When I got to the front I was attached to a signal company, which consists of establishing communication between headquarters and three brigades, and that meant when we were on the march riding through about seven miles of troops, guns, waggons and hosts of other things. When in action we had to go quite up to the firing line, and very soon I hardly knew myself, as I got quite used to the bursting of shells and to the shocking condition of the killed and wounded. It was astonishing to see how soon men, who had been used to every comfort at home and who knew nothing of war in any shape or form, got accustomed to the hardships of campaigning and developed a callousness which is altogether foreign to their real nature.
One of the most amazing things about the war is the way in which it changes a man and makes him callous. I know that before I had anything to do with the Army I was so sensitive in some ways that the mere thought of blood was almost enough to make me ill, yet now, after being for more than four months in the war, and having seen the havoc of the most terrific battles the world has ever known, I tear along the lonely roads and remain almost unmoved by the most dreadful sights. The dead pass unnoticed, and as for the wounded, you can do nothing, as a rule. You have your orders, and they must be obeyed without loss of time, because a motor despatch-rider is always on the rush.
I well remember the very first German I saw lying dead. He was an Uhlan, and was on the roadside. I was greatly distressed at the sight of him, there was something so sad about it all, but now there is no such sensation at the sight of even great numbers of the dead. A strange thing happened in connection with the Uhlan. I took his cap as a memento, and brought it home, with several other German caps and helmets, chunks of shell, clips of cartridges, and relics of altar-cloths; and now, for some cause which I can’t quite fathom, the Uhlan’s cap has turned a queer sort of yellow.
That strange callousness comes over one at the most unexpected times, and often enough a motor despatch-rider has to dash through a crowd of refugees and scatter them, though the very sight of the poor souls is heart-breaking. When Ypres was bombarded, the men, women and children thronged the roads, and all that was left to them in the world they carried in bundles on their backs; yet they had to be scattered like flocks of sheep when the motor despatch-riders rushed along. There was, however, one pleasing feature in the matter, and that was that these poor people knew that we were tearing along in their interests as well as our own, and that we did not mean to hurt anybody--which was different, indeed, from the spirit of the enemy, whose policy was to spread terror and havoc wherever he could, and to destroy mercilessly. When I first went into Ypres it was a beautiful old city, very much like Norwich, but I saw the German guns smash the place and the shells set fire to glorious old structures like the Cathedral and the Cloth Hall. The two pieces of altar-cloth which I brought home were taken from the Cathedral while it was burning.