Chapter XV: The Final Stages

FRENCH KING. _'Tis certain he hath passed the river Somme._

CONSTABLE OF FRANCE. _And if he be not fought withal, my lord,
Let us not live in France: let us quit all,
And give our vineyards to a barbarous people._

The fighting in the neighbourhood of Compiègne developed into something of a general action, an action in which the British more than held their own. There was some doubt whether the 4th Division would be able to shake off the heavy attack which was being made upon them, so another brigade was ordered to their help. The retirement was then easily effected.

The 3rd Brigade was a little north of Crépy-en-Valois, and, without waiting for the enemy, themselves made a spirited advance for a short distance, and did excellent work with their R.F.A. against the German infantry.

Soon after midnight on Wednesday, September 2nd, the Force continued its retirement. There may have been some little grumbling, and it became increasingly difficult to keep up the old fiction--now indeed a fact--about a "strategical retirement"; but, somehow or other, a genuine conviction was stealing through the ranks that at any moment the real end would come. If our men were very, very weary, so also were the enemy, and every day brought fresh evidence of the fact.

Then, too, news came to us that the French (the 7th Army) were really tackling von Buelow's armies, and were doing well against them. That had a very inspiriting effect.

Now the Force, or rather our left, was actually in sight of the outlying forts of Paris, about a dozen miles off. Great was the excitement, for, of course, everyone jumped to the conclusion that we were making for the capital. G.H.Q. was at Lagny-sur-Marne, just 15 miles due east of Paris. They actually got as far south as Melun, on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, before the tide turned.

If you look at these places on the picture-map you will see that, after Senlis was passed, the Force, instead of retiring straight on towards Paris, as it had been doing, now swung round, with the right flank of the First Corps as pivot, and marched in a south-easterly direction. Possibly the enemy imagined from this that their chance had come, and that they would now be able to slip in between our left and Paris. But the new French army was coming up from behind Paris, upon our left, to fill the gap and cover the approaches to the city.

That swinging round movement to cross the River Marne was rather a risky business, for it meant marching for a certain distance across the enemy's front. However, it was successfully accomplished, and by the evening of September 3rd the Force was south of the river. That same afternoon our aircraft reported that the Germans had also swung eastwards, and were now apparently making for the large town of Château-Thierry, the point of division between our extreme right and the 5th French Army.

The position in which the Force found themselves that evening was wellnigh hopeless from a defensive point of view. To make matters worse, we were very badly off for entrenching tools, the men having lost the greater part in the hurried retirement after the hard battle at the Wednesday. This question of entrenching tools was further complicated by the removal of our base to St. Nazaire, for that meant a much more serious difficulty in getting up supplies.

I forgot to mention that when orders reached the Second Corps and 4th Division on the Thursday night to keep on the move, instructions were given by G.H.Q. to abandon everything, even the ammunition, which might retard the transport, and so to leave the vehicles free for wounded or the more exhausted of the men. Only one Division carried out the order, and that only partially, before the G.O.C. Second Corps on the spot realised it was unnecessary and countermanded it.

During and after the battle of Le Cateau, as I have said the fight of the Wednesday has come to be spoken of, a rather curious adventure befell one of the motor transport ammunition parks About ten of the lorries, under an A.S.C. subaltern, had been doing some detached work away from the main body. These had got out of rather a tight corner, but the rest of the park (some sixty odd lorries) had become involved in that mix-up at Estrées.

About 3 P M. the A.S.C. captain in charge received an order to go back in the direction of Le Cateau. This was, apparently, straight into the advancing enemy, who were only some three or four miles off. The C.O. obeyed his orders and took his lorries back. From that moment those sixty great lorries vanished into thin air, and not a soul knew what had happened to them. At G.H.Q. the unit was officially reported as "missing," and it so appeared, I believe, in the London Press.

The subaltern invented and spread abroad a delicious yarn. I omit his version of his own adventures, for he got a "mention in dispatches" for it, though this was subsequently quashed.

When the order to go back was received, he said, and annihilation of the park seemed certain, the O.C. called his subalterns together and told them the position. They unanimously decided to obey and charge the advancing enemy with the lorries. The drivers (our old friends the busmen) were instructed to go full speed ahead into the enemy column. But the drivers were not having any. So the officers produced their revolvers and threatened to shoot any man who refused to obey. That decided them. "We will die by German bullets rather than British." So away they went, the lorries bumping along the road straight into the ranks of the astonished Germans. Nothing could stop them, and the column got through (the narrator forgot to mention where to) with the loss of about half the park.

The subaltern carried his arm in a sling for a fortnight afterwards. A shrapnel splinter, he said, when they were rushing the enemy. It had really been caused by the back-fire of a motor-bike. Possibly this is the origin of that glorified picture which appeared in certain of the London illustrated papers.

The park was, however, actually lost for nearly a week. They had vanished as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed them. They were eventually heard of by the merest accident, when a sergeant came in to one of the towns on the line of retreat to get provisions. But even then they could not be found, for the sergeant had gone again without leaving his address. So for days Staff officers scoured the country in swift cars, and thus the park was eventually run to earth. No one was more surprised than the C.O. to hear that he had been lost. They had not seen a single German, and they had had such a jolly time, thank you, seeing the pretty country.

But to tell of half the curious or amusing incidents I should need a volume many times the size of this one. Things happened every day any one of which would provide a newspaper with a column of excellent "copy." At the time one thought little about them, for everybody was too busy looking after his job and himself. There was, for instance, the Adventure of the Flat-Nosed Bullet, the Adventure of the Man with the Crooked Ear, the Adventure of the Field Cashier and the Pay Chest, the Adventure of the Blood-stained Putty Knife, the Adventure of the Perishing Cat, and many another.

The great question on the morning of Friday, September 4th, was: "Are we going right back to the Seine, with our left on Paris?" You picture the Force, tired enough but in most excellent fettle, growing hourly more impatient, longing with all their hearts to turn and have a go at the enemy who had caused them all that trouble and discomfort.

"Give a guess," I asked two of my sergeants that day, "how long we have been out here?"

They thought for a few minutes. "Six weeks," they said; "perhaps seven."

And, you see, it was only a fortnight after all. But they would not believe it until a calendar was produced. Unconsciously everyone reckoned each night as another day, for nights and days were alike so far as work was concerned. I think that remark was more telling than pages of descriptive writing.

The days during those final stages were almost tropical in their heat, which told very severely on men and horses. The nights were chill and wet. So altogether one had one's work cut out in mothering the men. Cases of bowel complaints were very common, and one has to be so careful to prevent serious developments. The lads really need looking after like children, bless them! Aromatic chalk-powder with opium (5-grain tablets) I found an excellent remedy, and cured dozens of cases. So there is a little tip for other officers. Calomel is useful, too, and I saved much agony from bad wounds by doses of opium (1-grain tablets), but this must not be given in cases of stomach wounds--most to be dreaded of any. Aspirin, also, is, of course, invaluable. Certainly no officer should be without a small medicine-case, and it is the one thing they never seem to think of when getting kit together. A trivial lapse, this, into egotism, I am afraid. I hope it will be excused for the sake of the hints offered.

In the evening of September 4th orders came to continue the retirement still farther. The Second Corps marched through most of the night towards the River Seine, the First Corps conforming to the movement on the east. The 6th French Army was coming up well on our left, and thus the western end of the Franco-British line was gradually swinging round and up between Paris and the right flank of the Germans, who were now definitely moving east-south-east. You must remember, though, that these facts were only apparent at the time to a handful of officers of the Headquarters Staff; everyone else was still in the dark. But how thrilling those hours must have been to an airman observing from above, and who knew the facts.

On the 5th (Saturday), at noon, one battery found itself halted in a field by the 12-kilometre stone from Paris, and the men were confident that "la ville lumière" was their next stop. There was an undercurrent of excitement, for another couple of thousand men had joined up to the corps as reinforcements. It was a definite halt and a rest, the first they had had since Mons, and they were making the most of it.

Just about 6 P.M. the major came into the lines with a paper in his hand. There was something in his walk, something about him--the men jumped up as he approached. "Paris?"--the major shook his head. "Not--not--is it advance, sir?" The major nodded. "We are going to advance," he said.

ADVANCE!

There was a cheer which must have startled the French Government in Bordeaux, or whereever they had gone to.

The drivers rushed at their horses, the gunners rushed to the limbers to help hook in. "Stand to your horses!" sang out the sergeant-major. Then, in a very few minutes: "Battery all ready, sir!"

The major stood up in his stirrups with a splendid laugh in his eyes.

"Sub-sections right-about-wheel! Walk, march!"

Another rousing shout, which soon merged into the cheery strains of "All aboard for Dixie," and the battery began a march, this time in the right direction, which only stopped at 2 A.M. for the sake of the horses. The men were ready to go on for a week.

The great Retreat had ended. The Advance had begun.

How and why the tide turned against the invaders at that, for them, most critical moment we cannot exactly tell. It was, as I see it, a combination of circumstances. There was the imminence of the Russian invasion into Prussia, and it was said that the Germans withdrew two army corps from the Western front to meet it. There was the sudden production by the French Commander-in-Chief of an entirely new French army from behind Paris to attack the German right.

But one thing, at least, is certain. Von Kluck made, perhaps, the biggest mistake in his life in imagining that "the contemptible little army" which he and his legions had been hunting for a fortnight was now too dispirited and broken for further fighting; and, with that conviction in his mind, he started to do the very thing which the most elementary military textbooks tell you is absolutely wrong. He moved his army across the unbroken front of a hostile force.

General Smith-Dorrien had been compelled to do the same thing with the Second Corps only three days before. But he did it with the full knowledge of the dangers, and he took every possible precaution to obviate them. He succeeded.

Von Kluck, in his delusion, saw no danger. He failed.

"I should conceive it," says Sir John French, "to have been about noon on September 6th ... that the enemy realised the powerful threat that was being made against the flank of his columns moving south-east, and began the great retreat which opened the battle of the Marne."

* * * * *

And there I draw the tableau curtains on the first act of the drama.

How inadequately the story has been told, or rather outlined, no one is more conscious than the writer. For every omission the critics may find, I will find two. But if I have so written that the great-hearted public may realise a little more of what the Retreat from Mons meant to the lads of ours who worked and fought so marvellously, to themselves at home, to our brothers and sisters overseas, then indeed I am satisfied.

Of necessity I have had to omit a great deal which may not be told until the war has ended. To an officer on the active list freedom of speech is rightly denied. But some day I shall hope to write in fuller detail and to do more justice to the work of individuals. It is only right that the public should learn the actual facts.

The glory of the achievement lay not merely in the hourly repulse, over a period of fourteen days, of an overwhelming attack, and of a continued retirement, which somehow never broke, before such an inveterate pursuit. But there was also the big question of temperament. The Germans knew exactly what they wanted, and they went straight for it, backed by all the resources of their wonderful organisation working to that particular end for a decade of years or longer. The British, on the other hand, were thrust into the breach literally at the last moment, a week late, and then had to fight for a fortnight in total ignorance of the course of events.

I recall a remark once made by General Joffre:

"The better he understands the importance of the movements of the attack wherein he participates, the braver the French soldier fights, and the more trust he puts in the measures taken by his leaders."

While the converse may not always be true, it will, I think, suggest how very difficult is the execution of a delicate piece of strategy when the officers and men are ignorant of the motives which prompt it.

The Retreat was carried to a successful conclusion because, by the inherent qualities of race, it was a piece of work of a character in which the British Army has always excelled; and also, in face of the terrible engines of modern slaughter, because of the splendid discipline of the men and their training as individual human beings.

Of the invariable cheerfulness of the men I have given several examples; but I would again attempt to correct the popular impression that such cheerfulness is no more than the cracking of jokes on all occasions. No, it is something far deeper and finer than that. The casual observer will watch a party of sappers mending a road, under fire, with loads of flint stones. He will hear them grumbling about the shocking waste of the ratepayers' money, and will then write home a letter for publication narrating the incident as a funny remark under fire. He omits to point out that it is only the cheery spirits of the men (and, of course, discipline, etc.) which make possible the clean finish of the work.

So it was in the Retreat. The men were far too exhausted to crack jokes, but the unconquerable soul of them rose high above every obstacle, and so the work was done.

Looking back over what I have written, I find that, quite unconsciously, I have said little or nothing of the work of the officers. Yet there is nothing else that I can say. It is not for me to remark upon the work of our leaders and of my brother-officers. I can only repeat the words of the Commander-in-Chief, and I venture to do so because the general public bothers but little with official dispatches.

"It is impossible," Sir John French remarked, "for me to speak too highly of the skill evinced by the two General Officers Commanding Army Corps; the self-sacrificing and devoted exertions of their Staffs; the direction of the troops by Divisional, Brigade and Regimental leaders; the command of the smaller units by their officers; and the magnificent fighting spirit displayed by non-commissioned officers and men."

But in the Commander-in-Chief's dispatches there is one officer whose name shines out like a beacon. You who have followed in spirit the work of the Second Corps on August 26th will have realised the imperishable debt which the nation owes to the General Officer Commanding that corps. The verdict of posterity will but confirm that of the present generation.

Again I can but quote the Commander-in-Chief:

"I cannot close the brief account of this glorious stand of the British troops without putting on record my deep appreciation of the valuable services rendered by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.

"I say without hesitation that the saving of the left wing of the Army under my command on the morning of August 26th could never have been accomplished unless a commander of rare and unusual coolness, intrepidity and determination had been present to personally conduct the operation."

At the head of my sketch of that day's work I have set Shakespeare's immortal lines on St. Crispin's Day. May one who was privileged to serve as a member of that "band of brothers" on that day venture to offer his poor tribute to the leader of that band?

From Mons to the Marne, wherever the fight was hottest, wherever his men were working against heaviest odds, there was the General at hand to help and stiffen them. The outposts before Mons were heavily engaged; the General was up with them, under shell-fire, to see how things were going. Through the days that followed, wherever opportunity served, their commander stepped from his car to say a few words of cheery encouragement to the passing troops. Was there a field hospital, a passing ambulance?--again, those few words of kindly inquiry which made the poor sufferers forget everything save only the desire to be well again to give their-chief, and Britain, all that was in them. If the Commander-in-Chief owed so much to General Smith-Dorrien, I can only say that the Second Corps would have stormed the gates of Hell for their leader, and would have trusted implicitly in him to bring them through.

I seem to have said practically nothing about the Flying Corps, and very little about the Sappers. I am afraid that I saw very little of our aeroplane work until the Aisne, and so I cannot speak from personal observation. In fact, there are far too many omissions in this brief chronicle.

But pardon, gentles all,
* * * * *
Oh, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work,
* * * * *
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.

Indeed, I find it quite impossible to speak of one branch of the Force more than another. It was just one perfect whole. Thus I have, so far as possible, refrained from designating particular regiments. If I have written of the 9th Lancers or L Battery it is because the gallant work of those units is already a household word throughout the Empire. But, so far as that first fortnight was concerned, there was not a single unit, officer or man, who did not achieve something equally as gallant did the opportunity come his way. Indeed, had it not been so, the Retreat could never have been accomplished as it was. Every man played the game for his side, and, in consequence, that side won.

And if that were so, then there can be no question of "mentions in dispatches," D.S.O.'s and D.C.M.'s. Every regiment in the firing-line should be "mentioned." If, by great good fortune, a regiment achieves some specially noble piece of work which comes to the notice of the authorities, then, say I, let the Colour of that regiment be decorated. To single out individuals, to give a Victoria Cross to the colonel, a D.S.O. to the senior major, a Military Cross to the senior captain, and so on, is to create jealousy, and is, also, unfair to others.

Humanity, the other noble trait in the character of our men, I have barely mentioned, for it seems quite unnecessary to do so. It is a characteristic of British sailors and soldiers which is always taken for granted. One need only recall some of the many occasions in our naval actions when British sailors have rescued Germans at the peril of their lives, and have been fired at while doing so. And set in contrast the murderous attack by German destroyers upon the crew of a British submarine stranded on the Swedish coast.

And so it has been with our soldiers. Our men invariably enter a fight with the innate feeling that it is a sporting contest, where you shake hands with your adversary before and after the fight. If he knocks out his adversary, then the winner is the man to help him to his feet.

We have seen from the very beginning that "chivalry" and "fair play" are words unknown to the Germans. To them nothing matters but to win, preferably by foul means. So, on the very first day, British soldiers were terribly undeceived. They saw German infantry advancing to the attack behind a screen of Belgian women and children, driven on at the bayonet point. From then onwards we lost hundreds of gallant men simply through their feelings of humanity towards wounded enemies, being shot at by other Germans, or being treacherously shot or stabbed by the very man to whose lips they were holding a flask of water.

And yet, with such examples before them of their comrades' fate, the sense of humanity and chivalry was never dulled. Despite the stringent orders on the subject, the men, even now, hesitate to fire when the enemy raises a white flag, and will always, whenever possible, succour a wounded German lying before the trench. These are the men who have only, as yet, learned of German treachery by hearsay evidence. But there are others. There are companies and battalions who know from ghastly experience. These men adopt other methods.

But nothing I can write will make people at home understand what this war really is. Nothing, short of actual experience, can do that. Stay, perhaps there is one thing: the genius of Louis Raemaekers. He, at least, by his cartoons, is bringing home to millions the hideous meaning of this war. And not only of this war, but of all modern war. I would have a volume of his cartoons distributed gratis by the Government to every household in the kingdom. I would have half a dozen of the cartoons thrown upon the screen in every cinema-house at every entertainment. The people would shudder with horror, but they would see them and learn what Germany is and what war means.

Apart from this, I hold it to be the sacred duty of every man and woman who can use a pen to advantage, or who can command the attention of an audience, to make known this meaning. To cry from the housetops what is this foul thing which Germany has thrust upon the world, and to show the people why and how Civilisation must crush it out for ever.

There is no greater honour to-day that a man may wear--alas, there are but few left to wear it!--than the honour of having served his King and Country in France throughout August and September, 1914. Just that. He needs no decoration, no "mention." He served through the "Retreat from Mons." In days to come our children, our children's children, will point with pride to that one little word on the regimental colour, "Mons." For in that single word will be summed up the Liberation of the World. It was the victory of the Marne which won for Civilisation that freedom, but it was, under God's hand, the British Navy, the stand of Belgium, and the "Retreat from Mons" which made that victory possible.