The King's Pilgrimage Part 5

Etaples during the Great War was for long our chief hospital centre. In the middle of the coast base line, having good railway communications with most points, within sight and smell of the sea, the sand dunes around Etaples were ideal for hospital hutments. To the Etaples hospitals there came wounded from every battle-field. To them there came also in 1918 the attacking air squadrons of the enemy, which accounts in part for the number of nurses and other medical personnel buried in Etaples Cemetery.

One hospital at Etaples was set on fire and destroyed by the enemy. These aircraft attacks on the Etaples hospitals came in June, 1918, when the enemy concentrated his strategy on trying to cripple our means of supply.

They inflicted grave embarra.s.sment on our High Command, for, at a time when material was very scanty and lines of transport very congested, we had to construct new hospitals elsewhere and move patients and staff. That was probably the effect aimed at. The difference, from an enemy point of view, in bombing a camp and a hospital is this: If you bomb a camp, you kill a few men, but the camp does not move; if you bomb a hospital, you kill a few patients, nurses, and doctors, and you force the hospital to move (if it can move) to a safer place. But to the end of the war some hospitals remained because it was impossible to move them.

In 1917 the hospitals at Etaples (which included eleven general, one stationary, and four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot) could deal with 22,000 wounded or sick. The earliest burial in the cemetery dates from May, 1915. The graves to-day number more than 11,000. Of these, 1,984 were from the Overseas Dominions, divided as follows: Canada, 1,122; Australia, 461; New Zealand, 261; South Africa, 67; West Indies, 29; India, 26; and Newfoundland, 18.

The site of Etaples Cemetery is very beautiful. It rises from the margin of the sea in three great terraces, in the middle one of which is the Stone of Remembrance and on the highest the Cross of Sacrifice, standing up stark against a grove of pine trees. From the cemetery the valley of the Canche flows up to the walls of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which was the General Headquarters of the British Army from 1916 until the close of the war.

It was early when the King arrived at Etaples Cemetery. The sea was a soft flood of silver grey in the morning light, and its salt breath, which is the very vigour of our British blood, came up sharp and strong to meet the smell of the pines, which is the smell of a s.h.i.+p's cordage. A seemly place for the graves of a sailor race.

Outside the gates of Etaples Cemetery, the Mayor of Etaples and the sub-prefect of Montreuil greeted the King, and there were presented to him French veterans of the Great War and of the war of 1870. The King remained a few moments talking with them and with two Anzac motor drivers, who are of the very small band of the Australian Army Corps still remaining in France. The King had expressed the wish that at this cemetery he should meet representatives of the Dominions and visit with them the graves of their fellow-countrymen. Accordingly, on entering the cemetery, the King was met by the Hon. P. C. Larkin, High Commissioner for Canada; Sir James Allen, High Commissioner for New Zealand; Sir Edgar Bowring, High Commissioner for Newfoundland; Lieutenant-Colonel G. J. Hogben and Colonel F. R. Collins, representing Australia and South Africa respectively in the absence of their High Commissioners at the Genoa Conference. With each of these in turn the King visited the graves of their Dominions, and spoke to them in proud appreciation of the gallant aid that the children nations of the Empire had given to the Mother Country. That this Imperial Cemetery should stand by the side of the sea, the communicating bond of the world-girdling British race, was referred to as the fitting thing.

Before leaving, the King showed, by an act of simple homage at the grave of a soldier, his feeling of kins.h.i.+p with those comrades of his who had fallen in the war. A woman in the West of England had written to the Queen, as one mother to another, begging that she might lay on the tomb of her dead son, Sergeant Matthew, R.A.S.C., in Etaples Cemetery, a spray of forget-me-nots which she enclosed. The Queen was unable to be present (she arrived later from Belgium), but confided the mission to the King. He had brought with him the letter, and carried out reverently, dutifully the pious task, taking care, accompanied by Mr. Harry Gosling and the gardener, to find the grave and, bending down in homage, to place upon it the mother's flowers. Standing by his side was Sir James Allen, the High Commissioner for New Zealand, who had lost a son in Gallipoli.

Going up, then, to the Cross of Sacrifice, the King looked long out over the marshalled graves to the sea, and turned back towards the pine wood which encloses the cemetery on the east. From Etaples Cemetery the King and his party returned to the train, and then proceeded along the coastline to Wimereux Station, where they again took car and visited Meerut Cemetery, which commemorates the devotion of India to the King Emperor. Here rest men of every rank and every caste and every race of India who crossed the black water to fight for their Emperor. This cemetery, austere, remote, dark cypresses breaking the line of its turf, with no flower nor Western symbol of remembrance and hope, records the British respect for whatever form the aspiration towards G.o.d takes in the human heart.

The King was met by General Sir Alexander Cobbe, V.C., representing the Secretary of State for India, and the Mayor of the Commune of St. Martin, in which commune the cemetery is situated. It was pointed out to the King that some 330 native soldiers and followers were commemorated after the disposition of their bodies according to their creeds. The headstones had been erected by the Indian Soldiers' Fund, the walls around the cemetery by the War Office.

The King inquired as to a central memorial in the cemetery, and was told that probably a Great War stone would be erected in the centre, and that in erecting headstones where required the War Graves Commission would follow the same pattern as already existed in the cemetery. He suggested that the crematorium might be now removed, and showed in other ways his deep interest that all the sentiments should be respected of the kinfolk of these men, of race and religion apart from our own but united to us in the bond of a common sacrifice.

Now had come the last stage of the King's pilgrimage. Already outside the port of Boulogne there was a.s.sembled a squadron of French destroyers to escort him out of French waters, and further at sea a British squadron waited to take over the guard. For all that their task to-day was to be one of honour and ceremony, they could abate nothing of that eager, crouching-forward att.i.tude, and they seemed to sniff at every wave for a submarine. They waited, hunters become courtiers, but the King for a time turned his back to them, his duty not yet accomplished. He had seen the graves of his sailors, soldiers, and airmen who had held to their trust by sea and land and air, from the gates of Ypres to the banks of the Somme; had mourned at their loss and had thrilled with the pride of their courage. Now he went his way to the high Terlincthun Cemetery, by Napoleon's column on the Boulogne cliffs, to say to his people what was in his mind.

Of all the war cemeteries in France there is none more n.o.bly planned than this of Terlincthun. It is set at the foot of Napoleon's column, where rested the right wing of the Grand Army when its face was turned towards England. But the guardian sea lay between. It is on record that there was offered to France a plan of conquering the Channel pa.s.sage by the use of submarine boats; and refused on the ground that the sentiment of humanity would not tolerate the use of such a weapon even against wars.h.i.+ps. "It seems impossible," wrote the French Minister for Marine, Admiral Pleville de Pelley in 1801, "to serve a commission as belligerents to men who employ such a method of destroying the fleets of the enemy." The British dead can rest content and comradely beneath the monument of so gallant a foe.

From its high wind-swept cliff, Terlincthun Cemetery looks over the English Channel, and on a clear day the white cliffs of our coast s.h.i.+ne out in the distance. The Stone of Remembrance faces towards home, the Cross of Sacrifice, bearing its great bronze sword, looks towards the old enemy lines. Between, like guardian walls, are ranked the lines of grave-stones, and around them flower-beds carpeted in this season with the foliage of wallflowers. Happy was the choice of this flower for a soldiers' grave-yard, since it loves to spread its tapestry of gold and red over ramparts. The cemetery shelters 3,327 dead. They are in almost all cases men who died at the base hospitals at Boulogne and Wimereux. But some are the bodies of British seamen washed up on the coast and buried here. Many graves are of Royal Air Force members. The graves of the Empire dead number 2,551 of the Home Country, 277 Canadian, 88 Australian, 29 New Zealand, 10 Newfoundland, one South African, one Guernsey, 33 South African Native, and 5 West Indian Native. In addition, there are 92 American graves, 27 Italian, 4 Russian, 3 Polish, 2 Serbian, and 16 of unknown nationality.

For this, the crowning act of homage, the King was joined by the Queen, who had travelled that morning from Brussels. With the Royal Party were Admiral the Earl Beatty and Field-Marshal the Earl Haig (who jointly represented the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force). At the gate of the cemetery the King and Queen were received by General de Castelnau, representing the French Army; M. Cauzel, prefect of the Departement of Pas-de-Calais; Admiral Barthes, naval prefect of Cherbourg; General Lacapelle, commanding the First Army Corps; General Philippeau, commanding the Second Army Corps; Mgr. Julien, Bishop of Arras; M. de Lavergne, K.B.E.; M. Lahan, sub-prefect of Boulogne; the Mayor of Boulogne, and other French officials, and the members of the Imperial War Graves Commission, whom it was His Majesty's expressed desire to meet at the close of his pilgrimage. Mr. Herbert Baker, the architect who designed the cemetery, and Captain A. W. Hill, D.Sc., were also present. Among the French officials was M. Le Sous-Intendant Bezombes, C.B.E., who is the administrative head of the French Government services dealing with their own war graves. All who realize the extent of the French losses can understand what a tremendous task falls to him; but he has never been too busy to help our Commission in overcoming any of their difficulties. One of the first acts of the King, after his arrival, was to express to M.

Bezombes and his staff the deep and sincere grat.i.tude of the British Empire for their ungrudging support and sympathy in this work. The citizens of Boulogne had a.s.sembled around the cemetery and gave the King and Queen a cordial greeting. Within the open s.p.a.ce before the Cross of Sacrifice were gathered many relatives of the dead, members of the British Colony and of the staff of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and a number of French sympathisers.

King George and Queen Mary, pa.s.sing through an aisle between the serried ranks of graves, advanced to the Cross of Sacrifice, and the King placed at its foot his chaplet of red roses, palms, and bay, and stood at the salute. The French Guard of Honour, clean, clear-cut figures in their helmets of cla.s.sic line, recalling the Roman Legionaries, came to the salute, and for two hushed minutes, even as our whole realm stands for two minutes on each 11th of November, all thoughts were given up to the memory of the dead.

Still standing at the Cross of Sacrifice, the King turned his face then towards the Stone of Remembrance, both in direct alignment with Napoleon's Column, which closed the perspective, and, his voice vibrant with emotion, but under rigid control, delivered his message to his people over all the seas, in the name of the Queen and of himself:--

For the past few days I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in honour of a people who died for all free men.

At the close of that pilgrimage, on which I followed ways already marked by many footsteps of love and pride and grief, I should like to send a message to all who have lost those dear to them in the Great War, and in this the Queen joins me to-day, amidst these surroundings so wonderfully typical of that single-hearted a.s.sembly of nations and of races which form our Empire. For here, in their last quarters, lie sons of every portion of that Empire, across, as it were, the threshold of the Mother Island which they guarded that Freedom might be saved in the uttermost ends of the earth.

For this, a generation of our manhood offered itself without question, and almost without the need of a summons. Those proofs of virtue, which we honour here to-day, are to be found throughout the world and its waters--since we can truly say that the whole circuit of the earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. Beyond the stately cemeteries of France, across Italy, through Eastern Europe in wellnigh unbroken chain they stretch, pa.s.sing over the holy mount of Olives itself to the farthest sh.o.r.es of the Indian and Pacific Oceans--from Zeebrugge to Coronel, from Dunkirk to the hidden wildernesses of East Africa.

But in this fair land of France, which sustained the utmost fury of the long strife, our brothers are numbered, alas! by hundreds of thousands. They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a resolute and chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who with ready and quick sympathy has set aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so that we ourselves and our descendants may for all time reverently tend and preserve their resting-places. And here, at Terlincthun, the shadow of his monument falling almost across their graves, the greatest of French soldiers--of all soldiers--stands guard over them. And this is just, for, side by side with the descendants of his incomparable armies, they defended his land in defending their own.

Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and maintained individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come, than this ma.s.sed mult.i.tude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

And I feel that, so long as we have faith in G.o.d's purposes, we cannot but believe that the existence of these visible memorials will, eventually, serve to draw all peoples together in sanity and self-control, even as it has already set the relations between our Empire and our allies on the deep-rooted bases of a common heroism and a common agony.

Standing beneath this Cross of Sacrifice, facing the great Stone of Remembrance, and compa.s.sed by these sternly simple headstones, we remember, and must charge our children to remember, that, as our dead were equal in sacrifice, so are they equal in honour, for the greatest and the least of them have proved that sacrifice and honour are no vain things, but truths by which the world lives.

Many of the cemeteries I have visited in the remoter and still desolate districts of this sorely stricken land, where it has not yet been possible to replace the wooden crosses by headstones, have been made into beautiful gardens which are lovingly cared for by comrades of the war. I rejoice I was fortunate enough to see these in the spring, when the returning pulse of the year tells of unbroken life that goes forward in the face of apparent loss and wreckage; and I fervently pray that, both as nations and individuals, we may so order our lives after the ideals for which our brethren died, that we may be able to meet their gallant souls once more, humbly but unashamed.

General de Castelnau responded with like eloquence and feeling. Two sentences of his reply voiced a sacred pledge:--

Nous garderons religieus.e.m.e.nt le depot sacre confie a notre devotion, ici, a Terlincthun, comme dans toutes les necropoles du front qui, de Boulogne a Belfort, jalonnent dans un funebre alignement la voie sacree, le calvaire des souffrances, des agonies et des deuils gravi la main dans la main par les valeureux combattants de nos deux nations.

Et lorsque charge des parfums de la Patrie toute proche, le vent du large apportera a ces tombes la douce caresse du foyer natal, il se confondra avec le souffle de piete tendre et fidele dont sont penetres toutes les ames et tous les coeurs francais pour les heros de l'Angleterre et de la France qui, tombes cote a cote au champ d'honneur, dorment cote a cote a l'ombre d'austeres forets de croix de bois elevant vers le Ciel leurs bras de misericorde et d'esperance.

General de Castelnau then laid at the foot of the Cross of Sacrifice a wreath in the name of the Anglo-French Committee of our War Graves Commission, and General Lacapelle another in the name of the French Army.

One more act of homage was to be made. The King and Queen, pa.s.sing slowly through the cemetery, ascended the steps to the Stone of Remembrance and then, bending lowly, the Queen placed before the stone, over which was draped the Union Jack--the merited pall of a soldier's tomb--a wreath of rosemary for remembrance, and carnations, these last of the colour which takes its name from the stricken battle-field of Magenta. The French Guard of Honour saluted, lowering their standard. Its colours, mingled with the colours of our flag and with the deep purple of the Queen's tribute, suffused the white stone as with heroes' blood. The King and those around him saluted, while from the bugles of the Coldstream and Grenadier Guards, posted near the Great Napoleon's Column, there came the sound, as of a long-drawn-out sigh, of "The Last Post."

There is no music, of all the music of the world, that so brings home to the soldier's heart, proud sorrow, healing consolation. In the daily round of his dutiful work "The Last Post" comes to tell him of the end of a day of this troublous life, that the shades have lengthened, the evening come, the busy world hushed, his work done, and he may rest. And, when he goes to the graveside to say the last farewell to a comrade who has found for ever peace, he hears again "The Last Post," to say to him that his mate is not dead, but sleepeth, and will rise again. The common and everyday use of the music takes nothing from its n.o.bility, but constantly communicates its message of immortality so as to make of it a habit of mind.

The call of "The Last Post" ended; and to the closing moment of the King's pilgrimage came a sense of over-powering emotion, which made men look resolutely forward, not wis.h.i.+ng to catch their neighbour's glance. The spirits of the mighty army of the dead seemed to marshall in that G.o.d's Acre, set high on the cliff looking over the sea; come to receive the homage of the King, for whom they died, and to hear that in the land which they saved their names will live for evermore.

FRANK FOX.

The King's Thanks

On the point of leaving France, the King sent the following telegram to the President of the French Republic:--

I have to-day brought to an end a visit to the graves of my countrymen who gave their lives on the battle-fields of France, and now lie covered by the same blood-stained soil as, alas! so many of their heroic French brothers-in-arms.

Before leaving Boulogne, I desire, Monsieur le President, to send to you from a full heart, and speaking in the name of all the people of my Empire, a message of profound grat.i.tude for the generous gift of the ground for ever hallowed by the memories of common sorrows and glories. These memories must recall for all time the sentiment of faithful comrades.h.i.+p which inspired those who fell side by side in the Great War, and which was bequeathed by them as a sacred legacy to our two nations.

I would add an expression of my personal thanks to you, Monsieur le President, and to the French people, among whom I have spent these three days, for the touching sympathy with my desire to make this pilgrimage in such privacy as was in harmony with my feeling of reverent affection for the dead and respect for those to whom they are dear.

The following message was sent to the King of the Belgians:

... May I add how touched I was by the sympathetic att.i.tude of all cla.s.ses whom I met last Thursday, when visiting the graves of our dead resting for ever on Belgian soil.

The King later caused the following letter to be sent to the Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission:--

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, _May 17, 1922_.

DEAR SIR FABIAN WARE,

The King desires me to thank you again for all the admirable arrangements made by you in connection with the visit to the cemeteries in Belgium and France, and to congratulate your staff on their excellent work.

His Majesty was interested to learn the details of the organization of the Commission, and is satisfied that, so long as it is superintended by you and those who so loyally a.s.sist you, the public here and Overseas can rest a.s.sured that the graves, wherever they may be, will be properly cared for.

The King hopes you will take an opportunity of telling the members of the Imperial War Graves Commission how much he appreciated their presence at the ceremony at Terlincthun.[2] His Majesty also wishes you to say that he trusts the High Commissioner and other representatives of the Dominions will convey to their Governments and people the great satisfaction he expressed to them personally at Etaples at the care bestowed by the Commission on the graves of those who lie so far from their homes. In all the cemeteries visited by His Majesty, Dominion and British graves lay side by side, and the King a.s.sures the people Overseas that these graves will be reverently and lovingly guarded. It is a satisfaction to His Majesty that the Imperial War Graves Commission has been so const.i.tuted that these graves may be honoured for all time.

The King was impressed by the ability and efficiency of the gardeners in the service of the Commission, and desires that his appreciation may be expressed to them of the manner in which they carry out their precious charge. Although the completion of these cemeteries must necessarily take some time, especially in the still-devastated areas, they may continue their work with the full conviction that they are earning the deep grat.i.tude of the relatives and friends of those whose graves they tend.

Yours sincerely, F. E. G. PONSONBY.