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11 2 Duty, Honour, country HECT.: The brave man holds honour far more precious-dear than life. —Troilus and Cressida, act 5, scene 3 In 1917 I joined the Royal Fusiliers. I didn’t wait to get conscripted—I was underage. In those days you said, “This is my job, to join.” It was all duty, honor, country. I applied for the Royal Air Force—but the spin test made me giddy. The RAF turned me down, thank God, because in 1918 the casualty rate of pilots in France was 100 percent dead. So, before long, I was on the Marlborough Downs, learning to be a soldier. Actually, learning how not to be. The camp was very big—known as Chiseldon Camp, south of the village between Chiseldon and Ogbourne St. George. It was high country and, in that winter of 1917, snow-covered. Sons of bitches— they’d get us up at six-thirty in the morning, icy cold and still dark, and soon enough they would have us out in the snow, marching up and down and obeying idiotic orders like “Move to the right in fours, form platoon!” Very useful, I suppose, if parading outside Buckingham Palace, but about as useful when it came to killing Germans as carrying a rabbit’s foot. Just as well. There are probably Germans still alive whom I might have killed, had I been more successfully instructed. I never saw a gas mask until I was forced to use one while bringing up rations to the front line trenches facing Albert, a town on the river Somme. My entire war was spent on the Somme, in front of a village, Amiens. The first night we struggled into the front line. A German shell burst right in front of me. It came so fast I couldn’t hear it coming, and the explosion went over me. I thought that was a lucky start. Then I saw on my left a German lying on his back—dead—with a rifle and bayonet in his body. That was a normal proceeding. I got used to it after a while. The Germans’ March 1918 offensive was simply horrible! We retreated HitcHcock’s Partner in susPense 12 for about thirty or forty miles. There was thick fog. We never knew where the Germans were—whether they were behind us or on our right or left. The British front held them in front of Amiens. I proved such a good shot that I was immediately given the title of First Class Shot, which was second to Marksman. That was dangerous. It meant that when I got to France, they made me a sniper—the most dangerous position in the world. The moment the Germans said, “There’s a sniper over there,” they would concentrate their guns. The life of a sniper was very short. After six weeks as a sniper on the front line, I transferred to machine gunner. In July 1918 the Germans attacked at Château-Thierry, aiming directly at Paris. My division was thrown into support, but we never came into action, thank God. The Germans were held back. Already smashed up in the March retreat, we held the trenches near Albert, gazing down on its shattered basilique. Hot summer days passed in stuffy dugouts, the German shells shrieking overhead. Vivid moonlit nights were spent on desperately dangerous patrol through high-standing corn. My first time “over the top” was at dawn on August 8, 1918—in the fog. With a roar that must have shaken the whole of northern France, the British front attacked from Albert to Montdidier, and my 3rd Londoners were in the first wave. There were two or three hundred tanks. And instead of helping us, the tanks became a fearful danger. A British tank would come through the fog, collecting all the barbed wire along the front line, dead and dying men in the wire. So any time we heard a tank, we’d go any other possible way through the fog. But the attack was an enormous success . The Germans were thrown back along parts of the front for ten miles; in fact, their generals were taken prisoner the following morning. I remember coming through the fog and suddenly seeing twenty to thirty Germans who had been captured; I was shocked to find they were as young as I was—I felt so sorry for them. I went over the top thirteen times. The next morning, August 9...

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