Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western FrontHornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
History
Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front
Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives; World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Young Men's Christian Associations
The party went out of the frying-pan into heavier fire further back:
'Soon after we had retired to rest the Germans commenced to bombard the
place with high velocity shells from long range.... A Lieutenant in our
hut went to the door, but reeled back immediately with a shattered arm.
A Corporal outside received a nasty wound in the shoulder. We set to
work bandaging the wounds of these men and making them comfortable while
others went to obtain a conveyance. There was no shelter, so after the
wounded were safely on their way to a C.C.S. we lay down in our
blankets, considering it as easy to be shelled in the warm as standing
in the cold'--more wine that needs no printer's bush. Later, he relieved
the leader of a very hot hut indeed, where he had for colleague 'one who
was calm in the hour of danger.' Here the congenial pair 'were able to
carry on for four days, when the order came for us to evacuate. We
distributed our stock of goods to the soldiers, then closed up. That
night we lay in our blankets counting the bursting shells around us at
three shells per minute.' On their arrival in our common port, naturally
not before, 'the effects of the gas at ---- began to make themselves
felt, and I was ordered by the Medical Officer to take a week's complete
rest.' One wonders if a rest was better earned in all those terrific
days.
The document from which I have been quoting is only one of many placed
at my disposal. It is typical of them all, exceptional solely in the
telling simplicity of the narrator. The writer was not our only minister
who came through the fire pure gold; he was not even the only Baptist
minister. One there was, the gentlest of souls, whose heroic story I may
yet make shift to tell, though it deserves the hand of Mr. Service or of
'Woodbine Willie.' Such were the men I had the honour of working with
last winter, and of such their adventures as against the personal
experiences it was necessary to recount first or else not at all. I
confess they make my Rest Hut look a little too restful as I set them
down; for there we were wonderfully spared the tangible horrors of the
situation; but many of these others, as little used to bloodshed as
ourselves, had left a shambles behind them, and looked upon the things
that haunt a mind.
And yet, as I began by saying, not a man of them showed shaken nerves,
or what mattered more to those of us who had seen less, a shaken faith.
Therein they were not only worthy of the men they had served so
devotedly to the end, but of the sublime tradition it was theirs to
uphold. It was a great matter that there should not have been one heart
among us so faint as to affect another, that we should have carried
ourselves at least outwardly as I think we did. But to some of us it
seemed a yet greater matter, in the days of anti-climax and reaction now
in store, that those to whom we were entitled to look for spiritual
support did not fail us in a single instance.
THE REST CAMP--AND AFTER
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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