Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1187 page)

On the 3rd October, 2nd Lieutenants J. J. Fitzwilliam Murphy and J. N. Nash joined; on the 4th the Reverend P. J. Lane-Fox joined for duty; on the 5th, 2nd Lieutenant the Hon. D. O’Brien came in sick with the draft of a hundred and fifty-two and went down sick, all within forty-eight hours, his draft punctually delivered. Major the Hon. T. Vesey also joined as second in command during the course of this month.

They paraded on the 5th October for the Divisional Commander, Major-General Feilding, who presented the ribbons to the N.C.O.’s and men who had been awarded medals and complimented the Battalion on its past work. Second Lieutenant E. Budd (and five other ranks), 2nd Lieutenant E. M. Harvey, with a draft of ninety-five, not counting eleven more who had joined in small parties, and 2nd Lieutenants A. L. Bain, H. H. Maxwell, and J. J. Kane all came in within the next ten days. Captain R. G. C. Yerburgh, on rejoining from the Central Training School at Havre, was posted to the command of No. 4 Company; and on the 8th October, a team, chiefly officers, greatly daring, played a Rugby football match against “a neighbouring French recruit battalion,” which campaign seems to have so inspired them that they all attended a Divisional dinner that night at 1st Brigade Headquarters at Dromesnil. There is, alas! no record of that match nor of what the French Recruit Battalion thought of it; but just before their departure from Hornoy they played a Soccer match against the 26th French Infantry, and next day the C.O. and all company officers rode over to that regiment to see how it practised the latest form of attack over the open. Thus did they combine instruction with amusement, and cemented the Sacred Alliance!

They dined also with their own 2nd Battalion, who were billeted five miles away — a high and important function at Hornoy where Brigadier-General Butler, formerly in command of the 2nd Battalion, was present, with all the officers of both battalions. The band of the Welsh Guards assisted and they all drank the health, among many others, of the belle of Hornoy, who “responded with enthusiasm.” Further, they played a football match against their brethren and won; entertained the village, not forgetting the 26th French Infantry, with their drums; drove all ranks hard at company drills and battalion attacks; rehearsed the review for the approaching visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, and welcomed small detachments as they came in. The last was 2nd Lieutenant D. A. B. Moodie with 50, on the 26th October, when Lieutenant H. F. S. Law rejoined the Battalion from his Intelligence duties with the Ninth Corps. Drill-Sergeant J. Orr assumed the duties of 2nd Lieutenant from November 2.

The mess was now full again. The dead of the September Somme had almost passed out of men’s memories till the war should be over and the ghosts return; and the Battalion, immortal however much it changes, was ready (“forty over strength”) for the bitter winter of ‘16-’17.

On the 7th November they were warned to move back into line and celebrated it by an officers’ dinner (thirty-seven strong) of both battalions at the Hotel London, Hornoy.

On the 10th they regretfully quitted that hospitable village for the too familiar camping grounds near Carnoy beyond Méaulte, which in winter becomes a marsh on the least provocation. They were accommodated “in bell-tents in a sea of mud” with weather to match.

Next day (11th November) they shifted to “a sort of camp” near Montauban, “quite inadequate” and served by bottomless roads where they were shelled a little after mass — a proof, one presumes, that the enemy had news of their arrival.

On the 13th November, in cold but dry weather, they took over a line of trench north of Lesbœufs between that village and Gueudecourt. These were reached by interminable duckboards from Trônes Wood and up over the battered and hacked Flers ridge. There were no communication-trenches and, in that windy waste of dead weed and wreckage, no landmarks to guide the eye. Trench equipment was utterly lacking, and every stick and strand had to be man-handled up from Ginchy. In these delectable lodgings they relieved the 7th Yorkshires and the 8th South Staffordshires, losing one man wounded by shell-fire, and Major the Hon. T. E. Vesey was sent down sick as the result of old wounds received at Loos and in ‘14. The Somme was no place for such as were not absolutely fit, and even the fittest had to pay toll.

Shelling for the next three days was “continuous but indiscriminate.” Four men were killed, fourteen wounded, and three disappeared — walked, it is supposed, into enemy ground. The wonder was there were not more such accidents. Wiser men than they would come up to the front line with a message, refuse the services of a guide back because, they protested, they knew every inch of the ground and — would be no more seen till exhumation parties three or four years later identified them by some rag of Guards’ khaki or a button.

The Battalion was relieved by the 2nd Grenadiers at midnight (16th November), but were not clear till morning, when they crawled back to camp between Carnoy and Montauban, packed forty men apiece into the icy-chill Nissen huts, supposed to hold thirty, and were thankful for the foul warmth of them. Thence they moved into unstable tents on the outskirts of Méaulte, on the Bray road, where the wind funnels from all parts of the compass, and in alternate snow, rain, and snow again, plumbed the deeps of discomfort. When frost put a crust on the ground they drilled; when it broke they cleaned themselves from mud; and, fair or foul, did their best to “improve” any camp into which fortune decanted them.

It was a test, were one needed, that proved all ranks to the uttermost. The heroism that endures for a day or a week at high tension is a small thing beside that habit of mind which can hold fast to manner, justice, honour and a show of kindliness and toleration, in despite of physical misery and the slow passage of bleak and indistinguishable days. Character and personality, whatever its “crime-sheet” may have been, was worth its weight in gold on the Somme, where a jest counted as high as a rum-ration. All sorts of unsuspected people came to their own as leaders of men or lighteners of care. There were stretcher-bearers, for instance, whose mere presence and personality steadied half a platoon after the shell-burst when, picking themselves up, men’s first question out of the dark would be “Where’s So-and-So?” And So-and-So would answer with the dignity of Milesian Kings: “I’m here! Caarry on, lads!”

So, too, with the officers. In the long overseeing of endless fatigues, which are more trying than action, they come to understand the men with a thoroughness that one is inclined to believe that not many corps have reached. Discipline in the Guards, as has been many times pointed out, allowed no excuse whatever for the officer or the man; but once the punishment, or the telling off, had been administered, the sinner and the judge could, and did, discuss everything under heaven. One explanation which strikes at the root of the matter is this: “Ye’ll understand that in those days we was all countin’ ourselves for dead men — sooner or later. ‘Twas in the air, ye’ll understand — like the big stuff comin’ over.”

On Sunday the 27th November, the day of the requiem mass for the Irish Guards in Westminster Cathedral, a requiem mass was said in Méaulte Church and they moved out to a French camp (“Forked Tree”), south of the town where the big French huts held a hundred men apiece, but cook-houses, etc., were all to build and the “usual routine improvement work began again.” Their Brigade bombing officer, Lieutenant the Hon. H. P. O’Brien, was appointed Staff Captain to the 1st Guards Brigade, and Captain R. G. C. Yerburgh left to be attached to the 2nd Guards Brigade H.Q. Staff for instruction in staff duties.

They were visited by their corps and divisional commanders, inspected by their Brigadier and route-marched till the 3rd December, when they moved to Maltz Horn Camp.

It had been decided that the British Army should, by degrees, take over a stretch of the French line from Le Transloy to a point opposite Roye; and the Battalion’s share of this was about a thousand yards of trench at Sailly-Saillisel, held by the 160th Regiment of the Twentieth Corps (Corps de Fer). The front line ran a little in front of what had once been that long and prosperous village on the ridge, and, though not continuous, “it held in places.” The support-line, through, and among the wreck of the houses, was dry and fairly good. That there were no communication-trenches was a small matter — men preferred to take their chances in the open to being buried in trench mud — but there was no road up to it and “the going was heavy.”

Once installed (December 6), after a prompt and workmanlike French relief, which impressed them, they found the 156th French Infantry on their right, a Coldstream Battalion on their left, and an enemy infront disposed to be quiet “except when frightened” or suspecting reliefs, when he would drop very unpleasant barrages on the support-line.

They were relieved on the 9th December by the 2nd Grenadiers who were late, because they were “constantly delayed by digging men out of mud.” From Bois de la Haie, the long, thin slip of wood under Morval whence the relief started at a quarter-past five in the evening, the distance to the Battalion’s sector might be two miles. That relief was not completed till halfpast one on the morning of the 10th — say eight hours to cover four or five miles in one continuous nightmare of mud, darkness, loss of touch and the sudden engulfment of heavily loaded men. A Grenadier battalion claims to hold the record (fifteen hours) for the extrication of one man. Six or eight hours was not uncommon. They were shelled, of course, on their arrival and lost Sergeant Wylie, killed, and eleven wounded. Captain R. V. Pollok joined from home on that day and took over command of No. 1 Company, Major E. B. Greer, on loan from the 2nd Battalion, who had commanded the Battalion temporarily, handed over to Captain the Hon. H. R. Alexander, D.S.O. acting C.O. in place of Colonel R. McCalmont on leave. Captain the Earl of Kingston had to go into hospital on the 10th — ”result of an old wound” — and on the 13th December Lieutenant J. J. V. F. Murphy — ”exposure.”

On the 12th December, after a day’s rest in a muddy camp near Montauban, they marched to Combles through the blackened site of Guillemont to relieve the 2nd Battalion on a more southerly sector, to furnish working-parties for the railway lines that were spreading stealthily north and east, to help lay down plank roads — not the least burdensome of fatigues, for the “planks” were substantial logs — and to make the front line a little less impossible. It was an easy turn, with very little shelling or sniping, “both sides being only able to reach their front line by going over the open.” When to this is added full moonlight and a fall of snow, moderation is imposed on every one till they are under cover. Otherwise a local battle might have developed — and what is the use of local battles where both sides are stuck in the mud, and no help can be sent to either? This question would be put to the Staff when, from the comfortable security of their decent dug-outs, they lectured the front-line, and were invited mirthfully to come up and experiment for themselves.

The Battalion had eleven wounded in three days, and returned to Bronfay to find their allotted camp already filled up by Gunners. Then there was confusion and argument, and the quartermaster-notable even among quartermasters — ”procured” fuel and braziers and got the men more or less warmed and fed. “The muddle,” says the Diary sternly, “was due to no proper arrangements being made to find out to whom Camp 108 belonged before the battalions were moved into them.” Thus, on paper at least, did the front line get back at the Staff.

They returned to the Combles area on the 18th, relieved their sister-battalion in less than three hours, and in fine frosty weather, helped by the enemy’s inactivity, improved the trenches, lost five killed and one wounded, and on their return found Camp 108 also “improved” and devoid of Gunners.

The year closed well. Their Christmas turn (December 25-27, when they missed their Christmas dinners) was almost bloodless. The reliefs went smoothly, and though a thaw made the trenches cave here and there, but four men were wounded, and in their New Year turn, only one.

About Christmas the Brigade, to their deep regret, lost their Brigadier-General, C. Pereira — promoted to command the Second Division, and in him, one of the best friends that they ever had. He knew the Battalion very personally, appreciated its value, and fought for its interests with devotion and a strong hand.

Nothing is said in the Diary of any attempts on the enemy’s part to fraternise, and the New Year was “seen in without any incident,” which means that no bursts of artillery marked the hour. And on the 3rd January the whole of the Guards Division went out of the line for refit. The Twentieth Division took its unenvied place, and the 1st Battalion Irish Guards lay at Sandpits Camp near Méaulte.

The strain was beginning to tell. They had had to transfer Lieutenant F. S. L. Smith and 2nd Lieutenant J. Kane to the 2nd Battalion “owing to shortage in that Battalion on account of sickness,” and their own coolies were in need of rest and change. The strongest cannot stand up beyond a certain point to exposure, broken rest, alarms all round the clock; laborious physical exertions, knee or mid-thigh deep in mud; sweating fatigues, followed by cooling-off in icy blasts or a broth of snow and chalk-slime; or — more undermining than any bodily stress — the pressure that grows of hourly responsibility. Sooner or later, the mind surrenders itself to a mill-round of harassing obsessions as to whether, if one had led one’s platoon up or down by such and such a deviation — to the left or the right of a certain dead horse, for example — if one had halted longer there or whipped up more cautiously elsewhere — one might have saved such and such a casualty, entombment in the mud, or some other shrieking horror of the night. Reason insists that it was not, and could not have been, one’s own fault. Memory brings back the face or the eyes of the dying, and the silence, always accusing, as the platoon goes forward. When this mood overtakes an officer he does well to go into rest for a while and pad his nerves, lest he arrive at that dreadful stage when he is convinced that his next turn of duty will see all his men destroyed by his own act. Between this last stage and the dragging weariness, the hoarse Somme cold, and the foul taste in the mouth which are mere signs of “beginning to be fed up,” there is every variety of derangement, to be held in check by the individual’s own character and that discipline which age and experience have devised to hold him when everything else has dropped away. It is the deadly journey, back and forth to the front-line with material, the known and foreseen war in darkness and mud against the natural perversity of things, that shifts the foundations of the soul, so that a man, who scarcely regards death hunting him at large by the hour, will fall into a child’s paroxysms of rage and despair when the wire-strand rasps him across the knuckles or the duckboard for the hundredth time tilts sideways underfoot. “Ye’ll understand,” says the voice of experience, “the fatigues do it in the long run.” All of which the Diary will dismiss with: “A few fatigues were found in this area.”