Hunting the Hun

by James Belton; E. G. Odell

Many of the soldiers who were undergoing training here had been wounded and, after being passed as physically fit for the front again, were trained with men who had never been up the line.

In some cases they were given instruction by an instructor who had never been in the front line. Now when a soldier is wounded his name appears on the casualty list. He is allowed to put on his left sleeve a narrow gold stripe for each time he has been wounded, and the Tommy is very sensitive about taking instructions from anyone who has not these stripes. One incident that was brought to my notice will show how sensitive Tommy is as to whom he has instructing him.

A certain sergeant, who had been gassed at Ypres, had also been fighting in various other battles but, luckily for him, he had never been wounded. Therefore, he could not wear the stripe. He was giving instruction to the class on gas drill. Nearly all the class were wearing a gold stripe for wounds received.

I was in the lecture room when the sergeant commenced his lecture, but subsequently I was called away for a few minutes. Upon my return I discovered that the lecture was practically at a standstill. All the Tommies had turned their backs on the sergeant and would not listen to him. They thought he had never been up the line and they resented very much taking instruction from one who, in their opinion, had had a bomb-proof job. I asked the sergeant what was the matter, and he told me that he thought his class was under the impression that he had not been up the line. I therefore allowed him, before proceeding with the lecture, to relate some of his experiences at the front. After that he had no further trouble with that class.

After a certain length of time training at the "bull ring," the men are drafted and ordered to go up the line to reinforce battalions at the front. I was given charge of a draft of 200 men. The men selected were duly warned to fall in on the following morn at 7.00 A.M. at their respective parade grounds. They were all delighted and, as most of them had never heard a shot fired, they were anxious and keen to go up the line. By 7:30 the next morning I had inspected the men carefully. Afterwards they were inspected by the adjutant and the colonel. Each man, I may say, had his full fighting kit on.

After a brief speech by the Colonel we marched to the railway station. As we approached the station the French soldiers, who were guarding the German prisoners that were working on the railway tracks, sprang to attention and shouted, "Bon Voyage, Bon Voyage." When I arrived at the station the railway transport officer met me and pointed out the cars that we were to occupy. There was a canteen at the station run by some English ladies, who were serving the men with cakes and dainty slices of bread and butter and tea or cocoa. The ladies were all very refined and were not paid for their services. They seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in making the soldiers happy and contented.

As we would proceed along the railway and approach a nearby town the little French children would shout out, "Bon Voyage, Bon Voyage, Bully Beef, Bully Beef, Biscuit, Biscuit."

Our boys would throw them out the rations, which would be picked up quickly by the poor French children. Upon arrival at the railhead each man would turn in all the extra food he had not eaten and would then be marched to the depot to be assigned to billets for the night. In the morning the various drafts would be sorted out and sent to reinforce their fighting units.

Here is an incident that occurred whilst I was in charge of a party at the "bull ring." A sergeant was giving a lecture on musketry to a class. He began in this strain: "The rifle is a soldier's best friend on active service." After that he described the length of the rifle, the length of the barrel, the muzzle velocity, the calibre of the ammunition used, the width of the lands, the depth of the grooves, and the mechanism of the bolt. He began to describe the care of arms. To emphasize his point, he repeated: "The rifle is the soldier's best friend and I want you to treat it as such. Treat it as you would treat your wife. Rub it well over with an oily rag." This caused a decided grin on the faces of the married men in the ranks.

We take great pains to train our men in machine gunnery. A barrage of machine guns on any part of the line is always dangerous to the enemy and is advantageous to us. Usually a barrage may be laid at distances from a thousand to five hundred yards. The cone of fire is very deadly, but when it gets as near as five hundred yards the trajectory, being flat or low, is then dangerous to us if we stand up, so that we have to be very careful how we work under it.