they had to ask, the one desire of their hearts." "The General [Lawford]," a young officer said, "plugged on ahead of all of us, waving a big white stick over his head and shouting like a banshee. There was no stopping him. He fairly walked into the Germans, and we after him on the run.... How Lawford escaped being hit is more than any one can tell. I can see him now, his big stick waving in the air, and he shouting and yelling away like mad, though you couldn't hear a word of what he said above the sinful noise. My Sam, he did yell at us! Wonder what he said?" Lord Cavan, Mr. Coleman tells us, "was almost a demi-god in the eyes of his devoted men." He also speaks of the bravery of young Chance, of the 4th Dragoon Guards, and adds: "Truly an army containing a multitude of youths of that mould may well be termed invincible." "Ah!" said one "grizzled Brigadier," with the tears rolling down his cheeks, "they may be able to kill such men, but they will never be able to beat them."
Experience has proved that in time of war, to whatever height passions may be aroused amongst non-combatants, national animosity amongst the actual combatants is to some extent tempered by the admiration and respect which all brave men feel for foemen worthy of their steel. Mr. Coleman quotes a letter written by a German officer to a friend in Zürich, in which he said: "If we Germans were given to understand formerly that the English soldiers were not to be feared, then that idea may now be banished from our minds, for the general opinion of those who have fought against them in these districts is that one Englishman is more dangerous than any two of the Allies." On the other hand, an English trooper, speaking to Mr. Coleman of the fight at Messines, said: "They was plucky beggars, if they was Germans. I don't want to see no pluckier. They've been killed off like pigs up there, in that town, and they keep on comin'. They fight stiff, that lot—they fight damn stiff!"
When the day of peace returns, and we again relapse into the state when possibly "God will be forgotten and the soldier slighted," let us endeavour to remember that, if the world is not dominated by the mail-fisted Kaiser, who has converted the half of Europe into a shambles, the delivery is due to the French poilus, to the British "Tommies," and to their officers, whose countless graves studded over the bloodstained fields of Flanders bear ample testimony to their heroism. And let it also be remembered that the hordes of poor German peasants and artisans who were driven to the slaughter by the politicians of Berlin also possessed some virtues. They fought in a bad cause, which was not that of progressive civilization and which was never truly explained to them, but they fought "damn stiff."
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