The King's Pilgrimage Part 1

The King's Pilgrimage.

by Frank Fox.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

May 1922.

I am interested to hear of the proposed publication of the record of my pilgrimage to the War Graves.

It grieves me to think how many relatives are prevented from visiting the graves of their dear ones through lack of means. During my recent visit to the Cemeteries in France and Belgium, I was glad to learn that various organisations are endeavouring to meet this difficulty by raising funds which I trust will be substantially a.s.sisted by the sale of the book.

George R. I.

The King's Pilgrimage

Our King went forth on pilgrimage His prayer and vows to pay To them that saved our Heritage And cast their own away.

And there was little show of pride, Or prows of belted steel, For the clean-swept oceans every side Lay free to every keel.

And the first land he found, it was shoal and banky ground Where the broader seas begin, And a pale tide grieving at the broken harbour mouth Where they worked the Death s.h.i.+ps in: And there was neither gull on the wing, Nor wave that could not tell Of the bodies that were buckled in the lifebuoy's ring That slid from swell to swell.

(_All that they had they gave--they gave; and they shall not return, For these are those that have no grave where any heart may mourn._)

And the next land he found, it was low and hollow ground Where once the cities stood, But the man-high thistle had been master of it all, Or the bulrush by the flood; And there was neither blade of gra.s.s Or lone star in the sky, But shook to see some spirit pa.s.s And took its agony.

And the next land he found, it was bare and hilly ground Where once the bread-corn grew, But the fields were cankered and the water was defiled, And the trees were riven through; And there was neither paved highway, Nor secret path in the wood, But had borne its weight of the broken clay, And darkened 'neath the blood.

(_Father and Mother they put aside, and the nearer love also-- An hundred thousand men who died, whose grave shall no man know._)

And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground Above a carven Stone, And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross Where high and low are one; And there was gra.s.s and the living trees, And the flowers of the Spring, And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas That ever called him King.

(_'Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four Red Rivers spring Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served the King._)

All that they had they gave--they gave-- In sure and single faith.

There can no knowledge reach the grave To make them grudge their death Save only if they understood That, after all was done We they redeemed denied their blood, And mocked the gains it won.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

I: "_Our King went forth on pilgrimage._"

It was our King's wish that he should go as a private pilgrim, with no trappings of state nor pomp of ceremony, and with only a small suite, to visit the tombs in Belgium and France of his comrades who gave up their lives in the Great War. In the uniform which they wore on service, he pa.s.sed from one to another of the cemeteries which, in their n.o.ble simplicity, express perfectly the proud grief of the British race in their dead; and, at the end, within sight of the white cliffs of England, spoke his thoughts in a message of eloquence which moved all his Empire to sympathy.

The Governments of France and of Belgium, our allies in the war for the freedom of the world, respected the King's wish. Nowhere did official ceremony intrude on an office of private devotion. But nothing could prevent the people of the country-side gathering around the places which the King visited, bringing with them flowers, and joining their tribute to his. They acclaimed him not so much as King, but rather as the head of those khaki columns which crossed the Channel to help to guard their homes; in their minds the memory of the glad relief of August, 1914, when they learnt that the British were with them in the war and felt that the ultimate end was secure. Many of them were of the peasants who, before the scattered graves of our dead had been gathered into enduring cemeteries, had graced them with flowers, making vases of sh.e.l.l-cases gathered from the battle-fields. The King was deeply moved by their presence, at seeing them leave for an hour the task of building up their ruined homes and shattered farms, and coming with pious grat.i.tude to share his homage to the men who had been faithful to their trust unto death. To those around him he spoke more than once in thankful appreciation of this good feeling of the people of France and Belgium. Especially was he pleased to see the children of the country-side crowd around him, and when little choirs of them sang "G.o.d Save the King" in quaintly accented words his feeling was manifest.

There came thus to the pilgrimage from the first an atmosphere of affectionate intimacy between these people who were not his subjects and the British King. They gathered around him as around a friend, the old women leaning forward to catch his words, the children trying to come close enough to touch him, seeing in his uniform again the "Tommy" who had proved such a gentle soul when he came for a brief rest from the horrors of the battle-field to the villages behind the line and helped "mother"

with the housework and nursed the baby. At one village a gendarme, feeling in his official soul that this was really no way to treat a King, tried to arrange some more formal atmosphere. But in vain. The villagers saw the old friendly good-humoured British Army back in France, and could not be official.

Now and then at a cemetery the King met relatives, in some cases from far-off Pacific Dominions, visiting their dead, and he stopped to speak with them because they were on the same mission as he was, of grat.i.tude and reverence. One mother, moved by the kindness of the King's greeting, opened her heart to him and told, with the simple eloquence of real feeling, how she had just come from her son's grave and was proud that he had died for his King and country; that every care had been taken to find and identify it, and "more could not have been done if it had been the Prince of Wales himself."

At several points the workers of the Imperial War Graves Commission--practically all of whom had gone through the campaign, and now are reverently and carefully tending the last resting-places of their fallen comrades--a.s.sembled to greet the King. He spoke with them also, giving them thanks for their work and noting their war medals and asking them about their life in the camps, or with the mobile caravans which, in the districts where housing cannot yet be found, move from cemetery to cemetery, keeping fresh the tribute of gra.s.s and flowers and trees--caravans which bring back vividly one's memory of the old British supply columns, for they are almost invariably led by a small self-important and well-fed dog.

When at Vlamertinghe--where are the graves of the first Dominion soldiers who fell in the war--the High Commissioner for Canada, the Hon. P. C.

Larkin, was met visiting the Canadian graves there; the King gave him a very warm greeting. He showed that there is never absent from his mind the thought that in the greatest Ordeal of Battle which the British race has had to pa.s.s through, the children nations of his Empire came to the side of the Mother Country, with the instinctive spontaneity of the blood in a limb responding to a message from the heart; and that the crimson tie of kins.h.i.+p never broke nor slackened through all the perilous anxious years.

Across the sea, held for them as a safe path by the Navy, the men of the Empire--and the women, too--kept pa.s.sing at the King's word to whatsoever point at which the peril was greatest, the work most exacting. The graves of the Flanders battle-fields told triumphantly of this august Imperial a.s.sembly--the dead of the Mother Country having around them those of India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, the West Indies, the Pacific Islands.[1] At every point the voices of the dead bespoke, in the King's words, "the single-hearted a.s.sembly of nations and races which form our Empire."

It was at the close of a State visit to the King of the Belgians that the King left Brussels on a special train early on the morning of May 11. The King lived on the train (in his own carriage which had been in France throughout the war) during the tour, motor-cars meeting it at fixed halting-places for the visits to the cemeteries. He was accompanied by Field-Marshal Earl Haig, whom His Majesty specially wished to be at his side on this pilgrimage. The Royal Party was a small one; in addition to Lord Haig, it consisted of Major-General Sir Fabian Ware (who, as Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was in charge of all the arrangements) and of three members of the suite, the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Ponsonby, Colonel Clive Wigram, and Major R. Seymour. The first visit paid was to Zeebrugge Churchyard, where rest some of those who fell in the Zeebrugge Battle which marked St. George's Day, 1918. Many of the graves are still unidentified, but, with the aid of enemy burial lists recently secured, it is hoped that the ident.i.ty of some, at any rate, will be established. There was, by the King's express wish, no formal ceremony at this nor any other cemetery before Terlincthun, but the school children of Zeebrugge a.s.sembled and sang the British National Anthem and brought flowers for the graves.

The King went on to examine the scene of the exploit of _Vindictive_ and her supporting s.h.i.+ps. The day was bright and breezy, and, by a happy chance, a Belgian fis.h.i.+ng fleet was making for harbour with the night's harvest of the sea. To the eye of the sailor this gave clear indication of the lay of the harbour approaches and of its entrance, and helped materially to ill.u.s.trate the way in which the Mole was approached and the task with which the British naval forces were faced. The King took the keenest interest in every detail of the exploit and of the tactics employed. He stayed for some time at the point where the submarine, loaded with high explosives, rammed the Mole to breach it, with the double object of cutting off the enemy garrison on the Mole from reinforcements and of helping the obstacles which were to be sunk in the fairway to silt up the harbour by letting in the drifting sands. The positions where the s.h.i.+ps were sunk in the fairway were examined, and the King, with his professional knowledge of the Service in which he spent his young manhood, could reconstruct the whole battle. He made particular inspection of the spot where the landing party from _Vindictive_ scaled the Mole--perhaps the most astonis.h.i.+ng "boarding" feat of naval history.

With some reluctance the King turned his back to the sea, and the Royal party went on by train to Zonnebeke. Here the party left the train and proceeded by car to visit Tyne Cot Cemetery, which is in the midst of what was the most desolate and terrible of all battle-fields--the Pa.s.schendaele marshes. Tyne Cot (or cottage) was on the north side of the Ypres-Roulers railway, near the village of Pa.s.schendaele. It was here that the enemy first built their "pill boxes" or concrete forts. The water-logged ground would not allow of the construction of dug-outs nor of effective shelter trenches, and the enemy sought to hold their line with these strong points of reinforced concrete, heavily armed with machine guns, to attack which the British storming infantry often had to wade waist-deep in mire up to the very muzzles of the guns.

No part of the long trench line which stretched from the sea to Switzerland has such shuddering memories for the British Army as Pa.s.schendaele. There it had the problem of storming a whole series of miniature Zeebrugge Moles standing in seas of slimy mud, to sink into which from the narrow built paths of trench-boards was to perish. Of the nine thousand British soldiers buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery, over six thousand are "unknown." The hateful mud swallowed up their ident.i.ty with their lives.

Many places on the long trench line which stretched like a dreadful scar across Belgium and France the King knew during the days of the war. Very jealously the secrets of his visits to the Front had to be guarded then, especially when both the King and the Heir Apparent were at the same time in the battle-line; and no public record exists of them. But it is safe to say that Tyne Cot he saw for the first time this May afternoon. He understood how appalling was the task which his soldiers faced there, and, turning to the great "pill box" which still stands in the middle of the cemetery, he said that it should never be moved, should remain always as a monument to the heroes whose graves stood thickly around. From its roof he gazed sadly over the sea of wooden crosses, a "ma.s.sed mult.i.tude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war." It is indeed fitting that this should form, as it will, the foundation for the great Cross of Sacrifice shortly to be built up as a central memorial in this cemetery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ZEEBRUGGE

ARRIVAL AT THE MOLE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ZEEBRUGGE

INSPECTING THE MOLE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ZEEBRUGGE

AT THE BREACH IN THE MOLE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ZEEBRUGGE CHURCHYARD

INSPECTING BRITISH GRAVES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT BRANDHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY.]