Innes Logan - On the King\'s Service
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Innes Logan >> On the King\'s Service
ON THE
KING'S SERVICE
Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms
BY THE REV.
INNES LOGAN, M.A.
CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES
SEPT. 1914-MAY 1916
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXVII
TO MY WIFE
This little book is written as a slight tribute of love and respect
for those with whom the writer had, for over twenty months, the honour
of association.
UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MANSE, BRAEMAR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
MUSTERING MEN
PAGE
I. THOSE GAUNT UNLOVELY BUILDINGS 3
II. WHY THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND ENLISTED 7
III. UBIQUE 10
CHAPTER II
A REINFORCEMENTS CAMP
I. THE SUNNY VALLEY 19
II. THE MAN FROM SKYE 22
III. 'YOU CAN HEAR THEM NOW' 26
CHAPTER III
A CLEARING STATION WHEN THERE IS 'NOTHING TO REPORT'
I. FROM PARAPET TO BASE 33
II. 'DO YOU THINK THAT SORT OF THING MATTERS NOW?' 45
III. THE NAME OF JESUS 50
CHAPTER IV
THE AFTERMATH OF LOOS
I. THE FLAVOUR OF VICTORY 57
II. DOUBTS AND FEARS 63
III. OUR SHARE OF THE FIFTY THOUSAND 69
CHAPTER V
DUMBARTON'S DRUMS
I. BACK AGAIN! 79
II. THE FIRST SHOCK OF WAR 81
III. AT THE NOSE OF THE SALIENT 88
CHAPTER VI
WINTER WARFARE
I. THE SHELL AREA 95
II. 'I HATE WAR: THAT IS WHY I AM FIGHTING' 103
III. BILLETS AND CAMPS 106
CHAPTER VII
HOW THE ROYALS HELD THE BLUFF: AN EPISODE OF TRENCH WARFARE
I. WAITING 117
II. THE BLUFF 125
III. 'WE'VE KEEPIT UP THE REPUTATION O' THE AULD MOB, ONYWAY' 128
CHAPTER VIII
THE HISTORIC TRIANGLE 135
MUSTERING MEN
CHAPTER I
MUSTERING MEN
I
_Those gaunt unlovely buildings_
The War Office built Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow, to look exactly like a
gaol, but these gaunt unlovely buildings, packed beyond endurance with
men of the new army, were at least in some way in touch with what was
happening elsewhere. Even in that first month of the war it seemed
callous to be breathing the sweet, clear air of Braemar, or to let one's
eyes linger on the matchless beauty of mountain and glen. The grey spire
of my church rising gracefully among the silver birches and the dark
firs, bosomed deep in purple hills, pointed to some harder way than
that. Stevenson, who wrote part of _Treasure Island_ here, called it
'the wale (pick) of Scotland,' but just because it was so we saw more
clearly the agony of Belgium and the men of our heroic little Regular
Army dying to keep us inviolate.
Up to the 10th of September recruits poured in in such numbers that it
was hard to cope with the situation in the most superficial way. On that
date the standard was raised, and, as though a sluice had been dropped
across a mill dam, the stream stopped suddenly and completely. I suppose
that was the object of the new regulation, but it caused
misunderstanding, and to this day the spontaneous rush of the first
month of the war has never been repeated. Beyond doubt the numbers were
too great to be properly handled. Men slept in the garrison church, in
the riding school, on the floor in over-crowded barrack-rooms, in leaky
tents without bottoms to them. There were no recreation rooms. It rained
a great deal, and once wet a man with no change of clothing or
underclothing remained wet for days in his meagre civilian suit. There
were too few blankets, no braziers, and the cheap black shoes of civil
life were soon in tatters. Everybody became abominably verminous, and
though the food was good enough in its way the cooks were overwhelmed,
and it was often uneatable. Nobody was to blame, and in an astonishingly
short time order began to emerge, but in those early days one enormous
'grouse' went up continually from the new army that was not yet an army,
and those conditions were partly responsible for the fact that when the
standard was lowered again the flow of recruits was so much less than
before. This, the faculty for hearty grousing, in the army whimsical,
humorous, shrewd, sometimes biting, never down-hearted, is evidently an
old national custom, for Chaucer uses the word half a dozen times. But
the aggravated discomfort of men soft from indoor life was really
pitiful.
Before long all recruits except those for the Royal Field Artillery were
sent elsewhere, and the barracks became a great depot for this arm of
the service, with Colonel Forde in command. What marvels were done in
those early days, and how hard pushed the country was, will be realised
when it is understood that for months a body of men numbering never less
than two thousand, and sometimes as many as three times that number,
had only two field guns for training purposes, and that officers had to
be sent out to the Expeditionary Force who had worn a uniform only for
three, four, or five weeks.
II
_Why the First Hundred Thousand Enlisted_
The first hundred thousand had some characteristics of their own
compared with their successors. They contained a large number of men who
do things on the spur of the moment, the born seekers after adventure,
men to whom war had its attractions. Many a man who had never found his
place in life, because his was the restless, roving spirit which could
not settle, or that chafed against ordered conventional ways, found his
happiness at last in August 1914. Alongside those were the men who were
passionately patriotic and saw very clearly and quickly the long issues
involved to the country they loved. The fate of Belgium had a far more
moving influence with the ranks of the new army than the officer class,
I think, quite realised. Indeed, with the later recruits I gathered the
impression that indignation at the German atrocities in Belgium was the
prevailing motive in their enlistment. There can be no question in the
mind of any one who worked intimately among the men of the new armies in
the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one
shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing
else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people
as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the
torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pass to the
sea we knew nothing. Day by day and night by night we were regaled with
stories of 'heavy German losses' and futile tales of the deaths of
German princes; neither our manhood nor our imagination was fully
captured, for of the almost unbelievable heroism of our brothers we were
never told. Perhaps the silence was justified; the enemy might have
learned how near they were to victory, and with a supreme effort have
broken through. At all events, unavoidably or not, the youth of the
country as a whole was never, throughout this winter, really roused to
its best. All the more honour to the first hundred thousand!
III
_Ubique_
After this war is over no soldier can ask 'What does the Christian
Church do for me?' The members of the Church, acting through its
organisation, or more frequently through other organisations of which
its members were the moving spirits, rose to the occasion nobly all over
the country. Glasgow was no exception. It did the Churches, too, much
good, teaching them to work together. Here is an example. The men were
lodged all over the city, two or three hundred in one hall, more than
that in another. In every instance arrangements were made for their
recreation and comfort. In a given district one congregation gave its
hall as a recreation room, another paid all expenses, a third supplied
a church officer for daily cleaning, the members joined in giving
magazines and papers, and in providing tea and coffee; the missionary of
one congregation held services, and all united in giving concerts. The
Y.M.C.A., which does not accept workers unless they are members of the
Christian Church, came on the scene and built a hut, through the
generosity of Mrs. Hunter Craig, in the barrack square.
On this, in the early months of 1915, there followed a revival of
religion among the Maryhill Barracks men, whose centre was the Y.M.C.A.
hut. This revival had the marks in it which we younger men had been told
were the marks of a true revival, but from which many had shrunk because
they were associated in our days with flaming advertisement, noise, and
ostentation.
A wise old Scots minister was once asked, 'How are we to bring about a
revival?' 'It is God who gives revival.' 'But how are we to get Him to
give it?' 'Ask Him,' he said. Perhaps in this case we may say humbly
that our asking was largely in the form of gaining the confidence of the
men, for when we had all become friends the movement began quietly one
night through the action of an agent of the Pocket Testament League, who
was spending the evening with us. The meetings looked prosaic enough to
the eye; there was no band or solo singing or outward excitement, and
the hut was a plain wooden building, but the strain was very intense at
times. Sometimes as many as a hundred in one week would stay behind and
profess conversion, desiring to yield to the profound spiritual impulse
urging them from within to make Christ's mind and spirit their principle
in life. All had been cast loose from their moorings and had been trying
to find their feet in new surroundings. Most of them were just decent
lads who had never thought much about it before. There were others who
at last saw a chance to make a fresh start and grasped thankfully at it.
A few were 'corner-boys,' learning in discipline and comradeship a
lesson they had never dreamed of. I think there was everywhere in the
new army a certain moral uplift arising from the consciousness of a hard
duty undertaken, and it was not difficult to lead this on to a more
personal and spiritual crisis. There was something very lovable about
them. A tall, handsome fellow from a Canadian lumber camp said, with
real distress in his face, 'I've tried and tried, and, God help me, I
can't. It's no use.' His chum tucked his arm through his and declared
with a warmth of affection in his voice, 'I'll look after him, guv'nor.'
Many months afterwards in a Flemish town I saw some of their batteries
go by clattering over the stony streets. The flashlight from an electric
torch lit up the riders flitting from darkness to darkness on either
side of the broad pencil of light. It showed bronzed faces, competent
gestures, stained uniforms, the marks of veterans, men who had been in
action many times with their guns. I am sure that they do their duty not
only to their king but to One Higher, too, in the words of the brave
motto of their corps, '_Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt_.'
In April orders came to join the Expeditionary Force.
A REINFORCEMENTS CAMP
CHAPTER II
A REINFORCEMENTS CAMP
I
_The Sunny Valley_
The reinforcements camp lay pleasantly in a sunny valley. The nearest
town was Harfleur, besieged exactly five hundred years earlier by Henry
V. of England, who placed his chief reliance on his big guns and his
mines and was not disappointed. The camp commandant was insistent that
the ground round the tents and huts should be turned into gardens, and
before long the valley was bright with flowers. There was peace over all
the landscape here. Sometimes a train of horse trucks, crowded with men
standing at the sliding doors or sitting with legs dangling over the
rails, panted up the long slope past the foot of the valley, and every
evening the supply trains pulled slowly off on their way to the front,
each laden with one day's rations for twelve thousand men. Fresh drafts
for the infantry and artillery arrived every day, stayed a few days, and
then were sent up the line. Probably a thousand men a month would be a
fair estimate for the wastage from a division at that time, that is, the
whole Expeditionary Force had to be renewed completely once a year, as
far as its fighting units were concerned. Drafts therefore were
continually passing through our camp, and I had many opportunities of
studying the morale of individuals of all ranks. The result was
interesting and worth setting down. My experience was that the good
heart of fighting men was affected by only two avoidable causes. The
first was the large number of young able-bodied men engaged in
occupations, on the lines of communications and at the base, which might
have been carried through effectively by others. These young men never
were in danger, while those who happened to have enlisted in combatant
corps were sent back to face death again and again. This (we are told)
has now been rectified, but it was for long a source of great soreness.
The second influence making for soreness was the amazing amount of
wrangling that went on at home, among the newspapers, between masters
and men, and so on. Officers would get furious with the conduct of the
'workers,' and condemn them wholesale as a class. One had to be at once
cautious and persistent in bringing home to them the fact that their
own men, whom they admired and loved, whom they knew would follow them
anywhere, were drawn from just the same class as those men who were out
on strike. Another reason why it would have been better to have had
older men and married men at the bases lay in the temptations
surrounding the men there on every side. These also have to be reckoned
with as part of the inevitable cost of war. It says much for the grit
and character of the average Briton that so many come through unscathed.
II
_The Man from Skye_
As I was going round the tents one day I had a long talk with a man in a
draft just leaving for the front to join a Highland regiment. He had
not been long out of hospital, and, like his companions, had scarcely
pulled himself together after the sadness of a second farewell.
Following a good plan of always handing on any rumour, however
improbable, which is of a thoroughly cheerful nature I said, referring
to a report that was current in the messes that morning, 'They say Lord
Kitchener says it will be all over by September.' He looked at me very
seriously and said sternly, 'It iss not for Lord Kitchener to say when
the war will be over. It iss only for God to say that.' Presently he
said, 'And what iss more, I will nefer see Skye again.' I had tried
every way in vain to lift his foreboding from him, and now I said
sternly like himself, 'It is not for you to say whether you will ever
see Skye again; only God can know that.' He moved a little, restlessly,
and answered slowly, 'Yess, that iss so, but--yess, it iss so.'
Sometimes when we were asking one another that old familiar unanswerable
question I would tell the story of the man from Skye and his answer to
the problem. We were very glad to hear a few weeks later that he had
been discharged as permanently unfit, and was by then in his loved misty
isle.
The Principal Chaplain visited the camp during my chaplaincy there. The
Rev. Dr. Simms, who ranks as a major-general, has charge of all
chaplains other than those of the Church of England. His tall,
distinguished, unassuming figure will always stand, in the minds of
those who were under his administration, for infinite kindness, wisdom,
and scrupulous fairness between all parties. Dr. Wallace Williamson of
St. Giles', Edinburgh, who was visiting the troops in France,
accompanied him. Their service on Sunday was very moving. Hearts were
near the surface in those brief days between the farewell and the
battlefield. The three Scotsmen whom I knew best of those who were at
this service are all dead: one fell at Loos, one in Mesopotamia, and one
on the Somme. The oldest of them, who was an officer in a Guards
battalion, could not speak and his eyes were full of tears. There was no
possibility here of the remark that one Lowlander made to another after
listening to a very celebrated London preacher: 'Aye, it was beautiful,
and he cud mak' ye see things too, whiles; but, man! there was nae
_logic_ in 't.'
It was about this time that we heard of the sinking of the _Lusitania_.
Somehow from this moment we knew better where we were and for what we
fought. Every one's thoughts were very grim. This was sheer naked
wickedness done plainly and coldly in the sight of God and man.
III
'_You can hear them now_'
One broiling afternoon as I sat talking with a friend in my tent an
orderly came to the door and said to him, 'Message for you, sir.' He
glanced at it. It was his orders to join his battalion at the front. We
shook hands and he went off, glad to be on the move again after hanging
about waiting so long. In five minutes the orderly was back with orders
for me to proceed at once to the 2nd London Territorial Casualty
Clearing Station. I said good-bye to Adams, my servant. No man was ever
more fortunate in his batmen--Adams, a typical regular, fiercely proud
of his regiment; Campion, the London Territorial, a commercial traveller
in civil life; and Munro, the Royal Scot, who within a month or two of
the outbreak of war could no longer suppress the fighting spirit of the
Royal Regiment stirring within him, and voluntarily rejoined, leaving a
wife and six children behind him. He was a foreman in the Edinburgh
Tramways Company. Handy man that he was, he could turn his hand to
anything, whether it was devising a ferrule for a broken walking stick
out of the screw of a pickle bottle, or making a bleak-looking hut
habitable, or producing hot tea from nowhere, or transforming a
wet-canteen marquee into a decent place for Communion (empty tobacco
boxes for table, beer barrels discreetly out of sight), or building a
pulpit out of sandbags in the corner of a roofless saloon bar.
The supply train left at a very early hour, and by devious routes
reluctantly approached the railhead. The journey took thirty hours. It
was long enough to teach the lessons never to go on a military train in
France without something to read, or to drink rashly from an aluminium
cup containing hot liquid, or to rely on bully beef as a sole article of
diet. Towards evening the Irishman in charge of the train had pity and
took me along--we had stopped for the thirty-fifth time--to admire his
Primus stove in full blast, and to share his excellent dinner. But
(stove or no stove) the world is divided into those who can do that sort
of thing and those who cannot; who, wrestling futilely with refractory
elements, wish they had never been born.
He said that before we reached the railhead we would probably hear the
sound of the guns. The phrase is used to barrenness, even to ridicule,
but the reality when first heard rings a new emotion in your breast. The
night was windless and warm, and about ten o'clock as we stood in a
wayside station the Ulsterman came up to me and said, 'Listen, you can
hear them now.' And away to the east could be heard a deep shaking sound
rising and fading away in the still air--the sound of British artillery
fighting day and night against yet overwhelming odds.
Twenty hours later, after many wanderings, a friendly Field Ambulance
car deposited me at the door of the mess of the clearing station, where
the arrival of a 'Scotch minister' had been awaited with a good deal of
curiosity and possibly some apprehension.
A CLEARING STATION WHEN THERE IS 'NOTHING TO REPORT'
CHAPTER III
A CLEARING STATION WHEN THERE IS 'NOTHING TO REPORT'
I
_From Parapet to Base_
We sometimes hear of some man who with leg smashed continues firing his
machine-gun as though nothing had happened. How is this to be explained?
The answer is one that is a real comfort to those at home. The most
shattering wounds are not those which cause the greatest immediate pain.
It is as though a tree fell across telegraph wires. The wires are down,
and no message, or, at worst, a confused jangling message can come
through to the brain. I have known a man carried into an aid-post in a
state of great delight because he had 'got a Blighty one.' He lay
smoking and talking, little realising that his wound was so grave that
it would be many months before he could walk again--if indeed he would
ever walk with two legs. By the time the realisation of the pain has
come into full play the sufferer, in ordinary times, is in the clearing
station or, at least, the field ambulance, and has the resources of
science at his disposal.
Suppose that at three in the afternoon Jock is hit, in the front trench.
'Jock' is the name universally given to Scottish soldiers, Lowland or
Highland. It is not a melodious name, but there it is! And it somehow
expresses the Scotsman's character better than 'Tommy' does. He cannot
be carried down the communication trench because it zigzags too much:
he cannot be got round the angles. So he is taken into a dug-out and
gets first aid, and a tablet of morphine perhaps. The M.O. may possibly
come up to see him, but he may be too busy in his own aid-post. There
are stretcher bearers in the trench able to bandage properly. The
average 'S.B.,' by the way, is a man from the battalion, not from the
R.A.M.C. As soon as it is dark the stretcher bearers lift him and carry
him across the open to the aid-post, which is perhaps five hundred or a
thousand yards behind the firing trench, near the battalion
headquarters. It is an eerie journey, with a certain amount of risk. The
brilliant Boche flares rise continually--the enemy is sometimes called
'the Hun,' more often 'the Boche,' in more genial moments 'Fritz,' but
'the Germans' never--and light up the ground vividly. These flares are
very powerful. I have seen my own shadow cast from one when standing at
the time in a camp fully five miles from the trenches, and when you are
close up you feel that every eye in 'Germany' is fixed on you. The best
thing to do is to stand quite still, for artificial light is very
deceptive, and it is hard to make out what an object is. In any case,
the real danger area is 'No-Man's-Land,' for it is on that mighty
graveyard stretching from Switzerland to the sea that the enemy's eyes
are bent. The regiments used to get various kinds of flares to
experiment with. We used to laugh over an incident that occurred when a
new type, a species of parachute, had been served out. The
Second-in-command, who fired it, miscalculated the strength of the wind,
which was blowing from the enemy's trench, and the flare was carried in
a stately curve backwards until it was directly over battalion
headquarters. Here it hung for a long time, showing up all details very
successfully, to the C.O.'s great annoyance. Over this ground, very
slowly and carefully, the stretcher is carried. When the aid-post is
reached the M.O. takes charge, assisted by the sergeant or corporal of
the R.A.M.C., whom he has always with him, and the 'casualty' is laid
alongside others in the dug-out, or cellar beneath some ruined house,
that forms the aid-post and battalion dispensary. The first stage in the
journey is now over. Soon a couple of cars creep quietly up. One by one
the casualties are lifted in or climb in stiffly. The doctor who has
come up with them chats with the M.O., and the local gossip is exchanged
for the wider knowledge (or more grandiose rumours) of the field
ambulance. Our Jock, who has a bullet in his chest, is lifted in. Straps
are fastened securely and tarpaulins tied. 'All aboard, sir!' 'Right!
Well, so long, Hadley!' 'Cheero, Scott!' The ambulances start very
cautiously, and crawl up the road. It is in execrable condition, for
work in daylight here is impossible. It is all knocked to pieces with
traffic, and frequently pitted with shell holes, and as a rule very
narrow. There is no moon, which is just as well, and no lights can be
carried. The driver feels his way through inky blackness by some sixth
sense begotten of many such journeys. Every now and then a flare lights
up the broken cobbles for a few seconds. His wheels are only a couple of
feet from the mud on either side, and if he goes into that the car
would be there for hours. A little to the right a battery of 18-pounders
is firing slowly and regularly, and the shells scream over the road on
their way to the enemy. A corner is turned and the road gets better. We
draw up at a building with no light showing, and R.A.M.C. orderlies come
up the steps from a cellar. This is the advanced dressing station; it
collects from a brigade front and there are two doctors at work. A large
window covered with sacking opens at the level of the ground into the
cellar, and the wounded are lifted through it. Some will stay here all
night, but the most seriously hurt are sent on to the casualty clearing
station five or six miles back. Hot drinks are going and are welcome,
for the injured men are trembling and sick with shock. Two new drivers
come up from their dug-out, yawning, and take over; a message has just
come in that the 'P' trenches have been 'hotted' by trench mortars and
cars must go back again at once. The ambulances move off, leaving the
doctors busy, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. The second stage in the
journey has been completed.