THE BLACK WATCH

SCOUT JOE CASSELLS
OF THE BLACK WATCH

THE BLACK WATCH

A RECORD IN ACTION

BY

SCOUT JOE CASSELLS

One of the few survivors of that
“contemptible little army”

Frontispiece

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918

Copyright, 1918, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

FOREWORD

From Mons to the Marne lies the bloodiest trail of sacrifice in history. In all the records of war, there stands forth no more magnificent and no more melancholy achievement than that of the British regular army, which bled its heroic way in ever-diminishing numbers from the challenge to the check of the initial German sweep upon Paris. It could not hope for decisive victory; it could only clog the wheels of the Juggernaut with lives and lives and lives, sold bravely and dearly. Before a countless superiority of numbers and an incalculable advantage in enemy preparedness, it could only stand, and fall—and stand again, and fall—until the end; when the cause of the Allies was saved for the hour, and of French’s hundred thousand there remained barely a little leaven of trained men for the British forces then assembling to learn the trade of warfare.

The ablest pens writing of the Great War have paid tribute to this splendid deed which changed the course of its beginning. French’s retreat from Mons has been a topic to inspire the highest eloquence of the patriotic historian and the most profound admiration of the militarist. Everything, from the point of the onlooker, has been said of it. And everything that has been said retires into the perspective of the academic, when one reads, in this volume, the words of a trained British soldier who experienced and survived it. For stark and simple strength, for realism of detail, for a complete picturization of the desperate and heroic resistance of the sacrificial army, this soldier’s tale is, and will remain, unequalled and unique. This prefatory emphasis is not vain or extravagant. It need not fear the fact that there is but the turning of a page between promise and performance. Here is a writing which is of the war, and therefore differs from all writings which can only be about the war. It conveys to the reader an almost paralyzing sense of wonder at the steadfastness of Britain’s military traditions, put to an unexampled test. It shows how marvellously well a soldier may learn his business in advance—when his business is to die. Concerning one of the most noteworthy accomplishments of the arms of Britain, there will survive in print no more compelling and convincing narrative than this, the utterance of one whose trade was fighting and not writing.

THE BLACK WATCH

THE BLACK WATCH

CHAPTER ONE

For more than two years now, I have been trying to forget those first months of the war. The months when the Black Watch and other regiments of the immortal “contemptible little army” marched into the unknown against the fiercest, most efficient military power the world, up to that time, had known; the months when hidden enemies struck swiftly mystifying blows with strange weapons, the more terrible because we did not understand them and had never imagined their power and numbers.

For more than two years I have habitually sought to keep my mind upon other subjects, yet I can recall those days now in the minutest detail. I can hear the sudden thrum of the masked machine guns like giant partridges drumming; can hear the singing roar of the Prussian airplanes to which, in those days, because of the scarcity of British planes, there could be practically no answer; and I can live again the frightful nights when we made our stand upon the Marne, and, sneaking into German outpost trenches, slew the guards with jack-knives, thrusting gags into their mouths and cutting their throats to prevent outcry.

Those were the days of picturesque and shifty fighting. There was movement, the rush of cannon from the rear, the charges of cavalry, the perils of scouting and patrolling. It was little like the slow trench warfare which followed.

The Black Watch—the regiment to which I belong—was one of the first to cross the Channel. War was declared August 4th, which was Tuesday. The first-class reservists, of which I was one, received their mobilization orders the next day.

We assembled at Queens Barracks, Perth, the historic headquarters of what we proudly maintain is the world’s most famous fighting organization. Twice before, since 1742, the Black Watch had outfitted in Perth to fight in Flanders. Almost constantly since that date, battalions of the regiment have been fighting for Britain in some far-off quarter of the globe. For the third adventure in Flanders, which was to see the existing personnel of the regiment practically wiped out in an imperatively necessary campaign of blood sacrifice, our preparations were brisk and businesslike. Within three hours of my arrival at the depot at Perth, I was one of a thousand men, uniformed, armed, and fully equipped, who entrained for Aldershot to join our first battalion stationed there.

On the thirteenth of August, after a week’s stiff training, we boarded the steamship Italian Prince and the next day disembarked at Havre.

What awaited us there was much like the reception later given to the first American troops to land in France. What followed was quite different. The American troops, and millions of their friends and relatives, are all wondering what awaits them—what war really will be like—what they will have to do and the conditions under which they will do it.

It is an axiom of war that the first troops almost invariably suffer the greatest losses. The first American units to go into the trenches have suffered a low average of casualties. In one respect they are far better off than were the first British and French troops to meet the Germans. They know what they are going up against. Modern warfare is a determined quantity. They know the methods of the men they will fight against and they have allies able to instruct them in the art of fighting as it is practised to-day.

We had nothing like that. It was as though we were groping in the dark while an unseen foe was striking at us. For days we tramped through France and Belgium hearing the roar of the German guns, feeling the sting of the shrapnel, but not seeing our foes. Then