Each of us knew that the offensive was coming and where, without ever speaking of it in our mess or being supposed to know. Nobody was supposed to know, except a few "brass hats" in headquarters town. One of the prime requisites of the gold braid which denotes a general or of the red band around the cap and the red tab on the coat lapel which denote staff is ability to keep a secret; but long association with an army makes it a sort of second nature, even with a group of civilians. When you met a Brass Hat you pretended to believe that the monotony of those official army reports about shelling a new German redoubt or a violent artillery duel, or four enemy planes brought down, which read the same on Friday as on Thursday, was to continue forever. The Brass Hats pretended to believe the same among themselves. For all time the British and the French Armies were to keep on hurling explosives at the German Army from the same positions.
Occasionally a Brass Hat did intimate that the offensive would probably come in the spring of 1917, if not later, and you accepted the information as strictly confidential and indefinite, as you should accept any received from a Brass Hat. It never occurred to anybody to inquire if "1917" meant June or July of 1916. This would be as bad form as to ask a man whose head was gray last year and is black this year if he dyed his hair.
Those heavy howitzers, fresh from the foundry, drawn by big caterpillar tractors, were all proceeding in one direction—toward the Somme. Villages along their route were filling with troops. The nearer the front you went, the greater the concentration of men and material. Shells, the size of the milk cans at suburban stations, stood in close order on the platforms beside the sidings of new light railways; shells of all calibers were piled at new ammunition dumps; fields were cut by the tracks of guns moving into position; steam rollers were road-making in the midst of the long processions of motor trucks, heavy laden when bound toward the trenches and empty when returning; barbed-wire enclosures were ready as collecting stations for prisoners; clusters of hospital tents at other points seemed out of proportion to the trickle of wounded from customary trench warfare.
All this preparation, stretching over weeks and months, unemotional and methodical, infinite in detail, prodigious in effort, suggested the work of engineers and contractors and subcontractors in the building of some great bridge or canal, with the workmen all in the same kind of uniform and with managers, superintendents and foremen each having some insignia of rank and the Brass Hats and Red Tabs the inspectors and auditors.
The officer installing a new casualty clearing station, or emplacing a gun, or starting another ammunition dump, had not heard of any offensive. He was only doing what he was told. It was not his business to ask why of any Red Tab, any more than it was the business of a Red Tab to ask why of a Brass Hat, or his business to know that the same sort of thing was going on over a front of sixteen miles. Each one saw only his little section of the hive. Orders strictly limited workers to their sections at the same time that their lips were sealed. Contractors were in no danger of strikes; employees received no extra pay for overtime. It was as evident that the offensive was to be on the Somme as that the circus has come to town, when you see tents rising at dawn in a vacant lot while the elephants are standing in line.
Toward the end of June I asked the Red Tab who sat at the head of our table if I might go to London on leave. He was surprised, I think, but did not appear surprised. It is one of the requisites of a Red Tab that he should not. He said that he was uncertain if leave were being granted at present. This was unusual, as an intimation of refusal had never been made on any previous occasion. When I said that it would be for only two or three days, he thought that it could be arranged all right. What this considerate Red Tab meant was that I should return "in time." Yet he had not mentioned that there was to be any offensive and I had not. We had kept the faith of military secrecy. Besides, I really did not know, unless I opened a pigeonhole in my brain. It was also my business not to know—the only business I had with the "big push" except to look on.
Over in London my friends surprised me by exclaiming, "What are you doing here?" and, "Won't you miss the offensive which is about to begin?" Now, what would a Brass Hat say in such an awkward emergency? Would he look wise or unwise when he said it? Trying to look unwise, I replied: "They have the men now and can strike any time that they please. It's not my place to know where or when. I asked for leave and they gave it." I was quite relieved and felt that I was almost worthy of a secretive Brass Hat myself, when one man remarked: "They don't let you know much, do they?"
To keep such immense preparations wholly a secret among any English-speaking people would be out of the question. Only the Japanese are mentally equipped for security of information. With other races it is a struggling effort. Can you imagine Washington keeping a military secret? You could hear the confidential whispers all the way from the War Department to the Capitol. In such a great movement as that of the Somme one weak link in a chain of tens of thousands of officers is enough to break it, not to mention a million or so of privates.