On the King's Service Part 1

On the King's Service.

by Innes Logan.

TO MY WIFE

This little book is written as a slight tribute of love and respect for those with whom the writer had, for over twenty months, the honour of a.s.sociation.

UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MANSE, BRAEMAR.

CHAPTER I

MUSTERING MEN

I

_Those gaunt unlovely buildings_

The War Office built Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow, to look exactly like a gaol, but these gaunt unlovely buildings, packed beyond endurance with men of the new army, were at least in some way in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Even in that first month of the war it seemed callous to be breathing the sweet, clear air of Braemar, or to let one's eyes linger on the matchless beauty of mountain and glen. The grey spire of my church rising gracefully among the silver birches and the dark firs, bosomed deep in purple hills, pointed to some harder way than that. Stevenson, who wrote part of _Treasure Island_ here, called it 'the wale (pick) of Scotland,' but just because it was so we saw more clearly the agony of Belgium and the men of our heroic little Regular Army dying to keep us inviolate.

Up to the 10th of September recruits poured in in such numbers that it was hard to cope with the situation in the most superficial way. On that date the standard was raised, and, as though a sluice had been dropped across a mill dam, the stream stopped suddenly and completely. I suppose that was the object of the new regulation, but it caused misunderstanding, and to this day the spontaneous rush of the first month of the war has never been repeated. Beyond doubt the numbers were too great to be properly handled. Men slept in the garrison church, in the riding school, on the floor in over-crowded barrack-rooms, in leaky tents without bottoms to them. There were no recreation rooms. It rained a great deal, and once wet a man with no change of clothing or underclothing remained wet for days in his meagre civilian suit. There were too few blankets, no braziers, and the cheap black shoes of civil life were soon in tatters. Everybody became abominably verminous, and though the food was good enough in its way the cooks were overwhelmed, and it was often uneatable. n.o.body was to blame, and in an astonis.h.i.+ngly short time order began to emerge, but in those early days one enormous 'grouse' went up continually from the new army that was not yet an army, and those conditions were partly responsible for the fact that when the standard was lowered again the flow of recruits was so much less than before. This, the faculty for hearty grousing, in the army whimsical, humorous, shrewd, sometimes biting, never down-hearted, is evidently an old national custom, for Chaucer uses the word half a dozen times. But the aggravated discomfort of men soft from indoor life was really pitiful.

Before long all recruits except those for the Royal Field Artillery were sent elsewhere, and the barracks became a great depot for this arm of the service, with Colonel Forde in command. What marvels were done in those early days, and how hard pushed the country was, will be realised when it is understood that for months a body of men numbering never less than two thousand, and sometimes as many as three times that number, had only two field guns for training purposes, and that officers had to be sent out to the Expeditionary Force who had worn a uniform only for three, four, or five weeks.

II

_Why the First Hundred Thousand Enlisted_

The first hundred thousand had some characteristics of their own compared with their successors. They contained a large number of men who do things on the spur of the moment, the born seekers after adventure, men to whom war had its attractions. Many a man who had never found his place in life, because his was the restless, roving spirit which could not settle, or that chafed against ordered conventional ways, found his happiness at last in August 1914. Alongside those were the men who were pa.s.sionately patriotic and saw very clearly and quickly the long issues involved to the country they loved. The fate of Belgium had a far more moving influence with the ranks of the new army than the officer cla.s.s, I think, quite realised. Indeed, with the later recruits I gathered the impression that indignation at the German atrocities in Belgium was the prevailing motive in their enlistment. There can be no question in the mind of any one who worked intimately among the men of the new armies in the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pa.s.s to the sea we knew nothing. Day by day and night by night we were regaled with stories of 'heavy German losses' and futile tales of the deaths of German princes; neither our manhood nor our imagination was fully captured, for of the almost unbelievable heroism of our brothers we were never told. Perhaps the silence was justified; the enemy might have learned how near they were to victory, and with a supreme effort have broken through. At all events, unavoidably or not, the youth of the country as a whole was never, throughout this winter, really roused to its best. All the more honour to the first hundred thousand!

III

_Ubique_

After this war is over no soldier can ask 'What does the Christian Church do for me?' The members of the Church, acting through its organisation, or more frequently through other organisations of which its members were the moving spirits, rose to the occasion n.o.bly all over the country. Glasgow was no exception. It did the Churches, too, much good, teaching them to work together. Here is an example. The men were lodged all over the city, two or three hundred in one hall, more than that in another. In every instance arrangements were made for their recreation and comfort. In a given district one congregation gave its hall as a recreation room, another paid all expenses, a third supplied a church officer for daily cleaning, the members joined in giving magazines and papers, and in providing tea and coffee; the missionary of one congregation held services, and all united in giving concerts. The Y.M.C.A., which does not accept workers unless they are members of the Christian Church, came on the scene and built a hut, through the generosity of Mrs. Hunter Craig, in the barrack square.

On this, in the early months of 1915, there followed a revival of religion among the Maryhill Barracks men, whose centre was the Y.M.C.A.

hut. This revival had the marks in it which we younger men had been told were the marks of a true revival, but from which many had shrunk because they were a.s.sociated in our days with flaming advertis.e.m.e.nt, noise, and ostentation.

A wise old Scots minister was once asked, 'How are we to bring about a revival?' 'It is G.o.d who gives revival.' 'But how are we to get Him to give it?' 'Ask Him,' he said. Perhaps in this case we may say humbly that our asking was largely in the form of gaining the confidence of the men, for when we had all become friends the movement began quietly one night through the action of an agent of the Pocket Testament League, who was spending the evening with us. The meetings looked prosaic enough to the eye; there was no band or solo singing or outward excitement, and the hut was a plain wooden building, but the strain was very intense at times. Sometimes as many as a hundred in one week would stay behind and profess conversion, desiring to yield to the profound spiritual impulse urging them from within to make Christ's mind and spirit their principle in life. All had been cast loose from their moorings and had been trying to find their feet in new surroundings. Most of them were just decent lads who had never thought much about it before. There were others who at last saw a chance to make a fresh start and grasped thankfully at it.

A few were 'corner-boys,' learning in discipline and comrades.h.i.+p a lesson they had never dreamed of. I think there was everywhere in the new army a certain moral uplift arising from the consciousness of a hard duty undertaken, and it was not difficult to lead this on to a more personal and spiritual crisis. There was something very lovable about them. A tall, handsome fellow from a Canadian lumber camp said, with real distress in his face, 'I've tried and tried, and, G.o.d help me, I can't. It's no use.' His chum tucked his arm through his and declared with a warmth of affection in his voice, 'I'll look after him, guv'nor.'

Many months afterwards in a Flemish town I saw some of their batteries go by clattering over the stony streets. The flashlight from an electric torch lit up the riders flitting from darkness to darkness on either side of the broad pencil of light. It showed bronzed faces, competent gestures, stained uniforms, the marks of veterans, men who had been in action many times with their guns. I am sure that they do their duty not only to their king but to One Higher, too, in the words of the brave motto of their corps, '_Ubique quo fas et gloria duc.u.n.t_.'

In April orders came to join the Expeditionary Force.

A REINFORCEMENTS CAMP

CHAPTER II

A REINFORCEMENTS CAMP

I

_The Sunny Valley_

The reinforcements camp lay pleasantly in a sunny valley. The nearest town was Harfleur, besieged exactly five hundred years earlier by Henry V. of England, who placed his chief reliance on his big guns and his mines and was not disappointed. The camp commandant was insistent that the ground round the tents and huts should be turned into gardens, and before long the valley was bright with flowers. There was peace over all the landscape here. Sometimes a train of horse trucks, crowded with men standing at the sliding doors or sitting with legs dangling over the rails, panted up the long slope past the foot of the valley, and every evening the supply trains pulled slowly off on their way to the front, each laden with one day's rations for twelve thousand men. Fresh drafts for the infantry and artillery arrived every day, stayed a few days, and then were sent up the line. Probably a thousand men a month would be a fair estimate for the wastage from a division at that time, that is, the whole Expeditionary Force had to be renewed completely once a year, as far as its fighting units were concerned. Drafts therefore were continually pa.s.sing through our camp, and I had many opportunities of studying the morale of individuals of all ranks. The result was interesting and worth setting down. My experience was that the good heart of fighting men was affected by only two avoidable causes. The first was the large number of young able-bodied men engaged in occupations, on the lines of communications and at the base, which might have been carried through effectively by others. These young men never were in danger, while those who happened to have enlisted in combatant corps were sent back to face death again and again. This (we are told) has now been rectified, but it was for long a source of great soreness.

The second influence making for soreness was the amazing amount of wrangling that went on at home, among the newspapers, between masters and men, and so on. Officers would get furious with the conduct of the 'workers,' and condemn them wholesale as a cla.s.s. One had to be at once cautious and persistent in bringing home to them the fact that their own men, whom they admired and loved, whom they knew would follow them anywhere, were drawn from just the same cla.s.s as those men who were out on strike. Another reason why it would have been better to have had older men and married men at the bases lay in the temptations surrounding the men there on every side. These also have to be reckoned with as part of the inevitable cost of war. It says much for the grit and character of the average Briton that so many come through unscathed.

II

_The Man from Skye_

As I was going round the tents one day I had a long talk with a man in a draft just leaving for the front to join a Highland regiment. He had not been long out of hospital, and, like his companions, had scarcely pulled himself together after the sadness of a second farewell.

Following a good plan of always handing on any rumour, however improbable, which is of a thoroughly cheerful nature I said, referring to a report that was current in the messes that morning, 'They say Lord Kitchener says it will be all over by September.' He looked at me very seriously and said sternly, 'It iss not for Lord Kitchener to say when the war will be over. It iss only for G.o.d to say that.' Presently he said, 'And what iss more, I will nefer see Skye again.' I had tried every way in vain to lift his foreboding from him, and now I said sternly like himself, 'It is not for you to say whether you will ever see Skye again; only G.o.d can know that.' He moved a little, restlessly, and answered slowly, 'Yess, that iss so, but--yess, it iss so.'

Sometimes when we were asking one another that old familiar unanswerable question I would tell the story of the man from Skye and his answer to the problem. We were very glad to hear a few weeks later that he had been discharged as permanently unfit, and was by then in his loved misty isle.

The Princ.i.p.al Chaplain visited the camp during my chaplaincy there. The Rev. Dr. Simms, who ranks as a major-general, has charge of all chaplains other than those of the Church of England. His tall, distinguished, una.s.suming figure will always stand, in the minds of those who were under his administration, for infinite kindness, wisdom, and scrupulous fairness between all parties. Dr. Wallace Williamson of St. Giles', Edinburgh, who was visiting the troops in France, accompanied him. Their service on Sunday was very moving. Hearts were near the surface in those brief days between the farewell and the battlefield. The three Scotsmen whom I knew best of those who were at this service are all dead: one fell at Loos, one in Mesopotamia, and one on the Somme. The oldest of them, who was an officer in a Guards battalion, could not speak and his eyes were full of tears. There was no possibility here of the remark that one Lowlander made to another after listening to a very celebrated London preacher: 'Aye, it was beautiful, and he cud mak' ye see things too, whiles; but, man! there was nae _logic_ in 't.'

It was about this time that we heard of the sinking of the _Lusitania_.

Somehow from this moment we knew better where we were and for what we fought. Every one's thoughts were very grim. This was sheer naked wickedness done plainly and coldly in the sight of G.o.d and man.

III

'_You can hear them now_'

One broiling afternoon as I sat talking with a friend in my tent an orderly came to the door and said to him, 'Message for you, sir.' He glanced at it. It was his orders to join his battalion at the front. We shook hands and he went off, glad to be on the move again after hanging about waiting so long. In five minutes the orderly was back with orders for me to proceed at once to the 2nd London Territorial Casualty Clearing Station. I said good-bye to Adams, my servant. No man was ever more fortunate in his batmen--Adams, a typical regular, fiercely proud of his regiment; Campion, the London Territorial, a commercial traveller in civil life; and Munro, the Royal Scot, who within a month or two of the outbreak of war could no longer suppress the fighting spirit of the Royal Regiment stirring within him, and voluntarily rejoined, leaving a wife and six children behind him. He was a foreman in the Edinburgh Tramways Company. Handy man that he was, he could turn his hand to anything, whether it was devising a ferrule for a broken walking stick out of the screw of a pickle bottle, or making a bleak-looking hut habitable, or producing hot tea from nowhere, or transforming a wet-canteen marquee into a decent place for Communion (empty tobacco boxes for table, beer barrels discreetly out of sight), or building a pulpit out of sandbags in the corner of a roofless saloon bar.

The supply train left at a very early hour, and by devious routes reluctantly approached the railhead. The journey took thirty hours. It was long enough to teach the lessons never to go on a military train in France without something to read, or to drink rashly from an aluminium cup containing hot liquid, or to rely on bully beef as a sole article of diet. Towards evening the Irishman in charge of the train had pity and took me along--we had stopped for the thirty-fifth time--to admire his Primus stove in full blast, and to share his excellent dinner. But (stove or no stove) the world is divided into those who can do that sort of thing and those who cannot; who, wrestling futilely with refractory elements, wish they had never been born.

He said that before we reached the railhead we would probably hear the sound of the guns. The phrase is used to barrenness, even to ridicule, but the reality when first heard rings a new emotion in your breast. The night was windless and warm, and about ten o'clock as we stood in a wayside station the Ulsterman came up to me and said, 'Listen, you can hear them now.' And away to the east could be heard a deep shaking sound rising and fading away in the still air--the sound of British artillery fighting day and night against yet overwhelming odds.

Twenty hours later, after many wanderings, a friendly Field Ambulance car deposited me at the door of the mess of the clearing station, where the arrival of a 'Scotch minister' had been awaited with a good deal of curiosity and possibly some apprehension.