A Rifleman Went to War

they are able to guess at their bearings and learn a little of what is happening, from questioning wounded or stretcher-bearers or signallers, who know little themselves. It may be another night before they take over their position. If there is no night attack (which is always hazardous business) they keep watch until day, then take up the advance. They cannot, of course, be called fresh troops. The fight has been going on for three days, and they have for most of this time been subjected to the most exhausting of its inconveniences and discomforts. They are tired, chilled and sluggish; their boots are heavy with mud and their eyes with lack of sleep. With daylight they are to face troops which may well be well-fed and rested, for they have come up over shortened lines of communication. They will have little artillery support, or none at all. Once in the fight they will take care of themselves. But the first few minutes may reduce their strength by as much as twenty per cent. In close fighting, the difference between life and death is measured in terms of hundredths of a second. That’s all. There is no second chance. Either you get him or you don’t. If you are on your toes, your eyes open, your whole self on the job, you get him.

These cramped, uncomfortable muddy men have no appearance whatever of being on their toes. For two days they have been living on bully and biscuits. The fortunate and resourceful ones may have found opportunity to make a cup of tea; but a hot meal for all hands is out of the question and they do not expect to connect with a regular ration supply for two days more. There are few complaints, not much conversation of any sort. The platoon officers pass along, checking up on the supply of ammunition, grenades, etc., and acquainting them with the nature of the attack, so far as they know it. The sergeant follows, pouring for each man the allotted portion of rum: “All right, rouse up there, Johnnie; you’ll be water-logged.” “Righto, Sergeant: When do the fireworks begin?” “This is about all there’ll be till the sun gets high enough for observation.” “Well, this is not so bad; they’re wicked-sounding bastards. Cheerio.”

Presently he returns, shaking his water-bottle, in which there still remains four rations. Tomorrow and next day there will be a much greater excess, because the casualties will not yet show on the strength-return.

“Say, Sergeant, I think I ought to have one of them; Smith was my buddy.”

“I’ll give it to you in a few minutes. You probably won’t know it, but I’ll hold your head up and pour it in.”

“Hell you say; damned if you catch me getting a Blighty today; too much trouble to get out of here.”

“Who the hell said there would be no more artillery; listen to that.”

“All right, men; shake yourselves out; stand to.”

There is a lively little echo of this, varied between man and man, back and forth along the line. Everybody is ready. There is a deadly interest in what is to come, hardly a thought of the misery of the past two days. If they could have had a good hot bath, a change of clothing and a substantial and leisurely breakfast, much the same result would have been achieved. Hardly practicable? But the rum ration is practicable, and it was adopted out of a very sensible and laudable desire to give men a chance to take care of themselves, to utilize fully their training, to achieve, with a minimum of suffering and death, the ends for which they were sent into the field.

There is no denying the practical, immediate value of this; but what I should like to get at is the purely human side of its issuance, in which it is recognized that all the devastating machinery of war — the tons of shells and bullets, the hundreds of ponderous guns and the vast array of men, motors and materials serving them — is dependent upon the work of a few elemental human beings who must face a similar concentration of destructiveness on the part of the enemy and whose energy and powers of endurance must often be severely taxed before they can even begin to do the actual work of battle.

I do not mean that the drink of rum was adopted as a dramatic and empty gesture recognizing this. The tot of rum is an old custom with the British. I do not know how long it has been observed in the army, but the morning grog of His Majesty’s Navy has long been an institution.

But I do mean that the issue of rum at this particular hour illustrates the use of common sense and that the occasion may serve to emphasize the imperative necessity for common sense in the handling of men on a modem battlefield. In the first place, soldiers of today are men not only of common sense but of intelligence and education. In the case of the United States and the principal British colonies, aside from the purely technical and formal knowledge gained at officers’ training schools, representative men from the ranks will match a similar group from among the officers in all branches of human knowledge. This is something that has become true within the last few decades and will be increasingly significant in the future. To fail to take it into account is the same as to refuse to take advantage of the scientific and mechanical developments in the business of war.

These common-sense men are, moreover, in the war for their own ends. They are free agents. In the last analysis, nearly all have of their own accord put aside their accustomed pursuits, to face, of necessity, a disruption of their normal way of life. They are not professional soldiers serving some conqueror for personal aggrandizement. The day of Alexander the Great is past. The soldiers of Attila trusted their leader and sought the hazards of battle because by the outcome they lived. They fought for flocks, pillage, women, for the sake of fighting, and to further the ambitions of their leader, which they in a measure understood and appreciated. They prospered as they were successful. The soldiers of today mistrust their leaders as being fallible, limited creatures much like themselves. They know that the blunders are made by the leaders and that the men pay for them. They recognize this as a necessary condition of modem war, even assuming that a Napoleon is at the head of it. The genius of a Napoleon is lost between headquarters and the days of preparation and the miles of chaos incident to launching and carrying on a battle today. Quick strategy and tactical acumen are resources not always directly available to the G.O.C. These qualities must be exercised largely through hundreds of ready heads on the shoulders of subalterns and sergeants and privates. The general officer who recognizes this and looks to key men all the way through his ranks is in a fair way to commanding his troops. It is the only way. The rhetorical chroniclers of battles must look for other phrases. “Flinging his legions against this wing,” or, “General Blank, perceiving at once the advantage which this maneuver gave him, threw two divisions,” etc., no longer, except in rare cases, have a shred of meaning or applicability.

So far as I know, these phrases have been little used in describing the battles of the late conflict, though if our historians are to match some of our generals, we may well expect them. But General Blank, if he was wise, counted upon the cool heads of Lieutenant Smith and Private Brown, knowing that his legions were not to be flung anywhere, that they would dissolve into a thin straggling line lost in smoke and confusion beyond his reach, and that they would advance as occasion offered, in small groups, by their own resources of courage and skill. He not only counted upon them, but he let them know in advance that he was counting upon them and did what he could to enable them to assume the responsibility in close cooperation with the general plan of battle. This was only to avail himself fully of the resources at his command.

If this sounds ridiculously non-military, that is because the cult of the military is still lost in notions of regulations and orders and obsolete ideas of discipline and methods of exercising control. They have not made the jump from the parade-ground to the battlefield and from the nineteenth century to the twentieth. It always seems to take a year or two of war to get clear of the rubbish and deadwood and make room for the leaders who are alive to the realities of the situation. A few real barrages and the concentration of machine-gun fire that goes on quietly beneath them will do wonders toward silencing the childish orders of the favorites of post commandants’ wives and the armchair theorists recognized through political and social intrigue who manage to find themselves charged with the grave business of conducting a war. This would be all right if these men alone suffered the consequences of their folly. The pity is that they escape.

They are not all politicians. Most of them are honest students of military science fallen into the common error of becoming academic. They lack experience and first-hand knowledge to bring them back to practicalities. But it does seem time that we utilized the high general average of common sense, intelligence and initiative characteristic of the people of these United States. That is exactly what is called for in war today; and men do not become imbeciles and children simply because they have put on a uniform; they still have their native intelligence — and a first interest in the efficient and intelligent conduct of their armies.

Now England is commonly held to be the example par excellence of hide-bound precedent, of dependence upon authority, of acting according to orders, of the complete paralysis of common sense until an order has been secured to enable it to function. This may or may not be true. The little apostles of regulation may have had fairly complete sway and a pretty firmly fixed hold on the military machine. But somewhere in the labyrinth of the British War Office there lived a human genius of common sense. He could not get rid of all encumbrances, but he did succeed in rendering them harmless at critical points and he had a sort of tacit understanding with the men in the field that together they would try to do as well as they could under the circumstances. This genius made use of all intelligent and courageous field officers, and he must have had a few of