KIPLING'S VIEWS
Pre-war, Kipling had issued numerous warnings about the might of Germany and his personal belief that it was a threat to civilization and the Empire.
THE INHUMAN BEHAVIOUR OF THE HUN IS AMPLY ILLUSTRATED IN HIS HISTORY.
They are described as ‘malignant apes’ as regards the wanton destruction they leave in their wake.
It was pro-Boche-agents who were responsible for mixing steel shavings into the baled hay that killed a number of army horses.
Passing through Ypres, it was felt necessary to ‘warn the companies that the enemy might attack behind a screen of Belgian women and children, in which case the battalion would have to fire through them.’
Prior to this the 1st Battalion had already experienced how unconventional this war would be.
Around the village of Soupir, ‘the battalion had its first experience of the German use of the white flag ….. (they) found some 150 Germans sitting around haystacks and waving white flags. They went forward to take their surrender and were met by a heavy fire at 30 yards range, which forced them to fall back.’
A few days later, ‘they judged it strange to find a man apparently dead, with a cloth covering his face, lying in a hollow under a ridge commanding their line, who turned out to be quite alive and unwounded. His rifle was within short reach, and he was waiting till our patrols had passed to get to his work. But they killed him, angrily and with astonishment.’
Two weeks later, one of their own, Lieutenant Brooke, was fatally wounded by a shell burst and the manner of his death clearly reflected the difference between the foes. ‘He was brought into the A.D.S by his own men who made the R.A.M.C. stretcher bearers walk behind as they would allow none but themselves to carry him. They bade him farewell before they returned to their trenches and went out openly weeping. His last words to them where that they were to ‘play the game’ and not to revenge his death on the Hun.’
LACK OF PREPARATION
Before the war, Kipling had regularly warned of the lack of preparation and readiness for military action of British forces for a European war. And this is expressed a number of times in the history.
n relation to the 2nd Battalion, he writes, ‘They had parted long ago with any delusion as to the War ending that year or the next. The information that came to them by word of mouth was not of the sort dispensed in the Press, and they knew, perhaps a little more than the public, how inadequate where our preparations.’
His assessment of plans for the conduct of the Battle of Loos are equally stark.
‘It does not seem to have occurred to anyone to suggest that direct infantry attacks, after 90-minute bombardments, on works be gotten out of a generation of thought and prevision, scientifically built up by immense Labour and applied science, and developed against all contingencies through nine months, are not likely to find a fortunate issue. So, while the press was explaining to a puzzled public what a far-reaching success had been achieved, the ‘greatest battle in the history of the world’ simmered down to picking up the pieces on both sides of the line, and a return to autumnal trench work, until more and heavier guns could be designed and manufactured in England. Meantime, men died.’
When the ‘war was still young’, the 1st Battalion were ‘taught how to throw bombs made out of jam pots…..the jam pot bomb died early but not before it had caused the sufficiency of trouble to its users.’ As Kipling puts it, ‘the price of making war on the spot of the moment was paid, day in and day out with the bodies of young men subject to every form of death.’