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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
ing fought, if I remember right, not only in South Africa, but
even in the Australian Suakim contingent.
A little wooden hut was put at our disposal, and there we
slept, Sir Joseph Cook and I, with a small partition between
us. I was bitterly cold, and so I can tell was he, for I could hear
him tossing about just as I did for warmth. We had neither of
us made the discovery that you may pile all the clothes you
like on the top of you, but so long as there is only one layer of
canvas beneath you, you are likely to be cold. We don’t usually
realize that the mattress is also part of the bedclothes. We both
got little sleep that night.
Next morning, September 28, we were off betimes, for we
had much to see, the old town for one thing, which I vowed
I would visit again in time of peace. We descended Mount St.
Quentin and saw ample evidence of the grim struggle that
had occurred there. There were many rude graves, some
of them with strange inscriptions. One of them, I was told,
read: “Here lies a German who met two diggers.” The Australian Tommy was of course universally known as a digger.
They make a rough, valiant, sporting but rude-handed crew.
They went through the prisoners for loot, and even the offi cers were ransacked. Colonel Bennett told me that a Colonel
of the Germans was impudent when he came into his presence, so Bennett said: “Mend your manners, or I will hand
you over to the diggers!” They were waiting outside the tent
for just such a chance. One German had an iron cross which
was snatched from him by an Australian. The German shaped
up to the man in excellent form and knocked him down. The
other Australians were delighted, gave him back his cross,
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ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
and made him quite a hero. I expect the looter had been an
unpopular man.
The younger Australian offi cers were all promoted from
the ranks, and many of them had their own ideas about English grammar. Bennett told me that he tried to get the reports
better written. One subaltern had reported: “As I came round
the traverse I met a Bosch and we both reached for our guns,
but he lost his block and I got him.” Bennett returned this for
emendation. It came back: “As I came round the traverse I met
a German, and we both drew our automatic pistols, but he lost
his presence of mind and I shot him.” I think I like the fi rst
style best.
I lunched that day at the Head-quarters of Sir John Monash,
an excellent soldier who had done really splendid work, especially since the advance began. Indeed, it was his own action
on July 5 which turned the tide of retreat. He showed that the
long line of fi ghting Jews which began with Joshua still carries on. One of the Australian Divisional Generals, Rosenthal,
was also a Jew, and the Head-quarters Staff was full of eaglenosed, black-haired warriors. It spoke well for them and well
also for the perfect equality of the Australian system, which
would have the best man at the top, be he who he might. My
brother was acting as Assistant Adjutant-General to General
Butler with the III British Corps on the left of the Australians,
and they had kindly wired for him, so that I had the joy of having him next me at lunch, and he invited me to join the Headquarters mess of his corps for dinner.
It was a wonderful experience that dinner. The great advance was to be next morning, when it was hoped that the
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
Hindenburg Line, which was practically the frontier of Germany, would be carried. There were only six who dined in that
little farm-house messroom Butler himself with hard composed face, his head of sappers, head of gunners, my brother,
the fi rst and second Staff offi cers, a little group of harassed and
weary men. Yet there was no word of the huge drama upon the
edge of which we were standing. Every now and then a telephone tinkled in the next room, a Staff offi cer rose, there were
a few short words, a nod, and the incident was closed. It was
a wonderful example of quiet self-control. I said to my brother,
when we were alone: “Don’t you think I am out of the picture
at such a moment talking about such frivolous things?” “For
God’s sake keep on at it,” he said. “It is just what they need.
Give their brains something new.” So I tried to do so and we
had a memorable evening I shall never forget the drive back
of 10 miles in a pitch-dark night, with not a gleam anywhere
save that far aloft two little gold points glimmered now and
again, like the far-off headlights of a motor transferred suddenly to the heavens. These were British aeroplanes, so lit to
distinguish them from the German marauders. The whole
Eastern horizon was yellow-red with gunfi re, and the distant
roar of the artillery preparation was like the Atlantic surge
upon a rock-bound coast. Along the road no lights were permitted, and several times out of the black a still blacker gloom
framed itself into some motor-lorry with which only our cries
saved a collision. It was wonderful and awesome, the eve of the
day of judgment when Germany’s last solid defence was to be
smashed, and she was to be left open to that vengeance which
she had so long provoked.
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ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
We were awakened early, part of our party getting away to
some point which they imagined would be more adventurous
than that to which we seniors should be invited, though in the
sequel it hardly proved so. They saw much, however, and one
of them described to me how one of the fi rst and saddest sights
was that of eighteen splendid young Americans lying dead and
lonely by the roadside, caught in some unlucky shell burst.
Mr. Cook, Commander Latham, and I had been placed under
the charge of Captain Plunket, a twice-wounded Australian
offi cer, who helped us much during the varied adventures of
our exciting day.
The general programme of attack was already in our minds.
Two American divisions, the 27th and 30th, one from New
York, the other from the South, were to rush the front line.
The Australian divisions were then to pass over or through
them and carry the battlefront forward. Already, as we arrived
on the battlefi eld, the glad news came back that the Americans had done their part, and that the Australians had just
been unleashed. Also that the Germans were standing to it
like men.
As our car threaded the crowded street between the ruins
of Templeux we met the wounded coming back, covered cars
with nothing visible save protruding boots, and a constant
stream of pedestrians, some limping, some with bandaged
arms and faces, some supported by Red Cross men, a few-in
pain, most of them smiling grimly behind their cigarettes.
Amid them came the fi rst clump of prisoners, fi fty or more,
pitiable enough, and yet I could not pity them, the weary, shuf-
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
fl ing, hang-dog creatures, with no touch of nobility in their
features or their bearing.
The village was full of Americans and Australians, extraordinarily like each other in type. One could well have
lingered, for it was all of great interest, but there were even
greater interests ahead, so we turned up a hill, left our car,
which had reached its limit, and proceeded on foot. The road
took us through a farm, where a British anti-aircraft battery
stood ready for action. Then we found open plain, and went
forward, amid old trenches and rusty wire, in the direction of
the battle.
We had now passed the heavy gun positions, and were
among the fi eld guns, so that the noise was deafening. A British howitzer battery was hard at work, and we stopped to
chat with the Major. His crews had been at it for six hours,
but were in great good humour, and chuckled mightily when
the blast of one of their guns nearly drove in our ear-drums,
we having got rather too far forward. The effect was that of
a ringing box on the exposed ear – with which valediction
we left our grinning British gunners and pushed on to the
east, under a screaming canopy of our own shells. The wild,
empty waste of moor was broken by a single shallow quarry
or gravel-pit, in which we could see some movement. In it we
found an advanced dressing station, with about a hundred
American and Australian gunners and orderlies. There were
dug-outs in the sides of this fl at excavation, and it had been
an American battalion Head-quarters up to a few hours before. We were now about 1,000 yards from the Hindenburg
Line, and I learned with emotion that this spot was the Egg
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ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Redoubt, one of those advanced outposts of General Gough’s
army which suffered so tragic and glorious a fate in that great
military epic of March 21 – one of the grandest in the whole
war. The fact that we were now actually standing in the Egg
Redoubt showed me, as nothing else could have done, how
completely the ground had been recovered, and how the day
of retribution was at hand.
We were standing near the eastward lip of the excavation,
and looking over it, when it was fi rst brought to our attention that it took two to make a battle. Up to now we had seen
only one. Now two shells burst in quick succession 40 yards
in front of us, and a spray of earth went into the air. “Whizzbangs,” remarked our soldier-guide casually. Personally, I felt
less keenly interested in their name than in the fact that they
were there at all.
We thought we had done pretty well to get within 1,000
yards of the famous line, but now came a crowning bit of good
fortune, for an Australian gunner captain, a mere lad, but
a soldier from his hawk’s eyes to his active feet, volunteered to
rush us forward to some coign of vantage known to himself. So
it was Eastward Ho! once more, still over a dull, barren plain
sloping gently upwards, with little sign of life. Here and there
was the quick fl uff of a bursting shell, but at a comfortable distance. Suddenly ahead of us a defi nite object broke the skyline.
It was a Tank, upon which the crew were working with spanners and levers, for its comrades were now far ahead, and it
would fain follow. This, it seems, was the grandstand which
our young gunner had selected. On to the top of it we clambered – and there, at our very feet, and less than 500 yards
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
away, was the rift which had been torn a few hours before in
the Hindenburg Line. On the dun slope beyond it, under our
very eyes, was even now being fought a part of that great fi ght
where at last the children of light were beating down into the
earth the forces of darkness. It was there. We could see it. And
yet how little there was to see!
The ridge was passed, and the ground sloped down, as
dark and heathy as Hindhead. In front of us lay a village. It
was Bellicourt. The Hindenburg position ran through it. It
lay quiet enough, and with the unaided eye one could see
rusty red fi elds of wire in front of it. But the wire had availed
nothing, nor had the trench that lurked behind it, for beyond
it, beside the village of Nauroy, there was a long white line,
clouds of pale steam-like vapour spouting up against a dark,
rain-sodden sky. “The Boche smoke barrage,” said our guide.
“They are going to counter-attack.” Only this, the long, white,
swirling cloud upon the dark plain told of the strife in front of
us. With my glasses I saw what looked like Tanks, but whether
wrecked or in action I could not say. There was the battle –
the greatest of battles – but nowhere could I see a moving
fi gure. It is true that all the noises of the pit seemed to rise
from that lonely landscape, but noise was always with us, go
where we would.
The Australians were ahead where that line of smoke
marked their progress. In the sloping fi elds, which at that
point emerged out of the moor, the victorious Americans, who
had done their part, were crouching. It was an assured victory
upon which we gazed, achieved so rapidly that we were ourselves standing far forward in ground which had been won
497
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
that day. The wounded had been brought in, and I saw no
corpses. On the left the fi ght was very severe, and the Germans, who had been hidden in their huge dug-outs, were doing their usual trick of emerging and cutting off the attack. So
much we gathered afterwards, but for the moment it was the
panorama before us which was engrossing all our thoughts.
Suddenly the German guns woke up. I can but pray that it
was not our group which drew their fi re upon the half-mended
tank. Shell after shell fell in its direction, all of them short, but
creeping forward with each salvo. It was time for us to go. If any
man says that without a call of duty he likes being under aimed
shellfi re, he is not a man whose word I would trust. Some of the
shells burst with a rusty-red out-fl ame, and we were told that
they were gas shells. I may say that before we were admitted
on to the battle-fi eld at all, we were ushered one by one into
a room where some devil’s pipkin was bubbling in the corner,
and were taught to use our gas-masks by the simple expedient
of telling us that if we failed to acquire the art then and there
a very painful alternative was awaiting us.
We made our way back, with no indecent haste, but certainly without loitering, across the plain, the shells always
getting rather nearer, until we came to the excavation. Here
we had a welcome rest, for our good gunner took us into his
cubby-hole of a dug-out, which would at least stop shrapnel,
and we shared his tea and dried beef, a true Australian soldier’s meal.
The German fi re was now rather heavy, and our expert
host explained that this meant that he had recovered from the
shock of the attack, had reorganized his guns, and was gener-
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
ally his merry self once more. From where we sat we could see
heavy shells bursting far to our rear, and there was an atmosphere of explosion all round us, which might have seemed
alarming had it not been for the general chatty afternoontea appearance of all these veteran soldiers with whom it
was our privilege to fi nd ourselves. A group of sulky-looking
German prisoners sat in a corner, while a lank and freckled
Australian soldier, with his knee sticking out of a rent in his
trousers, was walking about with four watches dangling from
his hand, endeavouring vainly to sell them. Far be it from me
to assert that he did not bring the watches from Sydney and
choose this moment for doing a deal in them, but they were
heavy old Teutonic time-pieces, and the prisoners seemed to
take a rather personal interest in them.
As we started on our homeward track we came, fi rst, upon
the British battery which seemed to be limbering up with
some idea of advancing, and so lost its chance of administering a box on our other ear. Farther still we met our friends of
the air guns, and stopped again to exchange a few impressions.
They had nothing to fi re at, and seemed bored to tears, for the
red, white and blue machines were in full command of the sky.
Soon we found our motor waiting in the lee of a ruined house,
and began to thread our way back through the wonderfully
picturesque streams of men – American, Australian, British,
and German – who were strung along the road.
And then occurred a very horrible incident. One knew,
of course, that one could not wander about a battle-fi eld and
not fi nd oneself sooner or later involved in some tragedy, but
we were now out of range of any but heavy guns, and their
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ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
shots were spasmodic. We had halted the car for an instant to
gather up two German helmets which Commander Latham
had seen on the roadside, when there was a very heavy burst
close ahead round a curve in the village street. A geyser of red
brick-dust fl ew up into the air. An instant later our car rounded the corner. None of us will forget what we saw. There was
a tangle of mutilated horses, their necks rising and sinking.
Beside them a man with his hand blown off was staggering
away, the blood gushing from his upturned sleeve. He was
moving round and holding the arm raised and hanging, as
a dog holds an injured foot. Beside the horses lay a shattered
man, drenched crimson from head to foot, with two great
glazed eyes looking upwards through a mask of blood. Two
comrades were at hand to help, and we could only go upon
our way with the ghastly picture stamped for ever upon our
memory. The image of that dead driver might well haunt one
in one’s dreams.
Once through Templeux and on the main road for Peronne things became less exciting, and we drew up to see a column of 900 prisoners pass us. Each side of the causeway was
lined by Australians, with their keen, clear-cut, falcon faces,
and between lurched these heavy-jawed, beetle-browed, uncouth louts, new caught and staring round with bewildered
eyes at their debonair captors. I saw none of that relief at getting out of it which I have read of; nor did I see any signs of
fear, but the prevailing impression was an ox-like stolidity and
dullness. It was a herd of beasts, not a procession of men. It
was indeed farcical to think that these uniformed bumpkins
represented the great military nation, while the gallant fi gures
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