A BRIGADIER IN FRANCE4 AINHOUGH we are quite aware that
war books are not now popular, we must mention this narrative by the late Brigadier- General Hanway Cumming (which has two brief introductions by Sir William Robertson and Sir David Campbell), for it contains the material of which true history is made. General Cumming wrote simply and modestly, with excellent clearness though he recorded many details, and with a due, and apparently instinctive, sense of proportion. In November, 1916, he was appointed to command a brigade in the 7th Division. His account of the Ancre mud, just because it is not over- emphasized, is very real and lingers in the memory. Very good, too, is his description of the uncanny stillness when
• Macbeth, Ring Lear, and Contemporary History. By B. Winstardey. Cambridge : at the University Press. [15s. net.] A Brigadeer in France, 1917-1918. By Hanway R. Cumming. London: Jonathan Cape. [9s. net.]
it was found in February, 1917, that the Germans had slipped away undetected from their positions.
In May of that year General Cumming, who could measure to a nicety what his men were or were not capable of doing, decided not to follow up immediately the success at Bullecourt.
His men were utterly exhausted. His superior officer super- seded him as the doctrine of " instant action in all circum-
stances " was then highly fashionable. The result of the instant action which was taken within an hour or two of Cumming's
supersession was rather disastrous. After a time in England Cumming was appointed to the Leicester Brigade in the Epehy district in the month of the final crisis—March, 1918. He had to help in holding an enormously long line with a quite inadequate
number of men. The story of those sleepless days of -tension is like a nightmare. Cumming characteristically gives all the
credit to the men :-
"Such men are beyond all price, and so long as England produces them and sees that they are looked after in the right way and that their spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to duty is fostered and encouraged to the highest possible degree, she need have no fear of any diminution in the National Spirit which is the right and heritage of her sons."
After the War this valuable officer served in Ireland and was killed in a Sinn Fein ambush.
Previous page
