The Retreat from Mons. Arthur Corbett-Smith

that is how I very nearly missed the most gorgeous adventure of my life.

CHAPTER II

       THE SAILING OF THE FORCE

       Table of Contents

       Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy; And leave your England as dead midnight still. ***** For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd With one appearing hair, that will not follow These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?

      "I consider that I have command of the sea when I am able to tell my Government that they can move an expedition to any point without fear of interference from an enemy's fleet."—SIR GEOFFREY HORNBY.

      Train No. B46 had slipped unostentatiously into its appointed siding precisely on its scheduled time. For a couple of hours the men had been working like galley-slaves to get the ammunition on board in time. The C.O. and two other officers with their coats off were working as hard as the rest. And it is no joke heaving up and packing neatly cases of 18-pr. and howitzer shell, especially when you are not used to it.

      Finished at last, and with half an hour to the good. Another four hours and they will be on the road themselves, the first step into the unknown.

      A couple of hours' sleep, a shave and a bath, a final look round the battery office, a last hurried breakfast in the Mess, and a last handshake with the colonel.

      "You off? Well, good-bye, and good luck to you. We shall meet over the other side, I expect."

      The battery parades. "Battery all present, sir," reports the sergeant-major. The report runs through until it reaches the C.O. A few minutes to ride round the teams and then:

      "Column o' route from the right. Walk—march!" and the battery is off through the early morning quiet of the Aldershot streets, bound for the port of embarkation.

      Thus the mounted units, or most of them. Others by train. A few lines will serve as description for all these.

      A Railway Transport Officer meets the C.O. on the platform as the men march in.

      "Get your men in as quickly as you can, please; we always get off five minutes ahead of time."

      "What's our port?" asks the C.O.

      "No idea. Push on, please."

      The C.O. "pushes on."

      "All in," he reports to the R.T.O., and turns for a final shake of the hand.

      "Well, good-bye, and good luck" (always that phrase); "wish I was coming with you."

      The R.T.O. gives the signal and looks wistfully for a moment after the train before he clambers across the metals to dispatch another dozen or so units from other sidings.

      "Where are we embarking?" asks everyone. Not a soul knows. I don't believe the engine-driver himself knew. He just went gaily forward following the points or stopping for signals.

      "Through Winchester! Why, it must be Southampton. Wonder what our port will be the other side?"

      Detraining and embarkation at Southampton were carried out under the same admirable conditions of efficiency and speed, and with never a single hitch. It seems little enough to read the sentence in cold print, but the more one thinks about it the more wonderful appears the organisation. Had it been the German War Staff directing movements the affair would have seemed no more than an ordinary episode. But with memories of the South African War, and a hundred everyday incidents constantly revealing muddling, red-tape methods, one can find no words in which to express adequately one's admiration for this astonishing volte-face. One single incident, one of fifty like it, will show to what excellent purpose the Authorities had profited by experience, even in those early days.

      An A.S.C. motor transport unit was detailed to embark upon a certain ship. Nearly a day's warning had been given to the O.C. The lorries were driven to the dock-side and were just being got on board. The Embarkation Officer, who was standing quietly by, suddenly informed the C.O. that his ship was not that one but another due to sail from another dock some distance away.

      The C.O. had barely time in which to get his lorries across, and the ship sailed the moment all was reported clear.

      An incident trivial enough, and how un-English it seemed at the time. But after the secret landing of the 9th Army Corps at Suvla, and the subsequent evacuation of Gallipoli, it would appear that we have nothing to learn in the art of ruse.

      The weather in those early days of August was perfect: the sea so calm that there was no discomfort even, with the men and horses packed on board like sardines in a tin. If it was a night crossing, the men bedded down in rows out on the decks just as they had filed on board. The transports were of all kinds, from an Atlantic liner to a coasting tramp.

      The ship's officers did more than their best for everybody's comfort, giving up their cabins to the officers, sharing their meals and refusing to accept any payment for food and drinks. If the skipper of a certain ship of the Royal Mail Company, which sailed on the early morning of August 16th from Southampton, chances to see these lines I would tell him how gratefully his kindness is remembered, and how the little mascot, in the shape of a tiny teapot from the steward's pantry, brought the best of luck through ten months' hard service, always made excellent tea whenever called upon, and now occupies a place of honour in my china cabinet. Here's wishing everything of the best to those who carry on the fine traditions of the blue or red ensign!

      "Well, where are we bound for?" This to the First Officer.

      "Don't know a bit," he replies. "The skipper may know, but I'm not sure. Anyway he's as close as a barnacle about it."

      We steamed across Channel with all lights on. It was another of those astonishing facts which didn't strike one until later. We were off the mouth of the Seine exactly twelve hours after sailing. And all that time we only once sighted anything in the shape of a convoy, and that was a T.B.D. for about twenty minutes a couple of miles to starboard.

      At this stage it seems almost invidious to say anything more about the work of the Grand Fleet during that first fortnight. And yet, even now, the public is amazingly ignorant of what the Navy has accomplished, or, indeed is still accomplishing. Ignorant, not through indifference, but because the Authorities still steadily refuse to take seriously in hand the work of education in war facts and ideas.

      How the Navy succeeded in sweeping the enemy flag from the North Sea and the Channel in a couple of days, apparently without firing a shot, we cannot pretend to guess. Some day the story will be told. But the result was the most astonishing manifestation of the real meaning of naval supremacy that the world has ever seen, or is ever likely to see. And Germany, by her naval inaction, lost for ever her great chance of the War, and so, in failing to intercept or damage the British Expeditionary Force, failed also to enter Paris and to end the war upon her own terms within the period she had intended. The British Army may have saved Paris, but the British Navy enabled it to do so.

      Entering the Seine the skipper revealed the name of our destination, Rouen. Another instance of organisation and forethought on the part of the Authorities in using small ships so as to get right up the river and disembark troops and stores well inland.

      Again, this has become a matter of everyday routine, but in those days each such new manoeuvre was sufficiently remarkable for admiring comment.

      Here the pilot came on board. A typical old son of Normandy he was, grizzled and weatherbeaten, clambering aboard with stiff heavy gait.

      On to the bridge he climbed: saw our lads clustered thick as bees in the fo'c'sle and lower deck. Up went his cap into the air, tears sprang to his eyes.

      "Vivent les Anglais!" he shouted, "vive l'Angleterre! A—ah" (with an instinct of triumph), "ça va bien. Ils arrivent."

      How the lads yelled in answer.