Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 | Page 9

required.
One had heard a good deal about the Belgians having filled in a gap on
their side of the frontier so as to join up Malmedy with their internal
railway system, and thus to establish a fresh through-connection
between the Rhineland and the Meuse, so I travelled along this on my
way back. But it was unimpressive. The drop from the rolling uplands
about the camp of Elsenborn down to Malmedy gave rise to very steep
gradients on the German side, and the single line of rail was so
dilapidated and was so badly laid that, as we ran down with steam off,
it hardly seemed safe for a short train of about half-a-dozen coaches.
That the Great General Staff had no intention of making this a main
line of advance appeared to be pretty clear. They meant the hosts that
they would dispose of when the moment came, to sweep round by
communications lying farther to the north, starting from about
Aix-la-Chapelle and heading for the gap south of the Dutch enclave
about Maestricht. The impression acquired during this flying visit was
that for all practical purposes the Germans had everything ready for an
immediate invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg when the crisis arrived,
that they were simply awaiting the fall of the flag, that when war came
they meant to make their main advance through Belgium, going wide,
and that pickelhaubes would be as the sands of the sea for number well
beyond Liège within a very few days of the outbreak of hostilities. On
getting home I compared notes with the Intelligence Section of the

General Staff which was especially interested in these territories, but
found little to tell them that they did not know already except with
regard to a few very recently completed railway constructions. The
General Staff hugged no illusions. They were not so silly as to suppose
that the Teuton proposed to respect treaties in the event of the upheaval
that was sure to come ere long.
Having a house at Fleet that summer, I cycled over to beyond
Camberley one day, just at the stage when coming events were
beginning to cast their shadows before after the Serajevo assassinations,
to watch the Aldershot Command at work, and talked long with many
members of the Command and with some of the Staff College
personnel who had turned out to see the show. Some of them--e.g.
Lieut.-Colonels W. Thwaites and J. T. Burnett-Stuart and Major (or
was it Captain?) W. E. Ironside--were to go far within the next five
years. But there were also others whom I met that day for the last
time--Brigadier-General Neil Findlay, commanding the artillery, who
had been in the same room with me at the "Shop," and Lieut.-Colonel
Adrian Grant-Duff of the Black Watch, excusing his presence in the
firing-line on the plea that he "really must see how his lads worked
through the woodlands"; both had made the supreme sacrifice in France
before the leaves were off the trees. How many are alive and unmaimed
to-day of those fighting men of all ranks who buzzed about so cheerily
amid the heather and the pine trees that afternoon, and who melted
away so silently out of Aldershot a very few days later?
The clouds thereafter gathered thicker from day to day, and on Friday
morning, the 31st of July, I received a letter from General Henry
Wilson, sent on from my town address, asking me to come and
breakfast with him on the following day. I was going down to
Winchester to see the Home Counties (Territorial) Division complete a
long march from the east on their way to Salisbury Plain, and it
happened to be inconvenient to go up to town that night, so I wired to
Wilson to say I would call at his house on the Sunday. On getting back,
late, to Fleet I however found a peremptory summons from him saying
I must come and see him next day, and I went up in the morning. One
could not foresee that that breakfast in Draycott Place to which I had

been bidden was to take rank as a historic meal. Mr. Maxse has told the
story of it in the pages of the National Review, and of how the
movement was there started by which the Unionist leaders were got
together from various quarters to bring pressure on the Government not
to leave France in the lurch, a movement which culminated in Mr.
Bonar Law's famous letter to Mr. Asquith.
On meeting General Wilson at the War Office about noon he told me
that I was to take his place as Director of Military Operations in case of
mobilization, and he asked me to join as soon as possible. He further
made me acquainted with the