Chapter II: Courage

What is courage or fortitude? There are many kinds of it, but Locke's definition covers most cases. "It is the quiet possession of a man's self, and an undisturbed doing of his duty, whatever evil beset him, or danger lie in his way."

There are those who have courage to fight, but not to wait. Where duty says, "Go forward," to halt or to go in any other direction is cowardice; where duty says, "Stand still," to go forward is cowardice. Our soldiers have shown themselves capable of both kinds of courage. At the battle of Mons they were brave enough to retreat when ordered, though they were driving the Germans before them at the point of the bayonet. They said that they could not understand why the order to retreat was given, but they trusted their leaders.

"Tommy Atkins, you're a fighter.
An' your work is clean and sweet--
When you've got a job before you,
Why you goes an' does it neat;
Tommy Atkins, you're a hero,
With your 'masterly retreat!'

"Tommy Atkins, you're a Saxon,
An' you're bloomin' hard to beat,
And you've borne the brunt o' fightin'
And you've kept upon your feet--
An' you've learned the precious lesson
Of a 'masterly retreat!'

"Tommy Atkins, you're a soldier,
An' your work is clean and sweet,
An' you've won a dozen battles
By a nicely-timed defeat--
Tommy Atkins, you're a hero,
With your 'masterly retreat'!"

"Ah," said a French officer, "we lose so heavily, we French. We haven't the patience of the English. They are fine and can wait: we must rush."

But indeed the very constancy of the courage of our soldiers may sometimes hide it. We take it for granted. We become so accustomed to read of the coolness of Mr. Thomas Atkins amidst a hail of bullets, that we begin to fancy that with a good umbrella we would be equally indifferent to the shower. Is courage then natural, and are all men brave? Quite the contrary. What is natural is an instinctive desire to save life and limb, and those who overcome this from a sense of duty ought to get credit for doing so.

How courage creates courage is told by a Connaught Ranger. Writing of a man who had carried him away through a storm of bullets when wounded he said, "He is a grand lad and afraid of nothing. He gave all who were near him courage by his brave conduct."

There are many kinds and degrees of courage. There is that which is calm, deliberate and with little or no hope of reward.

A magnificent manifestation of this courage was given by twelve Royal Engineers. A bridge on the British line of retreat had to be destroyed. A party of sappers laid a charge; but before they could light the fuse they were killed. Then one of the Engineers made a rush, alone, towards the fuse. He was killed before he had got half-way, but immediately he was down another man dashed up and ran on until he, too, fell dead, almost over the body of his comrade. A third, a fourth, a fifth attempted to run the gauntlet of the German rifle fire, and all of them met their deaths in the same way. Others dashed out after them, one by one, until the death toll numbered eleven. Then, for an instant, the German rifle fire slackened, and in that instant the bridge was blown up, for the twelfth man, racing across the space where the dead bodies of his comrades lay, lit the fuse and sent the bridge up with a roar as a German rifleman brought him down dead.

A few British soldiers held at bay a large number of Germans who were trying to rush a bridge. A Sergeant of the Royal Engineers perceived that if they did this our men would be cut off. He destroyed the bridge with dynamite, the British troops were saved, but a shell took off the Sergeant's head.

With the modesty of a real hero Lance-Corporal Jarvis, R.E., said to a newspaper reporter: "Yes, I am proud to have gained the Cross, but all the fellows at the front deserve it." Jarvis got the Victoria Cross for gallantry shown at Genappes on August 23rd in working for one and a half hours under heavy fire, in full view of the enemy, and in successfully firing charges for the demolition of a bridge. "The work on the bridge was done under fire from three sides. Near the bridge I found Captain Theodore Wright, V.C., wounded in the head. I wished to bandage him, but he said, 'Go back to the bridge; it must be done'--and so I went. The British infantry were posted behind barricades, and I had to make quite a detour to get round where I had to start operations."

"Good-bye, you fellows." Thirty gunners of a British field battery had just been killed and wounded. Thirty others had been ordered to take their places. Knowing they were going to their death, this was the last greeting to their comrades in the reserve line. Two minutes afterwards every man had been put out of action, and another thirty went to the front, with the same farewell greeting, smoking cigarettes as they went to almost certain death.

A pathetic picture was presented when a British Red Cross shelter was being shelled, and the less wounded men carried the more wounded to a place of comparative safety.

Some almost mad things were done by men in the trenches, in the intervals of coolly playing games.

A man stole forth on a dark night to carry off a German maxim. He wriggled on his stomach to within a few yards of his object. He surprised the guard of five Prussians, slew them, and returned in triumph to his trench with the maxim slung like a sheep across his shoulders. Rendered brazen by his success he sallied forth again to collect the ammunition and belt which he had left behind on his first journey.

One day the Gloucesters were lying under shell fire, and a shell dropped right in the middle of a party having some food. It did not explode at once, so one of the men dropped his biscuit, got up and threw the shell out of the trenches.

A sergeant of the Royal Horse Artillery who had come back from the war for a rest, was asked if there were many men getting the Victoria Cross. He replied: "Of course there are, but every fellow who has fought has in some way or other earned it. Why, our little trumpeter, had he been saving a wounded man under the same conditions as he collared a chicken for his comrades' dinner, would have certainly obtained the coveted Cross. We were being shelled and fired on fiercely when a chicken suddenly ran into a very inferno of fire. 'There goes our dinner!' cried the trumpeter, and without another word he chased the bird for at least five minutes, never worrying a little bit about the shells and bullets. Finally he came back with a bullet in his leg, but as proud as the Kaiser himself, with the chicken in his arms."

Compare with this the following, written by Sergeant George Freshwater, of the Highland Light Infantry: "The other day one of our fellows shot a pig that came wandering towards our trench. The difficulty was, however, to get him. The pig lay about 30 yards from us, and was right in the line of the German fire. Some of the Germans also shot at him, but it was our chaps who killed him. We drew lots who would go out and fetch the 'bacon' in. The chap who was stuck for the job went out at once, though some of us wanted him to wait until it got dark, but he wouldn't. He got the pig in safely, though he got two shots through his sleeve and one through his cap. The pig got six shots in him. We skinned and roasted the pig in the trench that night, and had a real good breakfast off him the next morning."

A man crept up to a German trench and took away from a sleeping warrior a helmet, knapsack, a pair of patent-leather boots (evidently looted), and forty-five rounds of ammunition.

A soldier wrote: "There was a big, awkward, gawky lad of the Camerons who took a fancy to a Scotch collie that had followed us about a lot, and one day the dog got left behind when we were falling back. The big lad was terribly upset and went back to look for it. He found it, and was trudging along with it in his arms, making forced marches to overtake us, when he fell in with a party of Uhlans on the prowl. He and his dog fought their best, but they hadn't a dog's chance between them, and both were killed."

"A man of the 'Glosters' noticed a horse that had been struck with a shell and was in great pain, and was neighing piteously for water. There was none about, and with the Germans rapidly closing in it was as much as any man's life was worth to stay another minute. The brave chap knew that as well as anyone, but he wanted to make the poor animal comfortable before he cleared off, so he hunted around until he found water. We had to clear out, and didn't know what had happened to him until next day when we retook the position, and found the Gloucester lad and horse both dead."

The highest courage comes from forgetting self and caring for the welfare of others.

This was told by a corporal of an Irish regiment. "We were in a place near Rheims and a Britisher dashed out from a farmhouse on the right and ran towards us. The Germans fired and he fell dead. We learned that he had been captured the previous day by a party of German cavalry, and had been held a prisoner at the farm, where the Germans were in ambush for us. He saw their game, and, though he knew that if he made the slightest sound they would kill him, he decided to make a dash to warn us of what was in store."

It was not enough for our men to show courage on land and sea; they now do so also in the air. At one time it was thought that the Germans excelled in this new kind of warfare, and that their Kaiser was "the Prince of the power of the air." Now the French and British have successfully disputed this ascendancy.

The men of the Royal Flying Corps are not "afraid of that which is high." "Fired at constantly both by friend and foe," Sir John French writes, "and not hesitating to fly in every kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout."

John Baker, Royal Flying Corps, told the following in a letter home: "While flying over Boulogne at a height of 3,000 feet something went wrong with the machine, and the engine stopped. The officer said, 'Baker, our time has come. Be brave, and die like a man. Good-bye,' and shook hands with me. The next I remembered was that I was in a barn."

Another new opportunity for courage is given by the work of the motor-cycle despatch-rider. There is in it adventure, danger, hardship and every other element of romance. The despatch-rider has to take his machine over rough fields and roads made dangerous by shell holes. He has often experiences as bad as the one which Lance-Corporal Davies, of the Welsh Fusiliers, thus describes: "I had to accompany one of the sergeants in carrying a despatch across the battlefield under fire. We had not gone far before the sergeant was shot dead. I took the despatch from his keeping with all haste and made at top speed for the staff officers for whom it was intended. As I delivered the despatch I dropped into a dead faint from exhaustion, and when I came round I found myself in the field hospital."

The despatch-rider has to pass sentries who shoot at sight, and sometimes he has to go through even the lines of the enemy.