The whole relationship between officer and man in our army is based on incidents like these. To get the best out of his men, an officer must show them that he does not fear to do what he demands of them. Seldom, if ever, is a stout-hearted officer “let down.” His example endures, even after he is gone. More than once, I am sure, the souls of our officers, slain in battle, have paused, as they winged their way homewards, to contemplate with pride their men, their officers all dead, holding on in an obliterated trench, sustained in their resolution by the lesson their dead leaders taught them.
On countless occasions in this war the teachings of the Regimental Officer have borne fruit, even after he himself had joined the great majority. In the assault on Neuve Chapelle in March the leading companies of the 1st 39th Garhwalis lost all their officers in the first ten minutes. But the brave little Nepalese hillmen never wavered. They had seen their officers die at the head of their companies. They remembered ... and it kept them firm. In the same historic fight the Scottish Rifles lost all their officers save one, Lieutenant Somervail, a Second Lieutenant of Special Reserve. But the men of this splendid regiment, whose tradition is that there shall be no surrender, went on behind their non-commissioned officers, despite heavy losses, against barbed wire and machine-guns, “moulding themselves,” as their regimental sergeant-major said to me afterwards, “on the glorious example of their officers.” When we recaptured at Hooge on August 9 the positions we lost on July 30, a party of twenty-five men of the 2nd Durham light Infantry, under the command of Lance-Corporal Smith, were lost in the dense smoke of battle, and held out alone in an obliterated trench for more than twenty-four hours, without orders, without connection with the rest of the troops, and only came away when they saw a fresh line being dug behind the line they were holding. The officers of this fine battalion had created in their men’s minds the proper idea of the functions of an officer, so that, when there were no officers left to lead, this young lance-corporal stepped forward and “carried on” in the best traditions of the service.
In the firing-line you get down to bedrock. Character tells. The cult is of the “stout fellow,” the “thruster.” The men will vaguely admire the clever strategy of their Generals which enabled the soldier to sing:
“We gave them hell
At Neuve Chapelle.
Here we are again!”
But their outspoken praise of any one General will always be traceable back to qualities of personal bravery that he has displayed. If they admire and respect Sir John French, it is because they recall him on the South African veld, because they remember him sitting on the roadside with them among the shells during the retreat from Mons. If they think a world of Sir Douglas Haig, it is likewise because they have seen him in the midst of his men on many critical occasions, not forgetting that historic afternoon in the first battle of Ypres, when the Commander-in-Chief and Sir Douglas Haig, waiting at Hooge, heard the news that the Germans had broken our line, and later that the 2nd Worcesters had saved the day. In present circumstances practically the only Generals that come into direct contact with the men are the Brigadiers, and I have found that the Brigadiers who are the best loved are those who are constantly making the round of the trenches, who show the men that they are willing to expose themselves to the same perils as they ask the men to incur.
I have been on many a long round of trenches with the Brigadiers through mud and water and evil smells, along roads in view of the Germans where bullets sang and snapped, across fields where shells were plumping, right up to the firing-line, where “whizz-bangs” were demolishing the parapet. I have often found myself admiring the physical endurance and the calm courage of these Brigadiers—who are not all young men—and have read the reflection of my own thought in the eyes of the men in the trenches who saluted as we passed.
It is in the firing-line that the relationship between officer and man, which it has taken so many decades to build up in the British Army, comes to full fruition. Its essence is the spirit of the playground. I am sure that the British officer is to his men, more than anything else, the captain of the team. The game is stern, the stakes are high, but the spirit is the old one: “Buck up! and play the game!”
Officer and man live together in closer companionship than ever was possible before they entered the firing-line. Their bond of mutual confidence is sealed by a thousand recollections of dangers faced together, of assaults side by side against the enemy, of perilous patrols at night. The daily tragedies of the trenches unite them still closer, drawing them together as men sleeping in the open will huddle up for warmth.
A young Captain was in his dug-out in the trenches one day, when word came back to him that one of his men had been sniped. He hurried out and along the trench to the spot indicated. As he came to a traverse, a man sprang out of a “funk-hole.” “Don’t go round there, sir,” he said; “there’s a sniper watching that traverse. He’s just got one of the men.” In a feeling of spontaneous sympathy the young officer went on. As he rounded the traverse in sight of his man, who had just expired on the floor of the trench, the sniper’s rifle cracked again, and the officer collapsed with a bullet through the body.
There was no doctor in the trench at the time. The wounded man’s comrades, who examined him, found that he had been shot through the abdomen. The only chance of life was to leave him where he lay. So, while a message was sent down for the doctor, his men built a shelter over him in the open trench.