The Square Jaw - free ebook by Henry Ruffin

THE SQUARE JAW

THOMAS NELSON &amp; SONS, LTD 35 &amp; 36 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. EDINBURGH NEW YORK PARIS Price One Shilling...

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THE SQUARE JAW

BY HENRY RUFFIN AND ANDRÉ TUDESQ. Translated from the French. THOMAS NELSON &amp; SONS, 35 AND 36, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. EDINBURGH. NEW YORK. PARIS....

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CHAPTER I.

THE IMPROMPTU VICTORY. The Ancre Front, 13th November. You read the reports. The names of the places that have been taken, the calculations of the gains, the numbers of the prisoners, leave you cold. Words! words! It is on the field of battle, amidst the thunder of the guns and the magic glow of fires, that one should read the bulletins of victory. This evening a heady, irresistible joy took possession of the Army. The prisoners were pouring in. The men were singing in their quarters. Upon a fro

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CHAPTER II.

IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH. Beaumont-Hamel, 15th November. That two-hour tramp through a few kilometres of trenches was a heart-breaking business. We floundered through holes, we were swallowed up in bogs, while the mud that fell from the parapets gradually spread itself over our oilskins. A steel helmet becomes wonderfully heavy after an hour or so, and a dizzy headache soon tormented us, from the constant right-angled turns which we were obliged to make, like so many slaves at a cornmill. B

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CHAPTER III.

THE REAL SUPERMEN. " We are consolidating our positions. " (English Communiqué, 16th November.) Here is a story. Some time ago, on the North bank of the Ancre, in the Beaumont-Hamel Sector, everyone was affected with a curious boredom. Nothing happened: very little artillery fire; not so much as a pretence at an attack. It was a dead calm. The bombs were all asleep. Muscles grew slack. Enthusiasm staled. Boredom, that worst misery of trench life, reigned supreme. One evening this slackness among

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CHAPTER IV.

SURPRISES OF A MOONLIT FROSTY NIGHT. A true Walpurgis Night of heroes and warriors. It is not on the summit of the Brocken that I have witnessed it, but, looking out over the plain of the Ancre, from a tree. This tree, every evening, is wreathed with the fumes of asphyxiating shells. Its woolly streamers of shrapnel smoke are like the foliage around a heraldic crown. As soon as twilight is come, aeroplanes cross the neighbouring lines and attack this tree with their machine-guns. It is treated l

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CHAPTER V.

THE BATTLE REOPENS. 18th November. The Battle of the Ancre, which for a moment had died down, began again this morning, at dawn, with a new violence. The English had only paused just long enough to oil the vast machine, which has now resumed its regular, methodic movements; and the latest news permits us to anticipate a fresh and substantial success. The scene of these last events has been rather different from that which witnessed the English advance of the 12th and 13th of November. This, one

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CHAPTER VI.

ON THE EDGE OF THE FRAY. 19th November. Yesterday was a good day for the English. Our friends were successful on nearly the whole front which they attacked. The only difficulty which they encountered—and this was not serious—was on their left centre; that is to say, to the South of Grandcourt. Thereabouts the ground favoured the defence, for it is cut up into a number of deep gorges, where the Boches had constructed redoubts and "nests" of machine-guns. But, on the other hand, the Canadians did

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EPILOGUE.

THE CHARNEL-HOUSE. 19th November. Evening. On this November Sabbath the belfries of Contay, Warloy, Senlis and a dozen other villages of Picardy are sending forth through the fog their regular summons to vespers. It is very cold, and the snow which fell the other night has become foul mud, in which men, beasts and wagons flounder and splash. The Tommies in their quarters have made a rather more careful toilet than usual, and are now gathered, in some neighbouring field or under some shed out of

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CHAPTER I.

THE WELDING OF FRENCH AND BRITISH. Not all things can be welded together. There are metals which are wholly unsympathetic, and even for those which are not we require the services of the plumber and his solder. It is the glory and the good fortune of the British and French Armies that, from the first day of the war, they have shown themselves fitted—and eager—to become one; and that they have discovered, to this end (and continue daily to employ them), plumbers of the first class and lead in abu

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AUSTRALIA WILL BE THERE.

1st Verse. Chorus. 2nd Verse. Chorus. 3rd Verse....

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CHAPTER III.

BOELCKE'S LAND OF PROMISE. On the 28th of October, six Halberstadters and Aviatiks attacked two English aviators in the neighbourhood of Pozières. During the fight six fresh enemy machines came to the assistance of their friends. At the end of five minutes of furious fighting two German machines collided. Pieces of the machines fell, and one of them descended toward the East. The fight lasted 15 minutes, at the end of which time all the enemy machines were driven off. It is probable that it was

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CHAPTER IV.

THE SQUARE JAW. [A] [A] Of the two articles which follow, the first ("The Square Jaw") was written on the 9th of December, during the crisis caused by the successive resignations of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith. The second ("The Moral of the British Armies") was written on the 19th of the same month, the day after Germany made her official offer of peace. The British soldier does not concern himself with Politics. It is not in his character to do so; moreover, any such conduct is against the

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CHAPTER V.

THE RELIEF. The scene is an old trench of the French first line. It is midday. It is raining. It goes on raining. It has always rained. The sector is fairly quiet, and has been for an hour or so. Tommy sees a chance to write a letter. Here in his dug-out—a miserable shelter which oozes water everywhere—squatted on the straw that becomes filth the moment it is thrown down, he is telling his friends in Scotland all his small sorrows and hopes; he is wishing them "A Happy New Year." Suddenly his pe

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PART III.

THE ARMIES OF THE NORTH. Flat calm on both sides of the Ancre; calm—or something like it—on the Somme. Let us take advantage of this apparent truce to get into rather closer touch with the British Army. By this eight-day tour (though it has seemed, while we have been making it, a kind of intermezzo between two acts of the offensive) we had intended, particularly, to demonstrate to ourselves, by our study of the events and those who have enacted them, the dauntless determination with which our Al

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CHAPTER I.

THE PREPARATION OF THE CANADIANS. We spent the first two days among the Canadians. Let me recall a few of their performances. They sustained, in front of Ypres, the first great gas attack launched by the Germans. During the offensive in Picardy, being sent into the front line on the 15th of September or thereabouts, they stormed Courcelette and Martinpuich, and consolidated their forward positions on one side towards Grandcourt, on the other towards Le Sars. The rest of them kept the enemy conta

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CHAPTER II.

ARRAS, THE WOUNDED TOWN. While I was in the British lines I visited Arras. Everyone knows that since February of this year this ancient town has been included in that part of the front which is held by our Allies. Soldier or traveller, whoever enters the ruins of Arras, is subject to the strictest regulations, which have been imposed for the sake of the security of individuals and the preservation of the general order. The steel helmet is obligatory, as is the gas mask. Numerous notices instruct

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CHAPTER III.

THE GROUND OF HEROIC DEEDS. Last year the ground that we are treading, this cold and rainy December day, saw played out one of the most terrible acts of this terrible war. It shook for weeks together during May and June, 1915, to the thunder of vast opposing artilleries. Thousands of men moved over it and drenched it with their blood. This ground has seen the French Army, in a transport of courage, bind for an instant the wings of victory; it has seen our battalions burst at racing speed over tr

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CHAPTER IV.

A DINNER OF GENERALS. This evening on our return from the lines we found the following invitation: "Dear Sir,—The General in Command will be very happy if you can dine with him at eight o'clock." We were, to tell you the truth, in such a state of dirtiness, so horribly muddy and so tired, that at first we wondered if it was possible for us to accept. But an invitation from a General—a General in Command—amounts to an order. And so we made a quick toilet and betook ourselves to the Head Quarters.

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CHAPTER V.

WAR IN THE BLACK COUNTRY. Trains follow each other every quarter of an hour—endless trains, 60 truck-loads and more, all bearing the mark of five big French companies. Some of these convoys seemed to have been borrowed from a museum of obsolete railways. The couplings rattle, the buffers are out of joint, and the brakes squeak. Others come from Belgium. One can easily see by the repairs that they have undergone all the horrors of war. Others, again, emblazoned with the arms of Essen or Alsace-Lo

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CHAPTER VI.

THE ART OF SAVING. Our hosts were very anxious to show us their Base at Calais, and, the visit being over, we fully realise their reasons. The fact is they have achieved miracles of hard work and organisation, of which they are justly proud. Dare I say that we had not taken full advantage of the port previous to the war? It is possible that in this matter, as in so many others, the war will have taught us useful lessons. Why should Germany have consented to make such bloody sacrifices on the Yse

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CHAPTER VII

"BROTHERS IN ARMS." The Times , through the medium of its distinguished representative with the British Army, Mr. Robinson, has recently published a very laudatory and somewhat flattering article on the attitude of the French soldier and the civil population of France towards the British Expeditionary Force. "It must not be forgotten," said the great journal of the metropolis, "that we are foreigners in France. Thus the spectacle of good-comradeship which we witness every day is altogether honou

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CHAPTER I.

AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL. Yesterday I met the Prince of Wales in the lines. The Prince of Wales! What does that name not say to a Frenchman! It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. A small, soaking rain was falling over the dismal plateau where once stood so many smiling villages and fair woods, now ruined, whose names, immortalised by British valour, must live forever in history. It was close on nightfall. Through the sticky, heavy mud troops and wagons crawled towards the firing line. The

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FORRARD AWAY!

11. A DRAWING IN "PUNCH" INSPIRED BY GENERAL CAMPBELL'S HEROIC ACT. Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of "Punch." All England has heard the tale. The Guards, whom the Colonel left but yesterday to become a General, have presented him with a silver hunting-horn, inscribed, in commemoration of his deed, with an account of it and this glorious motto: "Nulli Secundus." The King has rewarded his magnificent exploit with the rank of General. And the Empire has awarded him unhesitatin

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CHAPTER III.

MIDNIGHT IN THE FRONT LINE. 7th November. "So you knew those people that have just gone by in the carriage, Lovel." "How should I know them?" "Then why did you let them past you?" "It's true, I wasn't strict enough. But they roared out such a G.H.Q. [C] at me that I didn't dare to stop them." [C] General Head Quarters. "Wave your lantern, Lovel. Here's another carriage." So chatted, during this night of 7th November, on the road to Bapaume, two of His Majesty's Tommies. They were two scrubby lit

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CHAPTER IV.

THROUGH THE MINE AREA. In Picardy, November. A nobleman, with blue eyes and the haughty carriage that tells of ancient blood, presented us to that diabolical young creature who is making such a stir in the world to-day, and will make a good deal more before she is done: Mademoiselle Crème de Menthe. Observe the "de." She is a noble of the 1916 creation. Nothing less than a Peer and a Staff Officer might fittingly act as Master of Ceremonies to a young person of such quality. We made our bow with

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CHAPTER V.

THE MENACE OF THE GOLDEN VIRGIN. I have now to tell of the reconquered ground, and I own that the description, which I cannot claim to have invented, more nearly than any other suggests the reality. Indeed, there are not in the French language, nor can there be in any other, for the imagination cannot conceive such things, any words that can give a just idea of so much wretchedness and desolation. So I have thought a score of times, while, during these last days, I have been making my way over t

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CHAPTER VI

"RONNY." This is not a Christmas story. His real name was P——, but his name must not be mentioned on account of the family who mourns for him in a corner of the County of Surrey. We will simply call him "Ronny," as his school friends, and, later on, his brothers-in-arms, used to call him. "Ronny" was barely eighteen years old when war broke out. He was full of spirit, and already had a knowledge of soldiering, so he volunteered immediately, and soon got his commission. His appearance was incredi

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CHAPTER VII.

PIPING OUT THE DAY. 14th November. It is just before sunset—the most impressive moment of the day in these British lines. Now, wherever the British soldiers meet their bands, the following picture may be seen. We were returning from the trenches, a few evenings ago, at about four o'clock. The sky was cloudy; the ground heavy. As the night fell, a cold, penetrating fog enveloped the whole countryside. We were walking thoughtfully along, our minds busy with those impressions of the war which had g

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CHAPTER VIII.

Y GULLY. Between Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt, near the bend which the Ancre makes where it turns to meet the Somme, there is a deep gully, about three hundred yards across, which the Tommies have christened—probably they were a trifle short of words that day—with the last letter but one of the alphabet. It is called Y Gully. Up to the very last fight on the Ancre the German lines ran in front of this gully, to the West. The enemy made use of this most valuable hollow to conceal there his reserv

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CHAPTER IX.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN "NO MAN'S LAND." The setting is not a Biblical one. If, indeed, this cursed spot can possibly recall the Book of Books, we must search the chapter of immortal horrors in the Book of Revelation. No vegetation will grow there within the next ten years; no ghost of a tree or shadow of a house; the moon reveals the troubled earth whose chalky mud is as a festering sore. There is universal destruction, as though a huge tidal-wave, overrunning the plain and the valley, had been stru

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