June 7, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
35 
The Grown of Thorns 
By Centurion 
" J.a conronne dti '^oldal ea! tine couronne d'epincs. ' — De Vigny. 
MY friend paused for a moment and stared 
reflectively at the pattern of the dado; " Coyrago. 
W'liat is courage ? 1 don't know. Courage in 
tile heat of action, we've all got tliat, I 
su])pose. It's an animal instinct. There's a certain 
gregariousnesB in it, the instinct of the herd, tiie eyes 
of other fellows on you. And after all, to face Death 
requires far less courage than to face life, which, at any 
rate by the time you are forty, is much the more terrible 
of the two. But there's another kind of courage — the courage 
to take lonely decisions amid a dance of ctmflicting ideas, to 
resist the importunities of pity, or may be of prudence, and 
all the beckoning spectres ot Imagination, that kind of courage 
— resolution, in fact — well, that's not so common. I mean 
what that chaj) Conrad calls a jiower to ignore ' the solici- 
tation of ideas. ' That's what 1 call the courage of the 
Higher Command. The courage of a subaltern is one thing ; 
the courage of a commanding officer is quite another. You 
know what I mean ? A fellow may be a good observer, a 
good judge of positions, perfectly cool in charge of the fire- 
control when the enemy's ranging and gets a bracket on you — ■ 
and yet Jie may be utterly unfit to command a battery, still 
more a brigade, incapable of knowing when to take his guns 
out of action, for example ; he may hang on too long or not 
long enough. He may think too much. It's really not a 
question of cowardice at all — a man's more often undone by 
fear for the safety of others than by fear for his own — by a 
want of hardness in his composition, if you know what I 
mean." 
" Yes," I said, " I know. It's a distinction not unknown 
to military law, after all. Physical cowardice, cold feet, 
blue funk, means undue regard for one's personal safety, 
as the charge sheet puts it ; moral cowardice, irresolution, 
doubt, all that we call ' conduct to the prejudice of good 
order and military discipline.' " 
"Quite. And it's the second that is really seductive. It's 
not danger that intimidates the man of forty but responsi- 
bility. Even his affections may betray him! I knew an O.C. 
who never got over having his battalion cut up and losing 
three-fourths of his officers — it broke his nerve, he always 
got calculating prospective losses in an attack ; it wasn't his 
own life he valued but the lives of his men. I often think 
he courted the bullet that put an end to his perplexities, 
poor chap. The Hun, who thinks of everything, thought 
all that out long ago — Do you remember that passage in his 
text-l)Ook in whicli he warns the German officer against 
' the contagion of humanitarian ideas ?' 
" Now I knew a case, a hard case if ever there was one, 
one of those dilemmas of Duty and Conscience that De Vigny 
used to say were th6 baneful lot of the soldier who thinks too 
much. Yes, I'll tell it to you. It happened during the 
Retreat from Mons. I sujjj)ose there never was a show 
which called for greater resolution, for all that one under- 
stands by moral courage, than that ; for uncertainty brooded 
over us like a nightmare. It was not what we knetu we had 
to face but what we did not know that troubled us. " There 
were we constantly reconnoitring and taking up a position 
and then being ordered to abandon it, continually getting 
alarms, sometimes firing a round point-blank with the fuse 
at zero through a hedge in a village at Uhlans who were not 
there, despatch-riders rushing in from encounters with enemy 
])atrols and magnifying them into armies, and the inscrutable 
woods dogging us the whole way, dark and sinister. The 
air was thick with rumour and suspicion, and every day came 
rresh orders — orders against spies, against intermittent smoke 
:rom chimneys, against guides, against refugees. I never 
:ook my clothes off the whole time — except on the 28th when 
some damned fool of a staff officer sent out the order to burn 
all officers' kits, and, seeing I might just as well burn my 
old tunic and breeches instead of my new ones in the valise, 
I did a quick change. We never unlimbered after Le Cateau ; 
and that night- I'm coming Ito it in a moment- we didn't 
even unirarness ; the horses sle])t on their feet, and the drivers 
beside them. Talk about scares ! One never knew what was 
behind one — no, nor what was on our left or on our right. 
Why, I remember the Corn walls received one of our supply 
columns in the dark at the point of the bayonet. We moved in 
a mist — a mist of conjecture, rumour, invention, exaggeration 
and doubt. Mind you, I'm not saying the men ever got the 
wind up. Oh no ! not they ! Besides every O.C. told his 
men that it was all part of a great strategic plan to lure the 
Germans on and catch them in a trap. And the men believed 
it. So did we officers for that matter, but our trouble was 
that we did not know what that plan was. We did not know 
we were ])Iaying a big game — we knew the rules of the game 
but we did not know what the game might be. I'd have 
given anything to know exactly what we were up against. At 
las!: we got that Intelligence Summary of tlie jrst. It told us 
something like this. ' 77;<' march of a German column five 
hours' lont^ was observed yesterday on the road from Amiens 
to St. Juste en Chaussee-. aerial reconnaissance establishes the 
movement of strong and hostile columns fifteen miles long, 
preceded bv cavalry, from Roye to Compii'gne, also of a force 
South-Easi tmf.irds Monldidier,' and so on. Pretty stiff, 
wasn't it? And yet I felt posi iv 'ly bucked up. Yes, 
bucked up. Anyhow, I thought, bad news is better than no 
news — and so it is, in war.. But that was on the 31st, remem- 
ber. The story I'm going to tell you happened before that, 
at a time vyhen no one kn-ew anything. 
" It was in the retreat from Le Cateau. I. didn't see very 
much of the battle itself. As you know, a gunner never does, 
unless he's observing, ami my battery was well under cover 
behind rising ground. In fact beyond stray shells searching 
for our wagon-line positions, which I had, of course, placed 
carefully about 400 yards back on the flank of the 
battery, we didn't get it very hot. But about 2 p.m. 
there was a great .volume of enemy artillery fire, the 
crackle of our musketry came nearer and nearer, and I knew 
that we were being driven "back. My battery received orders 
to retire to a position to cover the retreat of the other 
batteries. The infantry began retiring past us, the cavalry 
helping to cover their retreat. Jolly well they did it too — 
they were everywhere. Acting the part of a stage army, 
dismounting, putting in a few rounds rapid, then mto the 
saddle and starting the same game somewhere else, 
so as to give the enemy the impression of our being 
in greater strength than we really are. That went oa 
till nig/itfall when the battery received the order to 
retire, which we did, wagons leacUng so as to 1>g 
ready for ' action rear ' at any moment. But a lot of the 
infantry were still behind and our Brigadier ordered us to 
halt for them to catch us up in order that we might take as 
many as possible on our Hmbers, for they were dead beat 
and dropping in their tracks. We took' them up, eight 
to twelve on a carriage, all clinging to each other like 
tired children to prevent their faUing off, and nodding, 
nodding, nodding their heads fike clock-work dolls. That 
halt was nearly fatal because the rest of the column had 
gone on ahead of us ; the night was dark, the road unmetalled, 
and they had vanished out of sight and hearing like ghosts. 
" I felt pretty uncomfortable, I can tell you, for that had 
happened once before and I had heard of columns taking the 
wrong road and marching straight into the Germans 
and never being heard of again. I - had no instruo 
tions as to the route and all the country people seemed 
to have fled. -And there was I, with the tail end of 
the column at a place where five cross roads met. I 
legged up a sign-post, flashed my torch on to it and hung on 
there perplexed and profane, with the moths fluttering in 
my face, when, as luck woiild have it, up came General — ■ — ■, 
our Divisional G.O.C. with a staff officer of his. He put us 
right. He told me to stop where I was and see that all the 
column followed the correct road towards a certain place 
and then to ride along it and report if the whole of it was 
closed up and of what units it was composed. 
" It was a strange business, uncanny you might say. The 
night was dark and the order had been given that tlicre 
was to be no smoking or talking in the columns. One 
heard nothing but the steady tramp, tiamp, tramp on the 
road as the shadowy frieze of tired men marched past 
in a cloud of dust like a river mist, silent and half asleep on 
their feet. Every now and then a man would pitch forward on 
his face and lie where he fell as though struck by a bullet. I 
was half asleep myself, but woke suddenly as a cockchafer 
came .straight at me and with a buzz hjt me in the face. The 
faint whisper of the poplars gradually grew louder, the wind 
rose, and rain began to fall. Everv few yards I pulled up, 
in order to identify the units, and called out " Who are you?" 
At that some sleepy O.C. would pull up his horse, halt the 
column, the men, who held their lifles at " the carry," would 
suddenly eome to the " on guard " position with the bayonet, 
and the O.C, ranging up beside me and peering into my face 
with his hand on his revolver, would sav " Who the devil 
are you ? What do you want to know for?" The whole ol 
'em would he suddenly most unpleasantly wide awake. Oh ! 
they were topping ! You sec I wasn't a staff officer, afid 
for all they knew.^I might. be a German si)y— such things 
