In the summer the Prince of Wales left G.H.Q., and was attached to the First Army, with which he went through a regular course of training as a Staff Officer. For some time he was on the Intelligence. Here his work was to read through the German newspapers, and the letters and documents taken from prisoners or the dead, and translate any passages that appeared to furnish useful information. When I was going down to visit a portion of our line towards the south in June, it was the Prince of Wales, who was then serving in the Q.M.G. branch of the First Army, who handed over our passes.
It is the fate of all writers who would describe the lives of Princes to be exposed to the charge of sycophancy. Yet there is no life for a plant of this growth in the perfectly natural and wholesome atmosphere surrounding the Prince of Wales at the front. He is not playing at soldiering. His periods of leave are few and far between. His life must often be very monotonous by reason of the restrictions which considerations of State must necessarily place upon his young and ardent temperament. Nevertheless, he sticks to his work, because he feels that his place is with our army in France. In after years, when the land over which the young Prince will one day rule is reaping the harvest of that peace for which our men in Flanders endured and died, the months which Edward, Prince of Wales, spent, of his own wish, with the army in the field will surely form another and a closer tie between him and the Empire.
CHAPTER XII
THE GUARDS IN FLANDERS.
“... They (the 3rd French Chasseurs) had neared the cross-road, when Wellingtons’s voice was heard clear above the storm, ‘Stand up, Guards!’ Then from the shelter of the wayside banks rose the line of Maitland’s brigade of Guards, four deep and fifteen hundred strong, which poured a withering volley into the square, and charging, swept them out of the combat.”
(“The Guards at Waterloo.” From The Life of Wellington, by the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P.)
“Tangier,” “Namur,” “Gibraltar,” “Blenheim,” “Malplaquet,” “Dettingen,” “Talavera,” “Fuentes d’Onor,” “Waterloo,” “Alma,” “Inkerman,” “Tel-el-Kebir,” “South Africa”—what a host of gallant memories these battle honours of the Guards call forth, what a glorious procession of heroic figures defiling through history amid the fire and smoke of a hundred deathless fights! Men come and go in war. The regiment remains. Its battle honours are the symbol of what it was, the promise of what it will be.
No body of troops in the British Army has redeemed the promise of its battle honours more illustriously in this war than the Guards. Marlborough, Wellington, Raglan, who saw in their careers, each in his turn, that the Guards were true to the promise of their colours, must look down from the Elysian Fields in proud admiration of the way in which the Guards in this war have once more maintained the untarnished splendour of their name. It will be with rightful satisfaction that the historian of the future will record how, in an unmilitary age, the British Army proved itself not unmindful of its great traditions, but he will be able to add that no regiments showed themselves more highly imbued with respect for the noblest qualities of the soldier than the Guards.
It is this same respect for soldierly attributes that is the outstanding feature of the Guards on active service. It is not a pose. It is not an affectation of the officers. It is not an individual whim. It is an attitude of mind that pervades the Guards as a whole, from their most senior officer down to the youngest drummer-boy. It is not a creation of this war, for then surely it would have withered for lack of fertile soil, by reason of the number of original Guardsmen who have died. On the contrary, it is seen as strong and as virile as ever, even in men who abandoned their civilian pursuits to take service with the Guards. The young men of good birth who have received commissions in the Guards after the outbreak of war, and the recruits who come out with drafts—novices all, not only to the war, but also to the Guards—are saturated with this manly respect for soldierly virtues.
In what do these soldierly virtues consist? First and foremost, in courage. Courage, indeed, is their alpha and omega, for it is the basis of all merit in the soldier. The standard that the Guards set, the standard that they most emulate and most admire, is the courage that recks not of danger, the courage that thinks first of the common cause, then of the fellow-man, and of self last; the courage that leads the forlorn hope as blithely as the storm, that is uncomplaining in hardships and humane after victory; the courage that hides itself beneath a bushel when the ordeal is past.
Then there is discipline. The strictest discipline on duty, a certain friendly good-fellowship off duty—these are the relations between officers and men of the Guards, as, of course, they are between officers and men right through the British Army. In the field the Guards officer is a guardian to his men. He is eternally preoccupied with their comfort in the trenches and in the billets; he furthers their sports and games, often out of his own pocket; he takes a general interest in their welfare. He is debonair and democratic in his dealings with them off duty, and they respect the familiarity thus allowed them, and in time of need repay their leaders’ generous solicitude by a loyalty and a devotion that are beyond all praise.