In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

I was a Reservist of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and had done seven years with the colours, so I at once went to my old home. I will confess that I was a bit downhearted, because my brother, also a Reservist, had come home, too, and he had the pain of saying good-bye to his wife, as well as to our parents. But we made the best of things, and it was the better for the two of us because we both belonged to the same battalion.

How many of us who assembled at Euston Station for the journey to our depot in County Armagh, Ireland, are left, I wonder? Not many, there cannot be, for the Royal Irish Fusiliers have suffered terribly in the war. The old soldiers assembled with brave hearts and were full of fun, and left Euston singing “Tipperary” in fine form. I well remember how much amused we were, when crossing in the boat, at a man who had come from Lancashire. He was wearing wooden clogs, and had a bottle of whisky with him; and he sang and danced and became particularly lively, and we thoroughly enjoyed his performance. At the depot we found our clothes and equipment waiting for us, and next day a big draft of us set out for England, my brother and myself amongst them. It was wonderful to see the draft and realise that here were fully trained soldiers, completely equipped, ready to take the field, and yet only a few hours ago many of the men were in civil life in various parts of the United Kingdom.

I had the strange experience of dealing with German soldiers before we left England, for a score of us were given ammunition and driven to Folkestone Harbour Station to meet a train of German Reservists who were trying to get away by a boat which was lying in the harbour, ready to take them to the Fatherland by way of Flushing. But the German Reservists didn’t get off, and they had a big surprise when they saw us waiting for them. We searched them, of course, and found that several of the men were carrying arms. We took them to Christ’s Hospital, the beautiful building in Surrey, and I suppose that they are still prisoners of war in England. These men were the usual type of Germans who were so often seen in London—waiters, and barbers, and so on, and I fancy that some of them were not sorry to be just too late to join the German Army. I cannot help thinking how different were these “reservists” to the long-service men who had rejoined the British colours.

I am not going into any details of the earlier part of the war; but I was not long before I saw a few more German prisoners on the other side. We had marched two days without seeing the enemy, then our scouts returned with three prisoners. The scouts told us that they had banged into the Germans, who were retreating fast, and had captured these three fellows. I was deeply interested in the prisoners, because they were the first German soldiers I had seen. They struck me as being somewhat miserable specimens, but that was perhaps because they seemed very hungry. They looked better when we had given them some biscuit, which of course we did at once.

Very soon after that I saw a farm which our artillery had hit, and which was in ruins and full of dead Germans. They had not had much of a chance against the British gunners, and I noticed that along the road leading to the farm ammunition was lying in heaps. It was a gruesome place to billet in; but in spite of the German dead we passed quite a comfortable night at the farm. Next day we were on the move again, and reached a river where a bridge had been blown up. This delayed us till the following morning, as our transport could not cross. But we found a way out of that trouble by taking the transport along a railway, and a rough, hard job it was, too, for we needed four horses and men with ropes to do the hauling, as the wheels kept getting stuck between the sleepers. But in spite of all the difficulties we got the transport across, and reached a town which the Germans had passed through; and we did not want telling which way they had gone, as we could see champagne bottles and wine bottles along the road for miles—drink which the Germans had looted from the town.

Drink and outrage and destruction marked the path of the German troops, wherever they had been, in those early unforgettable stages of the war, just as they did afterwards; though I believe that now, when they know that they are outcasts from civilisation, the Germans are disposed to mend their ways, if only to get better treatment when the final reckoning comes.

There comes into my mind as I talk the picture of a dreadful sight I saw near Armentières. We had reached a place and entered it, not knowing that the Germans were so near at hand, though we knew that we had them on the drive and that they were going away from us as hard as they could travel. Suddenly we came to a nunnery, where the nuns showed us the dead body of a little French boy, a mere child about five years old. A glance was enough to show that he had been bayoneted in the stomach, and it was clear that the cowardly murder had been done quite recently. One of our officers made inquiries of some nuns, and he was told that a drunken German soldier had killed the child. Can you wonder that when our eyes saw such dreadful evidence of German devilry and German cowardice, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, at any rate, made up their minds that whenever the chance arose the enemy should be severely punished? Nothing has been done by British soldiers in this war that has not been fair and square fighting, but I am glad to think that many a German coward and murderer has paid the penalty of some foul crime at the point of a British bayonet.

Even in the way of ordinary warfare many innocent women and children have been killed, quite apart from the large numbers who have been wantonly murdered by German brutes. In one village we passed through one of our men found a woman’s head of hair, which had been cut off, and the body itself was found by civilians. The woman had been maltreated and murdered by the Germans, and on every hand there were signs of the enemy’s ferocity and inhumanity. Buildings were in ruins and homes were wrecked, doors having been battered down so that the savage soldiery could wreak their maddened will on fellow-creatures and their belongings.

On every hand there was evidence of outrage. I went to a farm in this village to try and buy some milk and eggs. On entering a room which had a big fireplace, I saw in the corner of the fireplace an old man who seemed to be an idiot. A woman, whom I took to be his wife, and could speak broken English, told me that the Uhlans had taken him away, with his hands tied behind him.

“Why did they take him? What had he done?” I asked her.