1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [271]
Everyone has the idea of a Guardsman, but they were human like the rest of us. I remember during the Battle of Festubert the Guards Brigade attacked and we happened to be the supporting battalion in the brigade and we had to follow in. The Guards took two lines of trenches and we had to go in after them and occupy and hold the trenches they’d taken. The Germans had been overrun as the Guards went forward and some of them were in shell-holes and they were sniping at us as we came up. One of the snipers caught my officer, Lieutenant Daish, and the bullet went through one side of his jaw and out the other, so he was out of it. I was platoon sergeant then so I had to take over the platoon and carry it through the Battle of Festubert, so we went in to occupy these Germans trenches that the Guards had just taken while the Guards went on moving forward. That was the holding line. If the Germans attacked we’d got to keep them back. These are our trenches now. You don’t have them!’ That was the idea. I went into one of the dug-outs and I found two Germans in there and one was fairly badly wounded and the other, strange to say, was a Swede. Lots of people don’t know that during the First World War the Swedes were very favourably disposed to the Germans. I said to the Swede, ‘What the hell are you doing in the German Army?’ He said, Τ believe they’re in the right.’ Anyway I got some stretcher-bearers up and they made this Swede carry the wounded German back. That was the routine.
Now, I don’t always like to tell this, but it’s perfectly true. I went further along and looked into the next dug-out and there was a Guardsman in there. They talk about the psychology of fear. He was a perfect example. I can see that Guardsman now! His face was yellow, he was shaking all over, and I said to him, ‘What the hell are you doing here? Your battalion is out in front. What are you doing back here?’ He said, ‘I can’t go. I can’t do it. I daren’t go!’ Now, I was pretty ruthless in those days and I said to him, ‘Look, I’m going up the line and when I come back if you’re still here I’ll bloody well shoot you!’ Of course I had plenty to do because you had to reconnoitre the line and reverse the defences, so it took quite a while to get that going, and when I came back, thank God, he’d gone. He was a Coldstream. A big chap six foot tall. He’d got genuine shell-shock. We didn’t realise that at the time. We used to think it was cowardice but we learned later on that there was such a thing as shell-shock. Poor chap, he couldn’t help it. It could happen to anybody. But at that time you either did your job or you didn’t. There was no halfway house. I’ve seen chaps go, but I’ve never seen anybody go like that. It was horrible. A day or two later we heard that a Guardsman had been shot for cowardice. I often wondered if it was that chap.
But the Guards were wonderful soldiers – marvellous, second to none! Still I think we proved ourselves. I think they thought a lot of us.
A few nights before they left the 2nd Division the Grenadier Guards gave a dinner in Béthune to bid farewell to the divisional staff and Colonel Page-Croft of the 1st Herts was a guest of honour. There were many speeches and many toasts – not least to the ‘Herts Guards’. The Colonel of the Grenadier Guards proposed it in a speech of fulsome praise and Colonel Page-Croft made a suitable reply, but he could not resist concluding with the words, ‘I suppose now we will have to go and try to raise the standard of some other Brigade.’ This remark was greeted at first with boos and cat-calls, but then the Guards rose to their feet and applauded for a full two minutes.
On 19 August the three Guards Battalions marched away. The route was lined with detachments from the remaining