The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice. John Bourne

German soldiers on the Russian steppe were sometimes demoralised by the infinite space and huge skies. This produced a desperate nostalgia (literally ‘home-pain’), which, as James Cooke shows later in this book, often led to the idealisation of ‘home’.³⁰ Wherever they went, on whatever terrain, soldiers would eventually make the acquaintance of mud. Mud is inseparable from war. British Army uniforms were dyed ‘khaki’, the Hindustani word for ‘dust’ (dried mud). American ‘doughboys’ acquired their name from the adobe dust of the Mexican border war of 1916–17 that covered their uniforms. German slang for an infantryman is dreckfresser (‘mud-eater’). Learning to keep clean and to keep equipment on which your life might depend clean was part of the universal experience of soldiering in both World Wars. Few have better captured the image of soldiers adapting to these conditions than the painter Eric Kennington in The Kensingtons at Laventie, where functional efficiency has entirely replaced ‘smartness’ as a military virtue.³¹ Apart from details of uniform and equipment, photographs of combat soldiers from the two World Wars are barely distinguishable. Dirty, unkempt, haggard, exhausted, prematurely aged, they look straight past us with the tell-tale ‘thousand-yard stare’ that transcends time and reveals a universal experience.

      The final ‘actuality of war’ that bridged the experience of front-line soldiers in both World Wars to be considered here is ‘artillery’. Both conflicts were wars of the ‘guns’. Stalin called artillery the ‘god of war’, and in both World Wars, like the Gods of Ancient Greece, it dealt out death with a chilling impartiality. Artillery was the major cause of death and wounds on the battlefield in both wars. It was also the major cause of psychiatric casualties. ‘Shell shock’ is often regarded as a phenomenon of the Great War.³² I was never aware that it existed at all in the Second World War until I came across General Patton’s famous assault on a ‘shell-shocked’ GI. The experience of being under prolonged artillery bombardment was among the most terrifying that anyone has invented. The German veteran of the Western Front, Ernst Jünger, likened it to having a giant continually aim blows at your head with a huge hammer and just missing. The chances of being killed by a high-explosive shell, fired from ten miles away, were far greater than being killed in single or small group combat, in which personal skill, training, equipment and determination might be a factor. This reality contributed to the fatalism of soldiers, remarked upon by many commentators. High explosive did not distinguish between the callow recruit and the old hand, between the brave man and the coward, between the willing soldier and the man who just wanted to go home. Knowing when to take cover, being able to see that tiny but significant fold in the ground that another might miss, helped to keep one man alive while another would perish. But, ultimately, it was a matter of luck (front-line soldiers on all sides in both World Wars were deeply superstitious). To be a front-line soldier in the two World Wars was eventually to recognise your mortality, that one day, not this day or even the next day, given long enough exposure to the ‘God of war’, he would deal death or wounds to you and that your fate was to ‘lie on the litter or in the grave’.³³

      Notes on contributors

      Dr J.M. Bourne, The University of Birmingham, UK

      John Bourne has taught History at the University of Birmingham since 1979. He thought that the publication of Britain and the Great War (London: Edward Arnold, 1989, 1991) would be his first and last on that conflict, but he was mistaken. During the last ten years his work has become increasingly focused on the British Army during the First World War and he is currently completing a revisionist study of the British Western Front generals.

      Recommended reading

      Addison, Paul &. Calder, Angus (eds) Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of the War in the West 1939–1945 (London: Pimlico, 1997)

      Donovan, Tom (comp), The Hazy Red Hell: Fighting Experiences on the Western Front 1914–1918 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1999)

      Ellis, John, Eye-Deep in Hell: The Western Front 1914–18 (London: Croom Helm, 1976) The Sharp End of War: The Fighting Man in World War II (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1980)

      Holmes, Richard, Firing Line (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985)

      Hynes, Samuel, The Soldiers’ War: Bearing Witness to Modern War (London: Pimlico, 1998)

Chapter 2

       Preparing for war: the experience of the Cameronians

       John Baynes and Cliff Pettit

      The aim in this chapter is to look sequentially at the experiences of men drawn into the preparations for war in 1914 and 1939, emphasising in the second half of the chapter the similarities and differences between these two threshholds to British active service soldiering in the two World Wars of the 20th century. The study is mainly based on the recollections of those who served in The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), a regiment no longer shown in the Army List, but one of which both authors were proud to be members in their day.

      1914–15

      Although a few people in Britain foresaw the tragic consequences of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, the speed of events that led to the outbreak of hostilities on Tuesday 4 August took most of the nation by surprise. Once the die was cast, however, virtually the entire population enthusiastically endorsed the decision to declare war against Germany. Mobilisation of the Regular Army, the Reserves and the Territorial Force was ordered on 5 August. Within days Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, also called for volunteers to join a new army, since he realised that troops would be required in far greater numbers than could be provided by existing organisations. By 25 August the first hundred thousand men, referred to as ‘K1’, had been enlisted, so he called for a further hundred thousand. Nearly double that number came forward.

      To see how these events affected the various components of a particular regiment we shall look at the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) at their home bases in Glasgow and the county of Lanarkshire, commencing with Captain R. M. S. Baynes, a Regular officer at that time at home on leave from a tour of colonial duty with the West African Frontier Force in Sierra Leone¹:

      ‘When war was declared I was at home in Kent and either that day or the day after I had a telegram telling me to rejoin the 1st Battalion at Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. When I got there I found intense activity: reservists coming in and all sorts of preparations being made. Also arriving were a lot of officers – veterans of the Boer War – many of whom had just dug out their uniforms, and looked as though they had just arrived from South Africa without having time to wash or change since arrival. I can’t remember how long it was but it was two or three days after I got there, and we were really getting things going, when Kitchener made the announcement that he required a hundred thousand men, which were to be raised immediately. Robertson was commanding the battalion – always known as “Blobs” – and he sent for me and told me that he was very sorry, but as I’d been away from the battalion for some time, I must be one of the three officers who had to be sent off immediately to help with this business of raising a new army. It was a bitter disappointment, but there was nothing to be done about it. Off I went to the depot.

      At the depot in Hamilton, instead of the intense activity of Maryhill we found utter confusion. Reservists had been coming in and were fitted out, and the staff were getting on with things fairly well, although the depot was extremely full. But immediately the announcement of the first hundred thousand was made, volunteers started pouring in: their tents were pitched in a sort of playing field in the middle of the barracks, and every available space was taken up by men sleeping. There was not enough preparation in the way of food and rations, and we had to send out into Hamilton and collect everything possible in the way of food. The first night things