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LETTERS
FROM FLANDERS
Written by 2nd Lieut. A. D, GILLESPIE
ARGYLL AND SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS
TO HIS HOME PEOPLE
WITH AN APPRECIATION
OF TWO BROTHERS
BY THE RIGHT REV.
THE BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK
WITH PORTRAITS
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & GO.
15 WATERLOO PLACE
1916
[All rights reserved]
SECOND EDITION
« 71 ^Y good wishes and prayers go with all my friends,
J- r i jij}io have been so loyal and loving to me.'
To these, his ' loyal and loving ' friends who are
still in life, and to the memory of those who, like himself,
have laid down their lives, this book of his letters is
dedicated.
TWO BROTHERS
Among many delights which store the memory
of a schoolmaster the delightful picture of two
brothers sharing to the full the golden age of boy-
hood at home and school has a freshness and
radiance all its own. The two brothers are
differently equipped : one runs up the school
and wins the prizes ; the other makes little of his
books and is described as 'not so clever as
his brother, but a very good sort.' Yet in my
remembrance of some three or four pairs of brothers
at Winchester it is always a peculiar joy to recall
their intense loyalty to one another ; each admired
and loved the other for something he could not
do or possessed not himself : the cleverness and
distinction of the one ; the steady common sense
and judgment of the other : the brilliant career
of the one ; the sole motive of duty for duty's
sake in the other. There was an invariable some-
thing which made you feel they were, each of
them, really the same in different expression, one
viii TWO BROTHERS
in ' the red ripe of the human heart,' each the
complement of the other. And we discover that
the secret and spring of this deep unconscious
loyalty is love of home and home associations ;
we have here the simplest instance of true corporate
life.
Alexander Douglas and Thomas Cunningham
Gillespie were the only sons of Mr. and Mrs. T. P.
Gillespie, Longcroft, Linlithgow, grandsons of the
late Alexander Gillespie, of Biggar Park, Lanark-
shire, and the late Thomas Chalmers, of Longcroft.
They were both educated at the preparatory school,
Cargilfield, Cramond Bridge, and afterwards at
the two St. Mary Winton Colleges (Winchester,
and New College, Oxford).
We all remember Douglas and Tom Gillespie
at school. Douglas came to Winchester in Short
Half 1903 : he had been placed seventh on the
Roll for College in the July election. He moved
up the school rapidly, and was half-way up Senior
Division of Sixth Book, second of his year, in Short
Half 1906. In 1908 he won the King's Gold Medal
for Latin Verse, the King's Silver Medal for English
Speech, the Warden and Fellows' Prizes for Greek
Prose and Latin Essay. He was placed second on
the Roll for New College in December 1907, and
went up to Oxford in the following October.
There he proved himself to be intellectually one
TWO BROTHERS ix
of the most distinguished men of his generation,
winning the blue ribbon of Classical Scholarship, the
Ireland, in 1910.
If he wished, he might have stayed in Oxford
and taken up the work of fellow and tutor of a
College ; but he was very definite in his desire
to come out into ' professional life ' and to read
for the Bar ; he wished particularly to devote
himself to the study of International Law.
He loved every hour of Winchester and Oxford ;
and then the crown of it all was the nine months' trip
he took with his father after leaving Oxford. They
visited East Africa, China, Corea, Canada, and the
United States. I can never forget Douglas' letters to
me en voyage, nor the talk we had about it all when
he came back. Those who knew him and all who
read the letters in this volume appreciate his fresh-
ness of mind, his sense of humour, his grip of a situa-
tion, his love of nature, the knowledge of men and
things and their history which his wide reading and
intellectual alertness were fast developing. This
rare opportunity brought into play all these gifts
and powers at their best. Few fathers have had
such a time with such a son at such a moment of
his life ! It was a joy to think of them together
then : it is a comfort now to know that the father
has the precious memory of those days to treasure.
But Douglas keeps reminding me that I am
X TWO BROTHERS
leaving out Tom, animae dimidium suae Tom
came as a Commoner to Winchester in Short Half
1906 : he began in Third Division of Middle Part
and sturdily worked his way up with the purpose
of joining Army Class and going to Sandhurst,
Douglas, I remember, came to talk over Tom's
future with me some time in 1907, and we resolved
that Tom ought to go to Oxford and enter the
Army as a University candidate. And so it came
to pass.
Tom was a beautifully made lad ; as he grew
up he seemed to be the type of Browning's
Our manhood's prime vigour ! No spirit feels waste.
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, not a sinew
un-braced !
Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up
to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool
silver shock
Of the plunge in a pool's living water . . .
and the rest of it.
He rowed three years in his College boat, for two
of them he helped to keep New College head of the
river, and represented the United Kingdom in the
New College Olympic Crew at Stockholm in 1912.
He was always a keen member of the O.T.C. at
Winchester and at Oxford, and succeeded in
obtaining a University commission : he was
gazetted to the 2nd Battalion of the K.O.S.B.,
TWO BROTHERS xi
which he joined immediately after the outbreak of
the war. After three weeks' training at home, he
joined his regiment in France, shared the pursuit
from the Mame, was in the trenches at ]VIissy-sur-
Aisne for seventeen days on the northern bank of
the Aisne, exposed to the fire of the heavy guns
night and day. Then he took part in the movement
towards the Belgian frontier and was killed in
action on October i8, 1914, near La Bassee.
Tom was a great strong, fearless, affectionate
fellow : his men must have believed in him and
loved him for what he obviously was to the eye.
But there was much more in him than that. At
one time I saw something regularly of Tom's work.
At 5.15 P.M. on Wednesdays — an hour in the week's
programme I love to remember — ^he used to come
with others to learn something of the expansion
of our Colonial system, or British Dominion in
India, or the history of English commerce, or how
to read a book. I saw quickly that Tom had much
of that same insight and grasp of realities and genial
humour which made Douglas so sound and true.
Anyone who reads Tom's last letter, which is given
on p. 6, will see what depth of true feeling and
strong simplicity served to make him the son,
the brother, the friend he was,
Tom and Douglas alike were both stamped with
the same simplicity and strength of character
xii TWO BROTHERS
which won the confidence as well as the friendship
of all whom they touched. They always made
friends ; more than that, they could do any-
thing they liked with their friends, and they
never liked anything but the things that were true
and lovely and of good report.
Douglas had been reading for the Bar for some
months and had joined the Inns of Court Cavalry
before the war broke out. The moment war was
declared, as anyone can read in the opening letters,
there was only one possibility for him, to give
himself unreservedly to the ser\ice of the country
he loved dearer than life. He at once enlisted in
the 4th Seaforth Highlanders and was in training
at Bedford for two months : he was given a com-
mission in the 4th A. and S. Highlanders, and was
attached to the 2nd Battalion on going to the
front in February 1915. On September 25 he led
the charge of his Highlanders in face of a terrific
fire near La Bassee. He reached the German
trenches, the only officer to get through, and was
there seen to fall.
' Glory to God, to God,' he saith,
' Knowledge by suffering entereth
And life is perfected by death.'
I could not trust myself to speak of all that
I expected of Douglas' future. Besides, Douglas
himself would resent my petty speculations in the
TWO BROTHERS xiii
face of that supreme reality to which all his fine
gifts and capacities led him and fitted him. The
Great Cause claimed him as her own : and to her
he gave himself in exultation.
It was just that buoyancy, freshness, entire
absence of self-consciousness that made me so
confident of his success in days to come. The
highest usefulness of rare intellectual powers and
fine promise are not seldom marred by staleness or
overpressure or growing affectations or priggish-
ness or the mere love of intellectual gymnastics.
Douglas was as fresh and simple and direct to the
end as he was the first day he came to Winchester,
a wondering, fresh-faced, blue-eyed son of the
land of his fathers. And he would, I believe,
have kept that freshness of spirit through all
his days.
Now he is gone from us, what message do these
letters and the life that shines out from them
tell ? The old simplest truths of human life, that
duty is always possible, that self-sacrifice is sweet,
that the love of home and friends and nature and
fellowman is the crown of life. But he also reveals
throughout the secret which makes self-sacrifice
not only the law but the joy of true living. He
can exult and feel composed and happier than he
had ever been, because it was just everything
without reserve — home and comfort and safety and
brilliant prospects and life itself — ^he offered to the
xiv TWO BROTHERS
Cause that claimed him ; losing himself in the
larger purpose, he found himself : it was ' deep
calling unto deep ' : the deep of his country's
uttermost need called to the deep of his loyalty
and devotion.
When that which is perfect is come and we see
things as they are, we shall know fully what we
now surmise, that the real tragedy of human life
is to potter through it, carefully ' economising '
the little grains of faith, the feeble sense of duty,
'to loiter out our days without blame and
without use ' ;
Nothing of scandal or crime you see :
We have not murdered or robbed for pelf :
Just given poor work where the best might be,
And over all is the trail of self —
The curse of futility.
There was one heartache ; he knew that he
himself was happy enough and his own life fulfilled,
but he felt it was a hard trial for the dear ones
waiting and watching at home.
For them the trial is not so hard as it
would have been without the irresistible appeal
of his courage to them to be courageous, to give
as he gave without faltering, with a song on his
lips : not so hard, since they catch the glow
of his unclouded, happy life. Let Stevenson speak
to them :
TWO BROTHERS xv
et, O stricken heart, remember, O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
April came to bloom, but never dim December
Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart.
Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being
Trod the flowery April blithely for a while.
Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing.
Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smUe.
Came and stayed and went, and now when all is
finished
You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,
Yours the pang, but his, O his the undiminished,
Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.
At times when we are oppressed by the sordid
or the seamy side of life and are tempted to despair
of human nature, let us turn to these letters and
thank God we knew and loved and worked for lads
like these : whenever we think of them, we think
of the love and joy of life and Peace that passeth
understanding.
HUBERT M. SOUTHWARK.
Bishop's House,
Kennington Park, London, S.E.
March 20, 1916.
PORTRAITS
Alexander Douglas Gillespie, 1911 . Frontispiece
(From a photograph by Gillman & Co. Ltd., Oxford.)
Lieut. T. C. Gillespie, K.O.S.B., 1914 . facing p. 6
{From a photograph by Dovey, Weymouth.)
Lieut. A. D. Gillespie, A. & S. High-
landers, 1915 .....,, 16
{From a photograph by Moffat, Edinburgh.)
LETTERS TO HIS HOME PEOPLE
Oxford : July 30, 1914.
I hope to reach Rhiconich on Tuesday nth,
though really prospects look so black to-night that
I should not be surprised if we were kept under
arms, and not dismissed from Camp, where we go
on the 2nd. It is pitiful to think that the blood of
the Archduke should need the blood of so many
others to wipe it out — though I suppose his murder
was just the match to the powder magazine.
I don't see any means except a war to decide
whether the Austrian or the Serb shall have the
ruling voice in the Balkans, and I don't see where
the war will stop once it has begun. Instead of
being a frame to hold Europe together, it seems
that this system of alhances is just a net to entangle
us aU. Europe will be crippled for thirty years if
a great war does come — ^it might be worth pa5dng
such a price to have it driven into the head of
every man in Europe that our present armaments
are insane — but that, I'm afraid, is just what a
war don't do, because of the passions it will leave
behind.
Inns of Court O.T.C., Persham Down Camp :
Sunday, August 2, 1914.
I have just sent in my name through the Colonel
for a Commission in the Special Reserve of Officers
in case of mobilisation. . . . There was no time
to consult you and Mother first, but I felt sure
that, if the want comes, you would wish me to do
anything that lay in my power to help, for I am
free, and my career at the Bar would not suffer
from waiting for six months or so. . . .
We have no news to-night, and so I hope that
there may still be some honourable way to peace,
I don't want to fight the Germans, for I respect
them, but if the country is drawn in, I feel I must
go in too, and do the very best I can.
In the meantime we shall stay here, training and
manoeuvring for all we are worth. Good-night.
London : Monday, August 3, 19 14:
We were turned out at 11.30 last night, after
a couple of hours in bed, and hurried back to London
by troop train — packed up in dark, leaving tents,
horses, &c., and got here at 6 a.m. TiU 4 this after-
noon we were kept at H.Q. waiting for orders, but
are now dismissed till to-morrow morning.
{Later.) After the news to-night and Sir E.
Grey's speech in the House, I'm afraid there is
little doubt that we shall be at war to-morrow.
All day long I have been thinking of you and
Daddy, and wondering what you were doing and
saying, for I feel that your part in these troubles
is so much the hardest of all. We have so much
excitement to keep us busy, and so many cheerful
companions that it isn't hard for us to see the bright
side of everything. . . . To-night we shall sleep
well in our beds after our travels last evening.
How one thinks of all the Navy men who are
working for us to-night — there must be a Providence
to guide us out of all these troubles.
Good-night, with all my love, . . .
Royal Hotel, Weymouth : August 30, 19 14.
You will wonder what I am doing here, but I
made up my mind that, if I got the chance this
week-end, I would run down and see Tom ; a lucky
thing too, for when I got up to the Citadel this
morning, I found that he was under orders to leave
for France this evening, and I have just seen him
off to Southampton, in charge of a draft of ninety-
three Borderers. It was very short work, and I don't
B 2
think he had time to write to you, for he only heard
himself this morning ; but you can imagine how well
they think of him if they send him off so early in
sole charge of so many men. Portland is a queer
place. I never knew that the land rose to such
a height at the end of the Bill ; it was almost like
Hong-Kong, and the top has been in cloud all day.
I slept in Weymouth, and walked over this morning.
Tom was of course desperately busy, running in
and out of other people's rooms to get some kit
together, for his own has never turned up, except
his sword. All the other fellows were green with
jealousy, but gave him what he wanted, and I
think he was completely rigged out for active service
before he left. I lunched in the Mess. Then at
five o'clock, every one turned up on parade. A
wet fog had blown up from the sea, but it didn't
damp anybody's spirits. Tom looked splendidly
fit, with his revolver, field-glasses, &c. strapped
about him, and his little bonnet cocked on one
side, and he was very cheery in spite of a stiff
arm, the result of his inoculation. The men fell
in, in full m.arching order, a sturdy lot of fellows,
who looked as if they meant business. Tom
went round with the adjutant, inspecting rifles, kit,
and boots, then he called them to attention with
a roar, fours by the right, quick march, and off
they went ; a pipe and drum band in front played
for all they were worth, and the men swung out
of barracks, and down the hill, followed by
tremendous cheers. It was a good long column,
and they were not small men, but I could see Tom's
head and shoulders standing up above their bonnets
as I walked behind. The officers were all at the
station to see him off, but I went on to Weymouth,
and had another chat with him, as he came through.
They were joined there by drafts from the Royal
Scots, Wiltshires, and Dorsets, and must have been
about four hundred in all, a big crowd to see them
off, and the Brigadier shook hands with Tom, and
wished him luck. I hope he will come back as a
captain, and I'm sure he looked fit enough to march
to BerHn. He has a lot of postcards in his haver-
sack, so no doubt you will hear from him soon.
He is likely to be at the base for a day or two before
he moves up, but of course he didn't know where
his battalion might be. I enclose his address for
letters, parcels, &c. If Mother will send a good
thick pair of socks, I'll make up a little parcel with
some plug tobacco and chocolate, and send it off at
the end of the week. I don't suppose it's any use
sending large parcels, not at least until we know
more of his movements.
(T. C. Gillespie overtook his battalion, 2nd
K.O.S.B., on September lo, took part in the Battle
of the Aisne, and was killed near La Bassee on
October i8. The following letter, his last home, was
received two days after the news of his death.)
October i6, 1914.
My Dear Daddy, — I wrote a hurried letter
to Mother yesterday, but having some leisure time
to-day, am taking an opportunity of giving you
some more news. We have been moved from the
Aisne right round to the North, and are now
operating in the region we were originally intended
for.
We had a soft time during our transit, and
were kindly treated, so we knew we were in for
something stiff. Nor have we been mistaken.
We marched up country for several days, and did
30 miles of the way in French motor transport
wagons, which showed us there was some hurry.
They packed us very close ; it was fearfully dusty,
and the springs were very bad. I have had more
comfortable and clean drives.
We spent one night in a house in which some N.
French refugees, quite good class men, were also
stationed. They have to get out when the Germans
come anywhere near, as they are one of the reserve
classes, and may be wanted. If they stayed, and
the Germans got into their towns, they would all
"One feels one is doing something at last"
From letter of September 24, 1914
be made prisoners. We all had dinner together
in style and were very friendly.
We moved on the next day and were billeted
that evening at a castle, where we were entertained
most hospitably by a French lady and her daughters,
and I actually got a night between the sheets. It
was a paradise there. Heaven and Hell are close
together sometimes ; we were in the latter not many
hours after leaving the castle.
Next day we attacked the Germans in the
afternoon and advanced a considerable way. They
gave us a pretty hot time though, any amount of
bullets flying, and one company lost two officers
killed dead and one wounded. At dusk I found
myself with two platoons rather ahead of the rest
of the line (I had started in reserve, but things
got mixed) near a cottage and a trench of French
soldiers. There were German snipers loosing at
us close ahead. We entrenched there by night.
I had the Frenchmen under my comimand too,
as all their officers had been killed. I found two
poor fellows lying fearfully hurt in a ditch with
several dead, and managed to get a bottle of wine
out of their packs for them without the sniper
getting me.
Fortunately a captain came and took command.
Next day, having been about all night digging, I
was shifted to make room for some other company.
8
I advanced to a cemetery to defend it and stayed
there most of the day. It is a beastly thing to
have to do, digging trenches among graves and
puUing down crosses and ornamental wreaths to
make room. One feels that something is wrong
I when a man lies down behind a child's grave to
shoot at a bearded German, who has probably got
*i a family anxiously awaiting his return at home.
We were at the edge of a village and the Germans
were entrenched about 200 yards on. One could
see heads in the trench sometimes, and sniped at
them. There was a large brown barn door behind
one man, a look-out, I think. I and a corporal
had several shots at him, and later in the day I
noticed through my glasses a white cross scratched
on the door. It is a grim thought, but you have
to think of individual Germans as a type of German
militarism even if they are not.
The church tower also was fired at by us, the
belfry windows being our object. If everyone
agreed only to treat churches as such, one would
feel more comfortable.
We slaughtered a lot of Germans in the failing
light, who advanced in close order along the road.
Then we had to quit, as the post was too advanced
for the night, and the Germans came in.
It was a miserable day, wet, and spent in a
cemetery under those conditions. There was a
large crucifix at one end. The sight of the bullets
chipping Christ's image about, and the knowledge
of what He had done for us and the Germans, and
what we were doing to His consecrated ground
and each other, made one feel sick of the whole
war (or sicker than before).
The next day we spent lying in the trenches
there, with little to do except lie low, as shells from
the Germans and, I fear, our own guns too were
dropping near us. Towards evening a party of
about forty Germans charged the left of our line
from about 300 yards away. They made a noise
like ' All, All ' when they came out of the wood,
' Deutschland iiber alles,' I suppose.
Mad fools they were to charge like that across
a wet beetroot field. They must have thought
about ten of us were there. Barely ten of them
struggled back wounded. All that night we spent
expecting to be attacked. Nothing came though,
our bayonets were not inviting. In the early
morning we were relieved by French troops. I
have never talked French so fast or volubly as to
get them in before dawn broke. They would stop
and talk. The last I saw of that place was the
shattered crucifix standing up against the dawn, and
the glare of a score of burning homesteads all round.
We were marched back, a muddy, wet, tired,
and_hungry crowd, to rest. We lost two officers
10
killed, one died of wounds, and three wounded,
besides a large quantity of men. But our reward
was to come when we got into billets — a letter
from Sir Charles Fergusson, Com. 5th Di\ision,
saying that the Corps Commander wished him to
express his great appreciation of our conduct and
grit and courage, saying how proud he was of us
and thanking us. Sir Charles added that he was
all the prouder as we were all Scotsmen, and he
said he would come and see us when we had had
the rest and sleep we needed. He told our CO.
that he couldn't praise us enough. So ' something
attempted, something done,' earned us a night's
repose in billets. We were only supposed to be in
Corps Reserve and were shoved in in an emergency.
Mails and mails came in, as we had been with-
out for days. It was a case of ' save us from
our friends,' as we had nowhere to put things
except inside or on us. Still, thank you very much
indeed for everything. I got all my things on.
I got about 4 lb. of chocolate, which was deli-
cious after bread about three weeks old, bread
green with mould which I had one day, and jolly
glad to get it.
We are in reserve to the 14th Brigade to-day,
and very glad to rest.
I wish I had a table to write at, I could write
better and at greater length.
II
Hope you are all well. I don't know when you
will see us home.
Tom.
(A. D. G. had been in training at Lincoln's Inn
with the Inns of Court Cavalry all through August,
but after his brother left for France, becoming im-
patient of delay in getting a commission in a cavalry
regiment, he enlisted as a private in the 4th Seaforth
Highlanders, and was at Bedford ^\^.th them till the
middle of October. He then accepted a commission
in the 4th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,
with whom he was stationed near Plymouth and
at Sunderland till he went to the front in February.)
In the train — 4.30 p.m. : February 19, 1915.
This morning a wire came from the War Office
that Duff, Tyson, and myself were to proceed at
once to join the Expeditionary Force. We shall
spend the night in London, and go down to South-
ampton to-morrow morning. I only heard the news
at 10 o'clock, and I thought I would not wire to
you, for you would not have had time to see me
here ; and neither you nor I would have liked to
say good-bye on Newcastle or Darlington platform,
or even to-night in London. For no one likes saying
good-bye, and you and Daddy know how much I
think, and shall always think, of you without my
saying it. As I told you when I was home, it
12
somehow does not seem to matter much whether you
are actually in the room with me or not, for I feel
that we are never very far away from one another
these days. Of course I know what this news means
to you at home — for we have all the fun and excite-
ment — and you have all the waiting, which is far,
far harder, and it makes me ashamed that I have
been so impatient mth my own Uttle worries at
Sunderland, when I think how brave and good
and patient you and Daddy have been all these
months. I was always proud to be your son, but
you have made me prouder than ever — and you
and Daddy must remember when I am in France
that my greatest help will always be to think of you
at home, for whatever comes I shall be ready for it.
Of course you know that ever since I saw Tom
go off, and before that, I have been longing to go
too, and do what I can. Once when the Colonel
asked me, before Christmas, I told him that I did not
want to go at once, but later, after I had been home,
I told him I was ready, for other subalterns are
married, and no one can hold back ; however, I am
glad to think this wire came straight from the War
Office, for it is best to wait for orders in your turn.
And now you will know all the time how glad
I am to be young, and fit for something, whatever
news you get of me ; when a man is fighting for
his country in a war like this, the news is always
13
good if his spirit does not fail, and that I hope will
never happen to your son.
Of course I will write as often as I can, and will
let you know at once my regiment when they tell
me at the Base.
We have just passed Durham ; we shall not
meet there this Sunday, but I shall always remember
our week-end there, and I have liked to think of you
and Daddy and Daisy together for this afternoon,
and happy.
You mustn't think this letter a gloomy one, for
I am as happy as can be, but there are times when
I must say all that I am thinking, and this is one
of them.
Good-bye then, with all my love to you.
Saturday, February 21, 1915.
I don't think the Censor will tear up my letter
if I tell you that I am on my way to Havre.
I left London early yesterday, that I might
look in at Winchester on my way to Southampton,
and Hutchie^ and I had a very cheerful dinner
with the Headmaster ; but when I got up to the
station there, the train was an hour and a half
late, and even when it did start, it settled down
1 2nd Lieut. R. H. Hutchison of the 8th Black Watch, Scholar
of Winchester and New College, Oxford, and Fellow of Brasenose :
he was killed in action in France on October 13, 1915.
14
again at Eastleigh. I was in despair, with visions
of courts-martial if I was not on board at the proper
time, so I jumped into a train for Southampton
West. There was no cab there, so I ran a mile at
full speed, only to find when I arrived at the docks
at 12.30 that the Havre boat was not likely to
start till 7 A.M. — nor did it.
However, I'm on board now with all my
belongings.
Southampton Water was full of torpedo-boats,
transports, and hospital ships, and now we are out-
side steaming south, but changing course sharply
every quarter of an hour, as a protection against
submarines. It's a beautiful day, blue sea and
sun, with a lazy swell rolling in from the Atlantic.
. . . We are a scratch collection of aU nationalities
on board — Belgian soldiers, French captains, and
subalterns of almost every regiment. This is not a
transport, but the ordinary cross-Channel boat.
Winchester looked just the same as ever. I
walked down Meads at 5.30, and it was still quite
Hght. . . .
Rouen Base Camp, 27th Di\asion Details:
February 22, 1915.
We arrived here about lo this morning — a
bit of heath, two miles out of Rouen, with pine-
woods aU round — something like Surrey, except that
15
there is the sHght, almost indescribable, change
in colours and smells which warns you that it is
France. We took almost the whole night in the
train from Havre, and slept peacefully in a siding
for a couple of hours this morning. The station
was a curious sight — full of trucks labelled ' biscuits,'
' jam,' ' rum,' and so on, while the varieties of
uniform were even more extraordinary — Zouaves
and Belgians, Indian orderlies. Tommies in sheep-
skins, officers in khaki turbans from Indian regi-
ments, red-breeched Frenchmen, all waiting
patiently for orders. The camp is enormous. I
don't know how many divisions have their bases
here. . . ; They don't seem to have any orders
for us yet, so we may be here some days. It is
again a beautiful sunny spring day — they say there
has been almost constant rain, and the mud is very
deep in places, but here we are dry enough. In the
distance is Rouen, and the spire of the cathedral,
with the wooded hills on the far bank of the Seine ;
and all round about are rows and rows of huts
and tents. We are the farthest out of any except
the convalescent camp, which has a pitch among
the pines — ^the patients in their blue suits and red
ties are all enjoying the sunshine.
We have a mess, but it takes a long time to get
anything to eat, for there are so many coming and
going.
i6
Rouen : February 23, 1915.
To-day the 27th Divisional Base is moving
across into new quarters — huts about a mile away —
but I hope that Tyson and I will be able to go
straight to the 4th Divisional Camp, which is older
and probably more comfortable. We had a great
bit of luck yesterday afternoon in getting hold of
revolvers. The Ordnance Store was hidden away
in the docks at Rouen, and on our way we met
several other officers coming back, having been on
the same quest without success. However, we
reached the place at last, a sort of ramshackle goods
shed in the middle of a cabbage patch, and by good
luck they had been rummaging round, and had
just discovered a couple which had been lost. So
now we are fully equipped.
This hunt for the Ordnance Store took so long
that we had not time for more than a glimpse at
the cathedral in the faihng light, but it's a wonderful
mass of stone, and I must go back there. Vespers
were in progress, but the nave was very empty,
except for a few figures in black. Of course French-
women wear black a great deal, but still one sees
mourning everywhere, and when you look at the
length of line the French hold, and compare it with
our little section, you cannot wonder at it.
Rouen is full of quaint old streets. . . . While
" We are just at the beginning of the struggle I'm afraid, and every hour we
should remind ourselves that it is our great privilege to save the traditions of
all the centuries behind us.
It's a grand opportunity, and we must spare no effort to use it, for if we fail
we shall curse ourselves in bitterness everj- year tiiat we live, and our children
vi'ill despise our memory".
From letter of October i, 1914
O- -2). QiUuiui.
17
I was standing looking up at the cathedral, an old
Frenchman came up and pointed to Tom's skian
dhu, which I am still wearing. ' C'est un poignard,
mon lieutenant ? ' ' Mais oui, Monsieur,' and I
drew it for him. He was delighted, and saluted
me with great ceremony when we parted.
I find it very difficult to tell a French officer
from a sergeant, but the best plan is to salute every-
one. . . . With us I think saluting is a matter
of discipline, but with them of manners.
We could not help laughing, when we were
dining at a hotel, to see an old French officer, a
brigadier at least I should think by the gold braid
on his cuffs, march in with great ceremony, taking
salutes right and left, and then hastily draw a large
bottle from the folds of his baggy scarlet trousers
before he sat down. They are evidently more
useful, these scarlet trousers, than appears at
first.
There was very little of the hardships of the
campaign about our dinner last night — table d'hote,
and excellent Norman cider— though I think some
subalterns already fill their letters with adventures
and I believe the men's letters are very funny —
they have all to be censored, and yet they often sit
in their comfortable tents, and describe how the
bullets are whizzing round them as they write.
Piscipline is very strict indeed, but otherwise
c
i8
there is far more comfort than there was at Sunder-
land, when first we came there.
It's not quite such a pleasant day, a shower of
hail this morning, and now it's inclined to drizzle ;
but I shall have a walk in the forest presently, and
there it should be sheltered enough. This life does
interest me ; I could just stand all day watching
the different faces come and go.
{Later.) I have been up to the orderly room,
and am posted to 93rd (2nd Battalion) Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders.
4th Divisional Details, Base Camp, Rouen :
February 24, 1915.
Captain Ramsay and myself are under orders
to stand by, which means, I suppose, that we shall
be mo\4ng up either to-day or to-morrow, probably
with a draft from some other regiment. It takes
about two days to get up to the front from here,
and I think we shall have some hours in Boulogne.
Two days ago I thought the spring had reaUy
come, but yesterday morning there was a hea\'y
fall of snow, and all the tents are white — ^they look
very pretty with faint light showing through from
inside, under a starry sky. We got extra blankets
from the quartermaster, and slept very sound and
warm, in spite of another faU of snow in the night.
19
This morning it is thawing, but sleet is still falling ;
a miserable day for the trenches. But after all
one can feel now that every day brings us nearer
better weather. ... I see plenty of rooks, and for
some reason wagtails seem to be fond of our camps.
I suppose they like the shallow puddles, and the
little scraps of food from the cook-houses.
Billets : February 26, 191 5.
I shall be too tired and sleepy to finish a long
letter to-night, but I must begin it, for there is so
much that seems new in the first day.
We had a long cold night in the train, ^^dth much
jolting and stopping, and when I looked out, there
was the usual landscape of Northern France —
farm buildings and long rows of lanky poplars with
magpies' nests in them. Whenever we stopped in
the early morning, the men swarmed out of their
carriages and ran helter-skelter for the engine, or
some other engine, to get their tins filled with hot
water for making tea. I always thought half of them
would be left behind, for the train never gave any
notice w^hen it moved off, but except for one or
two stragglers, I think all of them were pulled in
again by their friends.
When we got to the station where the train
was split up into sections for the different corps,
c 2
20
I was amused to see the Railway Transport officers.
(27/2/15) They were both New College men ; one a
very talkative Etonian, who was a History scholar,
and the other a College Wykehamist, formerly
Prefect of Hall ; they had both had various adven-
tures, and I don't quite know how they had come
to be there, but there they were, managing transport
as if they had been at it all their lives.
Then we moved on again ; it was a bright, sunny,
windless, spring day, with a little snow still lying
in places. We passed a cavalry brigade on the
road beside the line, with their horse guns, the
men all very warmly wrapped up ; both they and
their horses looked splendidly fit. Apart from that
there was little enough sign of war, except the
empty bully beef cans lying in the ditch beside
the line, thrown there by innumerable troop trains
as they passed. Occasionally there were little bits
of trench and cars and transport on the muddy
roads, while when we came to stations there was
plenty of bustle, big guns on trucks, stores, hay,
mail-bags, A.S.C. transport wagons, and fatigue
parties. At last the train stopped at our place ;
we tumbled out on to the ballast and sleepers beside
the carriages ; the double line ran on straight in
front, as level as could be till it came to the place,
I suppose, where it is torn up between the lines.
The country all round was mostly ploughed fields,
21
without hedges, dotted with red brick farms ;
there were Hnes of straggly poplars too, and in
places the fields were smaller, quite like England,
with tall hedges, orchards, and cattle-ponds.
It was very warm in the sun, and quiet, except
for an occasional sound like someone thumping
a tub in the distance. We marched off led by a
guide, the Middlesex and Argylls together ; there
was a narrow strip of pave in the middle of the
road, then deep mud into which I saw one bicycle
plunge to the hub of its wheel, and on either side
a deep ditch, green with scum and duckweed. In
fact, aU this low country can never dry up, for
there is water just below the surface, and ditches
divide the fields. The road was crowded — staff
officers in cars, Belgian and French soldiers, country
carts, peasants, for the land is aU cut up into little
farms and there are red brick villages springing
up everywhere beside the old thatched houses ;
but there were horses ploughing and men and
women digging in the fields as if nothing whatever
was happening. I saw an old Cure go past, holding
his skirts well up above the mud, till I could see
his fat black legs in stockings. We went through
two or three villages all full of men in khaki lounging
at the door of their billets. Sometimes there were
raw patches on the bricks round about the doors
and windows where stray bullets had struck in
22
street fighting, and there were one or two houses
wrecked by shell. Some Tommies had patched
up one of these, and painted on it in great blue
letters, ' Breezy Cottage, this way to the married
quarters.' Next door to it stood a shrine which
had escaped untouched, \nth its own inscription,
' Notre Dame des sept douleurs priez pour nous ' ;
these contrasts are strange.
We went on and on, between the ditches
ploutering in the mud ; the sound of tub thumping
got louder ; it was some of our heavy guns firing,
but it w^as still calm and sunny, and several aero-
planes came buzzing over, shining in the sun. We
crossed a bridge over a fair-sized river, and on
again through new brick houses full of lean High-
landers, very like the suburbs of Sunderland, but
somehow it was much more bright and cheerful.
I could not help jumping when the guns went
off, and some of the men were a little nervous
too, but when one saw the old women knitting at
their doors quite unmoved, one felt ashamed of
it.
About 5.30, just as the sun was setting, we
dropped the ]\Iiddlesex and picked up a Canadian
Pipe Band, who seemed to be wandering along
with nothing particular to do ; they played us
into billets to the ' Campbells are coming,' v/hich
brought all the Belgians to their doors, and even
23
our men picked up the step ; they were very tired
with twelve miles of pave and heavy roads, carrying
full equipment, after their night in the train. Our
billets are in a row of brick cottages, strung along
a road, and I believe the trenches are about a mile
and a half away. I am posted to B Company, where
to my very great surprise and pleasure I found
Captain Chrystal, who was with the 91st for three
weeks, but has since been transferred. I also found
Bankier, who was at Cargilfield and Winchester with
me, though a good deal younger. The three others
in our company mess are Hutchison, late of the
K.O.S.B.^ and later from Rhodesia, where he had
been farming ; he is in charge of the machine-guns ;
Clark, second-in-command, who has just got the
Military Cross ; and Boyd. The four of us sleep on
the floor in a room together, and we mess there
too, plenty to eat and drink, with cakes and
sweets from parcels. Letters have just arrived,
and I have Mother's p.c. written on Monday, and
Daisy's letter to Sunderland from Longcroft, the
first which have reached me since I left home ; very
nice to have news of you.
We go to trenches to-night, and I must stop
now to pack up ; it is raining and blowing, very
different from yesterday, but I expect we shall
settle in somehow for our five days and nights. The
Middlesex come out when we get in.
24
I expect I shall be able to write a line in trenches,
but if I can't, I will of course write again as soon
as I come out.
March i, 191 5.
It was dark before we started for the trenches
last night — ^the road was deep in mud, and crowded
with troops — so that there were many halts, and
much swearing at other regiments, who of course
are always wrong. At last we got on to a clear
space of road, and began to hear the rifle fire get-
ting nearer. There were other signs too, wrecked
cottages, and burnt farms. Finally we turned off
the road, and squelched through ankle-deep mud
and water. There were lights moving mysteriously
ahead — they turned out to be braziers all along
the line for the men to warm themselves, and cook
their rations. We had a platoon of Canadians
with us too, who had come down for one night to
be instructed — but my platoon sergeant led me to
the wrong place, so we had to turn along the line,
wading knee-deep in mud. Just here we are not
in trenches, but in breastworks — for the trenches
have all been flooded out. I was posted on the
left of the company, but the breastwork here is
rather patchy, so that by daylight we are quite
isolated, for the sniping is too accurate to make
25
it worth crossing an open space without good
reason. So we watch by night, and sleep by day,
each man in his own post, or sleep for an hour or
two anyway. ... It was a cold night, with heavy
showers, but bright moon between, so that there
was little prospect of an attack. I spent most of
the night on my legs, so that my feet did not get
cold — but what mud ! up to the knees in places,
with pools of unknown depths — wretched for men,
but they are wonderfully cheery in spite of it.
I had supper in the dug-out with the other
company officers, and met a Canadian there, who
was one of Jack Gillespie's subalterns in Winnipeg
— curious, wasn't it ? But at dawn we all began
to keep down, and I had breakfast by myself,
cooked by my servant — ^ham and eggs in the
trenches !
To-day I have been sleeping or lying warm and
sleepy, watching the clouds drifting very fast,
and aeroplanes racing through them even faster —
it's funny to see them plunge in and disappear,
and then come out again after their dive. Of course
I can only look towards our billets, except for a
very occasional and very hurried glance over the
top towards the Germans, who are about 400 yards
away here. ... I wish I could draw better, but
I must practise. ... I send you a little scrawl
of a sketch, which will give you some idea of
26
what I see — a couple of wrecked farms, a stretch
of beetroot field, rows of tall poplars, and the
distant spires of a much contested town. There
was heavy fighting here in October, but very little
since, and we are losing very few men, in spite of
all these spells in the trenches. The guns have
been banging away hard all day, but they fire over
our heads and don't trouble us, they are so keen
on ' busting ' one another. Well, I am afraid you
will find it hard enough to read this, but fingers
are cold, and I am writing on the back of my diary,
balanced on *my knee. . . .
Dug-out : March i, 1915-
Daddy's parcel of gum-boots arrived last night ;
they should be very useful, for after ploutering
about in this mud, one can't lie down in boots
and putties, and though waders are admirable
for sleeping in, I could never move in them once
I got into the depths. Last night I went over for
supper all together to the dug-out, and we had
quite a cheery evening — it is nice to see someone
after lying alone all day and we have plenty of
sweets — and a three-course dinner — also I had my
first taste of army rum — for I have to stand by and
see a lot of that served out to the men as soon as
it gets dark. It's fine strong stuff and warms
27
you up inside, but I think they should arrange
that men who don't want it could get chocolate
or some other small thing instead. I gave my
letter to Mother to a subaltern who came down
with a digging party, and I hope he remembered
it. For two hours we were busy filling and carrying
sand-bags — an awkward job in the dark, but you
can't show yourself by day. It came on to blow
very hard with rain too, so to-day I have treated
myself to breakfast in bed, and lunch in bed too —
there is really no point in getting up, for I can
only move ten yards — and here I am quite cosy,
when I have finished wrestling with my boots, and
changing socks. All these operations are difficult,
for there is barely room to sit upright — and the
puzzle is to bring one's legs inside with as little
mud as possible on them. It might interest you
to know what I wear — ^two thin vests, and shirt,
your old woolly, an oilskin waistcoat, my tunic,
and that very thick-sleeved waistcoat Mother sent,
on the top of all — then I have put on trews, one
can't lie down in a kilt without waking up to find
it round the neck . . . and my feet are rattling
about in the waders, which are large enough to
allow me to exercise all my toes, and keep them
warm. . , , For breakfast I have ham and egg
and tea ; for lunch some ' Maconochie ' — that is
a kind of tinned stew — very good — and we are all
28
grateful to Robbie's namesake, whose name is
on the tins — bread, cheese, marmalade, and some
bun, which Clark gave me — so you see I'm
beginning to take quite an interest in talking about
my food — and eat enormously. ... I have with
me too Dante's ' Inferno,' but with eating and
sleeping, and writing, I can't find so much time
to read, and I have military books too, and your
letter which I got just before coming down, I have
read again and again. . . . I'm glad to think of
you so busy at Hopetoun, and now that I have
come out, I'm glad you can get some afternoons
at home. ... I see blue sky again, and the cold
wind is dropping. . . . You can imagine how we
count the hours till we shall find ourselves back
in billets.
Much love to all ; perhaps I shall get some
letters to-night.
March 2, 1915.
This is a very quiet day so far, even the snipers
seem to have got tired of wasting ammunition,
and though the guns were banging away this
morning, I slept through it all, for we had been
very busy with a new breastwork in the early
hours. This is said to be the quietest part of the
line at present ; we are about twelve miles north of
29
the place where Tom was killed. All last night we
heard the guns muttering away to the north — a
very heavy cannonade — and they were noisy in
the south too.
It's not very warm yet for March — ^there was
a furious storm of snow for about half an hour
yesterday afternoon, and frost last night, but
I am keeping fairly dry, which is a great thing.
I'm afraid those boots are no use ; they would do
very well for slush or water, but this mud pulls
them half off the foot at every step, and finally
one of them tore when I was trying to fix my heel
into it firmly. However, I am getting hold of a
pair of long gum-boots from the sergeant-major.
At one time the trenches near here were considered
the best on the western front, and Sir John French
and Poincare both came down to see them ; then
a fortnight's wet weather ruined them entirely,
and so the game goes on. I see very little of the
men all day, they sleep and sleep, but at night
they sometimes talk. There is one funny old
Irishman, who is in charge of the grenades. He
is very anxious to put one of his shirts on the /
Kaiser, and then tie him up to a stake — ' Ye would \
see him wriggle then, with them biting, and him
not able to come at them.' . . . You can guess
what ' they ' are ; fortunately there seems a good
chance to keep clear of ' them,' if one is careful.
30
We shall get a bath, I think, when we get back into
billets, and I hope to hear that Tyson has come
up to join us. . . .
Trenches: March 3, 191 5.
The guns on both sides have just been making
things very lively for one another. The shells
make a scraping sound, rather like stones sliding
down a rocky gully. When they ' bust ' in the
distance, I see a bright flash, and then a puff of
greenish-grey smoke, which drifts away slowly in
the wind. It was very wet last night — but so far
I have always managed to keep the upper part of
me dry, so I have been warm and comfortable all
day, sleeping to make up for time lost at night.
There are working parties almost every night, so
I am usually on my legs for several hours — just as
well to get some exercise, and I think this constant
lifting of the legs in deep mud, must develop new
and strange muscles. I have been censoring the
men's letters — it seems almost too bad to read
them all, but some of them write so nicely, that
one is glad to know what they are really like, under
a rather unpromising surface. One wrote to his
wife, thanking her for a shirt, but saying he wished
she was here to ' scratch his back as she used to do ' !
Most of them just want ' so and so ' to know they
31
were ' asking ' for them. ... I got two postcards
from you last night — one from Sunderland, and
one to the base camp — very glad to hear of you —
the parcel from Toronto has not come yet — ^no
doubt it will — and to-night I think some of your
other letters will reach me. . . .An aeroplane
has just been buzzing overhead — one of our own,
I think. They are like hawks in this war, and where
they poise and hover, you know there will be trouble
for those they see underneath, for they signal to
the guns. Fortunately our own airmen seem to
have the measure of the Germans and chase them
always at sight. . . .
The Brigadier came round last night, shook
hands, asked aU about me, and was very affable.
The 91st are in a bad place ; it is they who have
been losing the offtcers whose names you see in the
papers, not we. ... I have never managed to
write to Gwen at all since the base ; you must
copy some letters for her — if you can read my writing
at all. I cannot write well lying on my back,
and the only typewriter here is the machine-gun —
the men's nickname for it.
You must not worry yourselves about me, for
I should be very happy out here if it were not for
thinking of your being unhappy.
32
Billets : March 5, 1915.
I got your letter two nights ago in the trenches,
and this afternoon I have had one from Daisy,
and two from Mother, one of them forwarded from
the base camp at Rouen — ^so I am doing very well,
and am very lucky to have people at home who
can write me such good letters, for I look forward
to them very much. . . . We got safely out of
our trenches and breastworks, and marched back
to billets — about four miles along very muddy
roads, and slippery pave. I was tired and slept
very sound — the excitement in the trenches keeps
you going, and when it is all over, you suddenly
feel that you have been living very fast. The
Germans have two or three search-lights, which
throw a dazzling light across our lines all of a
sudden — but I think their light shows as much to
us as it does to them. I think, too, that they are
more frightened of us than we are of them, for they
are always sending up flares and coloured lights,
as if they expected to find us making a night
attack.
We have flares too, but hardly ever use them —
and we never fire if we can help it, which makes
them uneasy, for of course they know that we are
always there. No one in my platoon was hit, which
rather surprised me, for they would stand up and
33
cheer when they saw our guns knocking the houses
to pieces behind the German Hnes — and that of
course is the sniper's opportunity. I quite agree
with you that an officer ought to save himself
when he possibly can. In the trenches here, every
life lost is sheer waste, for no one need get hit, and
it's not like an advance, when someone must get
the men on at all costs. So I take every care, and
am not afraid of being thought afraid — for that's
a piece of cowardice rather worse than the other
kind, and has cost us many lives in this war. . . .
I am keeping a small diary, which I bought hurriedly
in Sunderland — it must be made for the meanest
kind of business man, for I was amused to find it
left no space for Sundays, but had instead several
sheets in front for ' notes of articles lent.' . . . It's
wet and windy, so I am just spending the day in
billets — and to-morrow I shall go into the town,
and try to get a bath. We are only a few miles
from the place where Ronald tried to escape. I
find that when I wear the kilt in the trenches, I
get quite like ' Rex,' for the mud splashes up about
my knees, and hardens in little lumps — and when
you try to pull them off, out comes the hair too.
. . . There is not much elegance about our billet ;
this room has a bare floor, bare walls except for a
hideous frieze of grapes and vine-leaves painted
round the top, and a mirror, damp and blurred,
9
34
with a line where someone has drawn on it with
his fingers ; then over the mantel-piece, or rather
the stove, is a case of everlasting flowers, and
two gilt china jugs, which can only have escaped
breaking by a miracle. . . . But it's a nice cheer-
ful place compared with the trenches — and now
that Captain Chrystal has gone away down the
line to recover from a chill, I spread myself on
the floor, and the others sleep upstairs, in beds, if
you please ! !
About parcels, things to eat are always welcome
— jam, marmalade, potted meat, cake, fruit, just
as if I were back at school again ; we all share
everything together, so I have been living very
well. It's difficult to buy anything in this wasted
country. I think I have all the clothes I want at
present, but I should like a book or two to read
and throw away. I have been reading the ' Inferno,'
now I think I'll make an effort to finish ' Paradise
Lost ' — ^there's a cheap Milton in my room, I think —
send the first volume first — and Scott's ' Bride of
Lammermoor,' which I don't think I ever read —
or any other Scott in a cheap edition — in fact any-
thing solid, for I don't think sixpenny novels would
go down so well at present.
I shall write every day while we are stationary
here, but of course I may not always get the letters
posted, and they may arrive in bunches,
35
Billets : March 6, 1915.
Really I do not grudge the Middlesex these
last two days in the trenches. It has rained in
torrents, and blown a gale from the south-west.
. . . I'm afraid it gives me nothing but pleasure
to watch it on the window, and think that I shall
sleep under a roof to-night. This morning the
General was to have inspected us, but it was too
wet for him, so we did nothing at all. We have a
gramophone, a very good one, which is kept busy.
. . . Then I went into to have a bath — ^it's
hard to remember not to write the names of places.
First of all there are new raw suburbs of red brick
— very like our own in manufacturing towns,
except that the brick is less dingy, and there are
lines of blue and white and coloured bricks for
ornament above the doors and windows. The rain
had almost washed the pave clean in places, so
that the red stone showed through the mud. We
crossed the railway line — along which we must aU
have passed that first year on our way to Switzer-
land. The rails are rusty, and grass is gro\ving
between the lines. Then came the town itself —
rather hke the city of a dream. The houses are
mostly brick, painted white and blue, with wooden
shutters — which makes them look as if made of
cardboard, all the more so when you suddenly
D 2
36
see one without roof or windows. Most of the
glass is broken — shutters closed and windows
boarded up. Every here and there was some
great gap where a shell had burst through the wall,
and set the building on fire. I noticed sand-bags
along the pavement, up against the gratings and
cellars — ^to which I suppose the wretched inhabi-
tants fly for refuge whenever the German shells
begin to drop in the town. But most of them have
now fled altogether, and the streets are almost
deserted except for our own soldiers. The clock
in the town hall was stopped — a great hole in the
dial — but some shops were still open, and I saw
quite a smart milliner's window full of hats and
toques, and the ' Cafe du Sport ' was full of patrons.
We had our bath in a private house — a fine spacious
building with a hall full of palms and shrubs and
singing birds in cages. It was strange to tread
on carpets again, and see a polished floor, and there
were still some French servants in the house,
carrying linen up and down stairs. There were
a great many cloth and linen factories in the town,
and it must have been a prosperous place once,
but now, as I say, the empty streets and shuttered
windows made me feel as if I was walking through
it in a dream. I don't want to blow anyone's
house to pieces, but when I see these ruins and the
light of the burning farms at night, I wish with
37
all my heart that they were German houses, and
German farms. . . . Mrs. Haldane has kindly sent
me a present — a little pocket hairbrush and comb,
and some phials of iodine. The Flemish mud is
very dangerous in the slight wounds sometimes,
the fields are all so heavily manured and the country
so populous. ... I do hope we shall succeed in
taking Constantinople — the effect throughout the
whole of the East would be enormous, and it
would let all the wheat from the Black Sea
get out to us — at present things look well. , . .
Your letter was a great pleasure. I like to hear of
all the little things you are doing every day.
A four-course dinner is just coming in, so I
shall stop for to-night.
Billets : March 7, 191 5.
Two letters have come from you since I last
wrote, I think — and they were a great pleasure.
I notice when I am censoring letters that men don't
write to their fathers very often, but to mothers
and sisters a great deal, and also to ' dear old pals.*
It's rather a shame somehow to read all their
letters, but they do write and write, even if it's
only to say ' hoping this finds you well, as it leaves
me.' It ' leaves me ' in billets, after another day's
rain. I went to service in the morning. Established
38
Kirk, held in an old school ; the singing was very
vigorous, with two cornets for an accompaniment.
A padre out here should be of the very best. For
men need some help, when they are set down in a
strange country, with nothing to do all day in their
billets, once their kits and rifles are clean — and it
makes one very sad to see a man drunk out here.
Why can't we do as the Russians are doing, for the
war at any rate ? I like French wines myself,
but rd be glad to give them up. . . . Most of my
platoon seem to be decent fellows — of course I
don't know all the names yet, but I must get to
know them all, in and out, or set out with that
idea — and then, at any rate, I shall know something
of them. There are very few regular soldiers left
now, mostly reservists and special reservists. . . .
Hopetoun must be a very beautiful place, and
there can be no view in the world to beat that view
of the Forth. ... I hope some time we shall all
have another holiday at Rhuveag. What a jolly
time that was last June ! and what an age back it
seems in the past now ! I remember saying to you
how nice it was to think that it was only June,
with four months of summer still in front of us.
Still, we both have something better to do than
take holidays at present, and I only wish I was as
competent for my job, as you are for yours. . . .
39
As I write a curious patter comes in from the
kitchen where the servants use the stove to cook
our dinner — French and Scotch, and then very
slow and dehberate French with a Scotch accent.
. . . The Germans near here behaved very well
when they were in billets, and paid for everything.
One is glad to know it.
I find that Boyd, one of the subs., was a ' wet
bob ' and rowed in the Eton VIII — so of course
he knows all Tom's friends — and is a big jolly
person, with a tremendous laugh. I believe Roger
Hog's battery is not far from here. I wish I could
run across him. Well, as you see, there's very
little news from the Western front, but we all keep
smiling, and are growing fat.
Billets : March 8, 191 5.
I was glad to have your letter of March 5 to-day
— how quickly the posts come through — we some-
times get the Daily Mail the day after it is printed.
Yes, I think things are going pretty well, although
you probably get more news than we do — ^the corps
publishes a summary of information every day,
but there is very little in it for obvious reasons.
It is dry at last, though very cold, with occasional
snow showers from the north, but if the wind
40
holds, it should have made a difference in the
trenches before we go in to-morrow night. The
others have gone to , so I am staying in billets
in case anjdihing should happen — ^but even the
guns have been very quiet these last two days-
Somehow one quite forgets in billets that one is
only a mile or two away from the German lines,
and that they could shell the whole place to the
ground if they felt inclined. Of course it's not
worth their while to do it — and anyway there are
so many houses, that even a spy would find it hard
to direct them. ... I am feeling I want some
exercise again, and must do some digging. I find
that I sleep sounder on the floor than I ever do in
bed as a rule. ... I have just been for a potter
in the garden at the back, to see if there is any
sign of spring yet, but there is hardly a green blade,
and this part of France seems to me just as bleak
and bare as the east of Scotland — but the summer
must be hot, for I see vines growing along the wall
outside. . . . Everyone who was at Mons says the
heat was terrible — roads very dusty, and pave
cruel to the feet — and the men had to throw away
their packs before the end of the retreat. I hear
nothing but praise of the way the Guards have
fought throughout this war — ^they say they have
never failed, and never surrendered. They have
been cut to pieces again and again, so that none of
4i
the original Guardsmen can be left, but their name
and their tradition has passed on to the new drafts,
and their battalions are even more formidable now
than they were at first.
A Sphere or an Illustrated would be interesting
to me, and to the men afterwards ; that is, supposing
we continue our present mode of life — but of course
that can't last for ever, and some day there will
be marching, as there was at first. . . . Here is
a rough sketch of our room in billets. I wish I
could draw better, so as to give you the face of
the old French woman in the kitchen — she seems
to get on very well with our servants.
Trenches : March lo, 1915.
I did not write yesterday, more laziness, I'm
afraid, than anything else, for though it seems a
busy day when one is packing up for the trenches,
there should be little enough to do. All our kit is
taken away, and stored in case of a move, while
other officers come into the billet, then when we
come out, it is taken back again. . . . We started
with snow falling fast, not a very cheerful omen ;
however, it cleared off, and there was a keen frost,
with a beautiful starry sky. The search-light was
very busy, and the guns, too, through the night.
To-day the frost is all away, and we have something
42
like a mild spring day. The birds have been singing
since our stand to arms, and various chaffinches and
wagtails have come to look at me in my dug-out ;
if only we move in time, what an embarrassing choice
of houses to let they will find in this line of breast-
works. There has been a good deal of firing, but
I can now get along, by day as well as night, to the
rest of the company, so that the day has gone fairly
quickly, and the second time in trenches every-
thing seems much less strange. I have my proper
sergeant back from furlough, too. ... I have been
getting all your letters, I think — it's nice that they
come so quickly. I am very well indeed — no colds
or other ailments — and I sleep splendidly. Well,
if I'm not so sleepy to-morrow afternoon I'll try to
write a better letter. Everything in this life gets
to seem so natural that after the first few days I
wonder what there can be to say.
Trenches : March ii, 191 5.
Well, we have had another two days in the
trenches, and two dry days at that, so everyone is
quite happy. We heard yesterday that the 7th
Division and the Meerut Division had taken the
first line of German trenches to the south of us.
I don't know how wide a stretch they took, but it
sounds good news. The war will last a long time
43
yet, I expect, but every little success brings the end
nearer ; this morning our guns were very busy send-
ing shells over our heads into the German lines, and
the German guns started to reply. They put four
or five near my platoon, and one actually on the top
of the breastwork, so that it buried a man under-
neath, but he was pulled out none the worse except
for a shaking. We could not help laughing to see
him plastered with thick yellow mud from head to
foot, and after a tot of rum to pull him together, he
laughed too — an old soldier, quite old enough to be
my father, I think. ... I had a very nice letter from
Laura yesterday ; she seems to have had enough
' trouble 'since the New Year to entertain a third-
class carriage all the way from Edinburgh to Glasgow;
but I hope the babies are recovering, and that it is
now well over. . . . This has been a very mild day,
and as I write, during the evening ' stand to arms,'
the birds are all singing in spite of the sniping, which
still goes on. I can imagine how busy they will be
at Hopetoun and Longcroft. ... I have got H. S.
Merriman's ' Velvet Glove ' to read, but so far I
seem to have been busy digging, eating, or sleeping —
you don't often get more than three hours together,
but putting one nap after another you have plenty
of sleep. Certainly it's a most interesting life out
here. I wouldn't have missed seeing something of
it, and it is good to think that we shan't always be in
44
trenches. How I do admire all the officers and men
who have had four months of them, and yet remain
so cheery ; they do deserve well from their country,
and the new army will have to do well to stand
beside them.
Trenches : March 12, 191 5.
We are having a most peaceful day ; it is still,
and quite mild, though the sun hasn't broken through
yet ; and we are all feeling happy, because we have
had three dry days in the trenches, running. There
was some heavy firing on our left early this morning,
and I believe they have been doing well up there.
You can see the flash miles away when they are firing
heavy guns at night, and, of course, long before you
hear any sound ; in fact, you often see the flashes
when you can hear no sound at all. ... A German
crept out last night within one hundred and fifty
yards of our lines and tied two French flags to a
willow tree ; just a bit of swagger, I suppose ; they
have been getting it pretty hot from our machine-
guns lately. I have some terrible old grumblers in
my platoon, but my N.C.O.'s are good enough, and
I like my platoon sergeant, who is very slow and
quiet, more like a real Highlander, of whom there
are hardly any in this battalion, mostly from
Glasgow, Falkirk, and thereabouts. The nights are
45
very dark so that it is difficult to get much digging
done, except by the Hght of the German flares and
search-Hghts, which help us quite as much as they
help them. Meals seem to have a great effect on the
gunners ; they always have a round or two after
breakfast, then, as a rule, they settle down again until
they have had their lunch, when they begin again,
and towards the end of the day our batteries seem
to get the mastery, and the Germans make no reply.
Is it the effect of tea, I wonder ? No doubt that is
a forbidden meal in Germany now, because it's so
English. I am very, very dirty, with mud splashed
all up my legs, from wearing the kilt day and night ;
but it has not been nearly so cold this time.
Trenches : March 13, 1915.
Last night was a great night for me, for two
delightful letters came, one from yourself and one
from Daisy, We always gather in the dug-out, where
Clark, the company commander, sleeps, and wait
eagerly for the mail. It comes in about eight o'clock
as a rule, as soon as it is dark enough to walk up and
down the road behind in comparative safety. The
newspapers come in too, only a day old, and we settle
down to dinner, which is usually the same — soup,
stew, thin tapioca, vin ordinaire, if one cares to drink
it, and tea from a battered tin coffee-pot. Bankier is
46
a sort of Wm. Whiteley, whose parcels contain every-
thing from cigars to carriage candles. Please don't
think this is a hint that I want either, for I will let
you know when my supply of Sunderland candles —
8ld. for three pounds, and pink wax into the bargain —
begins to run short. . . . Then we sit and smoke
while the bullets go singing overhead — they only
sing really loud when they are ricochetting — until
it's time to turn the men out to dig, or fill sand-bags,
or carry down planks and hurdles, which the mud
swallows up voraciously, like a bottomless pit. . . .
I haven't really taken to smoking again, but perhaps
Daddy will send me a box of cigarettes. You know
what sanitation is like sometimes even in a fairly
good hotel on the continent, and from that you can
guess what it is like in a small French farm like our
billets. . . . Things have been very quiet again to-
day, though there has been heavy cannonading to
right and to left of us, up and down the line, for we
have advanced in several places lately, and no doubt
the Germans have been trying counter-attacks.
They haven't shelled us again ; perhaps they are
waiting for Sunday morning, which is a favourite
time — but to-morrow night, if all goes well, we shall
be back in that bare ugly room, which seems a
paradise after the trenches. However, in spite of all
last week's rain, four dry days have really done a lot
for us, except that just at first the liquid mud gets
AT
more sticky and tenacious when it begins to dry. . . .
I have been censoring the men's letters again, and
it's often very amusing, but they write so many
that it takes up quite a lot of time — they send so
many kisses, often to three different girls by the
same post, and they are fond of quoting poetry,
copied from cigarette cards, or sometimes their own
composition — and there are the usual Scotch phrases,
' lang may your lum reek,' and so forth, though, as a
rule, it's only ' hoping this finds you well as it leaves
me.' As to my letters, certainly make copies of
them if anyone cares to read them, and they might
be interested to see some of them in B.C. . . . It's
very nearly five, so that the long day will soon be
finished, and we stand to arms from dusk till dark.
Trenches : March 14, 191 5.
We are to spend another day in the trenches
instead of coming out to-night, rather a disappoint-
ment, but we have had such fine weather that we
mustn't grumble. The mud is really drying up now,
and everyone is pleased with the good news from
Neuve Chapelle. Our losses are found to be pretty
heavy ; you can't attack entrenched positions and
wire entanglements without losing men, but the
Germans will have lost far more. I shan't get
your parcel with the hose-tops till I get back to
48
billets, so I won't be able to write and thank your
soldier till then. It's well that you have such a
family to look after, and that most of them seem
so nice. They may say what they like about the
east coast of Scotland, but I believe it has an earlier
spring than the north-east of France. We have a
favourite blackbird who sits up in the tree above
us, and answers when the men whistle to him, no
matter how heavy the firing may be, and the crop
of grass inside this dug-out is growing very long
and white, but otherwise there are few signs of
spring yet. Rather a funny piece of news came
round from corps headquarters yesterday ; they
said that a patrol had recently discovered a dummy
figure between the lines, dressed up in German
uniform, which exploded when they touched him,
wounding one of them, so we are warned to be canny
with lay figures ; it would be so ignominoius to be
knocked out that way. We have picked up a Ger-
man rifle grenade, a curious kind of bomb on a long
copper rod, which is fired out of a rifle, and carries
about 300 yards ; only this one had not exploded.
I hope they won't experiment any more with these
things on our trenches when I'm comfortably tucked
up at night ; but there have been various alarms at
night lately, so we have spent most of the time on
our legs. I have finished H. S. Merriman's ' Velvet
Glove ' ; he doesn't perhaps go very deep, but he
49
can tell a rattling good story, which many of those
modem psychological novelists, with their elaborate
analysis of character and of sensation, quite fail to
do. We have to report to-morrow night on the habits
of the enemy opposite us, so I think I must write a
little sketch of the German character.
Trenches : March 15, 1915.
We have had another day in trenches, owing to
a change in the disposition of the brigade, and I
don't think we shall have much more than three
days in billets from now on — but now that the
weather is so much better we shall be right enough.
There is very little sun yet — to-day was grey and
windless, but there was quite a touch of spring in
the air, and I knew by the flies that were going about
that trout would be rising on a still day on the loch,
when you could see every ring. Yes, you will have
to go up to Rhuveag, and see about the garden. I
see plovers flying overhead here sometimes, but I
don't think I'm likely to hear a ' whaup ' this April.
I was amused to watch two old magpies the other
day ; they wanted to cross over from this side to
the German lines, but every time they started to
leave the row of poplars just below my shelter, there
would be a crack from some rifle, and back they
would turn, and perch again to chatter about it, until
50
they had picked up courage to have another try,
and then the same thing would happen all over again.
They are so very suspicious that they are much more
frightened by sounds than the smaller birds — we
have a good many chaffinches and wagtails here, as
well as blackbirds and thrushes. All last night,
starting from four o'clock, there was tremendously
heavy firing to the north, the sky was quite lit up
with the flash of the guns, although the firing was
some miles away, and they went on all morning too
with hardly a break. The Germans opposite us
fire very few rounds from the batteries now ; I dare-
say they have moved many guns to cope with our
advance at Neuve Chapelle and elsewhere. Yes,
it was interesting to see these pictures of Yuan-shih-
kai at the Temple of Heaven, and very significant,
I thought, that the top-hat brigade, who used to
give fizz dinners at the Hotel des Wagons Lits when we
were in Pekin, have all disappeared. Instead, they
have gone back two thousand years for their dresses,
and there was nothing Western about them at all.
No doubt Yuan will found another dynasty, which
may be a little better than the Manchus, but other-
^vise things will go on much as before. I don't
think the Chinese, though they are so clever and
well educated in their own way, take enough interest
to get a very good one. What they seem to think
of most is their family, including their ancestors.
51
and, incidentally, the Emperor and his family, who
are heaven-born, and so deserve respect. But as for
government, they treat it as a necessary evil until
things get really unbearable ; then they have a revo-
lution, and a new dynasty, and the whole thing
begins over again. . . . We have all been eating far
too much, and I must try and get some walking while
I am in billets, for here there is so little chance to
move about ; at first I was all for digging, and carry-
ing, myself, but on these very dark nights I find that
work tends to slacken off in other places if the officer
gets too busy in any one place, so now, as a rule,
I just potter round, and have a look at everything,
and then there is more to show in the morning. . . .
H. S. Merriman talks of the ' Siren sound of the
bullet, a sound which some men, when they have
once heard it, cannot live without ' ; but I don't think
I shall want you to fire volleys under my window
to put me to sleep when I get home. I had a letter
from an Indian yesterday, whom I used to know in
London — very keen about the war. ... Do you
think there will be Christian service in San Sophia
again on Easter Day, after 460 years ? With the
extra thirteen days of the Greek calendar, I believe
it may be possible.
E 2
52
Billets : March i6, 191 5.
Here we are back in billets at last. The Ger-
mans opposite must have been relieving one another
too, I think, for we had a very quiet evening, and
handed over the trenches without difficulty. There
are several hundred yards of very open ground
to cross on the way up, and the men are heavily
loaded, so that they cannot move fast, but all went
well, and we only had to crouch down once while
the beam of a search-light swung round over us. We
are a disreputable gang of ruffians when we march
back, even after six dry days. The men all have
their goatskin coats on, or what remains of them,
but they have so many straps and things to carry
that you only see tufts of hair sticking out here and
there. Some of them have braziers, bags of coke,
waterproof sheets, and all varieties of woohy caps,
and the most amazing styles of lower garments that
you could ever imagine, for to keep their legs warm,
in spite of the kilt, they have set to work with sack-
ing and canvas ; some of them, too, have bought
baggy blue trousers from Frenchmen, or patched up
old garments that they have found lying about. I
myself had a stubbly red beard of six days' growth,
and a top dressing of yellow clay up and down my legs.
Yet in the early days of the war men had to go five
weeks without ever changing their clothes or boots.
53
It seems a very long way coming back over the pave,
though it is really only a mile or two. But at last
I saw all the men housed in their new billet, a big
Flemish farm, where they climb up hen-ladders to
the lofts where they sleep, and was free to open your
letters and parcels. Since Chrystal is still in hospital
and Boyd is hit, I have been promoted to a bed, so
that last night I actually slept on it ; soundly too,
though it has a great slope. I never had such a luxury
at Sunderland. It was a nice mild night, so that
through the open windows I could just hear the
pop-pop of the sniper down in the trenches in the
distance, and see the glimmer of the star-shells. It
was pleasant to wake this morning with farm-yard
noises for a change, in broad daylight, instead of
watching the dawn break from the ditch behind our
breastworks. The garden has begun to sprout a
little in these last six days, but it has also grown four
gun emplacements, and a forest of young trees to
hide them from the airmen. ... I think I must forbid
you to send any more parcels just now, for I have
already lost one buckle from my kilt, and shall lose
the others if we contrive to do nothing but eat sweets
all day. The room is just filled with little boxes, for
all the others have ' cargoes ' too. We shall do well
for the next week, unless, like the man in the Bible
who had goods laid up for many years, we suddenly
get orders to go marching off, up and down the line.
54
and have to leave everything except the minimum
behind. For we have not really done any fighting
here, though we pretended to attack one morning,
just to help things down at Neuve Chapelle, and it
is the 91st who have been in a hot comer up the line,
and whose names you will see in the lists presently.
Thank you very much for all the socks and
woolly things. I ought to be comfortable both
inside and out. But please send me some insect
powder or liquid; so far I have only met the
skirmishers, but supports and reinforcements can't
be very far behind, and I think a whole new army
will begin to move when the weather gets warmer
in April. It's no trouble, but a pleasure to me to
write every day, so I shall go on doing it while our
quiet life continues.
Billets : March 17, 191 5.
We are changing billets to-night, and to-morrow
we go back into the trenches, so this time we have
not had much of a rest ; also a new captain turned up
last night, and took my bed ! but I slept just as well
on the floor ; he was A.D.C. in Mauritius till Novem-
ber ; from such queer places do we gather officers.
Clark is just promoted Captain, so I think he will
still command the company. This morning was
still and bright and sunny ; I had a bit of a walk, on
55
dry roads too, for the last week has made a great
difference, and I saw a dandelion in flower ; but
what a smell there will be when the ditches dry up ;
every inch that the water sinks seems to unclose a
new smell, more powerful than the last. There are
some nice old farms and cottages scattered about, in
contrast to the red brick in the suburbs of the town.
What I should really like now would be a fortnight
' trekking,' marching ten or fifteen miles a day ; it
would be a great change, and would harden every-
one up ; then, at the end, we should be ready for a
fight ; for if we must lose men, it would be far better
to lose them all at once. Instead, we have half a
dozen killed or wounded every time we go down to
the trenches, and a dozen sent to hospital, and so the
drain goes on.
I had another bath this morning, and a walk
to the town. I wanted to get some French news-
papers, but I could only find an old Matin, with
nothing in it except translations from the London
papers. Then this afternoon, I had another walk
with Tyson, to a village about a couple of miles
away, which has been shelled almost to the ground.
It's a melancholy sight ; of the church nothing
remains except the skeleton of the tower, and a
roofless nave ; many of the houses have simply
been blown to pieces ; all have windows broken,
furniture wrecked and burnt, wallpapers and scraps
56
of window curtains trailing in tatters from the
window frames. I'm sending a p.c. to your rifle-
man ; the hose-tops he knitted are splendid, but
my writing paper is all packed up.
Billets : March i8, 191 5.
We changed our billets last night, and now
two companies and their officers, 500 men in all,
are quartered in this old farm. The farms here
are fortresses in themselves ; they are built all round
a square courtyard, the middle of which forms a
manure heap, the size of which I never saw equalled,
in any part of the world. There is a big arched
gateway leading in, with heavy doors to bolt and
bar at night, and round the edge of the manure-
heap, under the shelter of the eaves, runs a raised
path. Three sides of the square are given over to
horses, cows, calves, pigs, sheep, and goats ; and
the fourth side is the house proper, where the old
farmer, his whole family, and all his labourers
seem to live too. You can imagine the confusion,
when 500 soldiers have to find their way in too.
They lie down in the stalls beside the cows, climb
up hen-ladders to roost in the lofts, and curl up in
any corner where they can put a bundle of straw.
I found four horses in the place allotted to my men,
and had a tremendous argument with the farmer
57
and the farmer's wife, who refused to put them in
beside the cows. So at last I made my men take
them there, and then managed to pacify the old
man, his wife, and his daughters, for I told them
it was war, and that anyway we weren't as bad
as the Germans. It's the first job I have had to do
since I came out, which could not have been done
equally well by a good sergeant. . . . My French is
very fluent, and very bad when I get angry, but
just good enough to get things done ; for I know
all the words when I can speak slow enough to
think of them, and can make them speak slowly
too ; but as for pronouncing rightly, or speaking
grammar, I'm quite hopeless. Of course the French
here hate having soldiers billeted on them, and no
wonder, for it turns everything upside down, even
when the men behave themselves, which they do
not always do ; the finest officers and training
couldn't make saints of men straight from Falkirk
High Street and the south side of Glasgow. The
officers' mess is a fine old room, long, with a low
ceiHng, looking out on the moat or rather muddy
ditch, which runs round the farm on three sides.
It's curious to think what a lot these farms have
seen — 1635 was the date over the door ; this corner
of France to-day is so very different from one's
ideas of France under the Grand Monarque ; — but
I suppose they have had troops of one kind or
58
another billeted in them fifty times before, and will
again, unless the Germans suddenly shell them
to the ground, which they might do any day. The
gunners have an easy time of it just now, except
when they go into the trenches as observing officers ;
otherwise they live in these farms two miles from
the firing line, ride about all day, and hear the
news. Of course, when they were covering the
retreat, they got blown to bits, but now the infantry
are the targets. ... I wish the papers would not
make such a hullabaloo over a small advance ; we
did well, but after all the line is very much where
it was and the Germans are not broken, or anything
like it. The same thing will have to be done again
and again.
We go off to trenches in an hour or two.
Trenches : March 19, 191 5.
We are in a real trench this time, one of the few,
I suppose, which has survived the wet weather.
It's really very luxurious, for the bottom is all
paved with brick, or boarded over ; and though
naturally there is still a deal of mud in places,
we are quite happy. It's very quiet too compared
with our last place ; there is no machine-gun fire,
and very little sniping, so that unless they get busy
with ' Percy,' their trench-mortar, we ought to
59
have a peaceful time. ' Percy ' makes a great
deal of noise, I believe, but does very little damage.
Our (trench) headquarters are quite palatial ;
there is a ruined village about a mile behind the
lines, which has been used as a furniture shop, so
we have a table, chairs, a stove, cupboard, lamp,
shelves, &c., and can even stand upright. Bankier
and I share one very small shelter for sleeping ;
there's just room for the two of us to wriggle in,
and one can't lie straight out, but in this cold
weather that doesn't matter very much. It was
clear enough at 2 a.m. when I lay down this morning,
but at 4.30, when I got up again, there was a thick
coating of snow, and snow still falling, and there
have been heavy snow showers all day, and a
bitterly cold wind. However, we are warm enough
in our blankets, with books, cigarettes, sweets, and
two mouth-organs ; and the men too sleep all
day, wrapped up in their fur coats. They certainly
get plenty to eat ; there are always tins and tins
of bully beef to spare, jam too, and I don't feel very
sorry for anyone who says that bully beef is very
dry, or that he prefers marmalade. There are
two rather nice old farms standing in orchards just
behind us, but of course they are utterly wrecked,
and the new grass is beginning to sprout among the
fallen bricks. The Germans are about 400 yards
away here too, but since we are in trenches, they
6o
have very much less to aim at than they had in
our last place. We have a cat too, which is taken
over by each relieving regiment. I suppose it came
from one of the farms behind ; certainly we might
all learn from it how to adapt ourselves to this
life, for it seems completely happy. . . .
Trenches : March 20-21, 1915.
This letter never got any farther than the first
three words yesterday — why, I don't remember,
but we have two Terrier officers, both Staffords,
down here in this company at present, following
us round to be instructed, so that space is rather
limited. Both yesterday and to-day we have had
most glorious sunshine, the first since the day that
I left the train. It's very cold and frosty at night,
but by day the West wind blows softly, and the
grass sprouts from our trenches and parapets, so
that I'm now sitting out of doors in the sunshine,
in a trench behind the firing trench. There is a
lark singing high up between the lines, but in spite
of that the sniper is busy, and sometimes when an
aeroplane comes over, you see four or five little
puffs of white cloud in the blue all around it, where
the shrapnel from the air-craft guns is bursting.
Really we are very comfortable in this trench,
for it's a palace compared with our last one, and
6i
the snow that we had two days ago melted almost
at once. There has been comparative peace up
and down the British front lately, and, so far as I
know, no heavy fighting. But Boyd had very
bad luck last night, for after a week in the field
hospital, he had just left there to come back to us,
when a stray bullet caught him in the leg, at least
a mile behind the firing line. So this time he will
go home, and not come out of hospital so quickly.
Somehow, one doesn't feel very sorry for a man
who gets hit, not dangerously, with a dressing
station handy, and a doctor to attend to him at
once ; for even if he feels the pain for a week or
two, that's nothing much in the long run. I wish
I could see Hopetoun park on one of these sunny
days — ^last year I had such a short spring holiday,
and then the weather at Rhuveag was as bad as it
could be, until the day I had to go away. Yes, I
remember the ' Melting Pot ' very well, and I suppose
if the war ended next week, we might be doing
just the same next winter, for the change, whatever
it is, which will come after the war, will not come
quickly, and least of all will one notice it in surface
things ; though I don't think we know anyone who
hasn't changed, and when I read of ' nuts ' who
haven't enlisted, or people who still want to see
the Derby, it doesn't mean very much to me, for
they don't exist for me — I've never met them.
62
I don't think it's hard to explain why men get
drunk ; it's just as easy to drink too much as to eat
too much, only you can see the effects of the one
sooner ; but it's hard to understand how they go
on getting drunk and hopelessly drunk, when they
know what it means. I like sharing a bottle of
wine myself, but I wish we could do as Russia does,
for this war. I have heard from Sholto, who seems
to like Plymouth, also from Dick Mitchison, who
must be a very smart subaltern now, and is chafing
to get out. Something is wrong when a man with
his brains isn't given a chance sooner ; he shouldn't
be a subaltern at all, but on the liaison staff, which
links up the French and British armies. How he
used to argue with Tom in the flat this time last
year ; and Tom used just to smile and fence away,
and pretend to be a stupid athlete without an idea
in his head. This letter might interest you ; the
writer is one of the best men I ever knew ; people
used to say he had a conscience like a roaring lion,
but you want some people like that in the world,
just as you want a sergeant with a sharp tongue.
How beautiful the Dardanelles must be to-day if
it is sunny there, and how attractive it must be to
go round from place to place in the .^gean just
now in one of our cruisers. You would see that
my old friends, the 4th Seaforths, have been in some
stiff fighting, but I'm glad that Tennant and Andy
63
Fraser are safe. We relieved one battalion of the
Cameronians in these trenches ; their other battaHon
came out of Neuve Chapelle commanded by one
second-lieutenant, the sole surviving ofhcer out of
twenty-three who went into the fight. If the great
public knew these things, they might be better
able to decide whether the British soldier, or the
British thoroughbred, is in greater danger of
extinction.
Trenches : March 21, 1915;
This is as fine a March Sunday as you ever saw,
sunny and windless, so that you can almost see the
new grass sprouting on the traverses and parapets.
We have all been sitting basking in the sun, and the
men have been stripping, and washing in what
remains of the flooded trenches, so that they have
got something out of all that water which made them
so uncomfortable before. It has been very quiet
too, except for the birds and the snipers ; there were
several larks singing just between the lines this
morning. We heard the song of the aeroplane too,
at intervals, and the German guns have been very
busy, bursting strings of shrapnel in little fleecy
puffs : it must be great fun for the man with the
anti-aircraft gun, and also very exciting for the
airmen ; they say they hardly ever make a trip now
I
64
without getting a few bullets through their planes ;
but for all that many people say it's the safest branch
of the service. The cigarettes have come, and I
have been sitting lazy in the sun, and watching
the smoke of them. That's the worst of this life
in the trenches, you do get most abominably lazy,
so that you can hardly turn over in your blankets
without thinking about it for half an hour. It's
the want of exercise, I suppose ; but I had a walk
last night, up to the farm where the ration parties
go. It used to be a most appalling journey, three-
quarters of a mile in mud to the knees, but now it's
quite easy, and was a most beautiful starry night,
which reminded me of the nights at Nairobi. We
have two Territorial officers in our trenches to-day,
sent down to learn what to do ; perhaps they will
relieve us presently ; this division has never been
sent back for a real rest like the others, but has been
in and out of the trenches the whole winter. Will
you send me some nasturtium seeds ? It would be
rather fun to plant them in the trenches here, now
that so many things are beginning to grow. ... I
got hold of a German paper yesterday ; it had a short
account of a football match in Berlin, so did a
French paper of one in Paris the other day ; but
what interested me was to notice that they gave
very fairly and accurately the British Admiralty's
report of one day's operations in the Dardanelles,
65
except that they multipUed the number of our dead
by four — I know this because I happened to have
noticed the figures — and so had another subaltern.
That is just typical of their system in all their
reports ; they tell as much truth as they think
necessary to hide their lies — or, rather, tell as many
lies as they think their public can reasonably swallow.
My diary says that spring begins to-day, and when
I went along just now to look at the rifles and
ammunition of my platoon, I found two or three of
them wearing chapeaux — French girls' straw hats ;
they must have got them from some ruined shop
in the village behind us — ^the whole effect was very
funny, with the fur coat round their bodies, and gum-
boots on their feet. There are a great many flies
dancing about this evening, so I hope we are in for
a really good spell of weather. Great cheering down
our trenches just now ; the men always get hold of
the wildest war news in the evening, and shout it
towards the Germans, who reply with volleys if
they think it worth while.
Trenches : March 22, 1915.
We have another day of sun and calm, though the
frost again last night was very sharp, and the stars
extraordinarily bright. My feet have never been
wet at all these last four days, thanks to the bricks
66
from a ruined farm behind, with which our trench
is paved. There is a sound of melodeons and
mouth organs, mixed with the sniping, for many of
the men get parcels from home, as well as gifts from
different societies. They all have to be opened in
presence of an officer, for fear that bottles should be
wrapped up in socks and shirts. I think all your
parcels have been coming. I'm glad we did not have
so much snow as you, but how often March is the
snowiest month of the year ! I hear there are over
seven hundred New College men serving ; and an old
Wykehamist, a Colonel of R.A.M.C, who was in the
school from 1844 to 1849, so that he must be very
nearly eighty. There have been a great many
aeroplanes overhead again to-day, and the usual
attempts to hit them with shrapnel ; it seems strange
that they succeed so seldom. I get very tired of the
perpetual rattle of earth from the parapet, when
the sniper hits the top row of sand-bags ; there's
no danger whatever if you keep your head down,
but unless they are teaching their recruits to shoot,
it seems so pointless. One of our captains went
fishing in the river Lys, the last time we were in
billets, with a collapsible rod ; he caught nothing,
but there are said to be fish there, of the baser
sort. There's not much news to spin out a letter ;
perhaps I shall have more to say when we get back
into billets.
67
Trenches : March 23, 1915.
Writing is difficult, for Sonia, the trench cat,
is paddling about on my knees, and making herself
into a living sporran. She has come from the
ruined farm behind, I suppose, but she takes the
change very philosophically, and is a sort of per-
manent housekeeper, who never leaves company
headquarters in this dug-out, but is handed over
to each relieving regiment, along with other fixtures,
appearing in the official indent, after the ammun-
ition — spades, fascines, R.E. material, &c. — as * Cat
and box I.' She has no real affections, but prefers
kilts, because they give more accommodation in
the lap than breeches ; on the other hand, she has
an unpleasant habit of using bare knees as a ladder
to reach the desired spot. We go back into billets
to-night, to a different billet again, I believe, another
farm ; it is always a long business getting every-
thing packed up and handed over in the dark,
when there is no room in the trench for incomers,
and everyone wants to talk at once. I'm not
surprised that drifting mines have done such damage
in the Dardanelles ; do you remember how we saw
the current swirling like a river just opposite the
point at the narrowest part ? There was a Turkish
pasha, who came on board just before, vnth his
three v^dves in a small boat, who, owing to the wind
FZ
68
and the current, were about half an hour in getting
alongside, till their silk yashmaks were all drenched
with spray, and the pasha, who had come by an
earlier boat, was quite concerned, not for them,
but for his small boy. I think those long silk veils
must be most unpleasant to wear. How the Greeks
used to laugh and shout, if the wind blew them
up, as a Turkish lady struggled up the ship's ladder ;
but, according to Pierre Loti, it doesn't matter so
much if anybody sees your face, provided that
they never see the back of your neck. I don't
know why that should be considered such a
dangerous spot, but it was a Greek superstition
that devils entered into possession through the ears ;
and that, I believe, is the reason why a woman
covers her head in church, because of the angels
who used the same approach, and could not all be
trusted. Now, of course, on board ship all the
ladies go away and put on Sunday hats before
service in the saloon, which makes them more,
instead of less, conspicuous, just the last thing St.
Paul wanted, as he hoped to keep the attention of
his male congregation by leaving nothing for their
wandering eyes.
There's a new language growing up in N.E.
France which would surprise you — ^the language
in which the British soldier addresses his hostess
in billets ; its chief phrases are * §9 long ' and
69
' nap poo ' — I suppose this last was once ' il n'y
a plus,' but now it's used like the Chinese ' no can
do ' for everything. You will have as many patients
soon as you can manage, I'm afraid, for the hospitals
will be overflowing ; probably you will get some
A. and S. H. sooner or later, for we send away one
or two wounded men almost every day, and the
91st must be sending far more.
Billets : March 24, 1915-
We had a very wet night for our relief, which has
made the clay as slippery as ice again, but to-day
everyone has been drying and cleaning, for we have
only spent three of the last fourteen days in billets,
so that it is time. We have changed our billets
again ; I am in one farm here with two platoons ; the
rest of the company is scattered, and we mess in yet
another house, so that there is a great deal of wander-
ing to and fro, hunting for other people. It was too
late to get any food or any water last night, so that
the morning found me very hungry and very dirty ;
but now I have had a hot bath, and got my hair cut
by a very talkative French hairdresser. There is
nothing I hate more at home than a chattering hair-
dresser, but out here it is rather interesting to hear
what they have to say about the war ; though we are
in France, we see so very little of the French. My
70
platoon are all sleeping in a loft which they reach up
a hen-ladder ; I hope the floor won't give way, but it
creeks most ominously. I see signs of green on the
hedges now ; as usual the elder tree and the goose-
berry bush are the first to open their leaves ; the
magpie is busy with his nest in every row of poplars.
I quite agree with you that we must get the Germans
driven out of France and Belgium before we begin
to talk of peace, and we shall do it too, though, of
course, the cost will be very heavy. I wish you were
here in charge of an anti-aircraft gun, for I think
you would enjoy that kind of shooting ; you live up
in billets, with your gun and limber on motor lorries ;
then, when a German aeroplane is signalled, you
rush off, and follow him up and down the roads at
full speed, blazing away at him, so that he gets no
peace to observe, even if he escapes a hit.
Billets : March 25, 1915-
I have your letter of Sunday to-day, with its hst
of parcels, all of which I think have arrived, except
the parcel of socks for the men, which was not sent
by post. Officers' parcels are fairly safe, but I notice
when the men open their parcels they have often
been broken on the way, and in their letters they
constantly complain that parcels have never reached
them. It's a dirty shame, but it seems to be the rule
71
out here that the farther a man is from the fighting
line, and the less hardship he has, the worse does he
behave, and the more does he grumble. Our trans-
port were quite indignant the other night, when we
came back from the trenches, at being kept awake
after ten p.m., whereas none of us had had a long
sleep for five days. This has been a wretched day,
very cold, with rain and wind from the north-east.
We paraded twice for a route march, but both times
the rain sent us back, so I have done nothing except
inspect rifles, bayonets, and ammunition — a daily
task — and lecture to my N.C.O.'s on the way to read
a map. Some of them do not even know how to find
the North star ; not that that matters in the least
just now, but it might make a lot of difference in a con-
fused night attack ; and in these days you can never
be sure that an officer will be left to direct them. We
shall have to turn out to-night and march down
again towards the trenches to dig for some hours ;
rather a hopeless task, for this rain will have made
the mud like glue again, and the communication
trench, which we were clearing out, is sure to be
flooded. We are in the usual farm, with the usual
midden in the middle of the court-yard ; there is a
big dog there too, chained to his barrel, who is
having the feast of his life on scraps of bully beef.
All these French farms have a wheel outside, in
which the dog runs round and round, pumping water
72
or working a hand-mill. I could never make out
how the wheel worked at first, for it seems to be a
dog's holiday just now. The old farmer, with whom
I had such a violent argument in our last billet about
cows and horses, gave me a ' hurl ' along the road
to-day ; I was glad to know he bore no malice. He
has a face just like Joseph in any Holy Family by
the old Flemish masters, very honest, but round and
rubicund and ordinary, and he drives about in a
curious conveyance, not much larger than a peram-
bulator with the hood up. I get so used to the
landscape that it's difficult to describe it ; we look
across a mile of ploughed fields to the spires and tall
chimneys of the town. There are ditches and pollard
willows and tall poplars, and the telephone wires
to Brigade Headquarters and the different batteries
run everywhere, on their black and white poles,
and strung from tree to tree. For the guns are all
round about, planted in orchards, or hedges, or
behind sheds, where no one will see the flashes. It's
very difficult to see them even as you pass, and must
be twenty times harder from the air. No one knows
how many there are, for they come and depart like
woodcocks in the night. But there is always some
firing going on ; the smaller shells make a noise
like a loose stone sliding down a scree as they go
through the air, but the bigger ones are more like
a train in the distance. The men call every German
73
shell a Jack Johnson, but as yet I have had no
experience of the real Jack Johnson, the heavy
howitzer shell of sixty pounds or more which Tom
had every day on the Aisne. In fact, none of us who
come out now in the spring will ever know what those
autumn and winter months were like, when we were
always fighting against heavy odds, both in men
and guns ; and there are few enough left to tell ; but
it is those men and their traditions who have really
won at Neuve Chapelle, and will win again in these
coming months. When I see these long lists of
names, I like to think that they are more recruits for
the greatest army of all, which is worth far more to
the men still fighting here, than any reinforcements
in flesh and blood ; an army which is above all the
chances of war, and never comes up too late. I hope
we reservists and men of the new army have the
same spirit ; if we haven't, neither three nor thirty
millions of us are much use.
Billets : March 27, 1915.
I'm glad to think that you are at Rhuveag,
for you lost your hohday last autumn, and it is a
long time since you were away, ... I am sending
you some photos which Tyson took at the base ;
they are on a very small scale, and not very clear,
but they will give you an idea of our wintry weather
74
there. A month has not made much difference
in temperature, for there have been snow showers
to-day — ^how often have we had to shelter from
them behind a stone dyke when fishing in Easter
hohdays ! —but this keen north wind is drying up
the ground again. We had a short route march
this morning, with one piper for the company.
It's difficult to get along the roads, the strip of firm
ground, or pave, is so narrow ; then on either side
is a yard or two of hopeless mud, and then a deep
slimy ditch ; and, of course, supply wagons, artillery
horses, A.S.C., and odds and ends from various
regiments are all trying to get along at the same
time. Most of the infantry now wear the soft
' Gor'bli'me ' hat which looks horrid, but does not
give such a mark as the flat-topped ' Brodrick.'
Then I have been practising with my revolver,
and then had a cross-country walk with Tyson,
past a lot of ramshackle, picturesque old farms,
with the British soldier in his shirt sleeves to
complete the picture. The soil here is extra-
ordinary — I have never seen a stone yet — and it
must give tremendous crops. All the farmers are
ploughing and sowing as usual, and, strange to say,
they all seem to have plenty of fine strong horses.
I should have thought that the Germans would
have taken them all, or, failing that, the French
miUtary authorities ; but here they still are, as if
75
there was no firing line a mile and a half away.
Yesterday afternoon I went into the town, to a
theatre ! The 2nd Division keep a troop of Follies,
who perform daily, with two French girls to help
them. They are really very good, songs and stories,
step-dancing and so on for a couple of hours. The
male performers are of course soldiers, but I think
they are struck off their other duties, and certainly
they deserve to be, for they do good work in keeping
everybody cheerful. All leave here is stopped at
present, but this third corps is still very quiet. You
get so used to thinking of 400 yards as a consider-
able advance that it is strange to think that a man
could walk the whole length of the British front
in one day. I wish I could get the chance to do it.
All cameras have to be sent home now, so Fm
afraid I shall get no more photos. If they would
only trust you to take nothing which could do any
harm, you might get a lot of interesting things.
I suppose the daffodils at Rhuveag are not out
yet, but I hope you will have sunshine.
Billets : March 28, 1915.
I had your p.c. this morning, written just before
leaving for Rhuveag, also the pamphlets ; as you
supposed, prophecies don't interest me very much,
but I shall hand them over to the men to-morrow
76
in the trenches ; the other two I have not had time
to read yet. We go back into the same trenches
to-night ; it's very cold still, but dry, and that
makes all the difference. This morning I had a walk
instead of going to church parade, along the banks
of the river Lys ; it was a marvellously clear day ;
all the red-tiled roofs of the farms were shining in
the sun, and I could just see a hill in the far distance
with a chapel on the top of it. There is really
nothing to stop you from walking for 20 miles,
except the fear that an order to reinforce the
trenches might possibly come in your absence.
Being Palm Sunday, the French people were carrying
about sprays of something green ; it looked like
box, I see that many of the khaki scarves which
Sister Susie knitted are now adorning Sczur
Suzanne ; also all the little French boys are wearing
khaki puttees ; and I think every French family
in the north of France has been living on British
jam and 'boulibif.' I am sending home a Wyke-
hamist ; there have been a great many in the lists
lately whom I knew at Winchester. I heard a
good deal about the earlier fighting last night from
an officer in this battalion who came out in August
' as a private in the Scots Guards, and before the
end of January had got a D.C.M., a D.S.O., and a
I commission ; he had also commanded his regiment
for thirteen days — rather an amazing career ; now
he finds this part of the line unbearably quiet, and
no wonder, after what he describes of Ypres and
La Bassee. Well, this is a short letter, but we are
all packing up again, and just remembering all the
things we meant to do this time in billets. Much
love.
Trenches : March 29, 1915.
This war makes one realise more and more that
men are not good enough yet for universal peace ;
pacificists tell you that ' man should not add
unnecessarily to the suffering of man ' ; when he
has learnt not to do it in his daily life, he may be
able to refrain from doing it in war, but not till
then. It was very cold indeed last night, moon-
hght gUnting on the frozen pools, and at 4.30, as
the dawn came up, there was that curious effect
of dayHght fighting with moonlight, which makes
everything look so weird. To-day there is glorious
sunshine ; one of those days when the light seems
definitely white, and even the sky is dazzling to
the eyes. We are very comfortable again in the
same bit of trench ; Sonia the cat is still here.
The guns have been busy this afternoon, and the
Germans have given us a few bursts of shrapnel,
but otherwise there is no change. I am starting
to read ' The Mill on the Floss,' the third time I
78
have started it, I think ; this time I shall finish it.
Have also read Prof. Cramb's lectures on Germany.
I think a lot of what he says about the Germans
is very true — ^some of them have a sort of idea
that they will first conquer the world, and then
impose upon it the blessings of German thought,
and a new religion which has shaken off the mis-
taken Christian ideas about charity, and love,
and mercy for the weak. That is one sect ; and
there is another which believes that it would
be a kindness to this poor distracted world to
introduce Prussian system and method into it.
Fortunately, the thing can't be done.
Trenches : March 30, 1915.
I got the nasturtium seeds last night, but the
nights are so very cold just now, that I shall just
wait to put them in. We have bright sunshine
all day, but the ice is thick in all the abandoned
flooded trenches in the shade. They suddenly
began to shell us last night, and stopped equally
suddenly when our guns replied. It's rather a fine
sight at night ; first there is the flash of the guns,
then the wicked whistling of the shells, usually
three or four in a bunch together, and another
flash as they explode, and then the patter of the
bullets and lumps of earth. But unless the shrapnel
79
happens to catch working parties in the open,
it's very harmless. I read Christabel Pankhurst's
speech, which I thought good, and part of Prof.
Mackail's lecture about Russia, though I think one
learns very little from the appreciation of a whole
nation compressed into twenty pages ; it's apt to
be a hurried catalogue of names, and I think one
of Tolstoi's short stories will teach you more about
Russia. There must be something very attractive
about the Russian peasant, and Russia must have
such vast reservoirs of energy still untapped.
Whenever I get a chance to travel, I want to go
there.
I have just been crawling up the communication
trench to the orchard which lies behind us ; the
trees are in no hurry to bud, but the grass is growing
very long and green. There are some scattered
graves there, as there are everywhere up and down
the roads and footpaths. I think the French
people will look after them, but many of course are
nameless, and unmarked. Here is another photo,
one of Bankier's, and if I can get prints, he has some
very good ones of men in the trenches. An order
came round that all cameras were to be sent home ;
just after they had all gone off came a counter-
order, to say that they might be kept, to the great
annoyance of everyone who had packed and posted
bis camera. So I think that when you go back,
8o
you might post me our common camera, and if
we are still here, I will see what I can do with it.
I have been learning the ways of the machine-guns ;
they seem to use them more and more in this war,
and it gives me something to do in the day.
April I is the anniversary of Bismarck's birthday,
so perhaps the Germans wdll make a special effort
then ; they seem almost superstitious about these
festivals, like the Kaiser's birthday, and the great
days of 1870.
Trenches : March 31, 191 5.
Really there is no news at all, except that our
trench cat is going to have kittens, and that is more
interesting to the cat than to anybody else. I have
just been lying in the orchard behind, trying to
make a sketch of one of the old farms, very un-
successful, but I send it, for it may give you some
idea of what shell-fire can do. No troops have
occupied the farm for a long time, for it had been
well wrecked in October; but about Christmas
time the Germans fetched up a thing called a
Minen Werfer, a kind of trench mortar which throws
600 lb. of gun cotton. They made a target of
the farm — there are huge holes all round about, full
of water, deep enough to drown a man— and I
beHeve the noise was terrible. Now the walls are
8i
loopholed, and all the entrances and windows
sandbagged, so that we could still make a stand
there, if we were driven from our trenches. The
courtyard inside is all strewn with wreckage — broken
wagons, wheels, scraps of clothing, tiles from the
roof — yet it must have been such a fine old farm,
with a carved and panelled dining-room, and a
moat almost all round it. A kingfisher flew up
the moat as I lay beside it this afternoon, so that
I expect there are fish in it. I found a hollow in
the ground where I could wriggle along through
the orchard, out of view of the sniper. There are a
lot of cherry trees which look as if they would
blossom before very long, and it was nice to get
away from our muddy trench, and lie on clean
grass in the sun ; no flowers yet except daisies and
celandines. Almost all the trees have had branches
broken off by shells or bullets, but the tree under
which I lay was a walnut, so perhaps the breaking
will serve instead of a beating, and do it all the
good in the world. An aeroplane went over very
early this morning before it was light, dropping
coloured lights as it went. I expect it was one of
our own, off to raid some railway station or supply
depot at daybreak. The nights are so clear while
this full moon lasts that I expect they can steer
by night almost as well as by day. Your first
postcard from Rhuveag came yesterday, and I
82
was glad to hear of the sunshine. I can imagine
how pretty the loch will be looking, for snow always
makes the hills seem higher. Here the only hill
is a low ridge about two miles in front. We were
on it for a few days in October. Then a French
cyclist battalion suddenly jumped on their bikes
and rode away without telling anyone, lea\ing our
flank exposed ; so we retreated, thinking it was
only a temporary retirement till supports came up,
and we have been looking at that ridge for four
months now without getting any nearer to it. Their
big guns are all in shelter behind it ; I think they
have at least four separate lines, all heavily wired.
To-night when it gets dark, I shall have a planting
of nasturtiums ; the men have found a potato pit
just behind which gives them great joy; they cook
potatoes all day and all night. Much love.
Trenches : April 2, 19 15.
We should have been relieved to-day, but plans
are changed again, and we shall be here at least
three days longer ; however, nobody minds that
very much if it still keeps sunny and dry. I have
been out in the orchard again, and have started a
garden \nth a clump of sweet violets which I found
gro\ving on the bank of an old flooded trench. Two
blue things caught my eye together — one was the
83
clump of violets, the other was what appeared to
be a whole German shrapnel shell — so I jumped
across the trench, and immediately fell into water
up to my waist ; however, I got the violets, and also
the shell, which turned out to be only half the
casing, and now I have got the violets planted in
it and set outside the dug-out, and this pleases the
Jocks very much. The whole orchard is full of
sphnters of shell. I picked up the fuse of one
yesterday which I will post home to you. In fact,
the place reminds me of what I used to read about
the Chateau of Hougoumont at Waterloo — ^the
same shattered fruit trees and blackened loop-
holed walls, with raw bullet marks in the bricks,
and gashes showing white on the branches — only I
never thought I should see such a place myself,
and perhaps I shall yet have to defend it.
Bismarck's birthday passed off very quietly
indeed — perhaps even the Germans are not so fond
of ' blood and iron ' as they were— but I hear that
their heavy guns shelled our old billets away behind
us, without doing any damage. One of the forward
observing officers of the artillery lives in the trench
beside us and messes with us — different officers come
down, but the one I like best is a ranker, and a
very smart fellow and quite young too. I know
they have promoted a great many since the war
began, and quite right too, for I don't believe j^ou
G2
84
can manufacture a gunnery expert very easily or
quickly.
Mother's letter last night, posted on the 29th,
made me see Rhuveag very vividly, as it looks
in early spring.
Now that the weather is warmer the government
issue of rum is to be stopped ! That, as you can
imagine, is a bitter disappointment to all ' the boys
of the old brigade,' and the empty rum jars are
now set about the trenches adorned with crosses
' in loving memory.' But in dry weather every-
one is in better spirits ; the different trenches get
names — Cowgate, Gallowgate and so forth — and
there is a notice up prohibiting fishing in the ditch
which divides us from the next company. Artists
and clay modellers also appear.
The Germans put up a large notice one night,
' Come on, boys, we're ready for you,' but one of
our men crawled out after dark and brought it in
successfully. They also draw the snipers by putting
a turnip on the parapet with a Glengarry bonnet
on it !
Trenches : April 4, 1915.
We are to be relieved this evening, though I
think it unlikely that we shall have a full five days'
rest. Everything is still very quiet here, except
85
for a little shrapnel at breakfast time. It was a
very wet night, and the soil is such that an hour's
rain makes the mud as slippery as ever, but this is
a fine growing day, and the trees will soon be in leaf.
It will make it easier to conceal operations from the
aeroplanes. That, however, is rather against us,
for here, at any rate, we hardly ever see a German
plane, though there are plenty of our own.
I am writing from an orchard, to which I have
escaped again ; a pair of wood pigeons are busy with
their nest in the fork of one of the trees. I hope a
stray bullet will not put an end to their nursery, for
they must have plenty near enough to them.
The rum issue is stopped now that the weather
is warmer ; a good thing too, I think, for some of the
men thought of nothing else from morning to night.
I was amused by an old Irishman in my platoon,
who wrote, ' Give the minister my compliments,
and tell him to stik to his flok, and I will stik to
mine, but if the elders wish to dish out hot tea to the
troops, let them come out to the firing Hne and do it.'
The Germans are now reported by prisoners to
have rows of iron bottles behind their lines, in places,
full of asphyxiating gas ; they will wait for a favour-
able wind, and then pioneers with special respirators
will open them ; we are in no danger here, for we are
too far away, and I don't expect they will be very
successful in any case ; but I need hardly say that
86
the inventor has been promoted. They send over
rifle grenades occasionally, bombs on a brass rod,
fired from an old rifle ; they make a hellish noise,
very suddenly, for you can't hear them coming, but
they do very little damage.
I hope you wall send out that camera, so that
I can take some photos before they change the rule
again.
I had quite forgotten this was Easter Sunday —
there is little enough to remind you of it here — but I
hope you had dry roads for your drive to Callander.
Billets : April 5, 1915.
The whole day, from morning to night, it has
rained steadily ; it doesn't matter so much now
that we are back in billets, but it makes it very diffi-
cult to get the walking to which I had been looking
forward. I have an upstairs room in a small house,
to which I climb by a staircase as steep as a hen-
ladder, but for once I have a bed to sleep on, a rare
luxury. All the officers are messing together this
time, in the usual long dining-room of a big farm-
house. I like these old farms ; they are well designed
to shelter man and beast, both in patriarchal
numbers, and the rooms are well proportioned. But,
unfortunately, the present generation paints the
wooden panelling, and then pastes a cheap wall-
%7
paper on top of that. There are two or three glass
cases protecting dusty, dingy bunches of artificial
flowers ; a wonderful thermometer and barometer
combined, which gives you the temperature Reaumur
and Centigrade, neither of which scales mean any-
thing to me till I have translated them laboriously
into Fahrenheit ; however, the thermometers also
record the correct heat for ' bains ' and for ' chambres
des invalides,' as well as the degrees of cold at Lille
in 1738, and other invaluable records of the kind.
Then there are various pious prints on the walls,
coloured and terrible, and framed certificates of the
family's first communions, souvenirs precieux d, bon
Chretien, side by side with portraits of deceased
bishops. This part of France is still very Catholic ;
every room has a crucifix in it. Perhaps though, the
enlarged photographs on the walls are most charac-
teristic — ^they are very well done— typical of the
French farmers and their wives, solid, sober people ;
a httle mean and suspicious of strangers at first,
but honest and imperturbable. Both in face and
character they are utterly unlike the traditional
Frenchman as he is known in England ; still more
unHke the popular idea of the French woman. But
they make it easier to understand how France has
been and remains a great country, whatever a Paris
mob may do in a revolution. Of course the middle
and southern France must be quite different.
88
they supply the new ideas and enthusiasms, and these
northerns bring the pendulum back again ; that, at
least, is how I imagine it. I have been for a walk
in pouring rain with Tyson ; very Httle to see, for
the clouds were low, and there were only muddy
horses and men on the roads, and farms usually with
shell-holes in their roofs. But they will soon mend
everything when the war is over, and if I were a
Frenchman, I should feel as if I was scoring off the
Boches by running up a new house, planting new
trees in the orchards, and filling up the pits where
the shells have burst. That part of the damage of
war seems so easily repaired. Some kind friend
has sent me a pocket Homer this morning. I don't
know who it is, but it is a pleasant thing to have in
one's pocket. At the moment, of course, it seems
absurd to be able to read Greek at sight but not
German. Still, it is my own fault that I can't read
both ; newspaper articles I can just manage ; they
always seem to me just the same in any language.
We are sitting in a very hot smoky room, with a
gramophone going all the time, so I will finish this
rather professorial letter.
Billets : April 6, 1915.
I have actually been to a new place to-day,
a village about five miles off, to which I marched
89
100 men for baths. It was a nice, fresh, sunny
morning, and we had a piper to bring the French
women and children to their doors to see us pass.
Mud and muddy khaki everywhere, paved roads,
poplars, and the usual square farms, with the evil
smelling moats round about them. Some of them
are regular fortresses, with gatehouses guarding
the only way in, and narrow slits of windows
hanging over the water ; but, of course, a brick wall
is worse than paper against modem artillery ; it
doesn't keep the shells out, and it makes more
splinters when they burst. The baths were in a
factory for bleaching and printing cotton, great
wooden vats, in which, I suppose, they soaked the
stuff or boiled the dyes. Now it is a Rest Depot
for the 6th Division, full of Red Cross stores and
ambulances. We had to keep the men well under
cover, in case of aeroplanes, but they enjoyed their
baths ; and I had one too. We picked up a very
large lame dog there, who insisted on coming the
whole five miles back with us, in spite of a very sore
foot ; some of the men might learn by his example.
There was a most forlorn row of graves there, in
among the factory buildings, just a few wooden
crosses outside a drying shed. Somehow it seemed
a very comfortless place to put them. But out here
you see very much more clearly that it really does
not matter a bit what happens to a man's body.
90
and I think perhaps all the ceremony of a funeral
gives it too much importance. These wooden
crosses will not stand the weather long, and now
I believe the government are to send out iron
crosses in their place ; very different from the
Kaiser's, but perhaps better earned. The road
was bristling with sentries outside all the different
billets, rather a nuisance, for it means calling the
men to attention every time you pass them, and
giving 'eyes right' or 'left.' The Staff, too, in
their motors are a great trouble to the humble
infantry. I got a sniff of bog-myrtle from your
letter this morning.
Billets : April 7, 1915.
This has been another rather wet day, and I
have done nothing except go for a short march in
the morning, and a short walk this evening. The
rain had cleared off, and there was a fine sunset in
a stormy sky, which lit up miles and miles of country.
We are on a slight ridge here, so that we can see
the German ridge plainly about three miles away,
and the trenches are in between. Everything
was washed very clean after the rain, and the new
corn is sprouting very fast in these endless, flat,
ploughed fields. I notice that they are breaking up
a lot of grass this year, which has been untouched
91
for years ; high prices for wheat have done that,
I suppose, or else the lack of stock. I know that
there are twenty-three dead cows in one field behind
our lines, a problem for the sanitary authorities,
since no one can get near them to bury them. I
passed by one rather attraxtive house, not half a
mile from here. I suppose it would have been
called a chateau, for it stands surrounded by a
moat, a long building of two stories, with rows of
high French windows, and a sort of terraced garden
behind the moat, on to which the row of lower
windows opened. There is only one entrance across
the moat, . a high white gateway, with a crucifix
let into the gable above the keystone of the arch.
Behind was an older house, now a farm, also
surrounded with a moat, with a high peaked roof,
and a little belfry. There was a large cross in white
tiles let into the red-tiled roof ; many of the farms
have these crosses on their eastern side ; that is,
the side the shells come from, so there often is a
great hole through them. The chateau itself was
wrecked, for it stands just behind the village, of
which I'm sending you some photos ; please keep
them carefully. Even the orchard was full of great
scars, where the shells had broken up the turf,
and many of the trees had been purposely cut
through, and then held in their places by wires.
So that, if we ever found it necessary to fall back.
92
they might be swept away in a moment to aear a
field of fire from the chateau windows and the
trenches beside it. I know nothing at all about
Kitchener's army, much less probably than you do
at home. But I have seen guns which will give
Ally-man an Easter egg some fine morning big enough
to surprise him. We go into the trenches again
to-morrow night. I think the men prefer it now
in fine weather, and I shouldn't mind either, if I
could get more exercise.
Trenches : April 9, 1915.
We are back in the place where I got my first
introduction to the trenches, but I would hardly
recognise it now, for a month's work has altered
it entirely. The breastwork is finished, and we are
no longer holding islands in the old flooded trenches
in front. I have a very respectable house too,
with a raised bed of planks and straw, and we can
move about in cover where we please, even by
daytime. All the same, I would rather be in our
last trenches. Our heavy batteries have been very
busy to-day, but that doesn't really concern us
in the firing line, for they drop their shells two or
three miles beyond us. The sniping for some
reason is very much less, in fact last night there
was hardly a shot, and their machine-guns were
93
silent. To-day we have had fierce hailstorms at
intervals, great blue-black clouds driving up all of
a sudden, just as they do in Scotland every April.
But though they make the surface sticky, the water
is steadily sinking. I forgot to tell you that in our
last trenches one man spotted a hare sitting in a
field behind us ; he knocked it over at 130 yards
and in an hour it was soup. ... I lost my field-
glasses last night, but they were picked up in the
mud later. It's very odd that they should have
unstrapped their leather case, but since they have
come back, I must just assume that they managed
it.
Trenches : April 10, 191 5.
The last twenty-four hours have really been a
blank — the usual rounds at night, visiting sentries,
the usual slipping and stumbling over abandoned
trenches and mud-holes in the dark, the usual stand
to arms at daybreak, and then sleep.
The Germans are still very quiet opposite,
except for search-hghts and star-shells at night —
they bring up the search-light on a motor wagon,
I think; at any rate, it appears in very different
places. It's still cold and showery, but the hedges
are getting greener steadily, and soon the trees
will begin too. We have only wide muddy fields
94
behind us here, so that there's no attraction in
wandering about by day.
I, too, have been thinking of other Easter
hoHdays, especially of Florence as I saw it in spring,
and Athens. Spring in these southern countries
is delightful — for you have the excitement of seeing
new people and places, as well as a new clothing
for the country. And I liked Torhousemuir very
much too, and can remember very well the night
when I cried myself to sleep. You were asking
why it was — and it's a strange coincidence that you
should ask me now, and that I should write and
tell you from the trenches. Someone had been
talking about what I was going to be, and it was
suggested that I should be a soldier, but you said
that ' Bey would never be a soldier, for he was not
that sort,' and I took it as a great insult — but you
were quite right, for it's not really a profession which
suits me very well, though I am very glad to be an
amateur soldier now. No doubt the reason why
children enjoy themselves so much is that they
feel things so intensely, and throw themselves
completely into whatever they are doing. I always
approve very much of the place at the beginning
of the ' Inferno,' where the people who had the
medieval vice of ' acedia ' were stung with wasps and
hornets as a punishment because they didn't really
care about anything. Here are Gwen's letters ;
95
she has never had a touch of that vice, and that is
why everyone hkes her so much.
Trenches : April 12, 1915.
To-day we have been sitting outside our dug-
outs basking in the sun hke flies, and there has
been a big hatch of March-browns which has made
me think of fishing. It was very quiet too, so that
I think the Frenchman might have said again, as
he said of the charge of the Light Brigade, ' C'est
magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre,' especially
when the French are fighting so hard away to the
south, and having a Neuve Chapelle almost every
day, without shouting so much about it. . . .
We should be relieved again to-morrow night,
and go back into billets ; hare-stalking is the only
sport in the trenches ; I have not gone in for it
yet, but one fellow has bagged two with his
revolver ; rather rough on the hares perhaps, for
they are all playing about in couples. Send me
a few yards of fishing-line, and some small single
hooks ; I'm sure I shall find some kind of fish in
the moats round these farmhouses ; at any rate, I
can fish in hope, and if you can get me a pocket
microscope, it would be a toy for the trenches when
there is so little to do. I wish we could hear some
more news from the Dardanelles.
96
Trenches : April 13, 1915.
We have some more Territorials in the trenches
with us for instruction. I never saw a happier
kind of school-treat. They had a nice mild night,
dry, and not too dark, so that they could avoid
the pitfalls. I think they would all have liked to
be sentries, or go out for patrols in front of the
wire ; this morning they were all squibbing off
their rifles, just for the pleasure of writing home
to say they had had a shot at a German, and
they were far too excited to go to sleep. Their
enthusiasm will soon wear off, I'm afraid, but it's
quite refreshing to see it. Several divisions of them
have come out lately, and I think they will do very
well, for they are all very keen, and a good stamp
of man, better even than the new army, I should
think. The camera came last night, a very neat
present, and I shall try to get some photos with it
before I have to send it home. . . . But I don't
expect to get any very startling pictures, for I have
no experience with these small films, and there is
nothing very exciting to snap just here at present.
We are to be relieved to-night, and go back to
the same billets, I believe, where we shall have a full
mess again ; subalterns keep on arriving, some from
the Artists' Rifles out here, so that if Sholto doesn't
get out soon, he may have to wait till the ranks are
97
thinned again ; now that the dry weather is coming,
many of those who went home sick in winter will
turn up again, and many of the wounded must have
recovered now too. . . .
I see a gleam of sun, so I shall get out the
camera. I have just taken one of my bomb-thrower,
with a long-handled bomb, and a most ferocious
expression ; he's a funny old Irishman, who used to
be in the Camerons out at Tientsin, and now his
brother in the Black Watch has got a D.C.M., and
he is very keen to do the same. Our heavy guns
have just been blowing some houses to pieces
behind the German lines ; it was high time, for
I know they used to snipe us from the windows,
and keep machine-guns there. It's quite windless,
and it makes one think of tennis.
Billets : April 14, 1915.
Did we spend your birthday in Athens four years
ago ? or was it on the way to Constantinople ? I'm
sorry Venizelos could not persuade the King of
Greece to join us, but I think very likely Greece may
come in yet, possibly without a King, but with
Venizelos president. We are back in billets again,
the same billets, and I have had a bath this morning,
and must spend this afternoon waiting about while
the other subalterns in the company go and do
98
likewise. The town was looking as deserted as
usual, except for khaki. . . . All the men want
their photographs taken, so that they may send
them home, and they pose wdth bombs in their
hands, and rifles at their shoulders, so that the
friends may be terrified, and suitably impressed.
The trees and hedges are getting greener every day,
but it is rather a cold late spring, it seems to me,
seeing that we are as far south as the south of Eng-
land, and in the ' charmant pays de France.' I have
just been into a house where some of my men are
billeted, and seen an old woman, who looks like a
witch, making a decoction of black currant twigs
over the fire ; I wonder what she is going to use
them for. I did a great deal of solemn saluting
this morning, with French postmen and policemen.
There is something very comic about French officials ;
for instance, a notice just outside this house, ' Regie-
mentation concernant les Pigeons voyageurs,' which
insists that they shall be provided with ' bagues de
naissance ' on their legs. I got a copy of the Matin
to-day ; very little in it, except another instalment of
their serial, ' La fille du Bosche,' which I always
enjoy. Well, next year we shall have to have a
wonderful birthday party to make up for all this.
I think we shall be home by Christmas time, but
I don't think very much before that, unless for a few
days' leave.
99
Billets : April 15, 1915.
Well, I narrowly escaped a court-martial last
night, for in the evening , after dinner, I walked back
to our field ambulance station, a mile and a half
away, with the doctor, who was going to inquire
about some cases he had sent down to hospital.
Luckily I had told Clark I was going, for, as luck had
it, there was an alarm of sorts before I got back, and
everyone tumbled out and stood to arms, expecting
to move off at any minute. It v/as only a test alarm,
I think, to see if we were ready, but things would
have been, very unpleasant for me if they had moved
before I got back. As it was, I enjoyed the walk
very much under brilliant stars, very peaceful,
hardly a sound of war ; but, of course, you can see
the star-shells up and down the line in the distance,
and the beams of the German search-lights sweeping
across the sky. The doctor is a Cambridge man,
and a very clever lung specialist, I believe, when he
is at home. To-day was real spring, without any nip
in the air, for the first time ; there was a heavy morn-
ing mist when I started off for a route march, but it
soon blew off the ploughed land. We only went
about four miles, for we can't go far from the brigade
area. In the afternoon I had just to be a loafer, for
others were going to bath and ride ; but I escaped
again in the evening to my old ruined chateau, where
H 2
100
I noted one or two places for the camera, but the sun
was too low last night to let me try them then.
There are some peach and plum trees in blossom,
but the main orchard is not so far advanced. There
are, at any rate, fish the size of sticklebacks in the
moat, for I have seen them, so there may be some-
thing larger.
A German aeroplane appeared in the distance
during the day, so all the footballers lay flat and still,
while the anti-aircraft gun gave it a few rounds, and
it disappeared. We are always afraid that it might
occur to them to shell this row of houses. Earlier
in the day I watched a battery of our own field
guns firing. You see the flash, and a puff of bright
green smoke, and then the whole gun recoils more
than a yard on its spring mountings, and slips into
position again. It looks so very quiet and easy till
you hear the roar, which is not, of course, till a
second or two afterwards. These small field guns
make a big noise, especially if you are more or less
in front of them ; the howitzers give a bigger vibra-
tion and rattle the doors and windows, but since
their muzzle is pointing higher, they don't seem to
crack in your ear as the others do. Everyone is
talking of making a cricket pitch. I have finished
this letter in bed, morning of the i6th, and thefe i§
every promise of a fine warmMay.
10 1
Billets : April 17, 1915.
This was a quiet day along the front of the 19th
Brigade, without any ' substantial progress ' or
' notable advance ' to record, but I suppose we may
say we have ' maintained and consolidated our
position.' It amuses me to notice how Sir J. French
has refused persistently to publish reports unless it
pleases him. Parliament extracted from him a
reluctant promise that he would publish a bulletin
twice a week, but when he can't be bothered to send
anything, he just says he will send none, as there is
nothing to report. As you will see from his dispatch
about Neuve Chapelle, some of our generals have not
done all that was expected of them ; no blame to the
man personally, for no doubt he does his best, but a
general gets so much credit when things go well
that he must take the blame too. I spent the morn-
ing throwing dummy bombs with my platoon ; that
is most important in these days, for it's the only
way of clearing these deep German trenches, when
you get hold of a piece of them. It's curious how
this war has brought back into use many devices
which were thought obsolete — mortars, for instance,
of Crimean pattern ; breastworks instead of trenches,
also a Crimean trick ; grenades and grenadiers ; and
though I always thought jackboots absurdly big and
heavy, I now see that I might have known, that
102
Marlborough and his men knew what it was to go
through a campaign in Flemish mud ; soon, I believe,
we shall have something very like the Roman catapult
for slinging bombs from trench to trench ; it has the
advantage over every kind of powder that it makes
no noise, and so you can't switch a battery on to
it and knock it out. This afternoon we spent
at a thirty yards range, doing musketry practice ;
curious to be shooting at cardboard targets when
there are living ones only a mile and a half away.
I am just off with a digging party, and shan't be in
till midnight, so good-night.
Billets : April i8, 191 5.
My letters lately have been rather short and dull,
I'm afraid ; when I have seen anything new, or have
anything interesting to say, I can write, no matter
what is going on beside me, but when, as always
happens nowadays, I have to spin a letter out of
nothing, it's impossible to write properly in the
mess, and my bedroom hasn't got a table. How-
ever, this morning I have escaped to a sunny bank
in the orchard just outside our old headquarters farm.
There's just a little breeze, but hardly a cloud in the
sky, so that daisies, dandelions, and celandines are all
wide-eyed to the sun, and the buds on the cherry
trees will not be able to keep shut much longer.
103
I didn't write at all yesterday, for I had a couple
of other letters overdue, and in the evening we had
a concert. It was rather a curious scene ; they laid
down faggots in rows on the midden in the court-
yard, so that the men might sit there, along with the
hens, cows, pigs, and horses, and they stood round
three sides of the yard too, leaning against the walls
under the eaves. Then on the fourth side, which was
rather a higher platform, there was a piano, a space
for the artistes, and chairs for the officers. It was
not a very good concert, for the piano could hardly
be persuaded to make any sounds at all, and no one
quite knew whether they might cheer or clap as loud
as they liked, incase somehow the Germans should get
to know, and drop a shell among us ; but it was a
beautiful clear night, with a very young moon hang-
ing in the branches of a tree just above the steep barn
roof. Clark sang, and I think the men would have
liked to give him a rousing welcome, for he is very
popular, and his new ribbon for his military cross
has just appeared, but, as I say, everyone was shy
of shouting too loud ; the voices sounded rather thin
in the open air, as they always do, but I think
everyone enjoyed it in spite of the cold, and there
must have been five hundred men sitting there in
rows. . . .
This morning I walked over to Church of England
service in the yard of a very old farm, which you
104
reached through a gatehouse and a bridge over a
moat, but the chaplain was almost too jocular and
familiar. I believe that's a mistake even for the
men, for they can quite understand a man who is
serious, and don't expect a chaplain to smack them
on the back, during service at any rate. To-night
we are for the trenches again, B company in reserve,
all except one platoon, which is mine, so that I,
like Uzziah, am for the forefront, though not, I
hope, for the same reasons, and I don't suspect
anyone of King David's motives. However, I shall
have an interesting place on the flank of the battalion,
joining on to the next brigade a bit of our line
which I have not seen before. I must try and get
some photos. . . .
Trenches : April 20, 191 5.
We have rather a strenuous time at present,
so that I did not write yesterday. It's not that
there is much firing, for, on the whole, we are very
quiet. But there is a new trench and breastwork
in this particular corner which needs to be finished,
so that we are kept busy most of the day and night,
digging, filling sand-bags, putting up hurdles and
piling earth between them, setting barb wire along
the front, and carrying sacks full of bricks for
paving the muddy places in the bottom of the
105
trench. But there always remains the morning
from 4.30 till 2 for sleep, so that there's no real
hardship in working the rest of the day.
My flank rests on a railway across which we
cannot build a breastwork, for it is always shelled,
so we have to tunnel underneath, and then we
get down into the water, which complicates things ;
but the weather is dry, and yesterday there was
sunshine, and a windless, cloudless sky from dawn
till sunset. There is another orchard behind, where
the trees have been severely pruned by shell-fire,
and a lot of ruined houses from which we fetch the
bricks ; also we have a stream of running water,
which is a rarity in this countryside, though, running
as it does from the Boches to us, I don't trust its
waters to be so fresh as they look. They used to
send bottles down it with messages in them, but
that was in the days following the Christmas truce
when the Saxons were opposite. I rather think
we have Saxons against us now, but there are
Bavarians not very far away, and they have a
reputation as bad as the Prussians. The Saxons
shoot very little, and are always shouting across.
We have a fine mess-room, plenty of space to stand
upright. But when we were sitting there last
night, there was a sudden sh-sh-sh and a shell burst
just in front, so near that flying pieces or lumps of
earth pattered on the roof. You forget all about
io6
the guns until you hear them, but at any minute,
if the batteries on both sides chose to fire in
earnest, they could make this spot unhappy for
the infantry.
I got your clipping of Lord Rosebery's speech
on Dr. Chalmers. . . . There seems to have been
something about Dr. Chalmers which, more than
anything he actually did, made a tremendous
impression on all the men of his time.
We had a couple of shells beside us to-day, but
they did no damage. It's a most beautiful spring
evening, with all the birds singing very clearly
from the pear trees in the orchard behind us. The
fish-hooks have come, but I have no chance to use
them just at present.
Trenches : April 21, 1915.
We are still enjoying dry trenches and dry feet,
and in a little while we shall have it all paved with
bricks, so that, even if the weather does turn wet, it
will never be so bad again. The aeroplanes, too,
have been enjoying the clear windless weather, and
when they get busy the guns get busy too. We
were shelled twice to-day, but not more than a
dozen shells altogether, and no damage done. This
was rather lucky, for two burst between my fire
trench and reserve trench, in the space of about
107
fifteen yards, and riddled the sand-bags which my
men had just been filling before the first whistle
sent them under cover. You can usually hear these
shells coming in time to get out of the open. They
are not very heavy, only field guns, I think, but
one of my men got a fine brass nosecap from
one, which he is polishing as a souvenir. There has
been very heavy cannonading all day and all night
away to the north lately ; we shall no doubt hear
presently what it is all about. It's a good distance
away, for we can only just hear the guns, but the
northern sky is lit up with their flashes at night.
The colonel, adjutant, and padre all came to lunch in
the trenches to-day, so we gave them a great feast —
roast chicken from tins, spinach, gooseberry pudding,
cheese, beer, cocoa, and liqueurs — and they had two
shells for dessert and excitement, so that I think
they were quite sorry to go away. We do not
always live quite so well in the trenches, but still
we all eat far too much, because there is so little else
to do. I took some photos — one along the railway
line toward the German trenches — ^which I hope will
come out, for I just held it up on the parapet above
my head, and snapped without putting my head up
to see the view-finder. It's a very neat little camera,
and I shall be very sorry to have to send it back.
As I write the sky is full of little puffs of fleecy smoke,
where the anti-aircraft gun is chasing the aeroplanes ;
io8
they hardly ever seem to get very near, but they are
said to have improved vastly in their shooting since
the war started, and even a few shells somewhere
near must make it far more difficult to observe
accurately. Tyson has gone down the line with
fever, or a feverish chill, so I don't suppose I shall
see him again, and I shall miss him, for he, too,
liked a walk, and preferred a walk to the tea-shop
in the town. No word yet of Kitchener's Army in
the field ; I hear that we have taken a German
position to the north, and that repeated counter-
attacks and bombardments on their part have failed.
These successes may not be very big, but they have
a great effect, taken together, on the spirit of our
troops, and also on the Germans. We shall be in
May directly ; time passes very quickly out here,
or, rather, there is nothing particular to mark it, so
that, although it seems a very long time since I left
Sunderland, very little seems to have happened in
the space between. . . .
Trenches ; April 22, 1915.
We still have April sunshine, so that, in spite of
the cold winds and frosty nights, the hawthorn
hedges are quite green, and the desolate cabbages
in among our barbed wire are sprouting vigorously.
We have leeks there too, and every night a party
log
goes out to gather them, so that at all hours of the
day and night there is a fragrant smell of frying leek
from various odd corners. We have been working
hard day and night at these trenches since we came
in, and they are a great deal better now than when
we found them, but there is still plenty to do before
we can think of flower gardens just here. Our air-
men were very busy again to-day ; they take very
little notice of the German shrapnel, but just circle
round and round like great hawks. However, the
Germans fired so many shells at them to-day that
the pieces began to come down all round us, and if
I had taken two sizes larger in boots, I should have
had a shrapnel bullet in my toe. As it is, I have
it in my pocket, and will send it home when we get
into billets again to-morrow. . . . This would be
splendid weather for walking, but I have been
digging lately for exercise, and don't feel quite such
a slug as I was a week ago. ... I wish I had had a
camera at Bedford, and also at the base camp, for
it would have been so interesting to have the pictures
afterwards, but somehow I was too much occupied
at Bedford to think of it. The men have started
playing quoits with the round plates which divide
the layers of bullets inside the case of a shrapnel
shell ; there are a good many lying about, and it
makes quite a a good game for them when they are
well under cover behind a breastwork. , . ,
no
Billets : April 24, 1915.
Your letter arrived an hour ago ; also the parcel
with the writing-pad, which I am now using, and
the cigarettes, one of which I am now smoking, and
the magnifying glass. I'm afraid I keep you very
busy sending parcels, as if I was having a series of
birthdays ; but I wish you would anticipate my real
birthday and send me a new Burberry, lined, for
I have torn my old one all to rags on barbed wires,
rivetting hurdles, tumbling over things in the dark,
and I think that if we do move I shall drop my great-
coat and take a lined Burberry instead. No, we
were not at Hill 60 ; the work there was done by
Tom's old Division, the 5th, and especially by the
K.O.S.B.'s and the R. West Kents, who charged the
hill with the bayonet after our mines exploded, and
then held to it all night. How he would have en-
joyed that if he had been there ! Sir Charles Fer-
gusson, who now commands the Second Army Corps,
has been highly praised, and especially the 13th
Brigade; but probably you will know all this before
you get my letter. When they got to the crest of
the hill, they found that it was used as an artillery
observing post by the Germans, who had massed
forty-five batteries in preparation for an attack on
the 28th of this month, unknown to us ; so we just
took them in time. I learnt this from the fonvard
Ill
observing officer of our batteries in the trenches
yesterday. Of course, all these forty-five batteries
turned on to the hill at once, which accounts for
the tremendous bombardment which had been going
on at intervals night and day for the last five days,
and they must have given our troops a devilish hot
time of it ; all you read in the official report is that
' we consolidated our position through the night in
spite of a heavy bombardment,' which means that
officers and men would be digging like niggers while
heaven and earth were dissolving in fragments all
round them, and whole platoons getting blown into
space by heavy shells, for you can't hope for much
cover on the crest of a hill. For that reason, too,
it will be very difficult to hold the hill now that we
have taken it, but even if we were to lose it now it
would have been well worth it ; but for that I suppose
our front line of trenches would have suffered the
fate of the Germans at Neuve Chapelle on the
morning of the 28th,
The Germans have been bombarding Ypres again,
too, with 42 cm. — 15-in. howitzers — and did a lot of
damage to houses, and the artillery generally has
been rather active, and is blazing away as I write.
Yesterday, about 5.30 p.m., a German 4-2 ho\vitzer
dropped two shells plumb into my trench, but for
some extraordinary reason only gave one corporal
a small scratch in the hand ; one man's pack, which
112
he had taken off, was riddled, and another man
had about six holes through his canteen. Another
corporal standing a few yards from me got a piece
of shell plumb on the breastbone, but it only bruised
him very slightly ; and yet three days before a flying
piece from the same kind of shell hit a steel rail on the
railway beside us and shivered a yard of it to splinters,
which shows what queer things shells are. The
men dug up the nose-pieces of several of them, solid
caps of brass and copper weighing two or three
pounds ; they were so keen to keep them that I did
not like to claim them, but they would have made
fine ink-pots. And no wonder the Germans are
running short of copper if they use so much of it in
one shell ; most of them were dated 1915, and one
had the fine old German name of Simson on it. I
think they were really just registering the range on
that bit of trench because it was newly made, but
certainly they got the range to a T. The shelling kept
me busy at the time when I should have been writing
to you, but otherwise I never miss a day. . . . We
were relieved safely last night, and marched back
into billets, and so far as I know we only lost one man
wounded these last five days, which is less than the
battalion has lost in any spell of trench work since
I came out. We have a communication trench now
across the fields behind, which makes it a great deal
safer ; before that they had a nasty habit of turning
113
their machine-guns on to the roads about 8 p.m.,
and hunting the roads with their search-lights. I
really enjoyed this last spell in the trenches, but it
is always nice to get back into billets, after sleeping
in one's clothes and boots for five days and nights.
For at night we have to sleep, when we lie down at
all, in our equipment too, which means that you
wake up with the butt of your revolver digging into
your ribs, and your kilt somewhere round your neck.
It doesn't matter so much when you go to bed at
one A.M., and stand to arms at 3.15, for then we
sleep in the morning with boots on but equipment
off. However, last night I revelled in my Jaeger
sleeping-bag again, and went to sleep in a pleasant
smell of plum-cake, from Mother's last shirt in the
parcel, which was wrapped round the cake. I never
care to look to see how dirty I am at night, for it's
hopeless to start washing then, and too late to start
hunting if the coverts have to be drawn. But this
morning I walked in to the bath again, and I'm glad
to say that I haven't been much troubled with the
Scots Greys, as the men call them.
I'm afraid that many of the stories about
killing our wounded are quite true. The 3rd
Corps publish a sheet of news every day, which is
circulated all round the different regiments, and a
few days ago it contained an extract, dated back
to December, from the diary of a German offiicer
114
captured by the French. He said : ' The scenes in
the trenches and the fury, not to say bestiaUty, of
our men beating the wounded Enghsh to death
made me quite incapable of attending to my work
for the rest of the day.' At Neuve Chapelle, too,
some horrible things happened, when German
prisoners, who, in the confusion, were left insuffi-
ciently guarded, turned on their escort.
I don't think our men would ever do that sort
- of thing, though I can quite imagine that, if they
had charged across the open and through the barbed
wire, under heavy fire all the time, they might not
be inclined to take prisoners the Germans who put
their hands up at the last minute, after doing as
much damage as they could ; but I don't think they
would ever bayonet the wounded. I remember the
first time I was in the trenches that, when I came
out from my dug-out one morning, a corporal re-
ported to me that they had seen a German working
in the broad daylight in front of the German wire.
I asked if they had fired on him, and they said
no, because they thought he must have been sent
to work there as a punishment, so they wouldn't
shoot him. Yet the Germans won't even allow our
stretcher parties to work. It's impossible to prevent
ignorant soldiers from getting out of hand occasion-
ally, when there are no officers to watch them, but
what I hate is the thought that these devilish
115
cruelties are encouraged by German regimental
officers, and even by their General Staff, as a
deliberate system of war. . . . Would you send
out a set of rope quoits for the men to play with ?
We can fix up pegs for ourselves. . . .
Billets : April 25, 1915.
We have had a very quiet Sunday ; the cannonade
to the north seems to have stopped at last. It was
unfortunate that the French on our flank there had
to give way ; but perhaps the line has now been re-
covered again, and this war is a game on such a vast
scale, that you never know whether what seems a
loss may not be a deliberate move to draw away
attention from some other move elsewhere. I have
done nothing but read and write, and potter round
our billets ; it has been a sunny, cold evening, such
as I often remember at the beginning of cloister
time at Winchester, when enthusiasts in sweaters
tried to persuade themselves that the cricketing
season had really begun. It's really much too fine
to be fighting, it seemed more appropriate in cold
miserable weather ; but the latest German trick of
letting loose poisonous gas on a vast scale makes
one feel less and less scrupulous about fighting them
to the bitter end. There never can be any real
peace in Europe while one nation is convinced that
12
ii6
anything which can possibly gain it an advantage
in war is morally right. Fortunately, I think a lot of
these ingenious tricks will recoil on the inventors ; if
you train soldiers to depend on all sorts of mechanical
assistance, they wdll be lost when the time comes to
depend on themselves alone. Anyway, these stories
make me lose all regret, except the personal one,
for lives lost on our side in this war ; they are
necessary sacrifices for the lives of all the rest, and
for finer principles. Some men, like young Glad-
stone, are fortunate because they can give a name
as well as a life for the cause they believe in. I
can't think who the A. J. R. is in that clipping you
sent me from the Spectator, James Fort's little
poem ; the Wykehamist isn't published in the
holidays, so I haven't had any news from Win-
chester for a long time. . . . They are coming
to lay the tables for dinner, and there is no more
news, real or imaginary, to give you.
Billets : April 25, 1915.
We have a perfect sunny day, with a gentle
north wind which still brought the distant sound of
heavy firing this morning. It has been a big fight
near Ypres, and will be bigger yet perhaps. . . .
I had a long conversation to-day \^dth a Belgian
hairdresser ; he said that before the war Belgium
117
was bitterly divided between the Flemings speaking
Flemish, and the Walloons, who spoke French, for
the Flemings were supposed to be German in sym-
pathies ; but now both parties hate the Germans so
much that they are welded into one. He was of
the opinion that men^must always fight something,
and would be fighting in strike riots if they weren't
at war. Perhaps he's right.
We are going to have a rugger match to-morrow
against the Cameronians ; one way of getting fit. . . .
Billets : April 27, 191 5.
I was down at the range all this morning trjdng
to improve the shooting of the worst shots. I think
most of our men shoot remarkably well, but there
are always one or two who let down the average.
We had something very Uke an easterly haar, but
it cleared off to a hot sunny afternoon, far too hot,
in fact, for our rugger match with the Cameronians,
which we lost by three points to nil ; the dress of
the players was varied and peculiar ; for instance,
a canary coloured sweater and a pair of thin sky-
blue shorts ; one player, in fact, had got such a dia-
phanous garment that he had to pin a striped towel
round his waist when it was seen that there were
French girls in the crowd. However, the game was
furious and bloody, and the men enjoyed watching
ii8
it, and shouting the result, like newspaper boys,
when it was all over. There were welcome intervals,
as, for instance, when the ball went into an
evil-smelling moat beside the farm, and had to
be retrieved with poles. I shall be very stiff and
sore to-morrow when we go back to the trenches.
We are still waiting to hear the result of this
furious fighting in the north, but I think it will
probably last for several days yet. Here we are
peaceful as usual, and so long as we don't move from
here, you really need not be anxious, for we have not
had an officer hit for over six weeks. I don't want
to alarm you by talking about shells and bullets in my
letters, but it is no use pretending that they don't
come along occasionally, for, after all, this is war, even
in the trenches when there is no attack in progress.
We had another concert last night, and since
some officer had to be the victim ' pour encourager
les autres,' I had to face the manure heap in which
the audience were sitting and sing them the Skye
boat song, which can't often have been sung in a
stranger place ; really one needs a voice like a bull
to sing in the open air without any accompaniment.
The favourite songs are sentimental, e.g. ' I lost the
sunshine and roses when I lost you.' We are all
beginning to get sunburnt, and everyone is looking
and feeling far better since the fine weather set in ;
also there are not nearly so many ' drunks,' for
119
stricter measures have been taken to watch the
French estaminets.
I don't see any end to the war yet ; a good
deal will depend on what happens in this battle
up north ; if we could give the Germans a really
hard knock, it would have a tremendous effect,
for their losses at Hill 60 must have been
appalling ; they always are in an attack which
fails. . . .
When you send out my photos, keep the films
but number them, so that I can order any more
prints that I want, and send out several prints of
any that are good, for all the men are sure to want
to send them home ; they are promising them in
their letters already, so I hope they have come out
well. . . .
Billets : April 28, 1915.
This has been a really hot day, and makes us
wonder what it will be like in July. Everyone
is getting that slanting mark on the forehead by
which you can tell an officer in a Scotch regiment,
where the Glengarry makes a dividing line between
sunburn and white skin.
I have been making a bonfire of old letters, for,
though I am keeping some of yours, the others
were accumulating very much, and it's always
120
difficult to get rid of them, for I never want to burn
the whole lot, and one must read them all over
first. The Germans were shelling a village some
distance away with heavy shells ; you saw the
smoke first of all, and then heard the whistle of
the shells — black smoke when they just hit the
ground, red smoke when they burst on brick
houses, which took a beautiful salmon-pink colour
in the sun as it floated away. The Frenchmen
in the fields went on ploughing and harrowing
as usual. I am going to share a big dug-out
with Clark this time and we ought to be very
comfortable, with an upper and a lower berth to
sleep in ... .
Trenclies : April 29, 1915.
I wonder if you have such a perfect evening
as we have here ; the sun has really been very hot,
everyone in shirt sleeves complaining of the heat,
as if we had quite forgotten already what it was
to be wet and cold. I am back in a trench not far
from where I was last time ; the pear blossom and
cherry blossom is really very pretty, and we have
cuckoo pint coming up among the grass. There
are minnows in the stream too ; they always seem
to appear with the first really warm day, as if
they were born from the mud ; but they will have
121
to get used to soapy water this year, for a wash in
running water is not too common, and the men
appreciate it.
I have got hold of a book of Tolstoi's stories.
There's something very charming about them, they
are so direct and simple ; and in the same book
one has sketches of Sevastopol during the seige,
curious reading just now, when we are doing our
best to give the Russians what we fought to prevent
them getting sixty years ago. I once read them
before in French, and I think I'm right in saying
that he doesn't mention the British once — it's
always the French, and yet we all have the habit
of thinking that we did all the fighting in the
Crimea. Some time we must all go to the Caucasus,
as we used to talk of doing, for a summer
shooting.
I think this expedition to the Dardanelles is
intensely interesting, a great risk but a great prize
if we succeed ; and what a difference it would make
if all the wheat now lying useless in Southern
Russia could be brought out. You remember all
those empty tramps steaming up the Bosphorus,
high out of the water, to get their cargoes of wheat
as soon as the ice broke up.
You remember that sonnet I sent you a few weeks
ago. Well, I see that Rupert Brooke is already dead,
at Lemnos, from the effects of sunstroke ; he was
122
in the R.N. Division, so his wish has soon been
answered.
You will be walking about the lawns at Hope-
toun, playing golf with the patients, I hope. You
must be learning a lot about different kinds of
men, for I think men from the ranks show their
differences more on the surface. Public schools
leave men just as different underneath, but they
make them more alike in small things and externals,
so that it takes longer to make a guess at them
when they are on their guard.
By the way, the sight of bare arms passing
makes me wonder why tattooing is so popular ;
almost every soldier seems to be tattooed some-
where, especially soldiers who have been to
India. I can't say I ever wanted to be tattooed
myself, but I suppose there is some attraction
in it.
Trenches : April 30, 1915.
I don't know whether this letter will go off
to-night, for the colonel came along at my epistolary
hour, and then there were several knotty points
about separation allowances. They plague us
perpetually about them even here ; none of the
officers know what to do, and the men don't know
either ; their wives and dependants complain that
123
they aren't getting all their money, and the regula-
tions have been changed so often, that there is
no firm ground to go upon. However, I think I
must try to master the subject ; in fact, I should
have done it before. We have had another extra-
ordinarily hot day. Now that the pear blossom is
fully out, I notice how black it makes the branches
look, and if I were a Japanese painter, and had a
large sheet of blue paper to represent the sky, I
could make a study in blue and white and black ;
in writing, that only suggests advertisements of
Stephen's blue-black ink ; but it's really very
pretty, when all you see above the trench is the
sky with a black and white branch of blossom
in it.
I'm still eating too much, and taking too little
exercise, and now that we have the sun to bask
in, it's even easier to sit and do nothing, for what
work remains to be done can hardly be attempted
by dayHght. I have started to read ' Richard
Feverel ' again ; perhaps I should be reading and
rereading military text-books, but this war is so
utterly different from every other war that some-
times it seems very little use, and I must rest my
poor civilian brain sometimes, ... I was very
glad as usual to get your Sunday letter last night,
and the centre of my world's interest is where you
all are, so don't imagine that the smallest things
don't interest me.
124
Trenches : May i, 1915.
We have had yet another day of sunshine, but
there was more of a breeze ; yesterday it was so
still that the puffs of smoke from the air-craft guns
just stayed still in the air, until they gradually
melted away. I was on duty all last night, so I
saw the merry month of May come in from its very
beginning, a soft, mild night and a full moon, very
pleasant for walking up and down in the hollow
behind the trench and thinking of you all and of
Gwen in Nairobi. It's a great thing to live in the
open country and the open air, day and night,
as we do in the trenches. I enjoy that, and wonder
how I shall be able to settle down to an indoor
life in a big town when this is all over. . . ,
I read the pamphlet, it was quite good ; but just
occasionally I seemed to hear the ' voice of the
preacher,' and though I hope this will be the last
war for a long time, I don't believe that it is the last
war of all ; people are not ready yet to feel them-
selves citizens of the world, rather than of their
own country ; there was a time when they were
content to be subject to a foreign government,
because they were only interested in their own small
city or county, but for the last two hundred years
the feeling of nationality has been growing stronger
and stronger ; you see that in the history of Italy,
and of Germany especially ; and I don't think we
125
have reached the end of that period yet, for the
Eastern countries are only just beginning to share
that feehng with the West.
I must read Lloyd George's speech. The Daily
Mail accuses him of not having a sufficiently high
opinion of the working man, which is rather comic
when you think what the Daily Mail has said of
Lloyd George in the past. I wish every public-
house in the country could be run on the same
lines as those of the public-house Trust down in
Surrey and thereabouts : the system under which
the manager gets no bonus on alcoholic drinks, but
does get one on everything else. The result is
that any man who wants it can still get his beer
or whisky, but it's to the manager's own interest
to make the ' general refreshments ' as attractive
as possible. That's a more natural way of working
than total prohibition ; but I'm for taking what-
ever measures the government think necessary /or
the war ; nothing matters compared with success
in that. Heavy firing to the south this morning ;
the K.O.S.B. seem to have lost most of their few
remaining officers ; all regiments have suffered
heavily, but none more so than they.
126
Trenches : May 2, 191 5.
I have had a pretty long day, beginning at
3.15, but quite a pleasant one. Some officer in
the company has to stay awake in the morning
hours, in case anything should happen, or a German
aeroplane come over within rifle-range. It was
my turn to-day, not a very sunny morning, but
grey and mild. I watered our garden ; the pansies
and forget-me-nots are growing well ; the other
plants are not so happy after their transplanting,
and the Middlesex, being townsmen, do not seem
to understand about gardens, and when they water
the plants at all, they do it at midday, under a
blazing sun. I found a nest full of young hedge-
sparrows too beside the stream which runs through
our breastwork, and saw the very father of all the
water beetles at the bottom. Remembering how
hard these large water beetles can bite, I left him
severely alone. There were some British aeroplanes,
but no Germans, and what with newspapers and
a new book, I soon found it was 5 o'clock and
breakfast time. The book was a new one about
Belgium, in the Home University series, written by
a Wykehamist called Ensor. If you want to know
something about the Belgians, in a conveniently
packed form, he's your man. I'm ashamed to
say that, until this war, my two main ideas about
127
the Belgians were that they ran at Waterloo, and
that they were responsible for the state of the
Congo, neither of which is very true. ... I thought
Lloyd George's speech in introducing his Bill for
dealing with the drink problem very courageous,
and the mass of evidence overwhelming, to show
that something stringent must be done. . . . Even
a small number of drunkards can do an infinite
amount of harm, and the good have got to suffer
for the bad in a crisis like this. It's just the same
out here ; most of my men are good honest fellows,
whom I should be proud to lead, but one went
sick this morning because he had taken cresol, the
disinfectant, undiluted, and deliberately poured it
into his boots, so that it might inflame a scratch
on his ankle, and send him to hospital. He was
determined to get out of the trenches somehow.
That type of man makes discipline severe, because
you can't deal with him gently, and it's the same
with drunken slackers at home, even if their numbers
are small in proportion to the whole. But it will
be difficult to deal with the thing properly, for it
will naturally be unpopular with the working men ;
and, besides that, there is the enormous strength
of the liquor trade, which will raise the familiar
cry for the poor widow, who has put her money
into a brewery. What Lloyd George said was very
true, that ' people agreed about the facts, until
128
they came to consider the remedies, and then they
altered the facts to suit their opinion of the remedies,'
and began to say that there was no unusual drinking
after all. ... It would be cheaper to pay wages
and dividends for every brewery and distillery in
the kingdom than to prolong the war for one
unnecessary month. These next two months will
be critical ; the risk at the Dardanelles is very
great, but so will be the reward if we succeed, and
out here the trial of strength will come home to
everyone. There has been tremendous firing, as
heavy as I have heard yet, to the north all this
afternoon. We shall hear about it presently. . . .
When I spoke about the workmen, perhaps I wasn't
allowing enough for the craving which seems to
seize on some men. But even if they are to be more
pitied than hated, we must protect ourselves against
them, if we want to end this war quickly.
Well, to-morrow night I hope we shall find
ourselves back in billets ; it seems odd to be sitting
here so quietly in the sun, watering our forget-me-
nots, within sound of all that desperate fighting.
Trenches : May 3, 19152
We go back into billets again to-night, but it
has been so warm and dry and comfortable that
this spell in the trenches has seemed the shortest
129
of any since I came out. We have not heard yet
the meaning of all the firing to the north last night ;
though I believe the Germans made another attempt
to attack, with the help of their gas-pipes, at Hill 60.
But the rumours which I hear is that the wind
changed, and caused the gas to hang about the
German trenches ; our guns then turned on to
them, and smashed their iron bottles and apparatus,
so that they were obliged to leave their own first
line of trenches in broad daylight, pursued by our
own shrapnel, and suffocated by their own gas.
I hope it's true, but they stand to lose in any case
by their use of that gas ; they lose the good opinion
of every neutral country, and of the best men in
their own. And in any case they can only use it
in exceptionally favourable circumstances, which
they can't expect to have very often. We have
all got respirators now, gauze pads, and fiannel
gags, twelve pairs of goggles to each platoon, and
bottles of sodium bicarbonate, which combines
with chlorine, I think, to make it into harmless
salt ! So that if we breathe through pads soaked
in that, we shall be safe, but very thirsty ! No
doubt they will go on using the poisonous shells,
which are easier to manage. The Canadian Eye-
witness' account of the fighting was fine reading,
and should make them very proud in Canada ;
they must have fought splendidly, and so, of course,
130
did the British troops who came up to reheve them ;
but the battle's not over yet. I was glad the Eye-
witness paid such a fine compliment to the French ;
we are always apt to think that our own men
wouldn't have lost so much ground, but we can't
possibly know that, and all we do know is that the
French felt the full effects of the gas-cloud. . , .
Just up into billets. I have your letter and
mother's. Thank you for taking so much trouble
with the prints.
Billets : May 4, 191 5.
The three parcels of socks have arrived, but I
have just given orders to put them into the battalion
store of socks, and then those who need them most
will get them. My own platoon has had about a
dozen odd pairs from me, and there is no use giving
too many, for they will just throw them away,
instead of troubling themselves to wash them or
darn them. This sounds very wasteful, but it's just
what all men, including myself, will do when there
are no women to scold them for it. I also have a
cake, the new Burberry, and the parcel of quoits,
all of which make me feel that I am being spoilt ; but
thank you very much for them. This is a fine hot
day, with thunder in the distance. I have escaped
from the mess and my bedroom to the garden of a
131
deserted villa. It has been put in a state of defence ;
the garden wall is loop-holed, and there are trenches
and sand-bag parapets running through the flower-
beds ; notwithstanding, it is still very pretty, pear
trees and cherry trees in full blossom, and the
apple trees too are beginning to show their pink,
while the flowers are putting up a good fight against
the weeds, I will get you a sprig of lilac presently,
when I have finished writing, and I hope a photo
which I have just taken will be a success. I'm glad
the others were good, and the men were very pleased
with the copies that I gave them, but there is a great
demand for more. . . . My rest in billets is being
disturbed, for I have got to take my platoon back
to the reserve breastworks to-night — only for one
night, though. This is a new idea of the brigadier's.
They shelled our billets at lunch time to-day, but
without doing any damage. I was sitting by the
window in the mess, when there was a sudden whistle
and a ' crump ' in a cabbage patch about thirty
yards away, and there were half a dozen more
round about. It was a little uncomfortable while it
lasted, but everyone continued to read the news-
papers and smoke with affected indifference. These
Territorials up at Ypres have had a very rough
baptism, for I don't think they had been out more
than a few days. But it was lucky for us that we
anticipated the Germans at Hill 60, otherwise they
K 2
132
would have pinched the angle at Ypres from
both sides, and very likely would have taken the
town.
Billets : May 5, 1915.
This day began for me about midnight, as I lay
in my dug-out in the breastwork watching the
plough swing slowly round. I shall remember that
night ; there was a heavy thunder-shower in the
evening, but when we marched down it cleared away
for a warm still summer night ; still, that is, except
for the sniper's rifles, and the rattle of the machine-
guns, and sometimes the boom of a big gun far away,
coming so long after the flash that you had almost
forgotten to expect it. The breastwork which we
held ran through an orchard and along some hedge-
rows. There was a sweet smell of wet earth and
wet grass after the rain, and since I could not sleep,
I wandered about among the ghostly cherry trees
all in white, and watched the star-shells rising and
falling to north and south. Presently a misty moon
came up, and a nightingale began to sing. I have
only heard him once before, in the day-time, near
Farly Mount, at Winchester ; but, of course, I knew
him at once, and it was strange to stand there and
listen, for the song seemed to come all the more
sweetly and clearly in the quiet intervals between
133
the bursts of firing. There was something infinitely
sweet and sad about it, as if the countryside were
singing gently to itself, in the midst of all our noise
and confusion and muddy work ; so that you felt
the nightingale's song was the only real thing which
would remain when all the rest was long past and
forgotten. It is such an old song too, handed on
from nightingale to nightingale through the summer
nights of so many innumerable years. ... So I
stood there, and thought of all the men and women
who had listened to that song, just as for the first
few weeks after Tom was killed I found myself
thinking perpetually of all the men who had been
killed in battle — Hector and Achilles and all the
heroes of long ago, who were once so strong and
active, and now are so quiet. Gradually the night
wore on, until day began to break, and I could see
clearly the daisies and buttercups in the long grass
about my feet. Then I gathered my platoon to-
gether, and marched back past the silent farms
to our billets. There was a beautiful sunrise, and
I went to sleep content. Then I walked into the
town to get a bath ; it was a hot May day, sunny and
steamy, and the garden of the house where we get
our baths has two fine tulip trees in it. Then on the
way back I went round to the 24th Brigade Head-
quarters to ask for Roger Hog, and found him there
looking very big and healthy. He is telephone
134
officer, I think, and very happy mending breakages,
and inventing new devices, and his colonel and the
other officer were very pleasant. He walked back
with me part of the way, and you can tell his mother
when you see her that her son is ' in the pink,' as
my men always say in their letters. The afternoon
I spent in getting plants from a ruined village for our
trench gardens — ^wallflowers, paeonies, pansies, and
many others ; rather cruel to transplant them per-
haps, but there are plenty left. The village is a
terrible sight, for what the shells have left standing
has been wrecked in the search for wood, for burn-
ing and making dug-outs in the cold wet weather last
winter, and you notice the contrast more now that
the fruit trees are all in blossom, and the garden beds
have all their spring flowers. There were many
books lying about in the wreckage on the floors,
mostly Catholic Lives of the Saints and other books
of devotion, but I saw one Greek grammar. There
was a school too, with its windows all broken, and
great jagged gaps in the walls where the shells had
come bursting through ; so that there was a touch
of grim irony in the inscription on the walls —
Le Don de nos Benefacteurs,
Enfants, prions pour eux.
There are graves, too, everywhere in the little gardens
behind the houses, and except for the birds and an
135
occasional soldier passing, the place is very quiet.
One old couple still live in their house, I believe,
because they have nowhere else to go. . . .
Billets : May 6, 1915.
Here are some photos from the Yang-tse which
Harry sent me the other day ; you will recognise
some old friends. Someone who was looking at
them yesterday pointed out that the joints in the
forelegs of the kneeling elephants are made to bend
the wrong way. I think the picture of the women
on the terrace among the fruit trees was taken near
that great mound which excited the Canadian so
much, because he said it was ' raised from the dirt of
eighteen provinces.' The journey up the river to
Hankow, and even above that, would be well worth
doing, if one could go there again. Harry is still in
the tropics, but not allowed to say anything about
what he is doing. ... I have had a letter from Mrs.
Haldane full of the latest instructions and diagrams
for breathing in spite of the gas, but we have all
got respirators now, and bottles of solution in the
trenches, if we have time to use them. Here that
is not likely to be a difficulty, since we are 300 or
400 yards apart, but in places where the trenches
are very close, there is not much time to prepare.
It's so difficiilt not to make a joke of the whole
136
thing when we practise breathing through pads &c.,
but it's no joke when they turn the taps on, and
our doctor, who rode over yesterday and saw some
of the victims, has come back full of \vrath. I hope
we shan't be obliged to retaliate with the same
weapons, but if we are driven to it, we have the
south-west wind in our favour nearly two days out
of every three. ... I spent yesterday afternoon
getting plants from a ruined village. In most cases
I think they will have to pull the houses right down
and start all over again. Some of the deserted
gardens are very pretty, and the wallflowers are par-
ticularly fine. We shall get vegetables presently,
too, green gooseberries, and prickly artichokes. But,
as a rule, the French there seem to take very little
trouble with their gardens, and it is only accident
and the rich soil which makes the flowers grow so well.
I have to take a party digging to-night, so I must
send this off.
Billets : Maj' 8, 191 5.
I have come back to the deserted garden to
write to you ; four hot days have made a great
difference to it. The lilacs were hardly out when
I last wrote, but now they are very gay — ^white
lilacs too — and though the pear tree is green instead
of white, there is an apple to take its place. Four
137
demoiselles come to the garden, too, to pick the
lilac, and both yesterday and to-day we have had
long conversations, wdth a great many gallant
compliments on both sides. But you need not be
anxious, for their ages are six, five, four, and three
respectively, and besides I told them that I only
came to the garden to write to my mother, of which
they highly approved. I showed them my skian-
dhu ; they nodded gravely ' c'est pour les Allemands,'
then most bloodthirsty gestures, to show me the
right way of using it. They jump in and out of
the trenches, and carry off great bunches of lilac,
so that I think they are thoroughly enjoying the
war, and fortunately I had some chocolate in the
pocket of my kilt apron. Now that the weather
is so fine, it seems most absurd to be fighting ; we
go back to the trenches again to-night, and in future
I suppose we shall have to watch the wind, in case
they try the gas here too. We had a practice attack
here this morning on a trench which we dug
yesterday — wire-cutters, bomb-throwers, sand-bag
men ; most realistic ; so realistic indeed that there
were one or two casualties — ^two sprained ankles,
and one man slightly wounded with a piece from
a bomb ; for unless you practise sometimes with
true bombs, the men can never be persuaded to
treat it as anything except a joke. They are still
fighting away in the north ; the failure of the
138
French to recover the lost ground north of Ypres
was certainly most unfortunate for us, but we shall
be on our guard against the gas in the future. It's
curious how few, comparatively, of the officers
in the casualty lists belong to the regular army
now; there are so few left. . . . Give my love to
J . I have hardly ever seen her since the
leave-out days when Tom and I used to go down
to Alverstoke and play golf with her round
about the old forts ; usually she beat us badly,
I think. . . .
Trenches : May 9, 1915.
We are back again in the trenches, all wearing
respirators round our necks, and watching the
wind, in case the gas should come drifting down ;
but I don't think they will try it here. There is
a lot of fighting going on at different places, and
I hope you will hear good news in a day or two.
How pleased the Germans will be that they have
sunk the Liisitania ! ... It's no use protesting
against them now, except with the bayonet ; their
leaders must have lost their heads in their rage,
and I think it's a sort of just judgment for their
gospel of hate. This has been a beautiful day,
much fresher than it has been lately, thanks to a
north wind which has still a touch of the sea in it.
139
The gardens are all flourishing — lily of the valley,
pansies, forget-me-nots, and all the old favourites.
We are kept busy watering them.
We have all been supplied with Balmoral
bonnets, and khaki covers for them ; they look
hideous, but may be less easily distinguished from
the English Tommies' cap over the parapet, and
they will perhaps give us a little more shade in July.
. . . This is a dull little scrap of a letter.
Trenches : May lo, 1915.
We are still quiet here, though there is fighting
going on all round us. By the reports the French
seem to have done very well down at Arras, and
we are particularly glad when they score a success,
because the waiting game is more trying to their
temperament than to the British troops. That,
at any rate, is the usual opinion about the French
soldier ; but anything more stolid and imperturbable
than some of the farmers round here, I can't
imagine ; they don't look as if they could run, even
if they tried. It is a great coup for the German
submarines to have sunk the Lusitania. . . . We
shall have this advantage from the disaster, that
there will be no more difficulties about contraband,
for every reasonable American will now see that
we must fight the Germans with every weapon,
140
and that our interference with neutrals is nothing
to what they would have to expect from von
Tirpitz loose on the high seas. It just shows how
marvellous our navy has been, to lose so little in
spite of all their efforts, and it's extraordinary that
they have never yet succeeded in sinking a single
transport.
I have seen two aeroplanes come down to-day
behind the German lines ; one of them may have
been a German, but the other I'm afraid was British ;
shrapnel was bursting all round it, and presently
it caught fire, and fell down blazing from a great
height, so that I'm afraid there is little hope for
the pilot and observer. The casualty lists are still
very heavy ; one begins to look at them to see who's
left alive, rather than who's dead ; but in these
last few days at Ypres, we must have given the
Germans a good deal more than they gave us.
I had a letter from the Warden yesterday, very
indignant at the German barbarities, more especially
at the poisoning of wells in German South-West
Africa. It just makes one think what an appalling
condition Europe would be left in, if Germany
won. You would still have the competition in
armaments, severer than before, and an endless
competition in every kind of devilry when the
next war began. For if they succeeded by these
methods, everyone else would be forced to copy
141
them. . . . We were shelled early this morning ;
a bag of coke, sent up for the men's fires, was blown
to bits, otherwise no damage was done. Our own
guns were busy yesterday, and set a large building
on fire, a couple of miles away on the ridge in front
of us. When it grew dark, you could see swarms
of little black figures silhouetted against the blaze.
I suppose it was a storehouse and that they were
trying to rescue something. But we telephoned to
the guns, and they dropped their first shell right
in the middle of them, with several more to follow.
After that the fire was allowed to take its own
course. The wooded ridge looks very pretty, now
that the trees are in their first leaf ; but knowing
the woods are giving cover to the German batteries,
we should be better pleased to see the land in
front as treeless as Orkney. However, we never
give the German aeroplanes a chance to observe
accurately now, though our own are circling over
their lines every day. It is the hidden machine-
gun which makes an infantry advance so desperately
difficult ; it's almost impossible to spot them ;
they can be hidden in cellars or pits while the
position is being bombarded, and then whipped
out again before the advancing lines have reached
them.
142
Trenches : May 11, 1915.
There is no use pretending that I am soldiering
at the minute, and I don't deserve anybody's
sympathy. I'm sitting with my back against a
nice comfortable bank of baked earth, my feet have
a resting-place just at the right angle on the other
side of the trench. The garden is in full flower
round about me, and there's a nice breeze to temper
the blazing sun. I've had as good a lunch as I
ever want to get — curried beef, boiled rice and
rhubarb, plum cake, washed down with red wine
and soda. There's plenty to read, plenty to smoke,
plenty of writing paper. The store-room is well
supplied with your last parcel of raisins and figs,
and we haven't had a man hit since we came down
to the trenches again three days ago. The weather
is still perfect ; our trenches and breastworks are
brown and bare and dusty, and the sand-bags
are getting bleached with sun, but everything else
is green. The meadow behind is yellow with
buttercups and dandelions ; there's a large patch
of yellow mustard out between the lines, and a
forest of leeks and cabbages. Even the walnut-
trees, which seem to be the last of all, are beginning
to give a little shade, and the broken stumps of
poplars are doing their best to repair the damage
of the shells. I spent part of the morning skittHng
143
in the stream, for where an old trench crossed it,
some hopeful idiot last autumn had built a dam
of bricks, as if that were likely to keep the water
out. The remains were still blocking the current
and making a stagnant pool, so I cleared them out,
to the great disgust of the water beetles and other
tenants who had been living there so long. There
was a pleasant smell of warm mint and water-
weeds, which always remind me of the water
meadows at Winchester, and the birds, too, are
very much the same. Swallows and house-martins
are very busy, but it will puzzle them this year
to find a house left with eaves, within a mile of
the trenches on either side. Certainly there are
none about here, and few walls as high as a second
storey. My hedge-sparrows are nearly ready to
fly, but I found another nest with young birds,
in a pollard willow, a common sparrow's, I think ;
but there were three bullet holes scored on the
bark within a foot of it, so that I did not care to
climb up and look inside. The birds don't care,
and I often see them crossing between the lines ;
in fact, there are just too many pigeons crossing,
and I wish I had a shot-gun to stop some of them.
There was a tit's nest too, as usual in a hole too
small for my hand, and too deep for my fingers,
so that I must watch for the bird to see what kind
it is. This letter has been interrupted by the
144
observing officer for the artillery, who wanted to
be shown a place where my sentries had noticed
the smoke of German guns ; their batteries are
very well hidden, but now they should be able to
watch this place, and plaster it with shells when
the German guns begin to fire. It's near a church
spire, which is doubtless used for observing ; but of
course we do the same now when necessary. At
the beginning of the war, so Clark tells me, our men
would not fire on churches, but they had to learn
to do it in self-defence.
Our aeroplanes are very busy again ; it's extra-
ordinarily hard to see them in the sunlight against
the sky when they are painted white, or very little
yellow ; you can only follow the string of smoke-
puffs, and strain your eyes as if you were looking
for a lark. When so many shells are bursting up
in the air, you would expect a hail of bullets, but
somehow the pieces very seldom come down near us.
This morning, however, the base of an air-shell
came tumbling down, and almost went through the
roof of a dugout ; a sheet of corrugated iron saved
the sleeper. One of the aeroplanes we saw fall
yesterday was a German, the other was British ; but
the raids planned by us on various points round
Lille seem to have been successful. It must be
harder to see troops from the air when the leaf is
on the trees ; even the houses which we have seen
145
for months have disappeared, so that you only catch
glimpses of red tiles between the branches.
We had a little excitement yesterday at dusk,
the stand-to-arms was just finished, and I was
sitting down to your letter and my dinner, when a
man rushed in to say that a German had crawled
up among the trees in front and was throwing
bombs. So out we all tumbled, manned the
parapet, and started firing. The sentry, who was
trembling with excitement, swore that a bomb had
hit the ground just in front of him and burst. I
hae ma doots. However, presently Bankier went
boldly forth for lOO yards in front, to the spot
where we have a listening post when it gets dark,
and I followed to pick up the bits. But there was
no German to be seen, dead or alive, so that, unless
he had tumbled into the deep ditch there, he must
have crawled away again. It's curious to be out
in front of the lines after dark, the place looks so
different from that side. There are a couple of
solitary graves, beside an old farm road, which
comes straggling out of the pear trees in front of
us, and wanders away towards the German lines.
But the grass is growing thick upon it, for no one
could dig up the beetroot last autumn and bring it
in ; as for the farm wagon, one of its wheels has
been converted into a mounting for a machine-gun,
rather a clever little invention, for it just swings
146
round on its own axle, which is buried in the earth,
and the gun, sitting on the flat upper side of the
wheel, can be tilted and turned to follow an aero-
plane at any angle. The war must have come upon
these farms very quickly, for almost all the cattle
have been killed, and they still trouble us. But a
gunner who was here then described to me how he
had seen men dash out from their trenches, in spite
of the snipers, and run along to cut a steak from the
bullocks, and back again. For in these days rations
were not so plentiful as they are now, and fresh
meat still scarcer.
We were glad to hear to-day that an attack
with gas on the 27th Division, in which our ist
Battalion, the 91st, are brigaded, had failed badly.
For the respirators saved our men, and the Germans
came on carelessly in masses, thinking that they
must have gone back, or been suffocated. How-
ever, we were all there and ready for them, and
they lost very heavily. I think we have scored
a great deal already, in spite of the poor victims,
by the feeling which this latest German trick has
produced. When I censor the men's letters, I
notice a different spirit ; they were keen to win
before, but they are ten times keener now, and
even the faint hearts who said they were ' fed up
with the war ' see now what they are fighting against.
Every battle now will be sterner and fiercer than
147
before, for every man will now be determined
more than ever to do his best. We shan't retaliate
gas for gas, I hope. ... I meant to write you a
good letter to-day, but there have been constant
and maddening interruptions.
Trenches : May 12, 1915.
I have just been looking at a full-page photo \
in an illustrated weekly with the stirring title, ^
' How three encountered fifty and prevailed,' and
a footnote describing their gallant deeds in detail.
The dauntless three belong to this regiment, but
we were a little puzzled, because we have never
been at La Bassee, where their exploit took place.
A closer inspection showed that the trees were
in full leaf, and that the men were wearing spats
and hose-tops, which we have long since abandoned
for general use. Finally, someone recognised the
sergeant as our shoemaker sergeant, and his com-
panions as two men from our second line transport.
They are usually at least three miles from the
trenches, and the whole story is a lie from beginning
to end, without a shadow of truth in it. It makes
one distrust all newspapers more than ever, to
catch them out like that. The photo must have
been taken somewhere on the retreat last year. . . .
This Division is not likely to get any leave until
L 2
148
we do some fighting, ... I'm glad the French
have done so well near Arras, and they seem to
be still moving. . . .
Trenches : May 13, 1915.-
We are going out into billets again to-night ;
so far the fighting north and south has not
changed our routine. This was a day when I could
have got a basket of trout, I'm sure ; a nice warm
wind from the sou '-west, a dull sky, plenty of flies,
and light rain from time to time. But the wind has
brought the sound of heavy guns, rumbHng and
muttering since dawn without a pause. Somebody
must be catching it, though we don't know whether
it's our own guns or the Germans' which are so busy.
But, in any case, this firing, whether or not it leads
up to an attack, will help the French to gain still
more ground near Arras. Rumour says that our
First Army was held up by machine-guns in its attack
three days ago. At Neuve Chapelle they thought
they had rather overdone the bombardment of the
front trenches, and not paid sufficient attention to
the strong point behind. This time, therefore, they
didn't fire at the front line so long, and in some places
the machine-guns hidden at the bottom of the para-
pet escaped, so that one battalion is said to have
foujid itself up against seventeeii of them, But I
149
don't know that there is any more truth in our
rumours than in yours which run about at home.
The game is so big that we can never see more than
a httle bit at one time, and when you are playing to
a wavering audience of neutral nations, watching
their opportunity in every move, even the military
moves have all got to be calculated by diplomatists,
and arranged to suit their plans too. We hear
this afternoon that the French have carried another
village, taken six more guns, and over a thousand
prisoners. I think that by using gas the Germans
have given us a present which will be worth as
much as four Army Corps in the field. Nothing
since I came out has done so much to rouse the
men's spirit ; we shall gain far more by these dirty
tricks than we lose in lives.
I was sowing seeds yesterday, which had been
sent out to another subaltern — marigolds, poppies,
and stocks ; rather late perhaps, but anyway I hope
we shall have moved on long before they flower. What
fierce fighting in the Dardanelles, but I hope that
with the actual landing, the hardest job of all is over
though, of course, there will be a lot of fighting yet.
Billets : May 15, 1915.
Yesterday was a busy day ; really we get almost
more rest in the trenches now than in billets. I
150
spent all the morning at the rifle range, and then,
after inspecting all the platoon's rifles, &c. (the
etcetera now includes goggles, respirators, and ' nip
bottles ' of chemicals), I was told that I had to march
a party on church parade to listen to the Bishop of X.
I suppose godliness does come before cleanliness, but
he made me miss my bath. Until yesterday all I
knew about the Bishop of X. was the sad story of
the raven in Trinity, Oxford. This venerable bird
had lived in the quad for many years, and his tough
constitution had brought him safely through a Hfe of
miscellaneous feeding, and it is to be feared hard
drinking, for he was liberally treated by all his
friends. But one fatal day the Bishop of X. came
down to stay in Trinity, in a room overlooking the
quad, and left the window open when he went out.
Some sheets of his sermon blew out into the quad,
where they were seized and devoured by the un-
fortunate bird, who died a few hours later, before he
had time to say ' never more.'
Well, anyway, we gathered together some three
hundred men, of all persuasions, and marched them
off to the Bishop. He came under the wing of the
Brigadier-General, or rather the Brigadier was under
his wing, for he is a most enormous man. The pro-
ceedings began with a hymn, accompanied by a band
of mouth-organs, which, unfortunately, tickled my
sense of humour so much that I found it hard to keep
151
my face. Then the Bishop opened his bombard-
ment in that style which seems necessary to bishops
and other clerics in addressing soldiers. When he
wanted to be funny he could be very amusing, and
when he confined himself to his own business, very
impressive. But, personally, I do not care for a
mixture of the two styles, and when a cleric says
' Please God, the Germans will take it in the neck,'
he makes me wriggle in my chair, and feel uncomfort-
able all down my back. However, as I say, when he
left our German enemies alone, and came to those
others with whom a bishop is more particularly
concerned, he was very good, and I think the men
enjoyed it, for it was something quite new to most
of them.
Billets : May i6, 1915.
I enjoyed your long letter two days ago, and I was
very glad to know that Ronald has found some
friends ; but still, of all the men I know, he will find it
hardest to be a prisoner as the months go on. . . . This
has been a warm summer's day, and for me the first
day of rest since I came into billets, for I was busy
with a digging party all yesterday afternoon. It
was only a practice trench, dug in an orchard about
two miles back, for what the adjutant calls ' the
Colonel's new lawn game,' that is practice for attack-
152
ing trenches. The old farmer was very indignant,
and had spread his very strongest manure on the
grass, in the hope that that would discourage us ;
but we just dug on, while he looked indignant from
a distance. To-day the officers were all photo-
graphed after church parade ; the first group in the
new bonnets, which don't look so smart as the Glen-
garry,but may give a little more shade. Then I walked
in for a long deferred bath, and had lunch at the
house too ; the garden there is very pretty now with
lilac and magnolias ; it looked so damp and dismal
when I first saw it in March, with high gloomy walls
and dripping evergreens, but now one sees that it
was well designed for shade, which will be needed
presently. The owners of the house have fled to
Paris. But their servants and their dogs, both in
large quantities, still remain, and I think they, the
servants, are quite glad to lay table now and then,
while the dogs, of course, rejoice to see such signs
of normal life returning. There is a very large St.
Bernard, who careers round and round the flower-
beds,while the old housekeeper screams and threatens
in a torrent of abuse and affection. This second
attack of the First Army promises to be more success-
ful than the venture a week ago, but, as you say, one
gets hardened to casualty lists and disasters, for
that is the only way to finish the war. If we are to
have another winter campaign, we shall need con-
153
scription ; we~should have it now, I think, except
that the War Office are not ready to deal with such
an influx of men. I have got a Russian grammar and
a reading-book. I can, at any rate, teach myself
enough to find the way and ask for food, which are
the traveller's first needs. I have also a book on
botany, which Mrs. Balfour sent. I had written about
it to Bay ; he is now attached to the K.O.S.B. at
Weymouth, and likely to sail soon for the Dar-
danelles. ... It was a beautiful calm evening until
our batteries started firing ten minutes ago ; demon-
strations again, I suppose, but I hope it will help
them to push home their attacks further south. This
next fortnight will be important.
Billets : May i8, 191 5.
We have had a wet day, and a very wet night. I
expect there will be heavy rain here at intervals all
through the summer even in June, as Wellington
and Bliicher found at Waterloo. But it's a great
nuisance, because the mud becomes as sticky as glue
again at once, and may have hindered the First Army
in their advance yesterday. According to the latest
reports, they were doing very well, had lost less men
than in their attack a week ago ; and what was more
important than any gain of ground, the Germans
seemed to be surrendering in bunches, as if for the
154
moment, they had lost heart there. Of course we
are only at the very beginning of the business still,
but it's a hopeful sign. The firing throughout the
day was very heavy ; they say the gunners get quite
dazed and numbed after a bit, so that they find it
difficult to pick up new orders or new targets quickly.
I can quite believe it. Meanwhile, we were quiet
as usual, and I was playing football in the afternoon
with my platoon against Bankier's. I think the
men enjoy a chance of knocking an officer over for
a change. We were just beaten, and, of course, my
men blamed the referee, for that's just one of the
points where they are like very small boys or chil-
dren, they can't take a beating, and they do love a
grievance. I remember seeing one of the Seaforths
at Bedford refuse to take any bread from his friends,
so that he might have the pleasure of saying he had
had no breakfast. The photos gave great satisfac-
tion ; thank you very much for them, and for the
compasses. I had a walk yesterday evening when
the rain had cleared off ; the country is changing
very fast now that the leaves have come out, and
though at first I thought it very ugly, I begin to like
it. There are still many corners where there is
nothing to remind you of the war, and then
suddenly you turn a corner to find a pile of bricks
where once stood a house, or a grave by the roadside,
or a great shell-hole, shomng up in greater contrast
155
now that the grass is long and green. As one of my
men said in writing home about the strikes. ' If
them at home seen what we seen here, there would
be less talking and more doing.' It's nice to hear of
Gwen and her garden. We must be marking time
in East Africa at present, waiting until some of our
other campaigns are a little further forward. So far
old Botha seems to have made as great a success of
his as of any ; yet it can't have been at all an easy
job.
They are starting to poison water out here now ;
a stream running from their lines to ours has been
found to be full of arsenic, so we must be careful.
No one would have believed such things before
the war ; one could hardly believe in them in the
Middle Ages, I'll write to Mother this evening before
we leave for the trenches.
Billets : May i8, 1915.
This is a cold grey day, with sodden ground
under foot, and a grey sky, threatening more rain,
just like many days I can remember at Winchester,
when even sweaters could not make cricket anything
but a miserable game. However, the news of the
fighting is still good, and we are gaining ground
slowly. I don't know whether this battle will bring
it, but some day soon, I'm sure, there will be a
156
sudden and startling change in the whole situation on
the Western front. These bloody battles seem to
leave things very much where they were, but the
Germans are getting weaker every day, and we are
getting stronger. You remember Clough's poem —
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not, nor faileth.
And as things have been, they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars —
and so on. The whole of it seems almost to have
been written for this long drawn out struggle from
Switzerland to the sea. I see Jack Haldane is
wounded, but I have no further news of him ; a short
time ago he was going round the First Army lecturing
on respirators and gas, but I think he must have
been back with the Black Watch. The quarterly
you sent me is very interesting ; two of the con-
tributors, Gilbert Murray and H. A. L. Fisher, I
know well, and Vinogradoff, who writes about
Russia, was perhaps the most impressive lecturer
I ever heard at Oxford. He was a professor in some
branch of law, a man of immense learning, who
had really been driven out of Russia because his
liberal opinions were suspected by the police. In
fact, I think he finally left Moscow University in
protest, because detectives were sent to attend his
157
lectures. But now he evidently hopes for more
tolerance and freedom as the result of the war.
His English was perfect, except for an accent which
seemed to give new meaning to the most ordinary
words, when he came down upon them with all the
weight of an enormous voice, and an enormous body
too. ... I have been asked to write some notes on the
doings of the 93rd, for the sake of the future regi-
mental historian. I don't know what is wanted,
and it wall of course not be easy to make a connected
account of what happened before I joined ; but it is
as well that someone should try it while memory is
fresh, and' some of the officers who came out to
France with the battalion are still with us. ... I
hope the rhododendrons will be as fine at Rhuveag
this year as they were last June. . . .
Trenches : May 20, 1915.
These are strenuous days, for the new army has
arrived at last, and its officers come swarming
down upon us, to see what trenches are Hke. It's
quite refreshing to meet people who are so keen ; we
could only with difficulty restrain them from crawl-
ing out to the German wire. But it's also a bit of
a nuisance, for they sit in our seats and sleep in our
beds, and fill up our dug-outs, and, very rightly, ask
ten thousand questions which are difficult to answer.
158
However, we do our best, and they enjoy themselves
enormously. I took them along this afternoon to
the Buffs' trenches ; they are on our left, in the next
brigade. The lines are much closer there, and there
are a lot of interesting things. They can't be shelled
by the German guns, because the German trenches
would suffer too ; but they get a lot of rifle grenades
pitched among them, and to protect themselves they
have built overhead cover, until their trenches re-
mind you of the lower decks of a ship, with iron
loophole plates instead of portholes. Then at one
point, where they are only seventy yards apart,
they have a catapult, on the Roman or medieval
plan — a rack which winds up a cord, and so stretches
a dozen strands of the thickest elastic. There is a
canvas pouch to hold the bomb, and then you release
a catch, and away it goes for seventy or eighty
yards, and drops into the Germans. I found a
Wykehamist there whom I had not seen for years ; he
had been out since the beginning. Finally, the H.L.I.
officers hurried off, very pleased with themselves,
because they had been out in front last night and the
others had not. I took them out with a party of hay-
makers, for the grass in front is growing so long that
we have to cut it to clear our field of fire, and later on
they went further out with Clark, and thought they
saw six Germans, so their picnic was a great success.
To-night a platoon of A. and S. H. is coming in.
159
Trenches : May 21, 1915.
Writing becomes rather difficult now that the
New Army has arrived ; we had three the day
before yesterday, two yesterday, and two again
to-day, and since they are naturally anxious to
see as much as possible during their twenty-four
hours in the trenches, there are a large number of
personally conducted parties, and I am getting
quite the guide-book style, when I casually point
out to them where a shell burst last week, &c., &c.
Of course they ought to know much more about
soldiering than I do, for they have had nine months'
undisturbed training, with expert advice, and the
benefit of any information which the General Staff
can collect and pass on to them, whereas in the
Special Reserve we were given various jobs, which
made regular training impossible — such, for instance,
as guarding these two miles of sea-coast near
Sunderland — and as soon as either officers or men
began to know their work, they were drafted out
to the front, and lost to us. They are of very
different types ; our first three were all as keen as
mustard, one of them an Indian officer who had
been home on leave when war broke out, and was
now a major. Then last night we had a dignified
old gentleman who had last fought with the Black
Watch at Tel-el- Kebir ! He must have been well
i6o
over sixty, and had left the army for years, and I
did admire him for coming back, and sticking to
it as a captain, when all his contemporaries were
generals or club critics. But when I took him
round the trenches, I felt rather like a small child
showing its toys to its grandfather, who feels obliged
to take a patient, kindly interest in them. We
tucked him up in Clark's bed at an early hour,
and he asked anxiously whether the nights were
cold, or whether one could sleep with the door
open. ... I suppose that when he last fought,
it was in a scarlet doublet, with feather bonnet
and sporran and all. To-day one of the men
who turned up had been at New College with me ;
he used to write poems quite well, and now looks
quite a smart officer. I don't know what they
mean to do with this division of the New Army,
but rumour says it will be attached to the 3rd Corps.
They shelled us to-day, but only one man was
wounded ; another shell went right through the
top of the kitchen beside our mess, where two of
our servants were playing draughts. It put an
end to the game, but nobody was touched, and it
didn't spoil our dinner. . . . I'm sorry that there
should be a political crisis in the Cabinet ; the
ground swell after all the storms last year has
threatened to upset them more than once. . . .
I haven't heard what sailors think about the
1
i6i
Dardanelles, but it seems to me fairly obvious
that we shouldn't have sent such a large force there,
unless it had been necessary to give Russia an
opening to the sea. I'm sorry too that we should
use gas, and, on the whole, opinion out here, round
about my little corner anyway, is against it.
Trenches : May 22, 1915.
There is peace in our lines again, for Kitchener's
Army marched off at 2 a.m. before it got too light.
Our latest visitors were some of our own loth
Battalion whom we liked very much, and they are
said to be one of the smartest in this new division.
It is a very hot, steamy, sleepy day, with a hum
of bees and flies, which is seldom broken by any
firing. There is a smell of May in the air. which
reminds me of many happy days in a punt or a
canoe up the Cher. This was just the prettiest
time of year there, for Eights would have been
coming on this week, and I can see Tom very well
in a new Leander ribbon and his best blazer, looking
very serious before the racing began, and very
merry when it was over. The rowing men didn't
have much picnicking or punting or lazy sleepy
afternoons ; for they were always in training till
Eights, and then started practice for Henley after
9. week's interval. But for six weeks in summer
l62
they were the people, and I know how much all
Tom's friends in the Eight will be thinking of him
now. . . . There must, I'm afraid, be many cripples
in spite of modern surgery. But still, if a battle
to-day is in some ways more terrible than it was
one hundred years ago, it's very much less terrible
afterwards, thanks to anaesthetics and research.
There's one curious result of censoring so many
letters, that everyone is much more apt to make
mistakes in spelling from seeing the same words
spelt wrong so often. Schoolmasters who have to
teach small boys say just the same thing, and
I know that when I'm in doubt I always scribble
on the blotting-paper, and judge it by the eye.
Russian seems to be a language like our own, where
words are by no means pronounced as they are
spelt, and, like us, they write a great many letters
which they never pronounce at all ; I don't think
one can go far, without hearing the words
pronounced ; just think what a hash a foreigner
would make of English if he tried to learn it by
book, or how many rules for pronouncing ' ough,'
for instance, he would have to pack into his head.
The Germans were signalling with a lamp last
night ; I pegged out the line of direction on the
top of the parapet with bits of stick, just as at a
grouse-drive one sometimes marks the line of a
bird with an empty cartridge case ; and now by
i63
daylight I find they must have been using an old
telegraph pole along the railway. I hope you will
be off to Rhuveag as soon as this letter reaches
you ; if thoughts could bring me there, I should
not be very far away.
Billets : May 24, 1915.
We marched back into billets last night, but
after three hours' sleep we were roused up again
to stand to arms, in expectation of a fight some-
where near. All is quiet again now and we are
dismissed to our beds ; but it is a beautiful clear
fresh morning, and I can't get to sleep ; perhaps
a heavy meal of plum cake and chocolate at 2 a.m.
has something to do with it.
The Daily Mail and some other papers seem
to be raising a panic cry that our heavy losses in
the last few months have been due to the want
of the proper kind of shell, and that Kitchener is
to blame ; that is not true, and it's a shame to say
it. Our gunners can use just as many shells as
we can possibly give them, and so can the French
gunners and the German gunners, and the gunners
of every country now at war. The German batteries
are more strictly limited in their rounds than our
own in this part of the line, as I know myself from
counting the shells sent over. Yet Germany had
M z
IG4
been accumulating a vast stock for years in prepara-
tion for this war, and had enormous factories and
plants ready. We never contemplated any war
of aggression ; last August we had to suddenly
start and multiply our army and all its stores by
ten. It stands to reason that we can't do in a few
months what Germany after years of preparation
finds herself unable to do.
The forced retirement of the French at Ypres,
owing to the use of gas, let us into a very nasty
comer ; the Germans made good use of their
advantage, and we lost heavily before we
re-established our new line. That's really a side
issue. The main point is that for the last three
months we have been attacking, in one place or
another, lines of fortified positions, which the
best brains on the German General Staff, with
almost unlimited labour and material at their
command, have been preparing and strengthening
for six months. That doesn't mean that we can't
break their line in the end, we have shown that
we can do that ; but it does mean that, shells or
no shells, we are bound to lose heavily in doing it.
Our artillery may batter their first line of trenches
to a bloody pulp, but there are still their second
lines and third lines and fortified points to be
dealt with. You may knock out nine out of ten
machine-guns in position, but the tenth can still
i65
do a lot of damage to advancing infantry, and the
check will give them time to fetch up others from
the rear, or from deep cellars and covered pits,
where no bombardment by any guns will destroy
them all. I don't write these thing to discourage
you, for we can get over all these difficulties in time,
but just to show that we must expect to lose heavily
in the attack, even if the whole front is plastered
with high explosive shells — and neither Kitchener
nor Mr. Asquith nor the Prince of Wales nor the
Lord Provost of Edinburgh can prevent it — nor
yet the Daily Mail. By the way, it's sheer rubbish
to say that shrapnel is useless for clearing gaps in
barbed wire. Gunners out here will tell you that
it does that far better than high explosive shells,
and daily experience proves it. It makes me so
angry to see that kind of twaddle in print. One
newspaper he more or less is no great matter, but
it is very unkind to all those who are in mourning
to make them think that, but for some tragic blunder,
it might never have happened. . . .
It's a damnable thing to treat this war as so
much material for ' good copy ' — as for the photo-
graphs of survivors from the Lusitania, I can't
imagine what kind of reptile would be mean enough
to creep in front of a woman and snap his camera
in her sorrow-stricken face. The country needs
a prophet badly, an Isaiah full of white-hot
i66
indignation, to get up and denounce these things,
and make us all see that it's not only wrong to
print such pictures, but wrong to indulge the
morbid curiosity which make us look at them. We
should have Dr. Chalmers back again ' to bury his
adversary under fragments of burning mountains,'
as I think Jeffreys described one of his sermons.
However, I'm nearly preaching myself ! By way
of contrast, do you remember what Mr. Dooley
said of the Germans at the time of the Boxer rising,
and the punitive expedition ? ' 'Twill civilise the
Chinaymen,' said Henessy. ' 'Twill ci\alise thim
stiff,' said Mr. Dooley, ' and p'raps it wuddn't be
a bad thing f'r the r-rest of the wurrld — maybe
contact with the Chinese may cixdlise the Germans.'
But I think I liked best his remark about Christian
Science. ' If the Christians had a little more science,
and the docthors a little more Christianity, tw'ud
make no great difference which ye called in — always
pr-r-vided ye had a good nurse.' . . . You seem
to have had more east wind than usual ; here it
comes over miles of land before it reaches us, so
that it's often quite a warm wind. . . .
Billets : May 24, 1915.
You and I must both watch the dawn come in
very often these days. I didn't get to bed until
167
daylight for three out of our last five days in trenches,
and last night they roused us in the very early hours,
and I couldn't get to sleep again. However, it
was a beautiful morning, with a -clear wind, so I
wrote a long letter to Daddy, and then walked in
before breakfast to the house in the town where we go
for our baths. We can get a petit dejeuner there —
good French coffee, omelettes, and what is best of all,
a clean tablecloth, and clean knives and forks. The
servants are still living in the house, along with two
terriers, a bulldog, and an enormous St. Bernard ;
there v/as an even larger dog, but he was killed by
a shell which fell in the garden. It's a very pretty
garden, shut in by high walls, so that it reminds me
of one of those Oxford gardens, tucked away in an
odd comer between the colleges. There is a fine
weeping ash in the middle of the grass, lilac and
wistaria, a couple of beds full of tulips, with tea-
roses soon to follow, and a verandah looking
down the middle, with what I think must be a
niphetos rose — ^if that is how you spell it — climbing
round the outer side. At the far end there are a
lot of rambler roses which will very soon be out,
and espalier pear trees and vines stragghng up a
sunny brick wall, which has a large shell-hole
through the middle of it. But you can't see that
from the verandah ; in fact, you can see nothing at
all to remind you of the war, but only grass and
i68
sun and shade and flowering trees and bushes, and
that is why I Uke it, and the birds all like it too.
So I had my breakfast and bath, and came back
along a hot dusty mile and more of pave, and found
a lot of parcels and a letter from Mother waiting
for me when I got back, I meant to write to you
yesterday from the trenches, but we moved out
suddenly, and there was no time. Two nights ago
we had a little expedition towards a single tree
which stands among the long grass far over towards
the German lines. They had seen Germans working
there from the next trenches on our flank, and there
was some new earth thrown up. So we deter-
mined to see what we could do. Bankier and a
fellow from the next brigade crept up to the tree
with a supply of bombs, and then Clark took out
a covering party to make a diversion on this side,
so I went out too. I stayed in a little bit of trench
about half-way between the lines, while Clark went
further out and further across with an old Irish
bomb-thrower from my platoon. It was a still
warm night, and we waited there a long time, expect-
ing to hear the bombs go off. There was a low moon,
and a great deal of summer lightning, but it was
very quiet, except for a little sniping, and the rust-
ling noises in the long grass. I wanted desperately
to sneeze, and then the whole thing struck me as
so ridiculous that I very nearly laughed out loud.
169
At last we saw dark figures moving towards us, and
sat very still and quiet. But it was only the bomb
party, who had been right out and round the tree,
and found nothing there at all. So we all filed back
again just as it began to get light, and then I could
sneeze again to my heart's content. To-night there
is a beautiful moon and a cool breeze ; we are sitting
up in case we should be wanted, but I don't think
that's at all likely. . . . The adjutant has just told
us we can lie down, for all is going well, so Tm off
to bed, and very sleepy. Good-night.
Billets : May 25, 1915.
We still have glorious weather, and if it is the
same at Rhuveag, I expect there will be bathing in
the pool under the waterfall which we discovered last
year, unless you are still cursed by the east wind.
Something big is happening here, I don't know what
or where, but it doesn't seem to be near here, al-
though I watched rather a heavy bombardment last
night. I believe the 8th Black Watch are not far
away, and I wish I could run across Hutchie ; if only
they had sent him into our trenches to be instructed !
All your parcels have arrived, I think, so I was able
to give six shirts to my platoon this morning, and all
the socks ; some men were complaining that they had
had no new ones for a long time, and ' the holes
170
soon get big when there are no lassies to mend
them.'
The aeroplanes are very busy in the evening
hour, for the clear light gives them a chance
to observe everything, even from a great height 5
and there is a great rattle of rifles and machine-
guns firing at them, quite ineffectively, I think, for
unless an aeroplane has been hit already, and is flying
low, I'm sure none of the bullets ever come near it. . . .
My old enemy hay-fever has been threatening
me, but the doctor here thinks he can cure it. I hae
ma doots o' that, but his mixture certainly does
a lot of good.
Billets : May 26, 1915.
This is a baking day ; we have just been drill-
ing in our shirt sleeves, and we shall soon need
sun helmets if it goes on getting hotter ; the nights
are beginning to get warm too. It will be useless
for fishing if you have the same weather at Rhuveag,
but very pleasant for sitting in the sun. The men,
too, wish they were home in this fine weather, and
I found one the other day writing to his fiancee, and
saying that he hoped to be ' roaming in the clover
out the Bo'ness road ' before long. Most of them,
I think, respect me enough to obey orders, but I
don't think many of them like me, for many of them
haven't been soldiering long enough to understand
171
that an officer doesn't give punishment out of spite.
An army which elected its own officers would have
a curious history ; it would suffer terrible losses
until it leamt the value of discipline, and then when
the natural leaders had come to the front and made
their own orders, punishments would be far severer
than anything in the King's Regulations. I don't
quite know what effect Italy will have upon the war.
No doubt Italians in Austria were badly treated ;
but, of course, the real reason why she has gone to
war is that she sees an opportunity. I don't imagine
that they will be keen to move further towards
Vienna than the boundaries of the Italian-speaking
provinces, but that will always detain a lot of men.
People will scoff at her for waiting so long to make
up her mind, but I suppose her reasons for coming
in are very much the same as ours in the Boer War,
to protect the men of our race who were being ill-
treated in foreign territory. I'll never forget how
rude an Italian was to us in the train leaving Florence,
and how profusely he apologised when he discovered
we were English. He had thought we were Germans,
and he said he made a point of always being rude to
Germans ; as for the Austrians, of course they hate
them for their old supremacy in Northern Italy.
I don't understand yet what is at the bottom
of all the upheaval in home politics. . . .
172
Billets : May 27, 1915.
I had a letter from you, another from Daisy,
and another from Gwen to-day, so I did well.
This time Gwen's came direct from Nairobi, date
April 27, and I'll send it to you to-morrow. Here
we have nothing new, except a very cold north
wind. I was amused this morning to see a very
fat priest on a bicycle, with his skirts flying in the
wind, and to notice that priests wear dress guards
on the back wheel. I walked in this afternoon to
have another bath, and tried to get a buckle for
my kilt in place of one I had lost, but it was difficult
to make them understand, even when I took off
the apron and let them see for themselves what
was wanted. I'm afraid Sholto is not likely to
come to this battalion, but rumour says the 91st
are moving, and will not be so very far away. . . .
Billets : May 28, 1915.
I go into reserve with Clark to-night, in a farm
nearly a mile behind the firing line, so we shall
have a rest. The cold east wind which was
plaguing you has come to us now, or rather it is
north wind here, and comes from the sea, not very
far away. Cricket has just begun to invade France,
but I don't think it's likely to displace football ;
173
it needs much more elaborate preparations, and
would use up an infinite supply of balls in the
long grass. We don't seem to be much further on
yet at the Dardanelles ; if the Italians could spare
a couple of divisions, it would be a great help, but
I don't suppose they will send troops out of Italy,
except to cross the frontier. This letter was begun
last night, but never finished. I don't think I
have much more to add to it even after keeping it
for twenty-four hours. I have had a very peaceful
day, just pottering about this farm, which is close
to the orchard where I heard the nightingale three
weeks ago. The farm itself is deserted, but there
is one 50 yards away still inhabited by a Frenchman
and his three little girls, Sophie, Amelie, and
Clemence. It's the greatest joke in the world to
them when they hear a shell going overhead, and
yet the Germans might put one into their kitchen
at any minute. . . .
Reserve Farm : May 30, 1915.
This Sunday did not begin as a day of rest,
for at 5 o'clock this morning I was awakened by
a bursting shell. There is no trouble about dressing,
so I wandered out across the farmyard just in time
to see a shell burst in the farmer's field next door,
and scatter all the cows. I think I told you
174
yesterday about our neighbours, a French farmer
and his wife, an old grannie, and four Httle girls,
and how amused they were by the sound of the
shells. Well, the next one hit the roof of their
farm, and sent most of it up in a cloud of red smoke
and brick dust. Then I remember running up the
road, with the doctor's pyjamas twinkling in front
of me, shouting to the people to come out. The
man came out, and three of the little girls, wounded
and crying, and after them, the poor old woman,
who was also badly hurt. We guided them along
the road as best we could, back to our own farm,
but the shells were still coming, and several times
we had to take shelter in the ditch. Then I came
off to rouse my own platoon, and get them down
into the cellars, and while I was away, the Germans
scored four direct hits on our own farm, and brought
most of the wall on my bed ; I can't make out
why Clark, who was in the room at the time, escaped
without a scratch. In twenty minutes it was all
over ; we had seen nothing of Sophie and her
* mother, and were very much afraid they had
been killed ; but that plucky girl had stayed beside
her mother, who is an invalid, dressed her, and
j guided her down to the cellar, where they were
/ both safe. Clemence, Amelie, and Simone had
their wounds dressed, and were taken off in our
ambulance ; they will all recover in a few days.
175
I think, but the old lady is more serious. It does \
seem so cruel that those little girls, who were so
bright and jolly, and favourites with all the regiment,
should have to suffer for this war too ; but, of
course, I think they should never have been allowed
to stay so near the firing line. Even now Sophie
and her father are determined to stay here beside
their cows, although they seem to have friends a
few miles away. ... It took some time to clear
up the wreckage in our room ; luckily nothing
had been set on fire, and there was great cheering
when we discovered that a bottle of whisky which
had been swept on to the floor was still unbroken !
The doctor must have been very cold by the time
his work was done, in a cold north wind, with only
a thin pair of pyjamas. He is a first-rate man,
and very good to all the French people round
about, so that they all love him. His French is
even worse than mine, but still he rattles along, and
they enjoy his mistakes.
Reserve Farm : May 31, 1915.
After our disturbance the night before I slept
in the open, and we were not shelled again. It was
a fine clear night but cold, and in the early morning
a heavy bombardment began somewhere, which
we shall hear about presently. To-day I spent
176
some weary hours hanging about in a village street,
in case I should be called a witness to the character
of a man in my platoon, who was being tried by
court-martial for sleeping at his post. But after
all I was never called, and the sentence of the court
has not yet been declared. It's a serious thing
for a sentry to be found sleeping, and there is no
excuse now, for everyone has plenty of time to sleep
in the day. This afternoon I went down to the
trenches, hearing that the 91st were immediately
on our left, and found Sholto, who just joined them
a week ago. He was looking enormous in his kilt,
and very brown, but he seems to have enjoyed his
three months in the 4th Battalion at Plymouth,
and though I think he regrets the 91st has come
from war to peace, he mayn't find it quite so
peaceful after another night. By all accounts they
have had a strenuous time in their last trenches,
and lost nearly 700 men in April and May. It's
odd that chance should have set them down next
door to us, but I don't know whether they wiU
stay there very long. Our cat was killed yesterday
by one of the shells, or else died of shock soon
after. Amelie, Clemence, and Simone are all in
hospital, but in good spirits, so Sophie tells us.
Sophie is now running the whole farm single-handed.
i How these French girls do work ! Sometimes she
gets Maurice to carry water ; Maurice is a refugee
177
from Belgium, a funny little boy of thirteen, with
a serious old man's face, as if he had been forced
to grow up by the war. . . .
Reserve Farm : June 2, 1915.
We have been relieved to-night, but B company
remains behind in some farms near the firing line
until an hour before dawn, so we are sitting in a
loft, waiting for the hght to come ; it is a very sultry
night. I have enjoyed these last five days very
much, in spite of the shelling on Sunday morning ;
the doctor is a pleasant companion, and I always
like talking to a clever doctor, for he sees and hears
and knows a lot. There is a lot of distant firing
in the south, and I think the French must be pressing
hard again. Nothing has happened here, and I
think it would do everyone good now to be moved ;
we are just too comfortable, and both officers and
men lose their energy when the weather is so fine,
and the trenches are so quiet. I don't suppose
I shall see much of Sholto, but since we are now
attached to the 27th Division we may meet occasion-
ally ; the 91st have moved, so that they are not
alongside of us any more. I have finished ' Richard
Feverel ' ; I didn't like it so much at the second
reading, although I liked the ' Egoist ' more ; but
perhaps this wasn't the time or the place for reading
N
178
it. And I reread Tolstoi's ' Sevastopol,' which
gives you wonderful pictures of what the town was
like during the siege, and a lot of what he says
about the feelings of people who are fighting are
as true now as when they were written. The three
little girls who were wounded are all getting on
well in hospital ; they won't be so keen to watch
shells bursting when they come back. Roads are
getting very dusty, and the ditches smell worse
than ever. I think there will be a good many
mosquitoes, and, of course, ' infinite torment of
flies ' ; that's to be expected when there's a midden
in the centre of every group of farm buildings.
There are the usual rumours to-night : that the
German fleet is sunk, that President Wilson is
assassinated, that the Turks have given up, and
that the Russians have won an enormous \ictory ;
after all these lies are no w^orse than the printed
ones. I wonder if the Zeppelins have dropped
bombs on Woolwich arsenal ?
Billets : June 3, 1915-
I have done very little to-day except sleep,
the result of being up all last night. A large parcel
of socks has arrived by post, and I sent them off
to the company store ; a packet of cigarettes has
also arrived. Did I tell vou that Mrs. Haldane
179
had sent me another letter of instructions ? and
also a new kind of respirator in a little vanity-
bag ? so now I am well armed. I was glad to hear
of your fine weather at Rhuveag, and of the port-
manteau rod ; what a pity that Edward Campbell
couldn't stay for a week or two. I heard from
Uncle Charlie too, very nice of him to write ; he
was, I think, casting longing eyes from the hill
above Cathlaw towards Ben-a'oen ; but I think
you said there was some chance of getting him for
a week-end. He would like to find his favourite
orchis on the roadside again, just beyond the big
rocks. It's very nice of you to write so often, but
you must have so many letters, and I haven't
really. For it's not easy to write to a man when
you haven't the faintest idea where he is, or what
he is doing, and that is the case with most of my
friends at present. . . .
Trenches : June 5, 191 5.
We are back again in the old trenches, which we
used to hold at the end of March, when the weather
first began to get fine. There is a great difference
since then ; the grass has grown so long everywhere
that we can hardly see the German parapet, and
the trees hide a great deal of front too, now that they
are in full leaf. German shells have knocked down
two or three more of the trees just behind us, and
N 2
i8o
have battered down most of what was left of the two
farms. But the orchard is still very pretty, and
the scars made by the ' Minen werfer ' are disappear-
ing. These trenches are much deeper than the
others I have been in, for somehow or other they
never were flooded so badly, so they still hold the
original line of last October, through the middle of a
wheat field which was never harvested. Now the
wheat has sown itself, and is growing up every-
where in tall bunches on the parapet ; in fact, it is
in the ear already. Sonia, the cat, is now the happy
mother of three kittens, very pretty little kittens too.
I Never having known any home except this trench,
I suppose they would be most indignant if our line
went forsvard and left them. In the meantime they
and their mother and three servants live in one
dug-out, when they are not sprawling in the sun.
We only had two days in billets last time, and are
likely to have less and less as time goes on, but it's
no more hardship now to live in the trenches per-
manently ; there's more work there through the
night, but less through the day. I had a bathe
yesterday in the very muddy river about two miles
from our billets ; about twenty men went in too.
The water was warm enough, but the mud at the
sides was black and evil smelling ; so much so, that
I walked into the town in the afternoon to wash
off the sediment. I saw one or two small perch and
i8i
some water iillies, white and yellow, in a pool just
separated from the main stream. There used to be
a naval launch in the river, for bringing ammunition
to a naval armoured train, which trundled up and
down behind us, and bothered the Germans, because
they never knew where it would turn up next. But
now I think it has gone away, and the sailors are
probably enjoying an inland voyage through the
canals of France. An old French farmer, to whom I
spoke the other day, said that if last winter had been
as wet as some winters we should never have been
able to stay in our trenches at all. He said we should
have had to build platforms four feet above the
ground instead of digging down below it. He was,
by the way, the father of Sophie, Amelie, and
Clemence, the three little girls who were wounded.
They are all recovering except the little one, who
had two pieces of shell in her leg, and I think they
carried in pieces of her stockings with them. But
perhaps she will pull through in spite of it. They
have been shelling us at intervals all day, but we
are well covered, and can laugh at shrapnel ; in fact,
though they fired over thirty shells this morning,
they never got me out of my blankets. I heard a
distant sound, but just turned over and went to
sleep again. It becomes harder and harder to find
anything to put in my letters ; ' sat in dry ditch ' is
the beginning and end of my soldiering at present.
l82
Trenches : June 6, 191 5.
All is quiet to-day on the front held by the 93rd,
except that fierce engagements go on night and day
between the three kittens, and also between Sonia,
the proud mother, and a small black terrier pup,
called Satan Macpherson, who belongs to the
machine-gun officer. Satan has the best intentions
in the world, and is only anxious to do his best for
the new army by paying a friendly call ; but as soon
as he attempts to advance, he is met with high ex-
plosive, and driven from his position at the point
of the bayonet. Fighting still continues.
General X. visited our trenches this morning.
He must, I think, be an uncle of my friend, who
always had more uncles than I should have believed
possible of any man not closely related to the Patri-
archs, The General is a tall, genial, old gentleman,
known among his division as Father Christmas,
very lively on his feet ; he has two long rows of
medals, and wears glasses, perhaps, as someone
suggested of another much decorated general, to
save himself from colour blindness when he looks
down at his ribbons. Our own Brigadier came
round with him. The General stopped at one point
in my trench and took a cautious peep through a
periscope. ' There seems to be a road out there,'
he said. ' Yes,' said the Brigadier, ' there's a road
i83
leading out towards the German lines.' ' Indeed ! '
said the General, ' and what steps are taken to guard
it ? ' ' Patrols are sent out along it every night, sir.'
I said nothing, but I knew the road, and knew that
it did not exist till last night, when I sent out two
of my men to cut it through the standing corn. It's
best to leave one general to answer another general's
questions whenever possible. Here, of course, we
talk of our generals as small boys do of their
schoolmasters. They may be secretly respected or
admired, but, to hear us talk, you would suppose
they were all nervous, excitable old gentlemen, dod-
dering with age, hopelessly incompetent, and utterly
ignorant of what a trench looks like, and even of the
way to fire a rifle. All of which is not perhaps strictly
true, for this one had, at any rate, a sense of humour.
In this company, all except the officers were just
carrying on as usual, which meant that, except for the
sentries, you could see nothing except boots sticking
out from the dug-outs, and hear nothing except a
confused sound of snoring from within. In the
next company, however, a zealous company com-
mander had routed all his men out, and made them
stand to arms at the parapet. The General looked
at them and remarked, ' I suppose these are all the
men who would be asleep if I were not coming
round ? ' And, strange as it may seem, there are
some generals famous for their courage. There
/
i84
used to be one in the next brigade to us who is well
knowTi through the army by his nickname ' Inky
Bill.' I believe he rode out on a white charger,
rather like the great Russian Skobeleff at the siege
of Plevna, and was never hit, though often well
within range. In October, too, when we were re-
tiring off the ridge in front, and things were critical,
he was reported to have made ready to charge the
Germans, with his Brigade-Major, a few cooks, and
officers' servants. I see Captain Wreford-Brown,
D.S.O., Northumberland Fusihers, is killed ; a very
nice man, who came up in the train with me from
Rouen to rail-head. Latterly, I think he had been
an instructor at Sandhurst, but his medals showed
that he had seen a great deal of service on the N.W.
frontier and elsewhere. Someone in the corner,
who had not seen a great deal of service, was bucking
about what he and his regiment had done, or were
going to do. Wreford-Brown stood it for a time,
and then, when there was a pause, he said quietly,
' Well, personally, if I get through this war alive
without feeling I have disgraced myself publicly, I
shall be jolly well pleased.' I have got your pug-
garees, which I shall keep in case we go on trek ; here
in the trench I don't think I am hkely to use them
much ; and I have your ' Sixty American Opinions '
too. They are very encouraging, even if they are
selected from what Americans call ' highbrow ' class
i85
of lawyers, authors, and college presidents. The
names, of course, are Anglo-Saxon. I remember
noticing that, in spite of the immense immigration
from other countries, the names in the Roll of Con-
gress for 1915 were mostly British. Base-ball players
seemed to show a majority of Irishmen ; clothing
trades were in the hands of queer-sounding combina-
tions, from the south-east of Europe I suspect, just
like our Jews in the East End, who make so many
soldiers' uniforms ; while Greeks seem to corner
the fruit trade. These professions which run with
nationality are rather curious. We have the Italian
and his organ, the Portuguese with his strings of
onions, the Highland policeman, and the Clydeside
engineer, who seems as indispensable as oil in every
ship's engine-room. But in reading American and
every other ' opinion,' I notice more and more what
strength the invasion of Belgium gave to our case for
going to war. If the Germans had invaded France
straight across her own frontiers, we should have
been just as much bound in honour to support her
against an unprovoked attack. But it would not have
been nearly so clear to the rest of the world that it
was the right thing for us to do. Germany supplied
us and the rest of the world with a very striking
illustration of what her methods would lead to,
sooner or later, if any western country crossed her.
Belgium is by far the weakest power in the field.
i86
but, in a way, she has been more trouble to Germany
than the rest of us put together, and will be for years
to come, which shows that brute force isn't the only
thing which counts, even in modern war.
The bog-myrtle was still very sweet when it
arrived. Did you ever read a poem with the verse
in it ?
From the lone shieling, and the misty island
Mountains divide us, and a waste of seas.
But still the blood is warm, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
There are very few real Highlanders in this regiment
now, though I have one in my platoon from Strath
Conon in Ross-shire.
Trenches : June 8, 1915.
We had a birthday party last night for Clark ;
the dug-out was like an oven, and everybody was
sweltering in their shirt sleeves and thinking of
iced drinks ; but we had tinned asparagus and a
boned fowl, and three bottles of very sticky sweet
champagne, which had been unearthed somewhere
in the town, the last of the cellar, I expect.
To-day was even hotter ; a thunder shower
laid the dust for a bit, and brought out a pleasant
smell of wet earth and wet grass — but it's still
very close. The Brigadier came round again, but
he or his staff had forgotten the pohteness of princes,
and they were nearly an hour late — perhaps they
felt faint and had to sit down on the way. I like
the heat when I am moving about, but I don't
like sitting or lying still in it, and we shall
have ' infinite torment of flies ' before the summer
is out.
Yet another respirator has been issued to me,
a kind of helmet this time through which I can
make my voice heard to give orders ; the other
gagged me most effectually. The following
information is published in our official summary :
' It is stated by a refugee recently escaped from
Lille, that, as the result of a fancy dress dance given
there by the Germans on Christmas Eve, one of
the local ladies who had participated in the
festivities found the next morning that the words
" Gott strafe England " had been tattooed on ^
her person.' The champagne, I'm afraid, must
have been very good if she never noticed she was "^
being tattooed till the cold light of morning ; or do
you think the atmosphere was so charged with hate /
that the words printed themselves by some wireless
process — just as Bloody Mary said they would
find ' Calais ' written on her heart ?
How ridiculous the Germans have made them-
selves with their ' Gott strafe England ' ! Our
/
i88
newspapers have taken up a great many silly cries,
but none quite so silly as that.
It will take a good deal more hammering to
force the lock at the Dardanelles. I was glad
Winston Churchill said so clearly at Dundee that
it was vitally important to the course of the war in
the main theatre — though perhaps it would have
come a little more effectively from someone else's
mouth. I have thought all along that if Russia
is to carry on the war with her new armies she
must get an outlet to the rest of the world. She
has less factories than we, and she can buy neither
raw material nor finished explosives, except in
very small quantities carried across Siberia from
Japan.
The general elections in Greece are due this
month. I wonder what our old friend Eleutherios
Venizelos will do. Daisy and I became famihar
with his face on posters in Athens. He is not
in the least Hke Pericles, although his fond admirers
say he is, for a very ugly man with spectacles, a
huge nose, a stubbly beard, and a tall hat cannot
pose as an ancient Greek ; but he must be one of
the ablest men in Europe, and if he had had his
way I expect the Greeks would be marching through
Macedonia to take the Turks in the flank.
i8g
Trenches : June g, 191 5.
So you got an extension of leave, and Helen
had a Red Cross nurse to herself on her visit. I
wonder whether the willow-herb was in flower just
below the cottage across the ford, and whether
the rhododendrons were as fine as last year ; not
quite, I expect, for we couldn't have two such good
years running. Here we are just in the middle
of a thunder-storm, but the noise of thunder sounds
rather tame and ordinary compared with a shell ;
at least there's nothing frightening in it, and
no whistling pieces to follow. I have finished
' Cranford,' which I never read before ; it doesn't
quicken the pulse, or even tickle the ribs, but
everj^thing is drawn with such a delicate touch,
that it's a pleasure to read. Now I have begun
another book of peace, though I believe it must
have been written in the middle of the twenty-five
years' struggle with Napoleon. I mean ' Sense and
Sensibility.' One thing I can never quite get over
in reading an old-fashioned book ; that is the
feeling that language, which would be affected
to-day, must always have been a little affected ;
yet I know it wasn't really. ' Is there a felicity
in the world,' said Marianne, having ' ascended '
the downs ' superior ' to this ? ' Margaret, let us
walk here at least two hours.' If she was human
igo
enough for the second sentence, the first must
have been her natural way of speaking. I wish
you would give me as a birthday present, Gibbon
in Everyman's ; send out a couple of volumes
at a time, then I can get rid of them as I read them.
For even though it takes time and men and ships
to force the Dardanelles, I think the story of Con-
stantinople will be taken up again where it was
left in 1455. It's curious to think of the two
graveyards ; one beside the Bosphorus, where all
the British soldiers were buried who died in Florence
Nightingale's hospitals at Scutari, after fighting
for the Turk against the Russian, and now this
new one beside the Dardanelles, where we are
fighting for the Russian against the Turk. . . .
Trenclies : June 10, 1915.
I haven't had any letters for a day or two,
but I hope Uncle Charlie has broken the spell over
the loch. It's still very hot and close here ; neither
aeroplanes nor artillery can observe much, so
they have been quiet. There must have been a
lot of exaggeration about the shortage of shells,
by people who love to put their finger on one fault
and explain everything by harping on that. I was
asking an artillery officer yesterday about it ; he
had been all through the recent fighting at Ypres.
igi
He said there was never any question of a limit
there, except the difficulty in getting up supplies
from the parks to the guns quick enough, but they
could fire as many rounds as they pleased. Here,
of course, when nothing particular is going on, they
are stnctly limited. Another battery, which was
here a few days ago, had been just behind the
Canadians when the gas was first used on April 22.
When the Germans passed their flank, they turned
their guns round, so that they were firing in
two absolutely opposite directions, with alternate
sections of two guns. They had been gassed too
later on,- at least 2000 yards behind the firing
line. The guns were in a hollow, and suddenly
they saw the gas come rolling over the brow in
front like a cloud, but owing to their respirators
they didn't suffer much. The only officer badly
gassed was, curiously enough, Tom's old friend
Tinne, the rowing Blue (you know the famous
picture of the supper-party in his rooms in fancy
dress) ; and he was running round kicking out the
men, many of whom were asleep at the time.
When it was all over, they found their pet dog
dead, killed by the gas just where he lay curled up
asleep. We go back into billets to-night. I hear
the 91st will be out too, so I may see Sholto. . . .
192
Billets : June 12, 1915.
Your bog-myrtle came to-day, still very sweet,
and a scent like that always stirs the memory
more than any writing, or talking, or sketching
can do. There's a passage in Homer which I'm
very fond of, where he casts about for something
to give the idea of swiftness, and instead of taking
lightning or the flight of an arrow, he says, like the
thought of a man who has travelled to many places,
and sits at home thinking to himself, ' I wish I
was there or there,' But I shouldn't be at all
happy at Rhuveag just now, so I don't really want
to be there, except to see you. I have just come
in from a walk with the doctor, along a road which
runs south parallel to the firing line, and a mile
behind it. We should have been in La Bassee
before evening if we had followed it along. The
country was very pretty ; tall hedges with wild
roses in them, grass very long and green, and
pollard willows standing beside the black ditches,
which are now mostly covered with duckweed
and water crowfoot. The willow is a prettier
tree than the olive, I think ; it has much the same
grey-green colour when the leaves turn over, but
the branches are more graceful. The farms were
mostly deserted, and shell holes through the roof
and walls, showed the necessity ; but of course there
193
are soldiers, gunners especially, billeted every-
where, and one or two stray inhabitants, who have
escaped so many times that now they feel they
can't be hit ; curious how a lot of narrow escapes
either break a man's nerve altogether, or give
him ten times the confidence that he had before.
There are no vineyards so far north as this, but
vines climbing all along the cottages and houses,
as they used to do in the villages round Winchester.
I saw one artilleryman busy building an observa-
tion post, just like a large bird's nest 60 feet up in
a poplar tree ; that is the great difficulty in this
flat enclosed country, to observe the fire of modern
long range guns. Little shops are springing up
everywhere, and there are notice boards in windows
to say that eggs and milk and ' chips ' are sold. . . .
We go back into trenches to-night, to a new bit of
trench ; that means dining early, so I must get
ready.
Trenches : June 13, 1915.
We were a very long time in getting into our
new trenches last night, for the guides had been
sent to the wrong place ; the night was very dark,
and we wandered about in a perfect rabbit warren
of trenches, where even the occupiers did not
seem to know the way. Luckily, the Germans
were unusually quiet, for if they had started sheUing
194
us when we were blocked in the communication
trenches, or had showered grenades over the parapet
as they had done the night before, they might have
made a large bag. This used to be the hottest
corner in this part of the line, but it's only luke-
warm now. My trench is only 70 yards from the
German front trench, so we can only use loopholes
and cannot put heads up by day. I think I
described the place to you once before ; it's very
like the lower deck of a ship, for the trench is roofed
over, to give protection against rifle grenades,
bombs, and trench mortar ' sausages,' which are
freely offered at times, and in place of portholes,
there are iron plates with sliding shutters, in case
we have to fire. The parapet is very thick, but
it could not have been built at all, if it had not
been begun and finished in the days of peace which
followed the New Year, when both sides were too
wretched with mud and water to bother about
firing. Then, when both had made themselves
reasonably comfortable, they went at it again.
There are a great many graves scattered about
just behind the trench, for the Germans are really
on three sides of us here, and it takes a long time
to get in and out. But there is one advantage of
being so near, that they can hardly shell us for fear
of hitting their own men. We have to keep boots
and equipment on day and night, for the trenches
^5
are too close together to make it possible to put
up wire, and now, of course, there is always the
chance of gas, though we are well provided against
that. Perhaps all this sounds a great deal worse
than it really is, for we have had a very quiet day,
with very little firing, and I don't think it's any
worse than our old Hues used to be. I had one
piece of luck, for the 91st have moved along a
little to our left, and I found Sholto there this
morning, very brown and big. ... I wish he had
come to this battaHon, and I think he misses some
of his friends in the 4th. He has been in the
trenches • a fortnight without a break. We have
two bomb catapults, but I think the elastic is
wearing out, as it does with all catapults. I wish
I had something which would destroy Bombilius
Major, who is holding this trench in great force,
and seems to think the sand-bags are put there
for him to bask on them. There is a kind of
biting house-fly too. . . . There are no gardens
here, there has always been too much to do,
and much more than rain used to fall from the
sky. . , .
Trenches : June 14, 1915.
We had a Uvely afternoon yesterday, for a
trench mortar battery came along to wake the
02
196
Germans up. They started with 33-pounder bombs,
hke a big turnip with a long handle, and we watched
them sailing through the air, with the handle
spinning round. But out of twenty large bombs,
only eight went off. Then the Germans brought
out their sausage machine, and started to reply.
The sausage machine throws up a long bomb like
a rolling-pin, which makes a most infernal noise.
We could hear the report and see them come
rocketing over a tall row of trees just above our
trenches, tumbling over and over in the air. I felt
like a small boy at Winchester waiting for high
catches in the deep field, for the sausage seemed
to hang in the air above your head, while, to use
Daddy's favourite expression, your past life rose
before you like a cloud, and you wondered when
the thing was going to come down, and whether
it would go right over, or hit a branch and drop
straight on your head ; and all the time it seemed
to hang there, tumbling round and round. Luckily,
they all went over the fire trench where I was
standing, but one sausage was rude enough to come
into our company trench quarters, where it wrecked
Clark's house, and very nearly spoilt the dinner.
It was really very funny to see them. We replied
with two smaller mortars, which showered turnips
on them until their sausage machine was damaged
or silenced for want of sausages. But by that
197
time they were thoroughly angry, and had sent
word to their artillery, which put more than thirty
shells over our heads, and into the trenches on
our left. They also showered rifle-grenades on
us, to which we replied in kind, and for a while
there was quite a battle with turnips, sausages,
rifle-grenades, and shells all fl5ang through the
air, and bursting round about. But, in spite of
all this frightfulness, no one in this company was
hit. For some time, however, we all had a sausage
eye, and kept looking up anxiously when a swallow
passed the trees, and in the evening when three
or four large bats came out, I kept on seeing them
past the corner of my spectacles, and looking round
anxiously for cover. The artillery officer who
runs the trench mortar battery was in my trench,
and his orderly at the telephone laughed so much
that he could hardly pass the orders ; presently,
however, a sausage broke all his wires behind, so
he had to go out and mend them under fire. We
have just begun the same evening sport again, but
we have no more of the big bombs, and sausages
are scarce too. . . .
Trenches : June i6, 1915.
It must have been a hot day if it tempted you
to swim. . . . It's very hot again here, though the
nights are still cool. Bombilius is a greater plague
than ever. I almost wish we could have a gas attack
in order to get rid of him. They tell me that where
the gas has passed out at Ypres there is not a fly
to be seen anywhere, so it has some compensations.
We have been getting cherries from an orchard just
behind the trenches of the 91st, and strawberries
can be had when we are in billets, but at present we
only come out for two days at a time. Gordon,
our brigadier, has left us to take up command
of a division at home, and the Colonel of the
Cameronians succeeds him. . . . Some of the men
are getting leave again, but there will be none for
officers, except on doctor's orders. If we did more
fighting in this part of the world, we should get
more leave, but we can't have it both ways. . . .
We seem to be on the move again at both ends of
our line.
Trenches : Waterloo Day, June 18, 1915.
I got such a packet of letters last night that I
spent the time when I should have been writing to
you in reading them. The Invernenty burn must
be just the same as ever, and I should like to hear it
and the whaups, if they are still whistling in June.
I hope the cuckoo has not disappointed Francis of
his war-baby. Pipits, and other small birds who
199
are favoured with these blessings, seem to give them
far more attention than they would give their own
respectable families, and some of the letter writers
in the papers are inclined to do the same. Some
sparrows have built a straw nest in a tree just above
my trench, and the young birds should be very pre-
cocious, for they must have a strenuous life. At
that height they needn't fear very much except
shrapnel, but the tree itself is bleeding to death, for
its trunk near the ground has been riddled through
and through with bullets. I quite expected that
the Germans would remind us of Waterloo — La Belle
Alliance, as they call it — for they are quite as con-
vinced that Bliicher did everything as we are that
it was Wellington's battle. Sure enough, when I was
sitting quietly in my dug-out at 3.30. A.M., I heard
a sudden noise, and our old friends the sausages
began to hurtle through the air. They wrecked one
bit of our trench pretty thoroughly, but the only
one which came near me, bounced on the parapet
and, after hesitating a little, decided to stay outside.
The early morning sun was in our eyes, so that it
was difficult to ' mark over,' and the noise was soon
too loud to hear them coming. For a howitzer
battery opened on our reserve trench fifty yards
behind, and did some very pretty shooting, and two
or three field batteries began firing shrapnel. So we
had a lively half-hour, and were surprised to find
200
when it was all over that our losses were only
one man killed and three wounded ; we were very
lucky to get off so lightly. The sausage was just
the same as before. ' It puts yer in mind of a
polony,' as one of my men said to me. One of them
fell in a ditch, where it sent up a fountain of most
evil-smelling mud, and some buried German ammu-
nition. All the day before we had peace, and all
to-day too since early morning, though our heavy
howitzers have been busy on some target a long way
behind their front line. We are relieved to-night,
and go back into billets for two days. There was a
very funny scene to-day, when a prisoner for court-
martial, not of this regiment, objected to being tried
by a major in the Middlesex, because he said the
major was ' too much of a religious cove.' The ob-
jection was allowed ; whether based on truth or not,
I can't say, but a suitable Gallio was found to pre-
side over the court. I went along and saw Sholto
this evening, and showed him some photos of his
nieces which reached me last night, together \vith
a budget of letters from Glenairley. Til send them
home presently, but I like to have them here in the
trenches and look at them. The ' mink ' has been
busy with Al's hens again, but his old ' factor '
Harry Q. is still with him. Marion C. will be glad to
know that. ... I think that it was a wise man who
said that every country gets the Jews which it
201
deserves, and ours have done well for us on the whole.
After Dizzy, it's too late to start Jew-baiting, though
if Dizzy hadn't been so full of visions in the Near
East, and faith in the Oriental Turk, we might not
have backed the wrong horse in 1878, and might
have saved our troubles in the Dardanelles to-day.
This letter should reach you on my birthday, or
thereabouts. At Cargilfield I used to have great
luck in spending my birthday at home, but that
won't happen this year. However, I think I shall
have a very happy birthday out here, and you must
let it be a cheerful day at home. Of course, I wish
that I could see a chance of getting back to my work,
for twenty-six seems rather late to be starting my
way in the world. Perhaps a year out here would
make me a better man, if not a better barrister ;
sometimes I think I am learning a lot, sometimes
it all seems sheer waste. But, anyway, until we
win this war, I really care very little what
happens to me or to anyone else, though, naturally,
I want to come back, and want my friends to come
back too.
Billets : June 20, 1915.
We go back to the trenches again to-night,
to our old line, which, as a rule, is not so lively.
But the German guns have been rather active
202
these last few days. Personally, I think they are
making a noise to cover the withdrawal of most
of their infantry. I'm sure there are very few
men in the trenches in front of us, and that most
of them have gone north or south to the more
critical points. But, of course, they leave wire and
machine-guns behind them, so that we can't stroll
across. Yesterday morning they put 105 shells into
a space no longer than the path from Rhuveag door
to the gate (about 80 yards) ; marvellous shooting !
too good in fact, for they never got the battery
which they were firing at ; but if these shells had
scattered, they would certainly have knocked our
guns out. To-day they shelled our billets, wounding
three men, one from my platoon.
I marched a party of men for a bath in a factory
yesterday, a factory for bleaching linen, with great
wooden vats full of hot water, and some of cold,
so that you could take a plunge afterwards. I was
so pleased with the chance of a wash that I jumped
in without taking off my wrist watch, but it does
not seem to have suffered. ... I saw Sholto again
yesterday ; he had a very comfortable billet ;
a pale blue carpet, art paper on the walls, and a
spring mattress, so that at 5.30 p.m. I could hardly
wake him up. But he has had a long spell in the
trenches. From what he tells me, I seem to have
203
outlasted all but a very few of the 4th Battalion
who came out with or before me ; one killed, but
several wounded, and others sick. I don't hear
of much typhoid, or dangerous disease, but there
is a lot of flu, or low fever, which gives men a
temperature for a day or two, and leaves them
rather ' piano.' I had hoped he would be able to
dine with me. Unfortunately, he had to go digging,
so I had to have my dinner alone — in the house
where we get our hot baths. The housekeeper will
give you a very nice dinner there, very nicely served
and marvellously cheap. So I enjoyed a clean
cloth, and clean glass and silver, new peas, potatoes,
strawberries, and cherries — ^in fact all the delights
of the season. . , . How splendidly the French are
fighting ! I do admire the way they are facing
this war. They seem to have made a calm
resolution to drive the Germans out of their
country, no matter what the cost, and they will
do it. I see that in the Crimean War, they
and we only lost some 10,000 killed between us.
Yet I always thought of that as a big enough
war. . . .
204
Trenches : June 21, 191 5.
We are back again in a peaceful trench, 500
yards from the Germans, and until they shell us
we can sit at ease, enjoying the sunshine, and the
wind in the corn. It has been a very hot day,
until this breeze sprang up, and I spent most of
the morning waiting in a dusty street, while an
interminable court-martial dragged itself along.
One of my men had been found sleeping on sentry,
and he called me as a witness that he had complained
some time ago of trouble with his eyes, though why
he should make that an excuse for shutting his
ears too, I don't understand, and I don't think the
court will either. I was annoyed at wasting a
morning over evidence which only took a minute,
more especially because last night, to my great
surprise and delight, I found A. G. Heath,^ of New
College, now of the West Kents, was attached to
us for instruction. He has just come out with
another division of K.'s army. It was very
pleasant to see him again, and to get news of a
great many friends. But he will go off again
to-night, and we are not very likely to meet again.
I think the new army are very well trained, very
fit, and very keen ; in fact, I believe they would
astonish Europe if we could only get the Germans
1 Fellow of New College, Oxford : he was killed in action in
France on October 8, 1915.
205
on the move again. They seem to march miles
every day without tiring, while we have hardly
marched more than three miles in the last three
months. This letter never was finished yesterday,
for there was a lot to do ; two platoons of West
Kents came down to us, and we had to get them
in quickly before a patrol went out to try and get
a prisoner. They got no prisoner, but secured a
helmet and a greatcoat which some German threw
away. So they found out what regiment was
opposite, which was what they really wanted to
do. To-day I can just imagine what a tired hostess
feels like at the end of a strenuous day, for I have
been trotting round answering questions, and trying
to pretend that life in the trenches is desperately
interesting, which it isn't, when you would very
much like to be asleep if your guests were not
there to be entertained. However, Heath has
stayed till this evening, . . . The French guns are
still thundering away in the far distance night
and day ; they seem to have any quantity of shells,
and I bet the Germans opposite them are wishing
they had never come to France, for I think the
French are driving them out of each new position
before they have had time to dig themselves in
properly, which must be most exhausting work,
when they are always digging against time, and
always just too late. . . .
2o6
Trenches : June 23, 1915.
My birthday, like almost every other day, has
been quiet enough, though this last half-hour our
guns have been trying to knock out a German
machine-gun which we had spotted opposite us,
and the Germans have been replying with shrapnel
on our trenches. It amuses the West Kents who
have come in to be instructed, and are quite dis-
appointed if there is nothing doing. We have
been hosts again to two more officers, one a Balliol
man, whom I afterwards discovered to have been
at Loretto. He had known Ronald and Sholto ;
said that Ronald not only made a tremendous
impression in the year that he was head, but left
a tradition after him for years, and that there was
a school of followers who held him up as a pattern
of the Loretto spirit. We had quite a little fight
the other night. Bankier took out a strong patrol
in front here, to see if he could get a German trench ;
he couldn't manage that, but, on the left, one of
our patrol came into touch with the Germans in
the long grass. First of all, they cut off a small
party under a sergeant, one of our genuine High-
landers from Loch Awe side ; he charged them,
yelling, with a revolver in each hand, and laid out
seven of them. Then he came back with another
party, and recovered two of his men who were
207
badly wounded — driving the Germans off, who
retired past another party of ours who were lying
further out in the grass. They also dropped some
Germans, and captured a helmet and a greatcoat
which were thrown away in the rush ; so that we
know now that we have the 179th Saxon regiment
opposite us, and G.H.Q. were very much pleased
with this information. We lost one man missing ;
but I think the Germans were scared, for they
have been playing their search-lights on our front,
and have brought up new machine-guns. The
French are still thundering away to the south, good
luck to them. They have done splendidly, and
the Germans opposite them must wish they had
never been born. I don't expect to see any great
capture or surrender, but I think the angle which
Soissons makes in our line may be driven in. . . .
They are still shelling us, but one must just sit
tight, and believe in one's luck ; no one has been
hit yet.
208
Trenches: June 24, 1915.
We have had another peaceful day instructing
the West Kents. . . . We have just had a heavy
thunder-storm, and everything is still dripping, as
you will see from this paper. A very little rain
makes the surface as slippery as ever, but it dries
quickly now. The wheat which has sown itself in
the fields round about will soon be ripening, and we
are threatened with a plague of mice. I saw ever
so many while I was on watch early this morning,
playing about among the sand-bags ; they will soon
eat holes in them, but a sand-bag full of wet earth
has a short life in any case. After a couple of
months they get too rotten to lift. I don't
remember the loch which you describe as being
beyond Ben Chion ; does it run out into Glengyle,
or into the head of the Lochlarig stream ? The
bathing must have been splendid. I had a
letter from Laura last night, most enthusiastic
about Rhuveag, but I was surprised to hear
that she had never been there before. We
are not likely to have guests in these other
trenches, and I will try to write a longer letter
to-morrow.
209
Trenches : June 25, 1915.
I find Sholto next door to me again, so this
afternoon he came across for tea, and we made a
beginning on the birthday cake, which is a wonder-
ful creation, decorated with the flags of the Allies as
well as my initials. It did not arrive till last
night, possibly because it was dated for the 25th ;
but it's a very good cake inside as well as out. Our
bomb officer got a small china war baby from it ;
he learnt earlier in the day that he had got the
Military Cross, so that it was an eventful day for
him. Another subaltern has also got the Military
Cross for good work in the trenches, and since he
was in charge of the successful patrol the other
night he has been recommended for something
more. I hear that Bankier is recommended too.
We have been very peaceful here to-day ; the Ger-
mans are 350 yards away on our right, and nearly
1000 yards straight in front, with a wide field
of blood-red poppies in between. There is a
picturesque village, or what remains of one, on the
far side, and beyond its whitewashed walls and
ruined gables, the wooded ridge, behind which are
the German batteries. It has been rather a gloomy
day of rain and thunder ; rain much needed for the
crops, if there had been any just here. I like the
poem which you copied from the Spectator, but I
210
still think the front is very much less terrible than
the ' back ' ; of course, I have seen no desperate
fighting, but here in the trenches the wounded are
dressed and taken away so quickly, and, as a rule,
they suffer very little until their wounds get stiff ;
and when men are killed we do not see their homes.
There are moments of suspense — for instance, last
night when we were moving along an open road
just behind the trenches, two shells suddenly
swooped down out of the darkness, and burst not
far behind my platoon. The men stepped out
briskly, but there were no more, although I quite
expected them, and was glad when we were all under
cover again. I take no risks, except, perhaps, some-
times the risk of being thought afraid, for I am
convinced that the officer who gets killed when he
needn't be is doing no service to himself or to his
men ; and I have heard of so many being killed
when there was no need. If only I had as many
brothers at home as Sholto, I should be very happy.
After all, to be killed fighting for a cause like ours
is the greatest honour a man can win, and that is
how we should try to look at it, as something far
greater than a V.C. or any other honour to the
living. Your letter describing the sunset over Ben
Chion came last night. How well I can imagine it !
We often have beautiful sunset skies here ; but I
think you miss something in a sunset unless there
211
are reflections in still water, or unless the sun sets
over the sea. We go back into billets on Sunday,
I think, if the present arrangement holds good.
Trenches : June 26, 191 5.
The rain yesterday brought back memories of
February, and I went to sleep once more with
each foot thrust into an empty sand-bag, to keep
some of the mud from my blanket. But to-day
all is dry again with a sunny south wind. The
field of poppies in front is really a marvellous sight ;
they look to me crimson rather than scarlet, and
the colour is set of by some very white sand-bags
and lining on the German parapet behind. The
country on the wooded ridge which the Germans
hold looks very Enghsh, so much so that the gunners
say they can see the vicar's daughter going along
to play tennis every afternoon. There really is a
female figure, dressed in white, who moves along
a road at about the same time every day. . . .
Thank you very much for Gibbon ; he was a
marvellous man, to carry such a weight of learning
with so much ease, and though research has com-
pletely changed the study of classics in the last
fifty years, he still stands alone.
p 2
212
Trenches : June 27, 1915.
The 91st are moving along to relieve us to-night.
It's just starting to rain very heavily, so we are
lucky to be moxdng out. Nothing has happened ;
some men were wounded by rifle grenades this
morning, but not in this company. The Germans
have changed their tactics very much since I came
out ; they used to snipe ceaselessly all day and all
night. Now they remain quiet as a rule, unless we
stir them up. It would be better, I think, to be
rather more active, for it seems to me that in this
trench warfare both sides made the mistake of
thinking that the most important thing to do was
to strengthen their own position, whereas it was
really more important to prevent the other side
from doing so. In the wet weather it was natural
that officers and men should think first how they
could make an island of refuge in the seas of mud,
and then strengthen their parapets to keep out
bullets, and run up wire on stakes. But it came to
this, that we could not fire when we heard their
parties working, because our own were out in front ;
and now, having definitely passed from the defensive
to the attack, we suffer from the strength of their
positions, and are often hampered by our own wire.
The same thing would probably happen if we were
set down facing one another again ; but that's where
213
a staff can help, just because they are warm and
dry and comfortable, and can look ahead. Their
judgment isn't inevitably biassed, as it is for the
man on the spot, who is lying unprotected in a wet
hole in the open, and only wants to be let alone.
The same problem is always coming up ; our infantry
don't want our guns to shell the trenches opposite,
because they are sure to retahate on us, but if they
think they can do the most damage, our gunners
ought to damn the infantry and shell away. It's
worth losing guns too, if by Hngering behind they
can make great havoc before they are captured ;
but that must be one of the most difficult parts of a
general's work, to balance these losses and gains,
and a man like Napoleon, with little human feeHng,
has an advantage. So have the Germans at times,
being more careless of human life. Whatever may
be right in peace, I'm sure Radical politics are the
only politics for war ; never to be content with things
as they are. If you don't make the enemy do some-
thing, he'll make you do it, and force his time and
place upon you. I don't know in the least whether
we are preparing a great series of attacks, or whether
we are concentrating our efforts on the Dardanelles.
We must get through there before the autumn, if we
want the Russians to help us effectively next winter.
I don't see the slightest prospect of peace before
next summer, but I see less prospect than ever thct
214
the Germans will be able to make a peace favourable
to themselves. , . . You will have heard that Ronald
Campbell was shot through the jaw a week ago ; a
stray bullet while he was digging trenches behind
the line. His luck is out in this war — or else he is
lucky, if one looks at it the other way, for hospital
with a severe wound is the safest place for any man
at present. . . .
Billets : June 28, 1915.
We had a long roundabout march back from our
trenches last night, but were in billets before mid-
night. I always like walking on a summer night,
and there's a peculiar pleasure in it when you are
leaving the trenches. The rain had cleared off, and
the moon was full. We fell in quietly on a road
just behind the trench, as soon as the sentries had
been relieved, and moved off by a track through
the deserted fields. The first few hundred yards
are always a little anxious, for there is a chance
that a star-shell or search-light will discover you,
or that the clink of rifles or shuffle of feet will be
heard. But all went well, and we soon lost sight
of the braziers and line of twinkling lights, which
is all you see of the breastworks from behind at
night. It was very still and quiet, with a smell
of summer in the air, a change from the trenches,
which often smell of chloride of lime, if they do not
215
smell of something worse, and the crack of the
rifles sounded fainter and fainter behind us, while,
at long intervals, a bullet would come lisping past.
Presently we reached a road, still showing white,
in spite of the weeds invading it from either side,
and followed it for a mile or more, parallel to the
firing line, with star-shells lighting up the level
ground and rows of poppies in the distance. The
farms are mostly ruined, though a hght on the
sheltered side still shows when a telephone or head-
quarters' guard is there ; and you can see the
sky through the battered roof, and the black holes
where the shells have gone through the thin brick
walls without bursting. I saw a German gun put
four through one gable-end one day, four successive
shots — good shooting ! I heard Sholto's voice in
the dark, as he led his platoon along, but did
not see him again. When I got back into billets,
I found a letter from Ralph Fowler waiting for me,
written of course before he was wounded. He spoke
of the difficulty of getting water, and of protecting
their line among broken sand-hills from enfilading,
but he said that from the head of some of the
ravines, they had beautiful views of Imbros and the
other islands. I heard from Stainton too to-day —
better, but on leave till September i, and very
impatient to be back.
2l6
Billets : June 30, 1915.
What am I to say to you that I have not said
fifty times before ? There is no change in the
British front ; there have been showers, but it is
clearing up again, and will soon be as hot as ever.
For once I did see a new place to-day by walking
a mile further along a road than I had been before ;
there was not much to see — a deserted village with
a wide street, almost empty, except for a few artillery
men, and a ruined church, the doors of which were
barricaded, I suppose to keep out spies or careless
soldiers who might draw fire on the village again
by climbing up the tower. The church seemed to
have a foundation of old stone, but was finished
off in brick. I wonder if for the same reason as
Eton College buildings, which Henry VI began
in stone before the Wars of the Roses, and which
were finished above in brick, because after the
wars stone was too expensive. There was a rank
and hideous cemetery round about it, clumsy iron
crosses instead of tombstones, and no old monu-
ments at all. I wonder whether they were swept
away in the Revolution with so much of old France.
But I notice that even in this republican country
you have ' Monsieur ' inscribed on your cross, if
you can afford a better one than your neighbours.
The country was flat and placidly pretty, red-tiled
217
farms, cows, orchards, wheat fields. We asked one
old man whether any of his cows had been killed,
but he said no, but pointed to a big shell hole, and
said in tones of infinite scorn, ' Les Anglais ont
fouille dedans ' ; so they had, ' mais les Fran9ais
fouillent aussi,' and come running out with picks
and spades as soon as a shell has fallen. I believe
they get good prices for the fuses and other souvenirs
in Paris. We called on our way back to make
some inquiries about a supposed spy ; lights had
been reported on the nights when the battalions
in this brigade relieved one another, but I don't
think there is anything in it.
I was walking with a man who speaks French
perfectly. Captain Irvine of this regiment ; he was
A.D.C. in Mauritius before war broke out and had
to speak to the French sugar planters there, and
he has since married a French girl. I have been
inoculated for typhoid again, and the muscle of
my arm is a bit stiff to-day, but otherwise it has
not affected me. There is amazingly little typhoid
or enteric among the British troops, but I hear
the French have a great many cases, and that the
Germans are even worse ! I enclose a letter from
Harold Edgell, who, like all educated Americans,
seems very far from ' neutral.' I saw a good deal
of him and his wife in the first fortnight after war
was declared. The Champollion whom he speaks
2l8
of was a grandson of the Professor Champollion
who, I think, first deciphered the Rosetta stone,
and so found the key to all the hieroglyphics in
Egypt.
Billets : July i, 1915.
It's a grey day, inclined to rain ; this northern
corner of France is very like England, and seems
to have almost exactly the same weather, perhaps
a little hotter when the winds come to it across
Europe instead of across the Channel. I had been
enjoying a different billet, with a bed, and actually
sheets, the first I have slept in since I left England,
and except for one night in London, the first since
I last left home. But early this morning I got up,
wakened by our batteries which suddenly became
noisy, and when I was satisfied that they weren't
going to shell us back, and was returning to bed,
behold ! insects of a size and splendour which I
had hardly imagined. Perhaps they are fond of
exercise in the early morning ; anyway I was glad
that it was my last night, and not my first, or I
might not have slept so sound ; their attack was
beaten off with heavy loss, for they were too fat to
run, and I have plenty of Keating's powder left.
Another parcel of dried fruit has arrived, but
as we had not finished the last, I think I shall give
it to my platoon. The Sphere never comes now.
219
I don't mind for myself, because I always see it
in the mess, but if you are ordering it, it ought to
come, and the men might like to see it. Send me
on two copies of Forbes-Mitchell's ' Reminiscences
of the Indian Mutiny,' Macmillan's is. series ;
he was a sergeant in the 93rd, and I remember
that at Sunderland two copies which I gave my
platoon were very popular.
There is really nothing to make a letter.
Trenches : July 2, 1915.
I was very sorry indeed to hear last night from
Sholto that Eric Colbourne^ had died of his wounds ;
from what he told me before, I thought that there
v/as nothing serious ; perhaps he was wounded
again later. It's very hard on Florence ; seems
harder in a way because he gave up his work and
travelled so far to join, when no one would have
blamed him if he had stayed behind in Victoria.
The news from the Dardanelles this morning
seemed rather better, but if we are going to force
the Straits, I think we shall have to do it ourselves,
and not wait for Roumania or Bulgaria or Greece
or anybody else. They will fly to assist the con-
queror, as the French minister remarked, but I
^ 2nd Lieut. Eric Colbourne, ist Royal Berkshire Regiment
was mortally wounded at Cuinchy, 27th June, 1915 — he had
been awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous bravery some
daysbefore his death.
220
doubt very much whether they will move until
it's all over with the Turk, bar the shouting.
I don't know that there's any weakening yet
in the spirit of Germany, but I think there is a
sharp difference of opinion between the Germans
who want to annex Belgium now, and anything
else they can lay hands on, and the Germans who
don't want to annex anything, but are fighting
because they were persuaded that they were going
to be attacked. When the peace comes, these
may realise that they weren't in danger of attack
at all, but were rushed into war by the other party,
and then will come the real change in German
opinion and policy, if it comes at all.
We have had a few shells and a good many
aeroplanes overhead this evening ; otherwise we
are as quiet as ever, and the rain has encouraged
our gardens, which were getting very dry ; we have
some very pretty white lilies which I never expected
to survive, being transplanted late in the spring.
I heard from Mitchison last night ; he was out
just in time for the last gas attack, but is now in
billets somewhere behind Ypres, where only the
very largest kind of shell can reach him. Bankier
has come back with two bulldog puppies, which
fight all day, though they can hardly carry the
weight of their own heads yet. We have at least
six dogs or puppies in this company alone now.
221
a stray kitten or two, and a couple of leverets
who live in a dug-out in the trench ; but I wish
we had some creature to feed on blue-bottles.
They have started giving leave again, but only
one officer at a time, so that my turn will not come
till September at the earliest, and very likely it
will be stopped again if there is heavy fighting.
Trenches : July 4, 1915.-
We have had a sweltering hot day, as I know,
for I was using a pick through the hottest part of
the afternoon. But I feel ever so much better
after digging hard for these last two days, and
shall go on with it. After a period of inaction, the
brigade staff have several new orders, which always
means more digging for us ; but it's good for the
men to have more to do, for, as you say, keeping
the hands busy gives the mind a rest too. There
was a beautiful half-moon early this morning, with
a bright morning star beside it. Last night was
very warm and quiet, except for a strange display
of rockets to the south of us — all colours, with
showers of stars, green, blue, and red. We could
not imagine what was happening, but it was only
the artillery testing some new signals for directing
fire in the dark. We have a wonderful trench of
Madonna lilies in the garden. I don't know what
222
it is that makes them glow in the half-light of
morning or evening, but they are at their best then,
and shining as I write.
If you should decide to go up to London, I should
be quite glad to know how things are going on at
the flat — ^in fact, before the winter, I should like
you to rescue one or two belongings, particularly
my photograph book, which has all the pictures
of my travels in it, and several of Tom which you
have not got anywhere else. It is more likely to
be thumbed, too, than other books. There is no
hurry about this, but clothes and everything else
would be better at home, and they would leave
more room for Belgium to spread herself. The
hay fever is better now, more because the season
is passing than by reason of the doctor's ' dopes,' I
think ; it was rather troublesome in June, because
it used to come on in the early morning, which is
just the time of day when you hope to sleep. Now
the only difficulty is with the flies, which swarm
everywhere, and wake up and crawl upon you as
soon as the sun gets strong in the morning ; please
send me some fly-papers, the little ones which
unroll are the best, and I should like a wrist strap
for my left wrist, which is always apt to give when
I do much shovelling. . . . And if you will give
it to me for a birthday present, I should like to
read a book which has just come out, ' Ordeal by
223
Battle,' by F. S. Oliver ; he used to write a good
deal for the Round Table, which, by the way, I have
not seen lately ; send me the current number and
others as they come out ... I used to take it
regularly, but I'm afraid I have missed several
quarters since last August. . . . To-day, in the
middle of the peaceful sunny afternoon, a big shell
suddenly swooped down from nowhere into the
trench, killed five and wounded four. I remember
Tom wrote from the Aisne that fifteen of his men
had been put out of action by one of those Jack
Johnsons. There is luck and bad luck with them ;
as a rule, they do surprisingly little damage. . . .
Trenches : July 5, 1915.
I started the day's work at 4 a.m. by watering
the garden, a long and muddy business, for I had
to jump half the way down our wall to fill the
watering-can, and stand on a slippery cask. The
well is only a hole about six feet deep, which has
been a trap to frogs and toads, until it swarms
with them, but since all kinds of flies and moths
and beetles tumble into it too, I expect they find
a Hving. We have mignonette and corn-flowers
coming on well now, with a lot of nasturtiums
and canariensis to follow. The artillery have just
finished their usual ' evening hate,' but we have
224
only had small shells on our trenches, and no
damage. We have a range-finding instrument
now, which makes a very good telescope, and my
men enjoy it, for one observes while the other
snipes, so that you hear this sort of conversation :
' His held coming up agen noo.' ' Ay, I seen it —
he's taen his bonnet aff — he's bauldy-heided — I
can see his broo.' Then they fire, and if it's a miss,
the German often waves his cap in the air, before
he goes down ; but they are getting more cautious,
for some have stayed up too long. But these are
Saxons, with some sport in them. As a sample
of the Bavarian, this letter was printed to-day,
from a soldier in the Bavarian Guard Regiment.
It was never posted, so I suppose it was found on
his body. ' You will thus have a charming souvenir
of a German warrior who has been right through the
war from the very beginning, and has shot and
bayoneted many Frenchmen, and also bayoneted
many women. Dear Grete Maier, in five minutes,
I bayoneted seven women and four young girls
in the fighting at Batovile ; my captain told me
to shoot them, but I bayoneted the rabble of swine
instead.' That's the sort of man whom I yet hope
to see on the end of our bayonets. No one would
suppose that our heavy howitzers were short of
ammunition, for they seem to fire a good deal
more than the Germans' ; not all day of course.
225
but every hour there are some shells going over.
I suppose we have not enormous reserves, but we
seem to have plenty for all ordinary needs. I
think the Germans would like to settle the war on
land on the best terms they could get, and then
build an enormous fleet of submarines to blockade
us at sea. They will try that when peace comes,
I'm certain, if they still have a kick left in them ;
but I suppose we can do the same, and prevent
their submarines from leaving harbour. . . .
Billets: July 7, 191 5.
We spent last night in the farm where we were
shelled six weeks ago, not very luxurious quarters,
for there were only the bare boards to lie upon, and
the mosquitoes, who had come swarming in at the
shell holes, took advantage of my kilt. However,
we only stayed there until daybreak ; it was a very
dark thundery evening, with puffs of hot wind, and
when we had just left the trenches there was a
terrific flash of lightning, which seemed to strike
the ground just at our feet. I think we all expected
to go flying into the air in little bits, for, at the
moment, it seemed like a mine exploding or a
gigantic shell. However it was the only flash, as
these very big ones so often are, and we got under
cover before most of the rain.
9
226
I believe they shelled the farm again this
morning, soon after we left it, and this afternoon
they put some near our billets ; but the only one
which came really near was a ' dead ' and did not
explode. It's a nuisance being shelled in billets,
for I was just going to sleep when I heard the first
whistle, and after that you lie uncomfortably
awake, listening for the next one and wondering
whether it's any good going out to some other place.
In the trenches you have got to stay there and
look after your platoon, so there is an end of it,
and it makes it much easier, but here in billets
you always have the feeling that some other place
might be safer. I sleep now in a house where a
paralytic priest occupies the lower room, and we
have to pass in and out with much grave and
ceremonious saluting ; we must often disturb him,
and I think he's ' wearying to get awa',' as Trotter
says, for he sits there with his crucifix, and just
lifts it up and down now and then. He has a fat
priest friend who comes to give him consolation,
the same priest whom I met riding his bicycle
with the dress-guard to keep his skirts out of the
wheel. But the friend seems to spend all his time
talking to the women who own the house, and who
are shrill voiced and rather impatient, I think,
that their guest, like Charles II, ' takes such an
unconscionable time in dying,'
227
People talk as if all France outside Brittany
were anti-clerical, but this part of the country seems
intensely Catholic, like the Belgians. Or rather
the country people are Catholic, and I think in
the big towns like Lille there is a bitter radical
free-thinking opposition ; these rehgious differences
get mixed up with their labour troubles, and I
think they had furious strikes in all the factories
near here a little while ago before the war, with
Jaures, the French novelist, who was assassinated
at the beginning of the war, for their leader. By
all the signs, we shall have strikes in the ten years
follo^\dng this war at home, which will make the
coal strike and the railway strike seem small.
Billets : July 9, 1915.
I did not manage to write yesterday, for there
were other things to think about. I started off to
walk into the town with Bankier ; just as we were
leaving billets we heard a shell come over behind
us, and both said we were glad to be going the
other way. We had our bath and a stroll in the
garden, which was peaceful and full of the later
roses. Then, as we walked back, one of the men
stopped us and said that some officers had been
hit ; only three shells had dropped near our billets,
but they were unlucky ones, for the first killed six
9 2
228
men and wounded five, and the third burst close
beside Kennedy, Clark, and Irvine, who had gone
across to inquire about the damage. Poor Irvine
was killed outright. I was very sorry, for I liked
him ; he was full of interest in everything, and had
married a French girl last winter to whom he was
very much devoted. He spoke French so well that
the old woman in his billet used to call him 'I'espion.'
Kennedy was severely wounded in the arm ; a great
loss to the regiment, for he was a most capable
adjutant, and an extremely nice man ; and Clark was
wounded in several places, not dangerously, I hope,
though I doubt whether we shall see him out here for
a long time to come. We shall miss him very much ;
he was quite untiring in his work for the company
and extraordinarily brave ; in fact, I can't imagine
anyone could be cooler under fire. I did not see him,
butBankier rode down to the ambulance this morning
before he was taken away and reported that he was
still very cheerful. If his wounds heal well I shall
be almost glad that he has gone, for he would have
worn himself out by want of sleep, and would most
certainly have been killed in any advance. But
it is very hard lines for him, after coming through
the whole campaign, and the company are very
sad to lose him. Three captains by one shell !
We shall have to get some more officers out from
home.
229
Did you read Sir Ian Hamilton's long dispatch
from the Dardanelles yesterday ? It was extra-
ordinarily well written, as one would expect from
him, and gave me a very strong impression of the
enormous odds against which they have been
fighting out there ; but more than all it gave me an
impression of Sir Ian Hamilton's own ability ; he
seemed to have gripped the whole situation at
once, to have realised the great difficulties, but to
have conquered them, and if only he can get through,
as I now think he will, the whole campaign will
be one of the most marvellous feats of arms in
history; Just think what it must mean to arrange
for landing troops at half a dozen different points
miles apart, when he could know nothing of the
resistance to be met, except that it would be
as strong as skill and the stubborn Turk could
make it.
The Russian news is better too, but I expect
that there will be another great German effort on
this western front in August and September. . . .
Billets : July ii, 1915.
Daisy would tell you that we have lost our
company commander, and we are not likely to get
a nicer fellow, or a braver man. I hope his wounds
wil not give trouble, but we shall not hear for
230
some days now. Captains are scarce these days,
and I don't know whether they will be able to
spare any from the 3rd or 4th Battalion. There
is a horrible lot of luck about these shells ; if you
can hear them coming and lie down, you aren't
likely to get hit, even if they burst quite near you.
To-day we have had no shells at all, though our
guns made a great noise at 4 a.m., and I see a German
observation balloon hanging in the distance ; we
also have one up a couple of miles back, a great
sack drooping at one end. They are much steadier
than aeroplanes for using telescopes, and there is
no steering and balancing to be done ; but, of course,
they can't move, and are helpless in a wind. I always
wonder that aeroplanes don't drop bombs on them,
but I suppose they have air-craft guns sitting
waiting underneath.
I have had quite a long walk to-day, seven miles
at least, with the doctor. We went to visit his
Christmas quarters, where he had had several
civihan patients ; but most of them had been shelled
out of their houses since then, and had left for other
parts of France. There were a great many roofs
and walls in ruin, but a good many of the French
people are still living there, sitting at their door-
steps and chatting ^^ith the soldiers in broken
French and English. The churches had suffered
most, and one brave old cure had been killed when
231
he went in to rescue his communion plate and
sacred relics. We came back along a river, and
for an hour or two we were walking in Belgium,
I believe ; the fleets of barges seem to have been
sunk, but our engineers had rebuilt the broken
bridges on pontoons, and I saw one happy party,
two Tommies and six small French children, rowing
down the river in a government pontoon. There
was a weir pool which looked very inviting for a
bathe, but a sentry warned us that the spot was
under close observation from the German lines, and
in the slack water above, the rows of dead dogs
and cats did not make us regret it.
It is a great pleasure to see something new,
even if it's quite a dull field or a squalid street ;
no doubt when you first arrive there seems a lot
to see, but you get so used to everything that your
eyes soon forget to take notice of what would
interest people at home.
Some big guns were firing on our right as we
walked back, making a horrid noise, and in return
the Germans were bursting heavy shrapnel and
high explosives over the roofs of a village. It's
queer to see the great puff of black smoke suddenly
spread in the sunshine and melt away before the
report of the explosion reaches you. I saw one
great factory-shed full of bales of wool, which
had been arranged to make cover inside against
232
shell fire ; I think nothing could be better. The
chimney stack had had a piece bitten out of its
side by a shell, but, strange to say, it was still
standing.
We had the pipes playing in mess last night ;
we always do one night in billets, and then the
pipe-major comes in and takes a glass of port from
the colonel and drinks the regimental toast in
Gaelic, which I can't attempt to write down, but
which means ' Highlanders, shoulder to shoulder.'
It's a little ceremony which always pleases me.
Sometimes, too, the pipers march up and down the
village street in the evening, playing for all they
are worth ; last night it was ' The Barren Rocks of
Aden,' which is a familiar tune at home, but seems
to mean much more when you hear it out in France,
perhaps because it was written for Scotsmen far
from Scotland. I believe the Brittany regiments
sometimes have a kind of bagpipe too, which they
call ' binion.'
I could not help smiling just now when I came
into my billet, and found the poor old priest tilted
back helpless in his chair, his brow showing pale as
parchment above a lather of soap, while a fat, red,
jolly barber waved a razor round his head, and
seized him by the nose. I woke the other morning
to hear his bell ringing for his morning mass. I
don't know what the reason is for ringing a bell
233
at their sacrament ; probably it was meant to drive
away evil spirits.
I was afraid that I should have to go digging
to-night, but now it seems they don't want any-
body ; it always falls to someone in this company,
because two platoons are in disgrace for killing
hens in the farm where they are billeted. I came
out of mess about lo o'clock one very dark night,
and was met by a flustered corporal who said,
' Beg yer pardon, sir, but they're throwing deid
cocks and hens in among us,' and so they were,
and next morning there were nine victims laid out,
and one already half cooked, but in the dark the
culprits escaped and have never owned up. Of
course it was very wrong, but I expect the hens
were roosting up in the rafters above their heads,
and making themselves unpleasant guests, and I
don't think it was real looting. Anyway, the two
platoons will dig until further orders.
I will put some photos in this letter from B.C.
and Edgehill, please keep them for my book, and
this other letter might interest you ; I had suggested
casually that when the peace comes they might
make a great road, all along the line of this western
front, with a broad strip of ground on either side
well planted with fruit trees and trees for shade.
It would be a useful war memorial, for a great road is
always useful. It might be made most beautiful too.
234
besides being the most interesting road in the
world for future generations of Englishmen and
Frenchmen.
When I was in Washington I was so much
impressed with the cemetery at Arlington on the
far side of the Potomac, where lie 16,000 soldiers
from the Northern armies who fought to free
America from slavery, and it seems not unfitting
that they should be buried there round the home
of General Lee, who was such a marvellous general
on the Southern side, and such a fine man too ;
just as honestly convinced that in fighting for
State rights and Virginia he was fighting for
liberty. It's not in the least a morbid place like
most cemeteries, but a beautiful garden which,
from its character, is more than a public park
can ever be.
Billets : July 11, 1915-
This has been a black day for me ever since
I saw Bay Balfour's ^ name in the lists from the
Dardanelles. I can remember him so well as I first
saw him, on that hot July day outside school at
Winchester, before he and I went in to do our papers
at the same table. We went up the school together
all the way, and he was always the life of every
class. And at Oxford I came to know him even
>• 2nd Lieut. Isaac Bayley Balfour, attached ist K.O.S.B.,
son of Professor Bayley Balfour of Edinburgh.
235
better, until latterly he was in many ways my
greatest friend. He was the most lovable of men —
so lively and full of zest and joy in living that he
made all his friends feel glad to be alive.
He had a strong character too, with all his
charm — for all his popularity at school left him
quite unspoilt. He managed his house splendidly,
and whatever he decided to do, he would have
done well ; but he never could have painted a
better picture than his own five and twenty years,
for there is nothing in them that any of his friends
would ever wish to forget. I have written to Mrs.
Balfour, but didn't know what to say ; he was the
sunshine of that house.
If only we could have done our training this
last winter together — somehow I was afraid that
I should never see him again.
This is no letter, but I can think of nothing
but Bay Balfour.
Billets : July 13, 1915.
I am back in the old bit of trench which I first
held when I came out in February, but what a
difference between then and now ; the men used to
be huddled together on little islands, built up with
sand-bags, over what was left of the old trench in
front. Machine-guns used to play on us most of
236
the night, and the sniper flicked earth down from
the parapet all day. It was the favourite corner
for shells too. Now, an hour often passes with
hardly a shot fired, we walk up and down in safety
behind a good solid breastwork; in fact, you could
probably walk all the way along the line to La
Bassee. The ground is as hard as a brick and as
dry as a bone, and it wasn't till I dug a bit of new
trench yesterday that the smell reminded me of
the place where I had floated a hurdle on rotten
cabbage stalks in a sea of mud, to try to make a
moderately dry crossing over a bottomless pit. No
wonder the men ask anxiously whether we expect
to be here another winter. Probably you know
more about that at home than we do.
These five days Bankier and I are attached to
another company ; the Captain is a very nice fellow,
and it's quite pleasant for a change to live in a
different mess, but for the time everything is stale
and flat to me, since I heard of Bay Balfour's death.
I have always been very lucky to have so many
friends, and lucky too in this war, since Stainton,
Wilson, and Fowler have all been very badly
wounded, but are recovering ; but there was never
anyone quite like Bay Balfour. At school he had so
many friends in his own house that I didn't know
him better than many others, but lately I knew
him as well as anyone, perhaps better.
237
Ralph Fowler's letters were very interesting;
he's a lucky man, for if it had been cold weather,
or if he had had to lie in a wet trench with that
wound, he would never have recovered.
{July 15.) This letter was never taken up, so
I will add a piece to it.
Just to spite me for saying it was so different
from February, we had very heavy rain last night,
which in a few hours created quagmires and sloughs
of despond wherever feet churned the mud up ;
that's the worst of this country, it's so fiat that
there's nowhere for water to drain away, and as
soon as you dig below the surface at all, the water
gathers and the clay holds it, so that it takes a
long time to soak in. Luckily it cleared off at
I A.M., and to-day I could have caught a sea trout
I know, for there is a fine fresh breeze from the
south-west and a cloudy sky. I'm glad of wind
again ; though we often curse the winds at home,
we miss them out here.
I still think we shall get through the Dardanelles,
but it is difficult to see how we are to reach a decision
on this western front ; but if we feel the strain in
our factories at home, and suffer from the long
casualty lists, what must it be in Germany, where
Prussia, with a smaller population than ourselves,
has a list five times as heavy ?
The world is a poorer place without Tom and
238
Bay Balfour, and I do feel that, if it wasn't for all
of you at home, I should be quite content to follow
them. If ' getting used to it ' means that one
slowly forgets how much there was to love in them,
I would rather keep the pain for ever. Perhaps
Daisy would show you some verses I wrote about
Bay Balfour; afterwards I worked at them until
I made them rather better, but still not nearly
good enough.
Trenciies : July 15, 1915.
Yes, I remember writing some lines about the
walk back from Rackwick, one night at Oxford
when I could not sleep. I thought I had torn
them up, and I'm sure they are not worth sending
to the Spectator, but if you like, send them to me,
and I will have a look at them, for I have forgotten
all except the beginning and the end, of which you
remind me. . . . Latin and Greek lend themselves
to epitaphs almost better than EngHsh. . . . I've
often tried to write about Tom, but somehow I
never could. The better you know people, the
less easy it is to write about them. No one can
give any real reasons why he likes his brothers
and sisters — the feeling is there, and that's aU
about it. I can always write verses if I set myself
to it, but as a rule I'm too lazy, for it usually costs
239
me a night's sleep ; but wTiting real poetry is
another matter ; if you're a poet, the poems come
of themselves, if not, no amount of labour will
change your verses into poetry. I'm afraid the
vicar's daughter was more a joke than a reality,
and I've heard nothing of ministering spirits. In
fact, after seeing how often the men write things
in their letters which are pure imagination, I get
rather sceptical about everything which I have
not seen with my own eyes. I suppose some
people would say I had no faith, because I never
expect to see anything supernatural. (I remember
in the autumn of 1899, when you took Gwen and
me to Mull, we used to climb in the woods behind,
with Tina and Kenneth and some other children,
I think ; and one day some of us thought that
we saw fairies, and Gwen, as you would expect
somehow, saw at least twice as many fairies as
anybody else, and described them wonderfully ;
and I remember getting quite angry because I
never could see anything at all, and when I did,
it turned out to be a rabbit. Afterwards Gwen
confessed, with tears, I think, that some of the
fairies, at anyrate, were imaginary.) But it
seems to me that this expectation of miracles
is all part of that looking for a sign which Christ
denounced. ...
240
Billets : July 17, 1915.
We are moving off to-morrow, thank goodness ;
it will be a relief to see something new. I enclose
a lot of photos which Bankier took some months
ago ; the prints have only just arrived, but they
are very good indeed, only it's unfortunate that
Clark has moved in the picture of him and me
outside Company Headquarters and that stains
have spoilt the one of Bankier and me shaving.
What a pity that cameras are still taboo ! There
is such a lot that could not give anything to the
Germans, but would make most fascinating pictures.
... I saw Sholto this afternoon, looking enormous
as usual ; he seems to like the 91st, and his company
commander especially ; we are not likely to meet
again for some time. I never saw a billet like
this for flies ; they hang in great black clusters on
the walls like swarming bees ; fly-papers get covered
two or three deep in half an hour ; we are trying
poison too, but however we may ' strafe ' there
are just as many left. Our company have held
an impromptu concert, which wound up with a
song from^ me and ' wee doch-an-dorris ' from
Bankier — great enthusiasm. I bet half of them
try to fall out on the march, for their feet are as
soft as butter after all these months.
241
Billets : July 21, 1915.
I have enjoyed these last two days, in a curious
sort of way, as much as any since I came out.
We marched off from our old billets about 2 o'clock
yesterday — not sorry to see the last of them. For,
though our last two days there were spent in a
farm a good way farther back, we were still in the
middle of the same fields, and still within reach
of shells, if any had happened to come. It was
a clear, sunny day, \vith a breeze from the west,
and the country was still fresh after last week's
rain. My company was second in the line, so
that we could hardly hear the pipes at the head ;
but the men were pleased to be on the move again,
and marched well in spite of the heat. At first
we came back along the same road which I travelled
five months ago in February, when I marched up
with the draft. It was very different now ; the
low ground which had all been flooded was dry,
and the mud was gone. The traffic on the road was
much the same — A.S.C. motor lorries, ambulances,
and staff officers' cars. In one place we passed
an armoured car, mounting machine-guns which
had broken down. A little later on, everyone was
called to attention — that is always done when we
pass a guard — and when I gave ' eyes left,' there
was an Indian trooper, in turban, and baggy trousers.
242
rigid as a poker, with an enormous sabre, very broad,
and curved in the blade, held straight up in front
of him. It was very difficult not to laugh, and
some of the men who had been in India called out
to him in Hindustani, but he looked neither to
right nor left, and as if his life depended on keeping
his eyes on the blade. We only came about eight
miles, and then billeted in different farms ; but the
country is different, for there are tall edges, like
the English hedges, instead of those bare fields —
the wheat is turning yellow, and the farms are still
inhabited. It's a pleasure to see them without
gaps in the walls or roof, and with all their live-
stock and animals. For the Germans pushed
through this district very quickly in October,
and had only time to fire the churches as they
passed ; possibly our own artillery did some of
the damage, for the Germans used to mount machine-
guns in the towers to cover their retreat. I am by
myself with two platoons in a small farm — the
farmer and his family are all very friendly, and
press me to have coffee with them, whenever I
pass out and in to my room. I sleep on a table,
and I don't mind a hard surface in the least, if it
isn't uneven ; and besides, as I told the farmer,
it is better to sleep on the table than to sleep under-
neath it. He was very much pleased when I
explained the joke, and has been offering me wine
243
and beer ever since. One of his sons has been
called out, but is not yet ' sur le front.' He had
never had Ecossais here before, only English and
Canadians. He showed me the place where he
hid, with his two sons, when the Germans came
through, a little hole under the roof ; but they
did very little damage here. I made several other
friends when I went to look for other billets ; we
had too little room at first, and one old farmer
was so delighted to see my kilt that he seized my
hand and shook it for a couple of minutes. He
was very anxious to put me up, but he had already
a full company of 250 men in his farm, so that we
could not go there. He told me that he was seventy-
six, had eleven children, and some incredible number
of grandchildren, of whom the latest were t\\dns ;
most of them seemed to live under his roof, and
also two nieces who had fled from Lille, He him-
self had fought in 1870, but he still works away
in the fields. I must go and see him again. To-day
we have done nothing ; we may move off to new
trenches in a couple of days, or we may be here a
week, for we are now attached to another division.
It was a bright, sunny day again, still with the
same fresh breeze, and I had a walk with the doctor
— there are some hills not far away, beyond the
rail-head from which I marched in February,
and there is an observation balloon hanging over
R 2
244
a park for aeroplanes. Our sentry counted forty
of them all going off early this morning on some
raid, flying quite low. . . .
Billets : July 22, 1915.
I have been asleep on my table all the
afternoon, a different method of resting from
yesterday's, when I walked about four miles into
a town, and saw the sights, such as they are — an
old town hall, a fine church tower, spoilt with a
thimble of modern brick on the top of it, a great
many motor lorries driven by A.S.C., a good many
padres, and almost the same number of French
barmaids, wearing the badges of their favourite
regiments. I even saw a train, the first for five
months. We found a path through the fields
for part of the way, which saved us from the pave —
wheat fields, for the most part, just turning yellow,
rows of pollard \villows showing silver in the wind,
red-roofed farms, and one or two unbattered
church spires in the distance — very peaceful and
pastoral. I wish now that I had walked farther,
for the day was very clear though sunny, and
Ramsay, who rode to a hill just five miles farther
on, was able to see Ypres in the distance, and shells
bursting over it. I would have tried to get there
to-day, but the day was dull, and so I slept. This
245
morning we were inspected by the General
commanding the 3rd Corps ; he kept us waiting
for over an hour, which was very annoying of him,
but when he did come, he was very pleasant and
complimentary. We may go back to the trenches
to-morrow night, but it is not settled yet. . . .
The South Wales miners will probably find plenty
of people to tell them that they were true patriots,
victims of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and
so forth. At the best, their case was that they
wanted a greater share in the spoil, and at the
worst, something very mean indeed. However, it's
over now. If leave is not stopped again, I shall
probably get home for a few days in September,
but I'm afraid that there is every likelihood that
it will be stopped before then ; this front has been
quiet for so long that something must happen
soon. . . .
Billets : July 23, 1915.
We are marching back to the trenches to-day,
in a different place, about eight miles away, I think,
so that we shall not have a long march. I shall
be quite sorry to leave this place, for it was restful.
We could hardly hear the guns at all, or see the
flares at night. Last evening I walked to a village
near ; there was very little to see except a large
246
church which had been burnt. In the square beside
it was a whole supply train of motor lorries, nearly
one hundred of them I suppose, all filled with stores,
and ready to move off. You wondered how on
earth armies managed to feed themselves before
the day of the motor, and still more before the
railways came. I am sending you some more
photos. These are duplicates of some I sent before,
which perhaps Gwen would like to see ; it is some
time since I heard of her, but I suppose the mails
are still irregular. I think the whole course of the
Welsh strike has been disgraceful ; the Welsh coal-
masters managed things very badly, but that was
no excuse for the men ; plenty of M.P.'s would have
seen to it that they got full justice if they had
stuck to their work, while setting out their
grievances. It's more and more clear to me that
we shall need some system of conscription to carry
on this war through the winter. For one thing
the Expeditionary Force will lose between twenty
and thirty thousand reservists this autumn, whose
time was up nearly a year ago, but who were bound
by the terms of enlistment to serve another year in
time of war. They are just as patriotic as other
men, but having been out here a year, they feel that
they would like a turn at home, with high wages
and a comfortable house, and one day in seven clear
even when the pressure of work on ammunitions, &c.
247
is greatest ; and until it's made clear that every
available fighting man is wanted in the field, one
can't blame them. To a Frenchman, of course,
the idea of letting a trained soldier go in time of
war would seem quite ridiculous, but it will have
to be done unless we change our system ; and
it's not enough to make an army order forbidding
them to go, for that would leave them with a genuine
grievance. . . .
Trenches : July 25, 1915.
Many happy returns of your birthday, I'm glad
to think you will spend it at Rhuveag, and I hope
you will have a tea-picnic to celebrate it, I was
just thinking that I had no present to give you,
and behold a present has been provided, for this
morning I was pulling down my dug-out, a very
poor one, which had been half knocked in by a
shell before I came to it. In a corner underneath
some rubbish, I found a pouch for revolver ammun-
ition, left there by some officer, and in it, besides
some cartridges, was a cigarette holder, and this
gold ring ; at least it seems to be 9-carat gold, and
an Irishman in my platoon swears that he has
sold many rings, and that this is genuine. I wonder
what its history can be — had his lady hardened her
heart and jilted him for one of Kitchener's army ?
248
or did it belong to a French girl ? or was it destined
for someone before he left home, and never
presented ? Anyway it shall be yours now. . . .
There's nothing very striking about it except its
strange history, but I think the emerald is genuine.
We came back into trenches two nights
ago. We left our corn-fields and farms about 4
o'clock, and marched five miles first of all, over a
bridge broken and repaired, and past a church,
ruined and gutted by fire as usual. It was pave
most of the way, but a fresh summer afternoon.
Then we all halted in a large field, where the men
had their tea from our travelhng kitchens, and
we ourselves went on a little farther, to a cross-
roads, where the forces of good and evil were drawn
up facing one another — an estaminet on the one
side, and the priest's house on the other. We had
tea in the latter ; the reverend gentleman was gone,
but he had left his clerical furnishings behind
him, portraits of His Holiness the Pope, and of
his own family, his sisters mostly nuns, and his
brothers priests like himself. We marched on at
dusk, down a long straight road with farms on
either side, which gradually became more battered
and deserted as we came nearer the firing line,
and, finally, we had a laborious half-mile through a
very narrow winding communication trench, where
you had in places to turn sideways to prevent
249
the pack on your shoulders from sticking fast ;
subalterns usually carry packs and equipment just
like the men now. We found some very nervous
Territorials in our trenches, their first experience,
and they had been shelled heavily one evening.
I think it just as well the Germans had not attacked,
for I don't think many of their sentries dared
to look over the parapet even at night. As a rale,
the Territorials are now just as good as any other
troops, but these had left the trench in a terrible
mess, and we have been cleaning up ever since.
We are about 150 yards from the Germans ; we
blew up a mine underneath their parapet some
weeks ago, which hustled them a bit, but otherwise
I think this trench has been an island of comparative
rest, though some of the bloodiest fighting in the
war took place on either side. It's very flat, low
meadow-land, with tall, waving grass, and rows of
pollard willow stumps, a regular swamp in winter
I should think, and even now a deep trench would
gather water in the bottom, and the weather has
been broken lately. Almost every regiment in the
British Army seems to have been here in turn' —
Scots Guards, Devons, Irish Rifles, Lancashire
Fusiliers, Cameronians, Royal Scots ; you can see
their wooden crosses standing here and there
among the grass. Last night I was patrolling out
in front, and actually saw a lot of Germans working
250
on their parapet, and also a patrol who came within
30 yards of us. Two of them stayed beside a
tree, and we lay there for a couple of hours, just
about 20 yards away, waiting for clouds to come
across the moon, for it was too bright to go forward
or back. I hoped the two of them would come
forward, for then the two of us would probably
have made one a prisoner ; but perhaps they spotted
us, for they fired two shots, and after that never
moved. We were so close to the German trenches
that I could smell the smoke of a German cigar —
quite a good one too — not poisonous gas.
The photos came last night ; some of them might
have been clearer, but they are not bad, and I
shall want a lot of prints presently. The Round
Table, F. S. OHver's book, and one or two other
things have also come ; thank you very much for
them. . . . This letter may be too late now to reach
you on your birthday, but anyway it will take you
my love.
Trenches : July 28, 1915.
We are still hard at work strengthening and
improving these trenches, and there- is enough to
keep us busy for a long time. Last night our old
friend the sausage bomb made a reappearance —
he came flying over my platoon into the next
251
company, but did no damage. Again about mid-
night they sent out three or four of them ; they
have a train of sparks flying from their tails at
night, so you can just see them coming. We have
taken to pieces two which failed to explode ; there
is nothing inside them except the powder, which
looks curiously like wet yellow sand, and smells
like almond paste. The next brigade made a
good deal of noise firing on a German working
party, so their guns opened on us, but they only
sent a few shells, and the first seemed to burst
in their own trench, and the next two in their own
wire, so the Germans are not always perfect, and
I expect someone will be ' strafed ' for it. It's
sunny, windy weather, with occasional showers,
not very hot, in fact not so hot as it was at the
end of May. I hope you will get some trout out
of the loch. I rather fancy that shore round the
sandy point on the far side of Loch Doine, though
I can't say I ever got much there. How splendid
that Eric Colbourne got the Military Cross, and
though it's hard that he should not have lived to
wear it, Florence will be proud to have it ; and
it must have been a very gallant bit of work ; he
did a lot in his three weeks at the front, though
the time seemed short. . . .
252
Trenches : (possibly a day earlier than above).
Last night I took three men with bombs, and
we got right up to the German wire. I have cut
a specimen of it, which I shall send home as a
souvenir, unless the Brigade Staff want it. We
brought in a curious iron stake, which the Germans
use for rigging up their barbed wire, made in one
piece out of an iron rod looped while the iron is hot,
so that the wire can be just threaded through the
loops, and it has a corkscrew end, so that it can be
screwed into the ground noiselessly, just as you
screw in the stake which anchors a tennis net,
only, of course, this is much thinner and sHghter.
I don't think it's stout enough to be of much use,
but it's an interesting thing, and Major Hyslop,
who is commanding while Colonel Gore is home on
leave, sent dowTi a message this morning to con-
gratulate me, so I feel quite pleased, for of course
information about their wire is useful. . . . We
are likely to be in the trenches for two days more,
I think. A sprig of bog-myrtle from Mother this
morning which still smells very sweet. . . .
Trenches : July 29, 1915.
We have had another quiet day except for a
few sausages ; however this evening we managed
253
to mark the spot from which they were coming
and put a rifle grenade right into it, which shut
them up. The sun was very hot to-day after a
cold moonUt night. Our knees are all getting very
sunburnt. To-night we go back into billets, two
or three miles to march I expect, but it's worth it
to get well away from shells. . . .
You might send me some time a copy of the
W.O.'s description of the place where Tom was
buried ; I am nowhere near it at present, but some
day, if we were to move, I might find myself within
reach of it. I think you said it was accurately
described to you. I don't think it matters very
much though where and how anyone is buried. . . .
Billets : July 30, 1915.
... I see Mai thinks I have a sunny tempera-
ment ; she would not get the same opinion from
some of my men. I have been biting their heads
off lately ; too many flies, too little sleep, and too
much work in a hot sun to keep a philosophic mind,
and the men themselves get lazy, and want to spend
their time grousing about the state in which their
trenches have been left, instead of getting to work
to put them right. Of course they do have some
hardships out here, but take it all round, we are
very well treated, almost too well ; when I see piles
254
of bully beef tins going to waste, and fires made up
with biscuit, it makes me quite mad, and I just
wish we could all change places with the French
for six months, and see what it means to be fighting,
with half your own country in ruins, on a half-
penny a day, and just enough food to keep going,
while perhaps you left your family behind in Lille,
and haven't heard of them for ten months.
It's one disadvantage of our voluntary system
that the press and every one else try to persuade
officers and men that they are little heroes to have
come out here at all, and that they deserve the best
of everything ; whereas they are just doing what
every Frenchman has got to do as a matter of
course. I'm for encouraging the men in a tight
place, and for keeping them as busy as possible
at all other times. There's just a bit too much
sitting stiU, and not firing at the Germans because
it will only make them fire back ; but we should
always fire when there is any target, and take jolly
good care to aim straighter ; it's the only way to
end the war, and we know that when we take the
trouble we can always give them more than we
get.
The Russians seem to have checked the Germans
for the time, but it will be a hard task to hold
that saHent with the Germans pressing in from
three sides. I don't know more than anyone
255
else why we are waiting so long for the next
move on this front, but there must be some good
reason.
I have been sleeping this afternoon, so far as
the flies would let me, and listening in the intervals
to flirtations in broken English, and still more broken
French, between the men and the dairymaids at
the farm. The French all seem to like les Ecossais
better than the English regiments ; they come back
to their houses sometimes if they hear a Scotch
regiment is coming there.
I see Tom Erskine of the 4th Battalion is killed ;
he was one of the nicest of the Glasgow O.T.C.
men, very competent and a keen soldier ; his name
was in the list with Eric Colbourne's for the Military
Cross, and he seemed to have deserved it most
thoroughly. That's the worst of this damnable
war ; it just lops off the bravest men as you might
lop off the tallest heads of bracken with your stick,
and once a man gets a reputation for keeping his
head, and doing difficult jobs, he's bound to be
picked for them. However it's a fine life out here,
and if I come through I shall never regret the time
spent in the trenches ; one can't call them ' crowded
hours,' but they are as well spent as most in peace
time.
256
Billets : August i, 191 5.
The weather has turned very hot again.
July was really a cold month out here, and very
showery, but now we are getting harvest weather.
I grudge the Germans Warsaw very much ; of
course Napoleon got Moscow, and suffered more
than gained by it, and whether they hold Warsaw
or not, the Russians will go on fighting ; but still
it will encourage the Germans very much for their
autumn campaign. There are a good many Indian
troops near here. I walked along the river this
morning, and saw them bathing and washing them-
selves, and leading their horses down to water.
Some of them were splendid looking men, very tall,
with great turbans and long black beards ; they
are fighting very well now when they get a chance
in the open, but this trench warfare doesn't suit
them ; they can't understand what prevents them
from charging across to the German lines, and if
they try it, there are none left with experience to
warn the others. It's not a question of bravery,
but simply a mathematical certainty that, in the
face of so many bullets, no man can escape being
hit, unless the guns have just demoraUsed the
enemy, and broken up their trenches.
I marched a large party to the baths this after-
noon, very hot and dusty, but our piper played the
257
whole way without stopping. The French people
are still very much interested in a Highland regiment,
though, of course, it's nothing new to them now,
for all the Scottish regiments are particularly
strong in Territorial as well as line battalions.
The English regiments are jealous and make rude
remarks about the pipes, but a mouth organ is a
miserable instrument compared with them. I don't
see why they shouldn't have full military bands
out here ; it would cheer everyone up when we are
back in billets. There is so little for the men
to do except eat and sleep, and try to get more
beer than they are allowed from the estaminets.
So flame or liquid fire is the latest German device.
They won't stop the war with all these infamous
weapons, but they will make their name loathed
for evermore, until they repudiate the Great General
Staff which approves of such things. Some people
say, why observe rules in war, since it seems an
artificial distinction to kill by one weapon, and not
to allow some other ; but war at the best is a bloody
business, and it's only by sticking to the few rules
that men have agreed to keep, that we can prevent
ourselves from descending lower than beasts ;
fighting like the two devils in the ' Inferno ' who fell
back into the lake of pitch biting and tearing one
another with their nails.
258
Billets : August 2, 1915.
This day last year I remember I spent going
down to Salisbury Plain with the Inns of Court
squadron ; unboxing horses, and putting up tents ;
then in the evening, after ten minutes' sleep, we
were all roused up to move straight back to London
• — and the great game began. It was all very exciting
in those days ; somehow, now that I am in the
middle of it, I have lost the sense of tremendous
happenings which I had then ; and I was much
more anxious when I put my name in for a com-
mission in the Special Reserve, which Mitchison
and I did among the first few volunteers, than I
am now when I go back to the trenches. To-day
we have had cloud and sun with heavy showers.
I walked into the local village to have my hair
cut, and waited for an age in a very hot room with
nothing to read except some newsless French news-
papers, and an advertisement, with specimens, of
some man's art in working portraits with human
hair ; rather an unpleasant art, I think. There
were a great many Indians in the streets ; most
of them wear big khaki turbans with a touch of
red in them, and the cavalry have little epaulettes
of dark chain mail. They are very fine-looking
men ; the Indians have never had a proper chance
yet to show what they can do, but they sit patiently
259
beside the river, grooming or watering their horses,
or squat in little groups round their cooking-pots.
I always thought Falkirk had more public-houses
than any other place, but I believe this little town
could beat it in estaminets. They have all sorts
of titles ; perhaps ' Au Retour de I'Abattoir ' was the
most unpleasant, and ' Aux Vainqueurs de Paris '
the most curious. I suppose it refers to the
Marseillais who marched to Paris in 1789. They
must be funny little places in peace time, these
French towns. Our estaminet was called ' Reunion
des Sapeurs-Pompiers,' which means, I think, the
fire-brigade ; no doubt they were great people in
full uniform, and how indignant they must be now
that uniforms have become so cheap ! . . . I was
afraid I should be sent digging to-night, but luckily
I have escaped. We have never got any more
captains since these three were knocked over, only
one second lieutenant.
What shall we do if I get a week's leave in
September ? You must not count upon it, because
very likely leave will be stopped again.
Billets : August 3, 1915.
Here there is ' nothing to report ' ; it seems
likely that we shall be in billets longer than usual,
and that, when we do go back, we shall have more
s 2
26o
of Kitchener's Army with us for instruction. It's
a very long time now since there was any real
fighting on the British front, a trench taken here
and there, but no serious attacks on either side.
I had a walk to-day along flat, straight roads
among the corn-fields ; there is a great deal of
wheat round here, and they were reaping it by
hand. I had a chat with a French boy who was
busy with his scythe ; he said ' les Ecossais sont
meilleurs soldats que les Anglais, parcequ'ils sont
plus chauds — comme les Frangais.' I don't know
whether it was his own idea, or picked up from a
newspaper. Last winter some people said the
exact opposite, that the English regiments were
doing best in this war, because they didn't get
impatient while sitting in the trenches. I see in
to-day's paper that A. G. Heath has been wounded,
I hope not seriously ; somehow I seem to last longer
than all my friends ; they all get killed or wounded,
one after another, as soon as they come out. . . .
We never get any news of Clark, but I hope he
is round the corner now. What a vast difference
that half-inch either way does make. It seems so
petty that a miserable little thing like a modern
bullet can come along and make waste of the whole
marvellous machine, so quickly too, when a tree
the man has planted the day before may go on
living for a hundred years. I wonder what the
26l
Navy is thinking about, with all these preparations ;
they usually keep their secrets better than the
Army, I think ; perhaps because there are fewer
in the secret. Here everything seems to be the
talk of every pot-house for days before it happens ;
the only great exception was Neuve Chapelle ;
and even then we knew something, and the troops
in that part of the line must have known more.
But often it seems to me that orders are published
far too early and too widely. I prefer Stonewall
Jackson's plan, of putting his whole army into a
train, so that not a soul knew which way they
were going to start. Yet the crossing of the original
force, and the movement from the Aisne to the
Northern frontier were managed very well and very
quietly. There's so little to talk about in this
trench warfare, that when people do get wind of
a piece of news, they seem compelled to chatter
about it. . . .
Billets : August 4, 191 5.
This morning we should have had one of those
small Lammas floods, which make such good
fishing, for there was heavy rain part of the night.
I remember two floods like that in the very dry
August of our first year at Glencaird, which Mother
will remember too. They have begun the harvest
262
here ; they hardly seem to use machinery at all,
but do all their reaping with a small scythe-sickle,
about two feet long, and a short pole with an iron
hook on it, for gathering the sheaf together and
holding it while it is cut ; they manage to lay the
sheaves very neatly in rows, and work quite fast,
cutting with one hand and gathering with the
other. I was talking to a French boy of sixteen
or so yesterday ; his scythe, I was interested to
see, was made in Germany, but his hone was British
made ; yet I'm sure Sheffield could turn out the
scythes just as well, if we would take our chance of
getting the market now. He told me he could
make ten francs a day while the harvest lasted,
working from 5 in the morning till 8 at night,
a long day, but not a bad wage for a boy. By all
the laws of economics it ought to pay them better
to buy reaping-machines, for the fields are large
and the ground as level as can be ; but, of course,
the farms are smaller than at home, and the people
work so hard that I think they make more out
of them than we should. His father and brother
were both away serving in the French army. . . .
I suppose the Russians are desperately short of
ammunition, for rifles as well as artillery. But they
won't give in, and the effort of pushing into their
country will be most exhausting for the Germans. . . .
When you send out those photos, send them in an
263
ordinary parcel, otherwise the censor might think
I had been taking photos these last three months,
which, of course, I have not done, and it would take
a lot of correspondence to explain that they were
old prints ; the rule about cameras is very strict
now. . . . Our doctor is leaving to go back to the
London Hospital, and I shall miss him very much.
Bankier has also left the company to act as adjutant.
I'm very glad he has got the job ; he was the best
man for it, and others seemed at one time more
likely to have it. So now I have one of the Clan
Campbell for my company commander, and a
new subaltern who got his commission from the
9th H.L.I, Glasgow Highlanders. The colonel came
back from leave yesterday. It appears that my
iron corkscrew stake was the first of its kind
brought in, so they were glad to have it ; although
I think others have been brought in in several
places since. ...
Billets : August 6, 1915.
I am writing from a very comfortable billet ;
a villa belonging to a French officer, formerly
commandant des Sapeurs-Pompiers in this little
town. But the fire-brigade are now themselves
extinguished, and M. le Commandant, who lost an
arm early in the war, is training cadets in some
264
other part of France. So we sit on his chairs and
sofa, admire ourselves in his long mirrors, and
marvel at his taste in decorations. The mantel-
piece in the sitting-room, for instance, has three
small marble busts on it, in imitation of the classical
styles, but beside these ladies, or rather among
them, are a large brown stoat and a small white
weasel, while facing one another, like West and
East, are a cock-pheasant and a golden pheasant.
In the dining-room next door, there are mountain
scenes painted on the panels, while above the fire-
place, two barn owls with outstretched wings, are
roosting on long poles, and a great grey shrike
sits disconsolately among the fly-papers which are
hanging from the chandelier. I don't know that
I wish to see owls in the dining-room any more
than bats in the attic, but there they are. These
materials don't help us very far in guessing what
the commandant is like ; it's always a fascinating
game to try and reconstruct people from their
belongings, but from his library I gather that he
was a Royalist. Royalism used to be strong in this
corner of France, I think, they are so intensely
Catholic ; but if the French Republic and its army
come through this war successfully together, I
fancy Royalism is dead ; before, there was always
a chance that the army would quarrel with the
politicians and choose its own leader. The com-
265
mandant has a fine garden full of pears, which
should be ripe next month, and he had a fine cellar,
but the Welsh Fusiliers bought the last of it from
his housekeeper last week. This town must have
been a very quiet, peaceful little place before the
war ; curiously enough the regiment billeted here
on October 20 last year, just before the heaviest
fighting in the advance, when it was still untouched ;
and it has not suffered very much except in the
corner beside the church, which has been wrecked,
and the houses beside it levelled with the ground.
There is rather a pretty old garden behind it, which
must, I think, have belonged to the church, or to
some establishment of clerics. Their house is no
more, for it was in line with the church tower,
but the roses in their garden are in bloom and very
sweet. There is a pond too, with some pale gold-
fish in it, which seemed to have a great fondness
for the mud at the bottom, in which they buried
themselves entirely. I could not understand this,
until I saw a kingfisher fly away from the pond
as I came near it this morning. No doubt he will
stay there as long as there are any goldfish left. The
garden will very soon be a wilderness. I never
knew what a fine flower spinach (endive ?) has, until
I saw it there run to seed ; there is a smaller walled
garden with vines all round the walls, masses of
bright green, pear trees, and those small French
266
strawberries, half-way between the wild straw-
berry and the garden kind. All this place is ' out
of bounds ' to the troops, for it must be an unhealthy
corner when shells are falhng ; the biggest shell-
holes I have seen in France are there, one at least
20 feet across. The bottom was full of water,
and the frogs had just accepted it as the gift from
heaven of a fine new pond. We go back into the
trenches to-night; these eight days out are the
longest hoUday I have had since February, and of
course we have been drilhng and marching at times.
We shall have some Rifle Brigade from Kitchener's
Army in with us for instruction.
Reserve Billets : August 7, 1915.
I am likely to have an easy time of it these
six days, for B company is not in the firing hne at
all, being divided between some fortified points,
and a ruined farm, which holds two platoons and
myself and Alastair Campbell; unless they shell
us, we shall live and sleep in peace. There are
orchards all round about, and the men are throwing
sticks and stones at the hard green apples and
pears, and if it were not for the holes in all the
roofs and walls, you would think you were miles
from the firing line. This morning I took a digging
party to work on a communication trench; it's
267
not often you can dig by daylight. As I wandered
round, while the men were busy, I suddenly came
upon young Gladstone's grave,i in the corner of an
orchard railed off, where he lies with about fifty
men of different regiments — -Gordons, Wiltshires,
Royal Scots, Irish Rifles, and Welsh Fusiliers ; it's
curious to think of him there and his grandfather in
Westminster Abbey ; but they are both in honour-
able company.
The country is all of the same pattern — -farms
more or less ruined with orchards round them,
rows of poplars and willows, and wide fields where
the long grass of May is already bleached and
withering ; there don't seem to be pigeons or other
birds to harvest the corn which sowed itself and
is now overripe. It all seemed rather melancholy
to me, perhaps because I knew that one of our
biggest efforts in the war had been made across
that stretch of ground. I could see the empty
gun-emplacements everywhere, and the trenches
in rows one behind another where the supports
waited for the chance which never came ; for some-
how or other things went wrong and the attack
was a failure. In some places they were just mown
down by the German machine-guns as soon as they
tried to leave their trenches, and elsewhere they
got to the German wire, only to find it still uncut,
^ The body has since been removed to Hawarden.
268
and the few companies which did get through and
into the German hnes found themselves unsupported,
and had to fall back ; no doubt the effort helped
us or the French by drawing troops away from
other hard pressed places, but it was very costly. I
believe the dead are still lying thick out in front, just
where they fell. However, I don't think such things
are really depressing, for they just leave you with
the determination to reward all these past efforts
by success at last, and I never doubt myself that
success is coming, though it may be long in coming.
I had a Canadian letter yesterday written from
Georgian Bay. There is something very charming
about those innumerable rocky islands, with their
twisted pine trees and deep clear water in between,
and the great sweep of Lake Huron to the west,
as wide as the sea. You must go there some day.
I notice one or two flowers which are new to
me, but mostly they are just the same ; that big blue
flower, wild chickory, I think, is common here among
the corn, and the white convolvulus is very common
everywhere ; such a pretty thing I always think.
Now I must inspect rifles, ammunition, and gas
helmets.
Reserve Billets : August 8, 1915.
There is very little news, except that we captured
a German prisoner to-day. Two of our men had
269
gone out in front to bury a corpse, and they came
across two Germans who had apparently come out
to rob the dead — dirty brutes ; neither our men nor
the Germans were armed, but one of the Germans
bolted, so they jumped on the other one. I did
not see him, but of course the men were fearfully
pleased ; he was taken to the Colonel who gave
him a meal of German sausage, and sent him on
to the Brigade, with the note, ' Herewith one German
prisoner, please send receipt.' There is a very
handsome willow-herb which grows in the ditches
here. I will get some seed if I can. It is more
branched' than our giant willow-herb, and the
flowers grow closer together in spikes. Most of the
flowers are just the same as at home. I saw the
blue corn-flower growing wild to-day. I have had
no letter for a day or two, but perhaps they will come
in to-night. Last week our bomb subaltern went up
to the river with a new kind of bomb and threw it in
— result about twenty fish, one a big carp, the rest
mostly roach and perch. . . . The Frenchmen seem
to catch a good many, and our stretcher-bearers
fish a lot too. We are starting to fish ourselves,
so there will be no more poaching with bombs. . . .
August 9, 1915.
This has been a very hot sultry day, as I know
to my cost, for I spent the morning with my platoon
270
digging a new trench about half a mile behind the
firing line. We were well screened from view, even
from the captive balloon which was hanging in
the air over the German lines as usual, like a great
caterpillar ; so that we could work by daylight,
which is always more satisfactory. The men were
working practically naked, and the only dis-
advantage was a very populous wasp's nest close
beside the trench. I got stung twice on the knee,
but either it is a very long time since I was stung,
or these French wasps are not so venomous, for their
stings don't bother you after five minutes. Some
of the men were stung too, and were much more
alarmed by the wasps in pursuit than by some
shrapnel which the Germans put over just in front
of us. They rattled a few apples and pears down
off the trees in the orchard, smashed a dug-out,
and hit a water-bottle, but did no real damage ;
and at present, in this part of the front, our heavy
guns give them far more to think about every day
than they give us : and our aeroplanes are busy
every day watching for their batteries. I was
digging till midnight last night too ; a clear starry
night, \\ith a great many shooting stars.
The Bavarians opposite are rather nervous, I
think, since they lost that prisoner to us, and we
have also been annoying them in various ways ;
they kept on putting up flares, and opening bursts
271
of rapid fire, but they hit nothing. You get to
know the different sounds ; the crack of a rifle fire
straight in front is really the sound of the bullet
coming toward you all compressed into one sound ;
then there is the swishing sound of cross fire, and
the whee-er-ee of a ricochetting bullet. There
was heavy gun-fire to the north last night and
early this morning, and I hear that we have made
a successful attack. I am going off to-morrow to
Brigade Headquarters for a course in bomb throwing
— ^they are taking all subalterns for that one by one
— -so for ten days I shall live in peace and comfort,
and probably sleep in a bed.
Your letter came last night, as well as three
others, and the Wykehamist, so I did well by that
post. I see that a couple of lines of Greek, which
I had just scribbled at the bottom of the page,
have been printed along with my verses on Bay
Balfour — a famous epitaph of Plato on a friend
who died young, which plays on the contrast
between the morning and the evening star. Shelley
has translated it so far as I can remember —
Thou wast the morning star among the living
Ere thy pure light had fled,
Now thou art gone, thou art as Hesperus giving^
New splendour to the dead. — ■
but the Greek is simpler and better.
I was interested in what you told me about
272
the Quarrier's orphan homes — how much better
it is when these things can be done by private
enterprise and not by Government, yet unless
Government does them, they are so apt not to be
done at all. . . .
Billets : August 12, 1915.
I prefer this 12th to last year's 12th, which I
spent on Wimbledon Common, drilling on foot,
on a boihng hot day, and there was just enough
heather growing there to mock us.
To-day has been very hot, but I have spent
it lying about on the grass watching the men throw
their bombs, and being instructed in the theory
and practice of working down trenches. It seems
that we can usually beat the Germans at bombing ;
they can't throw so far, or so accurately. This
evening I walked two or three miles to see the
1st Seaforths in the Bareilly Brigade, and found
several 4th Battalion subalterns there ; they have
a fine-looking set of men, in spite of all their fighting,
and they tell me that 90 per cent, of them are real
Highlanders from Stornoway and Ross-shire ; not
so Highland as the 4th Battalion was, when I knew
it, all the same.
I saw a great many Indians too — -Gurkhas, Jats,
and various others whose names I do not know ;
273
they will be happy enough while the summer lasts,
but I doubt whether they will put them in the
trenches for another winter.
The war news from Gallipoli seems good, but
it will take a lot of hard fighting yet.
I think now that I may get leave about the end
of next week ; I shall get about six days.
Billets : August 13, 1915.
How curious that Ronald's post-card^ should
only come now ! That is just an example, I think,
of German unpleasantness, deliberately refusing to
do a kindness which would have relieved one family
of anxiety. At least, I can't imagine that the
post-card was delayed so long except by deliberate
intention.
We have had another day of bomb-throwing ;
there is not very much to do while the men are
just practising throwing, except sit and watch
them ; they are quite keen about it, and amused
with the catapult which will throw a bomb over
one hundred yards. We are rather scattered, for
half the battalion are in billets and half in reserve
in ruined farms behind the firing line.
^ Written on January loth by 2nd Lieut. R. D. Gillespie,
2nd Gordon Highlanders, to say he had been taken prisoner on
the gth. He, shortly after, made an attempt along with 2nd
Lieut. Gore-Browne to escape from Lille Citadel by jumping
40 feet. Mr. Gore-Browne breaking his leg, they could go no
farther, and were retaken.
T
274
Billets : August 15, 1915.
There was a little diversion for us yesterday —
a horse show for the division to which we are
attached. I was busy at the bomb school until
late in the afternoon, so that I was too late to see
anything, except the end of the jumping and the
wrestling on horse-back, Bankier and Campbell
were both disqualified early at the jumps, for their
horses refused, and I don't know who won, probably
some cavalry man ; but the wrestling on horse-
back was very fierce, teams of four, stripped to
the waist, so as to be more slippery, and riding
bareback except for their bridles. The Middlesex
won after a tremendous tussle with the Royal
Irish Rifles, who fought like Kilkenny cats, but
were clawed off one by one, clawed literally, for
both sides were scratched and bleeding when they
finished, and they writhed and struggled till their
muscles stood out in knots ; often they changed
horses in the middle, and climbed back again after
they seemed to be down, hanging on by their horses'
necks. The horses stood patiently, as if waiting
till their madness should have passed. There were
pipers and a band, and a great swarm of men and
horses and limbers in some open ground beside the
river, far back from the firing line. I never saw
so many red hats in my life, all the staff officers
275
from this part of the Une and brigadiers as thick
as blackberries. Many from the Indian Corps were
there too. Those Indian Army officers are a regular
type ; keen wiry men most of them, with sunburnt
faces and keen eyes puckered at the corners from
much Indian sunshine ; they must be fine soldiers,
for I think they get the pick of Sandhurst year
after year, and even in peace time their soldiering
is much more strenuous out there.
I met a New College man, and yesterday a
Wykehamist arrived here with a trench mortar
battery ; a friend of Tom's, both at Winchester
and Oxford. He will be able to make it hot for
the German trench mortar when he starts to work.
Your letter came yesterday and one from Gwen
too ; perhaps I shall be home for her birthday,
but that is no good as she is not there.
Our bomb school came to an end this morning,
for the brigade is moving to-day and to-morrow —
back from the peaceful country we came from to
go into these trenches — after that I don't know
where we shall go, but I think we shall be absorbed
into another division. I'm glad to move, for I
always like a change, and if we can't move on, I'm
always for moving sideways once a month, for I
hate settling down, and I think it's bad for the
men, though, of course, in some ways it's comfortable
and easier. I'm glad to hear that Clark is better.
T 2
276
. . . I'm reading one of Dostoiefsky's novels, ' The
Brothers Karamazov ' — interesting, Hke all the
Russians, but as I've only read 200 pages and there
are 900 in the book, I've hardly begun. . . .
Billets : August 19, 1915, 9 a.m.
It seems hard to believe it, but to-night I shall
be in England — for I have got my leave at last,
until the 26th, so that I actually shall be at home on
your birthday ^ — ^how I wish you could be there too !
At the moment I am sitting in an old farm-
house — ^in a kitchen with an enormous fireplace
and huge smoky rafters — and everything seems
very quiet, for though it is only 7 o'clock, the
regiment has marched off already.
I wish in a way that my leave had come some
other time, for I like marching to new places, and
to-day the brigade is to march past Lord Kitchener ;
probably Sir J. French will be there too, and I
should have liked to see them. Our brigade,
which has been a sort of War Baby, nobody's child,
after wandering about from one division to another,
is now going to take the place of the Guards Brigade
in the 2nd Division — and may be resting for some
time. As a matter of fact, I have not been in the
trenches for a fortnight, since, before we moved
1 Written to his sister in Nairobi,
277
back, I was doing a course of bomb-throwing —
very important for all this fighting in trenches.
We marched back from our post near the firing
line by night — for a mile or two we kept the pipers
quiet, not so much from fear of rousing the Germans,
as of waking the General, but when we had passed
beyond his ears, the pipers blew for all they were
worth, the ' Earl of Maxwell ' and other tunes,
whose names I never know though I can whistle
them. It was very weird somehow, marching along
in the middle of this tremendous war — the night
was dark, though starry, and there was a white
harvest mist rising from the low ground and stubbles.
Gradually the flares from the trenches grew fainter
behind us, as we went on past silent farms, and
through empty village streets, where the sound of
the pipes came echoing back from the walls.
Towards midnight the mist grew very thick ; I could
see nothing except scattered trees looming up
suddenly from the fields, and the square shoulders
of my company commander riding his horse in front.
When the pipers stopped, it was very quiet except
for the steady tramp of 500 men. We billeted
some miles from the firing line, near where we lay
a month ago, an orchard and wheat-field country.
Yesterday I had a walk and a wonderful
view, for after six months I was able to find a hill
to climb — ^the Cats' Mountain — and from the
278
monastery at the top I could look down on the
whole plain ; to the south and east it was rather
hazy, so that I could hardly make out Lille and
La Bassee, but to north and west I could see almost
as far as Calais and Dunkirk — and Ypres lay below,
across some miles of wooded hills and hop-fields,
as pretty a stretch of country with its hops and
corn-fields and woods and red roofs and church
spires as you could wish to see, and although the
trenches are so close in front, it seemed wonderfully
unspoilt. A moving war tramples the country
underfoot, but, except for the belt round the two
lines of trenches, this waiting game does not do so
much damage. I could see the ruined Cloth Hall
at Ypres quite distinctly, and the ruined Cathedral
Tower, and I could even see the shells bursting
over Hooge — where we captured some trenches the
other day — in puffs of white and black smoke. It
was a marvellous sight ; you might go there day
after day for a week, and not get tired of it, and if
ever I can go back there, I shall go — for on a clear
day you could see beyond Arras to the south.
The monastery has been turned into a convalescent
hospital, a pleasant breezy place to lie, looking down
across those miles of level country, with its villages
and churches. I thought I heard the sound of
monks chanting Mass, but when I came round the
corner by the church, it was only six Tommies,
279
dressed as pierrots, singing ' We pushed him through
the window ' to a large and happy audience of the
patients. But some of the monks were there still,
and I saw them bringing in their harvest, working
in their long white robes, with cords round their
waists. Some officers from the Indian Medical
Corps gave me a ' hurl ' down in their ambulance —
which was lucky, for it was a good long walk, so
long that, when I started, the others derided me and
said I should never get there. But, in spite of six
months in the trenches, I can still walk.
Friday, August 27, 1915.
I wrote this letter a week ago, and meant to
finish it at home, and now here I am back at our
billets, and I shall go into trenches this morning —
it seems odd when I was in London only last night,
as if both these worlds were not real. . . . On
your birthday we rowed across the loch, climbed
up to the gap above the fir- wood, then round the
hill behind Stronvar, and back along the loch. A
lot of grouse, and the heather smelt sweet, although
there were showers.
Billets : August 29, 1915.
It is a wonderful scene at Victoria when the
leave train is starting to the front, but it must be
28o
much pleasanter to go with it than to stay behind
when it is gone.
That Kentish country looked very green and
sleepy and peaceful, and the Channel was very calm,
with a bright full moon. We had one torpedo boat
running alongside of Us the whole way, and on the
other side was a row of floats, from which I suppose
the nets are hung ; there didn't seem to be one
continuous line all the way across, but no doubt
they change the position of the nets constantly,
like fishermen trying a fresh haul. The boat was
crowded with officers of all ranks and services ; and
another new division has been crossing lately to
Boulogne. I slept all the way up in the train, and
reached my rail-head about five o'clock on a misty
morning, then drove six or seven miles, quite
pleasant after a night in the train, with the sun
rising above the mist and corn-fields. The regiment
was in trenches, with its transport back in this
little village where we are now billeted, a slight
ridge above some very low-lying ground. There
is an old stone church, which seems to have escaped
untouched for once, and some pretty villas, which
I need hardly say are occupied by the artillery.
I drove right up to the trenches by daylight in a
gun limber, as noisy a drive as I have ever had in
my Hfe, for there were no springs, and the iron
rimmed wheels rattled and banged on the pave.
28l
It was extemely hot, and in the distance I could
see mine-heaps standing up everywhere through
the haze ; for this is a mining district, and the French
pile their waste into high pointed heaps, which are
now used as observation posts by the artillery. It
was through this part of the country that Tom
marched and fought during his last few days, and
later I saw roughly in the distance the place where
he is buried. It must have looked very much the
same to him, except that the leaves would be
turning, and that the villages and farms would
stiU be occupied and untouched. There are long
straight paved roads, with plane trees planted on
either side, wide fields of beetroot and corn and
occasionally bits of wood, \vith chateaux we should
almost call villas standing in them. By the way,
what was the name of that chateau in which he
slept ? I think you have a post-card of it. I may
come across it, if it is not destroyed.
The line here has swayed to and fro with attacks
and counter-attacks, so that the desert on either
side is larger. There are some villages and factories
just behind our trenches where hardly one stone is
left upon another, just heaps of brick and mortar
and twisted rusting machinery. Sometimes you
see a piece of an upper floor, which somehow has
never fallen down, with a bed still perched on it
and the mattress still upon the bed, though walls
282
and staircase and everything except the boards
beneath have disappeared.
The communication trenches are very long and
deep ; it is difficult to find your way, in spite of the
names, Waterloo Road, Strathcona Road, Sauchie-
hall Street, and so on, according to the fancy of the
regiment which has made them. In places they
are full of thistledown, which comes drifting in from
the waste fields. My company was not in the
actual fire-trench, so I had not much to do in the
twenty-four hours while I was there. I had a fine
bathe though, in deep clear water, which is a luxury
you can't often get in the trenches.
My leave seemed very short when I got back ;
all those who have gone since got an extra day,
so I was unlucky ; but while the war lasts I would
much rather be out here than at home, except for
leave occasionally.
Billets : August 29, 1915.
I did not like leaving you alone in that crowd
without your friends. I hope they came soon.
Stainton I saw for about five minutes, and it was
nice to see him looking so well again. I did enjoy
that day in London with you, and I don't think
we could have used our time better. M. is look-
283
ing a bit older and thinner since the war began,
so are we all, I daresay, but it strikes me again
and again how very much easier it is for the
men who come out here than for those who stay
at home. The only real hardships and suffering
— except of course actual wounds — come from the
mind and not from the body, and the things which
you imagine are much worse than what you actually
see and hear.
It was strange to be back here at five o'clock
on a misty August morning, with the sun just
rising, and at lunch time I was in Chelsea again,
in a Cheyne Walk which held a dressing station
but not a hospital. It is an interesting part of
the line ; there was a tremendous lot of fighting
here just about Christmas and the New Year, and
Tom cannot have been very far away when he was
killed ; now it is very much the same as any other
place, except that there are more guns behind on
both sides, and a greater maze of trenches. I am
to be taken for a tour of inspection round the trenches
to-morrow, and I'm looking forward to seeing them
all. It's curious to see the heaps of waste from
the coal mines dotted over the country ; the artillery
observe from the top sometimes, but the mines are
working not far back from the trenches, and I see
the French miners going to and fro wearing round
leather hats with wide brims, in which they put
284
their lamps. I wish I could come across French
guns and French troops.
Yesterday afternoon I had a bathe in a canal
basin ; some fine diving from a ruined engine-house
about twenty feet above the water, but the bank
was mainly coal dust, so that you came out much
dirtier than you went in. It's curious how often
the best soldiers are the men with a little enterprise,
who are always keen to bathe, or to see some new
place. If I had to choose my men like Gideon, and
had never seen them before, I think I also would
lead them down to the water's edge, and notice
the men who undressed quickly and dived in ;
they would be the best.
This morning we had a long tramp round a
perfect maze of trenches where even our guide seemed
rather uncertain of his way, and it's not easy to
recognise landmarks at the bottom of an eight foot
trench ; we saw a lot of curious things which I cannot
tell you about : these battles in the trenches get
more and more complicated every day, but in our
last trenches I believe the Germans used to shout
' keep down Jock ' before they opened fire with
their machine-guns at night. They wanted to
know if we were the Black Watch ; they are very
frightened of the Black Watch, since one memorable
night last winter when the Black Watch chased a
lot of them through a village and slew them with
28 =
picks and spades. I walked into the local market
town this afternoon ; rather a fine square with old
houses round about it, a belfry, and a fourteenth-
century cathedral. It was a French town, distinctly
not Flemish.
Well, I know now what you look at across the
Forth, and I wish I could come along that sea-walk
sometimes with you.
Billets : August 31, 1915.
We go back to trenches to-morrow, and I went
down this afternoon to have a look at them. They
used to be French trenches ; the dug-outs are quite
different from ours and much deeper under ground,
and the different alley ways, instead of being called
after London or Glasgow streets, are ' boyan ' 14,
' boyan ' 15, and so on. Our old friend the trench
mortar was busy, but his bark is much worse than
his bite, and we must try to shut him up. A Welsh
regiment was in the trenches, and I saw this little
poem written on a sand-bag :
God makes bees,
Bees make honey,
The Welsh does the work.
And the R.E. gets the money.
Of course engineers get higher pay than infantry.
286
though I don't quite know why they should in this
war. There is a song, too, in this part of the hne
which all the troops sing as they come marching
up the road to the trenches, but I only know the
last three lines, which are —
- The bullets and shrapnel they whistle and roar ;
I don't want to go to the trenches no more —
I want to go home.
But they sing it cheerfully. We have four
or five new subalterns since I was away on leave,
but are still very short of senior officers.
Trenches : September 2, 191 5.
So far we have had nothing very frightful in
these trenches ; I am sitting in a dug-out about
sixteen feet below the level of the ground, so that
I feel safe against anything, except the very heaviest
shell. We have a French miner's lamp with carbide
in it to give us light, but for all that it's rather
dark and stale smelling after so many months of
habitation. The French have taken a lot of trouble
to make these deep holes and prop them up, but
they don't seem to have troubled themselves so
much with the fire-trench. In places the Germans
are only about thirty yards away, and they creep
even nearer at night among the broken ground
287
of the mine craters to throw bombs at us, and we
do the same to them. I think either side might rush
the other's front Une at any minute, but they might
find it hard work to stay there. The German
trench mortars must have gone away, I think ;
at any rate we have seen none in the last twenty-
four hours. Both French and German ammunition
is lying about, so I suppose the trenches changed
hands more than once ; they were very slippery
last night after a few showers, and I hope we shan't
be here through the winter, for these deep holes would
simply become wells. There are a lot of blue
corn-flowers growing in the long grass which hangs
down into the trenches ; a pretty blue vetch too.
Trenches : September 3, 1915.
We had a new game this morning, ' hunt the
General,' but I did not enjoy it very much, for I
had only had three hours lying down, and had
been up since 4. We were told the G.O.C. 2nd
Division would come round our trenches at 9.30,
so for an hour I stood in a puddle waiting for him
at the corner of my trench. I was cold and my
feet were wet, and it was raining, and I'd had no
breakfast, so I didn't bless him. Then came
rumours that he had been seen first in one trench
and then in another ; you wouldn't think a general
288
and his staff could lose themselves like needles
in a hay-stack, but for an hour I pursued him
round and round our muddy rabbit warren, up one
shppery trench and down another, while Campbell
also tried to head him off. Finally, at 11.30, I gave
up, and sat down to cold boiled eggs and tannin,
the remains of breakfast. But he did come after
all, along a back trench which never led him to
this company. Then I slept my sleep until my bed-
fellows made things uncomfortable. I caught ten
to-day, a record bag ; but I think I can get some
powder for them when we go back to billets, as I
hope we shall to-morrow. These trenches are not
comfortable for a long stay, but they are very
interesting.
Late last night I was sitting in the dug-out,
reading by the dim lamp, when I heard a cheerful
Scotch voice say, ' I've gotten a wee souvenir for
ye.' I looked up, and there was a German standing
in the doorway, in grey cap and tunic, with red
piping. He was a deserter, a young Prussian who
had crawled across in the dark into our wire, and
when challenged put his hands up ; then Fraser,
our enormous subaltern, reached out a brawny
arm, and swung him into the trench. He was not
a bit frightened ; he knocked some papers off a
chair, sat down and asked for a cigarette. He
was very anxious to talk, and I did wish my German
289
had been better, so that I might have pumped him.
He said he had come because it was ' better over
here.' Two others crawled out with him ; we captured
one of them too, wounded by one of the German
bombs as he lay in front, but I think the other
must have gone back. He told me a good deal
about the officers and sergeants and their strenuous
life in billets, more in fact than I could understand,
but we sent him in to headquarters and they would
get all his information. He was a miserable
creature — I do despise a deserter — no doubt he will
be shot if he ever goes back to Germany ; but it
shows that even Prussians are losing heart if two
of them desert in one night ; he carried an ugly-
looking knife, and had a photograph of his company
in his pocket-book, with a football in front of them —
six of them were wearing the iron cross.
It's a very wet night, and has been raining more
or less all day, so that everything is ankle deep in
mud and water, and we feel that the winter will
soon be upon us ; but evidently the Germans opposite
disUke it much more than we do.
I read ' Cyrano de Bergerac ' again the other
day. What a fine play it is ! I would have given
anything to hear Coquelin declaim the great speech
about his nose. Sometimes there seems to be so
little in common between France to-day and the
old France, until you realise how, in spite of all
290
changes of government. Frenchmen have clung to
their great Hterary traditions, and have kept their
fighting spirit. You know that first Hne of du
/ Bellay's sonnet :
France, mere des arts, des armes, et des lois.
It was written about 1550, I suppose, and yet I
think it must still express all that Frenchmen feel
about France. An Englishman writing the same
lines would put the three things in the reverse order
of importance, don't you think ?
Billets : September 5, 191 5.
About 8 last evening, a very draggled regiment
of Highlanders, their knees the same colour as their
khaki aprons, marched into barracks ; we were
only three days in the trenches, but the mud was
ankle-deep in places owing to the wet weather, and
a heavy shower just before we were relieved made
things worse. It took an hour's wading to get
clear of the trenches at all, and then we had seven
miles to march on a paved road. But the men knew
they were going to good billets, and were pleased
to get out of that warm corner. I heard one of
them say, as the mud flowed round his legs, ' That's
the way I like ma parritch, weel thickened,'
We had a bit of bad luck the night before.
291
and lost six men and an officer all wounded by the
same bomb ; the wounded subaltern only came
to us a month ago from the Glasgow Highlanders,
a very nice fellow. It was a terrible job to get
them out, down narrow twisting slippery trenches
in the dark, for they were all wounded in a sap
head, only ten yards from a German sap, and one
of the wounded men made rather a fuss. The
Germans could hear our stretcher-bearers ploutering
about in the mud, and this man would not keep
quiet, though he wasn't really badly hit, so, of course,
as soon as anyone moved they threw more bombs
in twos andthrees ; however, after a couple of hours,
we did get them all away, and I think they will
all recover. We had only one man killed besides,
in spite of constant rifle-grenades, bombs, and trench
mortars ; but we had a trench mortar battery too,
which made far more noise than the German one,
and we heard the Germans yelling in terror when
its first bomb went off.
B company have been unlucky since I joined
them ; out of six officers kiUed and wounded since
I came out, four have been ours, and since Bankier
went to be adjutant, I am the only one left who
was there in February.
It was strange after leaving the trenches at
5 o'clock to find myself at 8 in a comfortable bed-
room with sheets and hot water, the best biUet
U 2
292
I have had yet. My hostess is a vieilU fille who had
billeted some of us when I was home ; she had
heard about our two German prisoners, so we told
her that Fraser, the large man, had caught them
one in each hand by the collar. She was very
much disappointed that we hadn't killed them.
I don't wonder that French women hate the
Germans like vermin.
To-day was fine and clear and sunny, with a
suggestion of autumn. I walked over to see Glass
in the clearing hospital. He's going on well, but
has nine holes in him. The hospital was close to
a landing place for aeroplanes ; it was wonderful
to see them coming down in steep spirals, shining
in the sun ; sometimes they seemed to dive almost
straight downwards, and then to turn on their edge
until they almost turned over.
The hospital was in a pretty chateau, next door
to a sugar beet factory, but the trees and grounds
were much older than beet-sugar, and I think there
had been an old abbey there — perhaps it was
destroyed in the Revolution. It was a very clear
day, I could see the puffs of bursting shells on the
top of a pit-heap miles away ; the Germans must
have been shelling an observing station.
293
Billets : September 7, 1915.
To-day I had a curious experience, for I walked
a few miles across country to see if I could find that
chateau which Tom described in his last letter.
It was a beautiful September day, and I was able
to take short cuts across the stubble fields, close
beneath one captive balloon with its midget in the
basket slung below. I found the village, but it was
so full of troops that I did not expect to find the
French owners still in their house ; however, when
I came up the drive, there was a French lady sitting
with her sewing on the verandah, so I told her why
I had come and showed her the post-card. She
remembered that night very well, because from then
until the beginning of June she had billeted no
British officers, though plenty of French ; she re-
membered Captain Wilson Smith's name, and Tom
too, though not by name. I saw one of the
daughters, quite a pretty girl. There had been nine
of them there that night, and they marched away
very early, for their orders were to rendezvous at \
Lille ; but she had told them that the Germans /
were close, and that they were forty-eight hours
too late. She had met the sergeant-major of the
K.O.S.B.'s some weeks later, and he told her they
had almost all been killed.
Unfortunately, two French officers arrived in
294
their car before I had time to ask her name, but
I thanked her before I left for having been so kind
to Tom. The officers were friends whom they
were expecting, so I did not Hke to stay. It was
a very charming spot ; a double -storied house painted
white, with green wooden shutters, and a broad
verandah running the length of the house, and
looking out upon the garden just the view in
Tom's post-card ; there were ducks and water-fowl
swimming in the pond, and some beds of flowers.
I would have liked to stay there longer; perhaps
another day I will show them his photograph which
I had not with me.
I am billeted just beside a canal, which would
be pleasant for an early morning bathe, if it was
not so fearfully dirty ; I really can't face it. . . .
Read Mr. Balfour's letters whenever you see
them in the papers ; they are very good, and full
of the most delightful irony, which is refreshing
among so much bluster and indignation.
It rather amuses me to see how much value the
Germans put on American threats. The Americans
will soon begin to realise that everyone takes it
for granted that they won't fight, and that they
could not do very much for the first year if they did,
and their pride will resent that, even though at
present they don't seem to have quite enough.
295
Billets : September 8, 1915.
Another day of rest and sunshine. I told Daisy
yesterday how I had found Tom's chateau and seen
the lady who entertained him so hospitably. It
seems hard that in those first weeks of war they
should have had so little rest, as well as all the
fighting ; now many officers have beds in the
trenches, and most of them grumble if they do not
get a bed and sheets in billets ; yet he had only
the one night in bed, and had to march at two in
the morning. If you have a copy of Tom's
letter, I think that French lady would like to see
it, if I get a chance to go over there again.
To-day I marched a party to the baths, where
they got a change of raiment — no doubt just as
necessary to the Patriarchs as it was to them — and
all the kilts and jackets were fumigated ; I had
a fine hot bath myself too. This afternoon I had
a ride for a couple of hours, and wish I had done
it before, for though I am no horseman, I can enjoy
it. On the way I met a man who used to be in
college at Winchester with me.
I am in command of B company at present,
for Campbell went home on leave this morning ;
he only came out again at the end of May, so he
has not had long to wait.
296
Billets : September 10, 1915.
We still have brilliant September days, but
there is a keen strong north wind to-day which
makes the distances clear ; better weather for the
artillery, which is very important here ; we have
not been called upon for digging parties or other
fatigues in this billet. We are well away from
the firing line, so that shells don't worry us, and
we spend the mornings in training, and lead a
peaceful sleepy life in the afternoon. I rode over
yesterday to the 56th Brigade Headquarters to see
if I could find Billy Mitchison ; he's signal officer
to that brigade, but unfortunately he was out.
I hope he may come to see me some day. We
are what is called Inlying Picquet, which means
that we have to be ready to move at a few
minutes' notice, so I can't go over to see him
myself.
I quite enjoy commanding the company. In
billets, as a rule, it only means paying out and sending
a good many messages and signing papers ; but in
action it is a big responsibility to have to watch
200 men as best you can, and I have only one
subaltern at the present time.
We spent most of the morning scratching like
hens in a stubble field with entrenching tools,
tr5n.ng new schemes for marking out trenches
i^
X
297
quickly; but it's one thing to do it by day-light
and quite another thing to do it in the dark under
fire.
Billets : September 12, 1915.
The brigade moves back into trenches to-morrow,
but we, I fancy, are in support and not in the firing
line. There should be no great hardship about
that if this fine sunny weather lasts. Church parade
to-day in a stubble field ; we have a new padre,
a nice fellow, but when he suggested to the men that
the conseirvation of energy and the indestructibility
of matter were arguments telling in favour of future
life, I think he might as well have been preaching
to the aeroplanes for all they understood.
This afternoon I walked up a hill, or rather a
slight rise in the ground, and had a fine view of
Bethune across the plain ; its square cathedral
tower and pointed belfry are landmarks for miles
in this level country, but the hills and woods begin
not far to the south. There was nothing in the
view of corn-fields and orchards to suggest war
at all, but I wish we could fight hard every day for
a couple of months and get it over, instead of waiting
eternally. Some of the men now think, as I see
by their letters, that Kitchener is in command out
here — ' a big rough man with a wild eye on him,' as
f
298
one of them described him after marching past him.
Most of their letters are full of the same old phrase,
' hoping this finds you as it leaves me,' and ' draw-
ing to a close ' when the stock is exhausted, but
one or two always write excellent letters. ' Dear
Wife, the pies you sent me last week had hair on
them when I got them ' was a good way of explaining
what had happened in the hot weather.
The French bean harvest is now in full swing ;
there are fields and fields of them, so they really do
come from their name-place, unlike the Jerusalem
artichoke ; they leave them until they are turning
yellow, then pull up the plants by the roots, gather
them in great bundles, put a stake through the
middle, and leave them to dry in the fields. We
used to see these bundles in between the trenches
in several places, and if you didn't take particular
notice of them by day, you were very apt to mistake
them for Germans by night, ""i j.^ :>
Billets : September 11, 1915.
We're still having beautiful weather, starry
nights and sunny days and misty mornings, and
the men have had a better rest than at any time since
I came out. I was very glad to see Booth's Military
Cross, and it must have been a very fine bit of work.
I admire that sort of thing more than the one plucky
299
effort which is all over for good or bad in a moment ;
you want men who can act quickly, but you also
want men who can stick to their job for hours
under a heavy fire, especially in this war. But
our fighting here since May can have been nothing
compared with the Dardanelles, where you come
under shell fire a mile or two out to sea, and once
you land, you can never hope to escape from it at
all, and there are no billets to go to, and no leave^
and little enough food and shade and water. It
must be a regular hell for everyone who is not in
a ship.
Billets : September 13, 1915.
We have not gone into trenches after all, but
only to new billets — some rather squalid cottages
beside a grimy canal ; they will do well enough if
the weather keeps fine, but in winter they must
stand in a swamp. The wind has gone round to
the west, so I'm afraid our fine weather may break
up. The 2nd H.L.I, were to come into our old
billets, but they had not arrived when I left.
September 15. — I began this letter two days
ago, and never finished it ; various odds and ends
of work for the company have filled up the evenings.
Yesterday I was nearly arrested as a spy, while I
was making a reconnaissance of some swampy
300
ground for the Colonel, to see if we could find a
better path across it. It was so funny that I
found it very hard to answer questions without
laughing, but in the end I did convince a suspicious
old colonel that I was what I pretended to be. He
was quite right, for I don't think we are nearly
careful enough about spies — a man with a little
cheek could go anywhere and see anything. The
swamp was rather a pretty place, with long reeds
and marsh plants, and I disturbed a kingfisher from
a tree trunk which had fallen across a ditch. This
morning I went again, this time with Wardlaw
Ramsay to protect me, and on the way I met
Quiller-Couch, the novelist's son, who used to be
at Winchester and Trinity, now he is Adjutant
to an R.F.A. Brigade. We walked a long way,
but I can't say we found any very good paths ; the
old tracks show up very white when the grass gets
trodden down into mud and then dries, so that the
German aeroplanes photograph them, and then
the German guns make a point of shelling them ;
no doubt we do the same to them.
Billets : September i6, 1915.
How nice it is to hear of you ^^ith your sailors
and soldiers ! I envy you your chance of getting
to know so many of them in their natural selves.
301
It's very difficult for an officer to do that, for some-
how his main occupation seems to be finding fault ;
there's so little to praise in the trenches, and so
much to do wrong, or do slackly ; also the tradition
of our army is, that officers are one kind of animal,
and men another, and you can't break that down.
Men have so little imagination too, that on quiet
days, or safe in billets, they will quite forget what
might happen at any moment if discipline or pre-
cautions were neglected. But in hospital it must
be quite different and pleasanter. . . .
I walked into the town to-day, and had a bath,
for we go back into trenches to-morrow. I have
had a lot of walking, for yesterday I went round
and round just out of rifle range behind the trenches,
trying to find out all the paths through a bit of
swamp ; it was very hot, and very difficult to plan
them all out, and now we are going to different
trenches after all, so that my labour is wasted.
It was difficult ground for troops, though it would
have been a nice little comer for snipe and ducks
in winter, just like these long stretches of marsh
which you see between Calais and Amiens on the
way to Paris.
I met young Quiller- Couch, who used to be at
Winchester with me, and I think stroked one of
Tom's trial eights, and twenty yards further on
there was another hnk with the literary world.
302
the grave of Marion Crawford, the noveHst's son,
a Lieutenant in the Irish Guards.
To-day I see from a paragraph that G. L. Cheese-
man has been killed at the Dardanelles, a very
great loss to New College, and to me, for he was
very much more than my tutor. . . . He was a most
loyal and honest friend, and gave everyone who
knew him something of his own passion for learning,
and hatred of repeating other people's ideas at
second-hand. He loved enterprise — in travel, food,
literature, politics, and everything else — but for
him you would never have gone to Greece. He was
a really fine historian, and, by the irony of fate,
he had a great respect for Germans and German
scholarship, and rather a contempt for the modem
Greeks and Italians, whom he classed as ' Dagoes.'
But, like many scholars, he had an intense admiration
for men of action, especially for the Romans and
the Roman Army, which was his great subject ;
and I know he entered on this expedition to the
Dardanelles with double zest, because he was fighting
on historic ground, to win back the Roman Capital
from the Turk. Now he lies hke a scholar and a
soldier beside the Hellespont ; but for me he will
always haunt those rooms at New^College where I
have talked with him so often far into the^night,
of the places where he too fought, and the men who
used to fight there. He wrote to me from his troop-
303
ship on the way, reminding me of our reading-parties
at Church Stretton — ^we used to gather there just
at this time of year before the Oxford term began
— and saying how different we should all be when
we met there again. It's true, but I'm afraid
the half of us will not be there at all. I feel that
death has been kind to him, for he was given the
very place and time which he himself would have
chosen ; he would have hated growing old, and he
had a horror of settling down, which made him often
chafe against the routine of Oxford.
It's nearly lo, and we are inlying picquet to-night,
and so I am saved all the trouble of undressing
or taking off my boots.
Trenches: September 17, 1915.
I am back at my old occupation, climbing round
the trenches in the dark visiting the sentries ;
we are in the same trenches again, but this time
another company has taken over the favourite
place for bombs. We relieve some of the K.R.R.
I thought I knew one of their captains by sight,
and he suddenly said to me, 'Do you remember
Thule ? ' He had been one of my juniors in Thule
Chamber, when I was in college.
So far it is dry, thank goodness, so the trenches
are very different from what they were when we
304
left them. Campbell is not back from leave yet ;
I hear that the Channel boats are temporarily
stopped, so that mails may be irregular too ; certainly
none came to us yesterday, and your copy of Tom's
letter arrived too late the day before for me to take
to the French lady ; perhaps I shall get another
chance, as the place is not very far away. '^
We have some rifles with periscopes attached
for firing over the top of the trench ; the difficulty
is, not in the sighting, but in overcoming the kick
of the rifle, for, as you know, when the butt isn't
held firmly into the shoulder, the rifle will jump
when it is fired, and the shot will go high and wild,
and it's difficult to prevent that without a vice
to hold it. The number of devices for kilHng men
employed by both sides at the front is extraordinary ;
we have about a dozen different kinds of bombs,
besides trench-mortars, drain-pipe mortars, rifle
grenades, and of course every kind^of shell.
Trenches : September 19, 1915.
Night watches leave time for letter-writing,
and the night is ever so much longer now, as we
know to our cost. We have been digging a new
bit of trench — it was behind our front line, but still
not more than 150 yards from the Germans — and
it always amuses me to notice how men dig when
305
they find themselves in the open with bullets
coming over ; you should see the earth fly. I would
do the same myself, if I had a spade, for after living
under cover so long you feel almost naked in the
open. In three hours' work, even in the dark, a
man will do as much as takes a navvy a whole day
at home. It was very hot to-day, but I found a
place where I could look out far toward the German
side without being seen, and the pitiless sunshine
showed up the country in its desolation ; the long
grass is withered now, and the ears of corn bleached
and draggled ; there are still a few poppies and
corn-flowers here and there, but otherwise the
prevailing colour was a dirty yellow. In the
distance were some rows of dead trees — either their
bark had been ringed to make firewood in the
winter, or else the bullet holes had bled them to
death.as I have often seen happen — and they grouped
themselves round the skeleton of a farm, roofless,
windowless, just a mass of ruined brick-work.
Our guns were shelling the German parapet, raising
enormous clouds of dust and greenish smoke, and
they were also battering at a ruined village about
a mile away, with heavy howitzers ; you would hear
the report of the gun, and the quiet whistling of
the sheU overhead, and then suddenly some house
would disappear in a cloud of brick dust and black
smoke. Then as the cloud slowly drifted away
3o6
down wind, the crash would come to your ears,
and you would see the house emerge again without
a roof and one of its sides completely gone. There
was not a sign of life in all that \'illage, it was like
breaking all the bones in a dry skeleton ; if only
the Germans could suffer that in their own country,
instead of inflicting it on France and Belgium and
Russia.
Alastair Campbell came back this morning,
bringing with him a melon, the smell of which, mixed
with the even stronger smell of mouse, fills the dug-
out as I write. We have only six feet of earth on the
top of us here, and a little porthole window to give
light, on a level with the bottom of the trench.
Billets : September 21, 191 5.
We came out of trenches last night ; only a short
spell this time, but a busy one, and I seemed to
spend half my time showing lost men and officers
their right way in the trenches, for everyone loses
their way in that maze. It was beautiful weather,
very clear, so that you could see every stick and
sand-bag in the German lines for miles. We must
have had at least eight miles to march last night,
a long way when men are tired and short of sleep,
but for some reason everyone was very cheerful
and musical ; my platoon formed itself into a
'■f^
307
regular whistling band ; as one of them remarked,
' There must ha' been canar^'' seed in the parcels
last mail.' A great favourite is a song which only
has two lines that I can hear — ' Wash me in the
water that you wash the dixies in and I shall be
whiter than the snow.' ' Dixies ' are camp kettles.
I was also very much tickled with one remark.
We passed a pioneer battalion of Seaforths, who
had abandoned the kilt and were wearing khaki
shorts. I remarked that it would make some of
the veterans from the 72nd and 78th turn in their
graves, if they saw their old regiment in that dress.
' Ay, ye may say that,' said one man, ' for there's
some of they Seaforths is bom in kilts ; ye mind auld ,
McRae o' this regiment, he was sae Hielan' ye )
could see the heather grawin' oot o' his lugs.'
We are back near our old billets where v/e rested
ten days ago, a nice farm with a cool airy mess,
free from flies and very clean. I have a very
comfortable bed, and my only regret is, that to-night
I have to go digging, so I shall probably spend
very little time in it. There is a stream of water
near — a rarity in Flanders — and a canal for the
men to bathe in, and an orchard full of trenches,
though it is miles behind the firing line. We still
have beautiful September weather, but for the last
two days the guns have been thundering away to the
south — all night too. The sound of them is like the
X 2
3o8
roll of kettle-drums — that must be the French 75 's,
I think. The Germans opposite must wish they had
never been born.
Two more brace of grouse arrived the other
day ; unfortunately they were just ' past.' The mail
had been delayed a day, then the parcel had lain
for twenty-four hours in a farm behind the trenches,
and, finally, my bright servant never told me when
it arrived, but left it for a night and a morning on
the side of the trench, in the sun ; there are times
when I feel that stupidity is the only vice, and
that I don't care what else a man does, if he will
use common sense. . . .
I believe the Zeppelins were a most beautiful
sight, coming out from behind the clouds in the
distance like a shoal of goldfish, and as they came
nearer, saiHng along like golden cigars with search-
lights playing on them, and shells bursting all
round. . . . Yesterday I saw nine aeroplanes in
a flock — a battle squadron — I think, and it was in-
tensely interesting to see them turn and manoeuvre
as they came under fire from the German anti-aircraft
guns. They swung this way and that, but I think
they all got through the danger zone, and sailed
away behind the German lines — a raiding expedition,
I expect. We shall get a ' hurl ' in motor lorries
to our digging to-night, so we oughtn't to have
very far to tramp.
309
Billets : September 23, 1915.
Last night three officers and 120 reluctant men
were ordered to go out digging, so we marched for
a couple of miles and then piled into a great string
of motor lorries, which took us down to the trenches.
It was a change for the men, and the road was
crowded with Highlanders and other Scots, so that
there was a running fire of chaff all the way, and
insults in broad Scotch hurled back and forward.
Most of this Kitchener Army Scottish Division have
got khaki Tam-o'-shanters, and some of them are in
khaki kilts. Lochiel's Camerons look very smart,
and no doubt they have a great opinion of them-
selves. It was a beautiful still night with a full
moon, but our artillery were keeping up a very
heavy bombardment all through. We were set to
work on a silly job some hundreds of yards behind
the trenches, deepening a trench which seemed
quite deep enough already, so that practically all
we managed to do was to cut all the artillery wire
between the batteries and the trenches. That
soon brought furious gunners buzzing about us ;
but really the men couldn't help it when they were
never told the wires ran along the bottom of the
trench, but were set down to deepen it in the dark.
It was most comforting to listen to our guns — some-
times there was almost one continuous roar of
310
shells leaving the guns and bursting far away,
with a swish like a waterfall as they rushed over-
head. I climbed up to a place where I could see
the bursts of flame far and near over the level
country, and long afterwards the deep ' cr-rump ' of
the shell came to my ears ; a lot of houses had
been set on fire, and were blazing fiercely, so that
it was a weird and wonderful sight ; and sometimes
there would be a minute of complete silence —
still moonhght and the mist rising from the hollows —
and then with a flash and a roar the guns would open
again. The Germans were hardly sending an5rthing
back ; no doubt they were biding their time. Finally,
we gathered our tools and marched back to our
lorries. It was very cold for an officer in a kilt
on the front seat, though warm enough for the men
who were packed like herrings behind. We had a
bit of a march at the end too, so we didn't get to
bed until 2.30 A.M.
I woke up with the sound of ducks quacking
in the farm-yard just outside ; they seemed to have
an intolerable lot to say, and as I lay I noticed the
most gigantic Daddy-long-legs I have ever seen
on the ceihng above me. It suddenly occurred
to me, what on earth can he use his legs for ? They
are far too long, and the joints all go the wrong way ;
he has wings, so he needn't use them for wading ;
perhaps they act hke the tail of a kite to keep him
I
311
steady on the wing, but in that case it would have
been better to give him a better pair of wings. Or
perhaps, hke MalvoUo he thinks his long slim legs are
irresistible to Granny-long-legs. If Darwin's right,
there must be some purpose in his legs to fit him
to survive, but I can't see it ; they are Hke the
appendix.
This is a very pleasant place for short strolls
on these fine moonlit evenings, along the edge of
the canal. Whole families live on board the barges,
and you see the smallest boys and girls steering.
One barge, very neat and clean, had the curious
name ' Mon Idee ' and then the owner's name ;
but I think he might have given credit to Noah,
for surely it was his idea first.
Trenches : September 24, 1915.
My Dear Daddy,— This is your birthday, I
think, but this trench has not provided me with a
present for you as Laventie did for Mother.
We had an eight -mile march down last night,
an extraordinary hot night, hotter than any I
remember this summer. There was a lot of R.E.
material — timber and so on — to carry up, and just
as we reached the end of our mile-long communica-
tion trench, down came the rain. Of course in
five minutes every one was wet through and up to
A
312
the eyes in mud, and it was terrible work to carry
these heavy timbers up in slippery darkness, -with
only the flashes of lightning to help. The thunder
drowned the sound of the guns, which is sa5dng a
lot, for they have never ceased night and day lately,
and there is a tremendous bombardment of the
German trenches going on as I write.
We got everything up in the end, though it was
worse than moving furniture at Thuluchan, and
we are beginning to dry now, though last night
was rather uncomfortable ; unfortunately, the men
can light no fires in these trenches, it's too near
the Germans, but they had a ration of rum this
morning to cheer them up.
Before long I think we shall be in the thick of
it, for if we do attack, my company will be one of
those in front, and I am likely to lead it ; not because
I have been specially chosen for that, but because
someone must lead, and I have been with the
company longest. I have no forebodings, for I feel
that so many of my friends will charge by my side,
and if a man's spirit may wander back at all,
especially to the places where he is needed most,
then Tom himself will be here to help me, and give me
courage and resource and that cool head which will
be needed most of all to make the attack a success.
For I know it is just as bad to run into danger use-
lessly as to hang back when we should be pushing on.
4
313
It \vill be a great fight, and even when I think
of you, I would not wish to be out of this. You
remember Wordsworth's ' Happy Warrior ' :
Who if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad, for human kind.
Is happy as a lover, and is attired
With sudden brightness like a man inspired.
Well, I never could be all that a happy warrior
should be, but it will please you to know that I
am very happy, and whatever happens, you will
remember that.
Well, anything one writes at a time like this
seems futile, because the tongue of man can't say
all that he feels — but I thought I would send this
scribble with my love to you and Mother.
Always your loving
Bey.
* Then I entered into the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, and had no hght, for almost half the way through
it. I thought I should have been killed there, over and
over ; but at last day broke, and the sun rose, and I
went through that which was behind with far more
ease and quiet.' — From Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress,'
a book A. D. G. had with him at the front, and which
came home in his kit with a mark at the page of which
this was the closing sentence.
314
/
' Nineteen '
Up thro' the sand and heather
I dimbed the stony track,
Then, where the valley ended,
I turned, and I looked back.
A spring of water chuckled
Among the bracken fern.
Far off the last hght ghnted
Upon the winding burn.
In the still breath of evening
The air was strangely cool,
The small gnats danced a measure
Above each dimpled pool. j
The steep bare hills had gathered j
Shadows in every fold.
Between the clear-cut headlands
The sea was shining gold.
A faint and fitful murmur
Carried the slow swell's roar,
One wisp of smoke climbed upwards
Above the distant shore.
Then, as I looked and lingered, ;
The gold was turned to grey, |
And out into the silence !
A boy's heart fled away. ]
Sadly I turned homeward "^
To leave that lonely place,
The valley was behind me.
And the night was in my face ;
315
For coming years may bid me
Be merry and be wise ;
But nothing can recover
That glory for my eyes.
And down that westward valley
Among the hills of joy
There wanders, blithe and singing,
The glad heart of a boy,
A. D. G.
(In the Island of Hoy,
September 1908;)
AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE AND CO. LTD.
COLCHESTER, LONDON AND ETON
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