Part 18

Should the German line ever be broken and all that earth-tied, enormous, complicated organization, with guns emplaced and its array of congested ammunition dumps and supply depots, try to move on sudden demand, what added confusion ten thousand cavalry would bring! What rich prizes would await it as it galloped through the breach and in units, separating each to its objective according to evolutions suited to the new conditions, dismounted machine guns to cover roads and from chosen points sweep their bullets into wholesale targets! The prospect of those few wild hours, when any price in casualties might be paid for results, was the inspiration of dreams when hoofs stamped in camps at night or bits champed as lances glistened in line above khaki-colored steel helmets on morning parade.

A taste, just a taste, of action the cavalry was to have, owing to the success of the attack of July 14th, which manifestly took the Germans by surprise between High and Delville Woods and left them staggering with second-line trenches lost and confusion ensuing, while guns and scattered battalions were being hurried up by train in an indiscriminate haste wholly out of keeping with German methods of prevision and precision. The breach was narrow, the field of action for horses limited; but word came back that over the plateau which looked away to Bapaume between Delville and High Woods there were few shell-craters and no German trenches or many Germans in sight as day dawned.

Gunners rubbed their eyes at the vision as they saw the horsemen pass and infantry stood amazed to see them crossing trenches, Briton and Indian on their way up the slope to the Ridge. How they passed the crest without being decimated by a curtain of fire would be a mystery if there were any mysteries in this war, where everything seems to be worked out like geometry or chemical formulae. The German artillery being busy withdrawing heavy guns and the other guns preoccupied after the startling results of an attack not down on the calendar for that day did not have time to "get on" the cavalry when they were registered on different targets--which is suggestive of what might come if the line were cleft over a broad front. A steel band is strong until it breaks, which may be in many pieces.

"Did you see the charge?" you ask. No, nor even the ride up the slope, being busy elsewhere and not knowing that the charge was going to take place. I could only seek out the two squadrons who participated in the "incident," as the staff called it, after it was over. Incident is the right word for a military sense of proportion. When the public in England and abroad heard that the cavalry were "in" they might expect to hear next day that the Anglo-French Armies were in full pursuit of the broken German Armies to the Rhine, when no such outcome could be in the immediate program unless German numbers were cut in two or the Prussian turned Quaker.

An incident! Yes, but something to give a gallop to the pen of the writer after the monotony of gunfire and bombing. I was never more eager to hear an account of any action than of this charge--a cavalry charge, a charge of cavalry, if you please, on the Western front in July, 1916.

In one of the valleys back of the front out of sight of the battle there were tired, tethered horses with a knowing look in their eyes, it seemed to me, and a kind of superior manner toward the sleek, fresh horses which had not had the luck to "go in"; and cavalrymen were lying under their shelters fast asleep, their clothing and accoutrements showing the unmistakable signs of action. We heard from their officers the story of both the Dragoon Guards and the Deccan Horse (Indian) who had known what it was to ride down a German in the open.

The shade of Phil Sheridan might ponder on what the world was coming to that we make much of such a small affair; but he would have felt all the glowing satisfaction of these men if he had waited as long as they for any kind of a cavalry action. The accounts of the two squadrons may go together. Officers were shaving and aiming for enough water to serve as a substitute for a bath. The commander with his map could give you every detail with a fond, lingering emphasis on each one, as a battalion commander might of a first experience in a trench raid when later the same battalion would make an account of a charge in battle which was rich with incidents of hand-to-hand encounters and prisoners breached from dugouts into an "I-came-I-saw" narrative, and not understand why further interest should be shown by the inquirer in what was the everyday routine of the business of war. For the trite saying that everything is relative does not forfeit any truth by repetition.

The cavalry had done everything quite according to tactics, which would only confuse the layman. The wonder was that any of it had come back alive. On that narrow front it had ridden out toward the Germany Army with nothing between the cavalry and the artillery and machine guns which had men on horses for targets. In respect to days when to show a head above a trench meant death the thing was stupefying, incredible. These narrators forming a camp group, with lean, black-bearded, olive-skinned Indians in attendance bringing water in horse-buckets for the baths, and the sight of kindly horses' faces smiling at you, and the officers themselves horsewise and with the talk and manner of horsemen--only they made it credible. How real it was to them! How real it became to me!

There had been some Germans in hiding in the grass who were taken unawares by this rush of gallopers with lances. Every participant agreed as to the complete astonishment of the enemy. It was equivalent to a football player coming into the field in ancient armor and the more of a surprise considering that those Germans had been sent out after a morning full of surprises to make contact with the British and reestablish the broken line.

Not dummies of straw this time for the lance's sharp point, but startled men in green uniform--the vision which had been in mind when every thrust was made at the dummies! This was what cavalry was for, the object of all the training. It rode through quite as it would have ridden fifty or a hundred years ago. A man on the ground, a man on a horse! This feature had not changed.

"You actually got some?"

"Oh, yes!"

"On the lances?"

"Yes."

From the distance came the infernal sound of guns in their threshing contest of explosions which made this incident more impressive than any account of a man buried by shells, of isolated groups holding out in dugouts, or of venturesome soldiers catching and tossing back German bombs at the man who threw them, because it was unique on the Somme. Both British and Indians had had the same kind of an opportunity. After riding through they wheeled and rode back in the accepted fashion of cavalry.

By this time some of the systematic Germans had recollected that a part of their drill was how to receive a cavalry charge, and when those who had not run or been impaled began firing and others stood ready with their bayonets but with something of the manner of men who were not certain whether they were in a trance or not, according to the account, a German machine gun began its wicked staccato as another feature of German awakening to the situation.

This brings us to the most picturesque incident of the "incident." Most envied of all observers of the tournament was an aviator who looked down on a show bizarre even in the annals of aviation. The German planes had been driven to cover, which gave the Briton a fair field. A knightly admiration, perhaps a sense of fellowship not to say sympathy with the old arm of scouting from the new, possessed him; or let it be that he could not resist a part in such a rare spectacle which was so tempting to sporting instinct. He swooped toward that miserable, earth-tied turtle of a machine gun and emptied his drum into it. He was not over three hundred feet, all agree, above the earth, when not less than ten thousand feet was the rule.

"It was jolly fine of him!" as the cavalry put it. To have a charge and then to have that happen--well, it was not so bad to be in the cavalry. The plane drew fire by setting all the Germans to firing at it without hitting it, and the machine gun, whether silenced or not, ceased to bother the cavalry, which brought back prisoners to complete a well-rounded adventure before withdrawing lest the German guns, also entering into the spirit of the situation, should blow men and horses off the Ridge instead of leaving them to retire in good order.

Casualties: about the same number of horses as men. Riders who had lost their horses mounted riderless horses. A percentage of one in six or seven had been hit, which was the most amazing part of it; indeed, the most joyful part, completing the likeness to the days when war still had the element of sport. There had been killed and wounded or it would not have been a battle, but not enough to cast a spell of gloom; just enough to be a part of the gambling hazard of war and give the fillip of danger to recollection.

ENTER THE ANZACS

Newfoundland sets the pace--Australia and New Zealand lands that breed men--Australians "very proud, individual men"--Geographical isolation a cause of independence--The "Anzacs'" idea of fighting--Sir Charles Birdwood--How he taught his troops discipline--Bean and Ross--Difference between Australians and New Zealanders--The Australian uniform and physique--A dollar and a half a day--General Birdwood and his men--Australian humor.

It was British troops exclusively which started the Grand Offensive if we except the Newfoundland battalion which alone had the honor of representing the heroism of North America on July 1st; for people in passing the Grand Banks which makes them think of Newfoundland are wont to regard it as a part of Canada, when it is a separate colony whose fishermen and frontiersmen were attached to a British division that went to Gallipoli with a British brigade and later shared the fate of British battalions in the attack on the Thiepval-Gommecourt sector.

On that famous day in Picardy the Newfoundlanders advanced into the smoke of the curtains of fire unflinchingly and kept on charging the machine guns. Survivors and the wounded who crept back at night across No Man's Land had no need to trumpet their heroism. All the army knew it. Newfoundland had set the pace for the other clans from oversea.

It was British troops, too, which took Contalmaison and Mametz, Bernafay and Trones Woods and who carried out all the attack of July 15th, with the exception of the South African brigade which stormed Delville Wood with the tearing enthusiasm of a rush for a new diamond mine.

Whenever the troops from oversea are not mentioned you may be sure that it is the British, the home troops, who are doing the fighting, their number being about ten to one of the others with the one out of ten representing double the number of those who fought on either side in any great pitched battle in our Civil War. After the Newfoundlanders and South Africans, who were few but precious, the Australians, an army of themselves, came to take their part in the Somme battle.

I have never been in Australia or New Zealand, but this I know that when the war is over I am going. I want to see the land that breeds such men. They are free men if ever there were such; free whether they come from town or from bush. I had heard of their commonwealth ideas, their State-owned utilities, their socialistic inclinations, which might incline you to think that they were all of the same State-cut pattern of manhood; but I had heard, too, how they had restricted immigration of Orientals and limited other immigration by method if not by law, which was suggestive of a tendency to keep the breed to itself, as I understood from my reading.

Whenever I saw an Australian I thought: "Here is a very proud, individual man," but also an Australian, particularly an Australian. Some people thought that there was a touch of insolence in his bearing when he looked you straight in the eye as much as to say: "The best thing in the world is to be an upstanding member of the human race who is ready to prove that he is as good as any other. If you don't think so, well--" There was no doubt about the Australian being brave. This was as self-evident as that the pine is straight and the beech is hard wood.

The Australians came from a great distance. This you knew without geographical reference. Far away in their island continent they have been working out their own destiny, not caring for interference from the outside. To put it in strong language, there is a touch of the "I don't care a rap for anybody who does not care a rap for me" in their extreme moments of independence. It is refreshing that a whole population may have an island continent to themselves and carry on in this fashion.