Tommy (78 page)

Nevertheless an officer's reputation could be blasted by a lapse. Lance Corporal Coppard was detailed to look after a new officer, but: ‘The poor devil was paralysed by fear… Not even the urge of nature would drive him out of the place [a deep dugout], and he did his business there. He lost his appetite and wouldn't touch the tasty bits I fixed up for him.'
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The officer was finished: he reported sick and never returned to the front. Many found instances like this the cruellest of disparities between officers and men. Medical officers were far more prepared to certify terrified or exhausted officers as sick than they were men. Moran reckoned that by 1917 subalterns did not last long:

The army's chain of command, aware of the damage that could be done by irresolute or frightened officers, and of the way that such men undermined its caste system, was usually prepared to support commanding officers who gave their failures an easy way out. And there was a way out even for commanding officers who failed themselves. Moran's own CO reported sick: ‘He looked old and troubled. In a quarter of a century he had been a soldier preparing no doubt for the real thing. It had come and this was the end.'
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Yet most officers played the role expected of them. Fred Hodges had five company commanders in the seven months to November 1918.

Good officers were wholly absorbed in their commands. Lieutenant Colonel A. J. B. Addison of 9/York and Lancaster was mortally wounded on 1 July 1916, but lived, untended, in a shell hole for two or three days. He scribbled in his pocketbook: ‘Tell the Regiment I hope it did well.'
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In May 1918 Lieutenant Colonel Dean of 6/South Wales Borderers was carried into an artillery headquarters, appallingly wounded, unable to speak and obviously dying. He signalled for pen and paper, and scrawled his last order: ‘To my battalion – Stick it, Boys,' and died within a few minutes. Regular officers, temporary officers, ex-rankers: gallant gentlemen indeed.

When the army went to war in 1914 it rewarded courage with a limited range of awards. The Victoria Cross was available to all ranks for the highest acts of valour. Officers could be appointed companions of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), instituted in 1886, for either gallantry or rendering distinguished service. The fact that the decoration could either reflect great bravery just short of that required for a VC, or a heroic struggle amongst the files and memoranda, always left it open to criticism, and during the Boer War it was so regularly bestowed on well-connected staff officers that it was said that its initials stood for Dukes' Sons Only. Other ranks could be awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for distinguished conduct in the field, and the medal's popularity was enhanced by the fact that recipients received a cash bounty. A bar on the medal ribbon (worn as a rosette when the ribbon was worn alone) signified a second or subsequent award. In addition, the various grades of orders of chivalry (most commonly the Bath and the St Michael and St George) could be bestowed upon officers. All ranks could be Mentioned in Dispatches, and officers could receive brevet or substantive promotion as a reward for distinguished service.

However, it soon became clear that the existing system would, like much else, not cope with a world war. The award of large numbers of DSOs and DCMs in the first six months of the war encouraged the creation, in December 1914, of the Military Cross (MC) for officers below the substantive rank of major and for warrant officers too, and in March 1916, of the Military Medal (MM), known, from its stripey ribbon, as a duckboard, for other ranks. In 1917 the Order of the British Empire was instituted, its five classes (from MBE to GBE) giving the opportunity of rewarding civil or military service across a wide range of ranks and appointments: a medal of the order (BEM) was added later. Allied nations conferred their own honours on selected British servicemen (a practice the British reciprocated), and men were allowed to wear such awards without the normal difficulty of obtaining royal permission to do so.

Old soldiers reacted disdainfully to the expansion of honours. All officers thought a lot of the DSO, and all men thought a lot of the DCM,' wrote Frank Richards, but they were less impressed by the new awards.

An officer or soldier was decorated as the result of a citation initiated by his commanding officer or, in the case of a higher headquarters, by the formation commander. Decorations might be periodic, awarded in the New Year's honours or the king's birthday honours, or in the list for a specific battle. Or they might be immediate, bestowed soon after a particular act of bravery. It soon became evident that an immediate award had to be very immediate indeed if its recipient was to live to receive it, and by 1918 these awards could be issued within a week of the act which had earned them. Formal investiture with the decoration itself might, however, take some time, for the most prestigious awards were given by the king in person; divisional commanders presented the ribbon of the award, often made up with a clip so that it could be pinned on immediately. Siegfried Sassoon was recommended for an award for gallantry on a raid near Fricourt in May 1916, and his MC was announced a month later: the kindly James Dunn took the purple and white ribbon off his own tunic and sewed it to Sassoon's. In 1917 Joseph Maclean told his parents that a brother officer had just been awarded the DSO for taking a pillbox, adding that: ‘The job was worth a Victoria Cross.' Two nights later he came round to Maclean's company mess to play bridge; Maclean reported ‘He has his ribbon up…'.
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John Cusack was awarded the MM for galloping through a village on 8 August 1918 and reporting it clear; he felt that he owed the award to the fact that the flamboyant act had been carried out under the eyes of his brigade commander. It was speedily presented by ‘a general, an old character with a shaky hand'.
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For most of the war there was a set quota for awards. On the Western Front for the year from 1 April 1917 it was 200 DSOs and 500 MCs every month: in May 1918 the limit was removed ‘provided the standard of the award was maintained'. There was no specified limit for DCMs and MMs. During the whole of the war 500 VCs (and two bars) were awarded for service in France and Belgium, with 6,768 DSOs (with 606 first bars, 69 second bars and 7 third bars); 31,793 MCs (with 2,761 first bars, 157 second bars, and 4 third bars); 21,041 DCMs (with 439 first bars, and 7 second bars), and 110,342 MMs (with 5,718 first bars, 180 second bars, and a single third bar).
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It was widely agreed that a man was far more likely to receive an award for a successful operation than a ‘dud show'. While a commanding officer could never wholly guarantee an award, he could make it clear that he would recommend those taking a prominent part in, say, a trench raid, for decorations, if they survived. Brigadier General H. B. de Lisle, commanding a cavalry brigade in 1914, promised a DSO to the first officer to kill a German with the new pattern cavalry sword, and was as good as his word, although Captain Charles Hornby's DSO, earned on 21 August 1914, was not gazetted till February the following year. A good deal also depended on a commanding officer's skill at citation-writing (what Rowland Feilding called ‘not necessarily a truthful but a flowery pen'), and his relationship with the brigadier. Feilding, constantly warned by his superiors that most decorations had to reflect ‘a specific act of bravery' rather than sustained good performance, described one act so eloquently that the delighted general wanted to hear all about it from the soldier when he conferred the decoration, but the man was unable to recall the incident. Awards were scarce in Stormont Gibbs' battalion, he recalled, because the CO ‘never gave anyone a good write up; the fact of his putting anyone in at all was a remarkable event'. Gibbs did his best, as adjutant, to make up for the deficiency, ‘and in this manner Scrimgeour and Richards got MCs. I don't remember anyone else getting one tho' “other ranks” got a fair ration of MMs.'
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The system caused joy and woe in equal portions. George Coppard MM admitted that ‘to win a medal of some sort was my highest ambition. There were medal-scoffers of course, who joked about medals being sent up with the rations, but I am sure that every man in his heart would have liked a medal, if only to relieve the monotony…'.
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Decorations brought extraordinary pleasure: Siegfried Sassoon wrote of the preoccupation with the left-hand side of the tunic, so common to winners of the MC, and John Cusack was delighted to put up his ‘duckboard'. Yet along with the honest pride engendered by a decoration came the burden of living up to it. ‘After you got a decoration there was a general feeling – and a fear – that you were expected to do more in any action that was going,' thought Cusack.
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F. P. Roe had a Royal Munster Fusilier corporal under his command who had won the VC in Gallipoli but declined to wear the ribbon ‘as he had been so teased by his fellow soldiers in the regiment…'.
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On the other hand, some men became so caught up in the repeated demonstration of courage that it eventually consumed them. Company Sergeant Major J. Skinner VC DCM and French
Croix de Guerre
was wounded in action eight times and, after his investiture with his VC, given a posting in Scotland. But he evaded the order and rejoined his old company near Ypres, apparently wagered with a brave comrade as to which of them would be hit next, and was then killed in March 1918 as he went out to aid a wounded man. This very gallant warrant officer was carried to his grave by six other VC winners of the incomparable 29th Division. Towards the end of the war Lieutenant F. L. C. Jones – ‘A Mons man, a Grenadier, commissioned in France', who was hoping for a regular commission – confided to a brother officer that he was ‘going all out for a VC to boost his chances. When his advancing platoon found a machine-gun post he yelled, ‘Here's my chance, I'm after that VC.' ‘He got twenty yards, and went down, shot through the head,' recalled an eyewitness.
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Not all who wanted decorations received them. Feilding wrote that: ‘I have known men – good men too – eating their hearts out through lack of recognition. How petty this sounds! Yet a ribbon is the only prize in war for the ordinary soldier…'.
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Ernest Shephard was infuriated to read that a baker with the Army Service Corps had been awarded the DCM ‘for turning out the maximum amount of bread', and snorted: ‘Ye Gods, what an insult to a
fighting soldier,
who risks his life daily. What are the authorities thinking about to award medals in this way and bring contempt on what should be a prized honour?
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Diaries are spattered with comments about undeserved awards, and drenched with complaints about unrequited valour. Private Mayne of 6/Connaught Rangers was caught by a German raiding party, hit all over with grenade fragments and had his left arm shattered. ‘Nevertheless he struggled up,' wrote Feilding, ‘and leaning against the parapet, with his unwounded hand discharged a full magazine (twenty-seven rounds) into the enemy, who broke, not a man reaching our trench. Then he collapsed and fell insensible across the gun.' At that stage only the Victoria Cross and Mention in Dispatches could properly be awarded posthumously: Mayne died of his wounds, and was duly mentioned.
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The lavish award of decorations to staff officers caused irritation to those outside the scarlet circle. Arthur Osburn complained that ‘our own generals and even some of their youngest ADCs with their rainbow breastplates of coloured gee-gaws and ribbons surpass even the Ruritanians'.
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Regimental officers who went onto the staff knew just how much easier it was for staff officers to be recognised. When Lord Stanhope, then on a corps staff, heard that he had received a MC and a Mention on 1 January 1916 he confessed that he had always objected to the decoration of staff officers, but in this case, he mused, it was a recompense for the promotion he might have received had he remained at regimental duty. And then, eighteen months later, ‘to my surprise and much to my dismay I was awarded the DSO. The Corps Commander was always most free in recommending both his own staff and those serving under him for rewards.'
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And a general's ADC, on the staff since being shot at Loos, told Guy Chapman that the divisional commander had just offered to recommend him for an MC yet again: ‘Damn it, if I couldn't get one with the Brigade of Guards I'm not going to pick it up on the way… It isn't decent.'
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Lieutenant Colonel Dunnington-Jefferson, a regular Royal Fusilier who served on the intelligence staff at GHQ throughout the war, was even more frank: