This extract from a letter found on a French captain who was killed on the Meuse will give to young and inexperienced officers a good idea of the thoughts that must absorb the mind of an efficient commander.
“I am alone,” he wrote, “in this underground shelter, still permeated with the foul atmosphere of the Germans, where the evidences of a disorderly flight, biscuits, bloody rags, stained letters, a biography of Hindenburg, etc., lie scattered in every direction. I am alone after having relieved the company that made the attack. I am alone without counsel if I hesitate, without help if I weaken, in this captured trench which is half destroyed. My two hundred men are blindly piling in, ignorant of their surroundings, of what to do. The sight of them restores my waning energy. I have to think for them, and put everything in order before daybreak. I consult my watch: it is midnight.”
Here is a Chief, a real leader! He goes out; until dawn he inspects his sector, he sets his men at work. To each he assigns a task; he stimulates them, prevents them from falling asleep, and does not spare himself. He can count on all his subordinates to do their best, and at the break of day, if the bombardment is resumed, if the counter-attack is launched, the trench will be ready; the losses will be lessened; resistance will have been made possible. It is by such methods, by the constant co-operation of the officer and his men, that the army performs marvellous feats. It is this constant co-operation, this comprehension of duty by the humblest leader, that enabled us to hold out at Verdun.
The most difficult missions should be entrusted to those known to be the best qualified to fulfil them.
Once the signal of attack is given, the officers and non-commissioned officers will scarcely have any other means of ensuring obedience to their orders than by setting an example to their men.
We take this occasion to render a profound homage to inferior ranking officers of the French armies. They indeed are and shall remain the heroes of this war. They have fallen on the field of honour since August, 1914, not by thousands but by tens of thousands. Never, under the most critical circumstances, has their morale weakened for a single moment. At all times, men equally as brave as their predecessors have been found to fill the places of those who had so heroically (I was going to say so cheerfully) gone down to death. By the sacrifice of their lives to their country, they have not only set an example to the officers of their Allies, but have also given the latter time to form and train themselves, and I can truthfully say, to equal them. The bravery displayed by the infantry officers of the English, Italian, and Russian armies is on a par with that of the French officers, and within a short time, the American officers, I am sure, will show themselves worthy of the same verdict.
South of La Bovelle Farm
January 29, 1917—12.30 P.M.
Our officers have always and from the very first day of the war invariably marched ahead of their men, leading them straight to the enemy. They have advanced through the most intense curtain-fire; they have exposed themselves to the fire of innumerable machine-guns; they have been the targets of rifles and grenades. Thousands have been killed; not one has hesitated, not one has turned back. The Allied officers have exhibited the same daring, the same bravery.