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Title: The King's Pilgrimage
Author: Frank Fox
Release Date: May 10, 2011 [EBook #36075]
Language: English
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THE KING'S
PILGRIMAGE
PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK
WILL, BY HIS MAJESTY'S DESIRE, BE
DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE PHILANTHROPIC
ORGANIZATIONS WHICH FOR SOME
TIME HAVE BEEN ASSISTING RELATIVES
TO VISIT THE CEMETERIES ABROAD
"THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE"
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
"_Standing beneath this cross of sacrifice and facing the great stone of
remembrance_"]
The King's Pilgrimage
London:
Hodder and Stoughton, Limited
1922
_The Imperial War Graves Commission has to acknowledge the permission of
the following for the publication of the photographs which are contained
in this book: Central News Agency, Graphic Photo Union, "Daily Mail,"
Press Photographic Agency, "The Times," Topical Press Agency, Lt.-Col. H.
Ellissen, Mr. F. C. See, Mr. A. H. W. Brown_
PRINTED IN PHOTOGRAVURE
BY
THE SUN ENGRAVING CO., LTD.
LONDON AND WATFORD
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
May 1922.
I am interested to hear of the proposed publication of the record of my
pilgrimage to the War Graves.
It grieves me to think how many relatives are prevented from visiting the
graves of their dear ones through lack of means. During my recent visit to
the Cemeteries in France and Belgium, I was glad to learn that various
organisations are endeavouring to meet this difficulty by raising funds
which I trust will be substantially assisted by the sale of the book.
George R. I.
The King's Pilgrimage
Our King went forth on pilgrimage
His prayer and vows to pay
To them that saved our Heritage
And cast their own away.
And there was little show of pride,
Or prows of belted steel,
For the clean-swept oceans every side
Lay free to every keel.
And the first land he found, it was shoal and banky ground
Where the broader seas begin,
And a pale tide grieving at the broken harbour mouth
Where they worked the Death Ships in:
And there was neither gull on the wing,
Nor wave that could not tell
Of the bodies that were buckled in the lifebuoy's ring
That slid from swell to swell.
(_All that they had they gave--they gave; and they shall not return,
For these are those that have no grave where any heart may mourn._)
And the next land he found, it was low and hollow ground
Where once the cities stood,
But the man-high thistle had been master of it all,
Or the bulrush by the flood;
And there was neither blade of grass
Or lone star in the sky,
But shook to see some spirit pass
And took its agony.
And the next land he found, it was bare and hilly ground
Where once the bread-corn grew,
But the fields were cankered and the water was defiled,
And the trees were riven through;
And there was neither paved highway,
Nor secret path in the wood,
But had borne its weight of the broken clay,
And darkened 'neath the blood.
(_Father and Mother they put aside, and the nearer love also--
An hundred thousand men who died, whose grave shall no man know._)
And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground
Above a carven Stone,
And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross
Where high and low are one;
And there was grass and the living trees,
And the flowers of the Spring,
And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas
That ever called him King.
(_'Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four Red
Rivers spring
Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served the King._)
All that they had they gave--they gave--
In sure and single faith.
There can no knowledge reach the grave
To make them grudge their death
Save only if they understood
That, after all was done
We they redeemed denied their blood,
And mocked the gains it won.
RUDYARD KIPLING.
I: "_Our King went forth on pilgrimage._"
It was our King's wish that he should go as a private pilgrim, with no
trappings of state nor pomp of ceremony, and with only a small suite, to
visit the tombs in Belgium and France of his comrades who gave up their
lives in the Great War. In the uniform which they wore on service, he
passed from one to another of the cemeteries which, in their noble
simplicity, express perfectly the proud grief of the British race in their
dead; and, at the end, within sight of the white cliffs of England, spoke
his thoughts in a message of eloquence which moved all his Empire to
sympathy.
The Governments of France and of Belgium, our allies in the war for the
freedom of the world, respected the King's wish. Nowhere did official
ceremony intrude on an office of private devotion. But nothing could
prevent the people of the country-side gathering around the places which
the King visited, bringing with them flowers, and joining their tribute to
his. They acclaimed him not so much as King, but rather as the head of
those khaki columns which crossed the Channel to help to guard their
homes; in their minds the memory of the glad relief of August, 1914, when
they learnt that the British were with them in the war and felt that the
ultimate end was secure. Many of them were of the peasants who, before the
scattered graves of our dead had been gathered into enduring cemeteries,
had graced them with flowers, making vases of shell-cases gathered from
the battle-fields. The King was deeply moved by their presence, at seeing
them leave for an hour the task of building up their ruined homes and
shattered farms, and coming with pious gratitude to share his homage to
the men who had been faithful to their trust unto death. To those around
him he spoke more than once in thankful appreciation of this good feeling
of the people of France and Belgium. Especially was he pleased to see the
children of the country-side crowd around him, and when little choirs of
them sang "God Save the King" in quaintly accented words his feeling was
manifest.
There came thus to the pilgrimage from the first an atmosphere of
affectionate intimacy between these people who were not his subjects and
the British King. They gathered around him as around a friend, the old
women leaning forward to catch his words, the children trying to come
close enough to touch him, seeing in his uniform again the "Tommy" who had
proved such a gentle soul when he came for a brief rest from the horrors
of the battle-field to the villages behind the line and helped "mother"
with the housework and nursed the baby. At one village a gendarme, feeling
in his official soul that this was really no way to treat a King, tried to
arrange some more formal atmosphere. But in vain. The villagers saw the
old friendly good-humoured British Army back in France, and could not be
official.
Now and then at a cemetery the King met relatives, in some cases from
far-off Pacific Dominions, visiting their dead, and he stopped to speak
with them because they were on the same mission as he was, of gratitude
and reverence. One mother, moved by the kindness of the King's greeting,
opened her heart to him and told, with the simple eloquence of real
feeling, how she had just come from her son's grave and was proud that he
had died for his King and country; that every care had been taken to find
and identify it, and "more could not have been done if it had been the
Prince of Wales himself."
At several points the workers of the Imperial War Graves
Commission--practically all of whom had gone through the campaign, and now
are reverently and carefully tending the last resting-places of their
fallen comrades--assembled to greet the King. He spoke with them also,
giving them thanks for their work and noting their war medals and asking
them about their life in the camps, or with the mobile caravans which, in
the districts where housing cannot yet be found, move from cemetery to
cemetery, keeping fresh the tribute of grass and flowers and
trees--caravans which bring back vividly one's memory of the old British
supply columns, for they are almost invariably led by a small
self-important and well-fed dog.
When at Vlamertinghe--where are the graves of the first Dominion soldiers
who fell in the war--the High Commissioner for Canada, the Hon. P. C.
Larkin, was met visiting the Canadian graves there; the King gave him a
very warm greeting. He showed that there is never absent from his mind the
thought that in the greatest Ordeal of Battle which the British race has
had to pass through, the children nations of his Empire came to the side
of the Mother Country, with the instinctive spontaneity of the blood in a
limb responding to a message from the heart; and that the crimson tie of
kinship never broke nor slackened through all the perilous anxious years.
Across the sea, held for them as a safe path by the Navy, the men of the
Empire--and the women, too--kept passing at the King's word to whatsoever
point at which the peril was greatest, the work most exacting. The graves
of the Flanders battle-fields told triumphantly of this august Imperial
assembly--the dead of the Mother Country having around them those of
India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, the
West Indies, the Pacific Islands.[1] At every point the voices of the dead
bespoke, in the King's words, "the single-hearted assembly of nations and
races which form our Empire."
* * * * *
It was at the close of a State visit to the King of the Belgians that the
King left Brussels on a special train early on the morning of May 11. The
King lived on the train (in his own carriage which had been in France
throughout the war) during the tour, motor-cars meeting it at fixed
halting-places for the visits to the cemeteries. He was accompanied by
Field-Marshal Earl Haig, whom His Majesty specially wished to be at his
side on this pilgrimage. The Royal Party was a small one; in addition to
Lord Haig, it consisted of Major-General Sir Fabian Ware (who, as
Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was in charge of all
the arrangements) and of three members of the suite, the Rt. Hon. Sir
Frederick Ponsonby, Colonel Clive Wigram, and Major R. Seymour. The first
visit paid was to Zeebrugge Churchyard, where rest some of those who fell
in the Zeebrugge Battle which marked St. George's Day, 1918. Many of the
graves are still unidentified, but, with the aid of enemy burial lists
recently secured, it is hoped that the identity of some, at any rate, will
be established. There was, by the King's express wish, no formal ceremony
at this nor any other cemetery before Terlincthun, but the school children
of Zeebrugge assembled and sang the British National Anthem and brought
flowers for the graves.
The King went on to examine the scene of the exploit of _Vindictive_ and
her supporting ships. The day was bright and breezy, and, by a happy
chance, a Belgian fishing fleet was making for harbour with the night's
harvest of the sea. To the eye of the sailor this gave clear indication of
the lay of the harbour approaches and of its entrance, and helped
materially to illustrate the way in which the Mole was approached and the
task with which the British naval forces were faced. The King took the
keenest interest in every detail of the exploit and of the tactics
employed. He stayed for some time at the point where the submarine, loaded
with high explosives, rammed the Mole to breach it, with the double object
of cutting off the enemy garrison on the Mole from reinforcements and of
helping the obstacles which were to be sunk in the fairway to silt up the
harbour by letting in the drifting sands. The positions where the ships
were sunk in the fairway were examined, and the King, with his
professional knowledge of the Service in which he spent his young manhood,
could reconstruct the whole battle. He made particular inspection of the
spot where the landing party from _Vindictive_ scaled the Mole--perhaps
the most astonishing "boarding" feat of naval history.
With some reluctance the King turned his back to the sea, and the Royal
party went on by train to Zonnebeke. Here the party left the train and
proceeded by car to visit Tyne Cot Cemetery, which is in the midst of what
was the most desolate and terrible of all battle-fields--the Passchendaele
marshes. Tyne Cot (or cottage) was on the north side of the Ypres-Roulers
railway, near the village of Passchendaele. It was here that the enemy
first built their "pill boxes" or concrete forts. The water-logged ground
would not allow of the construction of dug-outs nor of effective shelter
trenches, and the enemy sought to hold their line with these strong points
of reinforced concrete, heavily armed with machine guns, to attack which
the British storming infantry often had to wade waist-deep in mire up to
the very muzzles of the guns.
No part of the long trench line which stretched from the sea to
Switzerland has such shuddering memories for the British Army as
Passchendaele. There it had the problem of storming a whole series of
miniature Zeebrugge Moles standing in seas of slimy mud, to sink into
which from the narrow built paths of trench-boards was to perish. Of the
nine thousand British soldiers buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery, over six
thousand are "unknown." The hateful mud swallowed up their identity with
their lives.
Many places on the long trench line which stretched like a dreadful scar
across Belgium and France the King knew during the days of the war. Very
jealously the secrets of his visits to the Front had to be guarded then,
especially when both the King and the Heir Apparent were at the same time
in the battle-line; and no public record exists of them. But it is safe to
say that Tyne Cot he saw for the first time this May afternoon. He
understood how appalling was the task which his soldiers faced there, and,
turning to the great "pill box" which still stands in the middle of the
cemetery, he said that it should never be moved, should remain always as a
monument to the heroes whose graves stood thickly around. From its roof he
gazed sadly over the sea of wooden crosses, a "massed multitude of silent
witnesses to the desolation of war." It is indeed fitting that this should
form, as it will, the foundation for the great Cross of Sacrifice shortly
to be built up as a central memorial in this cemetery.
[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE
ARRIVAL AT THE MOLE]
[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE
INSPECTING THE MOLE]
[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE
AT THE BREACH IN THE MOLE]
[Illustration: ZEEBRUGGE CHURCHYARD
INSPECTING BRITISH GRAVES]
[Illustration: AT BRANDHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY.]
[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY
THE KING AND THE GARDENERS]
[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY]
[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY
THE KING READING INSCRIPTIONS ON WOODEN CROSSES]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: TYNE COT CEMETERY
INSPECTING THE GERMAN BLOCKHOUSE WHICH WILL FORM THE BASE OF THE CENTRAL
MEMORIAL]
[Illustration: YPRES TOWN CEMETERY
THE GRAVE OF H.H. PRINCE MAURICE OF BATTENBERG]
[Illustration: YPRES TOWN CEMETERY]
[Illustration: MENIN GATE, YPRES
EXAMINING THE PLANS FOR THE MEMORIAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE]
[Illustration: VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY]
[Illustration: VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY
THE BURGOMASTER'S DAUGHTER PRESENTING A WREATH]
[Illustration:
_Our King went forth on pilgrimage
His prayer and vows to pay
To them that saved our heritage
And cast their own away._]
[Illustration: "_I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in honour of a people
who died for all free men_"]
II: "_It was low and hollow ground where once the cities stood_"
The King's route after leaving Tyne Cot Cemetery brought him to the
salient where the British Army held Ypres as the gate guarding the Channel
ports. The enemy rush to Paris had failed, and he was seeking a way to
victory by a rush to seize the French side of the English Channel as a
prelude to the invasion of England. In the first Battle of Ypres the enemy
sought with enormous superiority of numbers to overwhelm the British force
which barred the Calais Road. To hold Ypres was vital, and yet Ypres was,
humanly speaking, indefensible, within a saucer-shaped salient dominated
on three sides by the German artillery.
The attack was pushed on with fierce energy from October 21st, 1914,
onwards, and was met with heroic stubbornness by a woefully thin khaki
line. At one stage there was no question of reliefs. Every man practically
in the British Force, including cooks and batmen, was in the front line,
and these men held to the trenches day after day, night after night,
without sleep, with little food, with no intermission from rifle and shell
fire.
During the second Battle of Ypres, in the spring of 1915, the war took on
a new phase with the enemy use of asphyxiating gas as a weapon. Of this
odious and unexpected form of warfare the Canadians were the first
victims, but withstood the surprise with a cool heroism which saved the
day.
There were other battles of Ypres, and all the land around was saturated
with the blood of heroes. So this "low and hollow ground," stiffened with
our dead, is holy soil to the British race. The King chose fitly to render
there his homage to the dead of the Belgian Army who on the Yser held the
left flank of the line through all the years of bitter fighting for Ypres.
On his way to the Menin Gate of Ypres city, the King directed the cars to
turn aside to the Town Cemetery, that he might stand silent for a few
moments by the graves of Prince Maurice of Battenberg, Lord Charles
Mercer-Nairne, Major the Hon. W. Cadogan, and other officers, some of
those of his own personal friends whom the war claimed, and whose graves
lie among those of their men, marked by the same simple memorials.
* * * * *
Ypres to-day is no longer a mass of shell-shattered ruins. The work of
reconstruction has been carried on earnestly, and thousands of new houses
have been built. But nothing can ever restore the mediæval beauty of the
city which grew like a noble wood in carved stone on the Flanders Plain.
The ruins of the Cloth Hall will remain as the monument of the old city
which was once a world's capital for those who wove wool into fine cloth.
The old ramparts at the Menin Gate--stout walls which provided security
for the British signallers even in the most furious bombardments--will
remain as another monument, an effective symbol of the British Army at
Ypres, very sorely battered, but still holding secure.
It is proposed by the Imperial War Graves Commission that at the Menin
Gate there should be a memorial to those of the Empire's Armies who fell
in this area but have no known graves. It will crown these ramparts with a
great double arch, enclosing a vaulted hall, in which will be recorded the
names of all those lost in the neighbouring battle-fields whose bodies
have not been recovered and identified. The design provides that the arch
facing Menin, where once the foe was drawn up, will be surmounted by the
great figure of a lion alert in defence, the arch facing Ypres by some
other symbolical sculpture.
* * * * *
The King was met at the Menin Gate by representatives of the Belgian
Government and Army, by Major Michelet and M. Lorel of the Belgian Graves
Services, and by the Burgomaster of Ypres. The industrious re-builders of
Ypres paused from their work for an hour and assembled to give him a
hearty greeting. The King entrusted a chaplet of palms and bay leaves with
a spray of red roses in memory of the Belgian dead to Major Michelet. He
then congratulated the Burgomaster on the progress his citizens were
making with the work of reconstruction. Sir Reginald Blomfield, architect
of the memorial at the Menin Gate, submitted to the King the designs and
plans of the monument. His Majesty emphasised the need that the names
inscribed should be clear to all to read.
* * * * *
Leaving the Menin Gate, the King passed by the ruins of the Cloth Hall and
of the Cathedral, noting the irreparable loss to the world through the
destruction of these magnificent examples of Flemish architecture. It was
observed that the drivers found it somewhat difficult to find a way
through the new Ypres which is growing up under the industrious hands of
the Belgian population. Ypres, the "Museum City" of 1914, is known to
many. The "Wipers" of 1918, a tumble of desolation through which the
soldiers passed under constant shell fire by burrowed paths, became
familiar to almost every British regiment. But this new, re-building Ypres
is a stranger.
The route of the pilgrimage went from Ypres to Vlamertinghe, passing on
the way the British cemetery behind Ypres Reservoir, the Asylum British
Cemetery, the cemetery on the Dickebusch Road, and the Railway Château
Cemetery. At Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery the King stopped and, as has
already been noted, visited the Canadian graves with the High Commissioner
for Canada, as well as paying his tribute to the many British buried
there. This cemetery, between Poperinghe and Ypres, was begun by the
French troops, then holding part of the line here. It contains 1,114
graves of British soldiers, 52 of Canadian, 4 of Australian, 2 of South
African, 2 of soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, one of an
Indian soldier, and one of an unknown soldier. Very many of the British
graves are of Territorial dead. There are, for example, nearly 250
Lancashire Territorials buried there: those splendid men who proved, both
in Gallipoli and France, that the town-bred population of the Mother
Country was fit, in courage and endurance, to rank with the historic
regiments of the line and with the young giants from the Oversea
Dominions.
* * * * *
From Vlamertinghe, along the granite-set roads which were for years
pounded by our ammunition wagons and supply trains, but the dust arising
from which now proclaims the works of peace as the country-folk drive
their carts loaded with bricks and timber for re-building, the King went
on to the Hop Store Cemetery, greeted everywhere with cordial sympathy.
Hop Store village was used from time to time as headquarters both by our
heavy artillery and by our field ambulances. The site of the cemetery is
on a marshy patch of ground, but it was drained by the Royal Engineers
early in 1917, and recently a moat has been constructed on three sides. It
holds 247 of our dead.
From Hop Store the King went on to Brandhoek, which was a comparatively
safe area during the war, and therefore a post for field ambulances. The
old Military Cemetery, which the King visited, was opened in May, 1915, in
a field adjoining the Dressing Station, and was closed in July, 1917. It
shelters the bodies of 601 soldiers from the Home Country, 62 from Canada,
4 from Australia, and 2 of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps. In July,
1917, the Military Cemetery was opened 300 yards away, and in August,
1917, a third cemetery was opened.
Poperinghe was next visited. This agricultural town on the road between
Ypres and Hazebrouck, situated among hopfields and dairy farms, was a
haven of rest in the early days of the war. Although occasionally
bombarded at long range, it was the nearest town to Ypres which was
reasonably safe. It was at first a casualty clearing station centre.
Later, in 1916, when shell fire increased, it was decided to move back the
casualty clearing station to a safer zone, and Poperinghe became a field
ambulance station. The earliest British graves at Poperinghe are in the
Communal Cemetery, a walled graveyard at the entrance to the town. The
old Military Cemetery was made in the course of the first Battle of Ypres,
and was closed (so far as British burials were concerned) in May, 1915.
The New Military Cemetery was made in June, 1915. It contains the graves
of 596 soldiers from the Home Country, 55 from Canada, 20 from Australia,
3 from New Zealand, and 2 of the British West Indies Regiment.
Lijssenthoek was the last of the cemeteries on Belgian soil visited. This
cemetery is at Remy Siding, on the south side of the Hazebrouck-Ypres
railway line, between Poperinghe and Abeele. The site was first used for
burials by a French military hospital, and there is a group of French
graves on what is now the eastern boundary of the cemetery. The earliest
British burial dates from June, 1915. This cemetery had to be repeatedly
enlarged as the campaign levied its toll on our forces. It now contains
9,795 British and Dominion graves, 892 French, 2 Belgian, 52 American, and
32 Chinese. The majority of burials took place from the Canadian casualty
clearing stations at Remy. Of the French graves, 10 are those of unknown
soldiers and 689 will remain in the cemetery.
* * * * *
Going out of Belgium to France the sun was shining and the graciousness of
Nature, covering with herb and blossom the ulcers of the old
battle-fields, made this corner of Flanders seem a fair and human country.
For those who now saw the district for the first time, the concrete forts
lying like the bleached skeletons of strange monsters in the fields, and
the serried ranks of the graves, coming up in line after line to give
their mute witness, told something of what it cost to hold the Ypres
Salient. But the King knew all that it had been in the long dark winters
of the war, when the very abomination of desolation brooded over it, and
in its pools of slime his soldiers struggled and choked that the fields of
England might be kept free of the foe. He did not hide from those with him
that the memory of it weighed heavy on him and that in his mind, with
pride in the thought of such superhuman devotion, there was a passionate
hope that never again in the world's history would men be called upon to
suffer as these men had suffered.
Speaking, too, of the cemeteries, where general and private rest side by
side beneath the same simple stones, equal in the honour of their death
for duty's sake, he agreed that this was the only possible way.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
THE KING MEETING MARSHAL FOCH]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
SALUTING THE FRENCH COLOUR PARTY]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
SALUTING THE FRENCH COLOUR PARTY]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
THE FRENCH GUARD OF HONOUR]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
THE KING AND MARSHAL FOCH]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
"_I have come to lay a wreath in homage on the tombs of French heroes who
have fallen for their country_"]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
THE SILENCE AND THE SALUTE TO THE DEAD]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE
THE BROW OF THE HILL OVERLOOKING THE RIDGE
THE KING WITH MARSHAL FOCH, GENERAL WEYGAND AND FIELD-MARSHAL EARL HAIG]
[Illustration: INSPECTION OF GARDENERS]
[Illustration: FORCEVILLE CEMETERY]
[Illustration: FORCEVILLE]
[Illustration: FORCEVILLE
THE KING SPEAKING TO THE MAYOR]
[Illustration: LOUVENCOURT]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: LOUVENCOURT
A TRAVELLING GARDENING PARTY]
[Illustration: PICQUIGNY
WHERE A NUMBER OF AUSTRALIANS LIE]
[Illustration: CROUY BRITISH CEMETERY
THE KING TALKING TO TWO BEREAVED AUSTRALIAN RELATIVES]
III: "_It was bare and hilly ground where once the bread-corn grew._"
In the evening of May 11 the King passed from Belgium into France on his
way to Vimy, which had been chosen as the resting-place for the night. As
the train arrived at Hazebrouck, the first stop after crossing the
frontier, the Prefect of the Nord, together with the Maire of Hazebrouck,
received His Majesty. The Maire (M. l'Abbé Lemire) is a figure known to
every soldier who passed through Hazebrouck during the war; not only had
he been a constant friend to all ranks of the British Army, but his
courageous and imperturbable control of his townspeople during the early
days of 1914 will always be remembered in the history of the war.
The journey through the stricken area of French Flanders was full of
memories of heroic resolution and accomplishment. Those fields yonder were
tilled during the war by the French--the old men, women, and
children--under the guns of the enemy, the plough-share's orderly cutting
of the soil now and again interrupted as exploding shells dug their pits,
but the stubborn peasants going on with their toil. Those same fields,
later, knew at its best the practical heroism of the British soldier (is
not that the dominant characteristic of the British race, its power to
bring the highest courage to the common labour of life?). The German
onrush had brought areas (which the French had cultivated under shell
fire) within the zone of the front line and the civilians had to be sent
back. Since every ear of wheat was precious at that time, the British Army
organized to save this part of the French harvest, and actually reaped the
product of eighteen thousand acres. It was gallant work, chiefly done by
fighting men between their turns in the trenches. When an area was under
the direct fire and close observation of the enemy the crop was cut at
night. When the enemy used gas shells to prevent the work, the soldier
reapers went on with their task in gas masks. One area of six acres of
corn was so close to the enemy trenches that the idea of saving it seemed
desperate. But one night seventeen volunteers with hand scythes cleared
the whole of it in the three hours of darkness that were available. This,
more perhaps than any deeds done in the heat and ardour of battle,
impressed the French farmers and set in their minds an imperishable memory
of the gallant friendliness of the British.
* * * * *
Coming to Vimy and looking out on its ridge, the King bethought of the
great battle in which his Canadian troops had won this key-position, and
telegraphed to Lord Byng, the present Governor-General of Canada, and
before in command of the Canadian Corps, the following message of
thankfulness and congratulation:--
"I have just spent the night at Vimy. My thoughts are with you."
It was a right royal remembrance which delighted Canada.
* * * * *
The first act of the King on May 12 was to pay his homage to the dead of
the armies of France, and he passed through the torn and shattered country
at its base to Notre Dame de Lorette, the great bastion hill which was the
centre of the Allies' resistance in the North. Noticing that his train
would pass by it, he had written personally to Marshal Foch asking him to
meet him there, so that the great commander might be at his side when he
paid his homage.
To the French people Notre Dame de Lorette is _la colline sacrée_ of the
Great War. It was the key for the defence of Flanders and Artois, the most
bitterly contested strong point on French soil, not excepting Verdun. For
twelve continuous months, without a day's interruption, one battle raged
round the hill. Every yard of its soil bears shell scars and has been dyed
with noble blood. Altogether, over 100,000 men gave up their lives around
this hallowed hill, and it was the most fitting place for the King to pay
his homage to the noble dead of the French Army.
Nor is Notre Dame de Lorette without its proud memories for the British
Army, which held for long the Artois line of defences. Hardly one of the
many thousands of British officers who served in the Royal Regiment of
Artillery during the Great War but who has at one time "observed" for his
guns from Lorette. All the batteries, field and heavy, for miles around
were directed from the observation posts on the hill, which gave a great
range of view, north and south, so far behind the enemy lines that the
housing of his balloons and the movements of his railways could be
followed.
As it stands to-day, Lorette has been cleared of much of its timber and is
thicketed with the clustering crosses of the French cemeteries. It is
intended to erect upon it a memorial to the dead of the Artois and
Flanders fronts. The design by M. Louis Cordonnier, an architect of Lille
(which was shown by him to the King), provides for a Basilica on the spot
where once was built the chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette. One hundred
metres from the Basilica will be built a beacon tower which will show a
perpetual light visible for fifty miles around, reminding the miner and
agriculturist and trader of future generations with what great sacrifice
their country was held free.
* * * * *
The King, reaching Notre Dame de Lorette, walked up the steep slope of the
hill to a little plateau, in the centre of the thickly clustered French
graves, where he was met by Marshal Foch, General Weygand (the Marshal's
Chief of Staff), General Lacapelle, commanding the First Army Corps, and
M. Cauzel, Prefect of the Pas-de-Calais.
"I have come," said the King as he took Marshal Foch by the hand, "to lay
a wreath in homage on the tombs of French heroes who have fallen for their
country."
The trumpets sounded a salute as the King arrived and inspected the French
Guard of Honour, and then with Marshal Foch he walked along the lines of
white wooden crosses of the cemetery.
The King came back to the centre of the hill, where will be erected the
memorial to the dead, and, addressing Marshal Foch, said: "I am happy, M.
le Maréchal, that you are by my side at this moment, when I come to place
this wreath in deserved homage to the heroic soldiers of France." On a
mound over which flew the French flag he placed his chaplet of red roses,
palm and bay, bearing the simple inscription, "From King George V,--12th
May, 1922," then stood for two minutes silent at the salute, Marshal Foch
and Field-Marshal Earl Haig on either side.
Deeply moved was the King and those around him. All the tragedy and all
the heroism which Notre Dame de Lorette symbolizes rose up before the
mind. At the King's feet stretched, in row after row, the tombs of the
French, who lost almost a complete generation of their glorious youth in
defence of their country. Beyond the line of tombs showed for miles and
miles devastated France--the ruins which had been great manufacturing
towns, the wastes which had been fertile fields, the dusty stains on the
landscape which had been smiling villages, the tangles of splintered
stumps which had been fruitful trees. Here was the record of the
scientifically considered, the systematically prepared, the meticulously
executed ruin of France; and these graves were of those who stemmed the
wave of that hideous desolation.
Leaving the cemetery and walking on a little distance, the King, Marshal
Foch, and Earl Haig took their stand on a commanding point of the hill and
discussed the strategy of the campaign. Marshal Foch and Earl Haig talked
over some of the great actions of the war, pointing out to the King
various points the names of which are household words to-day--Souchez,
Vimy, the Labyrinth, Loos, Lens, and those betraying dumps of the coal
pits which caused the loss of so many a soldier.
The King listened with keen interest and was clearly delighted at the
cordial comradeship of the two great soldiers. He turned to them at one
point with the confident query: "_Toujours bons amis, n'est ce pas?_"
Marshal Foch replied with fervour: "_Toujours, toujours, pour les mêmes
causes et les mêmes raisons_," and grasped Earl Haig's hand. As the two
Marshals clasped hands in the grip of comradeship the King placed his hand
over theirs.
A scene to be remembered for all time, the making of that pledge and its
sealing with the King's hand on the sacred hill of Notre Dame de Lorette.
Leaving the hill, the King and his party proceeded by car in the direction
of Albert, going through the mining villages, still mostly ruins, but busy
now again with useful industry. The route followed passed such well-known
places as Souchez and Mont St. Eloy. The day being a crowded one, there
was no time to stop in the ruined town of Arras, but with the thought
which characterized all the arrangements which the French had made, the
Prefect had detailed a guard of cyclists to meet the cars at the entrance
to the town. They conducted the King's car through Arras, passing all the
chief points in the town which had suffered from the enemy's fire.
From thence the King went on to Bapaume, Warlencourt, and Le Sars, seeing
again the Somme battle-field, the scene of the first great British
offensive attack in the summer of 1916. It was there the New Armies were
put to the crucial test and proved that they were worthy to take up and
guard the tradition of the old Regular Army. In many hundreds of thousands
of British homes to-day the Battle of the Somme is the greatest memory of
the campaign, for it marked the end of the wearisome trench war, the first
move to drive the enemy from out of the land he had invaded, though he had
made of it, as he thought, an invincible fortress. They can remember the
joy they had in the heartening roar of our guns as they prepared the
attack, the multitudinous clamour of the field guns, the sharp scream of
the 12-inch guns which reared their monstrous throats by street corners of
Albert, the deep note, as of a giant's cough, of the 15-inch howitzers,
pushing out shells as big almost as mines.
Bitter was the fighting on the Somme, most bitter when in moving to the
attack the infantry encountered rain and the chalky downs became as grease
under their feet. But there was the exultant feeling of advancing, of
winning back day by day a little bit of France. The Somme heartened the
British soldier with the knowledge that impregnableness had lost its
meaning, heartened them, too, with the knowledge that our Air Force had
won supremacy in the air, and now could blind the enemy at will by driving
his aeroplanes and observation balloons out of the sky.
Passing by several cemeteries and battle exploit memorials erected by both
home and Dominion units, the party reached Albert, from the ruined
cathedral tower of which a great statue of the Virgin and Child hung
perilously through years of the war. It was said that, when it fell, the
war would end; and in truth it did not fall until the end was near. A halt
at Albert had not been arranged, but the King, noting a party of workers
of the War Graves Commission in a camp there, stopped and talked with the
men.
The afternoon was occupied in visiting cemeteries in the surrounding
districts.
* * * * *
For the Somme victories we paid heavy price, as the crowding Somme
cemeteries show. The King visited of these:--
WARLENCOURT.--This cemetery is 500 yards north of the Butte de
Warlencourt, across the Albert-Bapaume road. It is entirely a
concentration cemetery, begun towards the end of 1919. It includes the
graves brought from the original cemeteries at Hexham Road, Le Sars, and
Seven Elms, Flers, as well as over 3,000 British graves due to the
fighting which took place around the Butte de Warlencourt from the autumn
of 1916 to the spring of 1917, and again in the German advance and retreat
of 1918.
WARLOY-BAILLON.--There are two cemeteries at the village of that name. The
Communal Cemetery is on the east of the village and the Extension is in
an apple orchard on the eastern side of the cemetery. The apple trees
around the graves, in blossom on this spring day, made the burial ground
very beautiful. All the cemeteries of France and Belgium have in common a
noble simplicity of design, but each one has some particular feature. One
is beautiful with orchard trees; another is graced with rose trees; of
another sentinel poplars are a feature; of another the shroud-like
cypresses. In every case the planning of a cemetery, its alignment, the
site of the Cross of Sacrifice, and the Stone of Remembrance, its
plantations and walls, are designed by the architects to harmonize with
the natural features of the country. Not often on the French and Belgian
sites has it been possible to attain the supreme loveliness of some of the
Italian cemeteries, but all are beautiful. The first British burial took
place in the Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery in October, 1915, and the
last on July 1st, 1916. By that date field ambulances had come to the
village in readiness for the attack on the German line, five miles away,
and the Extension was begun. There are buried in the Extension 857
soldiers from the Home Country, 318 from Australia, 152 from Canada, and 3
unknown. The Communal Cemetery records 46 British burials.
FORCEVILLE.--This cemetery is to the west of the village of Forceville,
about twelve miles from Doullens and six miles from Albert. In 1915
British troops of the Third Army took over the area from the French. In
February, 1916, a field ambulance was established in the village, and it
was followed by others until the end of July, 1916. Early in August, 1915,
additional land to the south of the Communal Cemetery was enclosed to
provide space for military graves. This land is enclosed by a low wall and
a hedge. Some of the old poplar trees have been preserved and fragrant
lime trees planted (the lime-tree avenues of Amiens will be recalled by
the troops on whom they showered their perfume as they went forward for
the first Battle of the Somme).
LOUVENCOURT.--The Military Cemetery here is south-east of the village,
which is midway between Albert and Doullens. The French soldiers' graves
dated June and July, 1915, mark the end of the French occupation of the
Allied front on the Somme. The British graves cover the period from July,
1915, to July, 1918. Louvencourt Military Cemetery is enclosed by a great
stone wall and the paths are stone paved. The Cross of Sacrifice is placed
at the entrance. The Stone of Remembrance is at the east side of the
cemetery, and the steps of it command a wide view over the north country.
The cemetery holds 151 British dead.
PICQUIGNY.--There are here a communal cemetery and a British military
cemetery. The historic town (where a treaty of peace between France and
England was signed in 1475) lies in the valley of the Somme River, on the
main road between Abbeville and Amiens. During the first four years of the
war Picquigny was on lines of communication, and the ten British soldiers
who died in or near the town were buried in the Communal Cemetery. At the
end of March, 1918, casualty clearing stations were brought to Picquigny,
and the British Cemetery was opened a little west of the town. It shelters
94 soldiers from the Home Country, 29 from Australia, one from Canada and
one unknown, and one French soldier.
CROUY.--The British Cemetery here is about half a mile south of the
village, near the Amiens-Abbeville main road. It was opened in April,
1918, when the enemy advance sent two casualty clearing stations to the
village. In October, 1919, the graves from the British Cemetery at
Riviere, a few miles nearer Abbeville, were brought to Crouy. There are
now buried in Crouy 281 soldiers from the Home Country, 275 from
Australia, 179 from Canada and one of the British West Indies Regiment, 2
labourers of the Indian Labour Corps, and 6 French soldiers.
LONGPRÉ-LES-CORPS SAINTS.--The village owes its name to relics sent from
the Holy Land by the founder of the church in the twelfth century. In
April, 1918, there was opened a British cemetery. It was closed before the
end of the month, and the present cemetery opened about half a mile south
of the village. In May, 1919, the graves from the first cemetery were
moved to it. The cemetery now contains 56 British graves, 20 Australians,
and one French.
* * * * *
On this day, during the morning and afternoon, the only bad weather
occurred, but the rainstorms did not in any way deter the King from
carrying out the programme which he had determined on. At all the
cemeteries visited in the afternoon there were striking demonstrations of
affection by the country people. The smaller cemeteries were surrounded by
the villagers, five or six deep, the children standing on the low walls,
the King as he inspected the graves passing close to them. All maintained
an attitude of sympathetic reverence. The King, who was evidently moved,
showed on many occasions how he felt himself among friends and was visibly
interested in the little children who stared round-eyed at "the King of
the British soldiers."
As the train steamed into Picquigny Station, the Bishop of Amiens was seen
standing with his clergy on the platform, having come out from Amiens,
specially and without interfering with the privacy of the pilgrimage,
sympathetically to greet our King. The Bishop reminded His Majesty that
the last time a King of England had come to Picquigny was in 1475, when
Edward IV agreed there on a treaty of peace with the French King. King
George V must have been interested to remember the piquant contrast
between then and now, for when in 1475 Edward met Louis at Picquigny a
close fence was built across a bridge "with no longer intervals than would
allow the arm to pass," and the two Kings came from opposite sides to meet
and confer under those precautions of mistrust. Now a British King moved
among the people of France with no guard but their respect and love for
him and his Army.
[Illustration: ETAPLES
INSPECTING SOUTH AFRICAN GRAVES]
[Illustration: ETAPLES
INSPECTING NEWFOUNDLAND GRAVES]
[Illustration: ETAPLES
THE KING READING THE LETTER FROM A BEREAVED MOTHER ASKING THE QUEEN TO
PLACE A BUNCH OF FORGET-ME-NOTS ON HER SON'S GRAVE]
[Illustration: ETAPLES
THE KING PLACING THE FORGET-ME-NOTS ON THE GRAVE]
[Illustration: ETAPLES
AT THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE]
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF ETAPLES
THE KING AND DOMINION REPRESENTATIVES]
[Illustration: ETAPLES
EXAMINING PLANS OF CONSTRUCTIONAL WORK]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MEERUT INDIAN CEMETERY
INSPECTING INDIAN GRAVES]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN THE LAST POST
"_They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a resolute and
chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who, with ready and quick sympathy has set
aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so that we ourselves and our
descendants may for all time reverently tend and preserve their
resting-places._"]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE FRENCH GUARD OF HONOUR AT THE CROSS OF SACRIFICE]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE KING PLACING A WREATH ON THE CROSS OF SACRIFICE]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE SILENCE AND THE SALUTE AT THE CROSS]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE KING'S ADDRESS
"_And the last land he found it was fair and level ground
About a carven stone,
And a stark sword brooding on the bosom of the cross
Where high and low are one._"]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
GENERAL DE CASTELNAU'S REPLY]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
PROCESSION TO THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
PROCESSION TO THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE
"_All that they had they gave--they gave_"]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE QUEEN LAYING A WREATH ON THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE SALUTE AT THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE QUEEN AT THE GRAVES]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE QUEEN AT THE GRAVES]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE WITH THE QUEEN'S WREATH
"_Their name liveth for evermore_"]
[Illustration: TERLINCTHUN
NAPOLEON'S COLUMN IN THE BACKGROUND
"_And here ... the shadow of his monument falling almost across their
graves, the greatest of French soldiers--of all soldiers--stands guard
over them_"]
[Illustration: LEAVING ETAPLES]
[Illustration: "_In the course of my pilgrimage I have many times asked
myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth
through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses
to the desolation of war_"]
IV: "_And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas._"
On the evening of May 12 the King's train left Longpré and went down to
the coast. The night was spent at Etaples, a fishing port at the mouth of
the River Canche, which has figured since many centuries back in the
history of the British Empire, and now is the site of what has come to be
known as our "Empire Cemetery" in France.
When the Romans were bringing in the path of their legions order and
civilization into Europe--misfortunately thwarted by forest or bog or sea
from reaching some countries, which have suffered from the fact
since--they had their chief naval station for northern Gaul at the mouth
of the Canche. This station, no doubt, Julius Cæsar used in his expedition
against Britain. Later, when Carausius, a Roman Briton, revolted against
the Roman Empire, he won the command of the English Channel with his fleet
and maintained for some time an independent Britain, assuming the state of
Cæsar and founding a Roman-British Empire. The _Classis Britannica_ of the
Roman Empire had had its chief station on the Canche. With the revolt of
Carausius there was no longer a "British Fleet" of the Roman Empire, and
the _Classis Samarica_ (the Fleet of the Somme) took its place and had as
its task to hold the coasts of Gaul for the Roman Power against the
British Carausius. This Fleet of the Somme also had its base on the
Canche. Doubtless in the very early years of the Christian era there was
many a naval action between the British sea forces and those of the Romans
stationed on the Canche. Etaples is thus linked with the memory of
Carausius, the man who first taught England that her fate depended on the
holding of the Narrow Seas.
Etaples during the Great War was for long our chief hospital centre. In
the middle of the coast base line, having good railway communications with
most points, within sight and smell of the sea, the sand dunes around
Etaples were ideal for hospital hutments. To the Etaples hospitals there
came wounded from every battle-field. To them there came also in 1918 the
attacking air squadrons of the enemy, which accounts in part for the
number of nurses and other medical personnel buried in Etaples Cemetery.
One hospital at Etaples was set on fire and destroyed by the enemy. These
aircraft attacks on the Etaples hospitals came in June, 1918, when the
enemy concentrated his strategy on trying to cripple our means of supply.
They inflicted grave embarrassment on our High Command, for, at a time
when material was very scanty and lines of transport very congested, we
had to construct new hospitals elsewhere and move patients and staff. That
was probably the effect aimed at. The difference, from an enemy point of
view, in bombing a camp and a hospital is this: If you bomb a camp, you
kill a few men, but the camp does not move; if you bomb a hospital, you
kill a few patients, nurses, and doctors, and you force the hospital to
move (if it can move) to a safer place. But to the end of the war some
hospitals remained because it was impossible to move them.
In 1917 the hospitals at Etaples (which included eleven general, one
stationary, and four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot) could
deal with 22,000 wounded or sick. The earliest burial in the cemetery
dates from May, 1915. The graves to-day number more than 11,000. Of these,
1,984 were from the Overseas Dominions, divided as follows: Canada, 1,122;
Australia, 461; New Zealand, 261; South Africa, 67; West Indies, 29;
India, 26; and Newfoundland, 18.
The site of Etaples Cemetery is very beautiful. It rises from the margin
of the sea in three great terraces, in the middle one of which is the
Stone of Remembrance and on the highest the Cross of Sacrifice, standing
up stark against a grove of pine trees. From the cemetery the valley of
the Canche flows up to the walls of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which was the
General Headquarters of the British Army from 1916 until the close of the
war.
It was early when the King arrived at Etaples Cemetery. The sea was a soft
flood of silver grey in the morning light, and its salt breath, which is
the very vigour of our British blood, came up sharp and strong to meet the
smell of the pines, which is the smell of a ship's cordage. A seemly place
for the graves of a sailor race.
Outside the gates of Etaples Cemetery, the Mayor of Etaples and the
sub-prefect of Montreuil greeted the King, and there were presented to him
French veterans of the Great War and of the war of 1870. The King remained
a few moments talking with them and with two Anzac motor drivers, who are
of the very small band of the Australian Army Corps still remaining in
France. The King had expressed the wish that at this cemetery he should
meet representatives of the Dominions and visit with them the graves of
their fellow-countrymen. Accordingly, on entering the cemetery, the King
was met by the Hon. P. C. Larkin, High Commissioner for Canada; Sir James
Allen, High Commissioner for New Zealand; Sir Edgar Bowring, High
Commissioner for Newfoundland; Lieutenant-Colonel G. J. Hogben and Colonel
F. R. Collins, representing Australia and South Africa respectively in the
absence of their High Commissioners at the Genoa Conference. With each of
these in turn the King visited the graves of their Dominions, and spoke to
them in proud appreciation of the gallant aid that the children nations of
the Empire had given to the Mother Country. That this Imperial Cemetery
should stand by the side of the sea, the communicating bond of the
world-girdling British race, was referred to as the fitting thing.
Before leaving, the King showed, by an act of simple homage at the grave
of a soldier, his feeling of kinship with those comrades of his who had
fallen in the war. A woman in the West of England had written to the
Queen, as one mother to another, begging that she might lay on the tomb of
her dead son, Sergeant Matthew, R.A.S.C., in Etaples Cemetery, a spray of
forget-me-nots which she enclosed. The Queen was unable to be present (she
arrived later from Belgium), but confided the mission to the King. He had
brought with him the letter, and carried out reverently, dutifully the
pious task, taking care, accompanied by Mr. Harry Gosling and the
gardener, to find the grave and, bending down in homage, to place upon it
the mother's flowers. Standing by his side was Sir James Allen, the High
Commissioner for New Zealand, who had lost a son in Gallipoli.
Going up, then, to the Cross of Sacrifice, the King looked long out over
the marshalled graves to the sea, and turned back towards the pine wood
which encloses the cemetery on the east. From Etaples Cemetery the King
and his party returned to the train, and then proceeded along the
coastline to Wimereux Station, where they again took car and visited
Meerut Cemetery, which commemorates the devotion of India to the King
Emperor. Here rest men of every rank and every caste and every race of
India who crossed the black water to fight for their Emperor. This
cemetery, austere, remote, dark cypresses breaking the line of its turf,
with no flower nor Western symbol of remembrance and hope, records the
British respect for whatever form the aspiration towards God takes in the
human heart.
The King was met by General Sir Alexander Cobbe, V.C., representing the
Secretary of State for India, and the Mayor of the Commune of St. Martin,
in which commune the cemetery is situated. It was pointed out to the King
that some 330 native soldiers and followers were commemorated after the
disposition of their bodies according to their creeds. The headstones had
been erected by the Indian Soldiers' Fund, the walls around the cemetery
by the War Office.
The King inquired as to a central memorial in the cemetery, and was told
that probably a Great War stone would be erected in the centre, and that
in erecting headstones where required the War Graves Commission would
follow the same pattern as already existed in the cemetery. He suggested
that the crematorium might be now removed, and showed in other ways his
deep interest that all the sentiments should be respected of the kinfolk
of these men, of race and religion apart from our own but united to us in
the bond of a common sacrifice.
* * * * *
Now had come the last stage of the King's pilgrimage. Already outside the
port of Boulogne there was assembled a squadron of French destroyers to
escort him out of French waters, and further at sea a British squadron
waited to take over the guard. For all that their task to-day was to be
one of honour and ceremony, they could abate nothing of that eager,
crouching-forward attitude, and they seemed to sniff at every wave for a
submarine. They waited, hunters become courtiers, but the King for a time
turned his back to them, his duty not yet accomplished. He had seen the
graves of his sailors, soldiers, and airmen who had held to their trust by
sea and land and air, from the gates of Ypres to the banks of the Somme;
had mourned at their loss and had thrilled with the pride of their
courage. Now he went his way to the high Terlincthun Cemetery, by
Napoleon's column on the Boulogne cliffs, to say to his people what was in
his mind.
Of all the war cemeteries in France there is none more nobly planned than
this of Terlincthun. It is set at the foot of Napoleon's column, where
rested the right wing of the Grand Army when its face was turned towards
England. But the guardian sea lay between. It is on record that there was
offered to France a plan of conquering the Channel passage by the use of
submarine boats; and refused on the ground that the sentiment of humanity
would not tolerate the use of such a weapon even against warships. "It
seems impossible," wrote the French Minister for Marine, Admiral Pleville
de Pelley in 1801, "to serve a commission as belligerents to men who
employ such a method of destroying the fleets of the enemy." The British
dead can rest content and comradely beneath the monument of so gallant a
foe.
From its high wind-swept cliff, Terlincthun Cemetery looks over the
English Channel, and on a clear day the white cliffs of our coast shine
out in the distance. The Stone of Remembrance faces towards home, the
Cross of Sacrifice, bearing its great bronze sword, looks towards the old
enemy lines. Between, like guardian walls, are ranked the lines of
grave-stones, and around them flower-beds carpeted in this season with the
foliage of wallflowers. Happy was the choice of this flower for a
soldiers' grave-yard, since it loves to spread its tapestry of gold and
red over ramparts. The cemetery shelters 3,327 dead. They are in almost
all cases men who died at the base hospitals at Boulogne and Wimereux. But
some are the bodies of British seamen washed up on the coast and buried
here. Many graves are of Royal Air Force members. The graves of the Empire
dead number 2,551 of the Home Country, 277 Canadian, 88 Australian, 29 New
Zealand, 10 Newfoundland, one South African, one Guernsey, 33 South
African Native, and 5 West Indian Native. In addition, there are 92
American graves, 27 Italian, 4 Russian, 3 Polish, 2 Serbian, and 16 of
unknown nationality.
For this, the crowning act of homage, the King was joined by the Queen,
who had travelled that morning from Brussels. With the Royal Party were
Admiral the Earl Beatty and Field-Marshal the Earl Haig (who jointly
represented the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force). At the gate of the
cemetery the King and Queen were received by General de Castelnau,
representing the French Army; M. Cauzel, prefect of the Département of
Pas-de-Calais; Admiral Barthes, naval prefect of Cherbourg; General
Lacapelle, commanding the First Army Corps; General Philippeau, commanding
the Second Army Corps; Mgr. Julien, Bishop of Arras; M. de Lavergne,
K.B.E.; M. Lahan, sub-prefect of Boulogne; the Mayor of Boulogne, and
other French officials, and the members of the Imperial War Graves
Commission, whom it was His Majesty's expressed desire to meet at the
close of his pilgrimage. Mr. Herbert Baker, the architect who designed the
cemetery, and Captain A. W. Hill, D.Sc., were also present. Among the
French officials was M. Le Sous-Intendant Bezombes, C.B.E., who is the
administrative head of the French Government services dealing with their
own war graves. All who realize the extent of the French losses can
understand what a tremendous task falls to him; but he has never been too
busy to help our Commission in overcoming any of their difficulties. One
of the first acts of the King, after his arrival, was to express to M.
Bezombes and his staff the deep and sincere gratitude of the British
Empire for their ungrudging support and sympathy in this work. The
citizens of Boulogne had assembled around the cemetery and gave the King
and Queen a cordial greeting. Within the open space before the Cross of
Sacrifice were gathered many relatives of the dead, members of the British
Colony and of the staff of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and a
number of French sympathisers.
King George and Queen Mary, passing through an aisle between the serried
ranks of graves, advanced to the Cross of Sacrifice, and the King placed
at its foot his chaplet of red roses, palms, and bay, and stood at the
salute. The French Guard of Honour, clean, clear-cut figures in their
helmets of classic line, recalling the Roman Legionaries, came to the
salute, and for two hushed minutes, even as our whole realm stands for two
minutes on each 11th of November, all thoughts were given up to the memory
of the dead.
Still standing at the Cross of Sacrifice, the King turned his face then
towards the Stone of Remembrance, both in direct alignment with Napoleon's
Column, which closed the perspective, and, his voice vibrant with emotion,
but under rigid control, delivered his message to his people over all the
seas, in the name of the Queen and of himself:--
For the past few days I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in honour of
a people who died for all free men.
At the close of that pilgrimage, on which I followed ways already
marked by many footsteps of love and pride and grief, I should like to
send a message to all who have lost those dear to them in the Great
War, and in this the Queen joins me to-day, amidst these surroundings
so wonderfully typical of that single-hearted assembly of nations and
of races which form our Empire. For here, in their last quarters, lie
sons of every portion of that Empire, across, as it were, the
threshold of the Mother Island which they guarded that Freedom might
be saved in the uttermost ends of the earth.
For this, a generation of our manhood offered itself without question,
and almost without the need of a summons. Those proofs of virtue,
which we honour here to-day, are to be found throughout the world and
its waters--since we can truly say that the whole circuit of the earth
is girdled with the graves of our dead. Beyond the stately cemeteries
of France, across Italy, through Eastern Europe in wellnigh unbroken
chain they stretch, passing over the holy mount of Olives itself to
the farthest shores of the Indian and Pacific Oceans--from Zeebrugge
to Coronel, from Dunkirk to the hidden wildernesses of East Africa.
But in this fair land of France, which sustained the utmost fury of
the long strife, our brothers are numbered, alas! by hundreds of
thousands. They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a
resolute and chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who with ready and quick
sympathy has set aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so that
we ourselves and our descendants may for all time reverently tend and
preserve their resting-places. And here, at Terlincthun, the shadow of
his monument falling almost across their graves, the greatest of
French soldiers--of all soldiers--stands guard over them. And this is
just, for, side by side with the descendants of his incomparable
armies, they defended his land in defending their own.
Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and maintained
individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the course of my
pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more
potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come, than
this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.
And I feel that, so long as we have faith in God's purposes, we cannot
but believe that the existence of these visible memorials will,
eventually, serve to draw all peoples together in sanity and
self-control, even as it has already set the relations between our
Empire and our allies on the deep-rooted bases of a common heroism and
a common agony.
Standing beneath this Cross of Sacrifice, facing the great Stone of
Remembrance, and compassed by these sternly simple headstones, we
remember, and must charge our children to remember, that, as our dead
were equal in sacrifice, so are they equal in honour, for the greatest
and the least of them have proved that sacrifice and honour are no
vain things, but truths by which the world lives.
Many of the cemeteries I have visited in the remoter and still
desolate districts of this sorely stricken land, where it has not yet
been possible to replace the wooden crosses by headstones, have been
made into beautiful gardens which are lovingly cared for by comrades
of the war. I rejoice I was fortunate enough to see these in the
spring, when the returning pulse of the year tells of unbroken life
that goes forward in the face of apparent loss and wreckage; and I
fervently pray that, both as nations and individuals, we may so order
our lives after the ideals for which our brethren died, that we may be
able to meet their gallant souls once more, humbly but unashamed.
General de Castelnau responded with like eloquence and feeling. Two
sentences of his reply voiced a sacred pledge:--
Nous garderons religieusement le dépôt sacré confié à notre dévotion,
ici, à Terlincthun, comme dans toutes les nécropoles du front qui, de
Boulogne à Belfort, jalonnent dans un funèbre alignement la voie
sacrée, le calvaire des souffrances, des agonies et des deuils gravi
la main dans la main par les valeureux combattants de nos deux
nations.
Et lorsque chargé des parfums de la Patrie toute proche, le vent du
large apportera à ces tombes la douce caresse du foyer natal, il se
confondra avec le souffle de piété tendre et fidèle dont sont pénétrés
toutes les âmes et tous les coeurs français pour les héros de
l'Angleterre et de la France qui, tombés côte à côte au champ
d'honneur, dorment côte à côte à l'ombre d'austères forêts de croix de
bois élevant vers le Ciel leurs bras de miséricorde et d'espérance.
General de Castelnau then laid at the foot of the Cross of Sacrifice a
wreath in the name of the Anglo-French Committee of our War Graves
Commission, and General Lacapelle another in the name of the French Army.
One more act of homage was to be made. The King and Queen, passing slowly
through the cemetery, ascended the steps to the Stone of Remembrance and
then, bending lowly, the Queen placed before the stone, over which was
draped the Union Jack--the merited pall of a soldier's tomb--a wreath of
rosemary for remembrance, and carnations, these last of the colour which
takes its name from the stricken battle-field of Magenta. The French Guard
of Honour saluted, lowering their standard. Its colours, mingled with the
colours of our flag and with the deep purple of the Queen's tribute,
suffused the white stone as with heroes' blood. The King and those around
him saluted, while from the bugles of the Coldstream and Grenadier Guards,
posted near the Great Napoleon's Column, there came the sound, as of a
long-drawn-out sigh, of "The Last Post."
There is no music, of all the music of the world, that so brings home to
the soldier's heart, proud sorrow, healing consolation. In the daily round
of his dutiful work "The Last Post" comes to tell him of the end of a day
of this troublous life, that the shades have lengthened, the evening
come, the busy world hushed, his work done, and he may rest. And, when he
goes to the graveside to say the last farewell to a comrade who has found
for ever peace, he hears again "The Last Post," to say to him that his
mate is not dead, but sleepeth, and will rise again. The common and
everyday use of the music takes nothing from its nobility, but constantly
communicates its message of immortality so as to make of it a habit of
mind.
The call of "The Last Post" ended; and to the closing moment of the King's
pilgrimage came a sense of over-powering emotion, which made men look
resolutely forward, not wishing to catch their neighbour's glance. The
spirits of the mighty army of the dead seemed to marshall in that God's
Acre, set high on the cliff looking over the sea; come to receive the
homage of the King, for whom they died, and to hear that in the land which
they saved their names will live for evermore.
FRANK FOX.
The King's Thanks
On the point of leaving France, the King sent the following telegram to
the President of the French Republic:--
I have to-day brought to an end a visit to the graves of my countrymen
who gave their lives on the battle-fields of France, and now lie
covered by the same blood-stained soil as, alas! so many of their
heroic French brothers-in-arms.
Before leaving Boulogne, I desire, Monsieur le President, to send to
you from a full heart, and speaking in the name of all the people of
my Empire, a message of profound gratitude for the generous gift of
the ground for ever hallowed by the memories of common sorrows and
glories. These memories must recall for all time the sentiment of
faithful comradeship which inspired those who fell side by side in the
Great War, and which was bequeathed by them as a sacred legacy to our
two nations.
I would add an expression of my personal thanks to you, Monsieur le
President, and to the French people, among whom I have spent these
three days, for the touching sympathy with my desire to make this
pilgrimage in such privacy as was in harmony with my feeling of
reverent affection for the dead and respect for those to whom they are
dear.
The following message was sent to the King of the Belgians:
... May I add how touched I was by the sympathetic attitude of all
classes whom I met last Thursday, when visiting the graves of our dead
resting for ever on Belgian soil.
The King later caused the following letter to be sent to the Vice-Chairman
of the Imperial War Graves Commission:--
BUCKINGHAM PALACE,
_May 17, 1922_.
DEAR SIR FABIAN WARE,
The King desires me to thank you again for all the admirable
arrangements made by you in connection with the visit to the
cemeteries in Belgium and France, and to congratulate your staff on
their excellent work.
His Majesty was interested to learn the details of the organization of
the Commission, and is satisfied that, so long as it is superintended
by you and those who so loyally assist you, the public here and
Overseas can rest assured that the graves, wherever they may be, will
be properly cared for.
The King hopes you will take an opportunity of telling the members of
the Imperial War Graves Commission how much he appreciated their
presence at the ceremony at Terlincthun.[2] His Majesty also wishes
you to say that he trusts the High Commissioner and other
representatives of the Dominions will convey to their Governments and
people the great satisfaction he expressed to them personally at
Etaples at the care bestowed by the Commission on the graves of those
who lie so far from their homes. In all the cemeteries visited by His
Majesty, Dominion and British graves lay side by side, and the King
assures the people Overseas that these graves will be reverently and
lovingly guarded. It is a satisfaction to His Majesty that the
Imperial War Graves Commission has been so constituted that these
graves may be honoured for all time.
The King was impressed by the ability and efficiency of the gardeners
in the service of the Commission, and desires that his appreciation
may be expressed to them of the manner in which they carry out their
precious charge. Although the completion of these cemeteries must
necessarily take some time, especially in the still-devastated areas,
they may continue their work with the full conviction that they are
earning the deep gratitude of the relatives and friends of those whose
graves they tend.
Yours sincerely,
F. E. G. PONSONBY.
The High Commissioners cabled to the Governments and peoples of the
Dominions the terms of the King's assurance that the graves of their dead
will be honoured for all time.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The total number of the dead of the British Empire in the Great War
was recently officially stated in the House of Commons to be 946,023,
distributed as follows:--Great Britain and Ireland, 743,702; Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, Colonies, 140,923;
India, 61,398.
[2] The following are the members of the Imperial War Graves Commission,
those marked with a [+] being unavoidably prevented, owing to the Genoa
Conference and other reasons, from personally attending: [+] Secretary of
State for War (Chairman), [+] Secretary of State for the Colonies, [+]
Secretary of State for India, [+] First Commissioner of Works, The Hon.
Peter C. Larkin (High Commissioner for Canada), [+] The Right Hon. Sir
Joseph Cook, G.C.M.G. (High Commissioner for Australia), The Hon. Sir
James Allen, K.C.B. (High Commissioner for New Zealand), [+] The Hon. Sir
Edgar Walton, K.C.M.G. (High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa),
The Hon. Sir Edgar Bowring (High Commissioner for Newfoundland), Sir
William Garstin, G.C.M.G., G.B.E., Harry Gosling, Esq., C.H., J.P.,
Rudyard Kipling, Esq., Lieutenant-General Sir George Macdonogh, K.C.B.,
K.C.M.G., Sir Robert Hudson, G.B.E., Vice-Admiral Sir Morgan Singer,
K.C.V.O., C.B., [+] H. Maddocks, Esq., K.C., M.F., Major-General Sir
Fabian Ware, K.C.V.O., K.B.E., C.B., C.M.G. (Vice-Chairman).
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Footnote 2 contains a dagger symbol which is represented in this text
version as [+].
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