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[Page 19]
March 30
name's been taken for removing and detaining gear from a patient. It grates me horribly to see a Tommy wearing our gear: for a while at the 2nd C.C.S. some had the damned nerve to wear our hats, all wore Australian boots, taken from stretcher cases.
No mail, and a cold dully raining day. Finished the reading of the last tale of "Limehouse Nights". Basil up from C. Section post and gave to him Verhaeren's "Plays".
22.
Today Sol was speaking to some of the Tommies up from the retreat on the Somme, and they tell of a terrible debacle – more terrible than the retreat from Mons, of staff officers full of wind and contradicting orders, of roads lined with abandoned limbers and wrecked G.S. wagons, of loose flying about the roads & about. But the worst is their telling of the Airmen, of the Boche planes ruling: all that has been reported of our Flying Corps. standing true for the Boche. Has the Mons stunt been played again? When will the English realise they have no genius for tactics and warr managing. If the French would only take over our decoratively useless staff, cut down their [indecipherable] and use them as office boys.
In the whole warr, not one great sweeping advance has been made by the English, and their successes have not – considering numbers – touched even the faint fringe of the successes of the French.
Yesterday's Daily Mails Black Type heading was – "Hurling the Germans back". Hurling? How did the Germans get over line where it runs now?
The greatest British victory was the Cambrai stunt – when bells tolled the Nation's joy, at a terrible loss to us of men, guns and tanks: another debacle.
If only we had a French supreme command! but the British narrow vanity of Sir Douglas Haig and his generals would carry them to a following of General Robertson's example.
I wonder if,
England is what England seems
And not the England of our dreams,
But only putty, brass and paint?
Kipling's last line seems a horribly 'Tommy' ending! Swinburne was right.
23.
At De Zon camp in O.R. saw new clay copying press and box of coloured inks, these the Col. promised to req. for, so now as soon as we're next settled will bring out a No. 5 Gheitz – a "Back to the Somme" issue.