Last Sunday we had a real first-rate game of Rugger—not very scientific as far as passing and outside play were concerned, but a great struggle forward. My own side had a couple of splendid Scottish forwards against it, and I had a great deal of defence to do, falling on the ball, etc. The final was 6-3 against us, but one glaring offside try was allowed to our opponents—accidentally, of course, as the referee's view was unfortunately obstructed at the time. It was a grand game to play in, though I was not in the best of training—one's first game for fourteen months is usually apt to be a bit of a strain, and I hadn't played since I turned out for the O.A.'s at Dulwich in December, 1915. It was simply great, worth living years for, to touch a Rugger ball again.
March 17th, 1917.
These days for me are crammed full of work, 8.30 A.M. to 6 or 7 P.M. as a general rule. I am enjoying life hugely, however. To me hard work has always been preferable to slack times, and I like going at high pressure. Besides, this is such a grand job that the work is a sheer pleasure. By Jove! if you only knew how much happier I am these days than in any period during the twenty odd months I had spent previously playing at soldiers in the "Grub Department." It amazes me that I could have been so long contented with work like that of the A.S.C. Well, anyway, those days are over and done with, and a new and brighter era has been ushered in. As a rule, I am now almost always in an incredible state of grease and oil and grime, which, remembering my old propensities, you will know delights me. The old gas-engine at home was nothing to it. I have had to set aside a special suit for daily use, as even with overalls on there is not sufficient protection against grease, oil, petrol and mud. I cannot tell you how supremely happy I am in my work.
Ambrose returned to his company from a course of instruction last week, and he came across immediately to see me. We discussed old times and old friends with great gusto. There are two other Dulwich men in the battalion whom I never knew well, as they were fairly senior fellows when I was only a kid, though I distinctly remember both. Their names are Trimingham and Sewell. They were in what was in those days Treadgold's House.
I am sending back by the same post a pair of spectacles which got broken recently. Will you please get them repaired? I still have four sound pairs, but I always like to keep up the set of five with which I started in the War.
The breaking of the great frost created appalling conditions on this countryside, which for some time was an absolute quagmire. Even now things are pretty bad, though the weather improves daily.
March 20th, 1917.
Well, the Boche has retreated on the Somme, as most people anticipated he would, though few imagined he would make such a considerable withdrawal. He is a cute customer, of that there is no doubt. He never does a thing without having a reason. Yet there have been occasions in the War when he has entirely misjudged the situation. Take Ypres and Verdun for example. This retirement on the Somme is clever, though it may tell on the morale of his men. On the other hand, the Boche relies, and always has relied, much more on discipline than on morale for keeping his army together. He has never developed esprit de corps as it has been developed in our army, or the French, but there's no denying that his discipline is something pretty considerable. That discipline, as far as can be gauged, has as its foundation a very efficient system of N.C.O.'s. His officers are intelligent, but nothing to write home about, but his N.C.O.'s are unquestionably very good. I have myself witnessed their influence among gangs of prisoners we have taken.
It must necessarily come about in the course of a War that situations arise when esprit de corps is equivalent to, and even produces, discipline. That is where brother Boche fails to rise to the occasion. I am not of those who think the Boche a coward, but undoubtedly an unexpected situation very often plays the very deuce with both his courage and his organisation. In his plans he allows for most possibilities, but he is nonplussed when the situation does not turn out exactly as it should on paper. Again, man for man, he loses "guts" in tight corners, because of this same lack of initiative. It is perhaps a temperamental failing. There have been moments in this War when only his incapacity to deal with a suddenly-developed situation has stood between him and stupendous success. He has assumed, let us say, that by all the rules of War the enemy must have reserves available, and has therefore ceased his attack until such time as he could muster his forces to meet the counter-attack by these imagined reserve troops, when actually his enemy had no reserves at all. Conversely, he has assumed on many occasions that his enemy must, by all the rules of War, be battered into pulp or asphyxiated, and that he has only to advance over the bodies of his foes to win an overwhelming victory; yet somehow or other from out of the indescribable débris and havoc wrought by his artillery or gas, arise survivors who, though half-dead, yet have enough life and pluck to hold him back.
Take as illustrations either the second battle of Ypres or Verdun. In the first case, after the first surprise gas attack a rent about a mile and a half wide had been torn in the Allied line. Against a vast number of German troops there was opposed only one single division of what Bernhardi contemptuously termed "Colonial Militia," namely, the Canadians. For quite a long time there were no other troops of ours (save a few oddments) in the vicinity. The Boche had five miles or so to get to "Wipers." Of these he covered just about two, and even that ground was only what he gained in the first surprise of his gas attack. Between him and the Channel coast there still stretched a khaki line. The same sort of situation was repeated several times during the second battle of Ypres (though the odds were never so great as in these first April days), yet the result was always the same.