A Rifleman Went to War

Meeks

+*Norton-Taylor

Parker

Paudash

*Peverelle

Red path

Rothwell

*Russell

Shangrow

Shepard

Smith

Southgate

*Stillman

*Tinkess

*Toms

*Wendt

+Williams

*Wilson

Those marked with an asterisk were killed in action.

All the others were wounded.

Those marked with a “+” were commissioned.

Herbert W. McBride.

An Explanation and an Introduction

It fell to the lot of the author of this narrative to serve as a member of the British Army in some of the battles it fought during the not-so-recent Great War. Ever since my return to the United States I have been asked countless questions by hundreds, yes thousand, of friends and acquaintances relative to my personal experiences in that conflict. The great majority of these questioners happened to be riflemen or soldiers of our own U.S. Army who did not have the “luck” (as they expressed it) to serve in battle, or to have ever used their military rifles for the purpose for which they were designed. Yet — like myself at the beginning of that great conflict — they felt fully qualified and were eager to face the common enemy and do their bit. Moreover, like any qualified workman, they had the true craftsman’s intense interest in any and all questions of work, tools or technique relating to even the most minute phase of their chosen profession — riflecraft.

It is for the edification of individuals such as these that I have been persuaded to write these pages. In doing so, I have purposely avoided the fields of strategy, applied tactics, military movements and, yes, even history; because, strange to say, nobody asked me anything about these general subjects of war; not, I take it, because they have been treated in so many other accounts, but because they are academic, theoretical — meaningless until they have been made to “tick”, have been taken off paper and shown on the battlefield; and here it is soon discovered that what makes them go is MEN. And this is just what my inquirers have been asking about. Their questions have been of seemingly insignificant things, which, when they are all answered, give one some sort of a picture of MEN at WAR.

Hence — and as the proper preparations for the defense of my Country are yet a vital matter with myself — I have tried to the best of my humble ability to give, in the chapters which follow, the honest answer to many of these questions regarding such small and human matters — the most important of all matters however, because they relate directly and particularly to the individual man, with whom battles are always won.

In describing these incidents and experiences and in making the observations given, I have carefully tried to stick to the straight and narrow path of truth, and tell the story as things really happened — with fictitious “sob stuff” and dramatics left out. Hence, if you do not find enough material about rifle shooting, or about scouting, or some other phase of warfare upon which you particularly wanted information, please be lenient with the old man and remember that I did not make the war. I did only my own little bit in it and must tell of the things which actually did happen and just how they happened. This I have done and this only.

* * *

I have often said that a soldier can and does outlie a fisherman and I still say it, but now I have come to the conclusion that he is not entirely to blame in the matter. The truth is that the public — his public — demands it. The average citizen: man, woman or child, has such peculiar notions as to actual modem battle conditions that it is impossible to make them understand anything beyond the fact that it is a fight; and fighting, as they visualize it, means a stand up and knock down, hand-to-hand struggle. They think that, because a man was in the Army, in France, and took part in some of the great battles — the Argonne, for instance — that he must have shot, bayonetted or otherwise killed off innumerable Germans and are inclined to doubt the veracity of any honest-minded soul who tries to tell them a true and straightforward story of events as they really happened. They just cannot understand that, out of the million or so of soldiers who actually did their bit in that great offensive, probably not ten per cent ever saw a German until he came back through the lines, a prisoner. The soldier, or ex-soldier soon learns this and to relieve himself of the necessity of long and tedious explanations, he simply starts in to invent a lot of bloodcurdling, spectacular tales; whereupon everybody is satisfied. Man believes what he wants to believe and that is the kind of stuff they want to hear. It coincides with their already formed ideas of what a battle ought to be like.

The same thing applies to the “popular” war stories and pictures. In cases where these stories and pictures are from the pens of men who actually served as soldiers, the authors know full well that they are ridiculously exaggerated and distorted, but they also know that the plain, unvarnished truth would not be accepted by the public or, what is more important to them, by the publishers, so they proceed to manufacture thrills to order. This I have not done.

Closely akin to this situation is the idea, prevalent among the populace of the United States at large, that the nation is safely and sufficiently protected because, in the event of foreign invasion or aggression, millions of men would immediately “spring to arms,” as the late Mr. Bryan expressed it. Even with the disastrous example of the last war still fresh, they just cannot or will not accept the truth that the ordinary citizen cannot be made into a trained soldier by the simple expedient of placing a weapon in his hands. Soldiers themselves; those who have “gone through the mill,” know all about it, but who pays much attention to a soldier — in time of peace? It’s Kipling’s “Tommy Atkins” all over again:

“Oh, it’s Tommy this and Tommy that,
And Tommy go away.
But it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins,’
When the Band begins to play.”

* * *

Probably no other single thing in the soldiering game is so little understood as rifle shooting. The general impression seems to be that all that is necessary is to give a man a rifle and some cartridges and that, in some miraculous way, that man immediately becomes a perfectly good and competent rifleman, able to knock over any number of the enemy at most any range.

WE know: Those of us who have spent years and years trying to learn the game — but how are we going to pound it into the head of “the man in the street”? This writer grew up in a family of shooting men — and good ones too — and kept up his training, all the time, winter and summer, throughout the years, yet he was well past thirty before he really learned much about real, honest-to-goodness military rifle shooting and it took a long period of intensive training, under the best of instructors and in the stiffest of competitions before he