“What's this?” said the general.
“Casualty, sir,” said the quaking platoon commander.
“Not bad, I hope?”
“Dead, sir,” said the subaltern. He meant dead drunk.
The general drew himself up, and said, in his dramatic way, “The army commander salutes the honored dead!”
And the drunken private put his head from under the blanket and asked, “What's the old geezer a-sayin' of?”
That story may have been invented in a battalion mess, but it went through the army affixed to the name of Hunter Weston, and seemed to fit him.
The 8th Corps was on the left in the first attack on the Somme, when many of our divisions were cut to pieces in the attempt to break the German line at Gommecourt. It was a ghastly tragedy, which spoiled the success on the right at Fricourt and Montauban. But Gen. Hunter Weston was not degomme, as the French would say, and continued to air his theories on life and warfare until the day of Victory, when once again we had “muddled through,” not by great generalship, but by the courage of common men.
Among the divisional generals with whom I came in contact—I met most of them at one time or another—were General Hull of the 56th (London) Division, General Hickey of the 16th (Irish) Division, General Harper of the 51st (Highland) Division, General Nugent of the 36th (Ulster) Division, and General Pinnie of the 35th (Bantams) Division, afterward of the 33d.
General Hull was a handsome, straight-speaking, straight-thinking man, and I should say an able general. “Ruthless,” his men said, but this was a war of ruthlessness, because life was cheap. Bitter he was at times, because he had to order his men to do things which he knew were folly. I remember sitting on the window-sill of his bedroom, in an old house of Arras, while he gave me an account of “the battle in the dark,” in which the Londoners and other English troops lost their direction and found themselves at dawn with the enemy behind them. General Hull made no secret of the tragedy or the stupidity... On another day I met him somewhere on the other side of Peronne, before March 21st, when he was commanding the 16th (Irish) Division in the absence of General Hickey, who was ill. He talked a good deal about the belief in a great German offensive, and gave many reasons for thinking it was all “bluff.” A few days later the enemy had rolled over his lines... Out of thirteen generals I met at that time, there were only three who believed that the enemy would make his great assault in a final effort to gain decisive victory, though our Intelligence had amassed innumerable proofs and were utterly convinced of the approaching menace.