by Ruskin Bond
This time we did not travel very far back. Just over the next range of hills, descending slowly on the other side, we saw a level plain spread out before us, a plain that bore no sign of activity. It seemed that the brigade were the sole survivors of the Fifth Army in this part of the line. No help showed itself on either hand; there was just the brigade vainly trying to steady things up and escaping by the skin of its teeth from the rapidly advancing enemy, a rolling expanse of deserted country greeting us as we deployed into action again, and a sense of unreality hanging over everything.
We opened fire again on our unseen target at three o'clock in the afternoon, but not for long. Nerves were getting frayed. In the absence of information it was suicidal to delay our retirement. Cavalry might be sweeping round on the flanks. And the French had not come yet.
Another hour of the road, then action again. Six o'clock now on the 24th of March. Strung out across the low-lying fields were the silent guns, eighteen of them in a line together, with wider spaces between marking off the batteries, trained carefully on a dip in the wooded skyline in front of them. Through this small defile the enemy would most certainly appear, and the first sight of field-grey against the trees would jerk the firing-levers of the whole brigade.'We stared at the distant woods, and waited.
Then suddenly from behind us, from the quiet countryside, rode forth at the gallop a magnificent line of French cavalry. We thrilled to their approach. Straight for the line they rode, passing on the right of the guns with pennons flying from erect lances and urging their horses to greater speed as they took the slope leading up to the woods ahead. They breasted the rise in open formation, drawn apart from each other somewhat but in perfect line as the fringe of the trees was reached. Now we took our gaze off them and looked behind us again, this time full expecting to see the landscape hidden by the moving masses of horizon-blue uniforms, which we had so long awaited. But there was nothing to be seen. Keenly disappointed we returned to the more hopeful sight of the single line of horsemen on the hillside. We still felt sure that they must be the advance guard of the legions to come. But even this picture had taken on a different aspect now, and the last vestiges of hope died in our hearts as we saw them turn tail at the approach to the defile and come flying back down the slope at a much greater speed than they had gone up it. We concluded sadly that they had only been retreating the wrong way and had discovered their mistake in time. Somewhere at the end of the line of guns there sounded a faint, ironic cheer as the Cuirassiers or Chasseurs or whatever they were disappeared the way they had come.
Darkness came on without the slightest sign of the enemy's appearance in the defile so carefully covered by the guns. And once it was dark it was no use waiting any longer; so about nine o'clock we took to the road again.
Through the night we rode, strangers in a strange land of great mysterious woods and silent, deserted hamlets. There was not a soul left in the villages on our line of march, the population of the countryside having abandoned everything and fled twenty-four hours before the retreating armies came through. What they could not carry with them they had left behind, and there were whole rows and streets of cottages with furniture in them and curtains still up at the windows, all ready to be plundered and perhaps burnt by the Jerries in a few hours' time. It seemed only right that we should take away what we could in order that it should not fall into the hands of the enemy, but strict orders were issued against looting. When darkness fell, however, we did a bit of foraging in one village, and several bottles of wine made their appearance; moreover, when we pulled into Crissolles to billet for the night, I was sure I could smell roast chicken somewhere.
Billet for the night was the order. Already it was twelve o'clock. We were not to undress but to lie down in the nearby barns with all our clothes on and the harness on the horses' backs. Our barn-load debated whether we should take off just a few of our things, and, very stupidly in view of the circumstances, we decided to undress and put our clothes handy so that we could slip them on at once if necessary.
It became necessary at one o'clock, after we had slept like logs for a short hour. Some one burst in through the door of the barn, waking us up with excited shouts: 'Come on out of it! Jerry's in the end of the village!' A mad scramble ensued; we fought for our boots and puttees and tunics in pitch darkness, no one stopping to light a candle, then we fell over each other in our haste to be going. The battery was moving off already; our subsection sergeant was yelling himself hoarse for us to get our horses and follow; we got mounted in a hurry, with bandoliers hanging round our necks, and trotted out of the field down to the road. Everything and everybody seemed to be on the move; columns of vehicles were retiring through the village at a brisk trot while our brigade waited to collect its stragglers and follow suit. Then we too made off in the direction of supposed safety, clearing the outskirts of Crissolles at the same time as the field-greys cautiously advanced through its streets and burnt a barn here and there to give themselves light.
Away on the right a red glow shone against the night sky; another village was being fired, perhaps a town. To the left was the blackness of great forests; everything was shrouded in silence, and the air seemed charged with suspense and uncertainty. For all we knew we were running right into their hands as the gloomy woods closed in over the road. We listened for the noises of German cavalry galloping to head us off, but the silence held.
There was some little excitement when it became known that one of the members of the battery had been left behind in Crissolles. The missing man was an NCO who had somehow failed to hear the alarm and had looked out of his deserted loft to see German infantry in the yard below him. He dropped through the window on the other side and ran for it, catching us up some hours later by sheer good luck.
Here was a crossroads, and a mounted figure, a staff officer. I could see the red tabs and the gold braid. The whole brigade halted dead behind us as the Major stopped to receive orders. Two torches played eagerly over maps at the saddlebows. Noyon, said the Major. Roye, said the staff officer, very stiffly and brusquely. That way, said the Major. This way, said the staff captain, pointing. Under no circumstances, said the Major; the line of retreat lay so-and-so and so-and-so and so on, and he would take full responsibility. A new note had come into his voice, hard and authoritative; the staff officer could do what he liked, but this particular brigade was going this way and no other way.
We drew on, leaving the staff captain with his gold braid and red tabs standing in the shadows out of our way. Good old Major!
The signposts told us that we had left Noyon behind us a little way now. Soon it would be captured, a great town full of shops and the like, now merely an incident of the night to us, a passing memory of a word on the signposts. We were concerned more with the strange noises on our left. Since leaving Crisssolles we had heard them continuously, a loud rumbling of transport that seemed to be coming nearer, as though the road upon which the unknown army travelled ran parallel with our own. As the roar grew louder, one thought only filled our minds—the Jerries were cutting us off! Their road was converging upon ours, and sooner or later it would join at a fork and we should be done for. Why didn't we trot and make a dash for it?
The Major told me then to ride back for Corporal G——, hand over my horse to him and send him up ahead for orders. I did so very reluctantly; I didn't want to lose my grey, and besides it meant having to ride on the waggons or a gun-limber, which was very uncomfortable. But the mare was handed over, Corporal G——galloped off to report to the Major, and we all heard him riding off alone into the darkness. Now the noise on our left was positively alarming in its closeness.
Then, suddenly, the level rumble of our own column changed to the heavier thundering of guns and waggons driving faster and faster on the echoing road. The waggon I was sitting on got under way at a rare pace, making me hold on tight to the handrail. Round a wide bend we careered before entering on a long straight stretch which promised a gallop. And gallop we did.
It was half a mile or more to the next bend, and here it was that the other road met ours, running into it from the shadows. And at a fork, bolt upright in his saddle, with rifle levelled at the livid face of a French general, sat Corporal G——, holding back a whole division of flying Frenchmen that we might get out first.
Morning came while we were still on the road. The pace had dropped some hours since to a monotonous walk. We went on, half asleep in our saddles, hungry, thirsty, gnawing at mouldy bits of biscuit hunted up from our pockets, chilled through and through with the bitter wind of the March dawn. We rode through deserted hamlets and now and again a larger village, its main street crowded with the vehicles and horses of the armies in retreat with us—there were long delays while the disorder of traffic was sorted out somehow and sent on its weary way again; then we were alone once more on the road as the dawn showed us a wide view of open country. At nine o'clock, still breakfastless, we dropped into action near the village of Lagny.
All day the guns kept up their barrage on the roads that we had ourselves traversed during the night. The ranges were very short; that fact we realised without caring much for its significance, for we were very tired and moved about as in a dream.
Late afternoon saw the usual spectacle of the infantry retiring. Small parties of them threaded their way past our guns, some slightly wounded, all dropping with fatigue. They asked for something to eat, but we had nothing ourselves and they carried on resignedly. Two or three of the Staffords flung themselves down by the guns, utterly worn out and unable to go any farther. From them we got news of the proximity of the German infantry, news which made us wonder why the Jerries did not make one clean sweep with their cavalry and cut off the last scattered remnants of the Fifth Army. There was no one at all in the line.
'Did you see anything of a staff officer on the road?' asked one of the infantrymen, a corporal.
'On horseback?' I remembered the staff captain.
'Yes.'
'We saw one last night trying to direct traffic. That the one you mean?'
'That's the bloke. He tried to direct us, but we lynched him. He was a Jerry.'
With the disappearance of the infantry we knew it would not be long before we, too, took the road again. Another night of travel faced us. Already we were a good forty miles from St Quentin and it looked as though we should be on the run for a few more days at least, as there seemed no sign of a stand being made anywhere. At nightfall, therefore, we limbered up to retire, and this time we trusted there was to be a sleep at the end of the march. We could not go on much longer without food or sleep.
We arrived in Thiescourt village at midnight. The rattle of the guns on the pavé woke us out of our doze, and we looked around expectantly, thinking that here at last was the long-awaited billet where we should sleep for at least twenty-four hours. But the place was alive with other artillery and infantry and transport of all kinds, crowded wheel to wheel in the main square in a solid block of traffic that moved this way and that way and yet did not move at all. Behind us more and more horses and wagons poured into the village to add to the congestion. It was like a jam of logs on a Canadian river, waiting for some one to move the key-log.
Eventually we scrambled through amid the curses of those who were squeezed against our wheels as we pulled put. The bottleneck of Thiescourt, where we had been stuck for over an hour, released us into the starlit night, and we rode on again muffled up against the cold. They followed six solid hours of the road, with billets as far away as ever and the horses on the point of collapse.
Three days later there was a strange sight to be seen in a field on the outskirts of Arsy village near to Compiégne: the sight of a whole brigade of Field Artillery, horses and men, fast asleep in full marching order. The Great Retreat, so far as we knew, was over at last; the line had been stabilised at Amiens and the threatened drive through to Paris stopped just in time.
And so we slept. From three o'clock in the afternoon until the stars came out to look at us, there on the grass we lay like drugged men, every bone in our bodies aching from the rigours of ten days and nights of rearguard actions and hasty retirements and endless journeyings through the night, famished, unwashed, and ever driven on by unseen menace; we had climbed the hilly main street of Compiègne with only the promise of rest that afternoon keeping us from falling out of our saddles; and now we were safe at last. We slept, and slept, and slept.
ESCAPE FROM THE FOREIGN LEGION
Michael Donovan
After serving for eight months in the French Foreign Legion, the author decided to escape with a friend from the fort at Ainalager, where they were stationed. This is the story of Donovan's adventures following his escape, the death of his friend who was shot by an Arab, and the terrible privations he suffered before reaching a port where he succeeded in boarding a Fifeshire trader bound for Scotland.
nd so it went on, day after day, week after week; shortage of food, shortage of water, excess of heat, excess of thirst, excess of fatigue; occasional shots fired at us,occasional glimpses of Arab snipers; occasional new notches added by myself to the hand-grips of different machine-guns with a figure scratched over them, sometimes five, sometimes twelve, sometimes twenty; and rare, oh! so rare returns to the fort for a period of 'rest'; then a novelty—an unwelcome novelty—busy as bees behind the line on road-making, road repairing, fort-building, railway-laying, always with a corporal standing over us, a corporal with a revolver at his belt; then back again to stockade headquarters for other spells of outpost duty. During one of these we were stranded on a hilltop for ten days with only four days' rations. It can be better imagined than described. So the weeks passed, lengthened into months, and the months too slipped from the Future into the Past.
But a climax was approaching.
With every new day that came, I felt as if it would be on us by nightfall. I knew not what that climax was, but I could almost see it in shapeless outline hovering over our heads. Was it death? ... I did not know, and I did not care overmuch. Life and death were all the same to me....But it was not death.
It came at last, that climax. Unmistakable.
The negro had taken a beautiful gold ring, set with a fine red stone, from the finger of an Arab whom we had killed during an attack on our stockade. I had been struck by its beauty and the negro, noticing my admiration, had given me the ring to keep.
Two or three days later, when our relief arrived, we were transferred to the fort for a few days' rest. As luck would have it, some one saw me showing the ring to Miller, and informed the sergeant. All valuables taken from dead Arabs are Legion property, I ought to explain, and presumably the sergeant thought this too good an opportunity to be wasted.
He summoned Smithy, the negro, the German and I to appear before him with full kits, made a thorough examination of the kits, and then told us to strip to the skin.
This was the order I most feared, for I carried the ring by means of a string round my neck, and I realised that he would see it immediately I took off my shirt. We knew better than to disobey him, however, and soon all four of us were standing before him—without a stitch of clothing on our bodies.
As I feared, the sergeant 'spotted' the ring at once, and came up to me and closely examined it. Then he suddenly twisted his hand in the cord and pulled it tight around my throat, apparently meaning to strangle me. I put my hand up to my neck to prevent the string cutting into the flesh, but his hand was quicker than mine, and I lost all consciousness of what followed by reason of that blow to the face which he gave me.
When I came to, Miller and Smithy were trying to get me dressed again. I found I was bruised from head to foot. My ribs ached when I touched them, and from what Miller and Smithy told me, and from the evidence of my own body, it seems that the sergeant had tried to kick me to death. The bruises were with me for a fortnight.
That incident decided me. Death was far preferable to an existence of this kind. It was increasingly apparent that the sergeant hated me, and wou
ld sooner or later find an excuse to shoot me.
But in any case, even without the sergeant's brutality, existence in the French Foreign Legion was nothing better than a slow living death, with no hope of any betterment until some Arab bullet or Arab knife put an end to my career.... Algeria— Morocco—they were positive hell-spots.... The whole Legion some devilish invention transcending all the genius of the Spanish Inquisition....This was hell, and I must get away before my mind perished.
I told Miller later that day that I was ready to make an attempt to escape. The sooner the better,' I added.
Aye, aye, Mick,' said Miller, quite unconcernedly, 'the morn's night.'
'What about the guards?' I asked.
'I'll look after the guards,' he said abruptly, and he kept his word too. He did 'look after the guards,' to some purpose.
When Miller left me, I felt that I must ask Smithy to join us in the attempt, but all I got from him was a pitying look. Since coming to Morocco, Smithy had sunk deeper and deeper into the slough of despair and had recently suffered other fits of violent insanity. Three rimes he had run off into the darkness, screaming like a frightened child, when we were at the headquarters-outpost, and three times had Miller and I brought him back to safety after quietening him by a blow over the head with the butt-end of a rifle. To all intents and purposes, Smithy was a madman.