THE GLORY OF WAR.
"CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY."
72
The Ypres Times.
By kind permission of the Editor of The Times we print below a copy of an annexe
to B.É.F. Routine Orders of September 24th, 1914, which appeared in the issue of
30th October, 1925.
The following is a copy of Orders issued by the German Emperor on August 19th
It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your energies,
for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address
all your skill, and all the valour of my soldiers, to exterminate, first, the
treacherous English walk over General French's contemptible little Army.
Headquarters, Aix-la-Chapelle, August 19th.'
The results of the Order were the operations cdmmencing with Mons and the advance
of the seemingly overwhelming masses against us.
The answer of the British Army on the subject of extermination has already been
given."
The boy turned the handle of the carriage door and stepped unobtrusively inside.
Despite the huge overcoat which Authority had flung upon him, you could see he was a
new soldier by the way he fidgeted in his khaki. No one looked much at him. In that
train, the third stage of the journey back to hell, men's thoughts were of other things than
newcomers. Some sat, staring fixedly before them, as if trying to read the future some
put up a dense smoke screen to hide their faces others sang and were gay but, in that
electric atmosphere, stoical despair was dominant.
They've blinking well fetched you at last then," bawled a thick-lipped corporal,
between his gulps from a bottle. I wouldn't wait till I was pulled out, I wouldn't.
I've 'ad two yearsNow then, Ethelred the unready," shouted a comic looking
chap, when you've done fondling the old bottle, I'll have a swig."
The boy sat quiet under the taunt. He was thinking how luckv he had been to have
escaped from home without that last sceneunder protest of dodging out to fetch some
fags." He wondered how long his mother had waited in the cottage to see him. The
grizzled highlander in the corner regarded him steadily from under bushy brows. Take
no heed to the loon, laddie I'll pitch him through the pane if he opens his jaw too much
you bairns are not fit for soldiering! Have a gasper, Jock," said the lad my brother
used to smoke these, and the last thing I sent him out was a box of them. He was killed
on the Sommeand mother tried to keep me from joining up. I didn't worry either way
but then all the girls frown at you, and older chaps say, Aren't you going to fight for
your country so somehow I got pressed ind'you see! Aye! said Jock while
the hand upon his knee clenched hard, and the lines deepened round his mouth.
A long silence fell in the carriage. The train, with its load of courage and fear,
love and hate, rushed on from the sea amongst the hills and valleys of France, smiling
and fair to the eye even in the early March sunshine for the shadow of the great illusion
had not spread its blackness over this countryside. The boy glanced timidly round at his
companions in bondage, and counted the golden stripes upon their arms pondering on
how they got their wounds, and what they endured getting them. Suppose he got one
Suppose he gotThen the vision of an old woman, waiting, waiting, crying, in a
cottage in England smote him and his eyes filled with tears. He thrust the terrible
thought from him and fiercely lit another cigarette.
In the redoubts that looked down into St. Quentin this lad stood, just before the
storm broke, watching the ebb and flow of the early shadows along the hillside as the
sun dipped behind the clouds. It seemed to him then, careless and strong in life, that
fighting was rather a cushy job, after all.
