With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

But there were many homes in England in which this carefully guarded secret had long been known—in fact, ever since the sinister spectre of the war had crept into the house on the sudden departure of husband, son, or brother for the port of embarkation. Imagination, quickly stirred by love, pictured the young soldier landed in post-haste in France, and forthwith marched into the trenches—into battle.

I met one of the first divisions of the New Army to come out to France within a few days of its landing. I fell in with it, indeed, at the end of its very first march towards the front from the railhead, where it had detrained on its journey up from the coast base. One of its battalions came into the little village where the war correspondents had their camp.

It was a picture that will not soon fade from my memory, the files of wet and mud-stained Highlanders tramping in through the gathering twilight, their baggage-carts and field-kitchens rumbling along behind. Their transport seemed strangely spick-and-span under its layer of yellow splashings from the road, and then, reading on the side of a cart the inscription, giving number and name of the battalion, I realized with a thrill that this was the New Army.

With what fresh interest I looked at those men again! The smiles and tears of a thousand homes seemed to wreathe themselves about those fine stalwart figures. If these bonny Highlanders did not each carry a Marshal’s baton in his haversack, then, at least, they bore there the hopes and pride of England. For, say what you will, the New Army occupies a place of its own in the nation’s thoughts. Regulars and Territorials both have their warm corners in the national heart, but the New Army—it is you, it is I, it is all of us. It is a child of the war, born since we broke with our old peaceful past, born of the new spirit of self-sacrifice and determination that is remaking a nation under our very eyes. The thought that is uppermost on seeing the New Army in the field is that these are the men who must complete what has been begun, the men that must carry on the torch so long and so bravely upheld by the Old Army.

That battalion was quartered in the village for a few days. That very evening, and each evening during its stay, their pipers strode once up and once down the village street, playing the time-hallowed tattoo. After nightfall the men quartered in the barns and sheds all around chased dull care away by impromptu concerts. The rousing choruses—veritable symposia of all the music-hall successes of the past two years—mingling with the strains of mouth-organs, evoked memories which were positively poignant in our isolation at the front of tired crowds streaming back into London on hot Bank Holiday nights in summer. For a few days one caught a glimpse of the kilt in the village, one heard now and then the skirl of the pipes, and then, one morning at daybreak, the battalion moved on.

After that, I continually came across the New Army at the front. I seemed to be following, stage by stage, its progressive acclimatization to the new life, its training for the new work. More than once I encountered an entire division on the march between towns in rear of our lines. The men’s uniform seemed to be of a more homogeneous khaki tint than that of the veteran battalions in the field, and I was particularly struck by the excellent leather harness and the splendid condition of the big shire horses of the transport.

Little by little the New Army was creeping towards the front. Now I would meet one of its officers doing a spell in the trenches, now a company trudging with full equipment towards the firing-line along some Flanders road, whose forlorn appearance spoke of “frightfulness” past and to come. In the same way as the Territorials, the New Army was gradually familiarized with the conditions in the trenches, until a whole division was deemed suitably prepared for holding its part of the line alongside of Regular and Territorial troops.

Like the Commander-in-Chief, everybody in the field was impressed by the remarkably fine physique of the men of the New Army. Their appearance fully dispelled an idea that was current at one time, not only in England but also at the front, that the first of the New Armies would be made up of poor specimens of the nation’s manhood—that wastage in the form of the permanently unemployed and the casual labourers, who are always the first to be hit by an economic disturbance such as war produces. The splendid proportions of the men in many new battalions, not only in stature but also in muscular development, suggested that these men were ideal fighters, whatever their training might prove to be like. This impression was amply confirmed by the easy poise of the head and the clear expression of the eyes of the men of the New Army.

Said the General commanding one of the first divisions of the New Army to come to France, in talking to me about his men:

“I don’t believe they have a nerve in their bodies. They are magnificent men in spirit as in physique. All they want now is to ‘have a go’ at the Germans, and once they get going, there will be no holding them back, I give you my word for that. I have never seen the Territorial system to better advantage than in the New Armies. In almost every battalion the men come from their own recruiting area, and, in addition to the bond of a common dialect, have all kinds of family, business, and social relations with their officers and with one another. Their discipline is excellent, and they are taking to the new conditions of life out here like a duck to water.”