Part 12

“Nothing could be more touching, and often at the same time funnier, than meeting men past military age who, sometimes for the sake of their boys serving, had slipped into the ranks, mentally folding down a corner of their birth-certificate over the date, and salving their consciences, as did one, who said to me, ‘I told them I was thirty-four—but I did not say on what birthday!’ I remember one old Scot, who could scarcely move, telling me, ‘I doot I’ll hae to get oot o’ this, an’ awa’ hame. Thae rheumatics is no good in the trenches; and they’re girnin’ at me again.’ Of course, he had ‘a laddie lyin’ up yonder,’ and a nephew, and ‘a guid-sister’s brither,’ and so on, like the rest. And, of course, if it were not for these pains he would be as good as ever he was! Some time later I met him in the rain, and asked how he felt now. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I’m just fine the day. I seen my youngest laddie gaun up, and I’d a word or twa wi’ him. I’ll be writin’ his mither the nicht aboot it. He was lookin’ grand. It was fine to get a roar frae him in the by-gaun.’

“I called on one old woman at home, and she told me that her husband had only the previous day, which was his birthday, gone off to France. ‘Eh,’ said she with unction, ‘he’s a good man, my man. I often think I was a lucky woman to have sic a man. D’ye ken—he never told a lie!’ ‘And yesterday was his birthday?’ I inquired. ‘And how old was he?’ ‘He was fifty-eight,’ was her answer. But when I asked how this modern rival of George Washington had got into the army with such an age, she innocently replied, ‘Ye see, he said he was thirty-twa.’

“How these elderly men endured for any length of time all the discomforts at the front was beyond understanding. They were, of course, frequently caught, when youth was more able to skip nimbly out of the way of death. The little, shell-swept graveyards at the front got many of them very soon.

RUNNERS AND M.P.’S

“I spoke elsewhere, some time ago, of some of the forgotten and overlooked departments of our army. There are plenty such, of course. But one cannot help recalling amongst them the battalion runners, who carry messages over No Man’s Land, or anywhere, from post to post, when air and earth are filled with hissing death, and who also act as guides up to the trenches. They are absolutely fearless. This type varies from the gaunt, silent figure, that stalks before you like an Indian through the dark, to the garrulous youth who talks all the time over his shoulder as he goes. One of the latter was leading up our men, and the colonel said to him, ‘I hear that these dugouts are wretched water-logged holes.’ ‘Deed, they are that,’ replied the guide. And then, gently, as if on a tender afterthought, ‘D’ye ken, sir, I’m often vexed for you; for I’m perfectly sure that you’re accustomed to something better than yon at home!’

“Another is the military policeman, who controls and guides the traffic at the cross-roads, and where there is danger of shells falling, in such places as the square at Ypres. There, amongst evidences of steady peril, stands this quiet man with the red band on his arm; and he steps forward to warn you that it is not safe to be there! I cannot forget one road, when we were moving up to the front. The stream of life flowing on towards the fighting area was like the Strand in London at its busiest. The policeman with uplifted hand was as powerful there as at home. In a moment, at the signal, limbers, guns, motor-lorries, ambulances, mounted men, and marching infantry stood motionless till permitted to go on again.

“The directions we got one day from an Irish policeman were unforgettable. He said, ‘It’s quite easy, your honor. You see, when you go into Albert, you don’t go into it at all. But you turn to the right, keeping well to the left all the way.’ We thanked him, and trusted to Providence, as we are apt to do where there is nothing else that can be done; and, following our directions in a general way, we reached our place in safety!

“Again, you will find, right up behind the front, the roadman busy, coolly filling up holes that shells have made, and behaving just as though he were working on a stretch of the Trossachs, or patching up the rut-worn tracks that the rain has damaged along by Loch Hourn.”

Of the airmen flying their graceful, birdlike craft, he says: “There can be no braver hearts than those. Many a time we looked up at them, sailing overhead, and wondered; and the roughest Tommy sends something like a prayer with them as they go.”

ENGLAND’S INDIAN WARRIORS

Who Made Up the Indian Army; And Some V. C. Heroes

In December of the first year of the war, a letter came to the Indian post-office in London with this address, written in the topknotted Marathi character, and hence perfectly incomprehensible to every one but the Jat orderly who read it:

“In the land of the European War The country of the King of France For my beloved son, the Sepoy Khundadad Khan And the hand of any who bears this to him shall be that of a gentleman.”

It was an extraordinary epistle to look at, very thick, and its envelope was an old official one that had been carefully ungummed and refolded wrong side out. And it had come from a tiny village on the banks of the Jhelum River, far away in India. But what was more extraordinary still, its owner received it that very day. For Khundadad Khan had become a very great man indeed, and his name was fully as well known in London then, as ever it had been in his native village. Lying in the Kensington hospital, he stroked his long black curly beard, the exact color of his hair, and murmured, as he fingered the bulky contents of the letter (a parchment verse from the _Koran_ tied up in silk with a dried serpent’s fang), “Oh, yes, it is a very good tawíz—charm—as such things go, and will no doubt keep off many demons. But the King-Emperor has given me a better one, is it not so, my friend?”

[Illustration:

© _American Press Association._

Second-Line Gurkhas Coming Up

From whatever tribe they came they proved themselves worthy to fight in any army of Europe, as the “V. C.’s” awarded to the members of the Indian army show. The photograph shows the second line advancing amid shell fire to the reinforcement of the first line at captured German trench.]

“Undoubtedly, oh son of a most high excellence,” replied the little brown orderly respectfully, in Hindustanie. And it was so. For the king had given him the highest military honor of Great Britain, the V. C., the first ever bestowed upon a member of the Indian Army. What he had done to win it sounds like many another brave deed recounted of the men in the Great War. There is a similarity even in brave deeds. He had remained in a trench, firing a Maxim, after his British captain and all the men with him were killed or wounded, holding back the Germans until he, too, fell, severely wounded, and they passed on over his body. But the Germans had been held back, and that was the important point.

THE BROWN MEN

It was in August that the brown men first took ship at Calcutta and Bombay, and, leaving the sound of temple bell and muezzin, and commending themselves, no doubt, to Ava Ardu Sur Jasan, the angel presiding over the sea and great voyages, sailed away under the British Jack to fight for the Empire in a land they had never seen. They reached the Western front in September, and after a scant two weeks’ rest, were thrown in beside the almost exhausted British in the flat mud-country between Givenchy and Neuve Chapelle. The force consisted of about 50,000 British and 65,000 native Indians, led by white officers, and with native officers to act as go-betweens. It was the first time, since the Moors had conquered Spain, long before Columbus sailed for America, that brown men and white had engaged in a death-grapple on European soil. But these brown men were from a continent, not a single nation.

There were little Gurkhas from around Nepal, stout and muscular, with high topknotted and slant eyes like Chinamen, grinning like terriers from behind British steel. Their great friends, the Scotch, say they can see objects and detect sounds which are imperceptible to other people. And though they trot along contentedly enough with their rifles in trenches that are sometimes too high for them, their favorite weapon is their own sickle-shaped knife, the _khukri_. This they can either hurl or use at close range, in which latter case, we are told, it makes a sound like the cutting of fresh lettuce. Their friendship with the huge Scotchmen seems to come from a certain like-mindedness on the battlefield. It was a regiment of Gurkhas (the 4th) that on the terrible night of the nineteenth of December supported the Highland Light Infantry in gaining the foremost trench along the Bethune-La Bassée Road. But the little brown men held the trench, while the gallant Lieutenant Anderson, not content with this, rushed on with his Highlanders, shouting, “We are going to take Chapelle St. Roch!” He and his men passed on into the darkness—and were never seen again.

There were long, athletic Sikhs from the land of the Five Rivers. The Sikhs’ knives are straight, for they are tall, brave men who let their hair grow, and who usually pray before fighting. Their knives are two-edged, and they carry on their other side a comb, as is likewise enjoined by their religion. Under Ranjut Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, they once carved for themselves an empire from the Sutlej to the Kabul River, and their greatest ambition even now is for one of them to be known as “Singh” (“Lion”) among his countrymen. This high honor one of them attained, together with the Indian Order of Merit, in the spring drive around Ypres. It happened that a young English lieutenant, J. Smyth, was ordered to supply ammunition to a company farther forward. In the course of the fighting, he found himself in an unconnected trench. Therefore, selecting fifteen Sikhs, he started forward with bombs in boxes, which they carried among them. Only three Sikhs were left unwounded, when finally, still under heavy direct fire, they conceived the idea of breaking up the boxes and carrying the bombs the rest of the way in their arms. One more Sikh fell dead before they reached their objective and delivered the bombs to their hard-pressed companions.

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

First Lieutenant James M. Symington

_2nd Division, 23d Infantry, 1st Battalion._

On June 6, 1918, near Château-Thierry, he voluntarily and outside of his regular duty rushed in front of the firing line and reorganized his men, leading toward the proper objective in the face of a barrage, changing a small reverse into a success.]

The great bravery of the English officers of the Indian Army, and the enormous casualties among them—Captain Paris, Lieutenant Hayes-Saddler, Major Graham White, good English names innumerable—is part of the story of the Indian Army. It is said that their white skins among the dark faces of their men rendered them an easy mark to the German gunners. And their loss was graver for their troops than that of most officers, for each Englishman in command is obliged to know several of the innumerable dialects of India, and as there remained fewer and fewer men in command who could speak both English and the native tongues, the Indian troops became at times almost isolated.

And there were men from tribes less well known: the Gurhwals, a comparatively new regiment, who proved their mettle at “the Indian Neuve Chapelle.” This was an engagement in November, not to be confused with the later battle of Neuve Chapelle, where the Indian troops actually gained the town, but were obliged to fall back, because of the lack of adequate support. Then there were the Pathans, who shoot like the Leatherstockings, and look, it is said, not unlike him, with their blue eyes and brown hair and their muscular frames. They are the fairest of the native Indians. Then there were the Rajputs, who have been the great gentlemen of the hills for many hundreds of years. Some of them were not subjects of the King of England at all, but citizens of the Feudatory States of India, who came down from their mud huts and mountain fastnesses to make the grand tour, as it were, and fight with the cunning implements of the white man.

WINNERS OF V. C.’s

From whatever tribe they came, however, they proved themselves worthy to fight in any army of Europe, as the V. C.’s awarded in the course of the war to the members of the Indian army will show. From G. A. Leask’s book, _Heroes of the Great War_, we summarize a few of their exploits, but many must go unnoticed here:

The second Indian V. C. hero of the first year of the war, says Mr. Leask, was also one of the bravest. Naik Darwan Sing Negi, 1st Battalion 39th Gurhwal Rifles, gained his reward for great gallantry on the night of November 23-24, 1914, near Festubert.

The 1st Battalion 39th Gurhwals are recruited from that portion of the Himalayas lying within territory immediately west of Nepal, known as Gurhwal; and Naik, like most of the sturdy recruits drawn from this neighborhood, spent his boyhood herding his father’s sheep and goats on the bleak uplands and glacier valleys, often alone for weeks on end.

One of the fiercest battles of the war took place around Festubert in the La Bassée district. On November 23rd the Germans made a determined attack upon some trenches near Festubert, held by the Indian corps. A counter-attack was organized during the night of the 23rd-24th, as our men were very hard pressed. In this great onslaught the 39th Gurhwal Rifles, all hardy warriors like Darwan Sing Negi from the northern hills, took a leading part. They leaped over the parapet with fixed bayonets, their faces set and grim. With irresistible dash they advanced to the captured trenches and drove the enemy off with terrible loss.

Darwan Sing Negi received two severe wounds in the head and in the arm, but refused to give in. He led the way round each successive traverse, and we can imagine the terror he inspired in the hearts of the Germans when they saw this tall, fierce Indian hero, with white turban gleaming in the darkness, his eyes afire, advancing upon them with the bayonet. Although fired at by bombs and rifles at the closest range, nothing could daunt this fearless fighter. By his splendid courage and powerful arm he practically cleared the trench himself and so saved a serious situation. The fighting went on all the next day, but the heroic deed of Darwan Sing Negi on the previous night had averted the worst of the danger. He was decorated by the King just before his Majesty left France on December 5, 1914.

THE JEMADAR

The next month, April, saw the winning of another V. C. by an Indian officer. He was Jemadar Mir Dast, of the 55th (Coke’s) Rifles, though he won his distinction when he was attached to the 57th (Wilde’s) Rifles, both belonging to Indian Frontier Force.

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Sergeant Joseph H. Stowers

_42nd Division, 167th Infantry, Machine-Gun Company_

He was cited for rushing into the open under fire January 2, 1918, through an area flooded with poisonous gas, to the assistance of a wounded comrade who was lying in an exposed position. He brought the wounded man back safely in his arms.]

The jemadar—corresponding to our lieutenant—had already distinguished himself before coming to Europe to fight for his King-Emperor. He possesses the coveted Indian Order of Merit for gallant services on the Indian frontier while acting as guardian of the northern boundary.

During both battles of Ypres the Indians fought magnificently. After the enemy’s poison-gas attack had made a temporary dent in the British line in the Ypres area, Sir John French ordered the Lahore Division of the Indian Corps, to which Mir Dast’s regiment was attached, to be moved up and placed at the disposal of the Second Army.

A few days later, this corps, supported by the British cavalry, was pushed up into the front firing-line. The time had come for the British to assume the offensive. Fighting with the French on one of their wings, the Indians were successful in pushing the enemy back some little distance toward the north. Again the Germans let loose their poison gas, and rendered further advance impossible. Such was the position on April 26th.

The Indians fought with determination to carry the German positions. A formidable series of trenches had to be assaulted in order to dislodge the enemy and so relieve the pressure on the rest of the line. Jemadar Mir Dast got his men ready and was waiting to advance. When the order was given to dash from the trenches, Mir Dast found himself detailed off to remain with his platoon in reserve. The others, advancing by short rushes, reached the crest of the first slope without a check, although a number fell by shell fire. On reaching the crest, however, the line came under a terrific machine gun and rifle fire. Whole swathes of men fell as if a scythe had been drawn across their legs. In spite of this, the line pressed on.

Then came the dramatic sequel. The Germans suddenly released their gas. Although the French Colonials were the chief sufferers, the Indian troops were affected by it. The poor fellows were totally unprovided with any form of protection against this devilish device, and were falling fast, being at the same time under a hail of machine gun fire. No troops could have withstood the terrible conditions, and the line was forced to give way.

Jemadar Mir Dast, from his trench, had seen the oncoming poison cloud, and noticed the retirement of a part of the line. He had one of two alternatives presented to him. Either he must retire in conformity with the rest of the troops, or endeavor to get his men to stand firm and resist the attack. Mir Dast decided to remain.

STOOD THE BRUNT

Behind the dense volumes of gas and with ceaseless pointblank fire, the Germans approached nearer and nearer. Undaunted in the trying ordeal, Mir Dast remained firm, and collected all the men available, among whom were many who were recovering from the effects of gas. So many British officers had been killed that there was no one left to lead but himself. He therefore assumed command of the forces he had collected, and kept the men together until ordered to retire, all the while holding up the oncoming Germans with rifle fire.

After dusk, Mir Dast left the trench with his small force. During this retirement, he picked up many men who were in the successive lines of trenches by which he passed, and brought them back to safety.

Throughout the attack, the resolute conduct of Mir Dast was beyond praise. As the little band wended its way to the rear he encouraged each man individually by his cheery words and courageous example. He saw an officer lying wounded, and at great risk went and brought him to cover. A few yards farther on he made out the writhing figure of a gassed Indian officer. In spite of a hot rifle fire the intrepid jemadar made for him, and, with assistance, got the suffering officer out of the zone of fire. Then a second British officer was observed. The jemadar, knowing every minute was precious if he himself was to escape the fire and gas, stopped once again to perform his heroic work of rescue.

In this way during the retirement the gallant Indian soldier brought in no less than eight wounded British and Indian officers. He was exposed in doing so to a very heavy fire, and was himself slightly wounded. Had he not shown such conspicuous bravery these eight men would have died on the field. Mir Dast not only received bullet wounds, but was rendered very weak through the effects of the German poison gas.

The gallantry of Mir Dast, as well as the behavior of the whole division at the second battle of Ypres, added yet another proud page to the record of the Indian army.

The jemadar, when well enough to be moved, was sent to England, and there received from the hands of the King-Emperor the V. C. he had so deservedly won.

He was much affected by the King’s praise and said afterwards, “What did I do?—nothing, only my duty; and to think that the great King-Emperor should shake me by the hand and praise me. I am his child.”

It must be remembered that India’s service in the war was entirely voluntary.

A LIVELY INTRODUCTION

An Ambulance Man’s First Twenty-four Hours at the Front Well Diversified

In a letter to his father, Dr. John B. Sullivan of Brooklyn, N. Y., an aid with the American Ambulance Field Service in France, Eugene Sullivan, who got quickly into the thick of things, tells the incidents of his first day where the Germans were busy. The letter appeared in the Brooklyn _Eagle_ as follows:

“Well, after being assigned to section ... we went immediately to the front by going to ..., base of sector, and arriving there were picked up by section chief and then brought to section headquarters. Next morning, at eight, was sent out as aid to learn roads, stations, _postes de secours_, etc. First station at.... Arriving there I expressed my disappointment, because everything looked so quiet, except for the village, which, by the way, at one time must have been lovely, but Germans had destroyed everything—every single house and building—only a few houses had walls standing. At the improvised relay station, or _poste de secours_, I left the ambulance and strolled to the top of a hill.