The German machine guns were not out of commission, and for them it was like working a loom playing the bullets back and forth across the zone of a hundred yards which the British had to traverse. The British had been told to charge and they charged. Theirs not to reason why; that was the glory of the thing. Nothing more gallant in warfare than their persistence, till they found that it was like trying to swim in a cataract of lead. One officer got within fifty yards of the German parapet before he fell. At last they realised that it could not be done—later than they should, but they were a proud regiment and though they had been too brave, there was something splendid about it.
With a soldier’s winning frankness and simplicity they told what had happened. Even before they charged they knew the machine guns were in place; they knew what they had to face. One spoke of seeing, as they lay waiting, a German officer standing up in the midst of the British shell-fire.
“A stout-hearted fighter! We had to admire him!” said the adjutant.
It was a chivalrous thought with a deep appeal, considering what he had been through. Oh, these English! They will not hate; they cannot be separated from their sense of sportsmanship.
It was not the first time the guns had not “connected up” for either side, and German charges on many occasions had met a like fate. Calm enough, these officers, true to their birthright of phlegm. They did not make excuses. Success is the criterion of battle. They had failed. Their unblinking recognition of the fact was a sort of self-punishment which cut deep into your own sensitiveness. One young lieutenant could not keep his lip from trembling over that naked, grim thought. The pride of regiment had been struck a whip-blow which meant more to the soldier than any injury to his personal pride.
But next time! They wanted another try for that trench, these survivors. No matter about anything else—the battalion must have another chance. You appreciated this from a few words and more from the stubborn resolution in the bearing of all. There was no “let-us-at-’em-again” frightfulness. In order to end this war you must “lick” one side or the other, and these men were not “licked.” One was sorry that he had gone to see them. It was like lacerating a wound. One could only assure them, in his faith in their gallantry, that they would win next time. And oh, how you wanted them to win! They deserved to win because they were such manly losers.
At home in their rough wooden houses in camp we found a battalion which had won—the same undemonstrative type as the one that had lost; the same simplicity and kindly hospitality which gives life at the front a charm in the midst of its tragedy, from these men of one of the dependable line regiments. This colonel knew the other colonel, and he said about the other what his fellow-officers had said: it was not his fault; he was a good man. If the guns were not “on,” what happened to him was bound to happen to anybody. They had been “on” for the winning battalion; perfectly “on.” They had buried the machine guns and the Germans with them.
When a man goes into the kind of charge that either battalion made he gives himself up for lost. The psychology is simple. You are going to keep on until—! Well, as Mr. Atkins has remarked in his own terse way, a battle was a lot of noise all around you and suddenly a big bang in your ear; and then somebody said, “Please open your mouth and take this!” and you found yourself in a white, silent place full of cots.
The winning battalion was amazed how easily the thing was done. They had “walked in.” They were a little surprised to be alive—thanks to the guns. “Here we are! Here we are again!” as the song at the front goes. It is all a lottery. Make up your mind to draw the death number; and if you don’t, that is velvet. Army courage these days is highly sensitised steel in response to will.
They had won; there was a credit mark in the regimental record. All had won; nobody in particular, but the battalion, the lot of them. They did not boast about it. The thing just happened. They were alive and enjoying the sheer fact of life, writing letters home, re-reading letters from home, looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers, as they leaned back and smoked their briar-wood pipes and discussed politics with that freedom and directness of opinion which is an Englishman’s pastime and his birthright.