Chapter II: Part 2

Soissons was like a sunlit town of the dead. Four out of five houses were shut. Most of the well-to-do people had gone. It was silent streets and blind houses. The clattering which Moonshine made on the cobbles was almost creepy. I stopped first of all at a saddler’s shop and tried to get a proper bridle. The saddler was a rough democratic Frenchman, not a bad fellow, the sort of man who made the Republic. He took me to a boot shop which was my first need, where the people were very kind, and I bought a capital pair of boots for twelve francs. I went into the “Lion d’Or.” They refused me a stall for Moonshine on the ground that the landlord and all his family were going. I insisted, and bought her some fodder, also some food for myself. They drove hard bargains.

Out of doors I met some English officers having breakfast. They had only just arrived. I left a man called Gustave to look after Moonshine and went out to spend a most laborious morning of shopping. After going to many different shops I found a bazaar like a mortuary, with two old women and a boy. They said to me: “Take whatever you want and pay as much or as little as pleases you. If the Germans come we shall set fire to this place.” They pressed every kind of souvenir on me, but it was extraordinary, with plenty lying round, how difficult it was to get what one needed. I was buying mostly for other people. It was like being turned loose in Selfridge’s--boots, scissors, pocket-knives, electric torches, watches, bags, vests, etc. I also bought an alpenstock, as I had lost my sword and thought it might be useful as a light bayonet.

I then went and had a bath, the first proper one since England. The heat was very great. I felt dirty and wanted to shave my beard, as the men said every day that I became more like King Edward. I then intended to go to the Cathedral, but found the few English soldiers in the town moving out hurriedly. They said the Germans were coming in an hour. So I gave up the Cathedral and went and had lunch in a jolly little inn. There were some very excitable Frenchmen, one of whom asked me if I would sell him a lucky sixpence for a franc which he could wear round his neck. I suppose he was really pathetic; at the moment he only irritated me. He said: “J’ai confiance--même s’ils vont à Paris j’aurais confiance.” “But,” he said, “where is the French Army?” They were all saying that by this time.

I went back to my boot shop. All the women there were crying. They insisted upon giving me some wine. At the hotel I found the hotel-keeper and his family going off, squeaking with anger at the ostler, Gustave, who was helping me to carry all I had bought in two great bags. The weight was very oppressive in the heat, and I was afraid of making Moonshine’s tender foot worse on the hard road. Before I had got outside the town I had to get off and readjust everything, with the help of some very kind French people. While I was doing this, Westminster, with Hugh Dawnay, drove up in his beautiful car. I suggested his taking my things on to Cœuvre. He said, unfortunately he had other orders, and wanted to know where to lunch. I told him where I had lunched, but said that he would probably have to share his lunch with the Germans if he went into the town, as they must now be close behind us.

Riding on, I met some French troops evacuating the town and with them a man of my regiment, who had hurt his knee. He could not walk, so I put him under the charge of a French sergeant. While I was talking to him two other men of my regiment came up. They had fallen out on the previous day and had had nothing to eat since yesterday’s breakfast. I took them into a French house, where the people were very hospitable; gave them food at once and insisted on giving them champagne, which they said was “déchampagnisé.” The men ate like wolves. One of them was a splendidly built fellow, called Sheridan.

Then we marched slowly on in the heat, for about two hours, when Sheridan said: “What is it is happening yonder, sir?” pointing to the horizon about a mile away. Soon rifle fire broke out, and Sheridan said: “There are Uhlans coming down the road.” There was a wood on our left, and we made preparations to get into this; the other man had fallen behind. They were both very done, but Sheridan was like a different man at the prospect of a fight. Our people, however, or rather the French, drove the German cavalry back at this moment, and we went on quietly. I was glad to be able to turn to the left, as the fighting on our right was pretty hot and I was weighed down with all the extra things I carried.

I fell into conversation with a medical officer, and asked him if he knew where Cœuvre was. Then an R.A.M.C. Colonel came up and looked at my kit very suspiciously. He asked me who the General in command of the Division was. I said I had forgotten his name; I could not keep my head filled with these details. He said to me: “You don’t seem to know who you are.” I said to him: “I know who I am; I don’t know who you are, I don’t want to. I hope to God I shall never see you again. Go to hell and stay there.” This made him angry, and he said: “Your regiment is ahead on the left, but the Germans are in front of you, if you wish to rejoin them,” pointing in the direction from which I had come.

All this time I had been waiting for Sheridan and other now numerous stragglers behind me, and at this point I turned round and rode off to see what had happened, thoroughly irritated with the R.A.M.C. Colonel. This apparently convinced him that I really was a German, as the engagement in the rear was going on fairly close, and he came after me with a Major of the K.R.R., who was unhappy. He said: “Will you come with me to my Colonel?” I said: “I will go with you anywhere to get away from this fussy little man, but if you think that a German spy would come on a racehorse, dressed like the White Knight, with an alpenstock, you are greatly mistaken.” He promised to have my stragglers looked after, and then I rode up to his regiment with him, when Blank came up and shook hands. We had not met since Eton. He cleared my character. After that I went on as fast as I could. I picked up some more of my regiment, including a sergeant who had sprained his ankle. I told him to ride, but found a motor and put him in that.

Soon we were stopped by a sentry in a wood, as it was growing dark. He said that his officer had told him to stop all on the road and to send for him. Then came General Monro, who was also stopped. He was with a sad man. He forced his way through, and I asked permission to take on the men of my regiment. He told me that I should find my regiment at Soucy, and gave me the permission I wanted. In a few moments I met the officer who had had us stopped. He said the Germans were very close to us. We could hear firing near by.

I reached my regiment as night was falling. They were delighted with my arrest. We spent our last night very comfortably, though there was heavy dew. Tom, who had been frightfully overdone, always carrying rifles, was recovering, and every one was cheerful and very keen to have a fight. Until now only Hickie had been invalided. The rum at night after a long march made a wonderful difference. The men got in very tired, footsore, cold and hungry, and had to sleep on the wet ground. A tot of rum sent them to sleep, and sent them to sleep feeling warm. Teetotalism on the march is an excellent thing, better still to drink nothing, but that nip at night made the difference between health and sickness, comfort and misery.

_September 1st._ The next morning we got up at 2 o’clock. The Army was passing all round us already. It was like the sound of deep, slow rivers. For the first and last time we took a wrong turning, only for a couple of hundred yards. This was the only mistake I saw at all in the long march. After two hours we halted, and S. and I sat under a dripping tree and talked about the West Country. At the beginning S. had said to me: “I shall be very disappointed if I go home without seeing a fight, but the worst of it is you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and I don’t want to see my friends killed.” I said to him: “You are going to get your omelette all right now.” Some constituents passed me. They said: “This be terrible dangerous. Do’ee come along with we.”

Moonshine would eat nothing, and this worried me. I had become very fond of her.

At about 6 o’clock we halted on what I knew to be a tragic plain. In my mind I associate this plain with turnips, though I am not sure that any grew there. There was stubble, high and wet lucerne, and a mournful field where corn had been cut but not carried. We sat about on the wet, muddy ground for breakfast, while a thin, dismal rain fell.

The C.O. called us round and gave us our orders. He said: “We are required to hold this wood until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We may have to fight a rearguard action until a later hour if there is a block in the road. We are to retire upon Rond de la Reine.” After this we breakfasted on hot cocoa; it tasted of vaseline or paraffin, but it was warm.

It was apparent that if the First Division took long over their luncheon we should be wiped out. By this time every one had got their second wind, their feet were hard and they were cheerful. Jumbo said he could go on walking for ever. I talked to Alex and agreed that we had seen a great deal of fun together. He had said, while we were crossing the Channel, that it was long odds, not, of course, against some of us going back, but against any particular one of us seeing it through. This was now visibly true; we believed that we were three divisions against twenty-one or even twenty-eight German divisions. I wrote two letters, one of them a eulogy of Moonshine. I went to Desmond, asking him to post them. He said crossly: “You seem to think that Adjutants can work miracles. Charles asks for letters under fire, you want to post them on the battlefield. It is quite useless to write letters now.”

He then borrowed some of my paper and wrote a letter. I have the picture in my mind of Desmond constantly sitting, in very tidy breeches, writing and calling for sergeants. We had little sleep. He never seemed to sleep at all. He was woken all the time and was always cheerful. We had nothing to do for a bit, and I read scraps about cemeteries from Shakespeare, to irritate the others. They remained cheerful. Then we moved off to the wood. Nobody had any illusions about the immediate future. One man said to me: “I may live to see many battles; I think I shall, for I am very keen on my profession, but I shall never forget this plain or this morning.” It must have been about 7.30 when we went into the wood. No. 4 held the extreme right; they were protected by a wall, which they loopholed, and a wire fence outside. No. 3 was next on a road that ran through the heart of the wood to Rond de la Reine. I did not see Tom; I thought I was sure to see him some time in the morning. Stubbs was behind No. 3, down in the village (I forget the name). The C.O. said to me: “I want you to gallop for me to-day, so stick to me.” I lost him at once in the wood behind No. 4, but rode right down to a deserted farm and, swinging to my right, found him at the cross-roads.

I had seen a good deal of him the last days. He had a very attractive personality, and it was a delight to hear him talk about anything. I asked him what chance he thought we had of getting more than half of us away. He said he thought a fairly good chance. Then he said to me: “How is your rest-cure getting on now? There is very little that looks like manœuvres in the millennium about this, is there?” I had told him some time before that I looked upon this expedition as a rest-cure, as in some ways it was. We talked about Ireland and Home Rule, riding outside the wood. The grey, damp mist had gone and the day was beautiful.

He sent me first to Hubert, Second-in-Command, with the order that in the retreat every officer was to retire down the main road, with the exception of Stubbs, who was to retire as he liked. I imagine that he was afraid that men would be lost in the wood. By this time the firing had begun, some way off, but our men could see the Germans coming over the rising land. The C.O. ordered me to find Colonel Pereira of the Coldstream Guards and tell him that, as soon our own troops, now fighting the Germans in front of him, would fall back through his lines, after this he was to fall back himself.

I went off at a hand gallop, and had got half-way there, with the wood on my left and open land on my right, when the Germans began shooting at about three-quarters of a mile. Our men were firing at them from the wood, and I felt annoyed at being between two fires and the only thing visible to amuse our men and the Germans. I turned into the wood, and, galloping down a sandy way, found the road filled with refugees with haunted faces. We had seen crowds of refugees for days, but I felt sorrier for these. I suppose it was that the Germans were so very near them. I gave my message to Pereira, who advised me to go back through the wood, but I knew the other way and thought I should soon be past the German fire. I had not, however, counted on their advancing so quickly. When I came to the edge of the wood they were firing furiously--shrapnel, machine-gun and rifle fire. Our men had excellent cover, and were answering. I then tried to make my way through the wood, but it was abominably rough. There were ferns and brambles waist-high, and great ditches; the wood was very beautiful with its tall trees, but that, at the moment, was irrelevant. Moonshine stood like a goat on the stump of a tree that made an island among the ditches, and I turned back to take the way by the open fields. When I got outside the fire had grown very bad. I raced for an orchard that jutted out of the wood. Bullets hummed and buzzed. Coming to it, I found that there was wire round it. I then popped at full speed, like a rabbit, into the wood again, through a thicket, down an enormous ditch, up the other side, bang into some barbed wire, which cut my horse. It was like diving on horseback. I turned round and galloped delicately out again, riding full tilt round the orchard.

I found the Colonel, who was standing under shelter at the cross-roads to the left of the road, facing the enemy, that led through the heart of the wood. He mounted the bank and watched the Germans advancing. I sat under the bank with M. and Alex. The German shells began to fall close to us, knocking the trees about in the wood. There were some sergeants very excited and pleased at the idea of a fight. They said: “Now has come the time for deeds, not words.” They felt that they were the men of the moment.

We considered whether the Germans were likely to charge down the road along which I had come, but thought we could hold them effectively in check from our corner and that the fire from the wood would reach them.

It was, I suppose, now about 10.30. Desmond, the Colonel and I rode back into the big, green wood. It was very peaceful. The sun was shining through the beech-trees, and for a bit the whole thing seemed unreal. The C.O. talked to the men, telling them to reserve their fire till the Germans were close on them. “Then you will kill them and they won’t get up again.” That made them laugh. The German advance began very rapidly. The Coldstreamers must have begun falling back about this time. The Germans came up in front and on our left flank. There was a tremendous fire. The leaves, branches, etc., rained upon one. One’s face was constantly fanned by the wind from their bullets. This showed how bad their fire was. My regiment took cover very well, and after the first minute or two fired pretty carefully. Moonshine was startled to begin with by the fire, but afterwards remained very still and confidential. Desmond did not get off his horse; he told me to lead my horse back into the wood and then come back to the firing line. The Colonel then told me to gallop up to the Brigadier to say that the retreat was being effectively carried out; that there were two squadrons advancing and he did not know what force of infantry. In this estimate he was very much out, as subsequent events proved. Eric, now at home wounded, said to me: “The Germans seemed hardly to have an advance guard; it was an army rolling over us.” When I found the Brigadier he wanted to know if the C.O. seemed happy about things. I said I thought on the whole he did. There were bullets everywhere and men falling, but the fire was still too high. One bullet in about half a million must have hit a man. I returned to the Colonel. Our men had then begun to retire down the main road to Rond de la Reine. A galloper came up and, as far as I heard, said that we were to hang on and not retreat yet. This officer was, I think, killed immediately after giving his message. The Colonel said that the Coldstreamers had already begun to retreat, that we couldn’t hold on there, but must go back to the position we had left. We were ordered to resume the position which Hubert had been told to leave. The Germans were by this time about 250 yards away, firing on us with machine-guns and rifles. The noise was perfectly awful. In a lull the C.O. said to the men: “Do you hear that? Do you know what they are doing that for? They are doing that to frighten you.” I said to him: “If that’s all, they might as well stop. As far as I am concerned, they have succeeded, two hours ago.”

The men were ordered to charge, but the order was not heard in the noise, and after we had held this position for some minutes a command was given to retreat. Another galloper brought it, who also, I think, was shot. Guernsey, whom I met with his company, asked me to gallop back and tell Valentine he must retire his platoon; he had not received the order. I found Valentine and got off my horse and walked him some yards down the road, the Germans following. He, like everybody else, was very pleased at the calm way the men were behaving.

I mounted and galloped after the Colonel, who said: “If only we could get at them with the bayonet I believe one of our men is as good as three of theirs.” He started in the direction of the Brigadier. Men were now falling fast. I happened to see one man drop with a bayonet in his hand a few yards off, and reined in my horse to see if I could help him, but the C.O. called me and I followed him. The man whom I had seen was Hubert, though I did not know it at the time. The C.O. said: “It is impossible now to rescue wounded men; we have all we can do.” He had a charmed life. He raced from one place to another through the wood; cheering the men and chaffing them, and talking to me; smoking cigarette after cigarette. Under ordinary conditions one would have thought it mad to ride at the ridiculous pace we did over the very broken ground, but the bullets made everything else irrelevant. At about 1 o’clock we went up to the Brigadier at the corner of the road. The fighting there was pretty hot. One of the men told the Colonel that Hubert was killed. The Colonel said: “Are you sure?” The man said: “Well, I can’t swear.” I was sent back to see. The man said he was about 400 yards away, and as I galloped as hard as I could, G. called to me: “To the right and then to the left.” As I raced through the wood there was a cessation of the firing, though a number of shots came from both sides. They snapped very close. I found Hubert in the road we had been holding. I jumped off my horse and put my hand on his shoulder and spoke to him. He must have been killed at once, and looked absolutely peaceful. He cannot have suffered at all. I leant over to see if he had letters in his pocket, when I heard a whistle 25 or 30 yards behind me in the wood. I stood up and called: “If that is an Englishman, get outside the wood and up to the corner like hell; you will be shot if you try and join the rest through the wood. The Germans are between us.” I bent over to pick up Hubert’s bayonet, when again a whistle came and the sound of low voices, talking German. I then thought the sooner I was away the better. As I swung into the saddle a shot came from just behind me, missing me. I rode back as fast as Moonshine could go. The lull in the firing had ceased, and the Germans were all round us. One could see them in the wood, and they were shooting quite close. The man who finally got me was about 15 to 20 yards away; his bullet must have passed through a tree or through Bron’s great-coat, because it came into my side broken up. It was like a tremendous punch. I galloped straight on to my regiment and told the Colonel that Hubert was dead. He said: “I am sorry, and I am sorry that you are hit. I am going to charge.” He had told me earlier that he meant to if he got the chance.

I got off and asked them to take on my horse. Then I lay down on the ground and an R.A.M.C. man dressed me. The Red Cross men gave a loud whistle when they saw my wound, and said the bullet had gone through me. The fire was frightfully hot. The men who were helping me were crouching down, lying on the ground. While he was dressing me a horse--his, I suppose--was shot just behind us. I asked them to go, as they could do me no good and would only get killed or taken themselves. The doctor gave me some morphia, and I gave them my revolver. They put me on a stretcher, leaving another empty stretcher beside me. This was hit several times. Shots came from all directions, and the fire seemed to be lower than earlier in the day. The bullets were just above me and my stretcher. I lost consciousness for a bit; then I heard my regiment charging. There were loud cries and little spurts of spasmodic shooting; then everything was quiet and a deep peace fell upon the wood. It was very dreamlike.

It is really very difficult to reconstruct this fight. I think every man’s attention was fixed like iron on doing his own job, otherwise they would all have noticed more. I carry in my mind a number of very vivid pictures--Desmond on his horse, Valentine and I discussing fatalism, the C.O. smoking cigarettes in the cinema holders that I had bought for him a few days before.

As I lay on the stretcher a jarring thought came to me. I had in my pocket the flat-nosed bullets which the War Office had served out to us as revolver ammunition. They are not dum-dum bullets, but they would naturally not make as pleasant a wound as the sharp-nosed ones, and it occurred to me that those having them would be shot. I searched my pockets and flung mine away. I did not discover one which remained and was buried later on,--but neither did the Germans. It was first hearing German voices close by that jogged my memory about these bullets, and the Germans were then so close that I felt some difficulty in throwing the bullets away. The same idea must have occurred to others, for later I heard the Germans speaking very angrily about the flat bullets they had picked up in the wood, and saying how they would deal with any one in whose possession they were found.

The glades became resonant with loud, raucous German commands and occasional cries from wounded men. After about an hour and a half, I suppose, a German with a red beard, with the sun shining on his helmet and bayonet, came up looking like an angel of death. He walked round from behind, and put his serrated bayonet on the empty stretcher by me, so close that it all but touched me. The stretcher broke and his bayonet poked me. I enquired in broken but polite German what he proposed to do next; after reading the English papers and seeing the way he was handling his bayonet, it seemed to me that there was going to be another atrocity. He was extraordinarily kind and polite. He put something under my head; offered me wine, water and cigarettes. He said: “Wir sind kamaraden.” Another soldier came up and said: “Why didn’t you stay in England--you who made war upon the Boers?” I said: “We obeyed orders, just as you do; as for the Boers, they were our enemies and are now our friends, and it is not your business to insult wounded men.” My first friend then cursed him heartily, and he moved on.

The Germans passed in crowds. They seemed like steel locusts. Every now and then I would hear: “Here is an officer who talks German,” and the crowd would swerve in like a steel eddy. Then: “Schnell Kinder!” and they would be off. They gave a tremendous impression of lightness and iron. After some hours, when my wound was beginning to hurt, some carriers came up to take me to a collecting place for the wounded. These men were rather rough. They dropped me and my stretcher once, but were cursed by an officer. They then carried me some distance, and took me off the stretcher, leaving me on the ground. The Germans continued to pass in an uninterrupted stream. One motor cyclist, but with a bayonet in his hand, was very unpleasant. He said: “I would like to put this in your throat and turn it round and round,” waving it down to my nose. That sort of thing happened more than once or twice, but there were always more friends than enemies, though as night fell the chance of being left without friends increased. As it grew dark, I got rather cold. One of the Germans saw this, covered me with his coat and said: “Wait a moment, I will bring you something else.” He went off, and, I suppose, stripped a dead Englishman and a dead German. The German jersey which he gave me had no holes in it; the Englishman’s coat had two bayonet cuts.

The wounded began to cry dreadfully in the darkness. I found myself beside Robin, who was very badly wounded in the leg. The Germans gave me water when I asked for it, but every time I drank it made me sick. At, I suppose, 9.30 or 10 p.m. they took us off into an ambulance and carried us to a house that had been turned into a hospital. I was left outside, talking to a Dane who was very anti-German, though he was serving with them as a Red Cross man. He cursed them loudly in German. He said it was monstrous that I hadn’t been attended to, that the Germans had had a defeat and would be beaten. I said: “Yes, it’s all true, but please stop talking, because they’ll hear you and punish me.”

Just before 12 o’clock they carried me into the hospital on to the operating table, and dressed my wound quickly.

Then I was helped out to an outhouse and lay beside Robin. It was full of English and German wounded. They gave us one drink of water and then shut and locked the door and left us for the night. One man cried and cried for water until he died. It was a horrible night. The straw was covered with blood, and there was never a moment when men were not groaning and calling for help. In the morning the man next to Robin went off his head and became animal with pain. I got the Germans to do what was possible for him. I asked the Germans to let me out, and they helped me outside into a chair, and I talked to an officer called Brandt. He sent a telegram to the German authorities to say that Robin and I were lightly wounded, and asking them to let our families know. He would not let me pay. I would have liked to have done it for every one, but that wasn’t possible. They took us away in an ambulance at about 11 o’clock. It was a beautiful September day, very hot indeed. The heat in the covered ambulance was suffocating, and Robin must have suffered horribly. He asked me the German for “quick,” and when I told him, urged the Germans on. There were great jolts and....

At Viviers I found Shields, who said to me: “Hullo, you wounded, and you a volunteer, too?”--as if a volunteer ought to be immune from wounds. We were carried upstairs and told that Valentine and Buddy, whom I had last met under the cedars, were in the same hospital. Valentine had the point of his elbow shot away just after I had left him. He raised his hand to brush a wasp off his neck, and only remembered pitching forward when a bullet struck his elbow. He woke up in a pool of blood. A German came up and took the flask of brandy that I had given him after my visit to Soissons. He gave Valentine a drink, and then, when Valentine had said he did not want any more, swigged the whole of the rest off. It was enough to make two men drunk, solidly, for hours. Later, five Germans came up to Valentine and ragged him. One of them kicked him, but an officer arrived, took all their names, promised Valentine they should be punished, and attached an orderly to him for the night. Buddy was badly wounded in the back and arm. He found his servant in the church at Viviers. Then we all met at the house in Viviers. The doctors gave Robin and me a strong dose of morphia. That afternoon a German doctor, whose name was Hillsparck, came in and woke me. He gave me a gold watch with a crest on it, and a silver watch and a purse of gold (£8 in it). He said that a Colonel to whom the watch belonged had been buried close by in the village of Haraman, and asked me if I could say who he was. We heard that the Colonel had been killed, and I imagined it must have been him, but we could not tell, as apparently every single man of the seventy odd who had charged with him had been killed. The doctor left this watch with me. In the hospital we believed that the General of the Division, Monro, and also our own Brigadier, General Scott Kerr, were wounded, and that the Colonel and T. were killed; Hubert we knew was killed.

Our experiences on the field were all the same. We were all well treated, though occasionally we were insulted. In hospital an old _ober-stadt_ was in command of the doctors. He was very good to us. The English doctors were W., in command, S. next, Rankin and Shields. They were all good doctors. W., Rankin and Shields were excellent fellows. Rankin, who has been killed since, himself wounded, was dressing the wounded on the field and was recommended for the V.C. Shields has been killed in the same way, and I believe would have been recommended but that his C.O. was also killed. They were both the best sort of man you can find.

After a couple of days I moved into Buddy and Valentine’s room. A little way down the street there was the château, full of wounded Germans. Our men were carried there to be operated upon.

W. and the other doctors who went to help discovered that there were 311 wounded Germans as against 92 of our own, so we didn’t do badly.

Every morning the German sentries used to come in and talk to us. My German and Buddy’s was very weak, but we managed to get along all right. Downstairs those who were lightly wounded sat outside in the chairs they took from the house, in the sunny garden. It was a fairly luxurious house, with paper marked “F. H.” I thought it was a girls’ school, for the only books we could find were the _Berger de Valence_ and Jules Verne. My side was painful the first few days. Then they cut me open and took out the bullet, which was all in bits. It was rather hard lines on the others to perform an operation in the room, but I felt much better after it. The food difficulty was rather acute. There was very little food, and what there was was badly cooked. We lived principally on things that S. called “chupatti”--thick, unleavened biscuits. The men began to give trouble. There was nobody in command of them. There was an ex-comedian who was particularly tiresome. We had to ask the Germans to punish one man for us. About the fourth day one of the orderlies escaped--Drummer McCoy. He passed for four days through the German lines, and on one occasion watched a whole Army Corps go by from the boughs of a tree. Then he found the French, who passed him on to the English, where he went to the Staff and told them of us. That is how we were picked up so quickly on the 11th.

* * * * *

Here is a copy of my diary for September 9th:--

The people are beginning to return, but not the priest, who is with the Army. We want him for the regiment. Up till this time only six of the wounded have died. The Germans tell us every kind of story--the United States are declaring war on Japan, Italy on France, Denmark on England, etc., etc. Also that Paris has been given twelve hours to accept or reject the German terms, and if the French Government is obdurate the town will be bombarded. We are told that we are to be taken as prisoners to Magdeburg. It is a week since I have had a cigarette.

_Thursday, September 10th._ We are all very anxious to get news home, but there is no chance. Last night S. Herbert died. I had a Testament, and Valentine and I found verses which W. read over his grave. Valentine has bad pain. Three bones broken in his arm and the point of his elbow gone. Buddy is better, but hit cruel hard. Robin has a bad wound, and is very restless. They don’t like giving us morphia. Luckily I have got my own medicine chest, which is a good thing for all of us, as I can give the others sleeping draughts. Last night a French cavalry patrol came within two miles of us. Early this morning there was rifle fire close by. It sounded in the wood that we suppose is Haraman. We think the Germans may evacuate this place any time. The bandages have given out. Stores are not coming in. There is a big aeroplane depot quite close by, and the whole air is full of aeroplanes. It looks and feels as if there might be a big battle round here soon. They have shot an old man wandering about the aerodrome. But he was asking for it.

_9 a.m._ The aeroplanes are being shifted from the depot. Last night we heard that arms were issued to all the wounded Germans in hospital who could carry them. This morning the Germans are digging trenches hard. There are Red Crosses everywhere. The doctors want us to go down to the cellars if we are shelled. The French women in the village say that the French are coming. The firing is increasing.

_9.15 a.m._ The German hospital across the way is ordered to be ready to move at once.

_10.25 a.m._ An order has come for all prisoners to parade at the church at 12 o’clock. The German lightly wounded are being sent on. We are very anxious as to whether they mean to take us too. More of our wounded who have died are being buried.

_11.10 a.m._ A German doctor has come. He said: “They are going and taking all (of our) prisoners, 18 (of our) lightly wounded, and leaving 25 (of their) badly wounded.” French wounded are now coming in. We have no more bandages at all. A German sentry with whom I had talked has just come in. I asked him some days ago to buy some handkerchiefs. He said: “I have not been able to buy you any handkerchiefs, or to get the cigarettes you wanted, but here is one of my own handkerchiefs, which I have washed. We have got to go.”

_8 p.m._ The last order is that the previous orders are countermanded and the Germans are to stay on ten days.

_Friday, September 11th._ Our English prisoners were marched off this morning. We are full of speculation as to what has really happened. Valentine, Buddy and I are well.

_10.10 a.m._ There are machine-guns about four miles away.

_10.30 a.m._ There is a heavy rifle fire within a mile. It is very trying lying here in bed. We have nothing to read except _The Rajah’s Heir_ which V. sent to me and which has become known as the treasure-house of fun. It is a sort of mixture of Hymns Ancient and Modern and the _Fairchild Family_.

_2 p.m._ There is a Maxim within a few hundred yards of the house. Rifle volleys outside in the garden. A rising wind and rain threatening.

_3 p.m._ Heavy rain. The French are visible, advancing.

_3.10 p.m._ The French are here. They came in in fine style, like conquerors; one man first, riding, his hand on his hip. The German sentries who had been posted to protect us wounded walked down and surrendered their bayonets. The German doctors came to us for help. I offered to go, but W. went. The French infantry and cavalry came streaming through. Our wounded went out into the pouring rain to cheer them. They got water from our men, whose hands they kissed. The German guns are on the skyline. The Germans are in full retreat, and said to be cut off by the English.

_5 p.m._ A heavy bombardment of the German guns began from here. I have come upstairs to a long low garret with skylights, in order to leave Valentine and Buddy more room. Through the skylight one can see every flash of the French and German guns. The doctors all come up here to watch with their field-glasses through my skylights.

_Saturday, September 12th._ Yesterday, when W. went down, he found the German doctors receiving cavalier treatment from the French. He explained to the French that they had treated us with the greatest kindness; after that the French treated with courtesy the old _ober-stadt_. Shields carved a great wooden tombstone for the thirteen men who had died up to date. It is a month to-day since I left England.

This afternoon Colonel Thompson, English Staff Officer attached to General Manoury, who had been attached to the Serbian Army through the last war, came in. McCoy, who had escaped, had found him and told him about us at Viviers. He said he would take me into Villers Cotterets after he had done some other business. We talked a lot about the Balkans, but I finally went back and lay down in my garret and shall not get up again to-day.

_Sunday, September 13th._ I went off with Thompson this morning. We passed through the wood where we had had the fight, and a long grave of 120 men was shown to me by McCoy.

ANZAC
1915

_SIFTON, PRAED & CO LTD ST JAMES’ ST LONDON S W_ ]

ANZAC, 1915

When I was passed fit for Active Service, after some time in hospital, I left England for Egypt with five other officers. Four of these had strange histories. One is, perhaps, the most romantic figure of the war, another now governs a great Province, while two, after many adventures, were prisoners of war in Turkey, for different but dreary periods.

I was sent to the East because it had been my fortune to have travelled widely, and I had a fairly fluent smattering of several Eastern languages. On arriving at Gibraltar about December 14, 1914, we heard the first news of submarines. One of these was reported to have passed through into the Mediterranean a few days previously.

When I reached Egypt just before Christmas, superficially everything was calm. This calm did not last very long. I was given Intelligence work to do, under Colonel Clayton, who has played a very great part in achieving our success in the East. Reports constantly came in from Minia, Zagazig and Tanta of Turkish and German intrigues. General Sir J. Maxwell commanded the Forces in Egypt. Prince Hussein had just been proclaimed Sultan, and Egypt had been declared to be under British protection. Rushdy Pasha was Prime Minister and a triumvirate of Sir Milne Cheetham at the Residency, Sir R. Graham as Adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, and Lord Edward Cecil as Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, directed the Government.

It was difficult to believe that the Egyptian, who then had all the advantages of neutrals without any of the disadvantages, really meant mischief. Most people, I think, agreed with Lord Cromer, and believed that his policy of making taxes light and life easy for the Egyptian had succeeded, but the East is never logical, as we all know, and the natural consequence constantly does not follow the parental cause. Mecca rose to join us after Kut had fallen; the rebellion in Egypt only took place when the English had achieved a complete victory over Turkey, and held Palestine and Syria. I quote the following incident as an illustration of the difficulty of sometimes following this mentality:--

A Syrian reported to me that a great Egyptian family, whom I will call the Ashakas, had conspired to bring 15,000 rifles into the country and to engineer a rising. The rifles were to be imported from the Greek islands and from Greece, by means of Greek sponge-fishers. One of these, who had the pleasant and appropriate name of Son-of-the-Dagger, met me in a café in an obscure side street in Cairo. There he revealed the conspiracy, explaining that only the landing-place for the arms had still to be decided upon. He and his companions were to receive a commission on every rifle landed, and he wanted to know what the British Government would be ready to pay for his betrayal of his patrons.

On reporting this to the proper authorities, I was told that they were aware of the existence of this plot. The next day frantic messages from the Greek came, and I met him, disturbed in his mind. He said that the Ashakas had become suspicious of him and the other Greeks, and that he feared for his life. He asked to be arrested immediately after the seizure of the arms and thrown into prison with the Egyptians, and then to be flogged before them, in order to convince them that he was acting honourably by them. He was very anxious to be paid for both pieces of treachery, by the Egyptians and by us. On making my report to the authorities I learned that the Ashakas had betrayed the Greeks by denouncing them as traitors.

The whole affair had been a result of Levantine nerves. The Ashakas in the past had been strong Nationalists. When the war between the Turks and ourselves broke out, in spite of the fact that it seemed possible, and indeed likely, that Egypt might again become a Turkish province, their politics changed, and they hastily became Anglophile, but their past record haunted them. They feared the British Government almost as much as the Turks, and yearned to prove themselves loyal.

After much thought it appeared to them that the simplest way of achieving this would be to supply valuable military information to the British. That, however, was an article which they did not possess, and they therefore hit upon the idea of getting up a bogus conspiracy in order to be able to denounce it. This seemed the simplest way to safeguard themselves, and they hurriedly adopted the plan. The instruments that they chose were subtle Greeks, who were more proficient in the art of intrigue than the Ashakas, and had an even more degraded morality. It took only a few days for the Ashakas to realize the infidelity of the Greeks, and to inform against them still more hurriedly, but meanwhile the Greeks had spoken first. In the end, when the hair of the Ashakas had turned grey, they made a clean breast of the whole affair to the British authorities, and were, I believe, forgiven.

* * * * *

“Happy is the country that has no history” is a proverb which is often untrue, but Egypt was certainly happy, compared with the rest of the world, early in 1915. Then history moved rapidly towards us. The thunder of the guns in France was no longer something remote and irrelevant. The Turks massed across the desert, and prepared to attack the Canal. Many of the English thought that we were living on a sleeping volcano, but there was general confidence, and no one doubted our power to cope with the situation. The Turks attacked skilfully and bravely, but the odds against them were too heavy. They were, however, able to shell H.M.S. _Harding_ in the Canal, and a few of their men swam across to Egypt. Complete serenity reigned in Cairo. I remember going to the Opera that night. General Sir John Maxwell was listening, quite unruffled, to the performance. I heard a civilian say in a scandalized voice to him: “They have gone and broken the _Harding_. What next?” To which Sir John answered: “Well, they’ll have to mend it, I suppose.” Two ladies landed at Port Said and had their train shelled as it steamed slowly along the banks of the Canal to Cairo. They wondered placidly if this was the normal state of things in Egypt.

These attacks added to the labours and quickened the energies of the Intelligence in Egypt, but still there were only vague rumours to be heard. One of these foretold that there was to be a general rising of Islam on April 27th.

I remember long conversations with a specialist with regard to this possibility; he disbelieved in it, then or at any time, for, as he said very rightly, Islam had to contend with great difficulties from the point of view of communications--waterless deserts, impassable seas, mountain ranges, unbridged by our telegraph. My friend, who was remarkable, would not have an office like any other man in his position; he disconcerted friend and foe alike by changing his address every few days, and when one wished to see him, and after the unusual event of catching him, he would make an appointment such as: “The third lamp-post in the Street of Mohammed Ali at dusk.” When he had gone beyond recall, one remembered that the Mohammed Ali Street was several miles long, and that he had not said at which end was the appointed lamp-post; so he was well qualified to speak of the disadvantages accruing from lack of communications.

Prisoners began coming in, but not much news was to be obtained from them. They were mostly shattered and rather pathetic men. The first to arrive were some escaped Syrian schoolmasters, who had been conscripted by the Turks, and gave a very graphic account of a hot and harassing journey ahead of their comrades to Egypt, where their friends and relations lived. Then came a blind old gentleman of eighty, who fell into our front-line trench. It had been his habit, every two years, to visit his son in Egypt, and he had not realized that there was a war going on.

Amongst the Turkish prisoners of the first attack there was one old quartermaster seriously ill, whose manners and courage made him the friend of all his captors, but, like the rest, he told us nothing. There was probably more information amongst the prisoners who had been interned, if they had been willing to speak, but they were not. I met one of these to whom fate had been unusually cruel. He was an Albanian whose home had been in Montenegro. When the amiable Montenegrins seized the land of the Albanians, he had been beaten and cast out; thence he had gone to Turkey, but the Albanians had been the first to attack the Turks, and were, indeed, the main cause of the ruin of the Ottoman Empire, so in Turkey he was bastinadoed and thrown into prison. Somehow he managed to escape and arrived in Egypt. In Egypt he was arrested as a Turk, and again thrown into prison. In prison he was continually beaten by his fellow-prisoners, who were Turks, as an Albanian and an enemy of Islam.

There were no tangible proofs of a conspiracy; one used sometimes to get black looks in the bazaar, and scowls from the class of the Effendis. On the other hand, we were very strongly supported by men of the type of the late Sultan Hussein and Adly Yeghen Pasha.

It would be difficult to meet a more attractive or courteous gentleman than the late Sultan. He was of the advanced school of enlightened Islam; neither his literary tastes, his philosophy, nor his pleasure in European society allowed him to forget his own people for a moment. Adly Yeghen Pasha, then Minister of Education, is an exceptional and outstanding figure in Egypt, with a marked personality. The other Ministers mixed freely with European society, and there was no sign of anything but friendliness.