Fields of Victory

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

The following night the brigade was relieved, after what was on the whole a very successful action. All the officers responsible for its Staff work seem to have been on duty, without rest or sleep, for some thirty-six hours, and after the attack was over there were still German prisoners to be examined.

Such is Staff work in the actual battle-line. What it needs of will, courage, and endurance will be clear, I think, to anyone reading this account, and the experience may be taken as typical of thousands like it at every stage of the war, so long as it was a war of trenches and positions. And what is also typical is that while the personal risks of the writer are scarcely hinted at, his mind, amid all his cares of superintendence and organisation, is still passionately alive to the individual risks and sufferings of his comrades. He ends on what he calls "another small point which deserves mention":

"When the officers and men of those two attacking battalions lay in the mud on that pitch-black night, soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, as they lay there waiting for the awful hour when it seems as if horror itself has been let loose, and as they wondered in their own minds what lay before them, gradually the German bombardment started, and then by degrees increased in intensity, until for fully thirty minutes before zero hour it became perfect hell. Every one of those officers and men, without a doubt, realised that the enemy had discovered that he was going to be attacked, and that he would be on the alert and waiting for them. Yet did any one of them falter, did any one of them for a single moment dream of not starting with the rest of his comrades and doing what he knew it was his duty to do?"

"I only know two things: Firstly, that a very great number of them, if not all, realised only too well that the enemy had discovered our plans; and, secondly, that the only ones who did not start were those who could not, because they had been either killed or wounded."

And now turn with me to the top of all—the General Staff of the Army in France—the brain of the whole mighty movement. It was with no light emotion that I found myself last January, on a bitter winter day, among a labyrinth of small rooms running round the quadrangle of the old Ecole Militaire at Montreuil, while they were still full of Staff officers gathering up the records of the war. Here, or in the Staff train moving with the Commander-in-Chief along the front, the vast organisation of battle culminated in a few guiding brains from which energising and unifying direction flowed out to all parts of the field of war. Here were the heads of Q., of A., of G.—in other words, of Supply, Reinforcement, and Operations. In a bare room, with a few chairs and tables and an iron stove, the Director of Operations was at work; close by was the office of the Quartermaster-General, while up another staircase and along another narrow passage were the quarters of the Adjutant-General; and somewhere, I suppose, in the now historic building, was or had been the office of the Commander-in-Chief himself. The Intelligence Department was not far off, I knew, in the old town; I had been its grateful guest in 1917. The directing Intelligence of the Army flowed out from here to the front, while from the front, at the same time, there came back a constant stream of practical knowledge and experience, keeping the life of G.H.Q. perpetually fresh, correcting theory by experience and kindling experience by theory. The complexities and responsibilities of the work done were vast indeed.

"At any time," says an officer of the General Staff, "during the operations of the past year, work was commenced here in the office, or on the train, when G.H.Q. was advanced nearer the battle-line, at any hour before nine o'clock. The work to be done consists, in general terms, of co-ordinating all the arrangements for the operations undertaken and carried out by the several armies; the issuing of general orders and instructions for operations, the details of which were worked out by the armies concerned; the issuing of orders for the movement of divisions, of artillery units, cavalry, and Tanks—in fact, all the different services which go to make up the Army. These orders must be so arranged as to fit in with the roads and railway facilities, or the mechanical transport available, and must be so couched as not to interfere or clash with arrangements made by the armies in the Army areas. This necessitates very intimate liaison with the armies and with the departments concerned. Maps have to be kept up to date, showing the dispositions of troops at all times, both on the battle-front and in back areas.

"In addition, there are the arrangements with our Allies, the fixing of areas between ourselves and our Allies, and between our own armies and the lines of communication. During operations messages have to be sent out giving information of the situation to the troops, to the public, and to the War Office at home. Schemes are worked out beforehand to deal with any possible eventuality, so that in the event of a hostile attack the movement of troops may be carried out with the least possible delay. Similar schemes are worked out for operations to be undertaken by ourselves, and methods of attack are thrashed out in consultation with the Army Commanders and Staff. The various details of this work fill in the day very thoroughly. This office (of Operations) rarely closes before midnight, and the principal officers are frequently at work until the small hours of the morning. There is, of course, an officer on duty all night.

"During the German attack in March the officer responsible here for the movement of troops by rail did not leave the office even for meals for a number of days on end."

So the long ascent climbs, from the humblest platoon in the field, through company, battalion, division, corps, and Army to the General Staff, and the British Commander-in-Chief, moving and directing the whole; with beyond these, again, as the apex of the great construction, the figure of the illustrious Frenchman, who for the last six months of the war, by the common consent of the Allies, and especially by the free will of England and her soldiers, held the general scheme of battle in his hands. In the British Army what we have been watching is an active hierarchy of duty, discipline, loyalty, intelligence—the creation of a whole people, bent on victory for a great cause. Must it, indeed, vanish with the war, like a dream at cock-crow, or shall we yet see its marvellous training, its developments of mind and character, gradually take other shapes and enter into other combinations—for the saving and not the slaying of men?