Memoirs of an infantry officer

9 April – 16 May 1917

Battle of Arras (1917)

BATTALION

Among the troops I observed a growing and almost eager expectancy; their cheerfulness increased; some¬ thing was going to happen to them; perhaps they be¬ lieved that the Arras Battle would end the War. It was the same spirit which had animated the Army before the Battle of the Somme. And now, once again, we could hear along the horizon that blundering doom which bludgeoned armies into material for military histories. “ That way to the Sausage Machine! ” some old soldier exclaimed as we passed a signpost marked Arras, 32 k. We were entering Doullens with the brightness of the setting sun on our faces. As wc came down the hill our second-in- command (a gentle middle-aged country solicitor) was walking beside me, consoling himself with remin¬ iscences of cricket and hunting.

BATTALION

The battle of Arras began at 5.30 next morning. Tor two days we hung about the ehlUcau, listening to (he noise (of Military I listory being manufactured re¬ gardless of expense) and wailing lor the latest rumours. With (breed uneasy gaiety we talked loudly about the sue, cesses reported from the Line. ‘Our objectives gained at Neuvillc-Vitasse ’, 1 five thousand prisoners taken \ and so on. but everyone of us had something in his mind which he couldn’t utter, even to his best friend.

BATTALION

ning to learn that life, lor the majority of the popula¬ tion, is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds, cul¬ minating in a cheap funeral. Anyhow the man with his head bashed in had achieved theoretical glory by dying for his country in the Battle of Arras, and we who marched past him had an excellent chance of fol¬ lowing his example.

BATTALION

heard some slightly wounded officers who were ex¬ citedly remembering their adventures up at Wan- court, where they’d been bombed out of a trench in the dark. Their jargoning voices mingled with the rumble and throb of the train as it journeyed — so safely and sedately — through the environing gloom. The Front Line was behind us; but it could lay its hand on our hearts, though its bludgeoning reality diminished with every mile. It was as if we were pur¬ sued by the Arras Battle which had now become a huge and horrible idea. We might be boastful or sagely reconstructive about our experience, in accord¬ ance with our different characters. But our minds were still out of breath and our inmost thoughts in disorderly retreat from bellowing darkness and men dying out in shell-holes under the desolation of return¬ ing daylight. We were the survivors; few among us would ever tell the truth to our friends and relations in England. We were carrying something in our heads which belonged to us alone, and to those we had left behind us in the battle. There were dying men, too, on board that Red Cross train, men dying for their country in comparative comfort.