The Ceaseless Bugle Call

The Weekly Machen

Less than two months into the Great War, Arthur Machen reported on the state of the British Army. Being that the navy was her strength, the country did not keep a large land force, so the haste to raise an army of former civilians is evident to the reader. This article serves as a fascinating prologue to Machen’s “The Bowmen” which would be published in the Evening News only twelve days later. The elements which would make that story so captivating are glimpsed here as Machen invokes St. George and the righteousness of the British cause “against the heathen horde.”

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The Ceaseless Bugle Call
by
Arthur Machen
September 17, 1914

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.

There is a long, long road in Aldershot. It rises in the heart of the town and climbs a hill, then descends a slope and then rises again toward wooded heights. It crosses the landscape as straight as an arrow—and all along it and on each side of it tremendous work is being done. I would say that all along that road great furnaces have been seven times heated. In those furnaces they are forging instruments wherewith to shape the world; they are making Englishmen into an English army.

In a word, Aldershot swarms with soldiers. The raw stuff tumbled out of the train as it drew up at the platform; the new recruits were formed up and marched away to their place, somewhere beside the long road. Outside there was the skirl of the pipes, and there swung along at a rattling pace a company of big, broad fellows in their ordinary dress, the piper in his kilt going before them, playing “A hundred pipers and a’.” After them came a squad complete in their khaki, looking hard and fit for anything, as if six months had been compressed into six weeks of strenuous work under the hot sun.

Vanishing Soldiers

The long road of which I have spoken goes through the camps. On each side of it are barrack buildings and quarters, gravel yards, and wide stretches of burnt-up grass. Everywhere the work is going on. Lord Kitchener has said that he wants men; we are making them for him as fast as we can.

There are white tents everywhere; on the barrack grounds and like a fringe about the wide common. Here a hundred squads must be drilling at once, forming fours, wheeling and turning, marking time. Wherever you look there are moving masses of men, right away into the distance.

Here are a number of men coming on in open formation. They get their word, and in an instant they have vanished, as it were into the earth. I strain my eyes and look for them, but there are no men to be seen. They have taken cover in a moment behind one of the baulks of timber, perhaps a foot high, that stretch across the grass.

One can judge of the white hot haste of the great operation by the uniforms of the men, or by the lack of uniforms.

Kitchener has given his word; the soldiers are to be made forthwith, and they are being made, with uniforms or without uniforms.

Motley Wear

There are, of course, the khaki battalions, complete and equipped. But we are not to wait for belts or caps or even coats—nor the matter of that—till we make our soldier; we are to win his body and his soul for the army first, and by the time that we have done that, his regimentals will be ready for him.

So here comes over the parched grass, wheeling and marching, a squad in blue serge, grey tweed, brown tweed, straw hat, black bowler, cloth cap; and the sergeant who is drilling them, and driving it into them pretty smartly, too, is in tweeds himself, with a cane in his hand for all his ensign of authority.

And there are the most fantastic mixtures imaginable. Here is a “unit” partly complete khaki, partly khaki ending with a straw hat, partly just any old dress of the street. Here are the men working for their lives in shirt sleeves; here they are simply in grey shirts and trousers. More Scotsmen; but out of a hundred there are only a couple who are fully furnished from top to toe.

On one side of the long road men busying themselves with their tents; on the other groups squatting on the turf, smoking their pipes, and resting for a little. Vans go by, emblazoned with jocund names that suggest huge barrels of beer; but, instead, they are laden with khaki soldiers.

The Great Trumpet Call

By the long road stands the garrison church, dedicated to our patron, Saint George. Above the porch the Saint is sculptured in stone, kneeling very humbly, as befits a gentle knight, beside the horrid monster that he has killed.

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis; sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam. So it is cut in Latin underneath the image of the Saint. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us; but unto Thy Name give the praise. So let us give thanks when we, after the pattern of our Saint, have set our feet on the monster’s neck. It is is dangerous to be apocalyptic, and the interpretation of the prophecies has led, perhaps, to more frantic absurdities than any other pursuit open to mortals. But, reading the report of those things that have been done to women and children in Belgium, it seems to me that we need not hesitate in identifying the Dragon and the Beast of our age.

Wheel and march and turn and countermarch; all the while the work is going on. And all the while from some far-off camp there sings and rings a ceaseless bugle call. It is as though it were the call of the trumpet that England has put to her lips, that summons that shall sound and echo round all the regions of the world even till the hour of final victory.

Tuba mirum spargens sanum; wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth. It shall resound till it call up the spirits of the heroes to fight in the vanguard of our battle, till it summon King Arthur and all his chivalry forth from their magic sleep in Avalon; that they may strike one final shattering blow for the Isle of Britain against the heathen horde.

 

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The Weekly

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Introduction and supplementary material – Copyright 2024 by Christopher Tompkins. All rights reserved.