The word ‘horror’ has become inseparable from contemporary judgement of the First World War, but it is too glib an appraisal. In many years of conversing with former soldiers I can say with perfect honesty that I have never heard the word ‘horror’ on their lips, though many of the experiences they spoke of were indeed horrific. A distinguished military historian, Sir John Fortescue, who was also librarian at Windsor Castle and author of the monumental History of the British Army, wrote as early as 1914, ‘We are too much inclined to think of war as a matter of combats, demanding above all things physical courage. It is really a matter of fasting and thirsting; of toiling and waking; of lacking and enduring; which demands above all things moral courage.’ Four years later, despite the ghastly effects of modern weaponry in the first industrialized war, of stultifying battles which dragged on for weeks or months, of the nightmare casualties in a war of attrition, his words still held good, and few soldiers returning from the war would have disagreed with them.
A poem which seems to me to sum up the experience of the ‘ordinary soldier’ was written by Second Lieutenant Jim Aldous, whose story appears in this book:
The endless road moves to a darkening sky,
A road where withered trees and shadows sigh
Across the years, where memories lie
With friends long-dead in Picardy.
The tide ran in, that day, so deep
The sun was drowned; yet friendship flows
Deeper, from springs which childhood knows,
Mirrored in ageing memory.
It wasn’t much.
A scramble up a bank, a foot or two;
A hundred yards as if you said
‘Look, post a letter for me, will you?’
Just fifty years ago. A summer’s day,
Not screaming as the poets like to say,
Because shock numbs, and anyway it’s rare;
But frightened, naturally, and tense,
And, until the end, rather enjoying it.
Thus came the end of a beginning.
No poet-prince fought in Picardy,
No golden voice of immortality
Sang Crispin’s day; but old men in their dreams
Will sometimes ramble with their youthful friends
And mingle shadow with reality.
In five years’ time, or ten at most,
They will be gone.
It matters not – so long as not in vain
The ghosts of far-off friends should die.
For though the poplars dream beside the road,
Yet through their dreams, the silver bombers fly.
Jim Aldous wrote these lines on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, when he was living in retirement in East Anglia, where American airbases were active in the 1960s, the ‘Cold War’ was more than a slogan, nuclear war seemed a real possibility, and newspaper headlines on the war in Vietnam were growing larger by the day. Jim Aldous’s poem is a powerful plea for peace, and who has a better right to make it than a man who fought in the Great War?
To the Last Man: Spring 1918 is not an oral history of the events it describes but, like my earlier books on the First World War, it is strongly based on the contemporary accounts and recollections of the soldiers. As always, my aim (and in a sense my obligation) has been to stand in their boots – regardless of rank, position or nationality – and, although their experiences are set in the wider context of situations and events of which they could have known nothing, to see things through their eyes, to try to understand, and above all not to be judgemental.
In recent years I have listened in the company of war veterans to speeches which were kindly meant and expressed with real sincerity but whose sentiments have caused them pain. They keep their thoughts to themselves, for they learned self-control in a hard school and they realized long ago how difficult it can be to explain the concepts of service and loyalty, as they understood them, to a more liberal, less reverent and perhaps more self-indulgent generation. Moreover, they themselves have not been impervious to the bombardment of scathing criticism of ‘the Generals’, the analysis of the conduct of the war, the re-evaluation of its worth, and the shift in perception of the ordinary soldier from brave hero to pitiful victim. They never saw themselves as heroes, nor even as particularly brave, for they were scared stiff most of the time, but they had some sense of achievement in what they had endured and they decidedly did not regard themselves as victims. Now many are half-convinced that they were and, worse, are half-ashamed of it.
It is hard to stand in a war cemetery among those serried headstones with their homely, poignant inscriptions and fail to be moved to sadness, to pity, sometimes to anger, and even to conclude that such a sacrifice was futile. Looking back on the threshold of a new century as the Great War recedes into history, it is easy to believe that it was, but the generation who fought that war were neither fools nor dupes, nor sheep led bleating to the slaughter, and to pity them as such is to do them a deep injustice. Only a handful of survivors are still alive to tell the tale, and they are very old, but they represent the legions of young men who did not survive, and surely we owe all of them the courtesy of trying to understand their world, the principles which inspired them and the context in which they fought that ‘war to end wars’. Many of the men whose experiences appear in this book have not lived to see them in print. But I hope that it does them honour, for they were a remarkable generation.
In any record of 1918 it is impossible to avoid mention of the politics. Even after eighty years they can still rouse passions and revive old arguments. The situations and relationships were so complicated, aims and attitudes – both personal and national – so different, and human nature, then as now, so unpredictable that it is no easy task to distinguish opinion from fact, accurate observation from gossip, even the official standpoint from reality, without taking into account the rivalries in high places and between the personalities involved. Nor can one discount the personal considerations which must have carried weight with those who were writing in retrospect of events which took place behind closed doors. The waters are muddy – and mud sticks. But I have done my best to stick to indisputable facts, and I hope that I have been fair.
As always, I owe a huge debt to other people who, with great kindness and usually unsolicited, have made available valuable original material in the form of diaries, memoirs and letters. My first thanks, of course, must go to the old soldiers whose names are listed separately at the end of the book. It has given me huge satisfaction to be able to include more first-hand accounts of German soldiers than I have been able to do in the past. People often enquire why I have never attempted to record the Germans’ experiences like those of the British, but the time and cost of such an exercise would be prohibitive, besides which my knowledge of spoken German is far too limited even to contemplate attempting in-depth interviews with German veterans. But someone else has. Richard Baumgartner is a third-generation American of German descent, and some years ago, in pursuit of his interest in the Great War, he traced almost 300 German veterans, very few of whom were living in the USA. To quote him:
I placed adverts in a variety of German newspapers and was astounded by the response – not just the number but the quality of the responses. I was very nearly overwhelmed with correspondence, which led to a month-long sojourn in Germany in 1981 when I visited a goodly number of these gentlemen, researched at several military history archives and spent more than a few pfennig in antiquarian bookstores. I returned to the States with a treasure trove of material which would fill several volumes if only there was time.
Richard is a publisher, and his interest has moved on, but with breathtaking generosity he has made much of this ‘treasure trove’ available to me. Mere thanks are hardly sufficient to express my gratitude for this and other acts of kindness – including his permission to quote from Fritz Nagel’s memoirs, which he published, and, of course, for the translations. The stories of some of those German boys are mirror images of those of their British counterparts – some of whom, indeed, must have been literally within yards of them.
Among other American contributors I must thank Mrs Margaret Barr for the letters written by General Alexander, 41st US Division, to her step-mother, who was his half-sister. In France, thanks are due to Mme Blanche de la Place for the memoirs of her grandfather, Capitaine Désiré Wavrin; to M. Jack Thorpe for a wealth of papers and much-appreciated hospitality and assistance; to M. Jules Notteau for his kindness in giving me volumes of valuable information on the French Army; to M. Antoine Caulliez for his interest and for copies of the sketches of the fighting at Grivesnes; and to M. Claude Dubois, mayor of Grivesnes, for his enthusiastic welcome and a mass of precious documentation unavailable elsewhere.
I am grateful to Colonel J. G. Aldous, OBE, for the papers of his father, Second Lieutenant Jim Aldous, and for permission to reprint his father’s splendid poem (which received a mere ‘commended’ from the Suffolk Poetry Society!); to Major A. W. Howitt for the memoirs and letters of his father, Brigade-Major Harold Howitt; and to Mr R. J. O. Ward for the memoirs of his father, Major Ronald Ward. Michael Wilson not only supplied additional information on his father, Second Lieutenant ‘Peter’ Wilson, RFC, an old friend and contributor, but also an illuminating interview with his father-in-law, Dick Gammell. Lesley Kemp kindly made available the diaries of her father, Private Stanley Sutcliffe, AIF, and in New Zealand Dr D. A. Purdie not only interviewed but also transcribed hours of colourful conversation with Private George McKay of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. My warm thanks to them all, and to the many other people who have assisted in different ways, not least with interviewing old soldiers in parts of the country which were too distant to be easily accessible to me.
My military researcher, John Woodroff, has been my unfailing support for more than twenty years, always available to discuss problems (sometimes knotty), to research the answers to difficult queries, and to check titles, ranks, honours and a host of regimental and divisional details. He is a mine of knowledge, a stern critic, a staunch colleague and an indispensable ally.
Over the years my husband, Ian Ross, has been a great support, despite his own demanding commitments. I have much appreciated his company on working trips to France – not only for doing the driving but for assistance with the photographs, and for sharing my pleasure when, by the merest fluke, we stumbled on the old keeper’s cottage at Rouez and recognized it eighty years on. My assistant, Sandra Layson, has also come on forays to the battlefields and kept track of a thousand details along the way. Her interest and enthusiasm never flag, she cheerfully relieves me of a host of routine chores, and I value her cool judgement, her work and her encouragement rather more, I suspect, than she realizes. Of the many people who have had a hand in the production of this book, none has played a more important role than hers.
Lyn Macdonald
London, May 1998