The challenge of the dead

by Stephen Graham

Yet the Seventh Division had been destroyed at the First battle of Ypres, only its framework had remained; its large reinforcements had been worked off in the night-raids and at Neuve Chapelle, and its second reinforcements had been almost exhausted at this Festubert. The speeches were made, not so much to the heroes as to new drafts. Kitchener's army was however flooding into France, and despite enormous casualties we were beginning in a way to have a national army. What was left of the old army became the instructors of the new. The regular army gave way to the volunteers.

It was a time of heart-searching in England. Optimism and pessimism began to be sharply defined. Russia had been routed. Lord Northcliffe made his sensational effort to make an easy-going London face bitter reality. Mr. Lloyd George at the Ministry of Munitions began to take a larger broader view of the military aspect of the war than did most of his colleagues. Preparations were made for the manufacture of shells for the terrific onslaught of the Somme next year. Whilst many poor fools still thought that 1915 would see us through the strife, plans on the basis of a three or four years struggle were being definitely made. Then we were beginning to manufacture poison gas and had at last invented a handy bomb—the Mills grenade, our answer to the stick-bombs which dangled from the belts of German soldiers. It was a time of far-reaching military plans and dreams. All grown-up children who were not themselves tin soldiers were playing soldiers. Flying men carried terror across the skies, and sailors of submarines carried it under the sea. No prophet knew the number of men who would have to be killed before the politicians would be ready to come to Versailles to discuss the matter. From England, France and Germany three or four million must actually die—that fact was unknown. In the summer of 1915 the number who had died was far from that figure. It is curious however to think of the many who had laid themselves down in earth's earthy bed in the full faith that their sacrifice would not be in vain—to think of the proud Germans, the fine ones, not the base ones, who believed in their Kaiser and that wonderful German Fatherland to which they owed their life before they owed their death, and to think of what was to come. Germany and her Kaiser not only defeated but humiliated and cast lower than all nations in old Europe; to think of the loyal Russian soldiers who perished in the first enthusiasm of the war with a bright starry faith in Russia, her Church and her Tsar, of the Grand Duke Oleg for instance, that young hero whose warm blood grew cold whilst the street-bred people of Berlin knocked nails in great Hindenburg's wooden statue—to think of these first Russians who lay dead with their weapons beside them in 1914-15, and then to think of the hideous revolution and those murders in Ekaterinburg when all Russia fell; to think of the fine youth of England and Scotland, of France, of Serbia, who died in the faith not only of national victory but of a victory for humanity, the boys whose fragment of iron destiny clove their brains or rived their hearts at the outset of the fray, and then to think of that sordid clash of selfishness at Versailles and of the untamed menagerie of Europe let loose in 1920. The spiritualists quickly claimed to get special messages from the dead. But did the dead only speak to the spiritualists? Did they say nothing more than was said to them? Most of us alas, hear nothing or only a "Dinna ye hear it?" a wailing of the pipes at an infinite number of poor soldiers' funerals.

Well, the war enters a new phase in the summer of 1915. It will be fought in a larger more terrible way, the number of millions of deaths will begin after a while to seem not so far off. Killing becomes the religion of the hour.

The first hundreds of thousands of the volunteers roll up. The old Seventh Division which we have been following is broken up and reconstructed. The Guards Division was formed. So Scots Guards and Grenadiers marched away to join new comrades, to leave behind brave Borders and Gordons and Devons and Duke of Wellingtons. The 92nd feted the Scots, the Devons the Grenadiers; the Gordon pipers played all the laments of the clans and "Will ye no come back again!"

And they went to Wizernes to prepare for the battle of Loos—a conflict which the gallant Highland lads were destined to enter first and the bright polished Guards but second, yet both to shine and die.

In June General Foch's Tenth Army launched its Artois attack against the great ridge of "Notre Dame de Lorette" which commands the Lens country from the South as the high ground of Loos does from the North. A hundred thousand Frenchmen perished for Notre Dame and it is henceforth a place of pilgrimage for France. The battle was the prelude to our battle of Loos and whilst the great new British army in reserve drilled and marched away to the North, it heard each night the drum-fire of the 75's rolling from the South. Later in the war when the British took over all the line 'twixt Lens and Arras the Canadians took Foch's victory a step further and captured Vimy Ridge. What Foch did in the summer of '15 was however to be eclipsed by what the combined armies should do in the autumn. Reliance was placed chiefly on the new man-power. The earlier battles of Neuve Chapelle and Festubert had been tests of the relationship of gun-power and man-power. Opinion inclined to support the theory that a superiority in numbers was the most telling factor in a battle. This seemingly was disproved, and the next theory was that in order to obtain victory there must be overwhelming superiority both in guns and in men. The Somme battle proved that even these were not enough.

In the battle of Loos however all the interest was centred on men, men personally. The new base was St. Omer, the picturesque ecclesiastical town with its castellated church towers in relief against the sky—all so thronged with khaki—henceforth till the war ends to be a great war centre. France lies in a bower beyond, and there are squads of poplar trees on hills, and green and happy meadows never scarred by shells or wilted by gas. On the left on the road out to Wizernes is now a large cemetery, and here lie French dead with the tricolour upon them, British with an infinity of flowers and wreaths, Americans with grim and tall white crosses—American dead who will not be exhumed perhaps. Behind the American graves stand wedges of unpainted wood—a Chinese plot where lie what was mortal of many unknown coolies. On the right lie Germans, on the left soldados of Portugal. This is called playfully the souvenir cemetery—there are so many of the dead they can be thus arranged, as children might arrange their toys. St. Omer was known as a great base hospital to which alas, so many were called to look their last upon their dying children, dying sons of England breathing out their last words before their bodies were laid away. There are those who are fond of saying that everything began at St. Omer. But for many also it was the place where it all—ended.

The cemetery past, (How it rains on it now!) you come to aerodromes all tortured and torn, indications of Handley Page but no indications of those who fly, the cages are all empty and there stands not a sentry. In plain blunt English the passer-by is told that "Trespassers will be shot" but in the heavy rain of a Saturday afternoon a muddy crowd of French boys are playing a football match. Chinamen evidently worked beside these aerodromes, for you see their scrawls on the sheds and shelters.

Wizernes, where the Guards Division was formed, lies in a hollow below a long green ridge. Most of it is painted white—including Au bon Diable a tavern of some name. The people know a passing Englishman, not by the cut of his clothes alone but by his walk and his complexion and style. Standing at their doorways old men give military salutes to any Englishman who happens to go by. All know bits of our tongue, of which they are as proud as if they had wounds to show. A poor woman in a little beer-house has eight daughters, five of whom are married and a sixth has a child by a Canadian. Little Renée, flaxen-haired, ruddy-cheeked, is getting on very well and the mother adores her, though a father in the New World his progeny has forgotten. This sixth daughter of substantial mother was in service at Havre and met the soldier there; she is now in service at St. Omer and not at all "ruined." There are thousands of baby tokens of the war in France. Some died no doubt, through lack of care; lightly they came and lightly they go, but a widespread sentimental feeling about departed Tommy shields those who now, live from any feeling of disgrace.

Of course the men at the base begot more infants than the men in the line, the latter were too much used up for "love" or "lust," saw fewer girls and had less time on their hands. But all had their opportunities. As we know, a great number of marriages were effected, and not a few overseas men are now living with French wives.