.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 46283
   :PG.Title: The Motor-Bus in War
   :PG.Released: 2014-07-14
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: \A. \M. Beatson
   :DC.Title: The Motor-Bus in War
              Being the Impressions of an \A.\S.\C. Officer during Two and a Half Years at the Front
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1918
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

====================
THE MOTOR-BUS IN WAR
====================

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      *THE MOTOR-BUS IN WAR*

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      *BEING THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN A.S.C.
      OFFICER DURING TWO AND A
      HALF YEARS AT THE FRONT*

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      *BY*

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      *A. M. BEATSON*

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      (*Temp. Lieut. A.S.C.*)

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      *LONDON
      T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
      ADELPHI TERRACE* 

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      *First published in 1918*

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      (*All rights reserved*)

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      *To
      LIEUT.-COL. GERALD CHARLES GORDON BLUNT,
      D.S.O.*

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      *Army Service Corps
      as a mark of esteem*

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   *CONTENTS*

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   *Chapter*

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I.  `Introduction`_
II.  `"Au Revoir" to England`_
III.  `Railhead`_
IV.  `Supply Columns and Rations`_
V.  `The Motor-Lorry Convoy`_
VI.  `The Workshops`_
VII.  `Life behind the Line`_
VIII.  `From Béthune to Ypres`_
IX.  `Mr. Thomas Atkins and the French`_
X.  `With the R.H.A. Batteries`_ (contributed)
XI.  `Along the Somme Valley`_
XII.  `Between the Ancre and the Somme`_
XIII.  `From Arras to Albert`_
XIV.  `To Bapaume, Péronne, and Beyond`_





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.. _`INTRODUCTION`:

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   *THE MOTOR-BUS IN WAR*

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   *Chapter I*

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   *INTRODUCTION*

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The War has been responsible, amongst
other things, for the publication of a
number of books dealing with it in its
different aspects and from various points
of view.

Many of these have been written by men
who, previous to it, possibly never thought
of writing a book, and even less of seeing
what they had written reproduced in print.

Finding themselves, however, amongst
entirely novel surroundings, engaged in an
adventure equally different from anything
they had previously anticipated even in
their wildest flights of imagination, they
have sought to place on record some account
of their experiences on active service, but
in nearly every case of the actual fighting
in which they have taken part with their
regiments or batteries at the front.

The majority of people at home very
naturally focus their mind's eye on what is
taking place actually in the long lines of
trenches that stretch from the sea in the
North right down to Switzerland in the
South, particularly in those manned by the
British armies, scarcely realizing the
stupendous part in the war drama that is played
by the men engaged in the vast organization
behind the battle-line.  The organization
that is essential in order to maintain an
army in the field as an effective fighting
force, by supplying and conveying to it
its two main wants—food and ammunition—thus
enabling it to keep itself alive
and destroy the life of its enemy.  An
army in the field drags behind it a long
chain of transport, mechanical and animal,
advanced supply depots, hospitals, rest
camps, etc., and communications by which
it is securely fastened to fixed bases at its
rear.  There are in France to-day thousands
of men from the railheads nearest the
firing-line, right through the long lines of
communication to the base supply depots,
leading a more or less uneventful life of
regular routine, freed to a certain extent
from the dangers of shot and shell, but who
are, nevertheless, "doing their bit
somewhere in France."  Whether the establishment
of men so engaged is too large and
should be reduced to enable more men to
be available for the firing-line, as has been
recently suggested in Parliament and
elsewhere, is a matter I do not propose to discuss
at any length, but would add that nearly
all the criticism which has been levelled
at Army administration has been destructive
as opposed to constructive criticism, which
is, of course, not only more difficult but
infinitely more useful.

Preparations on a vast scale have been
created, and should our armies in due course
advance and drive the invader before them,
every bit of that vast organization will be
needed, and, moreover, should its efficiency
fail, the advancing armies would find
themselves in a sorry plight.

A reduction in that establishment of
personnel behind the line might, therefore,
prove fatal.

At least, it can be said for these men that
their job is not of their own seeking, and
that they volunteered, many of them in
the first weeks of the war, for "active
service," having no definite idea at all as
to what they would encounter and what
was in store.  Although they are members
of a combatant corps, opportunities for
gallant actions and distinctions seldom come
their way.  Lord Northcliffe has described
them as "The Army behind the Army."  Such
are the men of the administrative
branches of the Service, who deal with
thousands of tons of every imaginable
material daily, from the time it is off-loaded
from the ships at seaport supply bases
such as Rouen, Le Havre, Calais, etc., up
to its actual issue to the fighting troops at
the front.  Thus their operations extend
from the bases to within a few hundred
yards of the trenches, the interest and
excitement of their work increasing
proportionately with its distance from the
former.

It is of the doings of some of these men
that I have endeavoured to write a description,
and the following pages contain an
account of my experiences with the British
Expeditionary Force, chiefly incidents in
my particular appointment during 1914,
'15, '16 and '17, as an Army Service Corps
officer in the Mechanical Transport Supply
Column of an Indian Cavalry Division.  This
book does not pretend to be an historical
record of the doings of the unit to which I
have been attached during this period, but
merely a few sketches, written at random at
various times, of incidents that have occurred
in the course of duty with the largest
mechanical transport unit (except the Base
Mechanical Transport Depots and Workshops)
of the British Expeditionary Force in France.

Incidentally, these experiences have been
unusually varied; though many is the time
when they have appeared to be exactly the
opposite.  Nevertheless, the unit of which
I write has consistently "rationed" its
troops at almost every part of the British
line, from Ypres to the River Somme, not
to mention the places far behind the line
where cavalry have been billeted during
the winters and other periods of enforced
inactivity.  Looking at the map of the
Western front war zone and drawing on it
roughly a rectangle, having for its four
angular points Boulogne and Ypres in the
North and Rouen and Péronne in the South,
there is, in this area, scarcely a town through
which, or a main road over which, motor-lorries
of the Supply Column have not
travelled in their many journeys, covering
thousands of miles, during the last two and
a half years, up and down this strange land
of "somewheres."

This has been called an engineers' war;
it is certainly the first war in which
petrol-propelled mechanical transport has been
employed to any extent.  Thousands of
Army Service Corps motor-lorries, painted
service grey-green, line the roads behind the
trenches in France and Flanders.  Petrol is
surely the key to modern warfare.  Operations
on such a gigantic scale could not
be carried on without it, for petrol-propelled
vehicles are used, amongst other purposes,
for the following:—

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   The conveying of food, clothes, ammunition,
   and water to the troops.

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   The haulage of heavy pieces of artillery.

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   The evacuation of sick and wounded
   to the casualty clearing hospitals, etc.

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   The rapid movement of troops from
   one part of the line to another, and
   as the quickest means of bringing
   up reinforcements.

.. vspace:: 2

The fate of Paris was largely changed, at
the beginning of the War, by the requisition
and mobilization of some thousand or so
motor taxi-cabs during a night, at the order
of the late General Galliéni.  In them were
sent out twenty-five thousand troops, who
by this means of transport swiftly proceeded
to the Ourcq and reinforced the French
Army, which was striking a terrific blow
at the turned flank of Von Kluck's army.
It will be recalled that the enemy's columns
advancing on Paris turned abruptly eastwards
to unexpectedly rush on the British
Divisions and cut them off from their juncture
with the 5th French Army.  They failed
to do so, but until the night of September
9th-10th the battle of Nanteuil-sur-Marne
hung in the balance.  General Maunoury's
army was constantly being reinforced,
however, by the troops which arrived at
Dammartin and other points in the requisitioned
taxi-cabs so regularly that the pressure
was increased, the tide of battle turned,
and the capital of France saved.  The stand
put up by the allied French and British
Armies on the Marne will go down to
posterity as the most epic battle in
European history.  The warfare in France and
Flanders, since it settled down to a prolonged
and continuous trench *strafe*, has been
described as consisting in "months of boredom
punctuated by moments of intense fear,"
and it has been to pass the time of day
during some of those months that the
following chapters have been written.  If
they succeed in giving the reader some slight
idea of the scope, extent, and versatility of
work accomplished by the mechanical
transport of the Army Service Corps, of how our
armies in the field are fed, and of the
soldier-man's life and surroundings at various
distances "behind the front"—what he sees
and does there—they will not have been
written in vain.  I have purposely avoided
matters of controversy, and I have written
not as a critic but as an observer and the
player of a very small part in the great
drama.  I trust that the varying degrees of
discomfort, inseparable from active service,
under which I have had to write will be
accepted as sufficient excuse for any lack of
literary style.





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.. _`"AU REVOIR" TO ENGLAND`:

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   *Chapter II*


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   *"AU REVOIR" TO ENGLAND*

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In the early stages of the War it was by
no means uncommon for a man to
enlist in the Army Service Corps in the
afternoon and the same night find himself
marching, in company with a good many
others, into the Mechanical Transport Depot
at Grove Park, singing "Tipperary."  The
following morning, having been put into
khaki, he would be told off to a motor-lorry,
on which he would chalk such cryptic
remark as "London-Berlin Express."  Later
in the day he would be driving his
lorry—one of a convoy of many similar
vehicles—to ——, and a few hours after
that he would be in France.

This is not exactly what happened to the
author; suffice it to add that in the first few
days of August 1914 he enlisted, and on
October 28th made the meteoric flight
from private in a Territorial Battalion to
a second-lieutenant in the Army Service
Corps.  On Sunday, November 15th, he
had just come up from Grove Park to
London on a few hours' leave of absence
from duty, when a telegram arrived.  It read:

"Return at once.—ADJUTANT."

Having followed this order, he was packed
off at once to Woolwich, and here found
he was posted to the —— Indian Cavalry
Division Supply Column.  On Tuesday, the
17th, the column was due to leave
Woolwich for —— and sail for France almost
immediately after arrival at the port of
embarkation.  So on that morning we
entrained; the motor-lorries and half the
personnel had gone on by road the previous
day.  The same night we found ourselves
at ——, ten officers and some 700 N.C.O.'s
and men, the latter composed of lorry
drivers and supply details, with roughly
160 motor-lorries and cars.  Half the
lorries were old buses off the London
streets, but not of the usual "London
General" appearance, for they had been
converted from passenger to food and forage
carrying vehicles by the substitution of
van-shaped open bodies in place of the
familiar bright red, two-decker bus bodies.
I was destined to travel many thousands of
miles on the front seat of many of these,
and it has often occurred to me during the
course of my journeys that perhaps the
same buses that I have taken to Ypres have
perhaps taken me on previous occasions,
before the War, down Piccadilly or along
the Strand, under entirely different
circumstances.  The remainder of the lorries were
brand new Silent Knight Daimlers, and the
carrying capacity of the majority of the
lorries was thirty hundredweight.  Painted
grey-green service colour, they presented
a sombre spectacle, "parked" in a long
line along a straight open road just outside
the docks.  Besides the lorries for carrying
supplies, we had the large, closed,
high-bodied, portable workshop lorries, fitted
with the essential tools—lathes, drilling-machines,
and the like—driven by petrol-electric
sets, to effect repairs to broken-down
lorries in the field.  Also the closed-in
store lorries, fitted with interior shelves and
pigeon-holes, in which were carried engineers'
tools, stores of all kinds, spare parts, and
various equipment.  In addition, we had
five 12-16 h.p. Sunbeam four-seater cars
and a dozen or so Douglas motor-bicycles.
Collectively, the column occupied just a
mile of road.

At —— we did not enjoy ourselves.
For one thing, 700 men, mostly quite
unaccustomed to military discipline, are not
altogether easy to deal with, and for another,
the only sleeping accommodation available
for officers and men consisted in the floors
of the various offices and goods-yards at
—— Railway Station.  Moreover, it was
snowing hard, and on the night of
November 17th there were several degrees
of frost.  Matters were made very much
easier by the presence of an Army Chaplain
who was on duty at the docks.  He mixed
with and chatted to the men, telling them
what splendid fellows they were, and on
the evening of our arrival got up an
impromptu concert, which proved a great
*divertissement*.  Our stay was not, however,
a long one; we did not even wait to effect
certain most necessary repairs to the lorries,
and those that were able to run under their
own power towed those that could not,
and the splendid hydraulic cranes on the
quayside at —— soon picked up each
vehicle and securely deposited it—at the
rate of about five minutes per lorry—in
the holds of the four tramps that, sailing
under sealed orders, were to transport the
column to France.  So on the evening of
November 19, 1914, I left England on
H.M. Transport *Trevithoe*, in company with two
other second-lieutenants.  On board we had
roughly a quarter of our personnel and
vehicles.  Our departure was quite unlike
that of any ship I have ever seen leave port
or left port on myself.  There were no
scurrying, hurrying crowds of people on
the quayside.  The men filed on board
almost silently in the darkness, each carrying
his rifle and kit.  There were none of the
usual spectators, no relatives or friends to
see us off.  As each man crossed the gangway
he was handed a small piece of paper;
on it was printed Lord Kitchener's message
to every soldier about to join the
Expeditionary Force:

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You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King
to help our French comrades against the invasion of
a common enemy.  You have to perform a task
which will need your courage, your energy, your
patience.  Remember that the honour of the British
Army depends on your individual conduct.  It will
be your duty not only to set an example of discipline
and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain
the most friendly relations with those whom you are
helping in this struggle.  The operations in which
you are engaged will, for the most part, take place
in a friendly country, and you can do your own
country no better service than in showing yourself
in France and Belgium in the true character of a
British soldier.

Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind.
Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property,
and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act.
You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be
trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and
trust.  Your duty cannot be done unless your health
is sound.  So keep constantly on your guard against
any excesses.  In this new experience you may find
temptations both in wine and women; you must
entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating
all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid
any intimacy.

Do your duty bravely.

Fear God.

Honour the King.

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KITCHENER,
   *Field-Marshal.*

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When all were safely on the *Trevithoe*,
the padre whom I have already mentioned
came on board and called the men around
him.  The senior officer present called all
to "Attention," and the padre proceeded
to bid us farewell and God-speed.  He
adjured the men to place absolute confidence
in their officers and obey them implicitly.
He added that he hoped all might come home
safe and sound in due course, though there
were some who might never return.  Our
caps removed, he raised his hand and gave
the Blessing, and shaking hands with each
officer and a good many men, he went ashore.
Emotion travels quickly through a crowd,
and his words had brought tears to the eyes
of many who were leaving home so suddenly,
for the first time, only a few days after they
had been following their accustomed
occupations as of yore.  Never, I must admit,
have any words I have heard uttered made
me feel so momentarily miserable.  Still,
from the religious point of view it was, I
suppose, necessary to remind each man
going out on active service of the consequent
possibility of meeting his death, that he
might order his life and conduct accordingly.
The whistle blew, the hawsers were cast off,
and the *Trevithoe* steamed slowly away
from the quay.  I leant over the side of her
deck to have a long last look at Old England,
whose gradually disappearing shore and lights
I could just distinguish, as we steamed out
into the darkness.  I wondered how long
it would be before I should see them again.
Only the silhouetted figures of the padre
and an Embarkation Staff officer were to
be seen on the quay.

I lit a cigarette and lingered a few minutes
on deck, and as I looked across the dark
silent sea, the throb of the ship's engines
seemed to say repeatedly, "Three years
or the duration!"

I am glad to have an opportunity of
expressing our thanks to the captain and
officers of the ship's company of the
*Trevithoe* for the hospitality they
extended to us on board.  They gave us
the run of the ship; we messed with
them in their saloon and had a right
royal time.

The captain offered to take me one day
for a voyage more or less round the world.
After the war I hope to find an opportunity
of holding him to his promise!

Of the other ships which transported
the Supply Column from —— to France,
one was the *Woodfield*—and it was with
regret that I read a year or so later in the
papers that she had come to an untimely
end, through being torpedoed by a German
submarine—not, however, before she had
put up a gallant fight against superior odds
and given the U-boat a very unpleasant
time of it.

After a voyage more or less uneventful,
we lay to off Le Havre on the evening of
the 21st.  The next morning we picked up
a pilot and steamed leisurely up the
winding River Seine, appreciating the beautiful
scenery and no less the greeting of the
riverside inhabitants, who waved Union Jacks
and the Tricolour, and whose frequent shouts
of "Vive l'Angleterre" and "Vive les
Anglais" could be plainly heard, so narrow
is the river at many points.  Such was our
welcome to France, and towards the evening
of Sunday, November 22nd, we arrived at
Rouen, and the next day set foot on French
soil.  In a few hours, with the help of the
French pontoon cranes, so different, alas! to
the hydraulic jibs at ——, we successfully
slung and landed all the vehicles,
without any casualties of serious importance.
The lorries were parked in a long line on the
road outside a former cinema theatre on
the outskirts of Rouen, which building was
for the time being the Advanced Mechanical
Transport Depot of the British
Expeditionary Force, and no time was lost in
completing equipment before starting on
the journey by road up country.  Rouen,
with its magnificent cathedral and quaint
narrow streets, is an altogether delightful
town.  It was, of course, full of khaki, and
it seemed strange to think that it, of all
towns, should be occupied by British troops.
A few days later we started on the journey
to the front.  The column went up in two
sections.  I was with the second to leave
Rouen, and we had with us half our vehicles,
and carried all our equipment, cooking
utensils, stores, etc., for all the world like
a huge travelling circus.  Leaving Rouen
by the Route Nationale Number 28, we
wondered how soon it would be before we
should encounter patrols of Uhlans or come
under shell fire.  No one knew where the
front exactly was, how far away, or what
it was like.

I had the pleasure of travelling together
with our French Interpreter, in the car
which led the convoy, with the senior
lieutenant who was in charge of it.  The
first night after leaving Rouen we stopped
at Neufchâtel-en-Bray, where there is a
small country hotel, kept, strangely enough,
by an Englishwoman, who put up a very
good dinner for us and the best cider that
Normandy can produce, which is saying
a good deal.  The next morning we were
on the road again, and by mid-day reached
Abbeville, outside which the convoy was
halted while the officer in charge proceeded
into the town for orders as to our ultimate
destination.  Pushing on, we arrived at
Hesdin and stayed there the night.  Travelling
throughout the following day, we at length
reached Lillers.  This little town was full
of troops of almost every imaginable
regiment, from dusky Indian Cavalry soldiers
to kilted Highlanders.  Guns were booming
away in the distance, and we realized that
we were at last at the front and within
measurable distance of the trenches.

I was billeted for the night in a café in
the square; all night long could be heard
the regular tramp of men marching, horses,
and the wheels of limbered wagons rumbling
along the cobbled street, for Lillers is on the
main road to Béthune, not far beyond which
were the trenches.  Resuming our journey
the following day, we passed through the
picturesque old town of Béthune, with its
typical *pavé* Grande Place and
square-towered church.  At that time it was to
all intents and purposes momentarily
deserted by its civilian population, for the
Germans had on the previous day caused
much alarm and some damage by an
aeroplane raid and bomb-dropping exploit, and
civilians took more notice of such
unaccustomed incidents at this period than
they do nowadays.  Eventually we arrived
at Fouquereuil, which for the time being
was to be our railhead.  It consisted of a
railway station, a couple of dozen or so
small cottages, a few estaminets and a
brickfield.  The latter served as the parking
ground for our mobile workshops and a good
number of the supply lorries, while the roofed-in
part of it was used as sleeping quarters
for officers and men, the column office, and
officers' messroom.  In the latter our table
and chairs, if one may thus describe them,
were composed of loose bricks built up in
heaps to the required shapes.  The Indian
Cavalry regiments were billeted in the
surrounding villages.

The same evening two officers of the
Supply and Transport Corps, Indian Army,
joined us, so that our establishment was
complete and we were ready to carry on.
The following day we tasted for the first
time the joys of "loading"—refilling the
lorries from the supply train at railhead,
which brings up from the Base the rations
and forage for the troops.  It appeared at
first a complicated and extremely lengthy
business, and the mud and rain—it seemed
to rain continuously—did not make matters
any easier.  Notwithstanding these several
disadvantages, a complete division of Indian
Cavalry "in the field" was for the first
time in history rationed in Europe, and also
for the first time anywhere by means of
mechanical transport.





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.. _`RAILHEAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter III*


.. class:: center large bold

   *RAILHEAD*

.. vspace:: 2

Supply trains, which, as their name
denotes, bring up supplies for the
troops in the field, are made up and loaded
at the Base, and possibly certain of their
contents are loaded at intermediate points
*en route* in the line of communications.
They then proceed to the regulating station,
which is to all intents and purposes the
terminus of the lines of communication,
and from there they are dispatched to the
railhead of the Division for which the
supplies are intended.

The railhead of a Division is the furthest
point along the railway line in the direction
of the Division in question to which the
supply train travels.  From that point
motor-lorries are loaded up with rations and forage
drawn from the supply train, and in
due course convey them by road to the
vicinity of the troops, where they either
dump their contents in bulk at a prearranged
point, deliver it to each regiment individually,
or, in the case of an Infantry Division,
off-load it to the divisional horse train.
This consists of a number of thirty
hundred-weight carrying capacity General Service
wagons, which in turn carry and deliver the
supplies to the Brigade or regimental ration
dumps.  From there they are taken on
by carrying parties into the trenches when
necessary—the plan adopted being, of course,
in accordance with tactical considerations
and the conditions prevailing.

The railhead usually consists of a station
yard; fortunately, in France they are nearly
all large, rather more so, I think, than those
of country villages or small towns of
corresponding size at home.  They are all built
on the same pattern and have the same
attributes.  In winter they are covered with
a sea of ankle-deep mud and in summer
they are as dusty as the Sahara.  In any
season of the year they are places to avoid
from a pleasure point of view.

We will try to picture a typical railhead.
It is about 6 a.m.  Drawn up in the yard
of some country station, possibly one that
has been blown to bits by shell fire, are one
or more goods trains.  They are composed
of large closed-in trucks, each of which is
marked "Hommes 40.  Chevaux [en long]
8."  One reads this for the first time with
feelings of sympathy, for either the
"hommes" or the "chevaux."  But, for
the trucks we are going to deal with, the
inscription is misleading, for they actually
contain rations for men and horses, and go to
make up a supply train.

The Column Supply Officer arrives in
his car and "takes over the train" from
the Railhead Supply Officer.  The sealed
trucks are opened up by the supply personnel.
A convoy of perhaps sixty to eighty empty
motor-lorries appears on the scene.  They
draw up outside the railhead and are checked
into the yard in batches and detailed for
the load they are to carry.  Entering the
yard, they "back" one by one up against
the open trucks and are loaded up from the
train.  The grocery trucks in particular
present a scene of great animation.  The
men who "issue" the groceries are experts
at their job, and can ladle out tea or sugar
and cut off given weights of cheese and bacon
with a rapidity which is amazing.  So
accurate are they, through long practice, that
weights and scales are almost unnecessary.
Each railhead has attached to it several
officers of considerable importance, namely:
Railway Transport Officer, Railhead Supply
Officer, Railhead Ordnance Officer, and a
representative of the Assistant Military
Forwarding Officer, officially designated and
known only by their initials, R.T.O., R.S.O.,
R.O.O., and A.M.F.O. respectively—not
forgetting the "Commissaire Militaire," an
officer of the French Army, usually of
advanced age and senior rank, who is the
liaison officer between the French and British
Armies in matters of traffic regulation and
organization.  The only other personnel at
railheads are a few military police, a handful
of A.S.C. details, and usually a company
or so of some line regiment in charge of a
subaltern.  These latter are employed as
sentries over trains and on various fatigues,
and are usually part of the remnants of a
battalion that has had a rough time in the
trenches and is out on rest, awaiting the
arrival from England of reinforcements to
bring it up once more to its fighting strength.
The duties of the R.T.O. include all matters
in connection with the regulation of the
railway traffic of his railhead, such as the
arrival and departure of supply and
ammunition trains; the entraining and detraining
of troops, reinforcements and remounts;
the evacuation of sick and wounded men and
horses; and last, but surely not least, the
issue of "movement orders" to officers
and men travelling by train, including the
"leave train," which, being apparently of
little or no importance in the scheme of
things, has to make way for all other traffic
on the line, and usually occupies from ten
to twenty-four hours to accomplish the
journey from the front to Boulogne or Le
Havre, as the case may be; sometimes even
longer in making the return journey.  French
trains, at any rate in war-time, are anything
but rapid, and to get to one place from
another by train is not always so easy a
matter as might at first appear.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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The R.S.O. is responsible for the issue of
all rations and forage at railhead, whether
from the supply trains or from the railhead
"dump" or "detail" trucks, while the
R.O.O. deals with the classification and
return to the Base of all unserviceable and
worn out material classed as Ordnance
Stores, which term includes such items as
used shell cases, rifles, boots, clothing,
horseshoes, saddlery, and various equipment.

The A.M.P.O. receives and distributes
the various boxes of presents, luxuries, and
so forth, sent by friends at home through
the M.F.O., Southampton, a task more
arduous than it may appear, particularly
about Christmas-time, and also dispatches
home surplus personal and deceased officers'
kits, etc.  At each railhead there is to be
found also a field post office.  I need
hardly add that from it His Majesty's
mails, always so eagerly awaited by all of
us, are distributed and loaded on to postal
lorries of the Supply Column allotted for
the purpose, which take the mails on
to the units of the Division.  The field
post offices are in charge of the R.E.'s.
What a wonderful corps the Sappers are!
Their versatility and multifarious duties are
truly remarkable, varying as they do from
"tunnelling" and the administration of
asphyxiating gases to the Huns from our
front line trenches to the maintenance of
telephone wires and the running of field
post offices.

One of the excitements of railhead is the
passing through of convoys of German
prisoners *en route* to internment camps.
On one occasion I happened to be at Merville
and saw a party of prisoners marched into
the railhead yard, where they were to
entrain; their escort consisted of some
Gurkhas, whom they looked on with evident
signs of alarm and suspicion.  The
R.T.O. happened to be able to speak German, and
very soon formed the prisoners up in two
ranks and marched them to the train,
giving his words of command in their own
language, greatly, it need scarcely be added,
to their surprise.

On such occasions as the entraining of
German prisoners, "souvenirs" are in great
demand, in the shape of German uniform
buttons and helmets, though the latter are
more uncommon than was formerly the
case.  This word "souvenir," which is
frequently put in the form of a request by
the inhabitants to English soldiers, appears
to cover a variety of articles, from an empty
shell case to a full tin of "bully."  It is
the recognized custom within the war zone
for every one to ask every one else for a souvenir.

There is a current story of one Tommy
who, writing home, remarked in the course
of his letter that the French were funny
people, and the only word of English they
seemed to understand was "souvenir"!





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.. _`SUPPLY COLUMNS AND RATIONS`:

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   *Chapter IV*


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   *SUPPLY COLUMNS AND RATIONS*

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The Supply Column of a Cavalry
Division consists roughly of 160 motor-lorries,
mostly of a carrying capacity of thirty
hundredweight each.  The column is divided
into two echelons or sections of eighty lorries,
each of which works independently of the
other.  Briefly, the system is as follows:
The echelons load and deliver rations on
alternate days—that is to say, No. 1 Echelon
draws rations from the supply train at
railhead on Monday and delivers them to the
troops on Tuesday.  No. 2 Echelon refills
on Tuesday and delivers on Wednesday,
and so on.  The rations in each case, being
delivered direct to units in their billets or
bivouacs, are consumed by the troops on the
day following delivery, so that one day's
rations are always held regimentally for the
following day's consumption.

The lorries are loaded in a particular
manner, namely, "by regiments," and
according to a definitely laid down scale of
daily rations.  That is to say, each lorry
is told off to a particular job, and the
quantity of each ration issued to a regiment is
arrived at by multiplying together the
number of men or animals to be fed—that
is "ration strength" of each regiment—and
the allowance of each particular ration, as
laid in the ration scale.  The scale of rations
and forage now prevailing for personnel and
animals is as follows:

::

  BRITISH AND DOMINION TROOPS
  (*Daily Ration per Man.*)

  1 lb. fresh or frozen meat or 3/4 lb. (nominal) preserved meat.
  1 1/4 lb. bread or 3/4 lb. biscuit.
  4 oz. bacon.
  3 oz. cheese.
  2 oz. dried vegetables, peas, beans, or dried onions.
  5/8 oz. tea.
  4 oz. jam.
  3 oz. sugar.
  1/2 oz. salt.
  1/50 oz. mustard.
  1/36 oz. pepper.
  1/12 tin condensed milk.
  2 oz. butter, thrice weekly.

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The ration of tobacco is 2 oz. per week,
either in the form of cigarettes or for
pipe-smoking, and two boxes of matches are also
issued.  There are certain extras issued
according to season or circumstances, such
as rum, pea-soup, Oxo cubes, lime juice,
and candles.  The fresh vegetable ration,
such as potatoes and onions, is 1/2 lb. per man
per day; it may come up by supply train
or be a local purchase.

Also must be mentioned the combined
meat and vegetable or Maconachie ration:
the latter name, by which it is usually known,
is that of its original maker.  It is issued in
lieu of fresh meat and vegetables occasionally,
and to Mr. Thomas Atkins is the most
popular feed.  It consists of stewed beef or
mutton with carrots, onions, rice, and
potatoes, and is packed in an air-tight tin.  It
is only necessary to boil the tin in water for
about five minutes, then cut it open, and
there is a good meal ready cooked without
any further trouble.  Nothing is overlooked:
even, in summer-time, fly-papers are issued.
Latterly, sardines and pickles, and even
rabbits, have become occasionally part of
the British ration.  The iron or emergency
ration, which is always carried on the soldier,
and is only consumed under exceptional
circumstances and at the direct order of an
officer, consists of 1 lb. of preserved meat
1 lb. of biscuit, 5/8 oz. of tea, 2 oz. sugar, and
two 1 oz. cubes of meat extract, such as Oxo.

Curious incidents occur in the best
regulated and fed armies; the following is one:
Some little time ago it was announced that
a new kind of ration in the form of tinned
pork and beans would be issued to the troops
as soon as stocks of the same were available
at the Base, and a few months later the
pork and beans ration duly put in its
appearance; appropriately enough in midsummer!
On opening a tin a certain Railhead Supply
Officer was surprised to find it to
apparently contain only beans, the pork being
conspicuous by its absence.  As the
contents were intended to be a substitute for
the ordinary fresh meat ration, he opened a
second tin, only to find that its contents
were similar to the first.  He thereupon
reported the absence of the elusive pork to
the Deputy Director of Supplies, and was in
reply informed that, strange as it might at
first appear, the pork, though invisible, was
none the less present in each tin; it had,
however, become "absorbed" by the beans.
A later request by the Railhead Supply
Officer was to the effect that "in view of the
rapacious appetite of the beans now being
issued as rations of pork and beans, it would
be advisable that, though a meat ration,
the latter be not sent up from the Base in
the same truck of the supply train as the
fresh British meat, for fear of the devouring
tendency of the once homely bean."

For Indian personnel the "field" ration
is as follows:

::

  Atta ............................ 1 1/2 lb.
  Fresh meat (goat or sheep) ...... 4 oz.
  Dhal ............................ 4 oz.
  Ghi ............................. 3 oz.
  Gur ............................. 3 oz.
  Potatoes ........................ 2 oz.
  Tea ............................. 1/3 oz.
  Ginger .......................... 1/6 oz.
  Chillies ........................ 1/8 oz.
  Turmeric ........................ 1/8 oz.
  Garlic .......................... 1/8 oz.
  Salt ............................ 1/2 oz.

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Atta is coarse ground flour, very similar
to that of which so-called "standard"
bread is made at home.  Of it the natives
make chupattis, which are round flat cakes
of baked dough.  Dhal consists of dried
peas.  Ghi is a kind of butter, which,
judging from its smell, would appear to be
rancid.  Gur is simply brown sugar or
molasses.  It will be noticed that the native
meat ration is very small.  The natives are
not meat-eaters in the accepted sense of the
word, and their small ration they invariably
"curry" with the ration of ginger, chillies,
turmeric and garlic, which are the raw
ingredients of curry powder.  Not infrequently
also they are issued with a ration
of rice and also dried fruits, when stocks are
available.

The ration of forage for horses and mules
varies according to the size and type of the
animals, from 6 lb. to 19 lb. oats, plus 10
lb. to 15 lb. hay.  Hay is sent up in bales
averaging from 80 lb. to 100 lb. in weight
and grain in sacks containing 80 lb.

It will be seen from the above scales that
there are a number of different rations to be
weighed out and loaded; the operation of
loading at first took a considerable time at
railhead, but with continual practice we
reduced the time and have consistently
loaded the rations and forage for the entire
Division, roughly for the ten thousand men
and horses, in two and a half hours.  Taking
into consideration the fact that we were
dealing with British and Native rations,
and that the quantity amounted to about
sixty-five lorry loads—over a hundred tons
of rations—two and a half hours is, I think,
not a bad average for time.  Speed in
loading, combined, of course, with accuracy, is
essential—it being not infrequently necessary
to get the train away quickly, so as to clear
the line for other traffic.

After refilling, the lorries either remain
near the railhead or proceed towards the
direction of the troops and park in a
suitable position until the following day,
when they go out in convoy and off-load
their contents, returning immediately after
doing so.

Most of the foregoing remarks apply to
a Cavalry Divisional Supply Column.  With
an Infantry Division matters are somewhat
different, there being only one echelon of
lorries, which issue and are refilled on the
same day.  Moreover, an Infantry Divisional
Supply Column is loaded with rations in
bulk; a Cavalry Divisional Supply Column,
as I have already explained, is loaded "by
regiments."

The reason for the first of the above
differences is not difficult to discover, for,
infantry being slow-moving troops, the
distance to be covered by road by the Supply
Column is not great, and cannot increase
rapidly, whereas with cavalry, the radius
of mobility or action may be possibly ninety
miles each way out and back to railhead,
and thus a double establishment of vehicles
is necessary.  If the cavalry to be rationed
are on the move, supplies cannot be delivered
until a definite resting-point for the night
has been reached, usually after dark.  They
are then delivered by supply lorries direct
to units in their billets or bivouacs.  With
a Cavalry Division there is no horse train;
obviously, horse-drawn wagons could not
keep pace with advancing cavalry.  On the
latter presumption the "War Establishment"
is entirely devised.

Ill-fed troops are worse than useless, and
in the British Army no pains or expense
are spared to enable the soldier's daily ration
to be not only plentiful and of the best
quality, but delivered to him with
clock-work regularity and dispatch.  The Army
Council evidently believe in the Napoleonic
maxim that "an army marches on its
stomach."  The British meat ration, nearly
always —— frozen beef, and occasionally
—— chilled mutton, is excellent in
quality.  It, of course, requires to be hung
for a few days, when practicable—as
Tommy puts it, "to get the frost out of it,"
or, in other words, to be slowly thawed;
after that has been done, it satisfies the most
fastidious or enormous appetites.  During
the summer months it was found that the
long journey in a closed railway truck did
not improve its quality, and for this reason
it was for a time sent up in trucks specially
built for the purpose and marked,
"Insulated Meat Wagon.  Viande gelée."

All the other rations are of equally good
quality.  The bacon, so much appreciated,
especially in the trenches, where cooking
facilities are not great, is of the best quality
Irish.  The butter, tinned dairy butter.  The
cheese, mostly Canadian Cheddar.  The jam,
at first of the proverbial plum and apple
variety, was later varied by strawberry,
apricot, marmalade, and occasionally by
honey.  As for the tea, one can taste worse
in London drawing-rooms, and the bully
beef, scorned perhaps to a certain extent
owing to the fact that it in time becomes
monotonous, is nevertheless the finest
preserved meat procurable.  The bread is all
baked in the A.S.C. field ovens at the Base,
and owing to the amount of moisture
purposely left in it, does not readily become
stale.  After being kept a week, if a loaf is
sprinkled with water and put into a hot
oven for ten minutes or so it comes out as
crisp as newly baked bread.  One of the
commissariat problems, which, however, has
been solved satisfactorily, was the question
of "Native meat," or the ration of meat for
Indian troops serving in Europe.  The
solution has been found in the institution of
"Native butcheries."  A Native of high
caste in India would, of course, not eat any
meat that even the shadow of a European
had passed over.  In coming to France the
Native troops have, however, been granted
certain religious dispensations, not only with
regard to food, but, in the case of Hindus,
in being allowed to leave the boundaries of
their own country.  Nevertheless, their caste
rights as to food are as strictly observed
as the exigencies of active service allow.
The goats and sheep, chiefly Corsican and
Swiss, purchased for their consumption, are
sent up in a truck to railhead alive, and are
slaughtered by men of their own caste in a
butchery arranged for the purpose,
generally in a field or some open place in close
proximity to the railhead.  The Mohammedan
will eat only goats or sheep slaughtered
by having their throats cut, and the Hindu,
by their being beheaded.  The latter method
is carried out in the abattoir by a Native
butcher with the aid of a cavalry sword at
one fell swoop, and of the two methods is
certainly to be recommended as being the
most rapid and instantaneous death.  I need
hardly add that the Native butchery is
always looked on as an object of awe
and interest, if not of excitement, by
the French inhabitants, and none the less
by English soldiers.

The Natives do not object to their meat
being handled by English soldiers, or to it
being brought to them in the same lorry
which also perhaps carries British ration
beef, although the cow is a sacred animal
to the Hindu and in the form of beef is
naturally distasteful.  The only point is
that the goat's meat or mutton intended for
their consumption must not actually come
into contact with the beef, and this is
arranged for by a wooden barrier between
the two, erected in the interior of the lorry.
On one occasion, however, the native rations
for a certain regiment had just been dumped
on the side of the road, and were being
checked by the Daffadar, or Native
Quartermaster-Sergeant, when at a critical moment
an old sow, followed by her litter, came out
of a farm gate and innocently ran over the
whole show.  A lot of palaver followed
amongst the Natives, and there was no
alternative; they would not have these rations
at any price, and back they had to be taken
to be exchanged.  The pig is, of course,
abhorrent to the Mussulman.  One story in
connection with the rationing of the Indian
Cavalry whilst in the trenches at Ypres in
the summer of 1915 may be of interest.  The
cow being a sacred animal to the Hindu, it
became necessary to replace the usual tins
of bully beef by a suitable substitute.  With
this end in view, quantities of tins of
preserved mutton were sent up for the
consumption of Hindu personnel.  The tins
in which it was packed, however, unfortunately
bore the trade mark of the packers,
Messrs. Libby—a bull's head—and in
consequence of this the Hindus would not have
it that their contents could be anything but
beef, until their own Native officers convinced
them that such was not the case.  It will
be seen that the organization for rationing
Native troops is such that they are able
to be fed in accordance with the rites
of their caste, surely a not unimportant
factor.





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.. _`THE MOTOR-LORRY CONVOY`:

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   *Chapter V*


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   *THE MOTOR-LORRY CONVOY*

.. vspace:: 2

Our duties continued daily, with one or
two exceptions, in an unbroken monotony
for the remainder of the winter, loading
the supply lorries at railhead one day and
taking them out in convoy the next, to
deliver the supplies to the troops who were
billeted in the surrounding villages.

What cold journeys those convoy jobs
used to be too!  The front seat of a lorry
leading a convoy, on a frosty, snowy, windy
or wet day, is no place for a joy ride, and the
only alternative for a section officer, namely,
a motor-bicycle on a muddy or dusty road,
as the case may be, is not much better.
The mud of the trenches in winter has
become proverbial, but it is not confined
to them: it exists on the roads behind the
line as well.  It must be seen to be believed!
Take any good main country road, that for
years has been used merely by a few farmers'
carts and periodically perhaps by a small
amount of motor-car traffic; suddenly start
running over it several hundred heavily
loaded motor-lorries, ambulances, general
service wagons drawn by teams of four
horses, not to mention sundry motor-cars,
motor-bicycles, and several batteries of
artillery; continue to do this every day for a
few months, in winter for choice; let the
heavens pour forth torrents of rain, fairly
continuously day and night, as was the case
during the winter months of 1914; let the
road be made on a clay soil and ill-drained,
perhaps not drained at all artificially—the
one and only result in due course will be a
road full of pot holes and ankle-deep with
mud and slush.  This is no exaggeration;
it is exactly what has happened to the roads
on which we have to travel behind the
trenches.  The only wonder is that they
have stood such a severe test so well.  In
summer, of course, they are correspondingly
dusty, and it is an open question which is
the lesser of the two evils—to get oneself
splashed from head to foot with mud, or
almost choked with dust.  The user of the
roads that one pities most, though it must
be admitted he appears to be perfectly
happy and contented with his job, is the
motor cyclist dispatch rider.  Clad in
leather overalls with map-case hanging from
one shoulder, dispatch case from the other,
and revolver attached to his belt, he dashes
along the worst roads, frequently into the
danger zone, wet or fine, day or night, winter
or summer, at lightning speed, nevertheless
finding time as he goes to salute any officer
he may chance to meet or overtake.  This
he accomplishes by turning his head and
eyes smartly in the direction of the officer
to whom he is paying the compliment, at
the same time proceeding at considerable
speed in a direction at right angles to that
towards which he has turned his head whilst
saluting.  Such courtesy surely deserves
appreciation from the officer!

Cases of motor-lorries being "ditched"
or stuck in thick and squelching mud at the
side of the road are not unknown, though,
of course, during the succeeding winters
they were less prevalent than in 1914,
through greater expertness, born of continued
practice and more experience on the part
of the drivers in handling their lorries.
Still, the liability to stick in a convenient
ditch is always present in bad weather on
narrow country roads, and during the
temporary pause of the lorry thus caused, the
greater the effort exerted by the driver and
engine to extract it, the more briskly the
rear wheels revolve in the mud without
advancing the lorry, and the worse becomes
the "ditching."  Non-skid chains that can
be easily fitted in such an emergency have
proved themselves an invaluable aid.  With
these securely fixed on the offending wheel
or wheels and another lorry in front, attached
to the defaulter by towing chains, the latter
is soon on the crown of the road once more
and able to continue its journey.

All convoys are run strictly in accordance
with orders, and the cardinal principles are
briefly that lorries running in convoy must
keep twenty-five yards, approximately, apart
and not travel at a greater speed than ten
miles per hour, even this being reduced on
passing troops on the march or going through
a village or town.  Since the convoy must
keep together, its speed must therefore
necessarily be the speed of its slowest vehicle,
and the method of keeping a convoy together
and thus preventing lorries taking a wrong
road or getting lost is a very simple one.
In addition to the driver, each lorry has a
driver's mate, who rides inside the body of
the vehicle just behind the tailboard, and
as soon as the vehicle immediately in rear
of him stops, he signals to his driver to pull
up.  Thus the driver of the lorry immediately
in front will receive the same message
from his mate, namely, that the lorry
immediately behind him has stopped, and
in a very few minutes the whole column of
vehicles will be at a standstill.  Instances
of such a stoppage occurred in the event of
a lorry in the column suffering from any
mechanical breakdown during the course
of its journey or meeting with a mishap of
any kind on the road.  It is also the job of
the "look-out" man in the back of the
lorry to warn the driver, by means of the
communication cord, when vehicles approaching
from the rear desire to overtake the
convoy, so that the driver can be immediately
warned to pull off the centre of the
road and thus enable the faster-moving
vehicle to pass.  The idea of the communication
cord is a good one; on these occasions
it makes outbursts of fiery language from
Staff officers in cars, who are in a hurry,
superfluous.

The tendency of drivers of all forms of
motor vehicles is, and I suppose always will
be, to drive too fast, exceeding the speed
limit, whether the nature of the road and
other circumstances allow or not.  The
condition of the roads within the war zone is
such that to drive too fast spells broken
springs, to mention only one result.  Severe
disciplinary action has become necessary,
and with this in view Assistant Provost
Marshals have a way of employing military
police with stop-watches in the old and
approved method of the Portsmouth and
Brighton roads.  I heard of one trap which
was set on a little stretch of road that was
within view and under enemy observation.
At this particular spot the military police
made some easy captures.  All roads are
under the supervision of the military police,
who direct all traffic.  Each army issues a
Traffic Map of the area in which it is operating,
and this is in possession of all officers in
charge of convoys.  On it, roads over which,
owing to their broadness, traffic is allowed
to travel from both directions are marked
in a certain way; narrower roads, over
which it is only allowed to proceed one
way, are otherwise indicated on the map.
This road control, though often an
inconvenience, necessitating a long detour,
in some cases, to reach a certain place, in
order to avoid going against the orders, is
absolutely essential.  Without it, blocks in
the traffic, ditching in narrow roads, and
consequent delay, would be of frequent
occurrence.

All lorries are, of course, inscribed with
a W.D. number, duly registered at G.H.Q.,
and from this their histories can be
immediately traced.  Different supply columns
and ammunition parks choose and register
distinguishing marks of their own—almost
like trade-marks: the Bee, Bluebird, Black
Cat, Bulldog, are all to be seen, to
give only a few examples.  The origin of
these distinctive marks is a matter of some
interest.  When the 1st Indian Cavalry
Supply Column arrived in France in
November 1914, there were, of course, far fewer
lorries in the country than there are
to-day.  At this time there was a General
Routine Order to the effect that all
motor-lorries were to have affixed to the outside
of their tailboards a large white card, 15
inches square, with a red danger bull's-eye,
6 inches in diameter, in the centre of the
card.  Cards of this size and description
were accordingly issued, one to each lorry,
to be nailed on the back, the idea being that,
at night especially, the driver of a lorry
would be able to distinguish a lorry in front
by the aid of his headlights shining on to
the bull's-eye and thus avoid collision.  The
idea was a good one, but the inventor did
not take into account the weather conditions
that prevailed during the winter of
1914 in the North of France, for in less than
no time the cards became pulp, destroyed
by the constant rain.  We therefore did
away with the cards and painted lasting
facsimiles in red and white where the cards
had been.  But even this was not
everything that was required, as the lorries of
our Supply Column were not easily
distinguishable from those of others.  To
overcome this, a special mark was painted over
the bull's-eye and square.  This was the
origin of all the distinguishing marks in
existence at present amongst the various
—— Supply Columns and Parks.

Every lorry and car is equipped with a
complement of tools, necessary for adjustments
and the carrying out of roadside repairs.
The tools are all entered up in the log-book
with which each vehicle is provided for the
purpose, the driver signing a receipt for
them in it, when taking over the vehicle,
and having to make good any deficiencies
that can be traced to his own neglect when
he is transferred to a different vehicle and
"hands over" to the driver succeeding him.

The multifarious duties of the
motor-lorry convoys continue in all weathers
and at all times of day and night.
Carrying as they do every imaginable
material, from bread and meat to stones
and coal, they do not work by time-tables,
nor do definite hours end and begin their
day's work, so that a high-pressure state of
readiness has to be constantly maintained,
this being only possible by perfect organization
and the closest attention to the most
minute details, which can alone pave the
way to thoroughness.

The duties of the Army Service Corps in
peace-times are many and various, and the
inauguration of hundreds of mechanical
transport units since the outbreak of war
has multiplied in every possible way the
duties which previously existed, and
considerably enlarged its scope of action and
power of assistance to the armies in the
field.  Its many phases, and the important
part that it plays in the commissariat of our
armies, cause the Army Service Corps to be
an integral part of the fighting machine.
From a Departmental Corps it has become
an army in itself, with many thousands of
officers.  Its spheres of operation with the
Expeditionary Force in France alone are
of such a magnitude as could never have
been adequately realized before the war.
It will be seen, therefore, that thousands
of mechanically propelled vehicles, from
motor-cycles to huge tractors, are employed
in this vast undertaking.  This necessitates
supply depots, where are kept stocks of
tyres, spare parts, tools, and reserves of all
kinds of stores, such as oil, petrol, etc.,
essential to the maintenance of this huge
system in the desired state of efficiency, so
that it is capable of promptly satisfying the
many and constant demands which are made
daily by officers commanding mechanical
transport units in the field.  The
organization now existing does credit to its
originators.  For the original Expeditionary
Force, motor-vans and such-like suitable
vehicles were hurriedly impressed, and of
them Supply Columns, Ammunition Parks
and such-like units were rapidly formed and
dispatched to France.  So one would, in
those early days, frequently meet on the
road a convoy composed of miscellaneous
vehicles of various makes, brewers' drays,
grocers' vans, etc., still bearing the names,
in blazing letters, of their former owners,
and the nature of the load they had
previously carried.  The London General
Omnibuses and their drivers, which were previous
to the war subsidized by the Government,
continued for some time to run along the
roads of Flanders loaded with troops, still
displaying their former route through
London.  "Piccadilly-Strand-Bank" routes
were to be seen, whilst many of them
continued to advertise the Revue at the
"Empire" and the fact that it started at
"8.30 p.m. every evening."

But times have changed, and convoys are
now composed, not of miscellaneous
subsidized or impressed vehicles, but of standard
motor-lorries; each convoy made up of
vehicles of the same make, each painted a
uniform colour, and all of exactly similar
appearance, groomed and turned out like
a regiment on parade.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WORKSHOPS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter VI*


.. class:: center large bold

   *THE WORKSHOPS*

.. vspace:: 2

Any account of the working and organization
of a unit in the field, composed
of mechanically propelled vehicles, would be
incomplete unless it contained a description
of the mobile repair workshops which form
such an important part of it.  So vital are
they that without their aid, and the skilful
application of the tools they embody, the
Supply Column—if such, for example, be
the nature of the unit—would become
hopelessly crippled and inefficient as a natural
course of events.  The question will possibly
arise in the reader's mind, "How are the
two hundred odd motor-lorries, cars,
ambulances, and motor-cycles attached to a
Division whilst on service at the front,
and which from the General's car to the
machine of the motor-cyclist dispatch rider
are all of necessity subjected to such hard
wear and tear, maintained in a state of
efficiency and 'running order'?"  I have
alluded briefly to the workshops of the ——
Indian Cavalry Division Supply Column,
and in this chapter I shall endeavour to
give a more or less complete description of
them—the work they perform and the results
they achieve in the general scheme of things.
The workshop section of a Cavalry Supply
Column has an artificer personnel made up
of fitters, turners, blacksmiths, electricians,
and carpenters—the latter known in Army
parlance as "wheelers."  The equipment
consists in four mobile workshops and four
store lorries.  Dealing firstly with the
workshops themselves: the type of lorry
employed is usually a Silent Knight Daimler
or Leyland, propelled by a 40-h.p. engine.
Surmounting the chassis is a platform, on
which is erected a four-sided and closed-in
body; the two sides are made so that they
can be opened out at will and secured
horizontally by wood supports.  The top
half of each side, opening upwards, forms an
extension to the roof, and the lower half,
being let down, extends the platform or
floor-space.  The back and front are fixed
vertically upright, the latter immediately
behind the driver's seat.  Inside the body on
the wooden platform are mounted a lathe,
drilling machine, tool-grinding machine,
also fitter's bench and vices, together with
the accompanying small hand tools.  A
petrol engine direct coupled to a dynamo
drives the lathe, drilling machine, etc.  Such,
briefly, is the arrangement of the standard
mechanical transport mobile workshops.
Our Workshops Officer, however, was not
satisfied and sought to improve upon it.
This he has accomplished in the following
way.  In the first place he has made structural
alterations to the workshop lorry bodies
so as to take fuller advantage of the possible
floor-space.  To do this he has extended the
front end of the body from the back of the
driver's seat to the dashboard of the lorry.
Secondly, he has eliminated the stationary
petrol engine, and instead employs the engine
in the lorry chassis to drive the lathe, drilling
machine, and other machine tools.  The
system of driving the machine tools from the
lorry engine is by means of a triple set of
whittle belts to the dynamo, and thence the
power is transmitted to the machines.  The
speed of the engine is maintained constant
by a specially designed centrifugal governor.
Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery,
this system of drive in one form or another
has since been copied in many workshops
of the mechanical transport units in France.
In addition to the workshop lorries,
O.C. Workshops has a two-wheeled "trailer" of
his own design and construction, which when
the column is on the move is coupled up to
one of the workshop lorries and towed by the
latter.  It is designed to carry two spare
engines complete.  When stationary, it acts as
a fitting, erecting, and engine-testing bench,
and on it all lorry engines are overhauled
and refitted as occasion requires.  On the
trailer is fixed a crane, which enables the
engine that is to be overhauled to be lifted
direct from its lorry chassis and placed on
the trailer.  Conversely, the crane replaces
the reconstructed engine into its chassis,
time and labour occupied by the operation
being considerably reduced by the use
of this device as compared with manual
labour and pulley blocks.  The time during
which the lorry is out of action is
appreciably reduced; it becomes a matter of hours
instead of days, for the engine that is
removed from the chassis for overhauling
purposes is replaced for the time being by
one of the engines which is in running order
carried on the trailer.  Moreover, without
the mechanical advantage gained by the
use of the trailer and crane, the operation
would naturally take very considerably
longer and the lorry be out of action for a
proportionately longer period.

The O.C. Workshops has also designed
and constructed numerous other time- and
labour-saving appliances; for example, he
has made extensions to lathes, enabling
almost any part of a lorry to be machined
in them when required.

To enable the blacksmiths to tackle any
job that might be required, he has made
and fitted up an electrically driven "Roots"
blower.  Thus it is only necessary to build
up a hearth of bricks and mud, set up the
blower, switch on the electric current, and
a roaring welding fire within a few minutes
is the result.  Although these workshops
are designated "mobile," and only intended
for the carrying out of simple and
"running" repairs, the blacksmiths have
literally forged axles by the roadsides.  Amongst
other appliances must be mentioned the
brass furnace, in which is melted up all old
scrap, such as used up phosphor or bronze
bearings, etc., and from such metal, when
poured, castings are made of every conceivable
brass part of a car or lorry that could
be required.  It is not uncommon for 2
cwt. of metal to be "run" in a day from this
furnace and cast into moulds, the
necessary "patterns" from which the castings
are moulded being also made by artificers
of the workshops.

The net result of such well-equipped
workshops is that during the whole time that the
column has been in France it has not been
found necessary to return a single vehicle
to the Base Depot for replacement.  Every
repair has been carried out "in the field"
by the column workshops.  The non-evacuation
of a single lorry is a record held by the
—— Indian Cavalry Division Supply Column,
and the fact is the more remarkable since
over half of the lorries are, as I have
previously stated, ex-London General buses.

It will be seen at once from the brief
description I have given of the workshops
appliances that at any time, day or night,
and in any place, be it even by the roadside,
it is only necessary to start up the engines
and the whole unit is set in motion, and
is immediately in full working order—at
night, illuminated throughout by a blaze of
electric incandescent lamps, the current
being generated by the self-same workshop
lorry engine.

The workshop artificers are all specially
enlisted and skilled workmen at their particular
jobs, and with the tools and appliances
at their disposal, there is no job that they
would not be prepared to tackle.  One of
the difficulties of mechanical transport
vehicles and motor-cars has been the
question of road "springs."  Owing to having
to carry heavy loads on rough roads, these
were found to occasionally break a leaf or
two, and thus put the vehicle out of action.
For this reason the O.C. Workshops not
only makes sets of springs, but hardens and
tempers them; an operation which, being
an art in itself, requires considerable skill.
He has constructed a special hardening
furnace for this purpose.

Apart from the many jobs necessary to
keep all the motor vehicles of the Division,
the Supply Column motor-lorries and cars,
all the motor ambulances, motor-cycles and
Divisional Staff cars, the total number
amounting to over two hundred in the case
of a Cavalry Division, in a state of running
order and constant efficiency, the following,
to mention only a few, are samples of the
jobs which have been undertaken and
accomplished: the making of 3-inch shells, hand
grenades, "discs" for motor-car wheels,
automatic barbed-wire cutters, and last,
though not least, a silver christening cup,
which was presented by the officers of the
column to one of our number, as a gift from
them for his son and heir, who was born very
shortly after our arrival in France.  In
order to make this cup, first of all a wooden
pattern was made; a quantity of old silver
spoons, forks, and other articles were then
melted up in the furnace, and the cup cast
from the pattern.  It was then turned up
and polished in a lathe, the result being a
handsome goblet, 18 inches in height and
weighing 1 1/2 lb.  The O.C. Workshops and
his artificers delight in making any special
article which calls for exceptional skill and
ingenuity; there are sometimes days when
possibly the workshops are not particularly
overburdened with work, and "fancy" jobs
such as the above serve to keep the artificers'
hands "in," and the efficiency of the tools
and machines up to high-water mark.

As I have already explained, although the
workshops are designated "mobile," which
term implies that they can be moved from
place to place as the position of the column
changes, and also suggests that they are only
intended for carrying out "running" repairs,
they are now the most complete and up-to-date
engineering works for the size that it is
possible to imagine.  They are able to carry
out all the operations of any engineering
works, from the preparation of designs and
drawings, patterns, castings, and forgings,
etc., to the fitting together of the complete
article.  Every workshop tool and appliance
is marked with a number, which identifies
the workshop lorry to which it belongs, so
that in the event of the column receiving an
order to suddenly move, which is, in fact,
frequently the case, the entire equipment
can be packed up and the workshops are on
the road in less than a couple of hours from
the time the order to move is received.
There is a place for everything, and
everything has been designed and constructed to
fit in its place.  It is, of course, necessary
to have always at hand a considerable
quantity of workshop stores in the form of
spare parts, tools, sparking-plugs, bolts,
nuts and the like; these are carried in the
store lorries, which have closed-in bodies,
the interior of the bodies being fitted out
with pigeon-holes and compartments for
the purpose.  The store lorries are four
in number; they also serve as offices for
the storekeepers and clerks, and in them
all office work connected with the
organization of the workshops is carried out.  In
order to enable this to be done, the
O.C. Workshops has fitted them with an office
table apiece and large side windows to admit
light and air, two necessaries which the
original designers must have overlooked!
The lorry which serves as his own office he
has fitted up with an office-chair and table,
cupboards, an aluminium wash-hand basin,
which was cast from scrap aluminium, a
gas stove, and hot-water supply apparatus,
the whole equipment having been made
throughout in the workshops.  The interior
of the lorry is also, of course, lit with
electricity, and thus the O.C. Workshops is
enabled to carry on his work in comfort day
or night, summer or winter.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LIFE BEHIND THE LINE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter VII*


.. class:: center large bold

   *LIFE BEHIND THE LINE*

.. vspace:: 2

During our stay at Fouqtiereuil, which
was not, however, of long duration, we
saw and heard things that to most of us, at
any rate, were quite new.  In the distance
artillery was continually booming away, and
at night the brilliant flashes of the star-shells
over the trenches beyond us lit up the sky.
It was not uncommon any day to see an
aeroplane in the distance, followed in its
passage across the sky by little puffs of
white smoke, the phenomenon caused by
shrapnel shells loosed off by our anti-aircraft
guns on land at a hostile Taube, bursting
all around it.

Our next move was to Lillers, where we
remained only for a short time also.  Of
our journeys and convoys from this railhead
I give some account in a following chapter.
A few days before the end of December,
railhead was again moved, this time to
Berguette, and here we spent our first
Christmas Day.  Our mess was a room in a small
empty house, which certainly looked
cheerless enough when we first saw it, but the
O.C. Workshops very soon, with the assistance
of his able artificers, produced a table
and forms, rigged up a thoroughly efficient
acetylene lighting plant and also a fire-grate;
this latter was really a masterpiece
of blacksmiths' art.

With these and many luxuries in the form
of Christmas puddings and cakes sent by
fond relatives at home, not forgetting a
turkey locally acquired by the C.O., and
some champagne of doubtful vintage, we
managed to do ourselves proud.  In all the
different places in which we have been
stationed, whether our mess has been a
brickyard, a deserted house, a barn or a
tent, the ingenuity of O.C. Workshops and
his contrivances to produce light, heat, and
such-like cardinal comforts have never failed
us.  A man who has spent years in the
wilds of Africa and is accustomed to making
himself always comfortable and thoroughly
at home amid the most unpromising
surroundings—even amongst the haunts of the
man-eating lions of Tsavo or the snowy
summits of the Klondyke—and who is also
an engineer and an inventive genius, is a
distinct acquisition to any unit on active
service.

The artistic touch also we do not usually
omit, for whenever possible we decorate
the faded wall-paper of the messroom with
a selection of Raphael Kirchner's fair
"Parisiennes"—those charming vivandiêres
of the trenches, dressed with that economy
which is so very French!

A day or two before the end of the year
railhead was again moved.  This time to
Aire-sur-la-Lys, where we were destined to
stay for some months.  Aire is one of those
quaint, old-fashioned little towns of which
there are so many in the Northern
departments of France, with its large *pavé*
Grande Place or open market square
bordered by shops, and squared off at one
end by an imposing Hôtel de Ville.  I
must not forget that here also is the Café
du Commerce, which in due course became
a recognized rendezvous for officers between
the hours of six and eight every evening,
and where Madame and Mdlle Chermeux
dispensed many delectable *apéritifs*.

Aire contains one or two good examples
of sixteenth-century Spanish architecture,
and a large, square-towered and massive
cathedral, which has been restored and
added to until it seems to embody many
types of architecture, and incidentally
contains some very fine and beautifully coloured
stained-glass windows, the interior effect of
these in the long, dark nave being
somewhat nullified by the amount of cheap and
gaudy decoration, gilt paint and such-like,
on walls and pillars, alas! so noticeable in
many cathedrals and big churches in France.

Not very far from this cathedral a number
of our motor-lorries were parked.  The town
boasted of many good billets, as is usual
in small towns of this sort.  The rank and
file sleep usually in their lorries.  These
can, by a man with a little ingenuity, be
made quite comfortable resting-places, by
rigging up inside the vehicle a hammock
or other similar contrivance.  With the
tail-board up the cold is more or less kept out,
and the tarpaulin cover, which is stretched
over the top of long oval-shaped, channel
iron supports, roofs in the vehicle and
protects the sleeper from rain and other
indiscretions of the weather.  Other
accommodation in the shape of empty warehouses
is usually available, or billets in private
houses—if the men care to go to the expense
of paying for them—are not disallowed.  In
the smaller villages matters become
somewhat different, the only opportunity for
additional cover consisting usually in the
inevitable farmhouse mud-walled barns.
These are seldom weather-proof, and
frequently their hospitality must be shared
with many rats which also make them
their dwelling-place.

French farms are curiously arranged places.
In the North of France, at any rate,
they are invariably one-storied buildings of
rectangular shape surrounding a farmyard
with a dung-heap.  Near the dung-heap is
frequently a pump, so it is not to be
wondered at that the greatest care has to
be taken in treating water before it is
used for drinking purposes by the troops.
This is accomplished by large movable
chemically charged filters, mounted on
wheels and towed by wagon or motor-lorry
from place to place as necessity
may require.  In any place where troops
are billeted it becomes necessary to immediately
construct incinerators, either of brick
or metal, where all rubbish in the shape of
empty jam-tins, garbage, etc., can be destroyed
and, after being thus burnt, is buried.
The result is that ground in France, after
being occupied by British troops, is generally
left by them in a better state of sanitation
than they found it, owing to the measures
taken to drain any stagnant water and the
free use of chemical disinfectants over any
doubtful soil or drainage.  The French
peasants sometimes express surprise at the
precautions taken by the British Army to
avoid insanitation, and at the fact that all
refuse is buried after being burnt.  Owing to
the latter we have sometimes been described
as *les chats*, the peasants apparently assuming
that we have learnt this idea from the habits
of the amiable members of the feline tribe.

All such undertakings are carried out by
that most necessary and efficient party of
men known as the Sanitary Squad.

But to leave the subject of billeting areas
in general and return to the town of Aire
and the attractions it offered.  I shall not
forget the first Sunday—the first of the New
Year, 1915—which we spent there.  Besides
ourselves there were considerable numbers of
troops stationed in the vicinity at the time,
and in honour of this fact, and also
presumably by way of further cementing the
Entente Cordiale, it was announced that
in the afternoon there would be a special
service in the cathedral to invoke the Divine
aid for the success of the Allied arms.  All
British soldiers were invited to be present,
and long before the advertised time of the
service the cathedral was packed, and,
looking down its long nave, presented in
appearance a solid mass of khaki.  The service
opened by the singing of "God Save the
King," in which the whole congregation
were asked to join.  The National Anthem
was accompanied by the organ and
conducted by an aged priest, who stood at the
chancel steps beneath a life-size statue of
Joan of Arc, and never, I thought, had there
been such an assembly under such strange
circumstances.  Here were a thousand or
so English soldiers of all ranks, from General
Officers to privates, and a sprinkling of
French soldiers, singing the National Anthem
while facing a statue of Joan of Arc, her arms
outstretched as if in the act of pleading.
And all this in a Catholic cathedral in France,
which still held protruding from its outer
walls cannon-balls accurately placed there
by a piece of Marlborough's artillery in a
former and somewhat different campaign.
Incidentally, several similar cannon-balls
were dug up in a field adjoining the
railhead, in the course of excavations made in
connection with the Native abattoir, which
I have referred to in a previous chapter.
That priest was nothing if not thorough, for
he conducted the congregation through all
the verses of the National Anthem, and it
must be admitted to our national shame
that the majority present knew no more
than the words of the first verse, and I
think these words did duty for all the
remaining ones!  The Bishop, who preached, again
and again addressed himself to "Messieurs
les Anglais," reminding his hearers that the
great armies of France and Great Britain
were fighting side by side in brotherhood
for the liberties of Europe.  He also laid
frequent emphasis on the help which Great
Britain had extended to France in her hour
of need, and paid a glowing tribute to
"Sa Majesté le Roi George de Grande-Bretagne."

There was nearly always something of
interest going on at Aire.  On the broad
canal the many barges presented a
picturesque sight.  The French, unlike us,
make the greatest possible use of their
canals and waterways, and their barges
would, I think, put anything of the kind that
one might see on the Thames quite in the
shade.  The use of these barges has been
invaluable to our Army: some have been
lavishly fitted up as Red Cross barges,
and, in charge of officers of the Royal Army
Medical Corps, gently bear down the more
seriously wounded from the front to the
casualty clearing hospitals, in a degree of
comfort that could not possibly be
approached by motor ambulance cars on
bad roads.  These lavishly equipped
hospital barges are indeed worthy of
comparison with our magnificent ambulance
trains running on the French State railways
between the casualty clearing hospitals and
the base.  Any one who has studied the map
and knows the position of La Bassée
Canal will at once realize of what use this
waterway has been as a means of evacuating
wounded.  Among other *divertissements*
there duly arrived at Aire a flotilla of
motor-gunboats, commanded by a real live
Admiral, with his second in command, a
celebrated surgeon and bone-setter from
Harley Street.  Amongst the other officers
of the flotilla was Earl de la Warr, who has
since lost his life in the service of his country
in another quarter of the globe.  His own
yacht, having been armed and suitably
fitted up, formed one of the flotilla.  The
gunboats were anchored in the canal at
Aire for some time.  Exactly what they
were intended to do we never actually
discovered.  In the end they did nothing,
but departed as mysteriously as they had
arrived.  We heard at a later date that
some had gone to the Dardanelles, and
others were being used for spotting German
submarines in the English Channel, a job
for which, judging by their speed, size, and
light draught, they must be eminently
suitable.  Whilst the gunboats were at Aire,
I spent some cheery evenings in the
wardroom with the gallant members of the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who
officered them—the second in command not
infrequently himself cooking the dinner on
board.  Aire having been before the war
a training centre of the French Army,
boasted a very good rifle-range, and here
our lorry drivers were instructed in the use
of the rifle.

In those days drafts of troops, arriving
from home, used to be frequently detrained
at Aire and other stations in its vicinity, and
great interest and excitement was evinced
at the arrival of the famous 1st Division
of the new Armies to come to France,
who marched through on their way up to
the trenches.  A finer set of men, in the
uniforms of almost every Scottish regiment,
it would have been difficult to imagine, as
one saw them file through the narrow streets
of this old town.

Judging by the many substantial buildings
which have been erected for various purposes
and the enterprises started in the war area,
one would imagine that the war was really
a permanent institution.  Amongst those
that should be mentioned are the Y.M.C.A. Huts
and the Expeditionary Field Force
Canteens.  In the former, which are to be
found in all towns behind the line of
any size, the soldier is always sure of a
welcome and is able to obtain refreshments,
read the papers, and write his letters.  Pens,
ink, and paper are provided free.  The good
work that the Y.M.C.A. has accomplished
out here is simply magnificent and meets
with much appreciation.  The Expeditionary
Field Force Canteens, of which there
are now quite a large number, are veritable
diminutive Harrod's Stores; in them can
be purchased by officers and men every
imaginable thing, from soap and writing-paper
to tinned fruit and cigarettes, all
at particularly low prices, especially, of
course, tobacco and cigarettes, which are
exported from England in bond free of duty.
Even at the extremely low prices prevailing
after paying current expenses and establishment
charges, etc., a profit is made, and this
is devoted to the alleviation of distress
amongst the dependents of soldiers fallen
in battle.  Surely a worthy object.

Boxing and, of course, especially football
are very popular behind the line, often
much to the evident amazement of the
French population, who are in a few cases
averse to lending their fields for the purpose,
which they naturally consider may be spoilt
as pasture land.

Amongst other amusements, some little
time ago, the Indian Cavalry Corps was
presented with a cinematograph machine.
An electric motor to drive it was provided
by the Indian Soldiers' Fund.  The whole
equipment is mounted and carried on a
motor-lorry.  Frequent changes of pictures
are obtained from London, and when times
are quiet the lorry travels from unit to
unit, giving periodic exhibitions for the
amusement of officers and men, the screen
being erected in a suitable barn or, when
weather permits, out of doors.

Aire was also not without its amusements,
both aquatic and equestrian.  It boasted
of one of the best open-air swimming-baths
I have ever seen.  As the summer of 1915
approached, we looked at it expectantly,
and very soon the officer commanding a
Reserve Ammunition Park, which was at
that time in a state of immobility and
compulsory idleness, was placed in charge of
the bath.  With considerable enterprise and
some perseverance he succeeded in clearing
it of weeds and rushes, and thus it became a
splendid bathing-place, adding considerably
to the enjoyment of officers and men alike,
who were fortunate enough to be able to
take advantage of it.  Towards the end of
July a very fine programme of aquatic
sports was put up and extremely well run,
the band of the aforesaid Ammunition
Park assisting in no small degree towards the
success of this enterprise.  That band of
string, wood, and brass instruments, as a
"volunteer" orchestra on active service,
was really an achievement.  It not only
did duty for such shows as this, but on
Sunday mornings regularly occupied the
band-stand in the centre of the Grande
Place during Church Parade, at which Sir
Douglas Haig, at that time the General
Commanding the 1st Army, was frequently
present.  At a later date His Majesty the
King attended a Church Parade in this
Grande Place.

During the summer two horse shows were
arranged by the Indian Cavalry Corps.  The
first was a competitive meeting in which
French cavalry also participated, and was
attended by civilian inhabitants and officers
and men who were anywhere within reasonable
distance of it at the time.  A military
French-horn band and a British regimental
band assisted.  The sight of the Royal
Horse Artillery batteries going round the
course at the gallop to the music of the
band, and the traditional smartness of
their "turn out," was one which once seen
could not easily be forgotten, together with
a number of riding and jumping competitions,
reminiscent as they were of the
Royal Naval and Military Tournament in London.

The second show was more in the nature
of an exhibition of feats of horsemaster-ship
by the Natives, and was arranged for the
pleasure of their Majesties the King and
Queen of the Belgians, accompanied by their
son, the Duke of Brabant, and by Admiral
Lord Charles Beresford, who were evidently
much impressed, as were all spectators, by
the Natives' prowess as horsemen.

It is interesting to note that on this
occasion King Albert wore the khaki uniform
and Sam Brown belt of a British officer.
His son was in the uniform of a private of
the Belgian Army, and stood at attention
as he watched the show, smartly saluting
all officers as they were presented to the
King.  He is now an Eton boy, and when his
picture appeared recently in the illustrated
papers, standing beside Prince Henry, the
son of our own King, my mind harked
back to that horse show and this strange
contrast.

Lord Charles Beresford was wearing khaki
slacks and field service tunic, with badges
of a Colonel of Royal Marines, and any one
who knows the gallant Admiral by sight
will at once appreciate how picturesque he
looked on this occasion.

The course was in a large field of very
green pasture land, roped in and marked
out with flags.  The setting of the whole
scene could not have been more beautiful.
The field was surrounded with woods, and a
typical French château stood at one end.

The various competitive events were, as
I have already remarked, not confined to
the Indian Cavalry Corps; officers of both
British and French cavalry regiments participated,
and the many different bright scarlet
and blue uniforms worn by officers of French
cavalry, together with the red and gold
cap-bands and gorgets of British Generals and
Staff and their many rows of ribbons, showed
up as bright spots of colour amongst the
crowd of khaki-clad soldiers, making the
whole scene a really picturesque one.

The uniform of French cavalry officers,
before the introduction of the universal
pale blue uniform, was a creation truly
marvellous; perhaps that is why they
were the last to adopt the new field
service dress.  It consisted in bright red
breeches, sky-blue short tunic with silver
buttons, red and white facings distinguishing
the chasseur from the dragoon;
jack-boots and long spurs; a forage cap of
sky blue, with silver-braid badges of rank.
My description may not be quite accurate
in its details; nevertheless, it is the
impression left in my mind of the full-dress
uniform of these gallant officers.  Also there
were present cuirassiers, with their breast-plates
and helmets, from the back of which
hung long crimson horsehair plumes.

One evening at Aire, another officer and
myself were taking an after-dinner stroll
along the road which leads to Berguette.
We were discussing matters far removed
from war, when our conversation and the
peacefulness of a moonlight summer night
were disturbed by a terrific explosion, which
appeared to be quite close.  It was followed
by several more in quick succession.  We
stood still and, gazing upwards, could see
nothing, though we heard the hum of an
aeroplane or airship overhead in the
distance.  Returning to Aire, we found the
inhabitants all out in the streets trying to
catch a glimpse of the hostile aircraft.
"Zeppelin" they murmured with one
accord.  Owing to the stillness of the night,
the buzz of the engine certainly sounded
louder than that of the usual aeroplane,
which, however, it turned out to be.  The
damage done was insignificant.  One or two
bombs landed quite near a neighbouring
station, which was being used as an
ammunition railhead at the time.  An ammunition
train was standing loaded in a siding, but
was untouched.  The night-raider did not
prolong his visit for very long, and by
bedtime all was again quiet.

I remember a daylight aeroplane raid
at Lillers one day.  The Taube, flying
very high, tried to bomb the station, but
succeeded in damaging only a café just
outside it and smashing, by the concussion
of the exploding bombs, every pane of
glass within a quarter of a mile radius.
There were two or three casualties.  A
Frenchman who was the possessor of one
leg only, had it damaged to such an extent
that it too had to be amputated, which led
him, no doubt, to reflect that troubles
seldom come singly!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FROM BÉTHUNE TO YPRES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter VIII*


.. class:: center large bold

   *FROM BETHUNE TO YPRES*

.. vspace:: 2

While we were stationed at Lillers, in
the latter part of December 1914, a
detachment of the Indian Cavalry was sent
up in the rôle of infantry to the trenches
beyond Béthune for a short spell, where they
reinforced the Lahore and Meerut Divisions,
the latter two Divisions comprising the
Indian Corps (infantry).  This corps was
moved to another theatre of war at the
beginning of 1916, after having borne the
brunt of the fighting through two winters
in France and Flanders and suffered many
casualties.  The cavalry on this occasion
gave a good account of themselves in the
fighting round Festubert and Givenchy.
During the time that they were there
we convoyed the motor-lorries with rations
for the detachment in the trenches, but
although our destination was shelled during
this period and was within earshot of rifle
fire in the trenches and the "rat-tat-tat"
of machine guns, like so many gigantic
typewriters at work, we never managed to be
actually there whilst any excitement was on.

In this neighbourhood are the graves
of many gallant Native troops, Gurkhas,
Sikhs, Garhwalis, and Pathans of the Indian
Corps.  Our Dominion troops have rightly
won universal praise and admiration for
the gallant part they have played in the war
and the way they have come forward of
their own free will to fight, but it is to be
regretted that our Indian troops have in
this respect been somewhat neglected.  The
nature of their loyalty is different somehow
to that of any of our other overseas troops.
"For East is East, and West is West, and
never the twain shall meet."  Perhaps it
is not generally known that every Native
cavalryman provides his own horse or its
equivalent value in money on enlistment.
I shall never forget the Review of the Indian
Cavalry Corps by the Prince of Wales in
France; the way they gave "eyes right"
as each squadron marched past the Prince
left in one the impression that they really
meant it and were saluting the future
King-Emperor.  These contingents, infantry and
cavalry alike, came to a far-away, strange,
cold land, and to a particularly bleak part
of it at that, during the rainiest winter ever
experienced in a proverbially wet part of
the country, dressed only in their thin
Indian khaki, be it remembered.  They
found themselves taking part in a kind of
warfare that was entirely new to them, in
deep trenches, frequently up to their middles
in water, and always in thick mud and
slush, such as they had never experienced
before in their lives.  Moreover, not only
were they unused to shell fire, but they
found their own particular methods and
tactics of war in open country impossible
under such circumstances; yet, in spite of
all this, they upheld the fighting traditions
of the Indian Army, and stuck it through the
very heaviest of the fighting and under the
worst climatic conditions it is possible to
imagine.  I am referring now chiefly to the
Indian Infantry Corps.

During the nights and days which preceded
the battle of Neuve Chapelle we heard
guns away in the distance making a
continuous bombardment, and a deep roar like
thunder rent the air.  This was the prelude
to the attack.  On March 9th Sir Douglas
Haig's Special Order to the 1st Army was
published.

Our minds at this time must have been
dwarfed, for the attack on Neuve Chapelle
was as nothing in magnitude, compared
with subsequent attacks, in the matters of
men and guns.

The Indian Cavalry Corps was moved up
towards the direction of the attack and
massed some way behind the line in woods,
where they remained "standing to," in
co-operation with divisions of British and
French cavalry, the whole representing, I
believe, the greatest number of mounted
troops ever massed together, up to that time.

The Supply Column made two or three
journeys up on its usual errand, but the
cavalry were sent back to the previous
billets after a few days, it being found that
no opportunity for cavalry fighting had been
effected.  Although this was the case it
must not be thought that the Indian
Cavalry Corps were kept entirely in a state
of idleness.  The —— Divisions of the Corps,
under the command of Lieut.-General
Rimington, were directly under the orders of
General Headquarters, and were available to
be attached to any army and sent to any part
of the line where it was considered that an
opportunity for using them might arise.
Meanwhile they did their bit of reserve
trench digging in various parts of the line,
and many a pleasant summer day I have
spent in convoying up the lorries of supplies
for the different digging parties, and
off-loaded them at various points between
Locon and Estaires.  The R.H.A. batteries
attached to the Corps were almost
continually in action at different places, though
more in the rôle of Field than of Horse
Artillery.

The most interesting journeys, from the
Supply Column point of view, were when
the Indian Cavalry were sent up to the
trenches, again in the rôle of infantrymen,
to the Ypres Salient.  This was in the
early summer of 1915, when they reinforced
the line immediately after the first German
gas attack, from which our line naturally
suffered severely through being unprepared
for another new and previously unanticipated
form of German "Kultur."

It is interesting at this point to note that
during this time a British Cavalry Regiment,
forming part of a Native Cavalry Brigade,
assisted in the attack and capture of Hooge
Château, which has changed hands so many
times.

The rendezvous for the motor-lorries on
these occasions was at some shelter huts
on an open, flat piece of ground, where
once grass had grown and now used as
a camping-ground for troops recently out
of, or about to take their turn in, the
trenches just beyond.  On it are erected
a number of huts, similar to those which
can be seen in many parts of England
where troops in training have been
encamped.  A road runs through the middle
of this plain, and at a prearranged point on
it was the ration dumping-ground.  Here
the motor-lorries were met by the Supply
Officer and their contents off-loaded.  The
use made by us of this ground as a camp
was, of course, not unknown to the Germans,
who occasionally favoured it with a certain
amount of shelling.  On one or two occasions
they shelled it at a most inopportune
moment.  A smoking concert had been got
up and was to take place in one of the
largest huts.  It was to start at 8 p.m., and
no sooner had the first performer on the
programme mounted the improvised
platform than a shell landed just outside; it
was followed by several others.  There was
only one thing to be done, and the senior
officer present ordered the hut to be
evacuated.  So everyone departed, cursing the
Huns roundly for being so extremely
inconsiderate as to spoil an evening's amusement.

One Sunday a Church Parade was being
held, and those present were lustily singing
a hymn, the opening line of which is,
"Stand up, stand up for Jesus."  As the
words "Stand up" were leaving their lips,
a shell came screaming over and exploded
near by.  Every one, the padre included,
instinctively "ducked"!

From the rest camp, as from many other
points behind the line, an aerial combat is
no unusual sight.  One hears the drone of
the aeroplane engines and sees the hostile
machine speeding along over the line, while
little white puffs, like flakes of cotton-wool,
spring suddenly into being all around it,
as the shrapnel shells from anti-aircraft
batteries, familiarly known always as
"Archies," burst.  Or perhaps the gunners
may favour it with high explosive shells,
which leave little black puffs.  On a still
day the puffs of smoke linger for several
minutes in the blue sky like tiny clouds and
gradually disperse.  The hostile aeroplane
darts hither and thither.  All eyes are turned
skywards, and the following are the type of
comments overheard as the shells burst:
"Just a bit too low," "Too far ahead,"
"The next'll get him," "Got him," "No,
he's only doing a dive down into his own
lines."  Often the whole path which the
aeroplane has taken across the sky is
literally covered with these little white puffs of
shrapnel smoke.  I have counted as many
as a hundred and eighty, and even then the
aeroplane not infrequently escapes without
apparent damage.  But the Taube does not
have things all its own way, for one or more
of our own 'planes rise to attack, and if one
is very lucky one sees it descend with a
long and rapid dive—nose first, in flames,
a tangled mass of framework and burning
canvas.  An air duel on a clear day is not
only wonderful from a spectacular point
of view, but the most exciting episode it
is possible to witness.  If, however, one
happens to be directly underneath where the
shrapnel shells are bursting and realizes
that all that goes up comes down again,
one takes more than a spectacular interest
in such an incident.  By night aviators
afford one even greater excitement, trying
to spot the hostile machine and locate it
by the sound of its engine.  Then perhaps
a terrific crash as it drops an incendiary
bomb, the explosion of which lights up the
whole neighbourhood with a dull red glow.

The weather all through that month of
May 1915 was ideal, and nothing could have
looked more beautiful than the long, straight
white roads, with their line of tall trees on
either side that characterize the Routes
Nationales and Routes de Grande Communication,
the main arteries leading across the
borders of France into Belgium, and which
run through miles of intensely cultivated
land.  The main road from Hazebrouck to
Ypres is a typical example of the highways
of Flanders; with its strip of raised *pavé* in
the centre, it is flanked by earth on either
side and runs between an avenue of tall and
stately poplars.  It has been followed by
troops from every part of the world over
which flies the Union Jack or the Tricolour,
and they have marched along it on their
way to fight the bloodiest battles of the
world's history.  The nearer one gets to the
trenches, the worse becomes the condition
of the roads, and that leading through
Poperinghe to Ypres was among the roughest
on which I have ever travelled.  Leaving
Hazebrouck, it gradually became worse and
worse as one approached and crossed the
frontier of Belgium.  The *pavé* in the centre
is narrow and has a high camber.  The
earth that borders it on either side is soft,
so that it is particularly difficult for two
heavy motor-lorries proceeding in opposite
directions to pass one another.  It is to the
credit of British motor-car manufacturers
that the lorries and cars with the
Expeditionary Force in France have stood up so
well on roads such as they were never
designed or intended to travel on.

They were sad runs these, up to the
trenches, where every village through which
the convoy passed was suffering more from
the devastating effects of shell fire than the
last.  Every day almost one would notice a
change; another church tower a little more
damaged, or a house that yesterday was
proudly standing and a landmark is a victim
to German artillery and a ruined mass to-day.
Fewer and fewer buildings left standing, not a
piece of glass remaining in any single window
frame; the bare walls, perhaps, of a house
here and there still standing, but bespattered
with shrapnel bullets.  The further up one
got, the fewer civilian inhabitants one saw,
until the last villages, such as Vlamertinghe
on the road to Ypres, which had been
entirely evacuated by the civilian population,
except perhaps for one or two old peasants
here and there, who had possibly spent all
their lives in their own particular village
and intended to continue doing so, even if
this entailed living a considerable part of
the time in cellars.  We often passed little
parties of refugees making their way slowly
into France, there to throw themselves on
the hospitality of their more fortunate
friends.  Turning their backs for ever on
their old homes, which they instinctively
knew they had seen for the last time, a whole
family, perhaps, the father leading a horse
and cart piled up with such odd bits and
pieces of household goods as they had
managed to save, perhaps all their worldly
possessions—a bed, mattress, and a few sticks
of furniture—the other members of the family
either riding on the cart or following in a
sorrowful little procession behind it, their
possessions amongst the animal world not
being forgotten, but frequently represented
by a goat and a few chickens.  The further
up one got, too, the more congested were the
roads with the impedimenta of war:
motor-lorries, ambulances, guns, wagons and the
like.  The Military Police, being stationed
on point duty on the more important cross
roads, with the aid of red and green flags
directed the traffic, and for all the world it
was often like a block of vehicular traffic
at Piccadilly Circus, the usual accompaniment
of language not being forgotten!

From the rest huts at Vlamertinghe right
into Ypres, or what remained of it, was
only a matter of five minutes on a
motorcycle.  Never have I seen or imagined a
sight so tragic.  Street after street in a state
of absolute wreck and ruin.  What had once
been beautiful and massive buildings, such
as the famous Cloth Hall, which dates from
the thirteenth century, and the Church of
St. Martin, now heaps of debris and broken glass
lying across the road.  Houses destroyed,
many of them, beyond recognition; some
had been set alight by shells and were slowly
smouldering; others, with their fronts
completely blown away, were still standing and
displayed their contents nakedly to the
passer-by.  Such is the ugliness of war's
destruction—the desolation of desolation,
deserted by every living soul.  Never before
have I experienced such a sensation of utter
loneliness.  This struck me more forcibly,
I think, than anything else.  If one had
searched amongst those ruins, what treasures
and what gruesome tragedies might one have
encountered!  Ypres must once have been
a very beautiful city and capital of Flanders;
now it was a city of Death.  To visit it in
1915 was to see the eighth wonder of the
world.  Surely it will for ever be haunted
by the spirits of the soldiers who have
fallen in fighting to hold it.  That the
Ypres Salient has been consistently held
against fearful odds and the heavy attacks
which the enemy has made on it, with Calais
as his objective, is an everlasting memorial
to the valour of British soldiers.

I picked up some pieces of coloured
glass, which had once formed part of
the stained-glass windows of St. Martin's
Church, now shattered and littered over
the ground around its ruins, to take away
as a memento, and as these thoughts were
just passing through my mind, a shell
whistled overhead and burst with a crash
a little distance away and awoke in me
a sense of duty.  I made my way out
of Ypres along the debris-strewn road,
containing here and there some fine examples
of shell-holes in the middle of it.  On the
way out I passed what had once been a
General Service wagon with horses and
riders, now a horrible inert mass of horse-flesh
and wheel-spokes—at least, that is the
impression that this sight left on my mind.
A shell had caught it fair—a direct hit—a
few minutes before.

Ypres at this time, it will be seen, was by
no means a health resort.  The long straight
road leading into it was shelled regularly as
clockwork every day; usually at about five
or six o'clock the evening "hate" started.
That is what is meant when the official
communique states that "artillery fire was
directed upon billets, railheads, and
communication roads"; for this was a road
which much transport loaded with rations,
ammunition, and other material for the
trenches there travelled along, and in the
villages along that road troops on their
way up to or out of the trenches were
frequently temporarily billeted.

Whether it is a peculiarly machine-like
working of the German mind or due to
the fact that German organization is carried
to such limits of mathematical precision
I do not know, but the fact remains that
this road was normally quite safe except
between certain fixed and regular hours
each evening.  So I was never particularly
anxious to delay the return journey of
the convoy of empty motor-lorries longer
than was absolutely necessary, and used
to leave the danger zone as soon as we
had off-loaded the rations and secured
the Supply Officer's receipt for them.  On
one occasion only, on the return journey,
however, did we have any excitement.
We were travelling in convoy along a
narrow road leading from the huts up to
and at right angles to the main road.  Just
as we came to the junction of the two a few
shells landed in the adjoining field, planted
with tall poles, around which twining hops
grew, doubtless of the famous Popeninghe
brand.  A few of these were destroyed, and
quantities of earth were thrown up, the
shells leaving dense grey-black clouds of
smoke in the air, but doing no other damage.
We were only just in time, though, that day,
for a few hours later a motor-cyclist
dispatch rider, who had come along the same
road, caught up the convoy at Hazebrouck
and told me that further back the road was
being heavily shelled.

The saddest sight of all is just behind
the line, in those roadside fields where
rest the fallen.  No matter to what part
of the line one goes, but particularly
behind Ypres—and nowhere scarcely along
the whole front has the fighting been
heavier than on this bit of the British
line—one sees clustered together in groups here
and there the little wooden crosses which
mark the graves of those of whom Robert
Louis Stevenson wrote, "They despised
Death and have won their discharge."  They
are cared for now and duly registered, and
as far as possible inscribed with names and
dates by that excellent department, the
Graves Registration Committee at General
Headquarters.  "Oh, Cromwell's England,
must thou yield for every inch of ground
a son?" asks the poet; and these little
graves will for ever remain, silent witnesses
to the fact that here Death once reaped a
rich harvest.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MR. THOMAS ATKINS AND THE FRENCH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter IX*


.. class:: center large bold

   *MR. THOMAS ATKINS AND THE FRENCH*

.. vspace:: 2

As I have already stated, Aire remained
our railhead for some months, and
during the first week of August 1915 we left
it.  What sorrow our departure caused!  As
the long procession of lorries pulled out
through the narrow *pavé* streets for the
last time, the civilian population turned
out *en masse* and was literally in tears!
It is a noticeable fact that when British
troops arrive to take up their quarters in
any town or village for the first time they
are occasionally, but by no means always,
looked upon with a certain amount of
suspicion and distrustfulness by the civilian
inhabitants, who sometimes seem disinclined
to offer facilities in the way of accommodation
and so forth.  I suppose this is not to be
wondered at, and it would be curious to see
what reception Allied foreign troops would
receive in an English village.  After a few
days, however, they find Tommy is a good
fellow and spends freely what little money
he has.  The shopkeepers in the little
towns behind the line are as fortunate as
the inhabitants of the invaded towns on
the other side of the line are unfortunate.
Among others, the *debitants de boissons*, or
Estaminet keepers, do a roaring trade in
such drinks as they are allowed to sell to
the troops—very "small beer," and the
usual red and white wines.  Occasionally, in
some places, one observes a small notice to
the effect that "English Beer and Stout
are sold here."  The popular winter drink
of 1914, *café-rhum*, came to an end when
the veto was put on the sale of spirits to
the troops, and it is impossible now to
buy even a whisky and soda, though I
have heard of one being produced by the
*garçon* at a certain café on being asked
for a *vin blanc Ecossé*.

It is wonderful how Mr. Thomas Atkins,
always adaptable, has mastered the French
language, or rather, I should say, has
compounded a language, half-French and
half-English, but which nevertheless enables
him to make himself understood and
thoroughly at home in the most trying
circumstances.  As a rule, he is able to
undertake the most complicated shopping
with the greatest of ease, and carry on long
conversations and arguments with the vendor
meanwhile.  There are, however, exceptions
to every rule.  A friend of mine, on
one occasion, arrived late in the evening
in a new village.  It had been raining hard
all day, as it only can in Flanders.  Being
wet through and very tired, he told his orderly
to find the billet allotted to him and make
various arrangements with Madame as to
a latch-key and so forth.  The orderly
returned a little later with a crestfallen look
and an air of dismay.  "Can't make Madame
understand, sir," he said.  "They seem to
talk a different kind of slang here to the
last place we were in."

On another occasion my friend himself
went into a chemist's shop at St. Omer
with the object of purchasing some
hair-wash.  "Huile pour les chevaux" was the
nearest he could think of, and he was greatly
alarmed when the chemist produced a bottle
of Elliman's horse embrocation and
proclaimed its excellent qualities at some length.
*Huile pour les chevaux* and *huile pour les
cheveux* are two very different things!
But Tommy is seldom at a loss.  "Deux
beers sivous play, Ma'mselle, compree?"
he will demand as he enters an estaminet,
and if Ma'mselle in question has any
pretensions to beauty, he will not infrequently
at a later stage of the proceedings, purely,
no doubt, by way of paying a delicate
compliment and to further cement the
*entente*, add to his previous remarks some
such jocular suggestion as "Promnarde avec
moi?"  To which the Ma'mselle will
probably reply to the effect that he is "Très
polisson."  Tommy, nothing daunted, will
round off the conversation by some cryptic
remark to the effect that she is "no bong"!

Certain phrases, easily acquired orally,
and seldom quite understood—for example,
"nar poo," derived from "il n'y-en a plus,"
do duty on many occasions and under
varying circumstances.  Tommy even sometimes
carries his French phrases so far as his letters
home, possibly for "showing off" purposes.
His spelling of French words is usually
quaint.

Many of our lorry drivers, as I have
explained, were previous to the war
motor-bus and taxi-cab drivers in London.  The
powers of repartee of this type of man are
proverbial, and with a slight admixture of
French have lost none of their former
crispness.  On the contrary, his "vocabulary"
has been augmented.  It is a pity that we
have had to resort to conscription for the
Army, and one can only hope that sooner
or later some distinction will be made
between the conscript and the man who,
regardless of age and the cost, volunteered
for service in the early part of the war.  In
an Army Service Corps unit particularly, one
notices men whose appearance leads one to
think that there is, to say the least, a
discrepancy between their real and regimental
age as given on enlistment.  I recollect
asking one elderly-looking man his age;
he replied, "Forty-two, sir."  Noticing
that on his breast was the blue and white
ribbon of the Egypt medal of 1882, I
remarked, "Then you must have been eight
years old when that was awarded to you!"

It is interesting to note that Indian troops
pick up French in many cases quite readily,
and apparently more easily than English.
If you chance on one on the road, trying to
find his way to some village or other, and
he cannot speak English and you cannot
speak Hindustani, a little "pidgin" French
will usually be found to be a common basis
for conversation, or an old soldier, who has
rejoined for the war and who many years
ago perhaps served in India, will come to the
rescue and explain matters with much
gesticulation and a curious mixture of English,
French, and Hindustani, the word
*compris*, in the form of a question, usually
playing an important part in the
conversation.  Many of the Native Cavalry soldiers
now speak French quite fluently, their
pronunciation being almost perfect.

There is one excuse for everything which,
like charity, covers a multitude of sins, in
France to-day.  If one has occasion to
suggest to a shopkeeper that so and so is
*très cher*, or to the *chef de gare* that the
train is late for which you are waiting, no
matter what the complaint, the answer is
invariably the same, "C'est la guerre,
monsieur."  It is the stock phrase of
consolation and explanation.  They accept the war,
do these peasants and bourgeois of Northern
France, in a spirit of optimistic fortitude,
as something which has unfortunately got
to be, and which shows no sign of ending, at
any rate at present.  Their hatred of the
Boches, which they readily express, both
verbally and by such cryptic signs and
phrases as "Coupez la gorge," etc., is
intense, and of a nature that could hardly
be realized by the people of England, who
have not been subjected to the systematic
brutality which the Boches have invariably
exercised, or experienced the invasion of
Belgium—as carefully planned as it was
diabolically executed.

In no town or village in which I have
been have I seen a solitary man of military
age, married or single alike, except, of
course, the obviously physically unfit, who
is not in the Army, the Navy, or the workshops,
and this has been the same since the
first 1914 mobilization in France.  The older
men are employed as sentries at level
crossings and on railway bridges.  Even in the
munition works, the impression one gains
is that the bulk of the people thus employed
are old men, women, or young girls and boys.

Yet the work of the land, right up almost
to the trenches, in this richly agricultural
and intensely cultivated country, is carried on
as usual by those left behind.  The old men,
women, and children work in a way that is
truly remarkable.  Never have I seen women
and children do such an amount of manual
work.  The pay of the French *poilu*,
formerly five centimes (a halfpenny) and
latterly raised to twenty-five centimes
(two-pence halfpenny), together with the small
"separation allowance" paid to his dependents,
compel the latter to carry on the work
of the land as of yore and keep things going
till the war is ended.

As a contrast to the many posters which
placard every available hoarding and wall
in England, there are very few in France.
One is to be seen everywhere—in cafés,
railway carriages, in the streets, etc.; and it
contains three lines of straightforward and
pungently sound advice, strictly to the point
and commendably brief.  It emanates from
the Minister of War, and is as follows:

   |  Taisez-vous!
   |  Méfiez-vous!
   |  Les oreilles des ennemies vous écoutent!

The only other posters to be seen advertise
the advantages of investment in the French
War Loan; they are obviously drawn by
artists, and are in keeping with the best
theatrical posters in London, such as one
would see outside His Majesty's Theatre.

The three lines of warning which I have
referred to above lead me to the question
of spies.  Of course, spies there are, without
a doubt, especially in places which have
previously been in enemy occupation, and
through such agents information of military
importance is conveyed to the enemy, by
one method or another.  There are, however,
alleged spies, who are occasionally reported
by different people, soldiers or civilians,
who may have reason to suspect them.  The
various Assistant Provost Marshals are,
naturally, only too anxious to catch real
spies, and are not only willing but keen to
investigate reports and incidentally
inconvenience ninety-nine suspects in the hope of
catching the hundredth.  Curious mistakes
happen, and did so particularly in the early
stages of the war.  On one occasion an
apparently eminently respectable-looking and
bearded Frenchman was apprehended.  He
was noticed standing in the street making
what appeared to be entries in a pocket-book
with the aid of a pencil whilst some batteries
of artillery were passing along through the
town.

It was only necessary to put two and two
together and use a small amount of
imagination; what could he be taking note of in
his pocket-book except the sizes, number,
and such-like particulars of the passing
guns?  He protested vehemently and
excitedly that so far from being a spy he
hated the Germans.  He was, he said, a
merchant from Roubaix, and was not his
house and business place in their cursed
hands?  Which facts were proved by
investigation in due course to be perfectly true.
On being examined, he was asked among
other questions if he could produce what he
was alleged to have written in his pocketbook.
This, he said, was a matter of impossibility,
but he offered instead an explanation.
He had, he stated, on the previous evening
seen a girl who greatly attracted him;
chancing to run across her again the
following day, he hastily pulled out his
notebook with the object of scribbling a brief
note to suggest a rendezvous for later in the
day.  Unfortunately, she disappeared into
a house near by, and he, losing sight of her,
was unable to deliver his note.  Naturally,
therefore, he could not produce it; he had
torn it up and thrown it in the gutter.  I
need hardly add that when the authorities
were satisfied as to his identity he was
released, the victim of a mistake and his
own indiscretion.

A few days after this incident I happened
to notice a report of it in a French newspaper.
With true journalistic ardour for sensational
details, the writer of it added that the
supposed spy "swallowed" the note he had
written, rather than produce it for inspection.
This is not true, but my story is an accurate
account of the incident, which caused great
amusement at the time.

On another occasion I was Orderly Officer
of the Day at Aire, and "visiting rounds"
late at night, a sentry on duty in the town,
belonging to a Scottish regiment, told me
that he had a man dressed in officer's uniform
under observation, who aroused his suspicion
owing to the questions addressed to him as
to the whereabouts of certain brigades and
regiments.  He had already, he said,
reported the matter to his corporal, who had
posted two sentries outside the house into
which the suspect had gone.  My duty was
quite plain: this case was one for immediate
investigation; so, accompanied by the sentry,
I went up to the house, which was only a
few yards away, and which happened to be
a *brasserie*.  The next thing to be done
was to gain admittance to the *brasserie*.
It was now after midnight.  Having given
the sentries orders to load their rifles, but
only to loose off in the event of their suspect
endeavouring to make his escape or resist
escort, and to shoot low at that, with my
revolver in one hand I rang the *brasserie*
bell with the other.  It was one of those
large bells suspended at some height, actuated
by a long chain, and which have a way of
continuing to ring for some time after the
chain has been pulled.  Very soon, up went
a window on the first floor, and out of it
appeared the head and shoulders of a woman,
obviously aroused from her slumbers.  I
inquired in the best French I could command
if there was an "Officier anglais" billeted
in the house.  She replied that there was
one, and she would go to his room and
wake him.  In a few minutes, after much
clanking of chains and bolts, the front door
was opened.  This, then, was the critical
moment!  A Captain of the —— Regiment
emerged and asked what the ——
I wanted and why the —— I had woke
him up at such an unearthly hour of the
night.  The sentry had made a mistake in
his overzealousness.  The alleged spy was
an officer, who had that night returned
from leave, and finding no one about except
a sentry, had sought from him such information
as to the whereabouts of his unit as
would enable him to rejoin it on the following
morning.  So, apologizing profusely and
explaining my position in the matter, I
withdrew, greatly disappointed at being
denied the excitement of catching a real spy.

A friend of mine was travelling along a
country road in a motor-car and noticed a
man walking who aroused his suspicions.
He was dressed in an odd assortment of
military uniform and civilian clothes, and
on his coat were several regimental buttons,
both French and English.  Moreover, he
was unable to produce any pass or papers
of identification.  My friend, first ascertaining
that his prisoner was unarmed, invited
him to get into the back of the car, which
he did, not neglecting at the same time to
pull over his knees a fur rug which happened
to be there—one of those magnificent
bear-skin rugs which were sent out as
presents to certain members of the
Expeditionary Force by the Grand Duke Michael
of Russia in the winter of 1914.  In a few
minutes the next village was reached, and
passing through it my friend noticed with
some surprise that his fellow-traveller was
being greeted with cheers, thrills of laughter
and hand-waves by the children and a few
people who happened to be about.  Stopping
at the *mairie*, the man was at once
identified.  He was the local "rag and
bone" man, quite harmless, though
somewhat mad.  Nevertheless, he thanked my
friend profusely for the lift, which he
explained had not only saved him a two or
three miles walk on a dusty road, but
provided for him a new sensation and experience,
for this had been his first ride in a
motor-car.  I need scarcely add that spies
have since been a sore point with my friend.

And here I must tell a story against
myself.  Returning to railhead about ten
or eleven o'clock one evening, I had occasion
to halt the convoy *en route*, as I noticed
that it was beginning to spread out too much
and several vehicles in the rear were
becoming "stragglers."  As I pulled up, a man
approached from the direction in which I
had been proceeding and walked past along
the line of lorries drawn up on the roadside.
He aroused my suspicions, for although
he wore the usual service jacket of a British
officer, he appeared in the dim light to be
also wearing red-coloured "slacks" of
apparently the same hue as a French soldier.  My
first impression was that he was dressed
in a mixture of British and French uniform,
possibly an ill-informed German spy,
who, having heard of the *belle alliance*,
imagined it to be carried to such lengths
in practice that the uniforms of the two
Armies were combined.  I watched him for
a minute, then followed, and getting even
with him, wished him "Good-evening."  There
was no time to lose, so I got straight to the
point and asked him his name and regiment.
He inquired the reason of my apparent
curiosity, and I admitted that the shade of
his trousers had aroused my suspicions.
He replied that he was in the 11th
Hussars—the only regiment in the British
Army, he added, who were privileged
to wear "cherry-coloured" slacks.  I
apologized and withdrew, feeling quite
crestfallen.  The following day I told this
to a cavalry officer who had been a
good many years in the Service.  He
was much amused, and said, "Oh yes,
that's quite right; no doubt he belongs to
the 11th, always known in the Service as
the 'cherubims'!"  I have never run up
against my cherubim friend again, but if
he should ever chance to read these lines
and recalls the incident, I trust he will
forgive me, and realize that I only carried
out what I deemed, in my innocence, to be
my duty.





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.. _`WITH THE R.H.A. BATTERIES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter X*


.. class:: center large bold

   *WITH THE R.H.A. BATTERIES*

.. class:: center large

   (CONTRIBUTED BY A LORRY DRIVER IN THE COLUMN)

.. vspace:: 2

In the capacity of motor-lorry driver on a
converted London General Omnibus
attached to the —— Indian Cavalry Supply
Column, and carrying rations to the Royal
Horse Artillery Batteries of the Division, I
have been fortunate in having had the
opportunity of driving my lorry as near the line
as lorries go, and have witnessed many
exciting incidents.  The author of this book
has asked me to record some of the more
interesting of them.

My first occasion to leave the Column was
in the early part of 1915, when, amongst
others, my lorry was for a time "on
detachment" and we left Aire for ——, from
which latter railhead we rationed the
batteries whilst in action.  Leaving ——,
we early sighted hostile aircraft, flying
fairly low, passing over the lorries.  We
quite expected some bombs to be dropped,
but as nothing of the kind occurred, the
machines may only have been out on
a reconnaissance flight.  On this
particular day, having returned to our own
lines, our load being dumped, we had not
been there many minutes when I observed
an aeroplane bearing the British mark, a
red bull's-eye on a target of blue and white
circles, which distinguishes our aeroplanes
from those of the enemy, the latter being
marked with the familiar "Iron Cross."  The
signs are, of course, readily distinguishable
from the ground, being painted on the
underside of the planes.  Much to my
surprise, on the aeroplane coming over us,
there was a loud report in the field alongside
where I was standing, followed by four
others in rapid succession.  After the
disguised hostile machine, as it proved to be,
had disappeared into the blue, we made for
the field and found deep holes, measuring
some five or six feet in diameter, in the soft
ground.  One bomb exploded close beside
a cottage, but fortunately no one was near
at the time, so no casualties occurred.  At
the Gendarmerie, where I was billeted, a
note, dropped from one of the aeroplanes
evidently, was picked up, bearing the
message, "A present from Uncle: many happy
returns."  This was on April 1st, but as
the only victim of the "raid" was an old
hen, the "fool" can scarcely be described
as having been a success.  One bomb
certainly succeeded in claiming the back
premises of an estaminet, but this was the
full extent of its day's work.  We dug up a
"dud" bomb in a newly ploughed field,
which was at once taken apart and "flogged,"
as we term it, for a few francs by the finder.
Its propeller now forms part of a lady's
hat-pin.

Our journeys were now to ——, by
no means a healthy spot, but there was
too much interest attached to the job for
time to think of the dangers lurking
around.

We watched the church being shelled—twenty-seven
shells in all were sent over by
the Huns; but they did not get the tower,
which, was, no doubt, their objective.
The deserted village afforded considerable
interest—the village pump standing over
at an angle of 45 degrees, the unroofed
houses and roads ploughed up with shell
holes.  The various notices on the doors,
to be seen in every shell-shattered village,
such as "Men must not linger here,"
"Out of bounds," etc., were hardly needed,
for no one desired to linger any longer than
curiosity prompted him.  As I returned to
my lorry, one of the R.H.A. batteries was
just starting to make itself heard.  Although
at this time the guns were only 13-pounders,
they spoke volumes, and to be a short
distance away in line with the firing gun was
as much as one wanted.  On one occasion,
when we went in advance of the gun-pits
to dump the rations, a salvo was fired just
as we approached the battery; a terrific
flash came through the hedge, a matter of
thirty yards away.  We scarcely needed the
order given by the battery sergeant to "halt."

Constantly we met parties of weary,
wounded Tommies, walking cases, making
their way to the —— Field Dressing Station,
smoking and always cheery—no doubt thankful
to get off so lightly: one had an arm in
a sling, while he wielded a mouth-organ with
the other.  Those passing in the opposite
direction on their way up to the trenches
were a contrast.  The only semblance of
cheerfulness was a slight wink given from
a very sober countenance.  Their jaws set,
there was no "Tipperary" here.  The
contemplation of what is to come precedes the
indifference in the heat of battle, when
the time arrives to go over the parapet and
excitement is at its highest pitch.

I had many talks with fellows just out
of the trenches, mud-clobbered and wet.
One I recollect who had lost his mate beside
him, taken by a stray bullet penetrating
his forehead, his brains falling in his lap;
the mud-plastered and blood-stained tunic,
turned back for my inspection, showing the
truth of the boy's statement.  Such
incidents, alas! are an everyday occurrence.
Neuve Chapelle claimed an army almost in
itself.  One had only to see at railhead lorry
loads of rifles twisted beyond recognition
almost, with bullet holes through the stocks,
in some cases stockless; blood-smeared and
broken bayonets, which had done their
work and whose period of usefulness had
for the time being passed—all on their
way to the Base, there to be sorted out,
and, where possible, overhauled for further
service; kits, which were hardly to be
recognized as such, German knapsacks and
accoutrements all mixed up in utter
confusion with those of our men.

German prisoners we saw daily brought in.
Yellow-faced as Chinese, due to lyddite or
high explosive shells and gas fumes, which
had changed the colour of everything.  Big
men, many of them, of fine physique; others
spectacled, or puny little baby-faced boys,
all bearing the same dazed expression of
men who have been through "Hell's
gates."  This phrase I borrow from one who was
in the first gas attack at Ypres.  He was
resting on account of broken nerve when I
met him, having carried out no less than
eighteen of his comrades, some never to
recover, who had lain down oblivious of the
gas being heavier than air, the communication
trenches being choked with men who
had dropped from the suffocating fumes.
How many cases of "unconspicuous" and
unnoticed gallantry occur almost hourly!

On April 24, 1915, we left this part of
the line with many regrets.  The forest of
Nieppe is one of the most beautiful that I
have ever seen; thickly timbered and with
innumerable ponds and lakes in its interior
was an easy matter to lose one's way,
unless one kept to the paths.  The length
and breadth of the forest are twenty-six
and five kilometres respectively.  My
temporary home was built by bending and
crossing branches of nut-trees, the young
foliage forming a roof or covering.  Some
fellows erected most elaborate bivouacs,
approached by a pergola of nut-trees.
Beside a railway level crossing near by was
the grave of a Private, who was shot
dead by a French sentry, through failing
to reply to his challenge.  This was in
the days when parties of Uhlans were still
in the locality.  Nightingales sang at night
overhead and frogs croaked on the ground
as an accompaniment, the concert being at
times interrupted by the bombardment of
the guns, which resounded through the
forest.  The earth shook and the din
reminded one of a number of traction engines
travelling over sets, only louder; the sky
was lit up by the gun flashes, intermingled
with star shells.  The batteries around were
all in action from Fleurbaix to south of
Béthune.  This necessitated our moving
about a great deal.  On one occasion we left
—— at 2.45 a.m.  Taking the road to
Béthune, which town was then under shell
fire—several French soldiers and civilians
were killed there during this particular
night—from there we went on through
Hinges, passing across former German
trenches and over the La Bassée Canal.
There were many graves of soldiers dotted
about in the fields; one we passed by
the roadside had received special attention,
having been planted with rose-trees and
evergreens.

After receiving directions from the battery
quartermaster-sergeant, we made our way
up the road to a moat farm, the road being
screened by a wood, the interior of which
was a mass of earthworks and fortifications.
Desperate hand-to-hand fighting had taken
place here; now, all was peaceful and quiet.
Hundreds of crosses were dotted about the
fringe of the wood, and the bodies of some
of those who had fallen during the night
before were being placed in their last
resting-places.  The road was lined on either side
with tall trees, now clothed in young foliage,
silhouetted against rugged timber which
would never see the green on it again.  A
nightingale, oblivious of what was going on
underneath, was singing as I walked down
the road, in close proximity to the line.
Having a few minutes to spare, I took a
turning to my left, when a voice from behind
a hedge demanded, "Where are you going?"  "Just
having a look round," I answered.
"Well, I should come down if I was you."  The
voice came from the communication
trench, and I about-turned, following the
further advice of the man who had just
come out.

The battery wagon lines were shelled
that night and the camp had to be shifted,
which was scarcely to be wondered at, for
the field in which it was pitched, whilst we
were dumping the rations in it earlier in the
day, was under shell fire; several, screaming
over us, had burst within a matter of a
few yards from our dumping-ground.  The
battery being on the move, we took up a
fresh position, this time at a little place
near Béthune.  I had a bed for the first
time for many months, but was unable
to sleep, owing, I suppose, to the sudden
change from the hard floor-boards of the
lorry to the softness of a box-spring
mattress.  Early the following morning
shells were bursting in the town, and the
*strafe* continued for about half an hour.
Once again it was the unhappy inhabitants
who suffered.  Two women and a child
were killed.

Our next delivery of rations was well
within range of the German gunners, who
had pretty well knocked the place to pieces;
there were shell craters all around.  We
halted at a farmhouse for the night, and
the following morning a shell carried away
the roof of our improvised cook-house.
Nobody, however, was injured.  It is really
amazing what good luck follows some of our
men; they seem to have charmed lives.
Three of the gunners while at —— were
sitting in a garden, where the guns had
been placed; a few yards divided them.
They were chatting, seated on ration boxes,
and a little peasant girl was amusing
herself standing behind them, tickling the
ear of one of the gunners with a straw.  A
shell burst directly in front of one of the
guns.  Two of the gunners were killed outright,
the little girl was very severely injured,
and the third gunner was simply knocked
over by the force of the explosion, but
absolutely untouched.  The same man, on
another occasion, was with the Commanding
Officer of the battery, looking for suitable
positions for guns, when a shell burst quite
near them.  Seeing an old French dug-out,
the Major dived in and the gunner did so
simultaneously.  The result was a jamb,
neither being able to get right in.  The
Major asked him where the devil he was
going to.  "Same place as you, sir," was
his quiet retort.  On another occasion an
R.H.A. gun was knocked out by a direct
hit.  Parts of one of its wheels were found
almost a hundred yards away from the gun,
and pieces of it were scattered everywhere,
yet an officer who was sleeping on the ground
only ten yards from the gun was untouched.
Towards the end of August 1915 the
rumour "Batteries on the move again" came
through, generally from the battery
cook-house, where all matters, military and
otherwise, are discussed.  The 1st of September
found us on the road again, this time to
Corbie, near to which town the batteries
had taken up their position on the Somme.
To reach the wagon lines, where rations
were dumped, it was necessary to travel
along a road under enemy observation,
along the Somme Valley, a beautiful part of
the country.  At that time we saw the
French troops leaving this part of the line
to make room for our men.  The Saxon
regiments were in the trenches just across
the valley, their line being visible on the
side of a hill.  A distance of three hundred
yards has to be maintained between each
lorry on such roads, it being possible to
only use this road after dark; no lamps
were allowed on the lorries.  This, of course,
made driving exceedingly difficult, especially
on one occasion when it happened to be a
particularly dark night and a lot of horse
transport was on the road.  One could
only judge the centre of it by the camber
and listen for the jangle of chains, the only
means of knowing when we near the horse
wagons.  That night a thunderstorm raged
nearly the whole of the way to the
batteries, the flashes lighting up the road
at intervals and making matters even
worse.  One might as well have driven
blindfolded as be dazzled by the lightning
and star-shells.  The risk of delivering
rations at night being so great, the
order was given to deliver in the early
morning, trusting that the mist would hide
the lorries as they travelled over the roads
under observation.  Very often such roads
run between high banks on either side, and
if one clambers up to the top (which, of
course, must be done very stealthily, otherwise
there is always liability to draw fire), a
perfect view of the trenches may be obtained.

I took a walk with my glasses one day
and found a more or less concealed position
from which I could see both lines clearly,
and traces of the German attempts to shell
the road below, which were evident
everywhere.  Here it seemed was a veritable
dumping-ground for their shells, which had
been, however, used to no account.  Many
had fallen in the marshes—no less than
thirty fell in an hour, prior to our arrival,
nearly all in marshland within a small radius.

Our journeys were not without excitement;
one, particularly, I shall not easily forget.
We were first forced to make a halt outside
Bray, on account of the very heavy shelling
which was in progress at the time.  During
the halt we filled in the time by going round
a very fine garden.  The inhabitants having
left, we regaled ourselves with some luscious
pears which lay ripe on the ground, when
suddenly a shell burst within forty yards of
the roadside.  We picked up a large piece,
weighing seven or eight pounds at least.
A few minutes later the order was given to
continue our journey.  This we did, although
the shelling was still going on.  It is an
uncanny feeling, driving a motor-lorry along
roads under observation or under shell fire.

Whilst at Corbie I paid a visit to a large
woollen thread manufactory, which was still
being worked, almost entirely by women—a
staff of forty against four hundred men prior
to the war.  I don't think I ever saw such
beautiful gardens as those which lay at
the back of the château belonging to the
factory proprietor.  Carpet-bedding and
elaborate borders, most beautifully kept,
led down to a natural and intensely
cultivated garden—lakes fed by the Somme,
connected up by rustic bridges; weeping
willows fringing the banks, and waterlilies
floating on the water by hundreds.  Such
a contrast to the country only a few miles
beyond, made ugly and desolate by war.

The lakes were full of fish, and many a
good dinner I made off a pike boiled in white
wine.  The French bourgeois of the Somme
district knows how to cook fish as I have
never before tasted it.

Where I was billeted the worthy *grand'-mère*
cooked my rations for me and supplemented
them with delicacies which I had
not tasted since I left England.  Omelettes
au rhum, confiture of any variety I cared
for, was always made ready.  Poulet en
casserole frequently awaited me on my
return at midday.  So I lived royally, and
it was a sad day when I had to leave such
very charming friends.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ALONG THE SOMME VALLEY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter XI*


.. class:: center large bold

   *ALONG THE SOMME VALLEY*

.. vspace:: 2

The move from Aire at the beginning
of August 1915 was for the purpose of
taking up a position to the rear of the most
southern portion of the line that the British
Armies then held, and for the time being the
Division came under the orders of the 3rd
Army.  To reach this position entailed a
move to some considerable distance for the
cavalry; it was a three days' march, and
necessitated the loading of their rations from
two intermediate railheads *en route* and
"rationing" at different points on the line
of march.  Eventually, we took up our
quarters at the new railhead, on the River
Somme, situated between Abbeville and
Amiens, and here we found ourselves
amongst entirely new surroundings—the
beautiful scenery of the Somme Valley.

Those large lakes or tracts of water which
seemed to stretch for miles gave splendid
and, I should think, almost unsurpassed
opportunities for swimming, fishing, and
boating, which we were not slow in taking
advantage of.  The O.C. Workshops, who was, of
course, equal to dealing with any
opportunity for ingenuity that might arise,
immediately procured some timber, and with the
aid of his workshops staff, after working
hours, produced in an incredibly short space
of time the most ideal and comfortable
24-foot Thames punt imaginable—not to
mention its accompanying boat-hook, pair
of paddles, and plush cushions, all of which
emanated from the same source.  The punt
was the envy of the entire Division, not to
mention the French inhabitants for miles
around; from it we bathed and fished daily
throughout those summer months.

During August and September the cavalry
were again given some spells of trench
fighting, for which they gained the thanks
and appreciation of the General Officer
Commanding the 3rd Army.  These spells in the
trenches gave the Supply Column some very
long runs, with which were mingled a certain
amount of excitement, for the road was
not infrequently under shell fire.

Taking up convoys of motor lorries with
rations to the R.H.A. batteries was also a job
not entirely devoid of interest and excitement
at this period.  The batteries were in action
at various points of the line due east
of Amiens, around which towns the lorries
with rations had to pass to reach them.
Amiens is a picturesque and interesting
town.  It has one of the most beautiful
cathedrals in France, and its inhabitants
being naturally anxious that it shall not
share the same fate as Rheims, have taken
the precaution of barricading it with piles
of sandbags, which if the worst came to the
worst would at any rate, to a certain extent,
save the adornment of its exterior—porches
and the like—from utter destruction.

On these occasions we used to off-load
the rations at the wagon line of the
battery, to reach which it was necessary
to travel along roads that were anything
but healthy.  One road which we frequently
used was particularly unhealthy, and was
seldom safe, except after dark, for transport
of any kind.  This was the long open road
leading from the village of Bray-sur-Somme
towards Suzanne.  The German gunners had
registered its range accurately, and no
transport was allowed along it in daylight without
a special pass or permit from the Divisional
Headquarters.  We frequently took convoys
along it by day, however, without any mishap
of any kind, always taking the precaution,
of course, to keep the lorries a good two or
three hundred yards apart from one another.
Taking these precautions, the possibility of
a shell putting the whole convoy or any
part of it out of action is reduced to a
minimum.

Bray was a particularly interesting place—now,
alas! much shattered through heavy
shelling.  The main road running through
it is a steep hill, from the top of which, just
before entering the village, was to be obtained
a most beautiful landscape view, in which
was included the lines of British and German
trenches, which could be distinctly seen from
this point on a clear day with the naked eye.
At this time our —— Army had just taken
over from the French an additional bit of
the line north of the Somme and east of
Albert, which stretched approximately from
Hebuterne in the north to Carnoy in the
south, and at these points our trenches
linked up with those of the French.  So,
passing through the villages in this district,
it was not uncommon to find khaki-clad
British Tommies in one village and blue-clad
French *poilus* in the next, each out of
the trenches for a few days' rest in billets.
A small village full of French troops, dressed
in their looped-up-at-the-knee greatcoats
of that wonderful pale blue which is the
colour of the service uniform of the French
Army, and with their blue anti-shrapnel
steel helmets—the mass of colour vying with
the blue of a summer sky—presents a
wonderful picture.  The colour of their
uniform is, in fact, officially designated *le
bleu d'horizon*, and is, I believe, particularly
indistinguishable at a distance.  If
there was a shortage of anti-shrapnel helmets
in the British Army in 1915, there was
certainly none in the French.  Every soldier
seemed to have been provided with one,
even down to the old Territorials employed
in repairing the roads in the lines of
communication; and the gendarme fifty miles behind
the line would wear one, presumably for
the same reason that a miller wears a white
hat.  The British variety, which is of a
pale sea-green colour, round in shape and
with a flat brim, and frequently has a
home-made cover of drab sackcloth, is certainly
not so beautiful either in shape or colour
as the oval French casque, and reminds one
rather of the head-dress of a Korean.  It is
heavier, and, I believe, has proved itself more
effective in actual practice, than the French
type, as a protection against shrapnel bullets.

This was our first view of French troops
*en masse*.  First-line regiments of the French
Army are composed of men of fine physique
and sound discipline.  It would be ridiculous
to discuss their qualities as fighting men:
one has only to think of Verdun.  Their
equipment is extremely heavy; they never
seem to march in step; they attack
with extraordinary "dash," and they "get
there" every time.  Their artillery, so
largely composed of the famous
*soixante-quinze* guns, is incomparable.  I remember
at Lillers, in 1914, seeing batteries of these
75's on the move and passing through the
town one after the other continuously for
seven hours.

There is one thing which differentiates
Monsieur le Poilu from Mr. Thomas Atkins
in the matter of smartness, and that is that
the former will not shave himself regularly.
Tommy, on the other hand, no matter
under what difficulties he is existing, is
always well groomed and has a clean chin.

I have already referred to Bray.  Amongst
the little towns of interest on this part of
the front is Albert.  It is possessed of a
large Byzantine church, which is reported
to have taken fourteen years of labour to
build and fourteen minutes of shell fire from
the Hun gunners to destroy.  Surmounting
the church tower is a large gilded statue
of the Virgin, holding in her arms the Holy
Child.  Glittering in the sunshine, it must
have been a good target, and for some time
has hung suspended in mid air, almost at
right angles to its original position, having
been displaced by shells.  It bends over the
almost deserted streets of the little town,
which has suffered so sorely at the hands
of the enemy, in an attitude of benediction,
and presents a picture which cannot but
impress one.  The superstition amongst the
inhabitants is that the day on which the
statue falls to the ground from its present
position is the day that the war will end.

This is perhaps the place to add a few
words on German "Kultur," of which so
much has been heard and written, and the
nature of which, after investigation and the
careful sifting of evidence, has been proved up
to the hilt by competent committees.  I have
myself seen what remains of the large church
at the village of Doulieu, near Estaires.
Doulieu was formerly in German occupation;
its church suffered no damage from shelling,
but had been destroyed by being used as a
crematorium, for the Germans placed in it
many of their dead, and, having saturated
it with petrol or paraffin, set it alight.  Its
outer walls, blackened by fire, now only
remain.  A friend of mine on one occasion
got into conversation with a German officer
prisoner, who spoke excellent English, having
resided for some years in London.  My
friend, discussing the war with him,
remarked: "Your army has played a pretty
dirty game in Belgium."  The Hun replied,
"It would certainly appear so, unless you
have heard our side of the story.  It
must be obviously a difficult matter for
an invading army to operate in a hostile
country, and in one which has been so
wickedly wronged at that, and has a just
grievance.  Stern disciplinary action in
regard to civilians must be essential, and
this has led to calculated and systematic
brutality."

It will be within the recollection of many
that Christmas Day 1914, on certain parts
of the line, notably where the trenches
opposite ours were occupied by Saxons,
was observed as a day of peace and a
temporary armistice was unofficially agreed on.
Soldiers of the opposing armies climbed over
the parapet, and it was reported, though I
cannot vouch for the accuracy of the
statement, played a football match in "no man's
land" at one point on the line.  I do know
that one regiment of London Territorials
exchanged presents with "brother Boche,"
a jar of ration rum being thrown over to
the Saxons, who returned the compliment
by a roll of barbed wire, of which, an
accompanying message said, they had reason to
believe our fellows were short at the time.
Since then, however, times have changed,
and subsequent events have put a stop to
anything of this kind.  In fact, strict orders
on the subject were issued just before
Christmas Day 1915.

Towards the end of September our railhead
was "moved up," this time to Doullens.
The Indian cavalry were in "close billets"
and "standing to" under an hour's notice
to move.  During the days and nights
immediately preceding the attack on Loos,
the bombardment by our guns of every
calibre was terrific and incessant; it
seemed to never stop, day or night, the
continuous deep reverberating boom.  The
air trembled, window panes thirty miles
behind the line rattled in their frames,
and at night the sky was lit up by the
flickering of the gun flashes.  One
wondered how men could live in such a hell,
for as such its effects can only be adequately
described.  Such a bombardment is the
essential prelude to an attack by infantry,
and the transport of the immense amount of
ammunition that is necessary to keep the
guns fed is a task which devolves on the
Army Service Corps.

The system adopted for transporting and
issuing ammunition to the guns is to all
intents and purposes a parallel to that for
transporting and issuing rations to the
troops, which I have described in a previous
chapter.  The "Ammunition Parks" of
motor-lorries are to the guns what "Supply
Columns" are to the personnel.  The lorries
comprising an ammunition park are loaded
up from the ammunition train at railhead,
and off-loaded to the limbered horse wagons
of the Ammunition Column, the function of
which corresponds to that of the horse
train in the Supply scheme.

But to return to Doullens.  It is a small
town, boasting of nothing of great interest,
but was at one time in German occupation;
only, however, for a matter of days.  The
inhabitants will tell you that the Germans,
contrary to custom, did not treat them badly
during their stay; they paid for their
billets and everything else they had, making
no civilians prisoners and exacting no money
from the population.  Doubtless, however,
they would have done so had their departure
not been of necessity a hurried one.

Shortly after the attack on Loos had been
made, the cavalry were again sent back to
their former billeting area, no opportunity
for cavalry fighting having presented itself.
It was sad indeed to see these fine troops,
superbly mounted and in perfect fighting
trim, marching back from the front, useless
for the time being in the general scheme
of things.

Any descriptive account of the Indian
Cavalry would be incomplete without
mention of its veteran Rajput warrior,
Lieut.-General Sir Pertab Singh.  He is in a sense
the *raison d'être* of the Indian Cavalry.
Over seventy, short, but as alert and erect
as a man half his age, he has literally lived
in the saddle, and is a born fighting man.
"'One charge, one bullet' sums up his
philosophy, and it is not a bad one to live
up to in these times," remarked a writer in
*Blackwood's* recently.

Sir Pertab, before leaving India to come
to France with the Indian Cavalry, made
over his principality to his descendants, in
the belief that he would never return to his
native country.  He is frequently to be
seen—his breast covered with the ribands
of many decorations and medals—amongst
his regiment, the Jodhpur Lancers, and his
wish is to lead them into action, charge and
"pig-stick the German brutes," as I believe
he once expressed it.  Writing of him in
1897, Winston Churchill, in *The Story of
the Malakand Field Force*, remarks: "The
spectacle of this splendid Indian Prince,
whose magnificent uniform in the Jubilee
procession had attracted the attention of
all beholders, now clothed in business-like
khaki and on service at the head of his
regiment, aroused the most pleasing
reflections."

So history repeats itself twenty years later!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BETWEEN THE ANCRE AND THE SOMME`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter XII*


.. class:: center large bold

   *BETWEEN THE ANCRE AND THE SOMME*

.. vspace:: 2

In previous chapters I have referred to the
intense bombardment which preceded the
attacks on Neuve Chapelle and Loos during
1915.  Looking back they seem as nothing
compared with what our artillery has
been able, thanks to the munition workers
at home, to treat the Huns to in August,
1916, a bombardment audible very far back
from the scenes of action.  At, say, nine
o'clock one night the guns will suddenly
start: one man turns to another and remarks,
"There must be a *strafe* on to-night."  The
guns continue without cessation, till
perhaps just as daylight is stealing across
the sky they stop for a time abruptly.
This may signify that at this very moment
the infantry are over the top, or parapets,
of the trenches at the particular point where
the attack is being made.  More names for
the Roll of Honour, for "Somewhere in the
universe, God's awful dawn is red."

Newspaper correspondents at the front
have recently, in a sense, come into their
own: they have been granted more latitude
in writing and allowed to see something of
the show.  It is good that this should be so,
both from the point of view of the fighting-men
themselves and also that of the people
at home.  Much has, therefore, appeared
in the Press and elsewhere on the subject
of the advance north and south of the
Somme, and for this reason there remains
little left unwritten, so far as the actual
fighting and the scenes of its surroundings
arc concerned.

On many occasions, in the course of duty,
I have had the opportunity of going over a
good deal of the ground captured from the
enemy in the great Allied push which started
on July 1, 1916.  It almost baffles description.
Without actually seeing the results,
it is difficult to realize the pulverizing effect
of continued and heavy artillery bombardment.

In this sector, such villages as Contalmaison,
Fricourt, and Pozières, to mention
only three, have literally ceased to exist;
the fact that there have ever been villages
in these particular spots is indicated only
by their names on the map and heaps of
debris and rubbish.  They are not like such
places as Ypres or Arras, where still here
and there remain standing a few forlorn-looking
bits of outer walls and the skeletons
of destroyed houses.  To give one instance,
the curé of a village in the Somme district,
after it had been taken from the Germans,
sought leave from the British authorities
to be conducted to it in order to see if it
were possible for him to recover any of the
possessions, or relics, of his church.  The
privilege was duly afforded him, and thither
he was escorted.  Unfortunately, however,
he was quite unable to find either the church,
his own house, or even his way about "the
village"; but then, as the officer remarked
who told me this story, all these things were
scarcely to be wondered at, for Monsieur le
Curé had only spent forty years of his life
there!  I give this story to indicate what
is the state of the land over which this
heavy artillery preparation has been
necessary in order to dislodge the Hun and
destroy his ramifications.

The impression of the whole scene of the
captured ground (July 1916)—or, at least,
that part of it which I have seen—remaining
in my mind is an undulating plateau extending
as far as the eye can see.  In more
peaceful times it was perhaps arable land.
Now it is arid and dead: nothing grows there,
not a blade of grass; even the trees of such
woods as the Bois de Mametz do not boast
of a green leaf—they are splintered and
torn down by shells.  Those that still stand
are withered and brown, the results of
continual high explosive and gas shells.  It
reminds you of nothing so much as land
which is suffering from the effects of very
severe volcanic eruption, for it is everywhere
pitted with craters and shell holes of all
sizes and depths.  On this plateau are
quantities of transport wagons, limbers, and heavy
draft horses, their bay coats shimmering in
the sun; these are the wagon lines of the
many artillery batteries that are operating
in the sector.  As you proceed along the
road, which runs through it, you will note
that it crosses more than one line of former
trenches which have been wrested from the
enemy at great cost.

At the point of the road-crossing they
have been filled in.  Almost all along the
road are well-constructed old German
dug-outs, many of them spacious, dug a
considerable depth into the bank on the side of the
road and surrounded by layers of sand-bags.
They must have taken considerable time
and labour to construct, many of them being
a series of cellars, connected by passages,
at least fifteen or twenty feet deep.  If you
care to climb down into them, frequently
you will come upon sights which are, to say
the least, gruesome.  There is a cold, clammy
feeling in the air in some of these
dugouts; they reek of death.  Some have been
luxuriously fitted up, walls plastered and
papered; traces of electric wiring and lamp
fittings and stolen French furniture and
beds are still visible.  I have before me a
scrap of torn and blood-stained paper, part
of a leaf from a Field Message Book.  On it
is written the following, which it is just
possible to decipher.  It was picked up in a
dug-out in the old British line, north of
the Somme, over which British troops have
advanced:

.. vspace:: 2

... high state of efficiency.  An important section
of these operations has been entrusted to this
battalion, and the Commanding Officer feels sure
that every one belonging to it will rise to the
occasion and "do his bit" for the regiment and his
country.  A man, no matter what his position, who
sits down or otherwise idles when he ought to be
working, is failing both one and the other.

.. vspace:: 2

No doubt the remains of an order issued by
the C.O. of a battalion in a tight corner,
with perhaps a difficult job ahead to
accomplish and an important part to play in the
"Big Push."  There is no signature or
clue which would enable the writer of this
inspiring human document or the regiment
referred to in it to be identified.  Perhaps
his men obeyed his order and with him have
earned their discharge and joined the great
majority.  To see the captured ground and
its network of trenches and dug-outs is to
realize what a tremendous achievement it
has been on the part of British troops to dig
the Huns out like rats from their strongholds
and drive them back, and what artillery
preparation must have been necessary to break
down their defences.  In passing, there are
also the other rats, and the shelter afforded
by dug-outs is shared by men and rats alike.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the
latter are a veritable plague, not only in the
trenches themselves, but behind them as
well.  There is a story—I cannot vouch
for its truth, though it certainly has a
Bairnsfather touch about it—of an officer
commanding a battalion who received orders
from his Brigade Headquarters to "render
a return" to that office by such and such
a date, stating the number of rats in the
trenches occupied by the unit under his
command.  The nature of his alleged reply
I have not, however, heard.  It is better,
no doubt, left to the imagination.  The
Army lives on "returns."  Every unit in
the field, no matter under what conditions
it is living, has to "render returns" on at
least a dozen different things each week.
In that most priceless little book of wit,
which contains so much that is in reality
true, *The Young Officer's Guide to Knowledge*,
we find that "a return" is a document
sent to a superior authority and comprises
lists of persons or things in your charge.
This document, quite contrary to what you
might suppose from its title, never returns
to you, unless the person to whom you have
sent it thinks it requires attention.  It is
probably called "a return" for this very
reason, as it is the most unlikely name for
it, and so cultivates a taste for the eccentric
in the Service.  Returns are always being
"called for" by somebody.  You must be
prepared to "render" these "returns" at
all times at a moment's notice, e.g. "the
average number of men who have had sore
feet between January 1st and April 1st."

But to return to the scenery between
the Ancre and the Somme.

Cunningly hidden away at different points,
the guns will make their presence constantly
known to you.  Here a battery of ugly-looking
howitzers is loosing off salvos into
the Hun trenches, and a little further along,
perhaps, a 6-inch gun by the roadside will
every now and then belch forth a sheet of
flame, as with deafening row it throws a
projectile, weighing about 100 pounds,
screeching through the air, which explodes
perhaps five or ten miles behind the German
lines.  Guns of every size, from the
13-pounders of Royal Horse Artillery batteries
to 12- and 15-inch Naval guns, can be seen
and heard pounding away at the enemy
when a big *strafe* is in progress.  No one
appears to pay any attention to these
deafening distractions.  Adaptability to
circumstances and surroundings is a cardinal
principle of war.

It is amongst such scenes as these that the
Army Service Corps motor-lorries roll up
as usual with their loads of rations for the
personnel and horses of the guns.  A little
way behind a battery, it will be noted,
is a bivouac.  It is the improvised mess
of the Gunner officers, and here you
may meet these priceless desperadoes
discussing "direct hits" that have been
recorded to their guns by the observation
officer ahead, narrow escapes and recent
adventures amongst "Grannies," "Crumps,"
"Whiz-bangs" and "Heavies," whilst they
consume delicacies from Fortnum and Mason
with the utmost sang-froid and complacency,
merely remarking that they hope the Huns
won't *strafe* them to-night!  They are
totally unconcerned with the dangers that
are constantly lurking around; thus does
familiarity breed contempt of even Death
itself.

Now and again one notices roadside groups
of the graves of German soldiers, all of
uniform size and design.  They almost
invariably consist of a wooden cross about 3 feet
high, surmounted by a little oval-shaped
roof or shelter, to protect them from the
weather—to such lengths in thoroughness
do the Huns go and so far do they see ahead!
Painted a grass-green colour, they are
strangely out of keeping with the present
hue of the soil and of vegetable life, so
conspicuous by its absence.  On each is
painted in white characters the name and
regiment of the man whose memory it
perpetuates.  This follows some such
inscription as "Hier ruht in Gott" or
"Unserem gutem Kameraden dem," etc.
Not far from them are groups of British
graves.  The inscriptions on two plain wooden
crosses that I noticed have particularly
lingered in my mind: "Here lies a British
soldier.  Name unknown.  Devon Regiment.
He died fighting."  The second, the epitaph
of a horse: "To the memory of my dumb
pal, Queenie.  Killed in action, July 6th,
1916," gives an insight to the character of
the British soldier and his love for the
animals that work with him.

In the sky is an irregular line of watchful
captive observation balloons for observing
officers.  In the language of the front they
are known as "sausages," from their
similarity in shape to that domestic commodity.
Away in the distance is another line of
stationary balloons of almost similar shape,
for the Huns, also, are not unobservant.
The barbed-wire cage, a temporary home
for recently made prisoners, is always an
object of interest; and everywhere one notices
salvage parties clearing up and collecting
together the quantities of waste metal, spent
ammunition, accoutrements, etc., which litter
the ground.  Piled up at various points are
stacks of empty shell cases, which by their
size indicate the enormous quantity of
ammunition that is being used by our guns
in their work of pulverizing the German
trenches and fortifications.  Every one is
busy—the newly won ground is being cleared,
positions are being consolidated, roads are
being made up, telegraph poles and wires
erected, standard-gauge railway lines are
being laid down.  Whether at the Base or
the trenches, war is carried on methodically
and with the regular routine of a factory.
It would appear to have become an institution.
The whole war zone is linked up with
a telephone system which compares favourably
with that of London.

Along the road one may encounter parties
of prisoners being marched back from the
line, and occasionally little groups of wounded
being helped towards the ambulances.  So
much for the ground taken from the
Huns in the Great Push of August 1916.

To turn for a moment to another part of
the line.  From the gaunt and shell-shattered
tower, which stands a landmark for miles
around, on the summit of Mont St. Eloi
I have looked across "the Labyrinth," as
it is called, and watched the shells from our
batteries beneath explode in the German
trenches, or amongst their wire between our
trenches and theirs, known as "No Man's
Land."  It is an amazing and uncanny
sight.  Not a single sign of life, not a
single human being, is to be seen; only the
results of human and mechanical activity
are visible.  The guns below loose off with
terrific noise, then in the distance there is a
dull and heavy thud, as a huge solid-looking
mass of black smoke suddenly rises up in a
cloud from the ground and remains a few
moments before gradually dispersing.  To
the right can be discerned the battered
towers of Arras, and between this point and
the trenches is the little village of Maroeuil,
which nestles hidden away in a hollow and has
been scarcely affected by enemy fire.  There,
crimson ramblers still blossom and roses
flourish in the gardens, now almost choked
with weeds, of its deserted cottages.

Sights like the view from the top of Mont
St. Eloi bring home to one the fact that
modern methods of warfare are accompanied
by few scenic effects or dramatic spectacles.
War, like its results, is invariably ugly.
Engineers and chemists have made it so by
their ghastly appliances and materials, which
have put the open fighting of former days
on horseback out of the question.  Cavalry
charges, as portrayed by Lady Butler, are
indeed a thing of the past.  A few machine
guns, suitably concealed, could hold up
squadrons of advancing cavalry.  The only
human element left is the infantry charge,
with fixed bayonets.  To be killed by the
explosion of a shell or asphyxiated by gas,
miles behind the line, cannot be described
as a heroic death—it is not even fair on
the individual who so meets his end.  He
is not in a position to combat his invisible
enemy; sometimes he has not even a
sporting chance of escape from an attack which
he is powerless to combat or avert.  Is it,
then, to be wondered at that men living
under such conditions, namely, in places
which are periodically or continuously
strafed, become fatalists?  They cease to
worry, take everything that comes as a
matter of course, never knowing when their
turn may come.

Not infrequently we have taken convoys
by night to within a matter of a few hundred
yards of the line.  The absence of lamps
and travelling along bad and often narrow
roads make slow speed imperative and the
utmost care in driving essential.  The only
light available is provided by the moon
and the many star-shells over the trenches,
which seem to light up the whole horizon,
and remind one of so many shooting stars,
or a pyrotechnic display at the Crystal
Palace seen from a distance.

Convoying along roads which are in view
and under observation of the enemy, even
by night, is as exciting as it is a fascinating
game, for even if the convoy is, by the
absence of headlights, to all intents and
purposes made invisible, the enemy is able
to assume from their geographical positions
what roads are of strategical importance
and being made use of for transport purposes
to the trenches.  He may at any time train
a gun on those particular roads, on the
off-chance of bagging a convoy, or at any rate of
making the road in question so dangerous as
to necessitate it being put out of bounds for
transport, thus making the approaches to the
line more difficult and fewer in number.

Was it not Field-Marshal Sir John
French who, some years ago, while
speaking of "Night Operations," remarked that
"the darker the night, the more inclement
the weather, the better the exercise"?  "Strong
words of comfort these," says *The
Young Officer's Guide to Knowledge*.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FROM ARRAS TO ALBERT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter XIII*


.. class:: center large bold

   *FROM ARRAS TO ALBERT*

.. vspace:: 2

In the preceding chapters I have
endeavoured to narrate a selection from
many and various episodes, disconnected,
perhaps, due to the omission of details of
long periods of enforced inactivity or
hum-drum daily routine, during times spent miles
behind the line, rationing the cavalry in such
places as the neighbourhood between
Abbeville and Le Tréport on the seacoast.  In
this area our second Christmas was spent,
and the cavalry were billeted in winter
quarters far from the scenes of action,
waiting, always waiting, for their chance.
Then we moved up again and settled
down to our usual duties, seizing the
opportunity of putting our house in order,
and for the time being carrying out the
work with the use of one echelon of
motor-lorries only.  The other echelon was
refitted, thoroughly overhauled in the
workshops, and all the lorries were given a coat
of fresh paint, so that by the beginning of
April they looked brand spanking new, in
keeping with their springtime surroundings.
During the spring and early summer nothing
of importance occurred.  The cavalry were
continually being shifted from one billeting
area to another, but always within the same
neighbourhood, not so much for strategical
reasons as for the purpose of making room
for new Divisions of infantry from home
and on their way up to the line.  Cavalry,
it will be readily understood, has, under
existing circumstances, had to take quite a
back seat on the Western front.  As usual,
the R.H.A. batteries attached to the
Division were almost continually in action,
and the cavalry regiments supplied a
constant stream of "digging parties,"
not only for reserve trench digging, but
chiefly for assisting in mining operations
from the front line trenches, such
operations not being carried out without
casualties.

The job of rationing the personnel so
engaged and of moving them from their
billets to the trenches and back, or from one
part of the line to another, as occasion
required, devolved, of course, on the motor
lorries and entailed a fair amount of work,
including a good number of all-night jobs
on dangerous roads.  During this time the
Column was parked near Arras, on the main
roads leading thither.  Dusty is not the word
for one of these on an August day, but it is
straight, broad, and of good surface, wide
enough in many parts for three lines of
traffic.

So time went on, and during July and
August 1916 we surveyed "the big push"
from a little village not far from Arras,
marking in daily on the large-scale map
which hung on the wall, with red pencil,
the villages captured from day to day,
and the advance of the British and
French line on the Somme.  The nearer
one is to the front, the less one knows
of the news.  The men in the front line
trenches know nothing, except what has
happened in their immediate vicinity, and
even then they are not able to form an
opinion of its relative importance, in
comparison with what has happened elsewhere,
of which they know nothing.  Further
back there are two sources of information:
one is "rumours," on which some people
thrive.  There are fresh rumours every
day, and they invariably contradict one
another.  The other never-failing source of
news is the Paris Continental edition of
the *Daily Mail*, which reaches the uttermost
parts of the front by teatime daily and is
well worth the 15 centimes usually exacted
for it, and universally looked forward to
daily.

All day long and often all through the
night there was a hum of aeroplanes in the
sky; fleets of them seemed to be always
rising from the flying-ground, a neighbouring
village, departing on bombing raids
and reconnaissance flights.  The Germans
knew of this flying-ground, and occasionally
one or two stray Taubes managed to reach
Savy at a very great altitude and drop a
few bombs, which usually landed in the
cornfields—the invaders being invariably
driven off by British machines and
anti-aircraft guns.  Doubtless they returned home
to report the complete and utter destruction
of the aerodrome!  Nevertheless, the
few and far between visits of the Hun
planes caused a certain amount of interest
and excitement during the course of an
otherwise dull existence.

Wondering always how soon or if ever
our Division would be called on to play a
part in the advance, we received quite a
shock when one day, towards the end of
August, the entire —— Indian Cavalry
Division was sent back to ——, only
however, for a matter of a week.  Here
the Division put in some manoeuvres and
field-days, and immediately after things began
to get a move on at last.  A little town,
near which the week was passed, nestles
comfortably in a hollow at the foot of
steep hills, and possesses a large and
beautiful cathedral, of Gothic architecture,
with a very decorative west portal.  Its
interior is bold, and, unlike that of many
such churches, has not been spoilt by the
addition of tawdry decoration and gilt paint.
From the top of its square tower can be
seen a magnificent panorama of the surrounding
country.  Incidentally, it contains a
life-sized beautifully carved wooden crucifix,
in which the detail is marvellous.  It is
said to be the most perfect example of its
kind in the world.  The story goes that an
American offered to pave the church with
gold if he were allowed to take it away.  I
do not know how true the story is, but,
needless to say, his offer was not accepted.

The initial move towards the line ——
for the Column was to ——, the first
railhead from which the troops were
rationed on the line of march.  Being
quite near Doullens, the country was very
familiar to us.  From there we moved
to the environs of Amiens, a new
railway recently laid by Royal Engineers
being made use of for the supply train,
whilst —— was railhead.  Around here
the country is flat and covered with
cornfields; by this time the harvest was
just gathered in, and on these fields the
whole Division, including, of course, the
Supply Column, bivouacked for the night.
What a wonderful sight was the arrival
of the cavalry that evening, miles of
mounted men marching from all directions
to the huge camp.  Every one was
optimistic; the air was full of rumours.  At
last, after all the weary months of
waiting, the hour was soon to strike.  Cavalry
was at length to have a "show."  French,
British, and Indian Cavalry Divisions were
"going through."  On the 14th we packed
up and were on the move again and
bivouacked for the night on the roadside
just short of ——, which was our railhead
the following day.  A sudden move is no
light matter!  More fortunate than other
branches of the Service in the matter of
carrying capacity, A.S.C. motor-lorries, when
loaded up to their utmost capacity with
rations and forage, do not offer as much
accommodation for the carrying of kits
and mess gear, though, as might at first
sight appear.  With matters properly organized,
and after a little practice, it is quite
possible to arrive at the resting-place for the
night, and within an hour of doing so the
men's cookhouse is set up and dishing out
hot tea and rations—bivouacs and tents are
in course of erection, the officers' mess tent
is pitched, and dinner is being served.  All
is accomplished in an incredibly short space
of time, even in pouring rain.

However, during these moves we were
particularly lucky in this respect, for not
only was there no rain, but we were favoured
with a very bright full moon.

During the night of the 14th and the
following day, cavalry was to be seen on
the line of march across the country—massed
cavalry marching towards a point
of concentration.  Towards evening we got
orders to pack up at once, and later that night
we arrived at Albert, pitching our tent by
the side of the main Amiens-Albert road.
All night long our guns just ahead were
bombarding, whilst enemy artillery was by no
means inactive.  We could see their shells
bursting over Albert and the other side of
it, like huge balls of fire in the sky.  In
front and on each side Verrey lights, which
linger about thirty seconds in the air before
falling, lit up the whole horizon.  There
was, in fact, a "proper *strafe*" on that
night.

The following day, the 16th, in
company with some ten other Divisions, we
refilled the lorries from the supply train,
which, however, did not arrive till the
early hours of the following morning.  I
was continually reminded of my first visit
to Albert, over a year before, and which
I have referred to in a previous chapter.
Then it was deserted, except by a very
few French civilians, who, in spite of
periodic shelling, still remained.  They were
still there in September 1916, and mostly
made a living by selling such provisions to
the troops as they were able to obtain—and
goodness knows how the supplies ever
reached them.  Scarcely any troops were
to be seen there at the time of my first
visit.  Now, more than a year later, it
was a hive of activity, and the town
was literally packed with troops and
motor-lorries, a constant stream of traffic
passing through its streets and along the
main roads leading into it—loaded supply
and ammunition lorries and wagons going
up, ambulances full of wounded and empty
lorries coming back.  Cavalry horse lines
and troops bivouacked in almost every field
on its outskirts.  A far greater number of
vehicles passed any given point in an hour
than would travel along Piccadilly during
the same time at the height of the season.
Motor-ambulances, the most frequent users
of the roads, passed to and fro constantly
in streams—towards the line, very fast; on
their way back, very slowly, laden with
wounded, British soldiers and German
wounded prisoners alike receiving the same
care and attention, each man with a label
or ticket pinned on to his coat, giving
particulars of his wounds and recent medical
history.  The more severe, lying-down cases
were in ambulance cars; the slightly wounded
in motor-char-à-bancs or empty lorries, all
the latter with a Blighty smile, as it is called,
if they were fortunate enough to have got
off with a slight wound which would send
them home.  It is really marvellous how
the wounded are bandaged up at the
first-aid posts and field dressing stations.  I
have stood at a first-aid post and watched
the R.A.M.C. officers at work.  The post is
usually just behind the trenches and
indicated by a Red Cross flag, visible from a
good distance.  The wounded make for this
flag, and one sees them, some walking, others
crawling, coming from all directions towards
it.  It is a pathetic sight; even sadder is
it to see those who do not survive, but
eventually succumb to their wounds,
perhaps on their way to the field dressing
station.

Close to our camp a battery of big
howitzers was loosing off in the direction of
Thiepval at the rate of about two shells per
minute.  It was only one of many within
a radius of a few miles, and all were equally
active.  Later in the day the Column was
moved off the main road and parked in a
narrow street.  I have previously described
the hanging statue that surmounts the church
tower.  It was still in the same position as
it was a year previously, and to the minds of
many the most striking and wonderful sight
of the war.

On the afternoon of the 16th I went out
with the convoy and delivered the supplies,
as usual, to the cavalry, who were still
bivouacking in fields around Albert.  Returning
to Albert, we stopped for two or three
minutes on the road to pick up a few men
on the empty lorries.  They were carrying
their rifles and packs, and being bound for
the same place as the convoy, naturally
got a lift.  As matters turned out, it was
rather fortunate that the convoy did halt
these few minutes; the slight delay probably
saved us.  We proceeded on our journey,
and when about a kilometre short of Albert
there was a terrific crash, and the town was
momentarily hidden from view by a huge
black cloud of smoke and dust.  The Huns
had put a "crump" right in the middle
of the town.  We pulled up, and as we did
so, crash went another as it burst on an
already demolished house by the roadside
just ahead of us.  The air was thick with
smoke and dust.  A good many troops that
were on the road at the time dived headlong
into the nearest dug-outs.  Several more
shells whistled over and exploded.
Fortunately, there was a small turning at right
angles to the road, almost exactly where we
had stopped.  Up it we were able to run
the lorries one by one, and thus turn them
round in the opposite direction.  We then
proceeded home by making a detour into
Albert, leaving the road that was being
shelled to its fate.  Reaching our camp, we
found that some twenty or more shells
had dropped all around it, and more on
other parts of the ruined town.  Several
landed within a few yards of the lorry lines,
one beside the men's cookhouse.  Fortunately,
there were no casualties amongst
our men or lorries.  One unfortunately
exploded in a bit of ground where vegetables
were growing, and thus deprived us of
cabbages: not one was to be seen the
following morning.  The shelling lasted
from 7 to 8.30, and at that hour the
episode ended.  The Huns, by way of
letting us know that they were still
there, had a little evening "hate"
regularly at this hour every day.  We were
indeed lucky to get the convoy turned round
and safely away, for almost on the very
spot where we had pulled up when the
shelling started, some limbers were knocked
out a few minutes after we had got away,
three men and several horses being killed.
After all, the Hun gunners could scarcely
be blamed for sending over a few "five
point nines"; doubtless they were quite
friendly towards us personally, but the
column of lorries was parked midway
between a large ammunition dump and a
battery of our own guns.  No doubt it
was these latter that they were searching
for.  During the whole of that night the
British gunners returned the compliment,
and all the batteries in the sector seemed
to loose off continually.  Sleep for us was
almost out of the question, as the shells
whistled over our bivouacs.  "Whistle" is
the word, I believe, usually employed in
describing the sensation; as a matter of
fact, the noise of a shell passing overhead
is more comparable with the screech of an
express train passing through a railway
station.

Sunday, 17th, was a gloriously fine and
sunny day, and during the morning a Taube
circled around very high, but was quickly
chased away by our 'planes.  It was very
seldom that an enemy 'plane was able to
remain for long over our lines or behind
them.  The number that our airmen brought
down, and the hot reception which invariably
awaited the invader, were the simple
reasons.  Fifteen hostile machines were
destroyed on the 15th September, nine others
being driven down in a damaged condition.

During this period, smoke helmets and gas
goggles were invariably carried, and
anti-shrapnel helmets always worn.  The Native
Cavalry soldiers looked strange in this form
of head-dress, after seeing them in the
familiar turban.  All wore them except the
Sikhs, whose caste does not allow them to
completely cover their heads and their long
hair.  This is never cut, and is tied in a kind
of bun on the top of their heads, and would,
of course, make the wearing of the helmet
a matter of impossibility in any case.

Our time for loading at railhead was
usually about midnight, and at about this
hour on the night of the 17th the weather
changed, and the heavens began to pour
forth rain and continued to do so throughout
the night.  We were not the only Division
to be loading at the time, and the chaos of
traffic in the pitch-black darkness and
pouring rain can only be described as appalling.
The amazing thing is that accidents and
collisions between lorries are of such rare
occurrence; their almost entire absence is
due to the careful handling of the vehicles
by the drivers.  To back a heavy lorry up
against a railway truck in the dark without
damaging the tail-board or trying to knock
the train over requires care and much
practice.  During the night a few shells
came over; they fell in a field at the far
side of the railhead yard, doing no damage.
The change in the weather had evidently
upset the Hun gunners.  It had been very
cloudy in the earlier part of the evening of
the 17th, and they had even omitted the
usual hour of "hate," except for a salvo of
shrapnel shells, some half-dozen or so, which
went over Albert and burst on a brow of a
hill beyond.  No doubt they were trying
to *strafe* the guns, which from that direction
had been firing at them continuously all
the previous day and night.  Loading being
finished, we got back to our camp and
between the blankets at 4 a.m.  Fortunately,
we had by now been issued from
Ordnance with a few bell tents, which we
pitched alongside the entrance to a
dug-out.  A subterranean gallery, some forty
or fifty yards long, ran underneath, and
opening out of it were several spacious
dug-outs—some of the best I have seen; as
good as many German ones, which is saying
a good deal.  The whole earthwork was
dug deep into the chalky soil, its perpendicular
walls wire netted; it was roofed with
stout tree-trunks, and laid across these were
sandbags.  It was conveniently situated for
us to beat a hasty retreat into when the
shells became too frequent and fell
sufficiently close to make us wonder how much
nearer the next might come.  This dug-out
was behind a row of shell-shattered and
deserted small suburban houses, and
extended under the back gardens of some of
them, now all joined into one.  These had
evidently once been well stocked and
cultivated gardens, as there were the remains
of strawberry beds and patches of all the
domestic vegetables.  Our mess cook was
not long in discovering and picking enough
spinach for dinner one night, and a patch
of thriving young turnips provided the
vegetable courses for several days following.
What, one wondered, would be the feelings
of the unfortunate owner of one of these
houses should he one day come back to
find his garden connected by subterranean
passages with those of his neighbours?
Incidentally, there is little to be seen above
the surface of the ground to indicate the
existence of the large cellars and passages
underneath.

Throughout Monday, the 18th, the rain
continued.  We convoyed the rations in
the afternoon to the cavalry, who were
still bivouacked.  Nothing could have looked
more miserable than those miles of horse
lines on the rain-sodden ground, now a
quagmire of mud.  A line of small flags
had been stuck in the ground, and stretched
away in the distance, indicating the route
across country which the mounted men
were to take when the time for them to go
up to the line came.  But that day no one
was very optimistic; somehow, in the rain
everything seems hopelessly impossible!  At
about 8 that evening the rain ceased
for a time, the sky cleared, and our guns,
which had been very quiet all day, started
on their exploits once more, much to the
annoyance of every one in their vicinity
who was at the time anticipating a night of
undisturbed and well-earned slumber.  On
the night of the 19th we turned in early; the
supply train was not expected to arrive till
3 the following morning.  Hardly had I
blown out my candle, when once more the
German shells started to come over.  All
through the night they shelled Albert
intermittently, and we were glad of the homely
dug-out.  For every one they sent over
they seemed to get about twenty back,
including some from a 15-inch gun that had
suddenly got busy.  The supply train
eventually arrived at 7 a.m. on the 20th.  At the
station there were a few big shell holes, but
little damage.  True, one had exploded on
the permanent way; one short length of
line had been torn up as a result and was
pointing skywards, several sleepers being
destroyed; but the damage was only such
as could be repaired in a few hours, and did
not hold up the traffic at all.  The Germans
were still shelling, and continued to do so
throughout the morning in several directions,
in their attempts, no doubt, to search
out the guns that were bothering them so
much.  So things went on from day to day.
On the afternoon of the 21st, half a dozen
shells landed in the field adjoining our
little camp.  One, which fell on a house,
killed several soldiers; the others did
no material damage.  Towards night they
started to *strafe* again, and succeeded in
hitting the ammunition dump near our
lines which I referred to earlier in this
chapter.  The whole sky was lit up by the
red glow from the fire, which was, of course,
the result, and for some hours afterwards
there was a succession of "ping-ping-pom-poms,"
as the fire spread and the ammunition
became ignited.  All night long, as
usual, the *strafe* continued, the Huns, also as
usual, getting back good measure for what
they sent over, including some useful efforts
on the part of a large howitzer battery
which had recently joined in the fray.
When fired at a distance of a mile or so
away, one could literally feel the blast in
one's face.  The resulting din can be better
imagined than described.  On such occasions,
even from the point of view of getting
away from the noise, there are worse places
to spend a night in than in a dug-out 7 feet
high, 8 feet broad, and 15 feet long, 12
feet below the level of the ground.

Albert at this time was distinctly unhealthy.
The shells exacted their daily toll.  Occasionally
the Huns varied their hate by sending
over a few lachrymatory or tear shells, which,
however, falling a fair distance away from
us, only had the effect of making our eyes
smart for a time.  We at first attributed
this to the lorry "exhausts" and the
quality of the petrol.

On September 25th one squadron of a
Native lancer regiment was put into action.
Cavalry patrols were sent on ahead, and
returned to report that the village of
Gueudecourt was still held by the enemy.
The squadron galloped to the outskirts of
the village; dismounting, they got their
Hotchkiss machine guns into action and
engaged the enemy for several hours.  They
had a few casualties amongst men and lost
some horses, but achieved their objective.
At Albert there was a sudden and unmistakable
lull in the enemy's shelling.  The
reason was soon forthcoming.  On the 27th
we heard that not only Combles, but the
fortress of Thiepval, which had for so long
been bombarded by our artillery, had at
length fallen to the Allied arms.  Doubtless
it was there that the guns which had
been shelling Albert were situated; the
shells had at any rate invariably come
from that direction.  Along the road from
Thiepval to Albert that day were to be seen
Hun prisoners being marched back not
by tens but by hundreds.  Many were
wounded and looked pitiful as they came
hobbling along, helping one another, guarded
by mounted men—not that they needed
guarding or were capable of escaping.  Those
that were not wounded seemed dazed and
demoralized; here and there was one who
had obviously been driven mad by the
ordeal he had been through—the continual
and ever-increasing hell fire which had been
directed on Thiepval.  One prisoner taken
that day I heard, much to my surprise,
had before the war been employed as chief
telephone clerk in a big London hotel.  At
midnight on September 27th the Column
left Albert and moved back to Corbie.
Thence, in conjunction with the cavalry,
we retraced our steps by gradual stages
westward.





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.. _`TO BAPAUME, PÉRONNE, AND BEYOND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   *Chapter XIV*


.. class:: center large bold

   *TO BAPAUME, PÉRONNE, AND BEYOND*

.. vspace:: 2

Events sometimes occur quickly and
unexpectedly in this war.  Recent ones
justify another chapter.  The 1st day of
November 1916 found us on our way to winter
billets; and in the same "back area" as
that occupied the previous year we spent
the long, dreary winter months.  They were
chiefly characterized as being the coldest
on record and by the most prolonged and
severe spell of frost within recollection.
The thaw was, if anything, more unpleasant.
French roads, even the main ones, seem to
lack a sufficient foundation of metal, and
the results caused by the passage of heavy
transport over them during a thaw are, to
say the least, disastrous to both roads and
transport.  They consist in the giving way,
and in places utter collapse, of the roads.
The difficulty is theoretically overcome by
a procedure known as *barrières fermées*,
which roughly means that when a thaw sets
in all main roads are closed to heavy motor
traffic until the thaw has been in progress
for several days.  After that, *barrières
fermées* become *barrières ouvertes* once
more.  Whether it was owing to the
impossibility of carrying out this scheme for a
sufficient length of time, or due to a failure
in the perfect working of the system, it is
difficult to say, but the results were
unfortunate.  Many roads became impassable, and
mechanical transport lorries were constantly
getting "bogged" everywhere.  A period of
rain did not improve matters, and when
they were almost at their worst for the
moving up of ammunition and guns, the
astute Hun began this retreat to the more
salubrious neighbourhood of the Hindenburg
line.  Immediately, almost, we were on the
road towards Albert.

The last week of March found us encamped
just outside it.  The cavalry had made
a forced march, covering the best part
of seventy miles inside two days.  Not
bad going, taking into consideration the
heavy, muddy roads.  Once again there
was a wave of optimism and confidence
in the air.  The Huns were in retreat,
unable to hold any longer the line they
had fortified and stuck to for so many
months; Bapaume had fallen; our troops
were still advancing and meeting with
little opposition from the enemy.  Three
very good reasons for optimism!

The town of Albert was, we found, little
changed in appearance since our departure
six months before, but it was a very much
more healthy spot, being out of range of
artillery.  Even its civilian population was
returning in considerable numbers.  One of
the largest Expeditionary Force Canteens
had been established, also quite a good
Officers' Club.

During the first few days of April
enemy aeroplanes came over and dropped
several bombs.  The damage done, however,
was negligible, except to a motor-lorry,
in which three men who were sleeping
were unfortunately killed.  Later on, when
the last week of April brought fine weather
and clear blue skies, Taubes became
our daily visitors, though the barrage of
anti-aircraft batteries kept them too high to
make bombing worth while.  Heavy snow
marked our arrival at the front, and it
certainly seemed that spring operations had
started in weather that was as unfavourable
as it was reminiscent of mid-winter.  To
add insult to injury, on almost the coldest
night of all the British Expeditionary Force
advanced its clock an hour and "summer
time" came in!  Railhead was moved up
as far as ——, as soon as railway communication
was opened up.  It had been a village
of some hundred and thirty houses.  Now,
of course, it was completely ruined, but
none the less a place of considerable
importance.  Surprisingly few "traps"
were left behind there by the Germans.
On two occasions only, mines exploded,
each leaving fair-sized craters under the
permanent way, but only causing such
slight damage that traffic was not seriously
interfered with.

To reach Bapaume from Albert there
is a long, straight road, which, from
strategical importance, must almost equal
that wonderful road from Bar-le-Duc to
Verdun.  The latter has come to be known
as "La Voie sacrée" and General Pétain
is said to have stated that the battle
of Verdun was largely won by the prowess
of the motor drivers along it, during those
months when there passed over it a
never-ending, continuous line of convoys,
transporting munitions and rations to the
defenders of France's most famous outpost.

The Albert-Bapaume road presented many
points of interest.  A few kilometres along
it is Pozières, the name of a village which
formerly existed here.  Now it is indicated
only by a signboard announcing the fact.

To the left are such places as Ovillers,
Thiepval, Courcelette—names which recall
bloody combats of a few months ago.
Like Pozières, nothing now remains of
them.  A little further along one strikes
Le Sars.  There are indications here of
what was once a village and a wood.
Now the wood looks like a skeleton and
the ground is littered with bricks and
odd pieces of timber.  On either side of
the road the ground is literally studded
with shell holes; not a solitary square
yard of it has escaped: everywhere are
broken-down dug-outs, old artillery
emplacements, and irregular and much battered
lines of trenches, running seemingly in all
directions and difficult to follow.  There
is not a blade of grass or any sign of
life.  To leave the road is to meet with
quantities of unexploded shells, broken and
abandoned equipment, skulls, and corpses
of both British and German soldiers.
Salvage and burial parties are constantly at
work and gradually clearing the ground, a
task of some magnitude.  Here and there
are the little military cemeteries—row after
row of long brown mounds of earth, each
surmounted by a wooden cross; here and
there a smashed-up aeroplane waiting to
be salved.

Nowhere is the ghastly aftermath of war
more in evidence than around the Butte de
Warlencourt, a few miles further along the
road.  The Butte appears an isolated hill,
rising by gradual ascent to a height of about
100 feet.  To capture it from the enemy
must have been a matter of considerable
difficulty.  On its summit is a large wooden
cross, dedicated to the memory of the gallant
officers, N.C.O.'s, and men of the Durham
Light Infantry who fell there in November
1916.  At various points on the road, particularly,
of course, at cross-roads, the Germans
before their retreat set mines; these, later
exploding, have caused enormous upheavals
of earth and craters large enough, many of
them, to bury half a dozen motor-lorries
in.  To let traffic pass them, it has been
necessary to circumvent them with causeways
built around their lips, until such time
as they have been filled in again and the
road is once more built up and able to
follow its usual course.  Eventually appears
Bapaume, and the Albert road at this point
strikes at right angles the road which, to the
left, proceeds to Arras, and to the right into
the centre of the town, into which converge
roads from Cambrai, Douai, and Péronne.

Bapaume itself presents a sight which is
at once amazing and tragic.  The first thing
that strikes the observer is that it is not
suffering so much from the effects of artillery
bombardment as from the deliberate burning
and blowing up of its houses, and chiefly by
the fronts having been blown out.  Where
these have thus been destroyed, the roofs
have collapsed into the houses.  Almost every
building has been demolished in this way; in
many cases the grey slate roofs lie complete,
warped but intact, over a mass of debris
caused by the blowing down of the supporting
walls.  Most of the furniture from the
houses was presumably removed some time
ago to furnish German dug-outs; what has
not been made use of in this way has been
piled up inside the houses, and, after being
tarred, set alight.  The trees which formerly
adorned the main roads have, to a great
extent, been sawn off near their stumps,
and the trunks lay, till removed by our
troops, at right angles across the roads.  I
take the object of this tree-felling to be
threefold.  Firstly, to impede advancing
troops; secondly, to leave no cover, and
thus throw the roads open to aeroplane
observation; and thirdly, for the sake of
sheer destructiveness.  The third is an
undeniable reason, for even the little fruit and
rose trees in cottage gardens had not been
spared at the hands of the Hun.

The wells everywhere had been poisoned
with arsenic or fouled with manure.  In
Bapaume itself the cleanest well was found
to contain eight German corpses.  To
appreciate the "wanton and cruel spirit," as
Mr. Ian Malcolm so aptly describes the spirit
in which the Germans are losing the war,
I quote in full a letter from him which
appeared in *The Times* on April 7th, 1917.
Comment would be superfluous.  I can only
add that, judging from the devastation, the
Hun soldiers must have carried out their
orders with a thoroughness which is typical
of German organization, except, of course, in
such places from which their hurried evacuation
did not give them time.  The following
is the letter:—

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   MORE INHUMAN DOCUMENTS

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   TO THE EDITOR OF *THE TIMES*

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SIR,—I enclose herewith two "scraps of paper"
taken from German prisoners in the region of Bapaume,
where I found myself last Monday.  Their contents
should, I think, be made known far and wide, for
they bear eloquent testimony to the wanton and cruel
spirit in which the Germans are losing the war.  I
will add that, for the time being, the originals are in
my possession, and that these translations are
faithfully done from the originals.

No. 1, dated March 9th, gives instructions for the
procedure preliminary to the so-called German
"withdrawal" on the British front, and runs as follows:—

\1. Pioneer ——,  and 1 infantryman will throw dung
into the wells.

\2. Pioneer ——, and 2 infantrymen will cut down
the trees.

\3. Pioneer ——, and 2 infantrymen will carry out
special tasks.

\4. Pioneer ——, and 2 infantrymen will stack wood
in houses.

No. 2 is a time-table to be carried out at Bancourt,
a village just east of Bapaume.

In the village of Bancourt it is more important to
set fire to the houses than to blow them up.

5th March:—Straw will be heaped up and tarred.

10th March:—Explosives are to be ready for the
cellars and wells in Bancourt.

11th March:—All unused wells and watering ponds
must be plentifully polluted with dung and
creosote soda.  Sufficient dung and creosote
soda must be placed in readiness beside the
wells which are still in use.

12th March:—Bancourt must be ready to be set
on fire.

13th March:—Parade in fighting kit, issue of iron
rations, cleaning of arms, instruction regarding
safe roads to be used and instructions for the
demolition party.

14th March:—Explosives to be issued for destroying
the cellars and wells in Bancourt.  Bancourt
church tower will be blown up.

16th March:—All wells in Bancourt with the
exception of one will be blown up by 6.30 p.m.

17th March:—The road mines will be fired at 3 a.m.
The remaining cellars in Bancourt will be blown
up at 3.15 a.m., and Bancourt will be set on
fire at 4 a.m.

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Your obedient servant,

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   IAN MALCOLM.
      BRYANSTON SQUARE, April 6th.

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\5, BRYANSTON SQUARE, *April 6th*.

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It is noticeable that along many roads the
great trees on either side of them have only
been felled on one side, sometimes on the
other, seldom on both at the same point.
Possibly those left were intended as
landmarks for artillery ranging purposes.
Beyond Bapaume every village, with a mine
crater at its entrance, has shared the same
fate.  At Beugny, part of the outer walls of
the church still stand; inside them are lying
about church ornaments, crucifixes, figures
of saints deliberately destroyed by being
decapitated, and mingling with this strange
collection on the ground are countless old
champagne and hock bottles.  Around the
church are hundreds of German graves.
Amongst them I noticed one cross, similar
to all the others, bearing as an inscription
the one word "Englander."  Hidden in the
ruins of these places the Germans have not
omitted to leave traps and ruses.  Many
of the roads were left for us mined, so
that every cross-road became suspicious
and the R.E.'s were busy investigating.  A
good many traps were discovered in time;
others, unfortunately, were not.

The country the other side of the old
German line looked refreshingly green, but
only traces remained of former supply dumps
and camps, of which everything of value
had been completely cleared away.  The
roads, too, had obviously not been
subjected to such severe wear and tear as those
on our side.  The Germans had used light
railways running along the roadside in lieu
of transport by motor-lorries on the roads
themselves.  Though the railway lines had
been carefully taken up and removed, the
sleepers still remained in many places and
the lay of the former track was still visible.
The devastation and laying waste of the
countryside suggested to one's mind that
the enemy did not anticipate having to fight
over the same ground again.

Perhaps one of the most striking roads
on this part of the front is that which goes
through Aveluy and runs along the valley
of the Ancre to Miraumont.  From it can
be had a wonderful panorama landscape
of former trenches and heavily shelled
battlefields.

The end of March and beginning of April
saw, for a time, at any rate, a return to the
more interesting though less comfortable
open form of warfare.  Cavalry patrols
were out on reconnaissances, and in touch
with Uhlans and the rearguards covering
the German retreat.  They were at such
places as Miraumont and Bihcourt, and not
once, but several times, Brigades marched
out in the early hours of the morning
"into the blue," spoiling for a big open
fight.

During this time, one echelon or section
of the Supply Column was employed in
rationing the troops.  The second section
was employed on various other jobs, such
as stone and road repair material fatigues,
and taking up ammunition for the guns.
The latter is a particularly interesting job;
especially is it so when 9.2-inch howitzer
shells compose the load.  First of all,
there is the loading, at one of the many
ammunition dumps.  These dumps seem
to be everywhere; they spring up like
mushrooms in a night and in the most
unexpected places.  Perhaps on what was
once "No-man's-land," to-day there are
enormous stacks of shells silhouetted against
the sky.  From these dumps the lorries draw
their death-dealing loads.  The shells are
taken from the stacks and piled on to trucks
running on a light railway to the edge of a
road.  Here they are transferred to the
motor-lorries.  Then there is the journey
up to the battery, at snail's pace, probably,
for no vehicle, except a Staff car, must
pass another along the —— road.  Traffic
control officers and mounted military
police on the road see to this.  Arriving
back at your parking ground, you have
just swallowed breakfast, only to find
that you must go off again almost immediately
and repeat the performance.  So that,
though tired perhaps, you feel you are of
a little use, even though it is only the
Army Service Corps you are in!  Long
days and nights, but full of interest,
and not infrequently enlivened by a few
"souvenirs" from the Hun batteries across
the way-shells that blow motor-lorries
into matchboard and scrap iron and kill
the men in charge of them.

The bombardment during this period was
the prelude to an offensive, the results of
which I will not attempt to write.  They are
now ancient history, for what is news
to-day is history to-morrow, so suddenly do
events sometimes occur in this war.  Suffice
it to add that British troops took close
on 20,000 prisoners and an appropriate
number of guns in a month, besides
capturing large tracts of land and many
fortified positions, including the Vimy
Ridge, to mention only one, which the
enemy, at any rate, had thought to be
impregnable.

That part of the line towards which
we were working was held by Anzacs.
The Australian Army is a democratic
one.  Officers go through the ranks first,
and all ranks are thus more or less on a
footing of familiarity, the officer invariably
addressing a man as "Son."  There are
many stories of them.  One, I think, got to
*Punch*, of the Staff Officer who remarked,
"This morning I was saluted by an
Anzac.  It has been a great day for me."  Every
day General Birdwood is to be seen
in his car going up to the forward positions.

Our motor-lorries were also employed on
salvage.  This also is an interesting job.
Thousands of men are dismantling old dug-outs,
collecting R.E. stores and equipment—in
fact, every kind of material imaginable,
from live shells to dead bodies.  The salved
material so collected is loaded on to horse
wagons and driven to the roadside, where
loads are transferred to lorries, thence
taken to railhead dumps, piled up, and
sorted.  Eventually it is put on train and
mostly reaches the Base, some of it being
sent further up to the front.  All equipment
that is repairable at the Base workshops
is reissued later to the troops; the remainder,
and scrap metal, sold by weight.  By this
means such places as Beaumont-Hamel and
Serre are gradually being cleared.  Corpses,
when recoverable, are taken in horse-drawn
wagons to the nearest military cemetery.
Here they are, if possible, identified by an
officer of the Graves Registration
Committee, and then given a Christian burial,
British and German alike, by a padre who
is always there for the purpose.

No sooner is the ground cleared than its
owners suddenly reappear and proceed to
search for the money that they hid before
their departure.  Alas!  I fear they seldom
find it!  The farmers begin to till the soil, so
that land which a few months before was the
scene of bloody fighting is gradually ploughed
up, and not a sound is to be heard except the
ploughman's cries in the stillness, urging on
his horses, and away in the distance the
never-ending thunder of the guns.  The
inhabitants are allowed to return and granted
a *permis de séjour* if they are *cultivateurs*.
When harvest-time comes they will
be provided with reaping and thrashing
machines by the British Army.

I recall two amusing items in
connection with salvage.  One was a notice
outside an old dug-out which bore the
legend, "This dug-out is mined": "To-night's
the Night."  The other was a
sentence in a letter I was censoring: "I am
now doing 'savage' work in the trenches."

The second week of May 1917 found us
once more on the move, this time to Péronne.
The move itself was an interesting one.
Our route lay through Albert, Bray, and
Cappy, and we travelled along roads in the
Somme Valley which I have written of in a
previous chapter—roads on which we had
taken convoys as far back as August 1915.
when they were at many points under
observation of the enemy and in close
proximity to the trenches.  Thence along
the main Amiens-St. Quentin road, the
straightest and most tedious road imaginable.

Crossing the former lines of trenches and
the old No-man's-land at Estrées, we turned
into Péronne.  The latter must have been
an altogether delightful riverside town, with
handsome buildings and broad streets.  Now
it is ruined, though not so completely as
Bapaume.  To pass through it one has to
cross the Somme about four times, and at
each point the original bridge has naturally
been destroyed.  The other side of Péronne
each village has, of course, been systematically
destroyed and the trees felled.  Even the
cemeteries have been desecrated by the
removal of corpses from coffins and of
tombstones.  The Huns have used the coffins and
lead shells for their own dead, and even
altered the inscriptions on the stones and
re-erected them as gravestones for their dead
soldiers.  In one churchyard a huge family
vault shows signs of having been used as a
bakehouse.  A Frenchman who had lived
in one village during its occupation by the
Germans said the Hun soldiers told him that
their orders were to destroy fruit trees,
gardens, graves, and houses, so that, after
the German Army had retreated, the civilian
population, returning, would be appalled
at the wanton destruction of their homes,
and, reflecting on the towns and villages
ahead still occupied, would collectively
revolt and demand terms of peace to be
made by France.

I conclude this chapter writing in a tent
pitched in a fair-sized garden: every fruit
tree has been felled, apple and cherry trees
lie sawn off two feet or so from the ground.
Even so they are covered with blossom.
The state of the village—between Péronne
and St. Quentin—can be left to the
imagination almost: a confused collection of grey
slate roofs, burnt timber, loose bricks, and
chunks of masonry.  The night is dark, but
in the distance the sky is red.  The Huns
have fired the cathedral at St. Quentin!

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   Printed in Great Britain by
   UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON

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