Leaves from a Field Note-Book

by J. H. Morgan

The C.C. has, however, many other things to do.

Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a "chit" to the C.C.:

Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be issued to his office.

A laconic message came back by my servant:

No. 105671a. ———— 2	The Camp Commandant presents his com- pliments to Mr. M., and begs toinform him that he is not an ironmonger. The correct
procedure is for Mr. M. to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to sendin the account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged.

The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply desks and tables—the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them out at the shortest notice—and he could produce stationery, but he drew the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings.

The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as "transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap. And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one—the transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are alive or dead.

It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a château used as the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the Front is one vast cemetery—a "God's Acre" hallowed by prayers if unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of every grave with a view to its preservation.

The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting "hearsay." He never prosecutes—that is always the task of some officer specially assigned for the purpose—but he may "sum up." Officers are not usually familiar with the mysteries of the Red Book,[29] however much they may know of the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious, instituted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and inadmissibility of evidence in the most "unhealthy" places. Speaking with some knowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and "went for" the latter, declaring his intention to "do him in," as he had, he alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification was, however, not absolutely conclusive—one Prussian guardsman is strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the doubt.

The prisoner gets all the assistance he may require from a "prisoner's friend" if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a charge—he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely, justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was as straightforward as it was brief: