Every Arm of the Service had its heroes. Major Allen in the R.A.M.C. earned the Victoria Cross; Major Alan F. Hobson, D.S.O., in the West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers, who was killed on August 26th, earned the following tribute from a brother-officer of his unit:
‘Poor Hobson, our Major, was killed about three days ago by a shell in the neighbourhood of our work. One has read of lovable, brave leaders in personal histories of previous wars. Hobson was one of those men whom writers love to describe as the best and truest type of an Englishman. He never asked one of us to go where he would not go himself. He was always happy, even-tempered and just.’
A hero’s grave or the Victoria Cross: it was a common choice, settled by fate during the war, and at no time commoner or more inevitable than during these Battles of the Somme. A few extracts from the letters of a fallen Officer may be given in conclusion to this period, not because they differ essentially (for a happy style is an accident of fortune) from other letters sent home from the Western front, but because they express in word-pictures, compiled on the spot and at first hand, the spirit of the very gallant men whose cheerful devotion in 1916 made possible the victory of 1918.
First, an account of an ordinary sight by the roadside:
‘While we were waiting for orders there was a constant procession of troops going up and troops going back from the front line. It was an intensely interesting procession to me, but there were some terribly sad sights of mangled men being brought back on stretchers. The “walking cases” were very pathetic; one in particular I remember. A young Officer leaning heavily upon the arm of one of his men, the right side of his face bandaged up. His left eye closed in agony, along he stumbled, while on each side of him our guns went off with a roar that must have been trying to a man evidently so shattered in nerve, and all the time he was exposed to Boche shelling.’
Another extract from the same letter:
‘It is a pitiable sight to see horses badly wounded, poor dumb things, so brave and patient under shell fire. When one is riding near one of one’s own batteries, and guns suddenly belch forth flame and smoke over one’s head, these dear creatures hardly wince. From the time the first shell fell among the horses until we left the town—about two hours later, we were dodging shells. When we were outside, the warning hiss of a Fritz caused a funny sight. Those near buildings jumped to a sheltering wall, some of us who were near trees embraced their trunks and dodged round them when we thought the burst would be on one side. We screamed with laughter at each other, but when one burst rather too close, our heads ached and our hearts thumped (anyway, mine did, and it is no use disguising the fact).’
And from the last of this series of dead letters:
‘Presently our trench crossed No Man’s Land—at least, it once was No Man’s Land; now it belongs to us until we can turn it over to its proper owners. We examined Fritz’s handiwork where he had spent months of watching and fighting. We could see what British fighting was like by the evidence there.... At one place we were within forty yards of him, but we heard no sound. The only sound that broke the stillness of that beautiful day was the bang of our own guns and the swish of our crumps overhead. At one point, close to the tangled wire of Fritz’s front line, we saw a sad sight, perhaps the saddest sight of war, groups of our own lads, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Heroes, they had done their bit and there they lie. They have died so that others can live to be free from the yoke of a monster in human form, whose greed for power must be stifled.’