- from 'the War Illustrated' 29th June, 1918
- 'Australia Seeing It Through'
Little Journeys to the Great War
Australian troops in action in France : pages from 'the War Illustrated'
The major who had guided us through a scries of trenches, which will be more famous in history than Waterloo or any battlefield of the older days, suggested a visit to brigade headquarters near by. In a soggy bit of shattered wood we saw some rude huts, and thither he led us.
Out of one of these huts stepped the tall and burly figure of an officer, bareheaded. The crossed sword and baton on . his shoulder-straps bespoke the brigadier. His manner instantly recalled to me Barrie's description of Professor Blackie — "he carried his own breeze with him."
"Well boys," said he cheerily, "Having a look round ? Come along and see how we carry on down below." And his breeze wafted us forthwith to the lowly entrance of a dug-out. Down the slushy steps he piloted us, calling out when we had to mind our heads, or when to beware a broken step. Down, forty feet and more, we went into the oozy clay, the brigadier enlivening our descent with happy comment, proud as a schoolboy taking you to his new rabbit-hutch.
At the foot of these toilsome, slippery stairs we found ourselves in a mammoth mole run. A main gallery ran at right angles from the stairway, and various transverse passages opened off this, back and forth. The ground was slightly muddy, the atmosphere moist as a hot-house, for all the steady working of the pump. There were many little rooms, each fitted for its special use.
"Here," the brigadier would say, pushing open a door, "are my signalling officer's quarters," and "here's the brigade major's outfit — jolly comfortable too." The rank of each officer was stated on a neatly-printed card nailed to his door. "Comfortable" they all were, as comfort is understood where shells fall like rain, and poison gas rolls over thick as sea mists on the Lincolnshire dunes. There is, of course, a sense of comfort that excels the cushioned luxury of a pasha in sitting securely in an earthen burrow with forty feet of solid soil atop when 12 in. shells of high explosive are bursting above. Give me the comfort of a deep, deep dug-out then !
All the officers of the brigade staff, with their servants, were housed in these humid cells, where the modern marvel of electricity made it possible to live and work as easily as in many a dim London counting-house. A counting-house of war it was. There was the telephone exchange, switchboards, and all the latest devices, with alert operators wearing the familiar receivers clipped to their heads.
"I can call up headquarters in London from here," said the brigadier. "Yesterday I was speaking to the War Office." And a matter of two miles away lay the enemy trenches !
The brigadier's own quarters differed in no degree of "comfort" from any of the others. His office adjoined his sleeping chamber, and here, at a long rude bench, the business of the brigade was carried on. On the bench stood four or five telephones, and each had its separate use. When a big attack was on, and the whole brigade in action, the general would be seated at one, the signal officer at another, the liaison officer at a third ; the chief medical officer would also be there at. his phone. Arid what exciting messages would come over the wires !
First the brigadier would hear that a platoon in an advanced trench had been wiped out, and he would repeat the message aloud. "Signals" would instantly tell the news to a platoon leader in a support trench, who would know his time had come to move up and take the place of those who had fallen ; the liaison officer would order up reserves to the support trench, and the M.O. would already be phoning to hurry up his stretcher-bearers to meet and relieve those now toiling down with their sad burdens. So, or in some such way — for I may have all the (facts wrong, and no matter — the desk-work would go on in this counting-house of war when the grisly business was brisk.
"It's just good business," I said to the brigadier, by way of comment, after his graphic picturing of the scene.
"That's what it is. Business methods applied to war. And business methods are the only kind that will win this war."
The enthusiasm of this man, his exuberant delight in his work, the kindly, brotherly way in which he spoke of his officers and men, were worth a long journey to witness. His table was piled in the most orderly way with plans of trenches and aerial photos of the enemy systems in his immediate neighbourhood. No business man in Queen Victoria Street has so clear a knowledge of his desk's contents as this brigadier had of his. I never saw a man of business so radiant with the joy of his work. He had been an architect or a civil engineer by profession, and done some "amateur soldiering" in his spare time ere the summons to the real thing brought him overseas, after many a hairbreath escape, to this particularly "unhealthy" sector of the western front.
For he hailed from Australia. That was where his tonic breeze came from.
That day I had already discarded several old prejudices against our kinsmen of the island continent, and I rid myself of any that remained down there in the brigadier's dug-out.
"It's well over three years since I sailed away from Sydney," said he, "and I have not seen my wife or children since that day. Despite all the letters and photos that come from them, I'm afraid of their fading a little in my memory, with that old life that is now so remote." His kindly, merry eyes were shadowy, and seemed to be straining to a far horizon as he looked at the wall of the dug-out, almost unconscious of our presence. His voice was firm again, his eyes brightening, when he went on :
"But we all came over here to see this thing through, and I, for one, am not going back till we're through with it. My new love is for those splendid men you've seen to-day. Many of them went through Gallipoli with me. They are here of their own free will to see it through. The Australian type has found himself in this war. They are men to be proud of — resolute, courageous, courteous."
We had heard such stupid talk about Australian "lack of discipline," that this from a commanding officer was a singularly beautiful .testimony to the character of his men. And I had noticed many little .things that day in the demeanour of these men that won my sympathy and admiration.
On this one point of discipline, I observed that in the trenches or on the duck-boards through the woods, when a soldier wished to pass an officer, he did not hesitate to keep upon his way, and overtaking the officer would say, "Excuse me, sir," saluting as the officer made way for him. It was a case of two gentlemen giving the path to each other, though the friendly recognition of rank was there also. Probably it was against all text-book teaching of military etiquette, but it struck me as tile ideal of an armed democracy.
It was clear that our brigadier was the idol of his men, and they were bound to him by cords of love — the sweet and wholesome love of strong men who have adventured together where duty calls and danger — a love beyond all love of .women. The Australia that is to be is finding an enduring foundation in the undying comradeship of strong men, forged for it in the furnace fires of the Great War.
Come such thoughts as these may solace the dream hours of this brigadier when, with infinite longing to be home again by his own fireside, he tries to visualise that wife he has not seen so long, those children growing up around her knees, while he is denied the most precious joy of the father — the joy of watching their young lives unfold.
Then there is ever the haunting thought with this husband and father that he may not even know the happiness of reunion with his loved ones. A weighty tome in which otir brigadier had minutely recorded his manifold adventures from the day of sailing from home as a company commander, and fighting through all those dreadful months on Gallipoli, to his latest observations on the doings of his brigade — a diary that may some day be written into a popular book for the new Australia — lay upon his table in that deep dug-out. It was primarily for wife and children, perhaps, just in case his luck did not hold long enough to bring him safe some day to Sydney Harbour and the lights of home. A diary that would tell them what happened to him, and what thoughts of them came to him when he was "seeing it through."
There would be some sad pages to add. Not many days after we talked together in the dug-out, as all the laborious works of his brigade had to be abandoned and the order given to1- retreat, when the sudden pressure of the enemy in the first thrust for Amiens made it necessary to withdraw so wide a portion of the British front. In "seeing it through," retreat must be faced as resolutely as advance, but my newly-awakened enthusiasm for the Australians makes me feel that, advancing or retreating in the swaying battles of the Great War, their motto remains the only one for a hero race — "Advance. Australia! "