On the platform Colonel Findhorn stood chatting to the Brigade Commander. Beside them was the graceful figure of the General who had inspected them the day before they had struck camp. Everyone knew his name, Sir Ian Hamilton, hero of the Boer War; and immensely great to Phillip since the General had stopped by him as he passed down the ranks; he said only a few words, but in those moments Phillip had felt his whole self to be alive. The General, who had a smiling face of unusual amiability, said, “This man has a look of Robbie Burns about him, Colonel.” Then to Phillip, “Do you know whom I mean?”
“Yes sir, and James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd lad, too.”
“The poets will be wanted after this war,” said the General to the Colonel; and the kind eyes passed on down the ranks.
Standing with others, at the open window, Phillip watched the General who did not look heavy-bodied like other old officers, and had a manner like that of Mr. Rolls. Eagerly he regarded the handshakes, the slight bows with heels together, the salutes, the smiles among the great ones. Then the Earl of Findhorn stepped back, gave the General a full salute, and got into his carriage, followed by the Iron Colonel and the Adjutant. The anxious-faced Railway Transport Officer blew his whistle; the civilian guard waved his green flag; the engine screeched; Sir Ian Hamilton and his staff stood to attention while Sir Ian saluted. A roar of cheering, in which Phillip joined, broke out along the length of the train as it moved away from the platform.
*
Equipment off and stuffed on racks, they examined their new rifles. Baldwin told him that they had a flat trajectory for six hundred yards, superior to the old long rifle’s four hundred. The order was that no man was to charge his magazine until ordered to do so. They had rattled and clicked away with bolt and trigger while in extended order in the heather of Ashdown Forest, but always with imaginary ammunition. There was no firing range.
Two of the Leytonstone tent were in the carriage, Collins and Martin. Collins suggested a game of nap. Phillip had learned this game, and the more interesting solo whist, in the tent. Before learning, he had considered the men seen in trains, newspaper over knees, flipping out cards, to be rather low sort of people. Now, with a paper over his knees and those of Martin, Collins, and thin little Kirk, who wore pince-nez spectacles, he gambled happily with ha’pennies and pennies. The others read, talked, or looked out of the window.
One of them, Tommy Atkins, was writing a very long letter. Tommy Atkins was his real name, not one nicked on to him. Tommy Atkins was exactly what the mythical British soldier was supposed to be, always cheery. Like Phillip, though in a different way, he had never quite mixed in with the others. Tommy was apple-cheeked and alert, with a small black moustache. He was ever ready to help others in any way he could with good advice, as well as practice. He had a tendency to preach the good life, and neither drank alcohol, smoked tobacco, nor used swear-words.
Tommy Atkins was something of a joke in the company; a nice joke, owing to his cheerful unselfishness, a sincere rather than an amiable nature. He had unusual habits; he washed all over every evening before putting on a white night-shirt to sleep in; then lying down in his place, feet to pole, he read the Bible; and knelt up, eyes shut and hands folded before him, to say his prayers. When at first he had been ragged good-naturedly, he replied, always with energetic cheerfulness, that he was a member of a Christian civilisation. Phillip had greatly enjoyed the cross-talk between Tommy Atkins and Lance-corporal Mortimore.
“So you think this is a Christian civilisation, do you, Thomas my son?” Morty would enquire, with his disarming smile.
“Certainly it is, Corporal! It is built on rock, not on sand.”
“London, the centre of it, is built on clay. How do you account for that, Tommy?”
“Part of it is built on chalk, Corporal; but I speak metaphorically.”
“Have a drop of this wine, Tommy. It came from limestone, which is allied to chalk, and sunshine—Beaujolais, very special, Tommy. It will liven you up.”
“I am already quickened by the Spirit, Corporal.”
“You sly dog, been at the whiskey, have you? Well, never mix malt and grape, they say.”
Imperturbably Tommy Atkins opened his Bible. No one ragged him then.
Cards flipped on the newspaper; coppers clinked.
“Do you believe in gambling, Tommy?” asked Collins, looking up.
“I do not, Collins, but carry on with your game, if it seems right to you. But look out of the window, man, the Downs are in sight!”
A grey-green extended hump lay above the heat mist.
“I’ll go the bundle,” said Collins, closing his cards.
“We must be going along the coast to Southampton, behind Brighton and Worthing and Chichester! Hurray!” cried Elliott, hanging between the racks by his hands. Phillip did the same; Collins took the opportunity to give him a hard slap on his backside.
“That’s for bloody well sucking up to the General.”
“But he asked me a question, and I answered it!”
“Arse crawler!” said Collins, contemptuously. “Come on, it’s your deal.”
“That remark injures yourself,” said Tommy Atkins.
“I don’t think I want to play any more, thanks all the same,” said Phillip.
The train ran on steadily, passing over many points behind towns which Tommy Atkins obligingly named from time to time, after scrutiny of the map in the glass case above his seat. So they came to Southampton, as he had prophesied, in the late afternoon, entering above marsh grazing where red and black cattle stood tail-swishing at trodden places in the dykes, and ragged ranks of thistles yielded shining floss to the heated airs above.
*
The railway lines were shining, too; and floating thistle-seeds were sucked into the carriage past the gazing eyes of one who was feeling that the world he had hitherto known, which had been leaving him in some unrealisable way since the far-off excitements of August Bank Holiday, was now at last come to its end.
Remotely, as with the moon’s pale shade in the September sky, his mother’s face looked upon his mind. He fingered the crucifix under his shirt, and felt the reassurance that, unknown to him, he had lost since childhood; when his father had taken from his cot and forbidden further use of the silken scrap of his mother’s old petticoat which had served, with his sucked thumb, as substitute for lost warmth and safety. Tears, sobbings of aloneness in dark fear had followed; but the father had been firm in this duty. The sooner the donkey boy learned manly ways, the sooner he would cease to whine, to cry at the least reprimand; the donkey boy was then two years old.
The troop train drew into the port. He stared at a row of brick back-to-back houses, where in tattered-looking gardens small tattered-looking children waved from porch and cinder path. Each garden, he noticed, had its faded wooden rabbit hutches and wired-in hens. Leaning sunflowers hung their brown heads askew in little shabby garden after garden. Each head hung as though weary of its weight of seed, its green and twisted neck tired of following the sun so many times around the sky, only to die when its race was run.
When its race was run—it was a sad and yet beautiful thought, first heard from Uncle Hugh, and recurring to him in secret since his earliest memory of faces and moments passing—Minnie his German nurse; Mona Monk the little maid who had wheeled him in the mail-cart on the Hill until her father had gone to prison; the early days at Beau Brickhill when Great-uncle Toby Thacker was still alive; the woods in Whitefoot Lane; cycling with Desmond to the Fish Ponds on Reynard’s Common; the catkins and red-speck flowers among the tracery of the hazel coverts of Shooting Common about the time the chiff-chaff flew across the sea from Africa; and the nightingales filling the new green wood with their dark purple notes above the acres and acres of bluebells, to announce the fullness of sap and egg. Well, he had had a lovely life, and now perhaps his race was run. He stifled the anguish of his thoughts by staring fixedly through the window; relieved that now it was time to put on his equipm
ent, within the carriage slowing in sudden dimness, as it moved under a long covered shed.
*
They piled arms in the centre of the platform. They were told to sit down, but not to fall out except to go to the lavatory on the dock at the end of the shed. At once he used this excuse to look around.
He pretended not to see the upright iron shelter, painted green, on the dock, for an excuse to walk beyond. It certainly was an unfamiliar lavatory, like a long green barrel which showed a man’s feet below and the top of his head above. He walked past it, looking at some silent Lascar sailors, various objects on the quay, including big wooden crates marked with the government broad-arrows. There was an enormous rectangular pile of rolls of galvanised barbed-wire. Beyond the grey stack stood something that he had seen before only in photographs; a howitzer with its short thick barrel pointing into the air; and the sight was startling.
Its shield was gashed and holed. Part of the barrel was pitted deeply, little ragged craters amidst gougings and jagged cuts. If steel could be so torn by shell-fire, as though spattered upon it, how much more so would the flesh and the body of a man! Hitherto his vision of death upon the battlefield had been of men falling, shot through the heart, the cheer ceasing on their lips; somehow the body was borne off, covered with Tricolour or Union Jack, to be buried with reverence, while bugles sounded in the sunset of the hush of battle; the noble soul at rest, understood at last by all in death.
The sun was going down over funnels, masts, and cranes. Chains were rattling, dirty men with greasy faces walking up planks with small wooden boxes on their shoulders. He hurried back to Baldwin, and tried to feel that this was the Great Adventure.
They waited on the platform, whiling away time writing letters, smoking, wondering. The haversack ration of cheese and bread had been eaten in the train. They had only their iron rations—a blue tin of bully beef each, and six hard thick biscuits, in a little linen bag. The iron ration must not be eaten until the order was given.
Phillip had some apples and chocolate, and Baldwin had a nut cake, so they shared.
Dusk descended. At last a stir, an order, rattle of piling-rings and knock of butts, shuffle of leather on wood; and up a gangway.
The transport was a rusty iron steamer, with a Lascar crew. Gleaming dark eyes under black ringlets passed noiselessly above bare feet. One murmured in a thin voice, “The la-dies from hell”, with a grin of very white teeth. Baldwin said, “That’s what the Germans call the Jocks.” Ladies from hell! He saw himself running in huge elastic-sided boots, bayonet outheld as in practice through the heather of Bleak Hill, his face contorted as in the pictures of soldiers in the Boer War, yet grinning like Grannie in Little Red Riding Hood. He felt cold and hollow. If ever in a charge, he would keep a bullet in his rifle, to save himself when a German came to bayonet him, at the last minute. The water below slopped oily between ship and dock. Then in the darkness the quiet pulse on the iron deck became a trembling. Water swirled below, glittering in the lilac light of the arc-lamps spluttering on the quay. They were leaving England!
*
A long thick row of glengarries above shoulders hunched over the rails hardly moved as the lessening garish lights began to slide round behind the wake of the transport. The order was given, No Smoking. There were submarines about, it was murmured. Suddenly he saw that the officers were above them, leaning easily upon their rail. A breeze found their kilts, and he turned to go below, to see what the sleeping quarters were like.
There were none. There was a rusty iron deck, partly covered in. They dumped their accoutrements with others against the canvas-shrouded rails, then set out to look around the ship, to find out if there was any beer to be bought. He met Gerry, and was greatly relieved to see him. “How about a beer together?”
“No luck, young Phil. There’s cocoa in the galley aft, thr’pence a cup, a damned swizz. How ’rey’ feeling?”
“All right. How’s Bertie?”
“He’s on another boat, with the transport. See you later.”
From the dark little galley lit by an oil-lamp hot cups of thick cocoa were being passed out, to the chink of coins. Threepence, sheer robbery! However, it was warm and sweet, which was something.
They returned to the rails. As they were looking into the dark, without warning their eyes were hit almost painfully by blinding light, the searchlight beam lifted away, washing the waves before swinging back to light the funnels. And all the way down Southampton water to Spithead ship after ship at anchor in the roads saluted with long blasts on their steam-whistles, while searchlight after searchlight picked up the transport. It was exhilarating; it gave a feeling of England’s regard to the men standing in penumbral darkness, while over the short waves moved in succession trails of tinny light to whiten the rows of faces.
A last greeting came from the signal station on the hill above the East Foreland of the Isle of Wight. W-H-A-T S-H-I-P I-S T-H-A-T spots and dashes of light spelt out in Morse. The answer from the bridge was met with another signal from the Isle, which Journend, one of the battalion signallers standing near spelled out G-O-O-D L-U-C-K. The entire battalion broke into cheering; cheer after cheer passed away into the night until the impulse was gone, and upon the darkened ship there fell a silence above the throb of engines, in the night spectral with waves breaking upon the receding shore of England.
*
Phillip had forgotten the nausea of the night when the transport hove to for the pilot outside Le Havre. As they moved nearer he saw upon the quays French sentries in red trousers and long blue coats with the ends turned up, carrying rifles with bayonets like the one he had bought at Murrage’s long ago. Word soon went round from the pilot that they were the first transport to arrive in the port after the evacuation caused by the Germans crossing the Marne. People and sentries on the quays were waving.
“I hear the Colonel’s orders are to report to the Director-General of Communications in Paris,” said Baldwin.
“Who told you, Norman?”
“Journend, in the Signallers. Only keep it to yourself.”
The news raised Phillip’s spirits, already calmed by what the newspaper which Baldwin had brought with him, said. The leading article stated that victory might be nearer than was supposed. The Germans in the East had been stopped by the Pripet Marshes; the Austrians had suffered a great defeat from the Russians, who had captured the fortress of Lemberg; and on the Marne and Aisne the enemy had lost many guns, and thousands of prisoners. He stood happily by the rail, in warm eastern sunshine bringing out the blues and pinks and greys of the houses of the town on the hillside.
They marched through narrow streets, led by pipers playing the Marseillaise, to the shrill cheers of the populace. They marched on cobbles, in which lines of steam trams were laid. There were many halts, due to traffic. The street was hot, the air smelt of the grey drain-water trickling in the gutters. The women all looked fat and blowsy. Some wore wooden sabots. They had a grim look when their faces were not animated by obvious jokes as to what les écossaises had under their skirts.
Flies were a nuisance. “They like the taste of British sweat, for a change,” said Collins.
They marched on, roaring out It’s a long way to Tipperary. After three hours without a fall-out, and many checks, the battalion arrived at the top of the long hill leading to a field above the town, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. It was littered with paper and bottles. Here they were to spend the night. There were not enough tents, they were told they would have to sleep out. It was a dispiriting place, for no one was allowed to go into the town. But by trusting children beyond the wire with English silver, bottles of wine and long loaves of bread were to be obtained. Phillip gave a florin to a boy, but did not see him again.
In the morning the camp, which previously had been used by French troops, was cleaned by fatigue parties. Then the battalion marched down the hill again, to the Gare des Marchandises. Another long delay; more children sent off for wine and bread and choco
late. He tried again, and was lucky. A long loaf of bread, a bottle of red wine! And just in time, for grey-covered trucks on which Hommes 40 Chevaux 8 (en longue) was stencilled in white paint, came clonking and jerking past them, into the siding. A rumour faster than the train said they were for Paris. This was the life!
“I only hope we get a chance of a smack at the Germans before it is all over,” said Baldwin.
“Same here, old son!” replied Elliott.
Only half the battalion, under the Iron Colonel, boarded the train. This fact confirmed that they were for lines of communication.
Everything seen through the open spaces on either side of the moving truck was of keen interest. He kept telling himself, with secret thrills, that he was in France. He must send a postcard to Mr. Howlett. At 42 Wine Vaults Lane they would be preparing the Michaelmas renewal notices very soon now. Was Mr. Thistlethwaite, in top-hat and frock-coat, still coming into the office to talk to Mr. Hollis about the way he had been ill-treated by his old company? Had Downham got his commission yet, for home service? Did Mr. L. Dicks still smell of fish-and-chips, and Mr. J. Konigswinter look as though he ate only salt and pastry? What was Downham doing at that moment? He would be in clover, with twenty pounds every half-quarter paid by the Moon, in addition to his officer’s pay. He himself wasn’t doing so badly, a shilling and twopence a day, and office salary adding up all the time. Perhaps the war would last six months—he hoped it would, anyway—and if he spent only his army pay he would have at the end of it enough to buy a second-hand motor-bike, and be able to turn up at the Old Heathians Fourth Footer matches on a N.U.T., or a B.A.T.!
The picture faded; the train, carrying the right-half battalion dragged its slow journey towards the night. After much stopping, and restarting, to melancholy little toots of the driver’s horn, it drew up at Villeneuve, a junction south of Paris. They were marched to billets in an empty school. Things didn’t look too good when a sentry was put on the door, and no one was allowed out.
How Dear Is Life Page 25