Chapter XVII: Enter the New Army

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”--ECCLES. 1. 9.

The public at large first heard of the arrival of the New Army at the front through the Commander-in-Chief’s Despatch, published on July 12, covering the second battle of Ypres and the military operations down to the end of May. In that Despatch Sir John French announced that, since the date of his last report, several divisions of the New Army had arrived in France, and added that their physique was excellent, and that their bearing and appearance on parade reflected great credit on the officers and staffs responsible for their training.

But there were many homes in England in which this carefully guarded secret had long been known--in fact, ever since the sinister spectre of the war had crept into the house on the sudden departure of husband, son, or brother for the port of embarkation. Imagination, quickly stirred by love, pictured the young soldier landed in post-haste in France, and forthwith marched into the trenches--into battle.

I met one of the first divisions of the New Army to come out to France within a few days of its landing. I fell in with it, indeed, at the end of its very first march towards the front from the railhead, where it had detrained on its journey up from the coast base. One of its battalions came into the little village where the war correspondents had their camp.

It was a picture that will not soon fade from my memory, the files of wet and mud-stained Highlanders tramping in through the gathering twilight, their baggage-carts and field-kitchens rumbling along behind. Their transport seemed strangely spick-and-span under its layer of yellow splashings from the road, and then, reading on the side of a cart the inscription, giving number and name of the battalion, I realized with a thrill that this was the New Army.

With what fresh interest I looked at those men again! The smiles and tears of a thousand homes seemed to wreathe themselves about those fine stalwart figures. If these bonny Highlanders did not each carry a Marshal’s baton in his haversack, then, at least, they bore there the hopes and pride of England. For, say what you will, the New Army occupies a place of its own in the nation’s thoughts. Regulars and Territorials both have their warm corners in the national heart, but the New Army--it is you, it is I, it is all of us. It is a child of the war, born since we broke with our old peaceful past, born of the new spirit of self-sacrifice and determination that is remaking a nation under our very eyes. The thought that is uppermost on seeing the New Army in the field is that these are the men who must complete what has been begun, the men that must carry on the torch so long and so bravely upheld by the Old Army.

That battalion was quartered in the village for a few days. That very evening, and each evening during its stay, their pipers strode once up and once down the village street, playing the time-hallowed tattoo. After nightfall the men quartered in the barns and sheds all around chased dull care away by impromptu concerts. The rousing choruses--veritable symposia of all the music-hall successes of the past two years--mingling with the strains of mouth-organs, evoked memories which were positively poignant in our isolation at the front of tired crowds streaming back into London on hot Bank Holiday nights in summer. For a few days one caught a glimpse of the kilt in the village, one heard now and then the skirl of the pipes, and then, one morning at daybreak, the battalion moved on.

After that, I continually came across the New Army at the front. I seemed to be following, stage by stage, its progressive acclimatization to the new life, its training for the new work. More than once I encountered an entire division on the march between towns in rear of our lines. The men’s uniform seemed to be of a more homogeneous khaki tint than that of the veteran battalions in the field, and I was particularly struck by the excellent leather harness and the splendid condition of the big shire horses of the transport.

Little by little the New Army was creeping towards the front. Now I would meet one of its officers doing a spell in the trenches, now a company trudging with full equipment towards the firing-line along some Flanders road, whose forlorn appearance spoke of “frightfulness” past and to come. In the same way as the Territorials, the New Army was gradually familiarized with the conditions in the trenches, until a whole division was deemed suitably prepared for holding its part of the line alongside of Regular and Territorial troops.

Like the Commander-in-Chief, everybody in the field was impressed by the remarkably fine physique of the men of the New Army. Their appearance fully dispelled an idea that was current at one time, not only in England but also at the front, that the first of the New Armies would be made up of poor specimens of the nation’s manhood--that wastage in the form of the permanently unemployed and the casual labourers, who are always the first to be hit by an economic disturbance such as war produces. The splendid proportions of the men in many new battalions, not only in stature but also in muscular development, suggested that these men were ideal fighters, whatever their training might prove to be like. This impression was amply confirmed by the easy poise of the head and the clear expression of the eyes of the men of the New Army.

Said the General commanding one of the first divisions of the New Army to come to France, in talking to me about his men:

“I don’t believe they have a nerve in their bodies. They are magnificent men in spirit as in physique. All they want now is to ‘have a go’ at the Germans, and once they get going, there will be no holding them back, I give you my word for that. I have never seen the Territorial system to better advantage than in the New Armies. In almost every battalion the men come from their own recruiting area, and, in addition to the bond of a common dialect, have all kinds of family, business, and social relations with their officers and with one another. Their discipline is excellent, and they are taking to the new conditions of life out here like a duck to water.”

One who is in a position to judge adumbrated to me the theory that the men of the later classes of the New Armies--men who joined for “conscience’ sake,” after taking a month or two to settle up their affairs--would be more “intelligent” soldiers, more to be trusted individually and in a sudden emergency, but less good with the bayonet and the spade than the earlier classes.

I believe this to be the veriest hair-splitting. Experience has shown, I think, that war, or at any rate this war, gives a uniform mentality to all men who are drawn into it, and they become good or bad soldiers as the case may be. I am convinced that there is not a pin to choose between a good Regular battalion and a good Territorial battalion, even if the latter, like so many of the London Territorial regiments, for example, is in the main composed of men from the educated classes.

The entrance of the New Army upon the stage of the theatre of war marks the passing of the old soldier, the man who put the battle honours on the regimental colours. He has left his magnificent spirit of courage, devotion, and endurance behind, but he is taking away with him many of his whimsical ways as expressed in his mysterious army slang, his curious army games, his love of sentimental ditties of the “Just before the Battle, Mother” order, or of doggerel like “Cock Robin” and “The Song of Shame.”

Already you may find trenches at the front where an allusion to the Motherland as “Old Blighty,” to bread as “roti,” and jam as “pozzy,” will meet eyebrows lifted in haughty amazement, where “Crown and Anchor”[1] is never played, where that cry, so familiar to army ears, of “’Ouse!”[2] is never heard.

You remember the apoplectic horror of the old Colonel in the story because a private of Regulars on parade blew his nose on his handkerchief, “like any damned militiaman.” What would the old gentle man say, I wonder, to privates who go into action with a pocket edition of Ruskin in their haversacks and a couple of _Times Broadsheets_ in their breast-pockets?

However, the long-service man is by no means wholly extinct in the army in the field, and in many battalions his influence lingers strong. In battalions of the New Army it is maintained by old soldiers who have re-enlisted for the duration of the war, and upon whom, with their tales of service in Malta, Gibraltar, Aden, Egypt, and India, their comrades, fresh from civil life, seek to mould themselves. But for all that, the soldier of Kipling’s stories is disappearing from the army as the fighting unit, mainly because his numbers are gradually becoming extinct through wastage of war, but also because the character of the army is changing.

Under the influence of the introduction of so much new blood, the army has ceased to be the close corporation it was, the kind of exclusive association that, by its terms of service and its small numbers, was able to select its material and shape it to its own form. It has become more universal in character, more identified with the nation at large. I believe that the change is only temporary, and that, as far as one may look into the future at the present juncture, our military traditions are strong enough to mould any amount of new material into the old form: moreover, the men of the Expeditionary Force, now prisoners in Germany, will alone suffice to furnish the backbone of a new army on the old lines after the war. The introduction of conscription would, of course, sound the knell of the army as we knew it in the past.

The regimental officer of the type that Sandhurst and Woolwich turned out is gradually being replaced by the subaltern from civil life. In the new conditions, it will be impossible, I imagine, to maintain to the full the old atmosphere of our officers’ corps, in which patriotism and pride of regiment were rivals in the affections. The subaltern of the New Army no longer talks of his regiment by its old army number, nor does he recognize in the men around him those little symbols that express our great military past, the red beckle of the Black Watch, the Sussex plume, the eagle of the Scots Greys, nor could he tell you why the officers of the Royal West Kents drink the King’s health sitting, and the Grenadier Guards not at all.

We are here confronted with the introduction of an entirely new type into the army. In the boys fresh from a Public School and in the ’Varsity graduates the army draws on a class that has always supplied a large proportion of officers, but in addition to these there is found in the New Army the vague young man--_le petit jeune homme_ that Tristan Bernard writes of so delightfully--who has never done anything particular until his response to the call of duty pitched him into a period of intensive training among men to whom the army and its great traditions meant as little as to himself.

Service in the field will make or mar this type of officer which is found so largely in the New Army. In his training-camp at home he has probably already dimly discerned that upon him, as an officer, devolves the enormous responsibility of “mothering” a large number of men, all of whom are older and more experienced in life than he. But he will scarcely realize how much he is on his trial, that he must “make good” or go under, until he comes out to the front. In the field he will learn that his neat uniform and his Sam Browne belt are something more than mere sartorial embellishments which are _de rigueur_ in England this year. He will soon find out that the honour attaching not to him but to the coat he wears carries with it obligations which he must meet unflinchingly or be crushed.

In the field he will understand the true inwardness of those regulations, continually impressed upon him at home by senior officers, whom he was disposed to regard as “fussy” and “red-tapey,” which lay down a clear social distinction between the officer and his men. He must find out for himself how to adjust those regulations with that measure of good-fellowship which, if he keeps his eyes open, he will see existing between officers and men already at the front. Presently he will begin to comprehend that the leader must be different from his men, that the men must look up to him as to a real “superior,” for guidance, for moral support. Then, when he begins to realize that it largely depends on himself whether his men are good or bad, he will take his place as a tiny cog in the position allocated to him by the army in its vast system of machinery.

But even should it prove impossible to maintain the old atmosphere of our officers’ corps, the new atmosphere will, I believe, be impregnated with the same ideals as the old, though their origin may be different. Our present army, composed of veterans of the Expeditionary Force, Territorials, and New Army men, is inspired by the same determination to prevail as held our little army firm at Mons and Ypres. In the case of the Expeditionary Force, probably military tradition, which has all the force of habit, was the main source from which this rare tenacity was fed; with the New Army this unanimous resolve to conquer or die springs from a blending of our great military traditions with the mighty uplifting of our British civilization against a tyranny in which liberty cannot live. Therefore I think one need not be apprehensive lest the change which is coming over the character of the British Army should detract from its fighting worth. Our military traditions will see to it that discipline remains unimpaired: our resolve as a nation to see this thing through will inspire our new troops to model themselves on the glorious example of the men who have gone before.

The men in the field were glad to welcome the New Army. Already the young troops have sustained their baptism of fire, not only in the trenches but also in the open field. Obviously, not only officers and men, but also the staffs, are lacking in experience of trench warfare. Their immediate usefulness would rather seem to lie in the assault, but, pending a resumption of the offensive by the Allies on the Western front, every day the New Army spends in the field adds to its knowledge of the peculiar conditions of the war of positions.

The future is to the New Army. Their arrival in the field betokens the end of the era of insufficient men and resources. It ushers in the day when the Allies, with all the force that in them dwells, shall essay to break the wall of steel which Germany has flung across Europe. In a dawn as full of promise as that which saw the rising of the sun of Austerlitz, the young levies of Imperial Britain are waiting at the parapet of our trench-line, looking out across the void at the barrier behind which victory lies.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Crown and Anchor”--a soldier’s game of chance played with a pointer which is spun round a board marked out in fields of different colour on which the players stake. Stakes are paid according to the field at which the pointer stops. This and “’Ouse” (see following footnote) are great games among Regulars at the front. They are, or used to be, extensively played on troop transports homeward bound from India. Quite considerable sums of money are said to change hands at “Crown and Anchor” on these transports.

[2] “House”--a kind of lotto, played with numbered cards, mostly for copper stakes.

THE END

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Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.

Page 7: “D’AZINCOURT” changed to “D’AGINCOURT”

Page 22: “all German soliders” changed to “all German soldiers”

Page 31: “on the balks” changed to “on the baulks”

Page 50: “first gas attac” changed to “first gas attack”

Page 62: “eight o’cloc” changed to “eight o’clock”

Page 125: “French Arym” changed to “French Army”

Page 284: “in comparsion” changed to “in comparison”