The Old
138
THE YPRES TIMES
is dead and gone, you must excuse me telling. We shook then, and parted, and,
as the figure of Bernard von Hauenhausen vanished away into the rain and the
darkness I marvelled at my colossal stupidity, for I had helped a spy to escape,
thereby flinging away once more the coveted reward of the D.C.M. or fourteen
days' leave in Blighty." He went, and I never saw him again; but later, when
the war was done, I learned that he fell at Rheims.
We marked time in that trench for forty-eight hours, and not once during that
period did a shot come near us; and when, finally, came the order to attack the
German pill-box and the crest of the ridge, we found the place tenantless, for Jerry
had evacuated and the position was oursOur officers marvelled while they cursed
the Huns for crafty, dirty swine; but while they talked I fell a-pondering deeply,
and, By gad," I told myself as the Borderers came up the ridge, Bernard
von Hauenhausen was a gallant gentleman after all."
The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung suggests that certain British ex-Servicemen's organizations
should adopt the name of the marvellous soldiers." The proposal arises from a re-union in Edinburgh,
a report of which has reached the newspaper of the Scottish area of the Old Contemptibles."
The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung" says there would be no reason to object to British ex-soldiers
calling themselves the Old Contemptibles as they proved they were not contemptible in four years of
heroic days, if it were not that the name rested on a legend. The newspaper says it has been fully proved
that the alleged Army Order of the Kaiser, containing the reference to the contemptible British Army,"
was never issued. It thinks it unseemly that gentlemen should parade under a false name, and therefore
proposes that the Old Contemptibles should in future call themselves what they really were
marvellous soldiers.' For as such they crossed blades with us Germans
Major-General Hon. Sir Francis R. Bingham was Chief of the British Section and President of
the Sub-Committee for Armaments and Material of the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control
appointed to supersede the carrying out by Germany of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles.
His Headquarters was established in Berlin, and shortly after arrival there in September, 1919, one of
his Staff Officers was invited to luncheon by a friend, and knew he was to meet General Von Kluck,
who had commanded the First German Army in 1914—the Army against which the "Old Contemptibles"
fought at Mons.
The following account of what happened at the luncheon was given by Lieut.-Colonel Roddie, the
Staff Officer in question, to Sir Francis Bingham when he reported to the latter immediately after
wards.
I went into the room where a number of gentlemen were standing. In front of them was a short
thick-set, soldierly-looking man whom I knew to be General von Kluck.
As I advanced towards him he held up his hand and said There is one thing I have always
wanted to say to the first British Officer I met after the war. It is this. I am and always have been a
great student of Military History, and in my opinion the finest performance the world has ever seen
was that of your first six Divisions that landed in France, and now I should like to greet you.'
Later General Bingham himself met General von Kluck and asked him if he might quote what
he had said to Lieut -Colonel Roddie. He said, Certainly and you will find that I have said the
same in my book." General Bingham told him that Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, who had fought against
him at Le Cateau, was about to write a book, and he said You can tell him from me that if it hadn't
been for him and his troops I should have turned the flank of the British Army and taken Paris."
The Times," August 25th, 1930.
(From our Own Correspondent.)
Berlin, Aug. 24.
H. Uniacke, Lieut.-General.
[Reprinted from The Old Contemptible."]
