Winning a Cause: World War Stories

by John G. Thompson; Inez Bigwood

AT THE FRONT

What one soldier writes, millions have experienced.

At first the waiting for orders; the wonder of how to adapt one's nature to the conditions that lay ahead. The fear of being afraid. Many times in that last week in London, which now seems so far away, I did aimless, meaningless things that I had done before; wondering if I should ever do them again. Visiting old scenes of happy days, trying, as it were, to conjure up old associations, for fear the chance might not come again. Strange, perhaps, but many of the things I do are strange, and only those who know me best would understand. My good-by to you—and the curtain rose on the first act of the drama that I have been privileged to watch, with every now and then a "walking on" part. The first act was one of absorbing interest, learning the characters of the play, and my mind was filled with wonder at the plot as day by day it unfolded before me. I have tried to write of all the wonders of the Base; its organization and the mastery of an Empire to serve its ideal in its hour of need. The second curtain rose on the trenches, and it is my impressions of this life, rather than of its details, that I would now write. The first and greatest is the way the average man has surmounted the impossible, has brought, as it were, a power to strike that word from his vocabulary. Living in conditions which in previous years would have caused his death, he has maintained his vitality of mind and body. Healthy amid the pestilence of decaying death, of chill from nights spent sometimes waist deep in water; or chattering with cold as misty morning finds him saturated with its clammy cold. Facing death from bullet, shell, and gas, and all the ingenuity that devilish manhood can devise, yet remaining the same cheery, lively animal, wondering when it all will cease. A new spirit of unselfishness has entered the race, or perchance the old selfishness bred by years of peace has died, leaving a cleaner, nobler feeling in its place. Men who before cheated their neighbors, grasping to themselves all that came their way, have learned instinctively to share their little all. The message from Mars, "Halves, partner," has become the general spirit; and yet some say that there is no finer side to war! As for the officers, as a rule, no words for them can be too fine. For they have learned at once to be the leaders and the servants of their men, tiring themselves out for others' comforts. And the men know it; from them can come no class hatred in future years. If danger lies in that direction it must surely come from those who have stayed at home.

For myself, I am slowly learning my lesson; learning that death, which seems so near one, seldom shakes one by the hand. Learning to look over the "top" to encourage those whose duty makes them do so. Learning to walk out with a wiring party to "No Man's Land," or to set a patrol along its way. Learning to share the risks that others run so as to win the confidence of my men.

Now let me say a word of the demoralizing effects of dugouts: Often it takes a conscious effort to leave its safety or to stay away from it for the dangers of level ground, and this is what all officers must learn; for men can have no confidence in one who, ordering them out, stays underground himself. I am learning, but, oh! so slowly, for mine is not a nature that is really shaped for war. A vivid imagination is here a handicap, and it is those who have little or none who make the best soldiers. At last the "finished and finite clod" has come into his own. Stolid, in a danger he hardly realizes, he remains at his post, while the other, perchance shaking in every limb, has double the battle to fight. My pencil wanders on and I hardly seem to know what I write. Confused thoughts and half-formed impressions crowd through my brain, and from the chaos some reach the paper. What kind of reading do they make? I wonder.

*************

I'm awfully tired, but this may well be my last undisturbed night this week, and I know how much letters must mean to you waiting and waiting for news in England. All afternoon I've been wandering about the front line, exploring, and learning to find my way about that desolate waste of devastation representing recently captured ground. One waded knee high amid tangled undergrowth dotted with three-foot stakes, and learned from the map that this was a wood. One looked for a railway, where only a buried bar of twisted metal could be found. One road we could not find at all, so battered was the countryside; and so after five and a half hours' wandering, we returned to a dinner of soup, steak, stewed fruit, and cocoa. Today I noticed for the first time the wonderful variety of insect life in the trenches; flies and beetles of gorgeous and varied color showing against the vivid white of the fresh-cut chalk. Past a famous mining village which for two years has been swept by shell fire, now British, now German, until nothing save the village Crucifix remains unbattered; iron, brick, and concrete, twisted by the awful destructive power of high explosives. Graves dating back to October, 1915, and up to the present time, lie scattered here and there, but each with the name of the fallen one well marked on it, waiting to be claimed when Peace shall come. As I walked the old lines flashed into my head—

"And though you be done to the death, what then,
If you battled the best you could?
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the critics will call it good!
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?"

Strange! but nowhere did I see a German grave other than those with the inscription in English, "A German Soldier killed in action." Dead Germans have I seen, but never a German grave.