Chapter V: Part 5

The Natal Field Artillery, too, were on our visiting list, and we found them to be excellent fellows. We swapped lies with them; we pronounced their guns to be the loot of some museum--they were not, certainly, of the newest type--and we greedily borrowed all the newspapers that they had brought with them.

It was in the N.F.A. lines, by the way, one white-hot noon, that I almost tripped over the super-philosopher. He was Irish, which perhaps makes his philosophy the less remarkable, and he sat upon an upturned soap-box and toyed with a dish of something that sounded like camp stew.

There was a sudden noise, the sort of noise that makes a grown-up say to a child: "You should put your hand before your mouth when you do that!" and I heard, rather than saw, the super-philosopher clear his mouth of some objectionable morsel. I looked round, and his pale eye closed with mine. "Praise th' saints!" he said, "thim ants have no bones into thim!"

Our interest in the arrivals did not last long. A new sandstorm blew up and swallowed them, and when, weeks later, it spat them out again, they had all but lost their identity as far as we were concerned. The infantry became known to us simply as "foot-sloggers;" the Carbineers, from a weakness for polishing their riding-boots, became "the Cherry Blossom Brigade;" and we, the I.L.H., were known to all and sundry as the "Illicit Liquor Hunters." I do not think, however, that we should have minded so much if there had been any liquor left to hunt.

We were kept hard at work, too, and we soon learned that the "in-betweens" were more profitably to be spent in what we called "blanket-drill," and what our N.C.O.'s, when they were not indulging in it themselves, called "darned laziness," than in afternoon calls upon strangers who had so thoroughly taken upon themselves the color of their surroundings as to have become as supremely uninteresting as ourselves.

The deep groaning noise that a trumpet makes at dawn, and which field-officers and poets call "réveillé," and turn over again and snore at, when by some rare chance, they hear it, was to us the first note in a symphony of labor that was to last all day. Who has heard the howls of execration that uprise from a sleeping camp at its first note will appreciate the truth of what I say. The utter hopelessness of any resistance to its summons is, perhaps, what galls most. Turn you never so deaf an ear, you will still have the chilling conviction that some N.C.O., with more liver than bowels of compassion, is waiting "outside" to mark you down as an absentee from roll-call.

Réveillé, roll-call, arms inspection, morning stables, alleged breakfast, stable fatigue, mounted squadron drill, watering and feeding horses, and musketry instruction took us by gentle stages as far as lunch-time. After lunch (save the mark! but is sand, disguised as Irish stew, lunch?), Swedish drill, sectional skirmishing on foot, and an odd quarter-master's fatigue or so thrown in, would lead us on to evening stables. That accomplished, we were at liberty--those, at least, of us who were not on guard for the night--to prepare our evening meal and to retire to our blankets, where, masters of ourselves at last, we could--the writer certainly did on one occasion--dream that one-eyed camels of malevolent aspect chased us through interminable leagues of sandstorm, and finally drove us into seas of greasy Irish stew, wherefrom emerged horrid shapes that lectured us on the care of rifles and the virtues of discipline.

How we longed for war, if only for its comparative peace!

Not all our days were gray days, however. There came a period when each morning saw us, clad mainly in pipes and towels, taking our horses down to a landlocked arm of the sea, where the hills stood up in their glory around us, and where flamingoes, in their stately phalanxes, waded the still shallows or flung in broad-pinioned ease to some further sand-bank; where black seals bobbed greeting to us from the dipping waters, and where we could forget the sandstorms of yesterday and to-morrow.

Horses, we found, made excellent diving boards, and lent themselves, besides, to a type of chariot-racing that I have not met elsewhere. For this form of sport it is essential to have two horses, and it usually became one's painful duty, therefore, to borrow the mount of some other man, preferably a non-swimmer, when he was not looking, and then to make for deep water--where he could not follow--with as little delay as possible. Remained then only to so contrive oneself as to stand with a foot on the back of each animal, and to keep them swimming sufficiently near together to allow one to retain some sort of balance. Sometimes one would succeed, but usually, and in spite of extreme efforts, the contrary beasts would swim more and more widely apart, until overtaxed powers of doing the splits would end in a ducking as ignominious as inevitable.

I remember an occasion when, after a long and tiring patrol, we had ridden our horses into the shallows to cool their legs, a school of ground-sharks suddenly appeared, almost literally, under their very noses. The White Knight in "Alice in Wonderland," who made his horse wear spiked anklets against the danger of shark-bite, must have foreseen some such contingency; but then, had he been with us, he would have fallen off, I feel sure, in the smother of spray and panic which the experience cost us.

III--WILD RIDE OF THE WATER PATROL

One of our duties at this time was the providing of an escort to the water ration that left Luderitzbucht each morning for Kolmanskoppe.

The water was taken in mule-drawn trolleys along the railway line (we possessed no other "rolling stock" at that time) and as it was the sole supply of the two infantry regiments stationed there, extreme care had to be taken to prevent its being intercepted by a stray German patrol.

On October 7, No. 3 Troop had supplied the convoy, and we, whose turn it was to do so on the morrow, had spent the greater part of the day in the sweet frame of mind that is bred by camp fatigues, and at four o'clock in the afternoon were waiting for the order to "break away" from a squadron drill that seemed as if it would never end. The other troops had dismissed long ago, and we asked ourselves with some bitterness why we should be kept out in the heat and sand playing at circuses, and all the while the sharp words of command stabbed through the curtain of dust that followed us, and punctuated our grumbling. "On the left fo-orm troop!" Some one, hand-jostled by a section in rear, cursed aloud, and we laughed as we went forward at the picturesque phrase he had used. "Sections right!" The sand-fog rose more thickly about us. Was this farce never going to end? "Ha-alt!" Ah! This was the order for which we had been waiting. The "dismiss" would follow, and there was still time if we hurried for a bathe before evening stables.

But our O.C. had apparently forgotten us. He was gazing with something of an air of abstraction at a soldierly horseman making towards us from the direction of the camp.

There was nothing really extraordinary in the sight of that figure (we could recognize him, by the big, upstanding gray that he rode, as the Colonel's orderly), yet something--his obvious hurry perhaps--made us forget our anxiety to be dismissed.

A minute later he had pulled up before our troop leader. "Colonel D----n's compliments, sir! and you are to report to him at once!" And then, in the confidential tone that orderlies learn from their constant association with the higher ranks: "Water guard, sir!" I could just catch the words: "... German patrol ... one ... chap wounded.... What's that, sir?... Yes, one of our fellows."

"Sections right! Wa-alk 'arch! Tr-r-ot!" There was life in the order this time, and there was life, too, in our quick response. The horses even seemed to be infected, and we had to hold them a little as we pounded along in the wake of the news-bringer.

"Steady, there! Ye don't want to ride the sentries down, do ye?" The camp buildings had leaped out at us from the yellow haze of our own progress, and the corporal of the guard had flattened himself against a wall--just in time. We pulled up and rode in soberly. Men of other troops dashed at us and held our horses. "Lucky devils!" they said, and bade us get our bandoliers and rifles. From them we learned that a German patrol had lain in wait for the water convoy at a point some three miles up the line, had potted one of our men through the thigh, and had retired without our fellows being able to fire a shot in exchange, and now, we--"lucky 4," they called us--were going out to hunt them. "And I don't suppose they've gone far," one informed me. "I expect they'll be waiting for you, an' p'raps they'll shoot one of you. I know I hope they will--you lucky, lucky devils!"

Into the press of chaff and counter-chaff, and the excitement of straps and buckles, rode one, speaking with the large voice of small authority, and hung about with "the complete campaigner's outfit." Not a detail--if we except the camp-stretcher and the cork-mattress--was missing. Water-bottle, haversack, prismatic compass, field-glasses, first-aid outfit, and sand goggles--the White Knight again!

As a quick-change artist he should have commanded our ready admiration. As it was, he provided just that sobering touch of humor that we needed. "Goin' to take all week to get ready?" he queried with that heavy urbanity which N.C.O.'s and stage managers mistake for satire, "... passel o' ladies' maids!"

"Oh! you--you May queen!" I heard some one say, and the troop giggled helplessly as we swung into our saddles. "Number off from the right!" the order was barked at us.

"One"--"two"--"three"----. The fourth man was having trouble with his pony and was far too busy to think of mere numbers, and the White Knight glared down the line of us as if, in some way, just outside his comprehension, we were all to blame. "As you were!" he snapped--it sounded like "Zwear!" "Number off from the ri----" "No time for that now, Sergeant!" spoke the crisp voice of the O.C. from somewhere behind us. "Sections left! Walk! march! Tr-r-ot!" and the quick dust rose to the forward surge of horses and men, and we were off.

Five minutes later we had passed the outlying pickets of the Transvaal Scottish, and were kicking up the sand at a good hand-canter along the hill-girt railway line to Kolmanskuppe. There is a peculiar exhilaration in this form of sport (I cannot easily use the term "warfare" in regard to a game wherein all that is ordinarily known as "patriotism" is swallowed up and lost in a wholesome, primal, man's desire to hunt man--the royalist of royal game--for the sake, only, of the game's lust), and if in G.S.W. we were rather like the famous American hunter who had never been known to kill anything, but who "just hunted"--well, such little killing as did come our way proved conclusively that "just hunting" held all the breathless joy of the thing and left no--aftertaste.

For some miles we held our pace, and the heavy, springless sand through which we rode flung its yellow veil about us. There was the sound of wind in our ears, and the creaking of saddle-leather, a vague surging noise, as of a heavy ground-swell sucking through rocks, and, over all, the choking, blinding pall of dust. An oath, back-flung from a leading section where a horse had stumbled, sounded smothered and unreal. Now and again an outcrop of bare granite would leap out to meet us, and the brief thunder of our passing would shout back from the echoing hills; then sand again, and its muffled tumult.

IV--STORY OF THE TROOPERS ON TRAIL OF THE AMBUSHERS

The valley became narrower, and a hint of coolness stole down the sudden shadows. All on a moment a swift hand plucked the sunlight from us, and the jaws of the hills closed suddenly about our path--closed, closed, until the ribbon of steel that we knew to be the railway line looked like a tongue lolling from the cleft grin before us. There was a silence in that place, and our horses pricked quick, apprehensive ears to it. "What a place for an ambush!" said some one of my section, and the angry "Don't be a fool!" of the man to whom he had spoken showed that three of us, at least, were thinking of the same thing. The click of a steel-shod hoof striking against stone, and--"click!" back would come the answer of the rocks; just the sort of noise that the bolt of a Mauser rifle makes when it is drawn back to ----. Well, speaking personally, I do not suppose that I should have noticed it if my horse hadn't jumped so.

It was here, or hereabouts, that our patrol had been fired on only a few hours before, and we had received no particular assurance that ours was not likely to be a similar experience. On the contrary, every breathing instant was pregnant with possibility, and, be it said, a sort of half-shrinking hope.

A barrier of great boulders, through which the line won a bare clearance, stood suddenly up against us. Just the place for an ambush; but nothing happened save, perhaps, that one was conscious more of one's own breathing after it was passed. A hundred yards or so farther on the hills to our right fell away in a great curve, and sheeted sunlight lay on all the place; orange, streaked with silver of drift-sand on the shining plain, while beyond, and high above all, white-faced crags swam on an opal-hearted mist. To our right a mad sunset flared above the purple-footed hills, and pointed long, scornful, shadow-fingers at us. Sunset? or drunken magic? Saffron there was, and duck's-egg green lying on amber; amber that dripped molten gold, and tipped with splendid color the peaks which stood up blackly against it; amber, shot with blush-rose and slashed with fierce scarlet: a breathless wonder that changed while we watched it--changed and deepened until all the painted sky was a blood-clotted glory.

Night had stepped into the valley in which we rode, and I was not sorry when my section was picked out for "flanking work," and we were sent at a sharp trot to the foot-hills and the sunlight. We were told to keep slightly in advance of the troop, and, as the broken nature of the ground allowed, about three hundred yards distant from the railway line, the idea being, of course, that should an enemy patrol be waiting for us among the rocks, we--"the advance screen"--would draw their fire, and so secure some measure of safety for our main body. A leading section was sent off to the shadow-land on the right of the line, and, looking back when we had ridden some hundred yards or so, I saw two other sections detach themselves from the main body, and drop back, to the right and left respectively, as a sort of extended rearguard.

"As the nature of the ground allowed!" The words were the letter of our instructions; the exclamation mark, as _Punch_ might say, was ours when the first gentle slope that we negotiated jumped suddenly up into a hog-backed "krantz," that looked as if it might strain even a klipspringer. It had to be done, however, and we laid ourselves on our horses' necks and let them go at it. What a breathless scramble it was! Loose shale avalanched about us, and steel-shod hoofs slipped and struck, and struck and slipped again on the crisp granite, and just when it seemed to me that nothing was left but to dismount and pull my horse up after me, there was a last, furious straining of willing muscles, a plunge that shook my hat over my eyes, and the four of us were landed in a hard-breathing bunch on a sort of shelf of rock. A girth had slipped, and we paused while it was tightened, and looked back. The troop was halted--while we attained our position, I supposed--and as we watched, a figure rode clear of the others and signaled agitatedly to us to advance.

It was comparatively easy, from our elevation, to select a route that conformed measurably to our instructions and to the opposing factor of our own instinct of self-preservation. Only comparatively easy, however, because distances that looked flat, or, at the most, but gently tilted, proved on closer inspection to be almost worth the serious consideration of an Alpine Club. But we managed to scramble along somehow. When possible, we even went farther into the spirit of our instructions, and rode in extended formation, but, although our horses displayed an amazing aptitude for rock-work, we usually found ourselves progressing in single file. Once, I remember, when a flat surface of rock tempted us to something approaching a trot, we pulled up only a few yards short of where the hill ended abruptly, and lay, piled about its own foot, hundreds of feet below. It was from there, too, that we first caught sight of the white buildings of Kolmanskuppe, some two or three miles away, but although it was a cheering sight, we went on from that place with much sedateness and circumspection. All serious thought of meeting the enemy patrol had vanished, of course, with that first glimpse of "civilization." Only one ordeal now remained: to get ourselves down, out of that region of sunlight and breathlessness, to where, with the lesser hills, began the last phase of our journey.

One attempt landed us in a cul-de-sac of tumbled granite, another on a tongue of rock that would have proved perfectly negotiable if the tongue had not been bitten short, or if there had been a bridge across the forty-foot chasm that grinned up at us; but, eventually, by winding in single file round a spur of rock where a false step meant--as one of us said and giggled so much at, that he all but put his assertion to the proof--"more than a bad cold" for the man who slipped, we found a steep slope wheredown we tobogganed with safety and some amusement to ourselves, but not a little detriment, I think, to the tails of our horses.

V--SCOUTING ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT

The troop, we found, had taken courage of the less imposing scenery, and were just visible in a cloud of dust some half a mile ahead of us. Just outside Kolmanskuppe the railway line takes a sharp bend to the left, and as half a mile in the rear does not exactly correspond with the M.I. hand-book's definition of an advance guard's position, we kicked up our tired animals and made a desperate effort, by cutting across the angle of the line, to regain some measure of dignity. What the troop thought when, some ten minutes later, we reappeared in advance of them, I do not know. They looked rather indifferent, I thought, and when, soon afterwards, a ragged fringe of infantry appeared on the sky-line above us--Kolmanskuppe is on the edge of the desert proper, and looks as if it had been washed up by the sea of mountainous sand-dunes--and the troop, realizing apparently that there was really no need to follow its meticulous course along the railway metals, wheeled sharply to the right, we cantered down and, with all humility, tied ourselves on to its tail.

In the number of its houses, Kolmanskuppe is not a large place; in the extent covered by such buildings as there are it is quite considerable. An average distance of about one hundred yards between the houses, and the glaring monotony of their design stifles any desire on the part of the visitor unduly to prolong his tour of inspection.

In the ordinary sense we were not, of course, visitors, and besides, we had "done" Kolmanskuppe, more thoroughly than an American tourist does Rome, on a previous occasion. Then, we had been actuated by other than guide-book motives, and now, its interest gone, the place was become an eyesore, and we wanted to go home. That, we supposed, was why we got the order to off-saddle.

The one picturesque touch in the picture was supplied by our three camels. They were there on some water-carrying pretext, and they recognized us from afar off, and came and stood to windward of us so that there could be no remote possibility of our not recognizing them.

We never seemed, somehow, to be able to get away from those three gaunt beasts. No matter the direction of our journeyings, we always met them sooner or later. We should not, of course, have minded if they had shown any signs of awakening affection for us, but they didn't. It was their sneering indifference to our presence that galled us most, I think. Had we been in the habit of thrusting ourselves upon them, this attitude would have been understandable, even commendable; but we didn't thrust ourselves upon them. They hatched deliberate plots to meet us in unexpected places, and when we met they sneered at us, and besides, as I have said elsewhere, they smelt abominably. In very truth, Tartarin of Tarascon was not more haunted by his own camel than were we by our three.

The corporal who was in charge of them slouched to us from somewhere out of the desert--he was borrowing habits right and left from his camels, we often told him--and gave us the cheerful information that we were to convoy some wagons back to Luderitzbucht, which wagons, he added, were only then being off-loaded. Dusk was spreading like a gray blanket across the face of the sands, and the prospect of a night ride at the tail of a string of creaking wagons was not enticing. We asked him how he knew, and he retired into his newly acquired camelism, and went off to his uncouth beasts.

But he was right, and an hour later saw us--or heard us rather, for it was pitch dark--starting on such a ride as I hope never again to suffer. The road from Kolmanskuppe to Luderitzbucht is rendered distinct from the country through which it runs by means of white-painted paraffin tins placed at irregular intervals along its alleged sides. That it does not otherwise differ to any marked extent from the surrounding country is due less, I think, to the surveyor than to the country, which is mainly precipices and small but very knobby hills. I have since traveled that road in the daytime, and its unrelieved roughness--unless an occasional wallow in deep sand can be called relief--makes of it a thing to be remembered; but of that night, when our nostrils, and our throats, and our eyes were filled with the dust kicked up by close upon a hundred mules and half as many horses, and our ears were deafened by the harsh thunder of empty wagons bouncing into and out of deep holes and over fire-spitting granite boulders, recollection is a mere headache.

For the first half-mile or so--my section had now become the rearguard--we rode at some fifty yards behind the last wagon. We did this for several reasons: firstly, because the air was less full of dust at that distance; secondly, because we could more or less select our own pace instead of having, every now and then, to pull our horses back upon their haunches to avoid spitting them on the brake handle of a wagon stopped suddenly in its drunken career by virtue of collision with some more than usually imposing obstruction; and thirdly--but this I do not think was a real reason--because we had been ordered to do so.

VI--THE FRIGHTENED HORSES--AND THE CAMELS

We were going down some unseen slope, I remember, when the change occurred. My horse was plunging a good deal, and I had to use both hands to prevent his getting away from me. The man on my right seemed to be having similar difficulty with his animal. Strange! they were all quiet enough a minute ago, and now----"Look out!" The words were shot at me by No. 3 of the section as, with his horse completely out of control, he raced past me into the darkness and the dust. "Rummy," said the man on my right, "I don't know what's the matter with the beasts. They're scared out of their lives, that I'll swear--Good Lord!" His ejaculation was spoken away from me, for his pony had swung suddenly about with a quick, frightened movement, and was now staring into the blackness from whence we had come. A moment later and my own beast had spun around. We waited in silence.

"Where's T----?" said the other man suddenly. (T---- was of my section, and I seemed vaguely to remember that he had been riding behind us.) If my memory was right, then T---- was somewhere out there in the blackness, and the--the--whatever it was that was frightening our horses was out there with him. It was not a nice thought. We waited again, and I found myself wondering what it would sound like to call out T----'s name, when out of the darkness came the sound of a snort, followed by what seemed like the frenzied plunging of some heavy beast. Then a voice uplifted itself in earnest supplication, and the voice was the voice of T----.

He seemed to be calling upon the name of a god not altogether orthodox. I caught, here and there, strong expressions of his disapproval of some person or thing. The voice was growing louder and clearer, and it became obvious that T---- was being borne towards us at a high rate of speed. The pale sheet of the sky held him in silhouette for an instant, and then he flung down upon us in a perfect flood of invective.

I had never heard him talk quite like that before. It was really, and almost literally, illuminating, and we reined aside in a sort of reverential awe to let him pass. He did so on the wings of some of the most golden eloquence that it has ever been my lot to hear. "Goddam!" I heard distinctly, followed by a string of words which I do not know how to spell; and then some fine but strictly censorable phrases, out of which I collected fragments that made a disconnected yet interesting whole. In this way I was puzzled for some moments by the many variations of the word camel. "Camel!" I found myself saying, "camel!" when "Look!" said the other man suddenly, and I looked, and saw striding down upon us from the same pale sheet of sky that had held T---- only a few minutes before three gaunt, long-legged shadows.

"The camels!" said the other man, and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and what there was in that shrouding darkness to tell each other what the other thought I do not know; but, as our frenzied horses waltzed and plunged away from the acrid fear behind them, we clung to our saddles with both hands, and rocked and choked with insane laughter. Later, when we met T----, leading a dead-lame pony out of the rocks, we broke out afresh, and between paroxysms, told him something of our admiring respect. Indeed, a man who could steer a madly racing pony through pitch darkness and over and between rocks, and at the same time conduct ably a rhetorical discourse on the (presumed) illegitimacy of camels and the moral degeneracy of men who ride upon them, well deserved some more tangible expression of merit than was held in mere words. Iron crosses have been given for less.

The remainder of that ride left to us only recurring fits of laughter, dust, and noise and darkness, and when the camels came too near, which, in spite of concise injunctions to them to go "to another place," they often did, spasms of wrathful and sulphurous abuse.

A note in my diary says of our return to Luderitzbucht: "Surprised to find myself looking on the beastly place as 'home!'"

But was there real cause for surprise?

(The narrator here begins to tell about "Alarums and Excursions" along the African deserts; a wild night ride; hunting the Germans like big game; and numberless anecdotes that put the African fever into one's blood.)

FOOTNOTE:

[8] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.

LAST WORDS OF A "SOLDIER AND DRAMATIST"

_Letters of Harold Chapin_

_An American Who Died for England at Loos, on September 26, 1915_

The story of Harold Chapin's life and death is a glorious page in the
annals of the Great War. This brilliant, young dramatist was born
in Brooklyn in 1888. His mother is an actress and when the boy was
seven years old, he made his first appearance on the stage in the
Memorial Theater, Stratford-on-Avon, England, where his mother was
engaged to play during a Shakespeare festival. From this youthful
beginning, he developed into an actor, producer, and dramatist of
great ability, gaining a reputation on both continents. When war was
declared on August 4th, 1914, Harold Chapin found that "he could not
act, he could not write" he could think only of the war and the world
bowed in tragedy. Finally, on September 2, 1914, he enlisted in the
R. A. M. C. The artist and dreamer became an enthusiastic soldier.
While fighting at the battle of Loos, he was killed on Sunday,
September 26, 1915. He was only 29 years of age but "he had lived
worthily and he died gloriously." The letters which Harold Chapin
wrote to his mother, his wife, and his little son have been published
in this country in book form by the _John Lane Company_, under the
title "Soldier and Dramatist." They form a notable contribution to
the war's literature. Several of the letters are here reprinted
by permission of the publishers from the hundred or more in the
published collection: Copyright 1916.

[9] I--STORY OF HOW HAROLD CHAPIN DIED

_The following letter from Mr. Richard Capell one of Harold Chapin's comrades, was the first intimation Mrs. Chapin received of her husband's death. It was, of course, written hurriedly and under trying conditions, but it gives so touching and dramatic an account of Harold Chapin's last days, that it is felt that it must be included in this book exactly as it was received._

October 3rd, 1915.

MY DEAR MRS. CHAPIN,

I beg you to accept my heartfelt condolences. I would not so much as hint at the word consolation to you after this unutterably cruel blow,--even to us, his chance friends of less than a year, it seems too cruel to be realisable,--were it not that I can give you some account, at first hand, of the splendid work of your husband on those days, September 25th and 26th. It must surely be, eventually, a consolation to you to think that he died no mean, casual death, but that he was shot down (on the afternoon of Sunday a week ago) when actually on an errand of help, and after giving himself up for hour after hour to heavy and perilous toil for the wounded. I have been at some pains to get for you some details of that fatal afternoon, but I cannot--the reason will be obvious--now tell you quite all there is. The essential is that on Sunday morning an appeal came to our station for stretcher-bearers to assist a battalion, seven of whose bearers were out of action. Your husband and two other men set out for the trenches in question, which were to the south-west of Loos. The journey, itself, had its perils. Over the distance of two miles or thereabouts, the Germans, who were rallying after their defeat of the day before, could enfilade our ground. One day I will explain the position with precision. The three of them eventually reached the series of trenches at a moment when the Germans were counter-attacking, and were told by an officer that stretcher-work was impossible at such a moment. It was suicide to show one's head above the parapet. This was, of course, one of the old German trenches, and the enemy fire came both from front and right flank. Chapin consequently told the two others to wait for him while he reported to the medical officer who had appealed in the morning, his intention being to return to collect the wounded after dark, as we did during the week as a matter of routine. The two never saw him again.

Our line that afternoon wavered for a moment, before the counter-attack. There was a short period of confusion, and some of our men were caught in the open by German rifle and machine-gun fire. You may possibly one day get an exact account from an actual eye-witness, but from what I can piece together, your husband went over the parapet to fetch in some wounded man. He was certainly shot in the foot. It appears that he persisted and was then killed outright by a shot through the head.

Our work was so exacting at that moment, that hours passed before Chapin's absence was noticed at our station, and it was not till the following morning that we felt anxious.

I pass over a series of extravagant adventures that befell me as I made my way, then, to your husband's destination of the day before, with the idea of getting first-hand information. I found myself on the scene when the English were making a further attack. It was impossible, in daylight, to go into the open, but I found from a medical officer that a lance-corporal of the R.A.M.C. had, the night before, been seen dead over the parapet. The English attack, that afternoon, improved the position. The next morning, we had a run out there; your husband had been buried in the night near where he fell. I went down on Wednesday to the trenches, saw the officer who had been in charge of the burial party, and eventually got the papers, watch, etc., which were found on his body. These you will have received by now, I suppose. There can be no harm in telling you that he lies with six other London Territorials, within a few hundred yards of Loos cemetery.

If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, when this ghastly business is over, I will tell you something of Chapin's fine work on the Saturday, collecting wounded on the wire before the first captured German trench. For many hours I was out there with him;--heart-breaking conditions, twenty appeals for help where one could only heed one; rain for hour after hour, and no little annoyance from cross-fire. On one journey, three of us (your husband was one) came in for a tempest of fire. Two of us lay low with the laden stretcher on the grass, while your husband volunteered to go ahead into the village, using a communication trench to bring back the "wheels," by which we get stretchers along at a good pace over roads. Eventually the tempest ended, and the whole day ended without casualties for us. We went to bed at midnight for two hours. Before daybreak I joined a party that was going to Loos, and so began the fatal Sunday.

If, dear Mrs. Chapin, you succeed in getting more detailed information of your husband's death it will be from some one or another in the 17th Battalion London Regiment.

I feel that I am intruding on your grief. Excuse me, and believe me, with profound sympathy,

Yours very sincerely, RICHARD CAPELL.

II--LETTER TO HIS SON ON HIS BIRTHDAY

ST. ALBANS, Dec. 21st, 1914.

MY DARLING,

This is your birthday! The day I'm writing on I mean, of course you won't get the letter till to-morrow so what you will have to say is "yesterday _was_ my Birthday and Doody wrote on the evening of my Birthday."

I'm not sending you any present for your Birthday because I can't afford to send two presents in one week. I am sending you a present for Xmas instead.

I am coming home to see you again soon and we'll have an awfully good time together. We might go to the Zoo together if I can get Sunday tickets.

Good night my little boy--I'm very tired and I've got to shave and have a good wash before I go to bed on the floor next to your friend Ex Corporal Willson on one side of me and with Galton and Fisher (you have met Fisher but not Galton--he is a Scotchman and likes whiskey hot before going to sleep)--with Galton and Fisher kicking me on the other side.

God bless you my dearest little man. Please _please_ be very good to dear Mummy and your newest Nanny and please _please_ don't ever spit. I should hate to hear that you had been spitting when I come back.

Your DOODY.

III--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON CHRISTMAS

ST. ALBANS, Dec. 26th, 1914.

DEAREST,

We have had a terrific Xmas ... tremendous work and plenty of fun. Went to Midnight Service on Xmas Eve (special leave being granted from 11 P.M. to 2 A.M. to those wanting to go, and of course I was after anything going). I know you will forgive me for not writing more often. We have really been up to our necks in work--and an alarum warned us as likely to occur on Boxing Day ... we were all packed up and ready--and indeed one battalion was entrained and another paraded for entrainment before the "warning" was withdrawn to _us_ of the 6th Field Ambulance. Perhaps you won't understand this: it means that the fighting section of the brigade--the battalions--(which of course move off ahead of us) were not only warned but ordered--in other words we were _all_ ordered but _our_ order was countermanded before taking effect. Hard luck on the Battalions wasn't it? The 21st had to march 12½ miles and back for nothing, having been roused at 4 in the morning to begin with. That is the advantage of belonging to a unit that travels by "train no. 57" as we do, instead of one of the first units to go out.

I'm going to turn in. God bless you and my baby--do write soon and at length. I know posts are responsible for it but I haven't had a letter since the one containing the photos--for which many thanks--now four days ago and I am longing for one.

Bless you! Bless you!

IV--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON LANDING IN FRANCE

FRANCE, March 18th, 1915.

Here we are in France--journey not finished yet. We had an ideal crossing--and a most amazing one. I believe every square yard of the Channel has its own British T.B. Destroyer--queer black shapes with rectangular outlines, hard and well drawn against the dark sky or the streams of light from more distant warships. I never saw one in detail with the light upon it--always in silhouette against the light. We steamed with lights out nearly all the way. I slept on deck--not over warm--but I kept getting up to see the latest sight as one or other called me and so kept warm.

We are fed on Bully Beef (ordinary Fray Bentos, you know the brand) and lovely hard biscuits which I adore. Last night I added to my menu a bloater and some bread and marmalade, "duff" and coffee--having scraped an acquaintance with some of the engine room artificers who invited me to sup in the fo'castle. It was very hot in there but we supped in low neck. Great fun!

Bye bye--Love to my blessed boy--Try to read him as much of my letters as he will understand. I do miss him so and I want him to hear about me all he can so's we shan't be strangers when we meet next. Rubbish I know, but still I'm not quite joking. He's growing so fast.

An unfortunate officer has got to read this and a hundred more letters, so I'll cut it short. Bless you.

V--LETTER TO HIS SON AT THE BATTLE-FRONT

FRANCE, March 30th, 1915.

Hullo Vallie! I'm in France at the war at last. How are you? We are having such a funny time all sleeping on straw on the floor--think of that when you get into your little cribbie-cot to-night.

I am sitting writing this on a sack on the ground with my back against Jack's. You remember Jack the cook? In front of me are all the horses in rows and rows tied to pegs driven into the ground. They are tied by the head--the way Modestine used to be--to one peg and by the hind foot to another peg to prevent them turning round and kicking each other. They don't like having their hind foots tied and pull at them and swear with their ears and top lips. You remember how your Modestine used to swear with her ears. They try to kick too, just as she used to do.

There are soldiers all about here, all busy shoving the Germans back and _shoving_ the Germans back and SHOVING the Germans back, and sooner or later we shall shove the whole lot of them right back into Germany over the Rhine--which is a big river--bigger than the river at Maidenhead--RIGHT back into Germany and off their feet, and then we shall sit on their heads severely until they have had enough, and then the war will be over, and we shall just have to tidy up and come home and I shall come home to you my Darling and the Blessed Mummy and the nice flat at St. John's Wood, and oh, I do hope it will be soon because I want to see you and Mummy most awfully.

Good bye my precious, please give my love to Gram and tell her I wish I could have some English Turkey. And please Vallie send everybody you can out here to help shove, because the sooner the Germans are shoved over and the more of us there are to sit on their heads, the sooner I shall see you all again.

Your DOODY.

VI--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON NIGHT REVERIES

April 30th, 1915.

MY DARLING,

Curious situations abound. Behold me sitting in Lieut. Dickenson's chair by Lieut. Dickenson's fire in the midst of Lieut. Dickenson's deserted patience (a game unknown to me: five rows and aces out) Lieut. D. having gone forth to the Regimental Aid Post on our L. Front to see a man afflicted suddenly with peritonitis. We are a party forming an Advance Dressing Station here at ----. We have just sent our first case (Sergeant shot through chin, tongue and neck--quite conscious--hit at three, remained in trench till seven, left us 8.15--in Hospital by now) into ---- together with a request for two pounds of soda for the Bat. M.O. on our R. Front. (Thus our Motor Ambulances fetch and carry). I am waiting up to take the soda when it arrives up to the M.O. at his aid post behind the trenches. Why soda in the middle of the night? _Gas_, my dear. Les Bosches are now throwing chunks of gas at us. Nasty smelly trick, isn't it? We are replying in our nice clean British way with soda--at least so I thought at first, but the truth is that partially asphyxiated Tommies thrive on Sodium _Bi_--not the washing variety. I am going to rouse out Fisher (now sleeping peacefully in the billet in spite of a battery) to walk up with me when the stuff arrives. Lieut. Dickenson won't let me go alone. It is a lovely night--high moon almost full and a low mist over the firing line through which star shells (otherwise rockets) twinkle up occasionally. The battery near here "bings" out a shell every ten minutes or so. It is a noisy brute but some naval guns over a mile away are quite deafening even at that distance. The expression "tearing the atmosphere" really applies to the scream of their shells as they pass overhead. They do sound like tearing silk heard through a stethoscope. The prettiest sound of the night is a machine-gun a mile or so to our right firing short tap tap tap tap taps like an over-grown woodpecker. Understand that these sounds are only occasional only the scattered rifle fire being anything like continuous, and that so scattered that it is a mere background. Bing! from the near battery--five minutes elapse--tap tap tap tap, another four or five--tap tap tap again--a slight increase in the rifle fire--_Bahang Wheeeee!_ from the naval gun--ten minutes perfect calm but for rifles very faint and intermittent, tap tap tap--tap tap tap. This time from further off: the woodpecker's mate. Sh Sh Sh--Sh--Sh a German shell coming to _look for_ our Battery. Sh Sh Sh! Whap! Missed it by about half a mile--five or six minutes peace. Bing from ours. Bing again after a minute and two more bings rapid. Peace once more, the rifles a trifle fainter, one crack a trifle louder. Tap tap tap tap tap----

That's half an hour not taken down of course but typified. I am looking forward to the walk.

VII--LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW ON HIS BOY'S FUTURE

May 28th, 1915, Empty Hospital.

DEAR GRAM,

Thanks very much for your letter. It is now nearly three weeks since it reached me but you will, I am sure, forgive tardiness in replying: those three weeks have been so very full of work.

Of course I have no objection to your teaching Vallie a prayer. Why should I have? Only please teach him one thing: that his prayer may not be answered and that if it isn't, he must not think that God is cruel or unmindful. "Thy will be done" is the safety valve in all prayer and a believer in God must surely think--if they do not say--those words as a part of every prayer. In the case of a child I think they should be said.

I would be grateful if you would not muddle his little brain with trinitarian dogma. I have nothing against the trinity idea except that it is puzzling and quite unnecessary. It's all right for an artist or a mystic--it can have a symbolic meaning which is most grateful but I think it should not be taught. One can be a lover of God without going into the matters of the definition of Christ; and all such difficulties. If Vallie grows up a poet or a mystic, he will fight into those problems for himself. I would rather he had the chance to do so unguided. If he is going to grow up an engineer or a farmer, he will be no poorer for never having been troubled with them.

If I don't come home you may--I mean: _Please will you_--teach him the Sermon on the Mount and "The Lord is my Shepherd" etc., but I have always looked forward to teaching him these myself and still hope to do so--this coming winter too.

VIII--LETTER TO HIS SON ON "SWANKING"

Vallie you villain what's this I hear about your visit to Brighton? Swanking in the Hotel about having cut the Kaiser into little bits and put him down the dust shoot. _Swank_ Sir, you never did _nothink_ of the sort. He's still bossing Germany and giving us no end of trouble. You must have cut up somebody else by mistake. You really should look before you chop.

Bye bye, my darling little man. I love you most muchly much. How do you like me?

Your DOODY.

IV--LETTER TO HIS DOG--HEART TO HEART

July 6th, 1915.

MY DEAR EMMA,

Do you realise that I haven't written to you _once_ in four months away? Do you? If you don't, I am hurt, if you do and _don't mind realising it_ I am still more hurt. Taken either way you are a heartless little dog and you don't deserve a letter.

There is only one hope for you. You may be too proud to enquire with suitable asperity, why I have not written. I leave it to you, _are_ you proud?

If so what of? Your ears?--I beg your pardon; I forgot Firstie. Of course you've a right to be proud after all, but I don't see your point. Why should your natural pride in Firstie be too great for you to complain of my remissness. You are illogical Emma, as well as heartless. I don't see what you're getting at.

If you see that son of mine, you might give him my love and tell him to get his hair cut. If it hasn't been cut since the photo it must be too long by now--unless it grows backwards: in which case he must have a knot tied in each hair close to his blessed little scalp to prevent it growing in too far and coming out of his chin as whiskers. Will you see to this? I don't want to come back and find my little boy sprouting a beard: he's too young for such things.

Please give my love to Mrs. Chapin with this, letter _enclo_. It's a silly sort of letter--a great mistake I know--but--entre nous--(that's French) I'm a silly sort of person and subject to quite idiotic moods when I start thinking about all my darlings at home in England.

Bless you all.

X--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON WAR'S HORRORS

July 22nd, 1915.

DEAREST,

I am quite incapable of doing justice to this morning's entertainment. "They" have been shelling the most thickly--and poorly--populated part of this little mining town. Some of us went up into it getting the wounded out. Houses, men, women, and children blown to pieces by huge high explosives--and more shells coming over every few minutes, all within a couple of hundred yards of the hospital. I want to tell you all I see--all that happens to me out here, but I must fail to convey it--and I don't want you quite to share my feelings. Amazing, ironic contrasts abounded: within five minutes of each other came in a self-possessed young woman of about ten to have the remains of her arm cut off--perfectly calm--walked in--never cried or showed the least excitement--_and_ a man of fifty on a stretcher with a mangled leg who roared out in an enormous mad voice for his "Maman" over and over again till he was anæsthetised. Could any creation of the imagination equal this? Or this scene in a squalid kitchen:--a huge woman dead on her face across the threshold, a little child also dead at her feet, the legs of her men folk (husband and son?) straggling across the foot way outside (I am keeping back all the hundreds of horrible details, hard though it may be to believe it) and her remaining daughter a child of about twelve--leaping back and forth over the bodies struggling to get a chain from the neck of the body. "Souvenir!" I tried to get her away--she was half mad--but was assailed fiercely by neighbours on her behalf, who seemed to regard her desire for a memento of her mother under the circumstances, most natural and commendable. While I was being suppressed another shell came over and we went to earth in a heap, the hundred yards away crash bringing down plaster and crockery on to our heads and the flying pieces of "case" buzzing past the windows like enormous bees or small aeroplanes. When they had settled the child returned to the chain--armed now with a carving knife--and I left her to it.

XI--LAST LETTER TO HIS SON--AT THE TRENCHES

Sept. 18th, 1915.

My Son-bird, how are you? I'm quite well but a little stiff in the joints. We've been doing a lot of digging: making a _trench_ to carry wounded people up and down, and we've walked miles and miles back from the place where we did the digging and we are tired.

We are not very near the Germans _here_, but we can hear them banging away in the distance sometimes, and last night all the sky was lit up in their direction by a big fire--houses burning. Yesterday--too--while we were up digging near to them some Germans climbed up a tower behind their lines, and we had to bob down into the holes we were digging to prevent them seeing us and then _our_ cannons banged at _them_ and they came down from the tower in a hurry.

I do hope you are a good little boy. It's so much nicer to have a good little boy at home than to have a regular little pickle. Please write and tell me if you are a good little boy--I shall be so pleased to hear it.

Love from your Doody.

XII--LAST LETTER TO HIS WIFE--AT DEATH'S DOOR

Sept. 24th, 1915.

SWEETHEART MINE: