War Letters of a Public-School Boy Part 17

I see that poor Kitter[6] has been killed. It is too horrible; first Nightingale, now Kittermaster. At Dulwich Kitter was always looked upon as a prototype of K. of K. He was a very silent man, who nevertheless took a very real interest in the affairs of the school, his form, and his "House." He knew a lot about military tactics, and his chief hobby was the Corps, for which he worked and slaved in school-time and out. He taught us fellows more about military discipline and training than you could get from months of study. He was always having little field-days, extra drills, and so forth, and while any movements were on he was always explaining and talking to you, showing why this, and why that, and so forth. He had a fund of dry humour. One of the best men at Dulwich, I always thought! Poor chap! Well, well!

[Footnote 6: Captain Arthur N. C. Kittermaster. Born, 1871.

Killed in action in Mesopotamia, April 5th, 1916. A master at Dulwich, 1896-1915. An accomplished scholar and athlete, who was C.O. of the Dulwich O.T.C.]

In May, 1916, Paul came home on leave. He spent a very enjoyable week in London and had the satisfaction of meeting many old College friends. On 12th May I saw him off by the 8.10 A.M. train from Victoria. There is a clear picture of him in my mind's eye standing on the platform before taking his seat in the waiting train, cheerily greeting this friend and that, conspicuous in the throng of officers by his ma.s.sive physique. He looked the incarnation of young manly vigour, courage and hope, and there was about him a fresh and fragrant air like the atmosphere of that delicious spring morning. The future is mercifully veiled from man. Little did either of us think when saying farewell, clasping hands and gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, that we would never meet again on this earth.

_May 15th, 1916._

Had a pleasant crossing to France. I dined in an hotel with a gunner lieutenant, who in civil life was a Professor of Literature, a charming and cultured man. We discussed some of our respective pet theories on Art and Life, the Novel and the Drama, etc., and found many points of agreement.

Well! it was a great leave. There is no countryside to compare with the English. If you had lived among the flats of Flanders you would find the tamest English scenery beautiful. Not that we are situated at present in unbeautiful surroundings. In fact, the downs about here are very pleasant, and there are many trees in the valleys; but give me the English countryside. Then there is London! Dear old London! to me the one town in the world. Our own home, too, with its happy blend of urban and rural. And then the old school----! Yes, it was a great leave, there can be no possible doubt about it. Would that it had been twice as long!

On arrival at our quarters I found my horses very well. They are looking perfectly beautiful just now, their coats s.h.i.+ning, smooth and glossy like silk. My big one really blazes on a sunny day, and my cob is not far behind him. I shall have a very busy time in the next ten days, arranging for a supply of about 30 tons a week of green fodder to be purchased in weekly instalments in the neighbouring countryside. All the troops are going to bivouac in the fields shortly, as they always do this time of the year, remaining under canvas until September, or even October if the weather permits.

_May 18th, 1916._

Thanks so much for the "Shakespeare"; it was exactly what I wanted. I am making a careful study of the Bard's works again, and with an enthusiasm that has not one whit abated; rather it has augmented. I only wish it had been possible to see some of his plays whilst on leave.

What a superman Shakespeare was! The interest of his plays is absolutely perennial. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of his work is the astonis.h.i.+ng consistency of the characters in his _dramatis personae_. His characters invariably behave exactly as people of that type would and do behave in real life. Thus we have the illusion that the characters conceived by his mighty imagination are themselves real. He has. .h.i.t with marvellous accuracy on the points in human nature that are common to almost all ages, and, _mutatis mutandis_, his plays could be staged in the nineteenth or twentieth century without losing any of their power.

Men of the type of Hamlet are doubtless rare, yet we all know the sort of genius who is so much a genius that he is incapable of action and does nothing but reflect. Hamlet seems meant to show how vain it is to be merely a philosopher in this world. Hamlet is always pondering, thinking of the abstract rights and wrongs of the case. In the result, though he does eventually avenge his father's murder, his introspection and vacillation have led to the death of himself and no fewer than three other innocent persons--Ophelia, Polonius and Laertes. Yet Hamlet was at least twice as brainy as the rest of them, and he was also a good sportsman; for instance, he refuses to kill Claudius when he finds him at a disadvantage--that is, when Claudius is praying.

To me the lesson of the play seems to be this--the only policy that really works in this world is to "go in and get the goods,"

as the Canadians say. The philosopher usually causes more trouble than his philosophy is worth. It is the old lesson of the Girondins and Jacobins over again. No one doubts which of them had the purer and loftier ideals. Equally no one doubts that the Girondins, despite all this, were hopelessly outmanoeuvred by the practical Jacobins, who had not a t.i.the of their brains.

To change the subject, I have been getting a lot of swimming lately. At a big cement works in a neighbouring town there is an enormous pond in a quarry. The water is about 15 feet deep all round and not at all stagnant, and there is a splendid place for diving. Yesterday I was down at a neighbouring seaport on business and got a delightful swim in the sea. A swim means to me almost as much as a Rugby match. I am going down to the cement-works pool every day, and whenever possible I shall have a swim in the sea. The weather just at present is wonderful, the suns.h.i.+ne simply glorious. Do not imagine that I am neglecting my work. In fact, I have been tremendously busy buying and arranging for green fodder for about 2,000 horses at the rate of 4 lbs. per horse per diem. By to-morrow noon I shall have contracts concluded to keep the brigade supplied until further orders.

_May 21st, 1916._

Thanks so much for congratulatory messages. It certainly was gratifying to get the second pip, and a particularly pleasant coincidence that it should be gazetted on May 18th [his birthday].

The weather in "this pleasant land of France" remains wonderful.

The sun is really s.h.i.+ning. In the height of summer I have never known more beautiful weather. This, on the whole, is a picturesque part of France, and everything looks at its best just now. The lanes and wooded downs here might be in Surrey.

I was seven hours in the saddle yesterday. The General himself commented the other day on the splendid condition of my horses.

They certainly are looking extraordinarily well.

_May 28th, 1916._

I note that Winston Churchill suggested in the House of Commons the other day that the Cavalry should be turned into Infantry.

With due respect to him, I think that he is all wrong. Whenever the "Push" comes, cavalry will be not only desirable, but absolutely and vitally essential. The day of cavalry charges may have gone, but I agree with Conan Doyle that "the time will never come when a brave and a capable man who is mounted will be useless to his comrades." You might, indeed, mount them in motor cars, but a man with a horse has three times the freedom and the scope for scouting and independent action that a man has who is brought up in a motor and then dumped to s.h.i.+ft for himself. I entirely agree with Churchill, nevertheless, about the large number of able-bodied men employed behind the fighting-lines. I only wish I were in the trenches myself, I can tell you. My rejection for the Infantry was a bitter blow!

Everybody here is grieved at the death in action of Captain Platt, ---- Hussars, attached Coldstream Guards. I knew him quite well, and we were great friends. He was a chivalrous gentleman, and very clever intellectually, quite a bit of a poet in his way.

_June 2nd, 1916._

We are now in bivouacs in a big field. I have rigged up a first-rate tent, made out of cart-cover, with a sort of enclosed dressing-room for was.h.i.+ng, etc., attached. We've got a fine mess-tent, 30 feet long by 20 feet wide, made out of wagon-sheetings. It is not only much more pleasant, but a good deal cheaper, to live in the open like this.

So Churchill has once again leapt to the fore as a critic of the Army. Mind, I have a lot of sympathy with some of his arguments, but in general this last speech seemed to me mere wild and whirling words. I note that L. G. now appears in the role of Conciliator-in-General to Ireland. If anyone can settle this miserable Irish question, he will.

The war drags wearily along on its monotonous course. Are you reading Conan Doyle's review in the _Strand_ of the early stages of the war? The style is not so good as John Buchan's, and perhaps he is inclined to miss the broad issues of the conflict.

But for details, and for pictures of incidents that go to make up war, Conan Doyle's narrative is very good indeed. The story of the heroic fight of "L" Battery R.H.A. at Le Cateau, when the whole battery was wiped out save for an odd man or two, is admirably told. War was war in those days, not like this earthworm war that has replaced it. Still, no doubt the trench phase will not last for ever.

_June 9th, 1916._

The school cricket XI seems to have been doing badly. It was undoubtedly hard lines to go under by only four runs to Bedford, but our bad season is only a tribute to the patriotism of the school, for I can see from the names of the eleven that we have no one playing over the age of 17. Our system of training the young idea in cricket is very much inferior to the training for footer. The consequence is that in Dulwich cricket a young team is probably destined for disaster, whereas I know from experience that whenever we've had a young footer team it has had quite as much success as teams exclusively composed of fellows in their last year at school.

To speak of bigger matters, it seems to me impossible as yet to put together any connected story of the Battle of Jutland. The only facts that seem certain are that both sides lost heavily (the Boches worse than ours, I expect), and that British superiority on the seas, and consequently the maintenance of the blockade, remains _in statu quo antea_. I am quite prepared to find, when the true facts come out, that it was a deathless story of heroism on the British part, and that in a fight with a foe about six times his strength Beatty covered himself with glory.

Lord Kitchener's death was terribly tragic. There ought to be stringent inquiries as to the ways and means by which the Boches were enabled to sink H.M.S. _Hamps.h.i.+re_. On the other hand, I can see that it is possible that the whole thing was a woefully unfortunate accident. To have one's name coupled with "Kitchener's Army"--a t.i.tle alone which should pa.s.s K.'s name down to posterity--is no small honour.

WITH A SUPPLY COLUMN

In June Lieut. Paul Jones, much to his chagrin, was transferred from the 9th Cavalry Brigade to the Divisional Supply Column. His letters will show how much he resented this change. (Certain words and figures omitted from the following letter are the result of excisions made by the Press Bureau censors.h.i.+p. They do not appear to have been made on any intelligible principle.)

_June 12th, 1916._

I have been transferred from my old post of Requisitioning Officer to Supply Officer, Cavalry Division Supply Column. I am frankly and absolutely fed-up with this change! They tell me it is promotion. Well, as I told my colonel, promotion of that kind was not what I wanted. I loved my old job with its facilities for exercising my French, and its comparative variety. Now I am dignified with a job whose main element is seeing to the rations being loaded on to the motor lorries that feed the division. I have not even a chance of exercising my special faculty--that of speaking French. I told my colonel I didn't want the job and beseeched him to leave me with my brigade. He was adamant. My late General wrote a personal letter to the A.S.C. colonel, urging in the strongest terms that I should be left with the brigade. Even to his appeal the only answer vouchsafed was: "The change is equivalent to a promotion for the officer," and it is "necessary for the satisfactory rationing of the division." The colonel told me he was moving me (1) because I was good at figures--me!; (2) because I was hard-working. They don't seem to realise that, if what they said was true, I would have been a far greater a.s.set as a Requisitioning Officer. Oh, it does drive me wild!

We had a brilliantly successful Divisional Horse Show last Sat.u.r.day. It proved a real triumph for the ---- Hussars of our brigade--to my mind the best cavalry regiment in the Army. They romped home easy firsts for the cup presented by the G.O.C. to the regiment that got the greatest number of points in the compet.i.tions. The cla.s.ses for heavy and light chargers brought out some magnificent horses. The well-known C.O. of the ---- Hussars was very much in evidence in all these cla.s.ses. He is a striking personality. With his hard, shrewd, red face, his wonderfully thin legs, light-coloured breeches, beautifully-cut tunic and high hat c.o.c.ked over his left ear, he looked the personification of the cavalry officer as we read about him in novels. It would seem as though these cavalry officers had been fas.h.i.+oned by nature to sit on a horse. I suppose it is heredity.

Certainly they are all of a type.

An interesting unofficial incident was provided by a man in the 4th Dragoon Guards producing a fine bay horse which he wagered 30 to 1 against any officer riding. It was a real American buck-jumper. This challenge was enough for the dare-devil subalterns of the ---- Hussars, and one of them, Beach-Hay, a splendid horseman, promptly closed with the offer. For twenty minutes or so he tried to mount, without succeeding; finally he m.u.f.fled the horse's head in a cloak and got on his back. Then he dug his spurs in and set off at a gallop over the wide plain where the show was being held. All went well for some time until suddenly, without any warning, the horse put his feet together, arched his back, and leapt several feet into the air, at the same time turning to the left sharply. This the horse repeated several times, up hill, down hill, sideways. How Beach-Hay managed to keep his seat no one could tell; it was marvellous the way he stuck on. At last the spirited animal contrived to get the rider well forward on his neck, and then Hay slipped off and the horse was away over the plain at full gallop, riderless. He was chased and caught at last after a long run. Then up stepped a wily old trooper of the 5th Dragoon Guards who used to be a jockey. He saw that the horse was now tired out and got on his back without difficulty, and as the animal by this time was utterly f.a.gged, he found little trouble in keeping his seat. All the honours, however, belonged to the young subaltern.

Did you see that wonderful record of R. B. B. Jones[7] of Dulwich? He shot no fewer than fifteen Boches in a sc.r.a.p in the craters on the Vimy Ridge before himself being killed. I remember him more than well--a short, st.u.r.dy fellow, a very good shot, and an excellent diver and gymnast. He did not go in much for cricket or for football. Poor chap! Yet such a death, I think, is far more to be coveted than an ign.o.ble life far from danger and risk.

I often think of those lines of Adam Lindsay Gordon:

No game was ever yet worth a rap for a rational man to play, Into which no accident, no mishap, could possibly find its way.

[Footnote 7: R. B. B. Jones. Born, 1897. Killed, May 21st, 1916. In the shooting VII, 1913-14; captain of gymnasium, 1914. Lieutenant, Loyal North Lancas.h.i.+res. His heroic bravery on the Vimy Ridge recognised by bestowal of a posthumous V.C.]

_June 16th, 1916._

I have had another fit of the blues over this wretched transfer.

Why should it be given to all the fellows I know to be in the thick of real fighting--a life which anyone should be proud to live--while to me, aged twenty, standing six feet, about forty inches round the chest, Rugby footballer, swimmer, fluent French speaker, and Balliol scholar, it is given to load up rations?

Loathing this Supply work, I have already applied for a transfer to the Horse Transport Section. Oh! that I had only obeyed the dictates of my own conscience and enlisted in the H.A.C. at the start of the war, instead of staying on at school to get a paltry scholars.h.i.+p which the odds are 10 to 1 on my never being able to use! What I pray for is a job in which the following elements are constantly present: (1) hard work; (2) real brain work, employing, if possible, my knowledge of languages; (3) constant danger, or, at least, the constant chance of it; (4) if possible, horses to ride. For such a job I would willingly give ten years of my life.

_June 22nd, 1916._

I am glad to say that I'm not finding my new job so absolutely hopeless as I expected. It is in many ways not at all uninteresting to be attached to a Supply Column. After a long time with men whose one interest in life is horses, I now find myself with men who eat, drink, live and breathe motors. My experience has already taught me that England has a splendid system of mechanical transport. Our column numbers no fewer than 150 lorries, 6 motor-cars, and 20 motor-bikes, and about 600 personnel, not to speak of a big travelling workshop and two or three break-down lorries. When you consider that this is merely the means of supplying one single division, you will faintly realise what a part mechanical transport plays in this war. There is no horse-train to a cavalry division, and the lorries deliver rations direct to the regimental quartermasters, so you stand a good chance of seeing all the fun if with the M.T. My duty is to make arrangements for translating the ration figures rendered daily to me by the Cavalry Brigades into terms of meat, bread, biscuit, forage, etc., and arrange for these to be loaded at railhead on to the lorries; then, in company with the M.T.

officer of the day, to take these rations up to the units, at the same time obtaining the next day's feeding strength from the Brigade Supply Officers.