Tales From A Bloody School

A BRASS HAT IN NO MAN'S LAND-- Brig.-Gen. F. P. Crozier--Cape & Smith ($2.50).

As I SAW IT--Alden Brooks--Knopf ($3.50).

Perhaps every man who saw action in the War saw it a little differently. Certainly those who went, saw, and have lived to tell their tales, all have a slightly different tale to tell. But the more tales, the more details, the completer the picture.

No typical brass hat (staff officer) was Brig.-General Frank Percy Crozier, 119th Infantry Brigade, British Expeditionary Force. Professional soldier descended from a long line of professional soldiers, he fought in South Africa, Ashanti, North Nigeria, Zululand, then retired from the army. In 1914 he joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers with the rank of Captain. During the next five years he won the D.S.O., C.M.G., C.B., Croix de Guerre with palm, was mentioned seven times in despatches, left the War a Brigadier. A capable officer, a soldier who knew his trade, General Crozier has no illusions about war, tells his trade secrets with amazing candor. "My own experience of war, which is a prolonged one, is that anything may happen in it, from the very highest kinds of chivalry and sacrifice to the very lowest form of barbaric debasement--whatever that may be."

General Crozier makes himself out a curious combination of hard, soldierly, efficient* officer and humane, skeptical, almost pacifistic civilian. He believed in shooting sentries who fell asleep; ordered his men to fire many an extra round on Christmas Day, because he did "not believe in Christmas relaxation, in war"; used "atrocity" propaganda and blood-and-thunder speeches ad lib to increase his troops' morale. Yet he can take stock thus of the ultimate end of discipline, of all soldierly training: "The net result of the barren, glorious bloody battle of Thiepval is that over 700 men of the West Belfast battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles prove their ability to subordinate matter to mind. Intellectual discipline had triumphed."

General Crozier is a great believer in officer personnel, thinks any men will make good soldiers if they are properly trained and led.

After the Armistice Soldier Crozier continued to work at his trade: with the Lithuanians against the Germans in the Baltic, against the Bolshevists in Poland. In 1920 he raised, then commanded, the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Next year he resigned on account of "condonation of crime in the Irish police."

A Brass Hat in No Man's Land has raised a squall of controversy in England. Soldier Crozier's frankness has enraged many an old soldier, many a brass hat, many a colonel. Next October he is coming to lecture in the U. S.

Author Alden Brooks found himself in France when the War broke out. He enlisted in the American ambulance service, acted as War correspondent for the New York Times. When the U. S. entered the War, Brooks wanted to get in the A. E. F. the quickest way, so he went to a French artillery school, to be transferred on graduation to the U. S. army. But when the time came for the transfer, he and a friend were rejected because of faulty eyesight. Thereupon they enlisted in the Foreign Legion, were soon transferred to French artillery regiments. Artilleryman Brooks saw plenty of action in his year with the French: the Marne, Chemin-des-Dames, Chateau-Thierry, Meuse-Argonne.

Says he: Belleau Wood (the greatest battle, in length of time and number of men engaged, fought by American troops since the Civil War) cost 9,000* U.S. casualties, "helped in no particular way to defeat the German armies except by matching American dead with German." He denounces the commander of the U. S. 2nd Army, without mentioning his name,/- for obeying orders and allowing his men to continue a previously ordered attack on Nov. 11, although he knew the Armistice would go into effect at 11 a.m. "He not only let many of them go to their death in that attack, but went out there himself to watch them." Said the General: "So I early went, with an aide, to near the front line to see the last of it, to hear the crack of the last guns in the greatest war of all ages ... I stayed until 11 a.m., when all being over, I returned to my headquarters, thoughtful and feeling lost. It was over!"

Artilleryman Brooks did not have the professional soldier's point of view about war. He thinks: "War is stupid, insensate, unheroic to the last degree. War is not waged like a game. Analogies of the football field and of the chessboard are completely erroneous. War is a brutal chaos, governed by no laws. . . . Men in battle do not meet in hand-to-hand fight. There is not even a struggle of any kind. The word 'fight' itself is out of place. It is all one thing or the other, advance or retreat, or then annihilation. . . . Men in battle do not even hate the enemy. Nor do men in battle die, willingly, for their country."

Author Alden Brooks, 47, a native of Cleveland, was schooled in France and England, graduated from Harvard, taught there and at the U. S. Naval Academy. During the War he won the Croix de Guerre with silver star. He lives in Paris.

*He admits to one singular disability: "During big battles I invariably lost my power for remembering names, owing to want of sleep, on about the third day." He kept a notebook to jog his memory.

*Official record of casualties: 7,870.

/-Lieut.-General Robert Lee Bullard (retired 1925).

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