Tommy (72 page)
Authors: Richard Holmes
âKitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity in the City you work so hard
With your “One, two, three four five six seven eight Gerrard?”.â
Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity that you're wasting so much time
With your lips close to the telephone when they might be close to mine?'
My last sight of the field-telephone man was of his face wreathed in smiles and his hand waving a friendly farewell.
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C. E. Montague regarded laughter as âthe deadliest solvent of hatreds', with his comrades quipping about âold Fritz' or âthe good old Boche', âas if he were a stout dog fox or a real stag of a hare'.
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To soldiers he was Fritz or the Alleyman, to officers more often the Boche (in a variety of spellings) or the Hun. Indeed, Private Stephen Graham maintained that âthe German was never Bosche or Hun to the rank and file, but always “Jacky” or “Jerry” or “Fritz”.'
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To the thoughtful David Jones he was something more sinister, for his field grey
seemed always to call up the grey wolf of Nordic literature. To watch these grey shapes moving elusively among the bleached breast works or emerging from between broken tree-stumps was a sight to powerfully impress us and was suggestive to us of something of what is expressed in those lines from the
Ericksmal
⦠âIt is not surely known when the grey wolf shall come upon the seat of the Gods.'
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Jones wondered what the German made of British âochre coats and saucer hats'. But to many he was bewilderingly elusive. When Sidney Rogerson saw German prisoners after his battalion had come out of the line on the Somme he admitted that:
Few of them were our idea of âsquare heads'. Some were mere boys, others myopic bespectacled scarecrows. Many were bearded, some having the fringes of whiskers framing their faces after the manner of the great crested grebe. All wore the long-skirted field grey coats, the trousers stuffed into clumsy boots. It gave us a strange feeling to see our enemies at close range. Except for dead ones, for an occasional miserable prisoner dragged back half-dead with fright from some raid, or for groups seen through field-glasses far behind their lines, many of us had never seen any Germans.
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And Charles Carrington heard wagon wheels, wiring parties, coughs and sneezes and even a sergeant major, his voice at full throttle, before he actually saw his first German.
Two general truths define the British soldier's relationship with his enemy on the Western Front: the first is that he generally had a high regard for the Germans, and the second that the fighting man rarely felt a high degree of personal hostility towards them. There are, though, striking exceptions, and it is typical of the way the war has been approached that some historians choose to emphasise the divergences rather than the norm. Officers, in particular, often admired the Germans' sense of discipline and duty. In October 1914 Lieutenant Billy Congreve searched the bodies of Germans who had been killed attacking Gordon Highlanders.
A good many of them had been bayoneted. Horrid wounds our bayonets make, and these Germans must have put up a good fight. It is all rot the stuff one reads in the papers about the inferiority of the German soldiers to ours. If anything the German is the better, for though we undoubtedly are the more dogged and
impossible
to beat, they are the more highly disciplined.
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âNewspaper libels on Fritz's courage and efficiency were resented by all trench-soldiers of experience,' maintained Graves.
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âHad we but had NCOs like the Germans,' argued Alan Hanbury Sparrow, âwe could have built dugouts like the Germans and saved countless casualties'. He thought that their high standard of pre-war training meant that the Germans could use NCOs where the British had to use officers, and so âthousands of promising young officers were killed doing lance-corporal's work'.
133
In part this did indeed reflect the fact that the German army was a conscript force structured for major war. In part, too, it reflected the fact that German senior NCOs often commanded platoons and acted as seconds in command of companies.
134
(In the late 1930s the British sought to imitate the German practice by introducing the rank of warrant officer Class 3 â warrant officer platoon commander â but it was not generally a success and the project was speedily abandoned.) There was wide agreement that British troops, even in very good battalions like 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers, generally required the presence of an officer to make them stand. When the British lost control of High Wood on 14 July 1916 it was partly because some of the men in scattered units drifted back, ânot demoralised, just leaderless'.
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In contrast, the German infantry mopping up one flank of the wood were commanded by an NCO, as humanitarian as he was brave. He marched the prisoners his detachment took to the rear, and: âAbout two miles back he halted them at a canteen, went in and bought a box of cigarettes and a bottle of brandy; each prisoner was given six or seven cigarettes and a pull at the bottle.'
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A month later Lieutenant Stormont Gibbs reflected of another failed attack that:
It seems hardly credible anyhow for Suffolk yokels to get as far as an objective with at the most two officers -who were both probably wounded â¦Â It may be suggested that the sergeants and other NCOs should have held the men together. But the suggestion would not come from anyone aware of the ineffectiveness of the average NCO under shell-fire. There are exceptions â and then they ought to be officers. This may only apply in the infantry where promotion is so rapid owing to continual casualties. It may also apply to âregulars'. Our high-class parade-ground company sergeant major, an old regular soldier, could not be taken into the line or he inspired panic.
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In May 1917 a British attack on Tunnel Trench in the Hindenburg line narrowly failed. One experienced sergeant blamed âpanic among men without enough training and discipline', and another said that success âonly wanted running forward instead of running away': it was significant that 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers had only one unwounded officer in action.
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In an earlier action a sergeant reported that things got out of hand when his platoon commander was killed (knifed as he went for three Germans) and the men rather lost heart: âIf there had been an officer about it would have been all right, someone to give an order and take no back-chat.'
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Corporal Fred Hodges was inclined to agree. âThe Germans were always referred to by us as “Jerry bastards” but we all respected their courage, professional skill and determination,' he wrote. âTheir NCOs, and some of their private soldiers, displayed great initiative; more, I sometimes thought, than we did when not being led by a determined officer.'
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The problem also reflected the British army's reluctance, rooted deep in its history, to give NCOs wide responsibility out of the line. Sidney Rogerson's Company Sergeant Major, Scott, was:
Quiet-voiced, phlegmatic to a degree, with sandy hair, ruddy face, and blue eyes⦠the antithesis of the bellowing warrant officer beloved by cartoonists. A man of considerable education and marked gentleness of manner, he got results by the affectionate regard in which he was held by officers and men rather than by obvious resort to discipline.
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Scott was commissioned, captured towards the end of the war, but killed fighting the IRA in Dublin immediately after it. For all Scott's evident quality, when Rogerson allowed him to issue rum to the company after it emerged from the line, Lieutenant Colonel James Jack rebuked him for permitting it without an officer present. Yet when the battalion had to be moved by rail, the business of entraining was left to the regimental sergeant major and the company sergeant majors working on the adjutant's direction. British NCOs and warrant officers were expected to get on with a wide range of purely mechanical tasks, and the army could not have been run without them: they never enjoyed the executive authority of the
Unteroffiziere mit Portepee
on the other side.
But who can doubt the potential of the best of them? Edmund Blunden paid handsome tribute to Company Sergeant Major Lee, âtall, blasphemous and brave'.
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Siegfried Sassoon affirmed that: âCSMs were the hardest worked men in the infantry; everything depended on them, and if anyone deserved a KCB it was a good CSM.'
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Arthur Behrend wrote with affection of âthe excellent sergeant major'. When a shed full of reinforcements was hit by a shell (they were killed before they had formally joined the brigade and appeared on its ration strength, and Behrend soon had to deal with letters asking if he knew what had become of the writer's son), it was the sergeant major, âalways at his best at times such as this' who sorted the ghastly business out.
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And when R. B. Talbot Kelly was observing for his battery at the very end of the Somme battle he saw spectacular heroism displayed by Corporal Barber of the Black Watch. He was:
A truly heroic figure. When he returned the first time the whole of the front of his chest and legs were scarlet with blood, the result of a German bomb bursting near him, and although he assured us that his wounds were only scratches, his appearance was quite terrifying⦠I would say that this corporal showed the most exemplary courage throughout this action, cheering-on and encouraging the wretched private soldiers who were helping him, and keeping the coolest of heads⦠this NCO's actions must have been largely responsible for restoring the situation on this little bit of the front.
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There was often admiration at the way the enemy fought. When Norman Gladden's comrades moved past a dead German, large and fully accoutred, who had been killed making a single-handed stand in an advance post, âa murmur of approbation went down the file, not, for once, for the death of an enemy but in admiration of a brave man'.
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In August 1918 William Carr, at thirty-one rather old for a gunner subaltern, was observing for his battery of 18-pounders.
All along the trenches coal scuttle helmets appeared. I spotted a machine gunner at the near end as he got his gun into position.
Keeping my eyes on him I sent another message to our guns.
âReady any minute now.'
The machine gunner was absolutely still. Did he guess that over a mile away six guns were pointing in his direction? Did he banish thoughts of wife and children as he concentrated on the target appearing up the spur? A red spurt of flame flashed from his gun.
âFire!' I shouted.
âFire!' the signallers repeated the order.
Within seconds we could hear shells going over and immediately the trench disappeared from sight as duck-boards shot into the air. We were dead on target.
âRepeat,' I shouted before the last round had arrived. Now for the other half of the trench.
âSwitch two minutes right, five rounds gun-fire.' Some shells were falling short.
âAdd twenty â three rounds gun-fire.'
As the trench became visible again I saw the machine gunner. He was covered in blood, terribly wounded, yet he was struggling to get his gun back into position. I'd have to silence him.
âLeft section only, return to target one, five rounds gun-fire.'
A minute or two passed as the guns were re-aligned. Through my glasses I could see Jerries running along the trench but the brave machine gunner stayed at his postâ¦
Every Remembrance Day during the two minutes silence I can see him and recall the moment when he disappeared in a shower of rubble.
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Captain Robert Dolby had been told that the Germans were automata âincapable of separate independent action', but soon saw how wrong this was when his battalion was overrun at First Ypres:
They poured out of the ends of the trenches, spread out into the most perfect open order and advanced at the double: nor was any officer visible. Some ran and dropped, so that I thought the whole line had been wiped out by our fire, but these men were foxing; and those who fell face downward soon got up to run forward again. Not so with the killed or wounded, they lay on their sides or, spinning round in the air, they fell supported by their packs⦠Taking cover of every natural object, they got behind trees or wagons or mounds of earth; so they advanced up to within 100 yards of our position, and our field of fire not being good, there they found shelter. The under officer was particularly gallant, for he ran to a mound of light soil, laid his glass on the top and closely examined our trenches with his elbows spread upon the top. From time to time he would turn his head and speak to two orderlies who crouched beside him like spaniels.
148
Beating off this sort of attack brought a mixture of emotions. Corporal Charles Arnold reported that when the Germans attacked in mass at Mons:
We then had revenge for poor C Company. I think the Germans will always remember my company, A Company, 1st East Surreys. They came at us in hundreds and we poured rapid fire into them until our rifles became too hot to hold and we were sick of killing. Just before we retired, I had a last look round. I saw the German dead piled up in heaps, the sight sickened me.
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Most officers and men saw more Germans after capture than they did in the line, and found them a very mixed bag. Lieutenant Joseph Maclean thought prisoners taken at Ypres in 1917:
A very poor looking crowd â thin and small and some very young â but there are boys of the other sort, and in fact the average Bosche seems to be a very well set up sort of fellow. Yet most of them are sick of the war, much more than we are.
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