Excerpts from Robert Graves, Goodbye
To All That (1929)
They
began singing. Instead of the usual music-hall songs they sang
Welsh hymns, each man taking a part. The Welsh always sang when
they were a bit frightened and pretending that they were not; it
kept them steady. They never sang out of tune.
We marched towards the flashes and could soon see the flare-lights
curving over the trenches in the distance. The noise of the guns
grew louder and louder. Then we were among the batteries. From
behind us on the left of the road a salvo of four shells came
suddenly over our heads. The battery was only about two hundred
yards away. This broke up Aberystwyth in the middle of a verse and
set us off our balance for a few seconds; the column of fours
tangled up. The shells went hissing away eastward; we could see
the red flash and hear the hollow bang where they landed in German
territory. The men picked up their step again and began chaffing.
A lance-corporal dictated a letter home: ‘Dear auntie, this leaves
me in the pink. We are at present wading in blood up to our necks.
Send me fags and a life-belt. This war is a booger. Love and
kisses.’
....
These were early days of trench-warfare, the days of the jam-tin
bomb and the gas-pipe trench-mortar. It was before Lewis or Stokes
guns, steel helmets, telescopic rifle-sights, gas-shells,
pill-boxes, tanks, trench-raids, or any of the later improvements
of trench-warfare.
After a meal of bread, bacon, rum and bitter stewed tea sickly
with sugar, we went up through the broken trees to the east of the
village and up a long trench to battalion headquarters. The trench
was cut through red clay. I had a torch with me which I kept
flashed on the ground. Hundreds of field mice and frogs were in
the trench. They had fallen in and had no way out. The light
dazzled them and we could not help treading on them. So I put the
torch back in my pocket. We had no picture of what the trenches
would be like, and were not far off the state of mind in which one
young soldier joined us a week or two later. He called out very
excitedly to old Burford who was cooking up a bit of stew in a
dixie, apart from the others: ‘Hi, mate, where’s the battle? I
want to do my bit.’
The trench was wet and slippery. The guide was giving hoarse
directions all the time. ‘Hole right.’ ‘Wire high.’ ‘Wire low.’
‘Deep place here, sir.’ ‘Wire low.’ I had never been told about
the field telephone wires. They were fastened by staples to the
side of the trench, and when it rained the staples were always
falling out and the wire falling down and tripping people up. If
it sagged too much one stretched it across the top of the trench
to the other side to correct the sag, and then it would catch
one’s head. The holes were the sump-pits used for draining the
trenches. We were now under rifle-fire. I always found rifle-fire
more trying than shell-fire. The gunner was usually, I knew,
firing not at people but at map-references — cross-roads, likely
artillery positions, houses that suggested billets for troops, and
so on. Even when an observation officer in an aeroplane or captive
balloon or on a church spire was directing the gun-fire it seemed
unaimed, somehow. But a rifle bullet even when fired blindly
always had the effect of seeming aimed. And we could hear a shell
coming and take some sort of cover, but the rifle bullet gave no
warning. So though we learned not to duck to a rifle bullet,
because once it was heard it must have missed, it gave us a worse
feeling of danger. Rifle bullets in the open went hissing into the
grass without much noise, but when we were in a trench the
bullets, going over the hollow, made a tremendous crack. Bullets
often struck the barbed wire in front of the trenches, which
turned them and sent them spinning in a head-over-heels motion
-ping! rockety-ockety-ockety-ockety into the woods behind.'
....
I had expected him to be a middle-aged man with a breastful of
medals, with whom I would have to be formal; but Dunn was actually
two months younger than myself. He was one of the fellowship of
‘only survivors.’ Captain Miller of the Black Watch in the same
division was another. Miller had only escaped from the Rue du Bois
massacre by swimming down a flooded trench. He has carried on his
surviving trade ever since. Only survivors have great reputations.
Miller used to be pointed at in the streets when the battalion was
back in reserve billets. ‘See that fellow. That’s Jock Miller. Out
from the start and hasn’t got it yet.’ Dunn had not let the war
affect his morale at all. He greeted me very easily with: ‘Well,
what’s the news from England.? Oh sorry, first I must introduce
you. This is Walker -clever chap, comes from Cambridge and fancies
himself as an athlete. This is Jenkins, one of those patriotic
chaps who chucked up his job to come here. This is Price, who only
joined us yesterday, but we like him; he brought some damn good
whisky with him. Well, how long is the war going to last and who’s
winning? We don’t know a thing out here. And what’s all this talk
about war-babies? Price pretends he knows nothing about them.’ I
told them about the war and asked them about the trenches.
‘About trenches,’ said Dunn. Well, we don’t know as much about
trenches as the French do and not near as much as Fritz does. We
can’t expect Fritz to help, but the French might do something.
They are greedy; they won’t let us have the benefit of their
inventions. What wouldn’t we give for parachute-lights and their
aerial torpedoes. But there’s no connection between the two armies
except when there’s a battle on, and then we generally let each
other down.
....
We officers are on duty all day and divide up the night in
three-hourly -watches,’ He looked at his wrist watch. ‘I say,’ he
said, ‘that carrying-party must have got the R.E. stuff by now.
Time we all got to work. Look here. Graves, you lie down and have
a doss on that bunk. I want you to take the watch before
“stand-to.” I’ll wake you up and show you round. Where the hell’s
my revolver? I don’t like to go out without that. Hello, Walker,
what was wrong?’
Walker laughed. ‘A chap from the new draft. He had never fired his
musketry course at Cardiff, and to-night he fired ball for the
first time. It seemed to go to his head. He’d had a brother killed
up at Ypres and he said he was going to avenge him. So he blazed
off all his own ammunition at nothing, and two bandoliers out of
the ammunition-box besides. They call him the Human Maxim now. His
fore-sight’s misty with heat. Corporal Parry should have stopped
him; but he was just leaning up against the traverse and shrieking
with laughter. I gave them both a good cursing. Some other new
chaps started blazing away, too. Fritz retaliated with
machine-guns and whizz-bangs. No casualties. I don’t know why.
It’s all quiet now. Everybody ready?’
....
I spent the rest of my watch in acquainting myself with the
geography of the trench-section, finding how easy it was to get
lost among culs de sac and disused alleys. Twice I overshot the
company frontage and wandered among the Munsters on the left. Once
I tripped and fell with a splash into deep mud. At last my watch
was ended with the first signs of dawn. I passed the word along
the line for the company to stand-to arms. The N.C.O’s whispered
hoarsely into the dug-outs: ‘Stand-to, stand-to,’ and out the men
tumbled with their rifles in their hands. As I went towards
company headquarters to wake the officers I saw a man lying on his
face in a machine-gun shelter. I stopped and said: ‘Stand-to,
there.’ I flashed my torch on him and saw that his foot was bare.
The machine-gunner beside him said: ‘No good talking to him, sir.’
I asked: ‘What’s wrong? What’s he taken his boot and sock off
for?’ I was ready for anything odd in the trenches. ‘Look for
yourself, sir,’ he said. I shook the man by the arm and noticed
suddenly that the back of his head was blown out. The first corpse
that I saw in France was this suicide. He had taken off his boot
and sock to pull the trigger of his rifle with his toe; the muzzle
was in his mouth. ‘Why did he do it.?’ I said. ‘He was in the last
push, sir, and that sent him a bit queer, and on top of that he
got bad news from Limerick about his girl and another chap.’ He
was not a Welshman, but belonged to the Munsters; their
machine-guns were at the extreme left of our company. The suicide
had already been reported and two Irish officers came up. ‘We’ve
had two or three of these lately,’ one of them told me. Then he
said to the other: ‘While I remember, Callaghan, don’t forget to
write to his next-of-kin. Usual sort of letter, cheer them up,
tell them he died a soldier’s death, anything you like. I’m not
going to report it as suicide.’
....
Propaganda reports of atrocities were, we agreed, ridiculous.
Atrocities against civilians were surely few. We remembered that
while the Germans were in a position to commit atrocities against
enemy civilians, Germany itself, except for the early Russian
cavalry raid, had never had the enemy on her soil. We no longer
believed accounts of unjustified German atrocities in Belgium;
knowing the Belgians now at first-hand. By atrocities we meant,
specifically, rape, mutilation and torture, not summary shootings
of suspected spies, harbourers of spies, francs- tireurs or
disobedient local officials. If the atrocity list was to include
the accidental-on-purpose bombing or machine-gunning of civilians
from the air, the Allies were now committing as many atrocities as
the Germans. French and Belgian civilians had often tried to win
our sympathy and presents by exhibiting mutilations of children —
stumps of hands and feet, for instance — representing them as
deliberate, fiendish atrocities when they were merely the result
of shell-fire, British or French shell-fire as likely as not. We
did not believe that rape was any more common on the German side
of the line than on the Allied side. It was unnecessary. Of
course, a bully-beef diet, fear of death, and absence of wives
made ample provision of women necessary in the occupied areas. No
doubt the German army authorities provided brothels in the
principal French towns behind the line, as did the French on the
Allied side. But the voluntary system would suffice. We did not
believe stories of forcible enlistment of women.
As for atrocities against soldiers. The difficulty was to say
where to draw the line. For instance, the British soldier at first
regarded as atrocious the use of bowie-knives by German patrols.
After a time he learned to use them himself; they were cleaner
killing weapons than revolvers or bombs. The Germans regarded as
atrocious the British Mark VII rifle bullet, which was more apt to
turn on striking
than the German bullet. For true atrocities, that is, personal
rather than military violations of the code of war, there were few
opportunities. The most obvious opportunity was in the interval
between surrender of prisoners and their arrival (or non-arrival)
at headquarters. And it was an opportunity of which advantage was
only too often taken. Nearly every instructor in the mess knew of
specific cases when prisoners had been murdered on the way back.
The commonest motives were, it seems, revenge for the death of
friends or relations, jealousy of the prisoner’s pleasant trip to
a comfortable prison camp in England, military enthusiasm, fear of
being suddenly overpowered by the prisoners or, more simply, not
wanting to be bothered with the escorting job. In any of these
cases the conductors would report on arrival at headquarters that
a German shell had killed the prisoners; no questions would be
asked. We had every reason to believe that the same thing happened
on the
German side, where prisoners, as useless mouths to feed in a
country already on short rations, were even less welcome. We had
none of us heard of prisoners being more than threatened at
headquarters to get military information from them; the sort of
information that trench-prisoners could give was not of sufficient
importance to make torture worthwhile; in any case it was found
that when treated kindly prisoners were anxious, in gratitude, to
tell as much as they knew.
....
The troops, while ready to believe in the Kaiser as a comic
personal devil, were aware that the German soldier was, on the
whole, more devout than himself in the worship of God. In the
instructors’ mess we spoke freely of God and Gott as opposed
tribal deities. For the regimental chaplains as a body we had no
respect. If the regimental chaplains had shown one tenth the
courage, endurance, and other human qualities that the regimental
doctors showed, we agreed, the British Expeditionary Force might
well have started a religious revival. But they had not. The fact
is that they were under orders not to get mixed up with the
fighting, to stay behind with the transport and not to risk their
lives. No soldier could have any respect for a chaplain who obeyed
these orders, and yet there was not in our experience one chaplain
in fifty who was not glad to obey them. Occasionally on a quiet
day in a quiet sector the chaplain would make a daring afternoon
visit to the support line and distribute a few cigarettes, and
that was all. But he was always in evidence back in rest-billets.
Sometimes the colonel would summon him to come up with the rations
and bury the day’s dead, and he would arrive, speak his lines, and
hastily retire. The position was made difficult by the respect
that most of the commanding officers had for the cloth, but it was
a respect that they soon outwore. The colonel in one battalion I
served with got rid of four new chaplains in as many months.
Finally he applied for a Roman Catholic chaplain, alleging a
change of faith in men under
his command. For, as I should have said before, the the
Roman Catholics were not only permitted in posts of danger, but
definitely enjoined to be wherever fighting was so that they could
give extreme unction to the dying. And we had never heard of an
R.C. chaplain who was unwilling to do all that was expected of him
and more. It was recalled that Father Gleeson of the Munsters,
when all the officers were put out of action at the first battle
of Ypres, stripped off his black badges and, taking command of the
survivors, held the line.
....
I was feeling a bit better after a few weeks at the base, though
the knowledge that this was only temporary relief was with me all
the time. One day I walked out of the mess to begin the
afternoon’s work on the drill ground. I had to pass by the place
where bombing instruction was given. A group of men was standing
around the table where the various types of bombs were set out for
demonstration. There was a sudden crash. An instructor of the
Royal Irish Rifles had been giving a little unofficial instruction
before the proper instructor arrived. He had picked up a No. 1
percussion grenade and said: ‘Now, lads, you’ve got to be careful
with this chap. Remember that if you touch anything while you’re
swinging it, it will go off.’ To illustrate the point he rapped it
against the edge of the table. It killed him and another man and
wounded twelve others more or less severely.
Source:
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