Chapter XI: Introduction: Bravery (5)

“We were obliged to leave our wounded in the trench with the dead. I lay until night in the German second line trench among the dead and wounded,” for of course there were no communications and no means of getting medical help for the men “writhing in agony all around us.” At night Highlanders from the 13th and 14th Battalions came to the relief. Three days later there was an attack at a point near Lacouture, where the Germans were entrenched in a hilly vantage. The French Canadians had been reinforced again, this time to 420. The Scots Grays and the Cold Stream Guards engaged in the assault. The artillery cleared the way for the charge. “On the third tussle we got into the German trenches. It was a close fight. We used even our fists. My bayonet was broken, and I used my gun as a club. There we remained until we got reinforcements. Out of 420 men my company was reduced to eighty. No, I could not be killed.”

Then the French Canadians fought at Cuinchy and at La Basse—repetitions of the same story. He had fought in the front lines from almost the very opening of the war, “until all the bed I knew was wet earth, and all the rest I knew was snatches of sleep obtained during lulls in the roaring tumult. And long since I had had my fill of the fighting.”

Then Jan. 10, 1916, he was summoned to headquarters to receive his discharge. He frankly rejoiced in the fact that he was free, free from the trenches, their fevers, their wounded and dead, their noxious odors, their deadly gases, their man-eating rats; free to go home to relatives and friends neither maimed nor wounded. Not that he had gone unscathed. There was a dent in his skull made by a spent bullet, and a very bad bruise on the leg made by a piece of shell, but these were trifles.

NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT

“I take no credit for any special courage in the field. If I was brave it was because I had to be so. We were all brave who kept our senses. We became accustomed to a large degree to the incessant intimacy with dangers and death. We could look at frightful things without wincing.”

He knows no word with which to describe war as he saw it. Hell is far too weak a word. “It is more horrible than the slaughter house, because the forms of death planned are more cruel, more mad, more devilish. We fight underground and under sea. We fight with fire, with steel, with lead, with poison, with burning oil, with gases. We are lower than the brutes, lower than the most degraded forms of life.... I am only Roméo Houle, a barber. But I have lived—God! I have lived. All the slaughter of heroes by the Meuse and on the Belgian border and in Northern France has passed before my eyes. And I, Roméo Houle, am forced to write this: ‘We cannot make ourselves better nor the world more worth while by killing each other like beasts gone mad.... I hope never to fight again.’”

And here is a final reflection of the soldier who confesses “I do not know why we fought.”

“No Archduke’s little life was worth the titanic butchery of the world war. The beginning was petty and small. And I, looking back at horror, horror, horror, cannot forget the extraordinary friendships we made with the men in the enemy’s trenches. We were both only human beings, after all, Fritz and I. We had no wish to kill each other. We had much rather sit at the same table, with our wives and children around us, and talk of gardens, of fair pictures, and of great books. But for our officers and the nations which they represented peace would have been declared right there in the trenches—and that by the soldiers themselves.”

O’LEARY STEPPED IN

And Faith, Never a Dumas Hero was a Marker to This Sergeant of the Irish Guards

He got the habit and trick of it early they say. He played outside the home cottage in Macroom, about forty miles from the city of Cork, charging imaginary foes, stick in hand, with so much vigor that the plump hens scuttled to cover. His mother at the door of the cottage demanded,

“An’ what is it ye are doin’ now, Mike?”

And the curly-haired youngster replied:

“I’m a sodger.”

Twenty years later the same mother stood outside the same cottage door in Macroom listening to the almost unbelievable story of a messenger who had dashed from Cork city by motor-car. Her son—her Mike—had won the great war medal. She heard how the world was ringing with the immortal exploit of Sergeant Michael O’Leary, V.C. Poems were being written about him. He had received an ovation in London such as kings might envy. And all this was no more than the brave Irish Guardsman deserved, for with his unaided strong right arm he captured an enemy position, and of ten Germans who stood in his path he killed eight and took the remaining two prisoners....

O’Leary was sent to the front in November, 1914. Mr. Leask has told the story.

All around the La Bassée district fierce fighting had raged since October. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, in common with other regiments, now experienced the severities of trench warfare. At the end of January they were stationed near the La Bassée brickfield, and the Germans were subjecting them to a withering fire.

_Copyrighted in U. S. A. by New York Herald._

How Sergeant O’Leary of the Irish Guards Won the Victoria Cross

“He rushed on like one possessed, never looking behind to see if his comrades were following. A railway bank rose in front of him. He cleared it, and went on, heedless of risks....”]

The last night of January the enemy’s fire was particularly hot. It was decided that the trenches were too expensive to hold. But before evacuating them the men were ordered to storm the enemy’s position.

In order to prepare the way for the assault, the artillery commenced one of the fiercest bombardments of the war up till then. The boom of the big pieces and the detonation of their shells were audible twenty miles away. The guns fired with such intensity in order to demolish what had become a regular bastion in the German lines, also to break down the barbed wire entanglements in front of the German trenches, and thoroughly to demoralize the enemy before the men stormed the positions.

No. 2 Company of the Irish Guards was ordered to keep up a hot rifle fire. This was to make the Germans keep under cover, no matter how much they wished to escape from the artillery. The diversion also caused the enemy to expect an attack from this direction, with the result that he concentrated his fire on the trench occupied by No. 2 Company.

Then No. 1, O’Leary’s Company, which was on the left of No. 2 Company’s trench, was ordered to charge. The Irish dashed over the parapet with a yell, their bayonets fixed, and rushed at the enemy in fine style. The distance they had to cover to reach the German positions was from 100 to 150 yards. The men were very eager to be at the enemy after their long spell in the trenches, and went for their foe at racing speed.

O’Leary soon outstripped his comrades. His Irish blood was up. “You would laugh if you saw us chasing the Huns and mowing them down,” he wrote to his parents.

CHARGE OF THE “MAD IRISHMAN”

He rushed on like one possessed, never looking behind to see if his comrades were following. A railway bank rose in front of him. He cleared it, and went on, heedless of risks, toward a strong barricade held by the Germans.

O’Leary paused at a little mound and looked around. In front of him was a deadly machine gun, trained on the trench occupied by the second company of Irish Guards. As already explained, their work was to deceive the enemy and the maneuver had proved successful. Their rifle fire had prevented the Germans from showing their faces, and they had not seen that the British were racing toward them.

When O’Leary reached the mound the Germans became aware of their danger and immediately prepared to turn the machine gun upon the advancing First company. It was a critical moment. O’Leary did not hesitate; he took deliberate aim with his rifle at the gun’s crew, five in number, and one by one they dropped as his unerring finger pressed the trigger. His bold move in a supremely dangerous situation had been successful. The machine gun was his. The lives of his comrades were saved. For an ordinary man this brave deed would have sufficed. But what O’Leary had just performed whetted his appetite for more.

Another barricade farther on had caught his eye. With daredevil audacity, he bounded toward it. The Germans then were prepared for him, but he “got his blows in first,” and killed three more Germans. The two remaining had no stomach for the “mad Irishman.” They promptly raised their hands, and O’Leary secured them as his prisoners.

He confessed afterward that his second exploit was a hazardous one. He had no bayonet at the time and had to trust solely to his marksmanship. His rifle was loaded with ten rounds, and eight of the bullets found a human billet. When the last two Germans surrendered he had no ammunition left, and had they not been demoralized by his sudden and audacious attack single-handed, the issue would have been different.

Sergeant O’Leary had killed eight Germans, captured a machine gun, taken two Germans prisoner, and carried two strong positions, from which the rest of the attacking party would have been heavily fired upon. Some one has said that this exploit was thoroughly Irish in method and execution, and that O’Leary deserves to rank as one of the greatest heroes of modern warfare.

Describing what happened afterward, Company-Quartermaster-Sergeant J. G. Lowry, of the Irish Guards, says:

“O’Leary came back from his killing as cool as if he had been for a walk in the park, accompanied by two prisoners he had taken. He probably saved the lives of the whole company. Had that machine gun got slewed round, No. 1 Company might have been nearly wiped out. We all quickly appreciated the value of O’Leary’s sprinting and crack shooting, and when we were relieved that night, dog-tired as we were, O’Leary had his arm nearly shaken off by his comrades.”

When on furlough O’Leary was fêted and cheered as no V.C. hero has been. He received a splendid welcome in Cork and in his native village. The greatest day in his life, however, was June 26, 1915, when Londoners turned out in tens of thousands to acclaim him in the streets. To honor him the London Irish organized a demonstration in Hyde Park, at which over 60,000 persons were present. O’Leary drove from the Strand to the Park in an open carriage, cheered all along the route by an admiring throng. O’Leary was a proud man but, as he afterward protested, he “didn’t know what all this fuss was about. Faith, a bit of a shindy is no great matter at all, at all!”

WHEN THE “YANKS” WENT IN

The Story of the First American Soldiers to Go It Alone in Banging the Huns

Because they were recruited in the New England States, the boys of the 26th Division were known as “Yankees” or the “Yankee Division” and they set up pretty good claim to the distinction by acts of unit heroism not excelled for dash, daring and effective service by any troops opposed to the Huns. The “Yankee Division” was the first of the A.E.F. to take part in a great offensive in France. It was organized under the command of Maj. Gen. C. R. Edwards, Aug. 13, 1917; arrived in France in September, and in January, 1918, was undergoing special training on the Chemin des Dames front. It was assigned to the Toul sector and was in position by the end of March. Ten days later the enemy struck its first serious blow at the line, “a blow which turned out to be far more serious to the Germans than to the New Englanders.” It was the beginning of the five days fight known as the battle of Apremont, though it really was the battle of Bois Brulé, the worst of the fight being in the “burned wood” on the hill top where the 104th Regiment was stationed. In an article in the Boston _Globe_ devoted to the 26th, Willard F. De Lue says:

“From the very first day there had been artillery-action; in fact, the Boche set up a row while the Yankees were coming into the line, before they got their packs off. Now, at five o’clock in the morning of April 10, the Germans sent over a body of seven hundred or eight hundred picked shock-troops against Colonel Shelton’s boys.

“But the Yankee artillery got the jump on them, and opened up with a barrage that couldn’t have been better. It smashed the Germans’ attack so badly that it broke down, and for the rest of that day, and for two more, the Boches were content to throw over a heavy artillery fire.

“On the 13th, however, they were at it again. This time they planned a little better. The center of the assault was directed against the French units on the left of the 104th, and it wasn’t long before they sent over a hurry call for a counter-attack by the Yanks. The 104th responded handsomely. They swept through Bois Brulé right on to the German flank, and relieved the pressure on the French line. But by that time their own flank was threatened. So the Yanks suddenly changed direction, and attacked by their own flank—a difficult maneuver, but beautifully executed.

_Courtesy World’s Work._

Cantigny—The First American Offensive

Here it was that our soldiers confirmed the confidence placed in
them and won the admiration of the Allied High Command. Two days
later Americans were ordered to hold the road to Paris and the
crossing of the Marne at Château-Thierry.]

“The fighting kept up stubbornly. By one o’clock in the afternoon the Germans had broken through and grabbed some of the advanced points held by the 104th, and were filtering in through communication trenches. It was apparent this was no mere raid. So the reserves were ordered up. But before they arrived the enemy had been hurled back again, and by six that night the heaviest of the fighting was over. On the 14th there was further action; but the Boche had been licked, and he knew it. His losses were tremendous; ours comparatively light.

“Many an act of heroism took place that day. The flags of the 104th Infantry were later decorated by the French for the gallantry displayed by its men. And the individual awards of American and French decorations are eloquent.

“That was the first battle fought by Americans—any Americans—in France in which they were not supported by French infantry.”

IN EVERY AFTER BATTLE

Having been inducted into the firing line, the 26th had no surcease, but took part in every subsequent battle up to the signing of the armistice, missing the promised rest, time after time, owing to the exigencies of the campaigns. And according to the complaint of a captured German lieutenant, they did not always play the game right. On one occasion the moment an enemy barrage was lifted, a body of Yankees darted ahead and actually nabbed some of the advancing Huns, the lieutenant included. He sputteringly said in reproach of these tactics, “They should not have been where they were. They were coming right through our own barrage, and might have been wiped out.”

That the Americans were so apt to be “where they shouldn’t have been” was greatly disconcerting to the Huns more than once. They did things in such an unconventional way, acting so much on individual initiative that they frequently spoiled the precise calculations of the German machine. The French had greater appreciation of the Yankee method. The commanding officer of the 32nd French said this of the 26th:

“I salute its colors and thank it for the splendid services it has rendered here to the common cause. Under the distinguished command of their chief, General Edwards, the high-spirited soldiers of the Yankee Division have taught the enemy some bitter lessons at Bois Brulé, at Seicheprey, at Xivray Marvoisin; they have taught him to realize the staunch vigor of the sons of the great republic fighting for the world’s freedom.”

The division was also in the Château-Thierry battle. Mr. Le Due writes:

“On the 9th the fighting on this new field began. The Boche, in the early morning, swept down into Vaux and established machine-gun posts.

“‘You’ve got to drive those (censored) out of there or we’ll be the laughing-stock of the division,’ was the word sent out by Colonel Logan. And so the driving began.

“That fight for Vaux will be long remembered—a picturesque fight, with groups of men rushing here and there, cleaning up snipers and machine-gunners, rushing hostile positions; overhead the roar of the American barrage, below the hum of countless machine guns. The clean-up was thorough.

“Three days later Foch’s famous counter-offensive began—on July 18, at 4:25 in the morning.

“The night before, at ten o’clock, a terrific thunder-storm had broken. Lightning flashed and rain fell in sheets. But in the morning there came a clearing, and when the fated hour approached there was a rosy flush on the morning sky. Commanders wore an anxious look. A surprise had been planned, and a clear day was not to their liking. But just before the time set a heavy mist began to descend. All was well.

“A gun spoke; then the roar from a hundred, a thousand iron-throated messengers of death. The creeping barrage had opened. The infantry was to attack simultaneously.

“The Yanks moved forward on the left, pivoting upon their own right, held by the 101st, in front of Vaux. The 102d came next; but it was the boys of the 103d and 104th, on the left, that did the early fighting.

“‘We are in Torcy,’ was the first message sent back. Then came a delay. A hitch had taken place; but by nine o’clock Bouresches, Belleau, and Givry were in the hands of the Yankees.

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Sergeant Dugald E. Ferguson

_32nd Division, 126th Infantry, Machine-Gun Company_

When the infantry on his right was held up by fire from an enemy machine gun at Cierges, northeast of Château-Thierry, August 1, 1918, he seized a rifle, rushed around the flank of the enemy’s position, bayoneted two of the machine-gun crew and shot three of them, enabling the infantry to advance.]

“The first objectives taken, preparations were at once made for a further advance. But the French, to the north, had been held up. On the 19th there was no forward movement until three in the afternoon. Hill 193, above Givry, where the French were held up, was passed on the flank, causing the Germans to fall back. Etrepilly and Etrepilly Woods were reached, taken, and passed. So, too, Genetrie Farm and the woods close by La Halmadière.

“In the night of the 19th there was another halt. Then forward again at daybreak, with the 101st and 102d Infantry getting into action late this day, and sweeping forward, through Vaux and the woods close to Bouresches, they crossed the Soissons-Château-Thierry road, and by the 22d found themselves in front of Epieds and Trugny.

WINNING MORE FRENCH PRAISE

“It was here that the severest fighting of the drive took place. In Epieds the Germans planted machine guns every seven yards. In Trugny and in the woods that lie on the hillsides to the east of both towns they had done likewise.

“The 101st tackled the Trugny proposition. Colonel Logan’s men were in and out of the town twice. But the German artillery had the range just right, and whenever the Yankees went in flooded the place with mustard-gas. On July 23 Colonel Logan borrowed a little ground on his right from the French, encircled Trugny on the south, and started up behind it, through Trugny Wood. It was a terrible fight, but that night the 101st broke through the German defenses and forced a retreat. Meantime, the three other infantry regiments were making constant frontal attacks. The 102d got into Trugny and captured the gun now on Boston Common.

“On the 23d the 103d and 104th Infantry Regiments were relieved; and on the 25th the 101st and 102d were relieved. But the artillery brigade kept on, supporting three other American divisions, until the Vesle River was reached, August 5. It was in this drive particularly that Sherburne’s outfit earned the name of the best field artillery in France. A regular Army officer, watching the guns in action, said: ‘I have been in the Army thirty years and never have seen field artillery until this day.’

“By August 7 the whole division, including the artillery, was back in villages along the Marne, between Château-Thierry and Paris.

“The people of the countryside hailed the men of the 26th as ‘saviors of Paris.’ Those who went into the French capital were greeted with enthusiasm. Men and women embraced them and kissed them.

“General Degoutte, famed commander of the French 6th Army, with which the Americans fought, wrote to General Edwards:

“‘The operations carried out by the 26th American Division from July 18 to July 24 demonstrated the fine soldierly qualities of this unit, and the worth of its fine leader, General Edwards. The 26th Division fought brilliantly ... advancing more than fifteen kilometers in depth in spite of the desperate resistance of the enemy.

“‘I take pleasure in communicating to General Edwards and his valiant division this expression of my esteem, together with my heartiest congratulations for the manner in which they have served the common cause.’”

THE LAST SHOT

And so on until, drawn from temporary reserve at Verdun, the 26th was ordered into the Argonne battle. The _Globe_ chronicler continues:

“On October 15 the 104th was fighting in conjunction with the French and a squadron of fifteen French tanks. What the fighting was like may be judged from the fact that only one of those fifteen tanks came back.

“On the 16th other units went in, and by October 18 command passed to General Edwards. The new position in line was on the east side of the Meuse River, facing generally east. Ahead lay the scrubby woods of Haumont, Chenes, Ormont, Belleau, and the skirt of the Bois de Wavrille, and of Samogneux, the latter to the extreme left, nearer to Verdun.

“The attack on these positions began on the 23d and continued until the 27th. The woods, so far as trees went, consisted of a few dead, blasted stumps, standing out like skeletons, in the midst of thick, deadly underbrush. The whole ground had been fought over recently. Bodies of dead French and Germans lay there. And in one place was a valley full of skeletons of the Crown Prince’s men who had made the desperate attack on the forts of Verdun.

“These woods were taken and lost again, taken and lost, taken and lost. Four times did the 101st battle through Belleau, only to be blasted back by artillery. The enemy had sworn to stick it out, for an attack here threatened the lines of communication. And stick they did.

“Of those last days a volume might well be written: of the desperate charges, the hell of shell-fire, the deluges of gas, the hum of millions of machine-gun death-messengers—death-messengers that brought their messages home. And through it all, partly over ground they had won before, they plunged in the dull desperation of despair. In the previous days they had been robbed of the officers they knew and loved. Edwards had been relieved October 25. Others had preceded him, and others followed—Cole, Logan, Hume.

“Desperately these boys fought and paid the price. On the 9th the line was drawn back a little, the accompanying units couldn’t keep pace. And still the battle raged—a bloody, maddening, disheartening battle—raged despite reports that an armistice had been agreed upon. Even at ten in the morning of November 11, one hour before the fighting was to stop, the 26th was ordered forward again ‘to straighten out the line.’ In that hour hundreds were lost.

“The Yankee division fought up to the last shot. That shot fired, the division remained a wreck. Gen. Frank E. Bamford, the new commander, reported that the division was in no condition to go to the Rhine. That day, the 11th, 1,200 replacements were received, and more were on their way. When the last hour’s fight began one regiment, normally 3,000 strong, had only 240 rifles.”

HUMOR AND HEROISM

Glimpses of the Sunnier Side of the Men Who Played with Death

After relating many pitiful, tear-compelling incidents of wounded and dying soldiers in trench and in the temporary hospitals back of the front, an English Chaplain turned from the saddening episodes to some of the humorous phases of his experience among the men—humorous by contrast, that is, for some of the touches are more than prods to laughter; this for example:

“Once, in a hospital train, where a crowd of helpless men were being loaded in at a siding, I saw one man, groaning in agony from rheumatism, carried in. ‘Where are you wounded, old chap?’ asked the orderly. ‘Hoots!’ he replied, ‘I’m na wounded at a’; fling me onywhere, an’ luk after the rest.’” The Chaplain continues:

“There are countless streaks of humor and gleams of laughter even amid the sorrow-clouds of war. The mysterious diseases from which the soldier thinks he suffers sometimes puzzle you. He will proudly, and with a majestic solemnity, tell you that his illness has developed into ‘gasteria’—perhaps a more accurately descriptive name than science recognizes. More than one is sorry for his wife, who is distracted and harrowed by the ‘insinuendoes’ of her neighbors, a word almost worthy of a place in the dictionary. And many will tell you of chums who have broken down, and who were not really fit to serve, having been always of a ‘historical’ tendency. One almost feels a plea for heredity there.

“How grateful we were when we found occasions like these! For, though we were not downhearted, we were often war-weary. And frequently the good cheer of those whom we were there to comfort and strengthen really strengthened and comforted us.

MICKY FREE REVIVED

“I remember an Irishman, quite of the type of Micky Free in Lever’s novel, a rollicking, jolly child of the Emerald Isle, pretty badly battered, but with a sparkle in his eye at which you could have lit a candle. He was from Dublin. I thought I should speak cheerfully to him, so I said, ‘Well, now, aren’t you lucky to be here, instead of home yonder, getting your head broken in a riot?’ ‘Troth, I am, sir,’ said he. ‘Lucky to be here, anyway. And lucky is anny man if he’ll only get a grave to lie in, let alone a comfortable bed like this. Glory be! it’s myself that’s been the lucky one all the time.’ Near him lay another. ‘Don’t spake to him, your honor,’ said the first man with a laugh. ‘Sure, he’s a Sinn Feiner.’ But both of them were of opinion that the loyalty of the rebels might be awakened by contact with German shells. ‘Bring them out here, sir,’ said they, ‘and they won’t be Irishmen if they don’t get their dander riz with a whiz-bang flung at them. That would settle their German philandering. Sure, isn’t it too bad what we’ve been enduring to enable the spalpeens to stay at home, upsetting the State, flinging Home Rule back maybe a generation, with their foolishness, and we as good Irishmen as themselves can be?’

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Private Albert Fritz

_1st Division, 16th Infantry, Company “I”_

Cited for extraordinary heroism in action south of Soissons, France, July 18-23, 1918. While attached to a machine-gun company as an ammunition carrier, he was wounded twice, but continued to carry ammunition while exposed to heavy shell fire.]

“The infinite variety of classes that make up our present army is astonishing. I told once of a Gordon Highlander landing in Havre with a copy of the Hebrew Psalms in the pocket of his khaki apron to read in the trenches. I saw, among our own Gordons, an Aberdeen divinity student, as a private reading in the mud the Greek Testament and the Sixth Book of Homer’s _Iliad_. Anything, from that to the _Daily Mail_, represents the reading of our men. This variety is also very noticeable among our officers. We had the lumberman from the vast forests of the West beside the accountant from San Francisco; the tea-planter from Bengal; the lawyer from the quiet Fife town beside the Forth; the artist; the architect; and the journalist. And it was this mixture that made possible episodes of irresistible comicality.

GLAD TO MEET HAIG

“For instance, to prevent waste of petrol in ‘joy-riding,’ a French barrier at one place near us had guards set upon it under a British officer. One day a young northern subaltern, entirely fresh to military work, was in charge; and the tale goes that he stopped Sir Douglas Haig’s car, asking him to show his permit and declare his business. When the general did tell who he was, the boy was so taken aback that he is said to have stammered, ‘So pleased to meet you!’

“Again, a young officer told me that he was leading a well-known general around some trenches in the dark. They came to a traverse. ‘We’ll go round here,’ said the general, and the young fellow led the way. But a watchful Gordon leaped up suddenly with fixed bayonet, and, ‘Who goes there?’ The youth replied, ‘General Blank.’ ‘Ay, lad,’ whimsically replied the Scot, ‘ye’d better try again. That cock ’ll no fecht wi’ the Cock o’ the North.’

“Another, a verdantly green soldier of the King, almost freshly off the ploughed haughs of home, met an officer of high rank. He was carrying his rifle, but he huddled it under his arm, and awkwardly saluted with the open hand as though he had it not. The officer said, very kindly, ‘Here, my man, is the way to salute your superior with your rifle’; and he went through the proper regulation field-officer’s salute. But Jock, after coolly watching him, as coolly replied, ‘Ay, ay; maybe that’s your way o’t; but I hae my ain way, and I’m no jist sure yet whilk’s the richt gait o’t.’

“It would be worth while seeing this man after a few months’ training has brought him into the ‘richt gait o’t.’ In fact, the way in which the men have fallen into the habit of discipline is as wonderful as the way they leaped into the line of service for their country’s sake when they were not forced to go. I recall one, who was only a type of many. Up in the mouth of a West Highland glen is a little cottage on a croft. And the man there was the last of his race. When others passed out to the world-wide conflict, his mother, who was very old, opposed his going. But she died. And then he drew his door to, locked it, and went to share the battle for liberty which to-day is shaking the earth. There are far more men of peace than men of quarrel fighting for the soul-compelling things that are of value beyond this dying world, and these are made of the true victory stuff.

THEY ARE NOT TALKERS

“None are less given to talk of what they have done than the very men whose deeds thrill others. They just saw the thing that was needed; they seized the flying moment, and did the deed that makes men’s hearts stand still. They came out of it with something akin to the elation of the sportsman who has scored a goal. They saved their side in the game. That was what they aimed at, and they were satisfied.

“In my last battalion were two men who, working together, did breathless things without themselves being breathless. They enjoyed them. After one ‘stunt’ our people in the trench observed a man hanging on the enemy’s wire. His hand was slowly moving to and fro. They watched carefully, and saw clearly that he was signaling to them. A little group of officers gathered and considered the matter. But it was entirely impossible, they thought, to dream of attempting a rescue before darkness. So they resolved to get together a rescue party in the night and save. Meanwhile, however, these two worthies slipped away, crawled over No Man’s Land, and brought the poor fellow in. Rebuked for their temerity, their reply was, ‘We couldna thole the sicht o’ a chum oot yonder like that.’ Another time, after a bitter struggle in a patch of woodland between our line and the enemy’s, they came and reported that a man in khaki was to be seen moving from tree-stump to tree-stump, evidently in distress. ‘I think he’s daft,’ said one. And in the gloaming over they went, found him, and brought him in to safety. He had been wounded in the head and side, and left behind. The first day he had kept himself alive by drinking from the water-bottles of the dead; but he had lost his reason and his bearings, and was in despair when our brave fellows got him. And these men were killed later on by a slight accident down behind the lines.

“It was difficult to get away from the touch of one’s environment and to overcome that unwelcome realization of the grim surroundings. One morning we had a weird reminder. When we opened the door of our hut, there, on the threshold, lay an unexploded ‘dud’ shell which had fallen in the night. Had it done what had been intended, we should have been very suddenly off somewhere among the stars. It made one think a little of solemn and strange things, and feel more than a little thankful to behold again the light of the sun.

“People speak a good deal about the lust for blood and the fever-passion of battle. But our boys are not bloodthirsty.

NOT THE HUN TYPE

“A friend of mine, after a ‘scrap,’ saw a proof of this which almost cost him his life, as he had to resist the tendency to laugh, for he had been shot through the lungs. A big Scotsman, in a muddy kilt, and with fixed bayonet, had in his charge a German prisoner, who was very unwilling to get a move on. And Sandy shouted out to a companion on ahead, ‘Hey, Jock, he winna steer. What’ll I dae wi’ him?’ But Jock, busy driving his own man forward, just answered over his shoulder, ‘Bring him wi’ ye.’ Both of these men had the sweat of conflict not dry upon them. But they never for a moment thought of driving the bayonet into that reluctant foe, as the German would have done most readily. Of course, one does occasionally find the old grim warrior still, quite contented under hard circumstances, finding indeed the conditions a kind of real relief after the rust of peaceful days.

“This same friend, going one night along the trenches, almost thigh-deep in mud, came upon a grizzled Irishman, O’Hara, cowering in the rain. ‘Isn’t this a damnable war, O’Hara?’ said he. ‘Thrue for you, sir,’ was the unexpected reply. ‘But, sure, isn’t it better than having no war at all?’

“A campaign like this brings one into touch with strange bedfellows. A man I know told me, ‘In one place, during the early terrible days, we crept into a cellar, and I lay down to try to sleep. But I soon found this to be impossible, for I became aware of somebody that kept running to and fro in the dark, driving all the rest away. I went out, and spoke to the doctor, whom I met. “Oh,” he replied, “that’s only our lunatic.” It was, indeed, a poor fellow who had gone mad in the retreat; and they could meanwhile do nothing but carry him along with them.’ Perhaps the weirdest of all the strange mixtures whom I met out at the front was a young fellow at a mechanical transport camp. His father was a Russian Jew, his mother was English, his grandfather Dutch, and he himself was born in London and brought up in Glasgow. In a world of such widely international disturbance you almost expected him to go off into effervescence, like a seidlitz powder.

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Major Henry E. Bunch

_42nd, Division, 168th Infantry, M. C._

On October 13-16, 1918, he went out in advance of the front line near the Bois de Chatillon, France, to reconnoiter a site for an aid station and an ambulance route. Seeing a wounded officer lying about 300 meters from the enemy’s line, he went to his rescue and carried him through terrific machine-gun and rifle fire to a shell hole, where he administered first-aid.]

DID NOT MERIT MERCY

“Amid the sorrows and the weariness of the times out there it was remarkable how closely laughter followed at the heels of tears. We had great fun over a colonel—not in our division—who was very unpopular. He did not know the depths of his unpopularity, but, deeming himself the best-beloved among his contemporaries, he was perfectly happy. One day, while he was sitting in front of his dugout reading an old newspaper, a sniper’s bullet passed quite close, and went ‘pip’ into the parados. He paid no attention, of course, for that was only a bit of the day’s work. But when another came, he thought it was an attention which carried civility a little too far. So he called a Scotsman to him, and said, ‘Go out, Jock, and nail that beggar.’ Jock crawled out, glad of the diversion, stalked the enemy, ‘winged’ him, and was running up to ‘feenish’ him, when the German held up his hands and cried, ‘Mercy, Englishman!’ But Jock replied, ‘Mercy? Ye dinna deserve nae mercy. Ye’ve missed oor colonel twice!’ I often wonder if Jock told the colonel how he had put it! Or is he still as happy as ever?

“It is told of Jock that, on another occasion, when a German held up his hands, after a good deal of dirty work with them, and said, ‘Mercy, Englishman. I’ll go to England with you!’ Jock replied, grimly and coolly, ‘Ay, maybe. But, ye see, that’s no exactly whaur I was gaun to send ye.’

“I was always much impressed by the Wesleyans, whom I often met in painful circumstances. I had never had anything to do with them till I came in contact with them wounded and suffering, but always most brave, patient, and truly religious. They bore their distresses without a murmur, and they died without fear. For they knew what they believed in. They had the gift of religion and the secret of a faith stronger than death. They were true mystics. I remember one day standing beside one of them who had been very dangerously stricken. His eyes were closed, and he was whispering continuously. I stooped down and listened. He was saying, over and over again, ‘Oh, God, remember me, and help me to get well, for the sake of those I love at home.’

SPEAKING TO GOD

“I was turning to slip away quietly, when he opened his eyes and said, ‘Whoever you are, don’t go, sir, I was only speaking to God.’ His religion was so intimate a possession that he did not need to apologize for knocking at the door of love with his prayer.

“Nothing could be more touching, and often at the same time funnier, than meeting men past military age who, sometimes for the sake of their boys serving, had slipped into the ranks, mentally folding down a corner of their birth-certificate over the date, and salving their consciences, as did one, who said to me, ‘I told them I was thirty-four—but I did not say on what birthday!’ I remember one old Scot, who could scarcely move, telling me, ‘I doot I’ll hae to get oot o’ this, an’ awa’ hame. Thae rheumatics is no good in the trenches; and they’re girnin’ at me again.’ Of course, he had ‘a laddie lyin’ up yonder,’ and a nephew, and ‘a guid-sister’s brither,’ and so on, like the rest. And, of course, if it were not for these pains he would be as good as ever he was! Some time later I met him in the rain, and asked how he felt now. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I’m just fine the day. I seen my youngest laddie gaun up, and I’d a word or twa wi’ him. I’ll be writin’ his mither the nicht aboot it. He was lookin’ grand. It was fine to get a roar frae him in the by-gaun.’

“I called on one old woman at home, and she told me that her husband had only the previous day, which was his birthday, gone off to France. ‘Eh,’ said she with unction, ‘he’s a good man, my man. I often think I was a lucky woman to have sic a man. D’ye ken—he never told a lie!’ ‘And yesterday was his birthday?’ I inquired. ‘And how old was he?’ ‘He was fifty-eight,’ was her answer. But when I asked how this modern rival of George Washington had got into the army with such an age, she innocently replied, ‘Ye see, he said he was thirty-twa.’

“How these elderly men endured for any length of time all the discomforts at the front was beyond understanding. They were, of course, frequently caught, when youth was more able to skip nimbly out of the way of death. The little, shell-swept graveyards at the front got many of them very soon.

RUNNERS AND M.P.’S

“I spoke elsewhere, some time ago, of some of the forgotten and overlooked departments of our army. There are plenty such, of course. But one cannot help recalling amongst them the battalion runners, who carry messages over No Man’s Land, or anywhere, from post to post, when air and earth are filled with hissing death, and who also act as guides up to the trenches. They are absolutely fearless. This type varies from the gaunt, silent figure, that stalks before you like an Indian through the dark, to the garrulous youth who talks all the time over his shoulder as he goes. One of the latter was leading up our men, and the colonel said to him, ‘I hear that these dugouts are wretched water-logged holes.’ ‘Deed, they are that,’ replied the guide. And then, gently, as if on a tender afterthought, ‘D’ye ken, sir, I’m often vexed for you; for I’m perfectly sure that you’re accustomed to something better than yon at home!’

“Another is the military policeman, who controls and guides the traffic at the cross-roads, and where there is danger of shells falling, in such places as the square at Ypres. There, amongst evidences of steady peril, stands this quiet man with the red band on his arm; and he steps forward to warn you that it is not safe to be there! I cannot forget one road, when we were moving up to the front. The stream of life flowing on towards the fighting area was like the Strand in London at its busiest. The policeman with uplifted hand was as powerful there as at home. In a moment, at the signal, limbers, guns, motor-lorries, ambulances, mounted men, and marching infantry stood motionless till permitted to go on again.

“The directions we got one day from an Irish policeman were unforgettable. He said, ‘It’s quite easy, your honor. You see, when you go into Albert, you don’t go into it at all. But you turn to the right, keeping well to the left all the way.’ We thanked him, and trusted to Providence, as we are apt to do where there is nothing else that can be done; and, following our directions in a general way, we reached our place in safety!

“Again, you will find, right up behind the front, the roadman busy, coolly filling up holes that shells have made, and behaving just as though he were working on a stretch of the Trossachs, or patching up the rut-worn tracks that the rain has damaged along by Loch Hourn.”

Of the airmen flying their graceful, birdlike craft, he says: “There can be no braver hearts than those. Many a time we looked up at them, sailing overhead, and wondered; and the roughest Tommy sends something like a prayer with them as they go.”

ENGLAND’S INDIAN WARRIORS

Who Made Up the Indian Army; And Some V. C. Heroes

In December of the first year of the war, a letter came to the Indian post-office in London with this address, written in the topknotted Marathi character, and hence perfectly incomprehensible to every one but the Jat orderly who read it:

“In the land of the European War
The country of the King of France
For my beloved son, the Sepoy Khundadad Khan
And the hand of any who bears this to him shall be that of a
gentleman.”

It was an extraordinary epistle to look at, very thick, and its envelope was an old official one that had been carefully ungummed and refolded wrong side out. And it had come from a tiny village on the banks of the Jhelum River, far away in India. But what was more extraordinary still, its owner received it that very day. For Khundadad Khan had become a very great man indeed, and his name was fully as well known in London then, as ever it had been in his native village. Lying in the Kensington hospital, he stroked his long black curly beard, the exact color of his hair, and murmured, as he fingered the bulky contents of the letter (a parchment verse from the _Koran_ tied up in silk with a dried serpent’s fang), “Oh, yes, it is a very good tawíz—charm—as such things go, and will no doubt keep off many demons. But the King-Emperor has given me a better one, is it not so, my friend?”

© _American Press Association._

Second-Line Gurkhas Coming Up

From whatever tribe they came they proved themselves worthy to
fight in any army of Europe, as the “V. C.’s” awarded to the
members of the Indian army show. The photograph shows the second
line advancing amid shell fire to the reinforcement of the first
line at captured German trench.]

“Undoubtedly, oh son of a most high excellence,” replied the little brown orderly respectfully, in Hindustanie. And it was so. For the king had given him the highest military honor of Great Britain, the V. C., the first ever bestowed upon a member of the Indian Army. What he had done to win it sounds like many another brave deed recounted of the men in the Great War. There is a similarity even in brave deeds. He had remained in a trench, firing a Maxim, after his British captain and all the men with him were killed or wounded, holding back the Germans until he, too, fell, severely wounded, and they passed on over his body. But the Germans had been held back, and that was the important point.

THE BROWN MEN

It was in August that the brown men first took ship at Calcutta and Bombay, and, leaving the sound of temple bell and muezzin, and commending themselves, no doubt, to Ava Ardu Sur Jasan, the angel presiding over the sea and great voyages, sailed away under the British Jack to fight for the Empire in a land they had never seen. They reached the Western front in September, and after a scant two weeks’ rest, were thrown in beside the almost exhausted British in the flat mud-country between Givenchy and Neuve Chapelle. The force consisted of about 50,000 British and 65,000 native Indians, led by white officers, and with native officers to act as go-betweens. It was the first time, since the Moors had conquered Spain, long before Columbus sailed for America, that brown men and white had engaged in a death-grapple on European soil. But these brown men were from a continent, not a single nation.

There were little Gurkhas from around Nepal, stout and muscular, with high topknotted and slant eyes like Chinamen, grinning like terriers from behind British steel. Their great friends, the Scotch, say they can see objects and detect sounds which are imperceptible to other people. And though they trot along contentedly enough with their rifles in trenches that are sometimes too high for them, their favorite weapon is their own sickle-shaped knife, the _khukri_. This they can either hurl or use at close range, in which latter case, we are told, it makes a sound like the cutting of fresh lettuce. Their friendship with the huge Scotchmen seems to come from a certain like-mindedness on the battlefield. It was a regiment of Gurkhas (the 4th) that on the terrible night of the nineteenth of December supported the Highland Light Infantry in gaining the foremost trench along the Bethune-La Bassée Road. But the little brown men held the trench, while the gallant Lieutenant Anderson, not content with this, rushed on with his Highlanders, shouting, “We are going to take Chapelle St. Roch!” He and his men passed on into the darkness—and were never seen again.

There were long, athletic Sikhs from the land of the Five Rivers. The Sikhs’ knives are straight, for they are tall, brave men who let their hair grow, and who usually pray before fighting. Their knives are two-edged, and they carry on their other side a comb, as is likewise enjoined by their religion. Under Ranjut Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, they once carved for themselves an empire from the Sutlej to the Kabul River, and their greatest ambition even now is for one of them to be known as “Singh” (“Lion”) among his countrymen. This high honor one of them attained, together with the Indian Order of Merit, in the spring drive around Ypres. It happened that a young English lieutenant, J. Smyth, was ordered to supply ammunition to a company farther forward. In the course of the fighting, he found himself in an unconnected trench. Therefore, selecting fifteen Sikhs, he started forward with bombs in boxes, which they carried among them. Only three Sikhs were left unwounded, when finally, still under heavy direct fire, they conceived the idea of breaking up the boxes and carrying the bombs the rest of the way in their arms. One more Sikh fell dead before they reached their objective and delivered the bombs to their hard-pressed companions.

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

First Lieutenant James M. Symington

_2nd Division, 23d Infantry, 1st Battalion._

On June 6, 1918, near Château-Thierry, he voluntarily and outside of his regular duty rushed in front of the firing line and reorganized his men, leading toward the proper objective in the face of a barrage, changing a small reverse into a success.]

The great bravery of the English officers of the Indian Army, and the enormous casualties among them—Captain Paris, Lieutenant Hayes-Saddler, Major Graham White, good English names innumerable—is part of the story of the Indian Army. It is said that their white skins among the dark faces of their men rendered them an easy mark to the German gunners. And their loss was graver for their troops than that of most officers, for each Englishman in command is obliged to know several of the innumerable dialects of India, and as there remained fewer and fewer men in command who could speak both English and the native tongues, the Indian troops became at times almost isolated.

And there were men from tribes less well known: the Gurhwals, a comparatively new regiment, who proved their mettle at “the Indian Neuve Chapelle.” This was an engagement in November, not to be confused with the later battle of Neuve Chapelle, where the Indian troops actually gained the town, but were obliged to fall back, because of the lack of adequate support. Then there were the Pathans, who shoot like the Leatherstockings, and look, it is said, not unlike him, with their blue eyes and brown hair and their muscular frames. They are the fairest of the native Indians. Then there were the Rajputs, who have been the great gentlemen of the hills for many hundreds of years. Some of them were not subjects of the King of England at all, but citizens of the Feudatory States of India, who came down from their mud huts and mountain fastnesses to make the grand tour, as it were, and fight with the cunning implements of the white man.

WINNERS OF V. C.’s

From whatever tribe they came, however, they proved themselves worthy to fight in any army of Europe, as the V. C.’s awarded in the course of the war to the members of the Indian army will show. From G. A. Leask’s book, _Heroes of the Great War_, we summarize a few of their exploits, but many must go unnoticed here: