Part 20 (2/2)
The location of these Headquarters on our side of the line is a constant object of solicitude to the enemy on the other. Very few officers even on our side know where they all are. I had confided to me, for the purpose of my official duties, a complete list of such Headquarters, and the first thing I did, in pursuance of my instructions, was to commit it to memory and then burn it. To find out the enemy's H.Q.--with a view to making them as unhealthy as possible--is almost entirely the work of aeroplane reconnaissance. To discover the number and composition of the units whose H.Q. they are is the work of our ”Intelligence.” Of our Intelligence work the less said the better--by which I intend no aspersion but quite the contrary. The work is extraordinarily effective, but half its effectiveness lies in its secrecy. It is all done by an elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate to say that the ”I”
officers discover the location of the H.Q. of captured Germans by a geological a.n.a.lysis of the mud on the soles of their boots, in the cla.s.sical manner of Sherlock Holmes; but I should be equally indisposed to deny it. There is nothing too trivial or insignificant to engage the detective faculties of an ”I” man. He has to allow a wide margin for the probability of error in his calculations; shoulder-straps, for example, are no longer conclusive data as to the composition of the enemy's units, for the intelligent Hun has taken of late to forging shoulder-straps with the same facility as he forges diplomatic doc.u.ments. Oral examination of prisoners has to be used with caution.
But there are other resources of which I shall say nothing. It is not too much to say, however, that we have now a pretty complete comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to say _De minimis non curatur_.
If ”I” stands for the Criminal Investigation Department (and the study of the Hun may be legitimately regarded as a department of criminology) the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be described as a kind of Metropolitan Police. The P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are the _Censores Morum_ of the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are the _Aediles_.
It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visit _estaminets_, keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his particular district daily, I had never once been stopped or questioned by his police. ”No,” he said quietly, ”they reported you the first day two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions; we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff, and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite a lively time at X----,” which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q.
itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to get into that town--or out of it. As for the ”Society ladies,” of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to a.s.sist you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for traces of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the fifth rib--at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his right hand smartly across the b.u.t.t of his rifle, and by that masonic sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the conversation.
Still, holders of authorised pa.s.ses sometimes lose them, and unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and ”convert” them to their own unlawful uses. The career of these adventurers is usually as brief as it is inglorious; when apprehended they are handed over to the French authorities, and the place that knew them knows them no more.
They are shot into some mysterious _oubliette_. The rest is silence, or, as a mediaeval chronicler would say, ”Let him have a priest.”
We have taught the inhabitants of Flanders and Artois three things: one, to sing ”Tipperary”; two, to control their street traffic; and three, to flush their drains. The spectacle of the military police on point duty agitatedly waving little flags like a semaph.o.r.e in the middle of narrow and congested street corners was at first a source of great entertainment to the inhabitants, who appeared to think it was a kind of performance thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delectation.
Their applause was quite disconcerting. It all so affected the mind of one good lady at H---- that she used to rush out into the street every time she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth gestures with her arms and legs, to the no small embarra.s.sment of the supply columns, the confusion of the military police, and the unconcealed delight of our soldiers, who regard the latter as their natural enemy. Gentle remonstrances against such gratuitous a.s.sistance were of no avail, and eventually she was handed over to the French authorities for an inquiry into the state of her mind.
Drains are looked after by the Camp Commandant, a.s.sisted by the sanitary section of the R.A.M.C. It is an unlovely duty. I am not sure that the men in the trenches are not better off in this respect than the unfortunate members of the Staff who are supposed to live on the fat of the land in billets. In the trenches there are easy methods of disposing of ”waste products”; along some portion of the French front, where the lines are very close together, the favourite method, so I have been told, is to hurl the buckets at the enemy, accompanied by extremely uncomplimentary remarks. In the towns where we are billeted public hygiene is a neglected study, and the unfortunate Camp Commandants have to get sewage pumps from England and vast quant.i.ties of chloride of lime. Fatigue parties do the rest.
The C.C. has, however, many other things to do.
Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a ”chit” to the C.C.:
Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be issued to his office.
A laconic message came back by my servant:
No. 105671A. The Camp Commandant presents his compliments to --------- Mr. M., and begs to inform him that he is not an 2 ironmonger. The correct procedure is for Mr. M.
to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to send in the account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged.
The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply desks and tables--the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them out at the shortest notice--and he could produce stationery, but he drew the line at ironmongery. But his princ.i.p.al task is to let lodgings.
The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as ”transports of delight,” and they can supply you with anything from a field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap.
And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a battalion. Also, he and his deputy a.s.sistants make up casualty lists. It is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one--the transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in England. And there is the mournful problem of the ”missing,” the agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are alive or dead.
It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a chateau used as the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the Front is one vast cemetery--a ”G.o.d's Acre” hallowed by prayers if unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has shown a n.o.ble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of every grave with a view to its preservation.
The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting ”hearsay.” He never prosecutes--that is always the task of some officer specially a.s.signed for the purpose--but he may ”sum up.” Officers are not usually familiar with the mysteries of the Red Book,[29] however much they may know of the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious, inst.i.tuted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and inadmissibility of evidence in the most ”unhealthy” places. Speaking with some knowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and ”went for” the latter, declaring his intention to ”do him in,” as he had, he alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification was, however, not absolutely conclusive--one Prussian guardsman is strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the doubt.
The prisoner gets all the a.s.sistance he may require from a ”prisoner's friend” if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a charge--he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely, justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was as straightforward as it was brief:
I had just been ordered up to the Front. So I stood my friends a dinner; I had a bottle of Burgundy, two liqueurs, and a brandy and soda, and--I am just nineteen.
<script>