To still hold that you're right in the face of armed assertions from
the Hun that you're wrong, requires pride in your regiment, your
division, your corps and, most of all, in your own integrity. No one
who has not worn a uniform can understand what pride in a regiment can
do for a man. For instance, in France every man wears his divisional
patch, which marks him. He's jolly proud of his division and wouldn't
consciously do anything to let it down. If he hears anything said to
its credit, he treasures the saying up; it's as if he himself had been
mentioned in despatches. It was rumoured this year that the night
before an attack, a certain Imperial General called his battalion
commanders together. When they were assembled, he said, “Gentlemen, I
have called you together to tell you that tomorrow morning you will be
confronted by one of the most difficult tasks that has ever been
allotted to you; you will have to measure up to the traditions of the
division on our left--the First Canadian Division, which is in my
opinion the finest fighting division in France.” I don't know whether
the story is true or not. If the Imperial General didn't say it, he
ought to have. But because I belong to the First Canadian Division, I
believe the report true and set store by it. Every new man who joins
our division hears that story. He feels that he, too, has got to be
worthy of it. When he's tempted to get the “wind-up,” he glances down
at the patch on his arm. It means as much to him as a V. C.; so he
steadies his nerves, squares his jaws and plays the man.
There's believing you're right. There's your sense of pride, and then
there's something else, without which neither of the other two would
help you. It seems a mad thing to say with reference to fighting men,
but that other thing which enables you to meet sacrifice gladly is
love. There's a song we sing in England, a great favourite which,
when it has recounted all the things we need to make us good and
happy, tops the list with these final requisites, “A little patience
and a lot of love.” We need the patience--that goes without saying;
but it's the love that helps us to die gladly--love for our cause, our
pals, our family, our country. Under the disguise of duty one has to
do an awful lot of loving at the Front. One of the finest examples of
the thing I'm driving at, happened comparatively recently.
In a recent attack the Hun set to work to knock out our artillery. He
commenced with a heavy shelling of our batteries--this lasted for some
hours. He followed it up by clapping down on them a gas-barrage. The
gunners' only chance of protecting themselves from the deadly fumes
was to wear their gas-helmets. All of a sudden, just as the gassing of
our batteries was at its worst, all along our front-line
S.O.S. rockets commenced to go up. Our infantry, if they weren't
actually being attacked, were expecting a heavy Hun counter-attack,
and were calling on us by the quickest means possible to help them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account