VIII

“A FIRST-CLASS FIGHTING MAN”

“If ever I come back, and anybody at home talks to me about the glory of war, I shall be d——­d rude to him.”  That is an extract from the letter of an officer who has seen too much of the grim and ugly side of the campaign to find any romance in it.  Yet out of all the horror there emerge incidents of conspicuous bravery that strike across the imagination like sunbeams, and cast a glow even in the darkest corners of the stricken field.

Valor is neither a philosophy nor a calculation.  The soldier does not say to himself, “Look here, Atkins,

    ’One crowded hour of glorious life
    Is worth an age without a name.’”

He goes into the business of war determined to get it over as quickly as possible,[E] and when he does something stupendous, as he does nearly ever day, it is just because the thing has to be done, and he is there to do it.  Tommy Atkins doesn’t stop to think whether he is doing a brave thing, nor does he wait for orders to do it; he just sets about it as part of the day’s work, and looks very much abashed if anybody applauds him for it.

For instance, there is a man in the Buffs (the story is told by a driver of the Royal Marine Artillery), who picked up a wounded comrade and carried him for more than a mile under a vicious German fire that was exterminating nearly everything.  It was a fine act of heroism.  “Yet if anybody were to suggest the V.C. he’d break his jaw,” says the writer, “and as he’s a man with a 4.7 punch the men of his regiment keep very quiet about it.”

Some fine exploits are recorded of the Artillery.  When the Munster Fusiliers were surrounded in one extended engagement a driver of the R.F.A. named Pledge, who was shut up with them, was asked to “cut through” and get the assistance of the Artillery.  Lance-Corporal John McMillan, Black Watch, thus describes what happened:  “Pledge mounted a horse and dashed through the German lines.  His horse was brought to the ground, and, as we afterwards discovered, he sustained severe injuries to his legs.  Nothing daunted, he got his horse on its feet, and again set off at a great pace.  To get to the artillery he had to pass down a narrow road, which was lined with German riflemen.  He did not stop, however, but dashed through without being hit by a single bullet.  He conveyed the message to the artillery, which tore off to the assistance of the Munsters, and saved the situation.”

The saving of the guns is always an operation that calls for intrepidity, and many exploits of that kind are related.  Lance-Corporal Bignell, Royal Berks, tells how he saw two R.F.A. drivers bring a gun out of action at Mons. Shells had been flying round the position, and the gunners had been killed, whereupon the two drivers went to rescue the gun.  “It was a good quarter of a mile away,” says the witness, “yet they led their horses calmly through the hail of shell to where the gun stood.  Then one man held the horses while the other limbered up.  It seemed impossible that the men could live through the German fire, and from the trenches we watched them with great anxiety.  But they came through all right, and we gave them a tremendous cheer as they brought the gun in.”