History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0452/04526.txt

Text File | 1992-10-12 | 14KB | 245 lines

$Unique_ID{how04526}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{True Stories Of The Great War
'A Student In Arms' - In The Ranks With Kitchener's Army}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hankey, Donald}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{knew
never
looked
smile
own
too
army
kitchener's
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job}
$Date{1916}
$Log{}
Title:       True Stories Of The Great War
Book:        "A Student In Arms" - In The Ranks With Kitchener's Army
Author:      Hankey, Donald
Date:        1916

"A Student In Arms" - In The Ranks With Kitchener's Army

I - Story Of "Kitchener's Army"

Resurrection of the Soul on the Battlefield

Told by Donald Hankey, Who Was Killed in Action on Western Front on October
26, 1916

[The high spiritual idealism which actuates so many thousands in the
ranks of the Allies finds its voice in Donald Hankey.  The horrors of War are
so appalling that the heart faints when we think only of the body.  But when
the eye is turned to the spiritual side it is a magnificent spectacle of the
self-sacrifice of men.  This young Britisher with inspiring nobility tells
of his experiences in his book "A Student in Arms," which is one of the most
notable contributions to the War's literature, dealing with the deeper things
of human life.]

[Footnote * - All numerals relate to stories told herein - not to chapters
in the book.]

     "The New Army," "Kitchener's Army," we go by many names.  The older
sergeants - men who have served in regular battalions - sometimes call us
"Kitchener's Mob," and swear that to take us to war would be another
"Massacre of the Innocents." At other times they affirm that we are a credit
to our instructors (themselves); but such affirmations have become rarer
since beer went up to threepence a pint.

     We are a mixed lot - a triumph of democracy, like the Tubes.  Some of
us have fifty years to our credit and only own to thirty; others are sixteen
and claim to be eighteen.  Some of us enlisted for glory, and some for fun,
and a few for fear of starvation.  Some of us began by being stout, and have
lost weight; others were seedy and are filling out.  Some of us grumble, and
go sick to escape parades; but for the most part we are aggressively
cheerful, and were never fitter in our lives.  Some miss their glass of
claret, others their fish-and-chips; but as we all sleep on the floor, and
have only one suit, which is rapidly becoming very disreputable, you would
never tell t'other from which.

     We sing as we march.  Such songs we sing!  All about coons and girls,
parodies of hymns, parodies about Kaiser Bill, and sheer unadulterated
nonsense.  We shall sing

     "Where's yer girl?

     Ain't yer got none?"

as we march into battle.

     Battle!  Battle, murder, and sudden death!  Maiming, slaughter, blood,
extremities of fear and discomfort and pain!  How incredibly remote all that
seems!  We don't believe in it really.  It is just a great game we are
learning.  It is part of the game to make little short rushes in extended
order, to lie on our bellies and keep our heads down, snap our rifles and fix
our bayonets.  Just a game, that's all, and then home to tea.

     Some of us think that these young officers take the game a jolly sight
too seriously.  Twice this week we have been late for dinner, and once they
routed us out to play it at night.  That was a bit too thick!  The canteen
was shut when we got back and we missed our pint.

     Anyhow we are Kitchener's Army, and we are quite sure it will be all
right.  Just send us to Flanders, and see if it ain't.  We're Kitchener's
Army, and we don't care if it snows ink!

II - Story Of The Beloved Captain

     He came in the early days, when we were still at recruit drills under
the hot September sun.  Tall, erect, smiling: so we first saw him, and so he
remained to the end.  At the start he knew as little of soldiering as we did.
He used to watch us being drilled by the sergeant; but his manner of watching
was peculiarly his own.  He never looked bored.  He was learning just as much
as we were, in fact more.  He was learning his job, and from the first he saw
that his job was more than to give the correct orders.  His job was to lead
us.  So he watched, and noted many things, and never found the time hang
heavy on his hands.  He watched our evolutions, so as to learn the correct
orders; he watched for the right manner of command, the manner which secured
the most prompt response to an order; and he watched every one of us for our
individual characteristics.  We were his men.  Already he took an almost
paternal interest in us.  He noted the men who tried hard, but were naturally
slow and awkward.  He distinguished them from those who were inattentive and
bored.  He marked down the keen and efficient amongst us.  Most of all he
studied those who were subject to moods, who were sulky one day and willing
the next.  These were the ones who were to turn the scale.  If only he could
get these on his side, the battle would be won.

     For a few days he just watched.  Then he started work.  He picked out
some of the most awkward ones, and, accompanied by a corporal, marched them
away by themselves.  Ingenuously he explained that he did not know much
himself yet; but he thought that they might get on better if they drilled by
themselves a bit, and that if he helped them, and they helped him, they would
soon learn.  His confidence was infectious.  He looked at them, and they
looked at him, and the men pulled themselves together and determined to do
their best.  Their best surprised themselves.  His patience was
inexhaustible.  His simplicity could not fail to be understood.  His keenness
and optimism carried all with them.  Very soon the awkward squad found
themselves awkward no longer; and soon after that they ceased to be a squad,
and went back to the platoon.

     Then he started to drill the platoon, with the sergeant standing by to
point out his mistakes.  Of course he made mistakes, and when that happened
he never minded admitting it.  He would explain what mistakes he had made,
and try again.  The result was that we began to take almost as much interest
and pride in his progress as he did in ours.  We were his men, and he was our
leader.  We felt that he was a credit to us, and we resolved to be a credit
to him.  There was a bond of mutual confidence and affection between us,
which grew stronger and stronger as the months passed.  He had a smile for
almost everyone; but we thought that he had a different smile for us.  We
looked for it, and were never disappointed.  On parade, as long as we were
trying, his smile encouraged us.  Off parade, if we passed him and saluted,
his eyes looked straight into our own, and his smile greeted us.  It was a
wonderful thing, that smile of his.  It was something worth living for, and
worth working for.  It bucked one up when one was bored or tired.  It seemed
to make one look at things from a different point of view, a finer point of
view, his point of view.  There was nothing feeble or weak about it.  It was
not monotonous like the smile of "Sunny Jim." It meant something.  It meant
that we were his men, and that he was proud of us, and sure that we were
going to do jolly well - better than any of the other platoons.  And it made
us determine that we would.  When we failed him, when he was disappointed in
us, he did not smile.  He did not rage or curse.  He just looked
disappointed, and that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any
amount of swearing would have done.  He made us feel that we were not playing
the game by him.  It was not what he said.  He was never very good at
talking.  It was just how he looked.  And his look of displeasure and
disappointment was a thing that we would do anything to avoid.  The fact was
that he had won his way into our affections.  We loved him.  And there isn't
anything stronger than love, when all's said and done.

III - "A Touch Of Christ About Him"

     He was good to look on.  He was big and tall, and held himself upright.
His eyes looked his own height.  He moved with the grace of an athlete.  His
skin was tanned by a wholesome outdoor life, and his eyes were clear and wide
open.  Physically he was a prince among men.  We used to notice, as we
marched along the road and passed other officers, that they always looked
pleased to see him.  They greeted him with a cordiality which was reserved
for him.  Even the general seemed to have singled him out, and cast an eye
of special approval upon him.  Somehow, gentle though he was, he was never
familiar.  He had a kind of innate nobility which marked him out as above us.
He was not democratic.  He was rather the justification for aristocracy.  We
all knew instinctively that he was our superior - a man of finer temper than
ourselves, a "toff" in his own right.  I suppose that that was why he could
be so humble without loss of dignity.  For he was humble too, if that is the
right word, and I think it is.  No trouble of ours was too small for him to
attend to.  When we started route marches, for instance, and our feet were
blistered and sore, as they often were at first, you would have thought that
they were his own feet from the trouble he took.  Of course after the march
there was always an inspection of feet.  That is the routine.  But with him
it was no mere routine.  He came into our rooms, and if anyone had a sore
foot he would kneel down on the floor and look at it as carefully as if he
had been a doctor.  Then he would prescribe, and the remedies were ready at
hand, being borne by the sergeant.  If a blister had to be lanced he would
very likely lance it himself there and then, so as to make sure that it was
done with a clean needle and that no dirt was allowed to get in.  There was
no affectation about this, no striving after effect.  It was simply that he
felt that our feet were pretty important, and that he knew that we were
pretty careless.  So he thought it best at the start to see to the matter
himself.  Nevertheless, there was in our eyes something almost religious
about this care for our feet.  It seemed to have a touch of the Christ about
it, and we loved and honored him the more.

IV - "A Torpedo Fell - That Was The End"

     We knew that we should lose him.  For one thing, we knew that he would
be promoted.  It was our great hope that some day he would command the
company.  Also we knew that he would be killed.  He was so amazingly
unself-conscious.  For that reason we knew that he would be absolutely
fearless.  He would be so keen on the job in hand, and so anxious for his
men, that he would forget about his own danger.  So it proved.  He was a
captain when we went out to the front.  Whenever there was a tiresome job to
be done, he was there in charge.  If ever there were a moment of danger, he
was on the spot.  If there were any particular part of the line where the
shells were falling faster or the bombs dropping more thickly than in other
parts, he was in it.  It was not that he was conceited and imagined himself
indispensable.  It was just that he was so keen that the men should do their
best, and act worthily of the regiment.  He knew that fellows hated turning
out at night for fatigue, when they were in a "rest camp." He knew how
tiresome the long march there and back and the digging in the dark for an
unknown purpose were.  He knew that fellows would be inclined to grouse and
shirk, so he thought that it was up to him to go and show them that he
thought it was a job worth doing.  And the fact that he was there put a new
complexion on the matter altogether.  No one would shirk if he were there.
No one would grumble so much, either.  What was good enough for him was good
enough for us.  If it were not too much trouble for him to turn out, it was
not too much trouble for us.  He knew, too, how trying to the nerves it is
to sit in a trench and be shelled.  He knew what a temptation there is to
move a bit farther down the trench and herd together in a bunch at what seems
the safest end.  He knew, too, the folly of it, and that it was not the thing
to do - not done in the best regiments.  So he went along to see that it did
not happen, to see that the men stuck to their posts, and conquered their
nerves.  And as soon as we saw him, we forgot our own anxiety.  It was: "Move
a bit farther down, sir.  We are all right here; but don't you go exposing
of yourself." We didn't matter.  We knew it then.  We were just the rank and
file, bound to take risks.  The company would get along all right without us.
But the captain, how was the company to get on without him?  To see him was
to catch his point of view, to forget our personal anxieties, and only to
think of the company, and the regiment, and honor.

     There was not one of us but would gladly have died for him.  We longed
for the chance to show him that.  We weren't heroes.  We never dreamed about
the V. C.  But to save the captain we would have earned it ten times over,
and never have cared a button whether we got it or not.  We never got the
chance, worse luck.  It was all the other way.  We were holding some trenches
which were about as unhealthy as trenches could be.  The Boches were only a
few yards away, and were well supplied with trench mortars.  We hadn't got
any at that time.  Bombs and air torpedoes were dropping round us all day.
Of course the captain was there.  It seemed as if he could not keep away.
A torpedo fell into the trench, and buried some of our chaps.  The fellows
next to them ran to dig them out.  Of course he was one of the first.  Then
came another torpedo in the same place.  That was the end.

     But he lives.  Somehow he lives.  And we who knew him do not forget.
We feel his eyes on us.  We still work for that wonderful smile of his.
There are not many of the old lot left now; but I think that those who went
West have seen him.  When they got to the other side I think they were met.
Someone said: "Well done, good and faithful servant." And as they knelt
before that gracious pierced Figure, I reckon they saw nearby the captain's
smile.  Anyway, in that faith let me die, if death should come my way; and
so, I think, shall I die content.