Papers from Picardy, by two chaplains, the Rev. T.W. Pym and the Rev. Geoffrey Gordon

Front matter

BY TWO CHAPLAINS _

REFERENCE LIBRARY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

2 Park Street, Boston

Preface

THESE papers owe their title to the fact that they were written, for the most part, during the fighting on the Somme in the summer and autumn of 1916. They are, however, the result of experience gained not only there but in other parts of France, in Flanders, and in a soldiers’ hospital at home.

We do not pretend to have written without preconceived ideas. No one who has any settled opinions can seriously make that claim. We write as commissioned officers in the Church of Christ, and are to this extent prejudiced that we have an unshakeable conviction that Christ alone holds the key to the social and individual problems which the war is forcing on our notice. We have, however, sincerely tried to see facts as they really are, and to record them without b vii

Vill PAPERS FROM PICARDY any effort to twist them to suit our theories. If anywhere in these pages we have seemed to state our deductions as though they were incontestable, let the difficulties of writing and revising under the conditions of active service be our explanation and excuse. That such is not our object the many question marks with which these pages are so plentifully besprinkled should afford sufficient evidence. Our purpose throughout has been at all costs to state the truth so far as we have been able to see it, and not so much to offer clear-cut answers and ready-made solutions as to enlist your sympathy and to stir your thought.

Te We RB,

| G. G.

PART I BY T. W. Pym

PAPER I. SOME CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THE VARYING

EFFECTS OF WAR ON THE INDIVIDUAL a

Il. A COMMENTARY ON THE SOLDIER’S ATTITUDE TO WAR . . . : e .

il], A STUDY IN CONTRASTS AND IN THE INFLUENCE

OF REACTION : : , onth banthy IV. DISCIPLINE—AND AFTER? . : : 4 VY. SOMETHING DEFINITE : ; *

VI. POSTSCRIPT: AN EPITOME OF WAR ‘ .

Part II By Geoffrey Gordon

VII. THE CHAPLAIN’S DILEMMA , : : ‘ VIII, SOME PRISONERS : i.

IX. ACTIVE SERVICE : . . : °

PAGE

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107 116

XIU.

XVI.

XVII.

A NIGHT IN THE CRATERS ; .

. IN A REGIMENTAL AID POST . .

WHAT IS TRUTH?

. THE SOLDIER’S CHARACTER: IL ITS FOUNDATIONS

THE SOLDIER’S CHARACTER: II. HOW ARE THESE FOUNDATIONS TO BE PRESERVED AND STRENGTHENED?

A CONFESSION AND A CLAIM : : .

T. W. PYM

SOME CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THE VARYING EFFECTS OF WAR ON THE INDIVIDUAL

PicarDy and the Somme will stand for all time in the history of England as symbols of her children’s valour. My admiration and affection for our men is unending, but others have told and are telling, better than I can hope to unfold, the tale of their glory. Will you, for once, read a book which nearly takes all this for granted ? There are doubtless others besides myself who care for them enough to be willing to go deeper than the surface brightness of their great achievements and their long endurance — to consider those of their virtues not popularly acclaimed. And more than this. For their sake, for the sake of the England of the future, their England as it should be by right, some of us want to examine dispassionately and bring to general notice tendencies and influences of the times which, if $ disregarded, will not make for our men’s truest happiness when they return, nor for the highest welfare of the England that is to be.

By going to the wars, by the offer of themselves in life or death, these men have surrendered themselves to the powerful and, as many hold, evil forces which war brings in its train—of which death may well be considered the least. Some of these influences it is the purpose of these papers to define and estimate in their effect on character and life; but there are reasons why such a definition and such an estimate are beset with difficulties, for the war has produced a rare crop of amateur psychologists. People who before had no particular reason to study the effect, upon themselves or others, of the varied experiences of ordinary life, now meditate and prophesy upon the mental and moral ‘ effects’ of the world’s chaos on classes or on individuals. If the war has served no other useful purpose, it has at any rate harvested the common-sense of Daylight Saving and has stimulated torpid imaginations. So far so good; that people who did not think much have started to think more is satisfactory, but the result of their reflections is sometimes of little practical use in assessing the amount of change that has been wrought. Men and women, of whatever class, have been drawn together ; common motives have linked them in work, vital needs have stripped them of reserve. The newly fledged psychologist, blinking his newly opened eyes, sees in his fellows qualities and tendencies, Virtues or vices which he had not hitherto observed: the roué is brave, the mechanic is intelligent, the duchess is human, and the Socialist patriotic; the private soldier is heroic and yet cute—he can die or he can lie. The man whose eyes have up till now been always closed thinks that all these facts are new and, staggered by the transformations, as he thinks, which war has evolved, he lumps his observations together, classifies his ‘ effects,’ and breaks into song about the future of the State, of politics, or of the Church. He might just as well go to Vesuvius after an eruption and comment on the alterations in the crater, which hitherto he had only known by photographs taken before the eruption from the other side and studied by him upside down; as to change, any correct inferences that he might draw from a subsequent visit to the actual spot would arise from good fortune rather than good sense. There is little of fortune, and still less of sense, in the observations of some of those who have lately gone into the prophesying business, and this is particularly true of their deductions from what they think they see in the soldier. They forget that what is strangely new to the observer is not of necessity a new growth in the observed; they have never read the back numbers of the book they are now studying.

It is not only by those who now open their eyes for the first time that we are in danger of being misled, but also by those who, having for long used their eyesight in one direction only, and perhaps too well, have developed a permanent squint. Many people look to the war to confirm all their pre-war ideas and do not in the least realise that they are doing so. The Socialist has this mental squint—‘' I told you so,’ he mutters : ‘State Control.’ The agnostic squints badly— ‘IT ’ve never met a man who’d been in trenches and remained a believer.’ Many a devoted priest can only see ‘ the immense revival of the religious sense in the face of suffering,’ * the recognition of God’s wrath,’ and so forth. They are like the young man who, from boyhood’s breakfasts onwards, has heard his father crumpling the pages of the same newspaper, wallowing in the shallows of its political bias, and spluttering out over toast and marmalade that such and such a Cabinet Minister ought to be shot. In nine cases out of ten the son goes out into the world unconsciously eager to accept, as true evidence, only those occurrences which coincide with prejudices thus inherited or developed. A severe jolt may be the means of preserving to him intellectual honesty and an open mind; but if there is no jolt, the more intelligent he is the more will he employ his brains to explain and justify rationally that which by no process of reasoning he has already accepted as part of his mental equipment. This habit of mind is, I believe, scientifically termed ‘ dissociation,’ and it operates, we are told, to a greater or less degree in all human thought, not excepting that of philosophers ; even where consciously detected by its victim it cannot be wholly counteracted.

These then are the two difficulties that beset any one who attempts to convey an impression of the marks that Active Service is leaving upon his friends: (1) To avoid jumping to the conclusion that others are really changing or developing, when perhaps only his own previous misunderstanding of them is being removed. (2) To remember that by guarding against prejudice and bias in his own case, and denouncing it in others, he does not automatically become himself impartial. Nor does the writer of these papers admit these difficulties in order to display his own immunity from the taint, but rather, painfully aware of his infection with the disease, to disarm criticism in advance. If there is anything about which I thought I knew something before the war, it was the character, mode of thought, the capacity for both good and evil in the young man of the day. It had been my joy to use such knowledge as I thought I had in the attempt to help him in more than one class of life. Much that I have seen in him during the past two years, much that might be due to his experience at the front, has seemed to me to be merely normal. It would be impossible to say exactly how much of change in him is due to the war. I do not know. In particular cases can be ncted undoubted changes, and these may indicate a more widespread effect than one could dare assume. Where I have been tempted in the following pages to say that ‘such and such an impression has been stamped,’ that ‘so and so will follow,’ I do not mean to dogmatise. Always I have this reservation—my own limitations—in mind. Let the reader form his own conclusions. For again I admit that I have the mental squint of my kind. I wanted to see the war as a purging influence. I believed, and still believe, that suffering should raise and not lower. I hoped that no man would ‘live through’ and return home anything but a better citizen— better not only by reason of past achievement, but in potentiality for the future. Yet I have tried to free these pages from the bias of this desire, this faith and hope; not because of an excessive fear that these emotions may not find fulfilment, but simply that they should not influence the faithful recorder. Religion, if it be true, does not need to be bolstered up with specially selected material. I believe that good will triumph over evil. My experience in these months of war has strengthened, not lessened, my faith in the reality and power of the Spirit of God, but I have honestly tried here not to press an argument to support such beliefs. We are concerned with a statement, not an argument. In token of sincerity in this respect we will start with an incident of some weeks ago, which I have leave to repeat in outline; it could so easily be twisted, with a little imagination, to serve as evidence in a court of special pleading, but we will try and assess it at its probable value in fact.

‘I ’d never thought of that word before, sir; it had never struck me. But as I marched along that road I couldn’t get it out of my mind; it kept coming back. It’s there now.’

The road was that described elsewhere ending in the ‘Coin de Mort,’ flanked by its blazing poppies— Dead man’s Corner ’—Flower of Sleep. The speaker was a sergeant in a certain city battalion. In the early days he had thrown up a very good position, left his mother alone, and joined after making over to her his bank-balance and savings, so that she might not be compelled in any way to change her mode of living. The word which he had mentioned was ‘ Anguish.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘one doesn’t often hear it. In fact, in my mind it has only one connection.’ I pointed to a small unframed picture on my wall, ‘Head of the Christ’ after Leonardo da Vinci. It came to me originally as a Christmas card, and since then in this wandering life is always the first thing to go upin a new billet and the last thing to be taken down on leaving. It goes with me sometimes to the various places where hastily arranged services are held, and helps to form a chancel. It brings there, to me at any rate, something of the atmosphere which it is not always easy to find in barn or cellar. The sergeant went over to it and studied it. ‘ Yes, I thought just the same; now that’s funny, isn’t it !’

He was not a church-goer at home or here, ‘not religious’ as he put it. He happened to be in my room because a friend of mine had found him in a distracted frame of mind and had managed to persuade him that I might be of use. And so I was in the one rodle which is always possible, the rdle of listener. Like countless others in this life, he wanted an outlet; discipline kept him from his officers, as shy pride would have kept him from me unless he had been brought; he couldn’t unburden himself to his comrades, for that, he felt, would be bad for moral; he was suffering too much. His great friend, a mere boy much younger than himself, whom he loved devotedly, had last been seen hanging limp on the German wire like fly on string. For the company had had two ‘ shows’ while the sergeant was on leave, one defensive and the other in attack, and had come out of them no company at all. And he had not been with them—there was pain. Why live when they had gone, the men with whom he had shared enlistment, training, and exile? Why had he ever served with them at all if he might not serve to the end? And while in England he had visited that other home and learned how great was the love there for the boy. He had promised to be father and brother to him and to do much for him—too late; if he had been on the spot things might have gone differently. Here was anguish! How could he write home ? ' What could he say ?

No one could have heard him talk and doubted that in the cry of his soul—‘ This is what anguish means ’—he was suffering the acutest heartache he had ever known, and was realising it as such. There was nothing of the dumb unrecognising suffering which is even more pathetic; his hurt was so intense as to startle him into self-consciousness. And just because he could see himself as a suffering being, he saw for a time the suffering Christ as well. An understanding of the Passion and the Atonement, the Great Love and the Great Sacrifice, flashed upon him; for a time only, because such impressions are not lasting out here and such sorrows pass away. Other anxieties will distract, other suffering will be felt, there will be other people to care for. The scar will of course remain—the remembrance of what anguish was ; and if all this had happened during his first month in the country, and then he had been wounded and gone home for good, Active Service would for ever after have meant just that one grief for him and nothing else.

If any one who has received at regular intervals intimate and perfectly honest letters from any one near the front line will take the trouble now to re-read them in the order in which they were sent, he will see how great is the difference. First impressions, here more even than elsewhere, go deepest. Horrors shock a man because they are unusual, rather than because they are horrible ; when they become a common experience they do not necessarily become less horrid, but they no longer shock; this is to say, they do not, by a merciful providence, create as deep a consciously felt impression the hundredth time as they did the first. I have seen much horror and met much tragedy in this country, but I could not write about it, I do not feel about it now as I did at first. It is not necessarily that people become callous ; it is rather that what first outraged their emotions has had to be accepted as ordinary life ; those upon whose emotions, through fear or anxiety, too great a strain has been placed have broken down and gone away ; the vast majority who remain accept, as normal, conditions and experiences which they know at bottom to be grotesquely unnatural. .

So it may be with that which we call Religious Experience under war conditions. Abnormal occurrences set a man adrift from the ordinary channels of explanation and consolement. He discovers in religion something which he never before felt conscious of needing or capable of understanding. In that state of mind religion steadies and comfortshim. Had hein the middle of a normal life at home experienced a similar shock of sorrow as an isolated event, the effect of the remedy afforded by religion would live on just as—if not just because—the experience which had called it forth stood out in the memory as unique. But in warfare so protracted as this human nature has time to adapt itself to such an extent that the once abnormal becomes, in time, the ordinary. Such an adaptation is ‘ natural,’ unconscious, automatic; no remedy produces it; it just happens; and, generally speaking, the religious sense or the Christian Faith have no part in it; and, after many months of active service, a religion which was once a welcome refuge to outraged emotions may come to be regarded as an intrusion which cannot now be justified. It may even be treated more slightingly—much as a man will despise himself for ducking at the sound of his first bullet nine months ago. That is to put the case at its worst, from the point of view of those who have sincerely at heart the coming of the Kingdom of God in the world. It is not pessimistic, but we must be disillusioned. There are far too many flamboyant assertions that war has turned man to God; such assumptions become blasphemous when they add that the Almighty stage-managed the war with this particular end in view. Our ground for hopefulness should be rather the opportunity which will remain after the war. To real enthusiasm such opportunity ahead is an infinitely keener spur than past achievement— the thought of what the war may enable us to do rather than of what the war has done for us already.

The opinion of ‘ effect’ as stated, even supposing it to be well formed, is a view of the least hopeful aspect and is not intended as a general prophecy. No man can look even once and briefly to the Anguish of Christ as an explanation or palliation of his own, and remain the same ; the old indifference must be weakened in its fortifications. Any man must be, however unconscious of the fact, a better man for having, even once, turned to God in an agony of fear, remorse, or sorrow. And with many this is not unconscious ; often it underlies the utterance of that password into any soldier’s conversation— ‘It makes a man think, this here.’ He does not understand God any more than he understands himself ; he could not work it all out here and now even if he had some one to help him to do sO. But there is a possibility there which did not exist before. And in some cases—they are, I believe, comparatively few—a man has so found God. |

But the unreasoning optimists on the Christian side had best remember that for all of these people the expected revival of religion will not be automatic ; good will not slide out of evil like mince out of a machine. |

SECOND PAPER

A COMMENTARY ON THE SOLDIER’S ATTITUDE TO WAR

A PECULIARLY loathsome day in November was drawing to a close; the weather, of course, was bad, the cold bitter, the trenches deep in muddy glue. German shelling and sniping had added a mental discomfort, and there had been casualties. Somewhere about tea-time a setting sun, cold and grim, flickered for a few minutes over a black sky and a scene of desolation that only Bairnsfather’s pencil could reproduce. A malicious wind heralded the approach of night as two private soldiers sat down on the fire-step over the remains of what had once been a brazier. They were too tired to say much, and then suddenly from one of them came the remark: ‘All points to ’appiness, don’t it, Jim ?’

The cheerfulness which in this form is such a peculiar characteristic of the British soldier that 18 it has become proverbial, and needs to-day no further illustration, yet never ceases to amaze. The unconsciousness of it is the really heroic thing ; they do not know, they do not even think how patient they are; they do not in the least realise, as they ‘stick it out’ month after month, that their cheerful persistence is, in this protracted form, not only foreign to their previous character, but indeed a miracle, to this extent, in human nature at all. This persistence is the same, only more self-conscious, with the young officer—self-conscious because it is in a sense conventional ; class-training demands it of him, and Army form requires him to set an example of optimistic equanimity. But there is often much more behind; living under the conditions described above they often say: ‘You’ve absolutely got to be cheery or you’d go under. You simply can’t afford to be anything else.’ Even when winter is doing its very worst the cheerful attitude is only more marked amongst officers, and with the men there is in bad times less grousing in the trenches and always more song on the march.

Wonderful though this has been, there has appeared, many think, one disadvantage arising out of the courageous cheerfulness of all ranks; that has been the effect of their letters home. Any one who has done much censoring of letters knows how most of the men conceal the discomfort of their lives, the unspeakable sights around them, and the risks they run—referring to the latter in a sufficiently flippant manner to suggest that they are but a distant concern of their own. There are, of course, exceptions: when a man is having a fairly easy time he will be more likely to grouse in his letters, and the terrifying effect of shell-fire and the scenes of carnage in and around Rouen or Havre have produced the most highly descriptive correspondence of the war. With officers the same effort at concealment is absolutely universal. Wife and mother simply must not be allowed to be worried and anxious about their loved ones more than can be avoided. ‘Going home on leave? If you see my people tell them I’m first-rate, having the time of my life.’ It is also one of the rules of convention and refinement that nasty things must be kept from the women; they must not know what a battle is really like; they must be saved from any appreciation of the worst horrors of war. A Territorial private whom I know went home after nine months of very active service. ‘And do you mean to say you have really seen a trench ?’ said his aunt. A devoted mother under similar circumstances said to her officer-son: ‘ Fancy that you ’ve heard enough bullets close enough to be able to describe what they sound like!’

Often, of course, the opposite occurs, and people at home picture their friends in the midst of hardship and pressing dangers when they are having, if anything, rather a pleasant time. But on the whole such remarks as those which I have quoted, incredibly foolish though they sound, are fairly typical and not really so foolish when you come to consider the epistolary pap on which the speakers had been fed. While such ignorance among friends and relations redounds everlastingly to the honour of the soldier who has fostered it, it is nevertheless a disadvantage. In the first year of the war it had its share in blinding the public to the immensity of the struggle, to the horrors of war as it would be in England if it came there, and to the strength and determination of the enemy. It also disguised the true nature of war itself. Humility, consideration for others, good-humoured belittlement of suffering or horror are admirable in their way, but war must not be allowed to masquerade as tolerable, enjoyable, and glorious when it is chiefly cruel and degrading. In spite of letters from the front war's true aspect is gradually being laid bare in all its ghastliness, but one wonders when the Press of the country will give it its right emphasis; perhaps not until war-correspondents are chosen from the ranks of serving soldiers and—putting wife or mother out of consideration—permit themselves in the interests of humanity to describe things whole. Meanwhile the unfailing cheerfulness of our soldiers remains in itself a thing of joy and is, one may be certain, a war development that will live on. In itself patient endur- ~ ance of hardship and adversity was not created by the war; that has merely trained and stiffened what was always there and brought it to a higher pitch.

The same light-heartedness affects the soldier’s attitude to the enemy. Speaking of the English non-commissioned officer and man, I am prepared to maintain against any one that they bear little ill-will. Certainly the hardest veteran could not accuse them of lack of keenness to win the war and to win it by killing Germans; that is the business they are out for, their whole lives for months have been concentrated on nothing else ; it has become their natural existence. But there it ends, and after they get home again they will be found to hate a German, as such, less than they will hate war itself and the people in all countries who make for war and make out of war. Their attitude on the subject is indicated in many ways, chiefly by such remarks as these, made often enough within a hundred yards of the enemy: ‘ Well, I ’spect Fritz wants to get back to blighty and ’is wife and kiddies as much as us chaps,’ or ‘ It’s queer-like trying to knock out a chap as you ’ve never seen.’ Their treatment of prisoners points the same way; when unwounded they are regarded as objects of merriment quite free from malice; our men stand round the cage and toss over cigarettes, partly out of kindness of heart, partly as they would throw buns to bears at the Zoo—for the sheer fun of it, to see whether the prize will be caught or dropped and who will get it. I once passed some

Germans being marched down the road; an infantryman, formerly a mechanic, was with me; his only comment was: ‘ They’re glad enough to be getting out of it, and I don’t blame them.’ There are, of course, many exceptions, and that spirit is not universal, though common enough to be quite typical. No one finds it easy to love his enemies, but people at home who empurple fatly with hatred against the Germans—while calling themselves Christians—should blush, if they can still produce a blush, at the example set them by men fighting cleanly and dying bravely on their behalf. With the officers the attitude varies; but in their mouths the German is rarely described as ‘ Fritz ’—the Christian name —but usually as ‘the Hun’ or ‘the Boche.’ This again is partly conventional; it’s not exactly good form to stand up for the Boche, especially if the speaker or any one else present is known to have lost brother or father at German hands. In part, too, such a designation is an attempt, by artificial means, to stimulate keenness in the speaker or others for a business that nobody likes, which however, to be brought to a successful issue, must be carried on with enthusiasm. All the same, I don’t believe that the General who is ‘dying to get within range of Cologne Cathedral’ would really choose it as a target except for proved military necessity. The attitude of personal antagonism to the enemy is, of course, more noticeable in the senior officers, and age and rank often tell nearly as much in the conversation of the mess-room as they do on the parade-ground.

As for the men, they do not for the most part think out their feelings on the subject, but one who did so made such an impression on my mind that it may be worth repeating (with his full consent) what he said, as far as I can remember it, almost word for word. He was a young private of the new armies, well-educated, and had certainly no apparent cause to love his enemies. ‘Oh, sir! I know I’ve killed one of them! It wassofunny. I was on guard in the front line the other night; and, you know, it’s a big strain when it’s just beginning to get light, and you’re sleepy and tired, and you’ve got your eyes fixed so hard on their wire till all their posts look to be moving about and dancing up and down, and you can’t tell whether it’s men out or not, and fellows sometimes loose off round after round—and it’s only the posts. Well, that morning there was a mist, but all the same I felt certain it was a man I saw moving about and bending down as if he was mending the wire or picking things up; but I wasn’t certain enough to let go, and it seemed a pity to risk frightening him off. But I daren’t wait too long—I was so afraid some one else would see him and get him first, and I wanted him all to myself. And then suddenly the mist kind of drifted away just where he was and I hada shot. I was so excited to get in first that I must have missed him, for he just raised himself up a little and looked round and then went down again; so I had another go, but I took more care this time and he dropped forward a little on to the wire. I don’t know if that killed him, but I fired off round after round into his body—seven or eight I should think; I was so excited I couldn’t stop.. And he was still there some hours later just as I left him. Well, you know, sir, I never thought at the time, I was as pleased as Punch to think I’d got one myself. And then after a few minutes—while I was having breakfast—I cooled down and I suddenly wondered why I’d done it; I don’t mean why I’d killed him—I wasn’t sorry about that—but why I'd felt like that about it. It wasn’t as if I’d any grudge against him, and it was taking him unprepared—though he’d have done the same to me, I know, if he’d had the chance. I suppose it was the sport of it, but it was funny being like that.’