The challenge of the dead : $b A vision of the war and the life of the common soldier in France, seen two years afterwards between August and November, 1920Graham, Stephen
History
The challenge of the dead : $b A vision of the war and the life of the common soldier in France, seen two years afterwards between August and November, 1920
Graham, Stephen
World War, 1914-1918
At Metz-en-Couture is a roadside cemetery. How good that most of the
cemeteries are actually close to the highways, and even automobilists
speeding past will see them, though it be only a blur on the
consciousness. All the crosses will fade into one another as a car
passes them. Here at Metz the Chinese and the Germans are put together
as outcasts from the pens of decency if not from God's grace. But it
will be all one to the man who passes by and does not pause to see. The
pilgrim however will find the graves of the stalwart Guardsmen, and
remember that they met their end saving the day and marching the right
way when the foe had broken through. The whole winter of 1917-18 might
have been very terrible had the Germans gained a great victory here, and
bad as it was the rout of March 1918 might have been complete. As you
walk back from Metz to Gouzeaucourt you figure again the way the enemy
was stopped and his grand potential victory robbed of its crown. In
Gouzeaucourt the Guards took back a hundred and fifty guns. Beyond
Gouzeaucourt Wood they cleared out the machine-gunners. Next day at dawn
the Grenadiers made good the line and together with the Indian cavalry
closed the gap and dug in. The Indians were most happy in their
association with the Guards in victory, and averred that henceforth
December First would always be known as Grenadiers' Day.
Back at Metz the low-flying German airman who with his machine-gun had
been whipping up the panic of the men who had fled was shot down. He was
a young officer of the fearless angry type, terribly mortified at being
taken prisoner. He was put in a cage by himself till one of our runaways
came into the courtyard and began to strike a Charlie Chaplin pose, and
the officer in charge lost his patience and thrust him in with the
German. The German was striding up and down like a lion or tiger, and
the sudden depression of the erstwhile Charlie Chaplin gave to the
latter the gait of an Androcles thrown to a wild beast to be destroyed.
Later in the day German prisoners began to flow along the road from
Gouzeaucourt to Metz in considerable numbers. What was the astonishment
of the "Jerries" to find when they were put into the barbed-wire
enclosures that their neighbours, also enclosed, were British and not
German, and to see the mixed crowd of Old Bills, Labour-men,
artillerymen, infantry, engineers, and even padres and officers mixed
with men. Presently however these were marched out of the cages and
lined up in miscellaneous squads derived from varying units with no
distinction of rank. Rifles were put into their hands and an attempt was
made to use them as a reserve defence in the trenches outside Metz. This
however proved impossible. The disease of panic had gripped their minds,
and at the idea of being sent to fight once more many threw their rifles
down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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