Letters from France

C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean

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• Publié par: nusher
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Letters from France, by C. E. W. Bean This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Letters from France Author: C. E. W. Bean Release Date: May 14, 2006 [eBook #18390] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS FROM FRANCE*** E-text prepared by Elaine Walker, Paul Ereaut, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) AUSTRALIANS WATCHING THE BOMBARDMENT OF POZIÈRS Their mates were beneath that bombardment at the time Letters from France BY C. E. W. BEAN War Correspondent for the Commonwealth of Australia WITH A MAP AND EIGHT PLATES CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1917 To those other Australians who fell in the Sharpest Action their Force has known, on July 19, 1916, before Fromelles, these Memories of a Greater, but not a Braver, Battle are herewith Dedicated PREFACE [Pg vii] These letters are in no sense a history—except that they contain the truth. They were written at the time and within close range of the events they describe. Half of the fighting, including the brave attack before Fromelles, is left untouched on, for these pages do not attempt to narrate the full story of the Australian Imperial Force in France. They were written to depict the surroundings in which, and the spirit with which, that history has been made; first in the quiet green Flemish lowlands, then with a swift, sudden plunge into the grim, reeking, naked desolation of the Somme. The record of the A.I.F., and its now historical units in their full action, will be painted upon that background some day. If these letters convey some reflection of the spirit which fought at Pozières, their object is well fulfilled. The author's profits are devoted to the fund for nursing back to useful citizenship Australians blinded or maimed in the war. C. E. W. BEAN. CONTENTS CHAPTER PREFACE 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. A PADRE WHO SAID THE R IGHT THING TO THE FRONT THE R OAD TO LILLE THE D IFFERENCES THE GERMANS THE PLANES THE C OMING STRUGGLE: OUR TASK IN A FOREST OF FRANCE IDENTIFIED THE GREAT BATTLE BEGINS THE BRITISH—FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE THE D UG -OUTS OF FRICOURT THE R AID POZIÈRES AN ABYSM OF D ESOLATION POZIÈRES R IDGE THE GREEN C OUNTRY TROMMELFEUER THE N EW FIGHTING PAGE vii 1 7 21 28 36 43 49 57 64 71 77 86 92 101 111 116 123 127 136 THE FIRST IMPRESSION—A C OUNTRY WITH EYES 14 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. ANGELS' WORK OUR N EIGHBOUR MOUQUET FARM H OW THE AUSTRALIANS WERE R ELIEVED ON LEAVE TO A N EW ENGLAND THE N EW ENTRY A H ARD TIME THE WINTER OF 1916 AS IN THE WORLD'S D AWN THE GRASS BANK IN THE MUD OF LE BARQUE THE N EW D RAFT WHY H E IS NOT "THE ANZAC" 143 151 157 168 175 181 189 197 203 209 218 223 229 LIST OF PLATES AUSTRALIANS WATCHING THE BOMBARDMENT OF POZIÈRES Frontispiece FACING PAGE SKETCH MAP "TALKING WITH THE KIDDIES IN THE STREET" "AN OCCASIONAL BROKEN TREE-TRUNK " N O MAN'S LAND ALONG THE R OAD TO LILLE THE TRENCHES HERE HAVE TO BE BUILT ABOVE THE GROUND IN BREASTWORK A MAIN STREET OF POZIÈRES THE C HURCH POZIÈRES THE WINDMILL OF POZIÈRES THE BARELY R ECOGNISABLE R EMAINS OF A TRENCH 1 12 16 16 26 30 112 112 140 140 THE TUMBLED H EAP OF BRICKS AND TIMBER WHICH THE WORLD KNOWS AS 160 MOUQUET FARM "PAST THE MUD-H EAPS SCRAPED BY THE R OAD GANGS " 160 [Pg 1] Rough sketch showing some of the German defences of Pozières and the direction of the Australian attacks between July 22 and September 4 1916. (From Pozières to Moquet Farm is just over a mile.) LETTERS FROM FRANCE CHAPTER I A PADRE WHO SAID THE RIGHT THING France, April 8th, 1916. The sun glared from a Mediterranean sky and from the surface of the Mediterranean sea. The liner heaved easily to a slow swell. In the waist of the ship a densely packed crowd of sunburnt faces upturned towards a speaker who leaned over the rail of the promenade deck above. Beside the speaker was a slight figure with three long rows of ribbons across the left breast. Every man in the Australian Imperial Force is as proud of those ribbons as the leader who wears them so modestly. Australian ships had been moving through those waters for days. High over one's head, as one listened to that speaker, there sawed the wireless aerial backwards and forwards across the silver sky. Only yesterday that aerial had [Pg 2] intercepted a stammering signal from far, far away over the brim of the world. "S.O.S.," it ran, "S.O.S." There followed half inarticulate fragments of a latitude. That evening about sundown we ran into the shreds of some ocean conversation about boats' crews, and about someone who was still absent —just that broken fragment in the buzz of the wireless conversation which runs around the world. A big Australian transport, we knew, was some twelve hours away from us upon the waters. Could it be about her that these personages of the ocean were calling one to another? Days afterwards we heard that it had not been an Australian or any other transport. Somewhere in those dazzling seas there was an eye watching for us too, just above the water, and always waiting—waiting—waiting—. It would have been a rich harvest, that crowded deck below one. If the monster struck just there he could not fail to kill many with the mere explosion. But I don't believe a man in the crowd gave it a thought. The strong, tanned, clean-shaven faces under the old slouch hats were all gazing up in rapt attention at the speaker. For he was telling them the right thing. He was not a regular chaplain—there was no regular padre in that ship, and we [Pg 3] were likely to have no church parade until there was discovered amongst the reinforcement officers one little subaltern who was a padre in Tasmania, but who was going to the front as a fighting man. We had heard other padres speak to troops on the eve of their plunging into a great enterprise, when the sermon had made some of us wish that we only had the power and gift to seize that wonderful opportunity as it might be seized, and have done with texts and doctrines and speak to the men as men. Every man there had his ideals—he was giving his life, as like as not, because, however crude the exterior, there was an eye within which saw truly and surely through the mists. And now when they stood on the brink of the last great sacrifice, could he not seize upon those truths—? But this time we simply stood and wondered. For that slip of a figure in khaki, high up there with one hand on the stanchion and the other tapping the rail, was telling them a thousand times better than any of us could ever have put it to himself exactly the things one would have longed to say. He told them first, his voice firm with conviction, that God had not populated this world with saints, but with ordinary human men; and that they need not fear [Pg 4] that, simply because they might not have been churchgoers or lived what the world calls religious lives, therefore God would desert them in the danger and trials and perhaps the death to which they went. "If I thought that God wished any man to be tortured eternally," he said, "to be tortured for all time and not to have any hope of heaven, then I would go down to Hell cheerfully with a smile on my lips rather than worship such a being. I don't know whether a man may put it beyond the power of God to help him. But I know this, that whether you are bad or good, or religious or not religious, God is with you all the time trying to help you. "And what have we to fear now?" he went on, raising his eyes for a moment from the puckered, interested brown foreheads below him and looking out over the shimmering distant silver of the horizon, as if away over there, over the edge of the world, he could read what the next few months had in store for them. "We know what we have come for, and we know that it is right. We have all read of the things which have happened in Belgium and in France. We know that the Germans invaded a peaceful country and brought these horrors into it, [Pg 5] we know how they tore up treaties like so much paper; how they sank the Lusitania and showered their bombs on harmless women and children in London and in the villages of England. We came of our own free wills—we came to say that this sort of thing shall not happen in the world so long as we are in it. We know that we are doing right, and I tell you that on this mission on which we have come, so long as every man plays the game and plays it cleanly, he need not fear about his religion—for what else is his religion than that? Play the game and God will be with you—never fear. "And what if some of us do pass over before this struggle is ended—what is there in that? If it were not for the dear ones whom he leaves behind him, mightn't a man almost pray for a death like that? The newspapers too often call us heroes, but we know we are not heroes for having come, and we do not want to be called heroes. We should have been less than men if we hadn't." The rapt, unconscious approval in those weather-scarred upturned faces made it quite obvious that they were with him in every word. In those simple sentences this man was speaking the whole soul of Australia. He looked up for [Pg 6] a second to the wide sky as clear as his own conscience, and then looked down at them again. "Isn't it the most wonderful thing that could ever have happened?" he went on. "Didn't everyone of us as a boy long to go about the world as they did in the days of Drake and Raleigh, and didn't it seem almost beyond hope that that adventure would ever come to us? And isn't that the very thing that has happened? And here we are on that great enterprise going out across t