Tommy Atkins at War: As Told in His Own Letters

by James Alexander Kilpatrick

XI

ATKINS AND THE ENEMY

In one of his fine messages from the front, Sir John French, whom the New York World has described as the "best of war correspondents," referred to the British soldier as "a difficult person to impress or depress." He meant, of course, that it was no use trying to terrify Tommy Atkins. Nothing will do that. His stupendous sense of humor carries him, smiling, through every emergency.

But Atkins is a keen observer, and he takes on very clear and vivid impressions of men and affairs. He hates compromises and qualifications, and just lets you have his opinion—"biff!" as one officer expresses it.

"Bill and I have been thinking it over," says one letter from the trenches, "and we've come to the conclusion that the German army system is rotten." There you have the concentrated wisdom of hundreds of soldier critics who talk of the Kaiser's great military machine as they know it from intimate contact with the fighting force it propels. They admit its mechanical perfection; it is the human factor that breaks down.

Nothing has impressed Tommy Atkins more than the lack of morale in the German soldiers. "Oh, they are brave enough, poor devils; but they've got no heart in the fighting," he says. That is absolutely true. Hundreds of thousands of them have no notion of what they are fighting for. Some of the prisoners declared that when they left the garrisons they were "simply told they were going to maneuvers"; "others," says a Royal Artilleryman, "had no idea they were fighting the English"; according to a Highland officer, surrendering Germans said their fellows had been assured that "America and Japan were fighting on their side, and that another Boer war was going on"; and a final illusion was dispelled when those captured by the Royal Irish were told that the civil war in Ireland had been "put off!"

It is not only that the men lack this moral preparation for war. Their system of fighting is demoralizing. "They come on in close formation, thousands of them, just like sheep being driven to the slaughter," is the description that nine soldiers out of every ten give of the Germans going into action. "We just mow them down in heaps," says an artilleryman. "Lord, even a woman couldn't miss hitting them," is the comment from the Infantry. And as for the cavalry: "Well, we just makes holes in them," adds one of the Dragoons. At first they didn't take cover at all, but just marched into action with their drums beating and bands playing, "like a blooming parade," as Atkins puts it. After the first slaughter, however, they shrank from the attack, and there is ample evidence of eyewitnesses that the German infantry often had to be lashed into battle by their officers. "I saw a colonel striking his own men with his sword to prevent them running away," is one of the many statements. Revolvers, too, were freely used for the same purpose.

But, generally speaking, there is iron discipline in the Kaiser's army. The men obey their officers implicitly. Trooper E. Tugwell, of the Berwicks, tells this little story of a cavalry charge from which a German infantry regiment bolted—all but one company, whose officers ordered them to stand: "They faced round without attempting to fire a shot, and stood there like statues to meet the onslaught of our men. Our chaps couldn't help admiring their fine discipline, but there's not much room for sentiment in war, and we rode at them with the lance, and swept them away." "They are big fellows, and, in a way, brave," writes Private P. Case of the King's (Liverpool) Regiment, describing one of their attacks; "they must be brave, or they would not have kept advancing when they saw their dead so thick that they were practically standing up." "Their officers simply won't let them surrender," says another writer, "and so long as there's an officer about they'll stand like sheep and be slaughtered by the thousand." The essential difference between the German soldiers and our own is in the officering and training, and it is admirably expressed by Private Burrell, Northumberland Fusiliers. "We are led; they are driven,"[F] is Burrell's epigram.

According to other letter writers, the German soldiers are absolutely tyrannized over by their officers. They are horribly ill-used, badly fed,[G] overworked, constantly under the lash. "They hate their officers like poison, and fear them ten times more than they fear death," says Private Martin King. "Most of the prisoners that I've seen are only fit for the hospital, and many of them will never be fit for anything else this side of the grave. Their officers don't seem to have any consideration for the men at all, and we have a suspicion that the heavy losses of German officers aren't all due to our fire. There was one brought in who had certainly been hit by one of their own bullets, and in the back too." Other soldiers say the same, and add that if it weren't for dread of their officers the Germans would surrender wholesale. "Take the officers away, and their regiments fall to pieces," is the dictum of one of the Somerset Light Infantry, "and that's why we always pick off the German officers first."