XXXII LONDON PRIDE

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September 20

Another dark, wet day, filled with grey mist, and rain-storms and mud. Up in the lines British soldiers and Germans lie near each other in shell-craters, waist high in water. The rain is slashing upon them, and it is cold. But though gunners cannot see, nor airmen fly, the bombardment goes on, and all day long there has been the dull crashing of heavy shells, on both sides deep and sullen boomings through the white fog of this foul day.

Last night and early in the morning the enemy attempted a counter-attack at different parts of the line. They attacked heavily here and there with strong bombing parties, who for a time forced a way into our new lines, at the corner of Courcelette and the north of Martinpuich and the ground further east.

Many of them were killed—the bad weather does not stop this slaughter—and they were driven out and back again by men who, though cold in their shell-craters, kept their courage and flung themselves fiercely upon the German assaulting troops, in sharp bombing fights, which left us with more ground—at least in one part of the line—than we had before. All of which shows that the enemy is hard pressed and tightly held, and that our men—infantry to infantry—not counting gun-fire, have the mastery of these German reserves, and a spirit that refuses to be beaten even by artillery.

I have written many thousands of words about this abominable war since the first shot was fired, and for fifteen months and more have been trying to picture as closely as possible the life of our soldiers in action, but I am conscious that all I have written has given but a vague, dim, far-off glimpse of the character, sufferings, and valour of our men.

How is it possible to show these things truly, to make my readers understand something of the truth when I cannot understand myself, but can only guess and grope at the qualities which make them do the things they do? Take our last great day of battle—September 15—there were troops of many different types engaged in its fighting—Canadians, New Zealanders, Scots, Irish, and English of many counties. One would expect to find differences among these men, to find some harder than others, or softer than others, battalions here and there who flinched before the storm of steel and those frightful shells which open great chasms in the earth. But on Friday the courage of all those men was of one quality, and a man would be a liar who said that one set of men were less brave than another.

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To-day I went among the London men, and afterwards among some Highlanders, who have a special place in my heart. In blood, in upbringing, in physique, in temperament one could not find two bodies of men more unlike, yet they have been alike in splendid endurance under merciless fire last Friday and onwards. “I cannot understand how my boys stuck it out during the worst hours they had,” said a colonel of one of the City of London battalions. “They just had to sit in shell-craters under heavy crumps. Many men would not have gone through with it. But the London boys just stayed there, gamely. They are wonderful.”

The colonel himself was wonderful—this old Territorial soldier, nearly sixty years of age, with a white moustache and grizzled eyebrows that did not hide the bright and almost boyish light in his eyes. He used to be a dyspeptic and a “bundle of nerves,” so he told me, and did not think he could last three months of war. But now, at the beginning of the third year of war he led his battalion into action, went under some of the fiercest fire along the whole battle-line with them, and lay side by side with his “boys,” as he calls them, in a shell-hole which became filled with water by violent rain-storms. For three days and nights he lay there while the enemy was trying to shell our men to death by his monstrous five-point-nines.

There were London men with him and all around him in the same kind of holes—for there were no trenches here—and though even the sergeants were shaking with a kind of ague, not with cold, but after the nervous strain of enduring the incessant shock of high explosives, they “carried on,”—O splendid phrase!—and not a fellow played the coward, though all were very much afraid, as all men are in these frightful hours.

They had been born and bred in London. They had worn black coats and “toppers” in the City—all the officers among them—and the men had been in warehouses and offices and shops down Thames-side and away to Whitehall. They had played the gentle game of dominoes in luncheon hours over a glass of milk and a Bath bun. They had grown nasturtiums in suburban gardens, and their biggest adventure in life had been the summer manœuvres of the dear old “Terriers.” And now—they fought through German trenches and lay in shell-holes, and every nerve in their brains and bodies was ravaged by the tumult of shell-fire about them and by the wounded who lay with them. But these Londoners who fight on their nerves were no less staunch than men like the Scots and the North Country lads, who, as far as I can see, have no nerves at all.

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There were some strange individual adventures in the midst of the general experience of rushing two lines of German trenches through a violent barrage and getting forward to open country, where they dug themselves in. Among ten machine-guns which they captured on their way up there was one handled by a German gunner who awaited his chance to sweep the ranks of the London lads. But he did not get it. An officer of the London regiment who was carrying a rifle “spotted” the man quickly and killed him with a straight shot before he had fired more than a few bullets. That rifle-shot saved the lives of many of our men.

In the second German trench there was a sharp fight, and one single combat between one of our officers—who happens to be a South African—and a great lusty German who was a much bigger man than ours. It was a bayonet duel as two mediæval knights might have fought in the old days with heavy swords.

Our officer was already wounded twice. He had a bullet through the shoulder, and a damaged jaw. But five times he pierced his enemy with the bayonet. It should have been enough, but the great German still fought. Both bayonets were dropped and the two men closed and wrestled with each other, trying to get a grip of the throat. The German wrestler, bloody as he was, seemed to keep all his brute strength, but he was laid out by a bullet in the neck from a sergeant of the Londoners who came to the rescue of the officer. Afterwards this easy-going gentleman—from South Africa—chatted with his colonel over the body of his man as quietly and calmly as though he were in his smoking-room at home, and paid no attention whatever to his wounds, refusing to go down to the doctor, but going forward again with his men.

Some of the men went too far in their eagerness, away into the “blue.” No word came back from them. No signal. Later one man trudged back, bringing two prisoners. “Where are the others?” he was asked. He pointed far away, and said “Over there.” He is the only man who has come back from that place of mystery.

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Some of the London battalions did not suffer so heavily as might have been expected, from the hard task they had, and the wonderful way in which they fought. What loss they suffered was the price of extreme valour. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava has been put into song as one of the great heroic tales of history. Will any one make a song of the London men who fought forward through a hurricane of fire?

The stretcher-bearers of the London Territorials did their work nobly, and among them as a volunteer was one German who deserves a word of praise, by men with a sporting spirit, fair to their enemy. He had first been taken prisoner by an officer of ours, who was then hit by a piece of shell or a rifle bullet. He fell, and could not rise again, but his prisoner, who was an officer, too, picked him up and carried him across the battlefield to our dressing station, and then stood by for an escort to take him away.

The General commanding these London men spoke of them to-day with a thrill in his voice. He had been with them, and had reconnoitred their ground, and had seen their way of fighting. When I spoke to him he had been without sleep and rest for two days and nights. “No men could have done better,” he said. “No general could wish to command braver men or better men. Their discipline is splendid. There is never any crime among them. They behave always as gentlemen should behave, and they fight with fine hearts. These London boys of mine had one of the hardest tasks on Friday, and they carried it through with a most gallant spirit.”

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Another day I must write of the Highlanders whom I met to-day—those Gay Gordons of whom I have written several times when I have found them in other parts of the battle-line. Some of them waved hands to me to-day and shouted cheerfully across a track of mud, and, seeing the faces under their bonnets, I was enormously glad to find these old friends of mine alive and well after many days of fighting. Squarer, tougher, harder men than the Londoners, they fought in their own style, gloriously, with all their comrades in kilts or trews who swept across the German lines, and then held their captured ground under infernal fire. One story they told me of the things they have seen is a grim little picture which is etched in my brain.

Two of them went down into a German dug-out and started back when they saw a man seated there at table. The table was laid for a meal, but the food was uneaten. It was a dead German officer who sat before them, as though asleep. The top of the dug-out had been knocked in by one of our shells, and something had fallen and killed him as he was beginning breakfast. The Gordons went into other dug-outs and found other dead bodies, but it was this sitting man that they remember most.