SOME MINOR TACTICS
For War a new and dreadful language spoke,
Never by ancient warrior heard or known;
Light’ning and smoke her breath, and thunder was her tone.
SCOTT.
THE only object in writing a biography is to record the truth, or such bits of it as one can remember. If one does not wish to do that one leaves mere dull fact altogether and writes fiction, which is so much better suited to the pen. Yet I regret to inform the reader that in the account of my purchase of a Winchester rifle in the last chapter I had to call fiction to my aid; for just there it is as though facts had grown too strong and violent and might have risen up and hit the man from whom I acquired the rifle. I therefore had to turn my back on them and walk a little away, leaving them dim and confused, and partially concealed by bits of fiction that I had to insert amongst them, in order to protect the man with the rifle down his trouser-leg from people who, for all I know, might still think it their business to get on to his cold scent. But everything I said about the rifle since its arrival at Holyhead is perfectly true.
The day before we left Ireland I wrote a poem which needs no explanation. It gives one reason for my journey, and so I reproduce it here.
THE GATE OF HORN.
A dreamy isle has sheltered me,
But I can write from there
No song to welcome Victory
When her wings thrill the air,
When to our army or our fleet
She comes, or like a star
Above the thunder and the sleet,
Shines where our airmen are.
I cannot in that pleasant isle
Of mead and marsh and lake
And dreams of old kings dead long while
Write of a world awake.
And so to Kent I set my face,
Across whose narrow seas
The enemy has put in place
Rows of realities.
For the rest of that summer and early autumn we had two or three battles a day over our valley. My platoon commander was Sir Herbert Cohen, an old friend, and our Commanding Officer was Colonel Hadow, or he was at any rate the senior officer of our lot of L.D.V. on that side of Sevenoaks. Of course we all noticed in those days that Hitler was unpunctual, and we may have known that he was a liar, but I don’t think any of us doubted that he was coming. I had plenty of time to think about things during many delays in Ireland, and I had a far clearer view of what I had supposed was coming than I have had of any other war. I was not right, for the invasion never came, and if it had come it would probably have been very different from what I had imagined, and yet I believe it is a good thing to have a clear picture of the future in one’s mind: if things happen as you think, you have obviously an enormous advantage; and, even when they don’t, I believe it is better for the future to have appeared visible to you than for it to look all vague; at least one has confidence that way, and, provided that one is not too certain that one must be right, it does not turn to pigheadedness. I was no armchair strategist, because I never got as far as strategy, but only concerned myself with minor tactics, and with the possible adventures of a small platoon in a wood. My minor tactics went no further than this, that the enemy would probably land on open ground, and would attack London: our downs were about the last bit of open rural England before London began; therefore it seemed to me that they were just the place for Hitler, or rather Goering, and that it would be an easy march to London for him if he landed there. Of course it was not my business to have any views at all, but it seemed to me that against an enemy better trained and better armed we should make the utmost use of our one advantage, which was knowledge of the ground, and the particular feature that we had in that part of Kent was the thin woods that we call shaws. If the enemy landed to the London side of us I imagined that we should not be much interested, but if he came down to the east of us I imagined he would move straight on London, and that we should be able to wait in the shaws on the way by which he would go. I never imagined an attack after the leaves should have fallen, and no doubt the Germans intended to come before then. My simple plans went no further than that, except for one more, which was never to fire at much over fifty yards. Some among us had shotguns, and I could not imagine a much greater solace, if one was being fired at with rifles, than to know that the faces of the men who were firing at you were being spattered at short range with small shot. This was my dream, and it was very unlike reality, as usually happens in war. Instead of shooting at Germans who could not see us, we got bombs from planes against which we could do nothing, and if I sometimes wrote to my shooting friends to tell them that I had the finest shooting in Europe, I had to admit that the game was all out of shot.
Colonel Hadow came over to see us, and I remember how extremely clearly he put the whole situation. I had at that time been unable to get the right kind of bullet for my rifle, and the ones that I had were the wrong kind. But the Germans had just declared the L.D.V. to be an illegal force, so I said that, if that was their view, it no longer seemed so much to matter what kind of cartridges might be found on one if one were taken prisoner.
“O don’t worry about being taken prisoner,” said Colonel Hadow. “They are not coming to take prisoners. They are coming to massacre men, women and children.”
This view was not only clear, but perfectly accurate, as has been shown by their campaign in Russia.
I went up our hill with Colonel Hadow to show him the wide open country beyond it, which I had fondly selected as Goering’s landing-ground. I think I chose quite a good place for him, and plenty of things landed there, but not a German army. There are dells in that land now which used not to be there, unless they have lately filled them in or made dew-ponds of them. I remember the sunlight that day shining on the sandy soil of that rather wild land on the top of the hills of chalk, and a great many tracks of pigs that ran about over a farm; and something in the sunlight and the strange tracks and the rough soil, and Colonel Hadow’s uniform, set my thoughts wandering eastwards, whither my body had not been for ten years, and whither I scarcely thought to go again. Strange that in less than a year I was to see many wild lands. Some months later, looking at the tracks of barefooted men in the sunny dust of Africa, I remembered this scene and the wandering fancy that had suddenly flashed from it. On this hill there lived a man in a lonely farm and we thought he would make a good scout, if we could have him fitted up with a telephone; and I lent him a pair of binoculars. Whether he ever saw anything I don’t know, but he certainly heard things.
I will leave these words as I wrote them, though since I wrote them that house has tragically disappeared.