“The Captain ’e says....” “Lieutenant Blank ups with his rifle quick-like....” “The Major? ’E’s a fair nut, ’e is. First over the parapet ’e was, and going that fast that, what with the bombs you ’ave round you, and them you carry in a box, we couldn’t ’ardly keep up with ’im!”
This is a sergeant-major on the death of his Colonel:
“Yes, sir,” he says in his deep, slow voice, “our Colonel was hit, the best soldier that ever commanded this battalion. He was a grand man. ‘Sergeant-major,’ he says to me, ‘sergeant-major, I’m just going up to have a look round.’ Well, he didn’t come back. Then a man coming down, wounded, says in a great fuss: ‘Sergeant-major, it’s something awful up there. The Colonel’s killed,’ he says, ‘and the Adjutant, too!’ ‘You’ve got the wind up, my man,’ I said to the chap, not believing him. ‘You run along to the dressing-station and get your head bound up. You haven’t any brains to spare, remember.’ But, all the same, I went up to see for myself what was happening. It was true, sure enough. There was the Colonel, mortal bad he was, and the Adjutant killed. Ah, he was a grand gentleman, our Colonel! There were not many like him, sir! We could ill spare him!”
When you have seen officers and men together in the trenches you understand Francis Grenfell’s dying words: “Tell them I died happy. I loved my squadron.” Those noble words are the epitome of the lifework of the Regimental Officer.
Out of this close friendship between officer and man springs a great spirit of camaraderie between officers in the trenches. It is no small test of character for a group of men of different stations, ages, and dispositions to live in the closest possible association, as men do in the trenches, for days at a time, and never to fail to display that mutual forbearance and readiness to serve which help men over the rough paths of life. During the months I have been at the front I have been privileged, at different times, to see a great deal of officers together in the trenches. I have spent nights with them in their dug-outs; I have had various meals with them at their messes; I have accompanied them on their rounds. What has struck me more than anything has been the real spirit of co-operation existing between them. This takes the form not only of the sharing of the minor comforts of life, such as the pooling of gifts sent out from home—which was only to be expected—but of a continual striving to help one another, to render one another small services in their duties, to cover up, if needs be, one another’s shortcomings, and, above all, to make things smooth for the new man.
On the other hand, active service appears to accentuate inter-regimental rivalry. Trenches are a great theme for criticism. There may be a battalion in our army in the field to-day that has given a written testimony to the troops from which it has “taken over” of the splendid condition in which the trenches were left. If there is, I have not found it. The relieving battalion always roundly abuses its predecessor for the state of the trenches. In every trench I have been in I have been shown with pride the improvements made by the actual tenants: “You should have seen the state of things those bloody fellows in the Blankshires left behind!...” I once heard the Commander of the Second Army get in a sly dig at a brigade on parade regarding this inevitable trench criticism. It was a very human touch in a formal address, and evoked broad smiles from the audience, both officers and men.
Nothing could be more charming than the atmosphere of a trench mess. The Colonel is back at the battalion headquarters with the Adjutant, so that the senior officer present is the Captain in command of the company holding the particular section of trench, or at most a Major. The rest of the company at table will consist of two or three subalterns, the machine-gun officer, possibly the doctor, and sometimes the Chaplain. The “Padre” is, properly speaking, attached to the Field Ambulance, but one often meets these gallant men in the firing-line, making their tour of the men under their charge as conscientiously as the Captain makes his round of his trenches.
You must picture the company seated on rough benches or ammunition-boxes (here and there one finds a chair salved from a wrecked farm) round a makeshift table, knocked together by the orderlies, with sheets of newspaper in lieu of a tablecloth. Most of the food is put on the table at once—sardines in an enamel soup-plate, cold tongue ditto, ration bread (rather mouldy if we are in an isolated post), some kind of hot meat on an enamel dish, and enamel cups for drinks. The conversation is sprightly, mostly of the events of the day. The presence of the “Padre” curbs the freedom of the language to some extent, though, Heaven knows, he, poor man, has already discovered that the army swears terribly in Flanders. “I can stand a good deal,” a “Padre” said to me one day, “but I draw the line firmly at some words.”
This imperturbable young man with the shaven head and the yellow moustache, whose dinner is being continually interrupted by gruff voices issuing from the darkness at the door of the dug-out, “Can I speak to the Captain?” “A message for the Captain!” “About those blankets for the men, sir ...” is responsible for the safety of this stretch of trench and its tenants. He transacts his business through the door of the dug-out and eats his dinner at the same time, always tranquilly. The hole in the back of his tunic is a souvenir of a piece of high-explosive shell in the shoulder, and the cut in the knee of his trousers is due to the same cause. A boy with yellow hair and pink cheeks, who is talking telescopic rifles with the doctor, is Lord of the Hate Squad—in other words, in charge of the snipers. Only that afternoon I had seen him, with a companion, amid bullets snapping viciously against a ruined wall, patiently waiting for a certain sniping Hun whose habitat was in a tree. He had not got him that day, but the Hate Squad had their eye on the sniper, and sooner or later his number would go up.
A burst of laughter from the other end of the table greets a story told with infinite gusto by the machine-gun officer, a phlegmatic young man with the ribbon of the Military Cross on his tunic. He knows German well, and one of his amusements is to revile the Germans in their own tongue. He is recounting some of the epithets he applies to them.