One of the few survivors of that “contemptible little army” Frontispiece Garden City   New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1918 Copyright, 1918, by Doubleday, Page & Company All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian...

From Mons to the Marne lies the bloodiest trail of sacrifice in history. In all the records of war, there stands forth no more magnificent and no more melancholy achievement than that of the British regular army, which bled its heroic way in ever-diminishing numbers from the challenge to the check of the initial German sweep upon Paris. It could not hope for decisive victory; it could only clog the wheels of the Juggernaut with lives and lives and lives, sold bravely and dearly. Before a countle

For more than two years now, I have been trying to forget those first months of the war. The months when the Black Watch and other regiments of the immortal “contemptible little army” marched into the unknown against the fiercest, most efficient military power the world, up to that time, had known; the months when hidden enemies struck swiftly mystifying blows with strange weapons, the more terrible because we did not understand them and had never imagined their power and numbers. For more than

Most of the time while we were dragging our exhausted, diminishing numbers ahead of the German wave of shot and steel, I was on scout duty. For a while, I was “connecting file” between the Black Watch and the Munster Fusiliers who were in rear of us and almost constantly in touch with the enemy. I had more than one narrow escape from capture or death. On one occasion the regiment had been deployed to beat off a flank attack. When we resumed the march I was sent back to get in touch with the Fusi

I had about got settled in the stable where I was billeted, when orders came to “stand to.” No more sleep that night. We took the road and left La Grange behind us just as the sun was pinking the sky. It was Sunday, and, although we knew war was no respecter of the Sabbath, we had not been in the field long enough to get the idea quite out of our heads that Sunday, somehow, in the nature of things, was a little easier than other days. When we halted in a ravine at about ten o’clock in the mornin

As we neared Pinon, the sound of artillery fire could be heard, and the inhabitants were all leaving the town in any way that they could. Here I saw further effects of Prussian atrocities. At this spot, a French woman, supporting her mutilated husband as best she could, passed us in a buggy. The sight was awful! His face and body were almost entirely covered with gashes from the Prussians’ bayonets. His wife’s face was as white as death except where three cruel cuts had laid it open. Neither of

As we —the other scouts and I—advanced, firing details, which had been left behind under close cover by the Germans, did a good deal of execution amongst us. The hay-stacks, particularly, gave us a great deal of trouble. More than once, one of them would be disrupted as though by some sort of explosion from the inside, and machine guns would begin spraying our skirmishing lines. So it became an important part of our scouting operations to search all hay-stacks and farm houses. And continually we

We had very little rest after the fight I have just described. We were getting down to the real business of war. It was fighting, and not the incessant retreating, which had been sapping the life out of us for weeks. You must remember, also, the weight that each man carried during all those long wearisome retreats. Each of us had his heavily plaited kilt; his pack containing great coat, flannel shirt, two pairs of socks, waterproof sheet, extra shoes, and towel; his canteen, rifle, entrenching t

Our trenches were pretty effective against rifle fire, but we had not yet learned to make them deep and narrow enough in proportion to protect us against shrapnel, which is not of much use against troops in the present-day trench. Our defence lay in leaning up close against the front wall of the trench, which caused most of the force of the shrapnel burst to go over our heads. One morning I was hugging the wall of the trench as close as I could stick, when a “coal box” burst near by. It tore dow

After the first dressing of my wound, I was sent to our transport station, a short distance behind the lines, being told that in a few days I would be fit for duty again. There was a farm here. By the time I reached the farm house the pain of my wound was terrific. It was like a toothache all over my head and down into my neck and shoulders. Nevertheless, I threw myself onto a pile of straw in the barn and, after tossing about a while, managed to fall asleep. When I awoke it was daylight again,

For a day or two after this we had comparative quiet. Only bursts of shell fire threatened us, but these were so common as to be hardly noticed. The stench of the dead was terrible—worse than we had yet experienced. Men turned sick and were positively useless for hours, many being sent to the base hospital for treatment for their violent nausea. Others developed rheumatic fever from sleeping in the mud and water. Shortly after this, during the night time, we were relieved by an English regiment,

It was still morning when it was reported by one of our look-out men, who had been scanning the boche lines with a pair of field glasses (only his head showing above the top of the trench made for observation purposes), that the Germans were walking about the tops of their trenches in a careless fashion. Naturally some of the last batch of men to join us wanted to have a pop at them, but our officers said no—to let sleeping dogs lie. Most of us peeped over and saw them. Doing so, my eye caught a

After spending a few more days in this last, very warm position, we moved to billets a little way off behind our left flank, and we certainly needed the rest. There was no indication that these billets had been used before by our troops. Jock Hunter and I were assigned to a barn, and you may be sure I was delighted at the prospect of literally “hitting the hay” as the Americans say. As there were chickens running around, even over every part of the thatched house, Jock and I went in search of eg

Our regiment was now shifted from the position where the Germans had tried to drown us out to another section near a place which we afterwards christened “The Glory Hole.” The German lines and ours were very near to each other here. On the night of our arrival we could hear the Huns talking, and after we had settled ourselves in our trenches, we could hear them now and again whistling “Highland Laddie.” It was evident that they knew who we were, as that is the tune to which we “march past.” I wa

We were by no means well acquainted with our new position, and one night shortly after our arrival, two of the men who had been sent out to reconnoitre, were captured by the enemy, who let them go, however, after stripping them to the skin. When they returned they had big bayonet wounds in their hips, and were suffering greatly both from the wounds and exposure. You can imagine our feelings at such wanton cruelty. Previous to this for some time I hadn’t been given any scouting duty and had been

I seemed to awake from a long sleep, only to discover that instead of being in a trench or a billet I was in a hospital; one of the kind made of canvas. There were two great marquee tents, with nurses flitting about quietly—like angels they seemed to me, for the moment. The pain that racked my body was awful. I lay there trying to determine in what part of me the pain was located but it seemed to be all over me. I noticed that either a nurse or an orderly was constantly in attendance at my cot.

On a day in February, 1916—a week prior to the sailing of the S.S. Tuscania , on which I had taken passage to the United States—I had left the office of the Anchor Line and was proceeding up the High Street, of Cowdenbeath (across the river from Edinburgh), bent on an errand pertaining to the preparations for my departure, when I noticed across the way something familiar in the appearance of a tall man in khaki. Twice or thrice I gazed at him, with a sense of dim recollection, and then I went wa

No doubt, if I had been trained in writing rather than in the tactical requirements for service in the British army, I should call this the appendix of my book. I prefer not to do so, having found in my own experience that readers may be inclined to view the appendix in literature as similar to the appendix in surgery—something which is unnecessary. I cannot so regard this chapter. It is to me a component and interesting part of the whole, for it goes to the source of the splendid and unique tra