by Sapper
All the general said when I returned was, “Did he mean socks?”
Then there was a dreadful occasion when he sent me away one weekend with one of his dickies in my bag – he had been promoted to mufti – instead of a dress shirt; and another even more awful when he sent me to an austere household – prayers at eight, etc. – from the owner of which I had hopes, with my boots wrapped in a paper of orange hue which had better be nameless. I could continue indefinitely – the mistakes that lad made would have built a church; but withal I never wish for a better servant – a truer-hearted friend. And all this happened in the long dim ages way back before we started – he and I – with thousands of others for the land across the water; where for a space he remained my servant, until in the fullness of time he passed down that Long Valley from which there is no return. Many have passed down it these last months – many will pass down it before Finis is written on this World War; but none deserve a gentler crossing over the Great Divide than Robert Brown, Driver, RE, and sometime batman.
Now should there be any who, having read as far as this, hopefully continue in the belief that they are getting near the motto – in the shape of some wonderful deed of heroism and daring – they will, I am afraid, be disappointed. I have no startling pegs on which to hang the tale of his life. Like thousands of others, he never did anything very wonderful – he never did anything at all wonderful. He was just one of the big army of Browns out here of whom no one has ever heard. One of that big army who have done their bit unrewarded, unknown – because it was the thing to do; a feeling unknown to some of those at home – I allude to the genus Maidenhead Maggot still seen in large quantities – er – resting. And yet for each of those Browns – their death recorded so tersely in the paper – some heart-broken woman has sobbed through the long night, watching the paling dawn with tear-stained eyes, aching for the sound of footsteps for ever still, conjuring up again the last time she saw her man, now lying in a nameless grave. Would the Maggot get as much? I wonder.
As I have said, I’m afraid I haven’t got anything very wonderful to describe. You can’t make a deathless epic out of a man being sick – dreadfully sick beside the road – and an hour afterwards getting your food for you. It doesn’t sound very romantic, I admit, and yet – It was in the morning, I remember, about three o’clock, that we first smelt it, and we were lying about half a mile behind the line. That first sweet smell of chlorine turning gradually into the gasping, throat-racking fumes. Respirators weren’t regarded with the same importance then as they are now, but we all had them. Of course I’d lost mine. Since early childhood I have invariably lost everything. Brown found it, and I put it on – and then he disappeared. Some two hours later, when the shelling had abated a little, and the gas had long since passed, I found him again. He was white and sweating, and the gas was in him – not badly, you understand, not badly – but the gas was in him. For three or four hours he was sick, very sick – and his head was bursting. I know what he felt like.
And I said to the major, “I’m sorry it’s Brown, but it’ll teach him a lesson not to lose his respirator again,” for, that is the way with Thomas Atkins – he is apt to lose most things that are not attached to him by chains.
It doesn’t sound at all romantic all this, does it? – and yet, well, I found my respirator in the pocket of another coat. And as Brown came in with some food – he’d recovered about an hour – I handed him back his respirator, and I asked him why he’d done it.
“Well, I thought as ’ow you might ’ave to be giving orders like, and would want it more than me.” He spoke quite naturally.
I didn’t thank him – I couldn’t have spoken to save my life – but the lad knew what I thought. There are some things for which thanks are an insult.
There was another thing which comes to me too, as I write – nothing very wonderful again, and yet – In the course of our wanderings we were engaged upon a job of work that caused us to make nightly a pilgrimage through Wipers. At the time Wipers was not healthy. That stage of the war of attrition – I understand that many of the great thinkers call it a war of attrition, though personally I wish they could be here when the Hun is attriting, or whatever the verb is – that stage, then, known as the second battle of Ypres was in progress. And, though all of that modern Pompeii was unhealthy at the time, there were certain marked places particularly so. One such was the Devil’s Corner. There, nightly, a large number of things – men and horses – were killed; and the road was littered with – well, fragments.
Now it chanced one night that I had taken Brown with me to a point inside the salient, and at midnight I had sent him away – back to the field the other side of Ypres, where for the time we were lying. Two or three hours after I followed him, and my way led me past the Devil’s Corner. All was quite quiet – the night’s hate there was over, at any rate for the moment. One house was burning fiercely just at the corner, and the only sounds that broke the silence were the crackling of the flames and the occasional clatter of a limbered wagon travelling fast down a neighbouring road. And then suddenly I heard another sound – clear above my own footsteps. It was the voice of a man singing – at least, when I say singing – it was a noise of sorts. Also there was no mistaking the owner of the voice. Too often had I heard that same voice apostrophising “a beautiful picture, in a beautiful golden fraime.” I stopped surprised – for what in the name of fortune Brown was doing in such an unsavoury spot was beyond me! In fact, I felt distinctly angry. The practice of remaining in needlessly dangerous places is not one to be encouraged. I traced that noise; it came from behind an overturned limber, with two defunct horses lying in the ditch. I crossed the road and peered over.
Sitting in the ditch was Robert Brown, and on his knees rested the head of the limber driver. In the breaking dawn you could see that the end was very near – the driver had driven for the last time. From the limp sag of his back I thought it was broken, and a bit of shell had removed – well, no matter, but one could hear the beating of the wings. Brown didn’t see me, but occasionally, gentle as a woman, he bent over him and wiped the death sweat from his forehead; while all the time, under his breath, mechanically, he hummed his dirge. Then the man, lying half under the limber, stirred feebly.
“What is it, mate?” said Brown, leaning forward.
“Take the letters out of my pocket, matey,” he muttered. “Them blokes at the War Office takes so long – and send ’em to – to–” The lips framed the words feebly, but no sound came.
“Who to, pal?” whispered Brown; but even as he spoke the poor maimed form quivered and lay still. And as I watched Brown lay his head gently down, and closed his eyes, the road, the houses seemed to grow a trifle misty. When I next looked up I saw him stumping away down the road, and, as he rounded the corner, a dreadful noise stating that, with regard to a lady named Thora, “he had loved ’er in life too little, ’e ’ad loved ’er in death too well,” came floating back in the still air.
Yet methinks no great man’s soul, speeded on its way by organ and anthem, ever had a nobler farewell than that limber driver, if the spirit of the singer has anything to do with it.
But, as I said before, I could continue indefinitely. Was there not the terrible occasion when I found him standing guard over a perfectly harmless Belgian interpreter, with a pick in his hand and the light of battle in his eye, under the impression that he had caught a German spy? The wretched man had lain on the ground for three hours – every movement being greeted with a growl of warning from Brown and a playful flourish of his pick. Also the awful moment when in an excess of zeal he built the Major a canvas chair, which collapsed immediately he sat in it, thereby condemning my irate commanding officer to walk in a bent-up position with the framework attached to his person, till his howls of rage produced deliverance. But time is short, and the pegs are small. He was just one of the Robert Browns, that’s all; and the last peg in the lad’s life is perhaps the smallest of all.
It was wet tw
o or three days ago, very wet; and I, as usual, had gone out without a macintosh. We were away back west of Ypres, in a region generally considered safe. It is safe as a matter of fact by comparison, but occasionally the Hun treats us to an obus or two – lest we forget his existence. I got back very wet, very angry, and very bored, and howled for Brown. There was no answer, save only from the doctor’s orderly, and he it was who told me. Brown had started out when the rain came on, six or seven hours before, with my macintosh, and, not returning, they had gone to look for him.
In a ditch they found him with the water dyed crimson, a few minutes before he died. It was just a stray shell that found its mark on the lad. I can see him in my mind stumping along the road, humming his song – and then, without warning, the sudden screech close on top of him, the pitiful, sagging knees, the glazing film of death, with none to aid him through as he had helped that other, for the road was little used.
Thank God! they found him before the end, but he only made one remark. “I couldn’t get no farther, Dick,” he muttered, “but the mack ain’t stained.”
I went up to see him in the brewery where they’d carried him, and I looked on his honest, ugly face for the last time. “The mack ain’t stained.” No, lad, it isn’t. May I, when I come to the last fence, be able to say the same.
Though he spoke it literally, there is, methinks, a man’s religion in those last words of Robert Brown, Driver, RE, and sometime batman.
Chapter 8
The End of “Wipers”
A nice balmy day, a good motor-car, and a first-class lunch in prospect. Such was my comparatively enviable state less than a month ago. True, the motor-car’s springs had had six months’ joy riding on the roads of Flanders, and the lunch was to be in Ypres; but one can’t have everything – and Wipers was quite a pleasant spot then. In the square, souvenir hunters wandered through the Cloth Hall and the cathedral intent on strange remnants of metal for the curious at home. Tobacco shops did a roaring trade – market day was on. Villainous fragments of fried fish changed-hands for a consideration, and everyone was happy and contented.
Into a delightful little shop I ultimately found my way. Twelve small tables, spread with spotless linen, and, needless to say, full of officers satisfying the inner man, presided over by two charming French girls, seemed good enough for me, and, sure enough, the luncheon was on a par with the girls, which is saying “some” in the vernacular. As I left with a consignment of the most excellent white wine, for thirsty officers elsewhere, two soldiers passed me.
“Say, Bill,” said one, “this ’ere Wipers is a bit of orl right. They can leave me here as long as they likes.” And as I crossed the railway at the western end of the town, one shell passed sullenly overhead, the first I had heard that day – the only discordant note, the only sound of war. That was a month ago.
A fortnight ago duty took me past the same little shop and through the square. This time I did not linger – there were no souvenir hunters; there was no market day. Again I was in a motor-car, but this time I rushed through – hoping for the best. Instead of one shell they came in their hundreds. A drunken, swaying noise through the air, like a tramway-car going homewards on its last journey down an empty road, a crash and the roar of the explosion, mixed with the rumble of falling masonry. Another house gone in the dead city. Huge holes clawed up in the pavé road, and in every corner dead and twisted horses. Children lying torn in the gutter, women and men gaping in their death agony. Here and there a soldier; legs, arms, fragments of what were once living, breathing creatures. And in nearly every house, had one gone in, little groups of civilians still moaning and muttering feebly. They had crept into their homes, frightened, terrified – to wait for the death that must come. And without cessation came the shells. In one corner a motor-ambulance stood drunkenly on three wheels; in the middle a wagon overturned with four dead horses still fast in the traces, and underneath them stuck out two legs, the legs of what had been the lead driver. A city of the dead – not a sign of visible life, save only our car picking its way carefully through dead horses and masses of bricks fallen across the road. Yesterday’s tobacco buyers stiff in the gutters; yesterday’s vendors of fish dying in some corner like rats in a trap; yesterday’s luncheon-shop a huge hole in the wall with the rafters twisted and broken, and the floor of the room above scattered over the twelve tables with the spotless linen. And perhaps – worst of all – the terrible, all-pervading stench which seemed to brood like a pall over everything.
At last we were clear of the square and getting into the open east of the town. Over the bridge and up a slight incline – then clear above the noise of the car for one most unpleasant second we heard the last tram going home. The next second a deafening roar, and we were in the centre of the stifling black fumes of a present from Krupps. All would have been well but for a dead horse in the centre of the road, which caused an abrupt stop. We left the car till the fumes had cleared away, and stumbled, gasping into the air, with the water pouring out of our eyes and the fumes catching our throats. And it was then we saw yesterday’s Tommy who had regarded “Wipers” as a “bit of orl right.”
Staggering down the road came three men, lurching from side to side, bumping up against one another, then falling apart: ever and anon collapsing in the road or the gutter, disappearing into shell holes, tripping over debris, over trees, over dead things. Gasping and panting they came on with their legs not strong enough to hold them. Nearer they came, and their faces were yellow-green, and their foreheads were thick with sweat, though the evening was chilly. They were half sobbing, half moaning, with their collars open and their clothes coated in mud. And one of them had a great gash over his head. Just before they reached us he collapsed in the ditch – for the last time. He was leaning forward and heaving with the agony of getting his breath. A froth was forming on his mouth, and his face was green.
“In God’s name what is it?” we asked one of the other two as they staggered by. He stared at us vacantly, gasped out the one word, “Gas,” and disappeared into the shambles of Ypres. We had not seen it before. We have since, and the first horror of it is past: but as there is a heaven above, there is not a man who has seen its effects who would not give every worldly possession he has to be able slowly to dribble the contents of a cylinder of the foulest and most diabolical invention yet conceived into a trench full of the originators of a device which most savages would be ashamed to use. We picked up the poor devil in the ditch and got him to a dressing station. He died in fearful agony half an hour after, so I subsequently heard. That was a fortnight ago.
Four nights ago there was a great light in the sky. Standing up out of the blaze, what was left of the cathedral showed up like a blackened sentinel. Through the trees the yellow flames shone with a lurid glow, and the crashing of falling houses completed the destruction started by German shells. The sight was one which will never be forgotten by those who saw it – that final gutting of a stricken town. For three days and three nights it blazed, and now all is over. It is the best end for that historic city – the scene of so much senseless carnage. How many of its harmless inhabitants have perished with it will never be known – will probably never be even guessed at. But fire is a purifier, and purification was necessary in Ypres.
Chapter 9
The Black Sheep
No one could have called Herbert Jones brilliant: his best friend – if he possessed such a thing – would not have predicted a great future for him. Into the manner of his living during the first twenty years of his life it would be well not to inquire too closely. Herbert Jones – more generally known to his inmates as ’Erb – was a dweller in dark places; one of the human flotsam who emerge like rats from their holes at night and spend in the nearest gin palace the few pence they have nefariously earned during the day. He was just a product of the gutter; from the gutter he came and to the gutter he returned in the fullness of time. And this was the way of it.
Personally I never made the acquaintanc
e of Herbert Jones: such information as I possess of his disreputable history was told me one night at a dreary crossroads three or four miles east of Ypres, with the greenish flares lighting the sky all around us and the stench of dead horses in our nostrils. My informant was one of my drivers who had lived in the same street with him in London.
What it was that had caused a temporary ebullition of decent feeling in such an unpromising subject I was unable to find out. It was something to do with a lady called Lizzie Green, too much gin, and a picture palace which displayed a film of the Royal Horse Artillery galloping into action. In view of the fact that ninety per cent of Herbert’s income was derived from making himself a public pest at jobbing stables, he quite naturally posed as a horsey youth, and that fact, coupled with Lizzie, the gin, and the film, apparently produced this one ebullition of decent feeling of which I have spoken. He enlisted. The very next day he presented his unprepossessing personality at a recruiting office – and his slum knew him no more. The Royal Regiment swallowed him up, gave him a uniform, decent food, and prepared to make a man of him.
It failed – hopelessly, dismally. The revilings of officers, the cursings of sergeants, the blasphemy of bombardiers alike failed to produce the slightest effect. His conduct sheet rapidly assumed the appearance of a full-sized novel; but there he was and there he remained – a driver in the Field Artillery, and the black sheep of his battery.
A year later found him at Havre. From there he drifted to Rouen – reviled by everyone who had the misfortune to have anything to do with him. At last, like a bad penny, he turned up again at his old battery, to the horror of all concerned, who thought they had effectually got rid of him at the beginning of the war. But the ways of record officers are wonderful – passing the ways of women. So when the news was broken to the major, and he had recovered, he ordered him to be put with the ammunition limbers, whose job it is to take ammunition to the battery nightly when they are in action and then return for more. And the captain, whose job is largely ammunition supply, heard his history from the sergeant whose job is entirely ammunition supply, and their remarks would be unprintable. Two nights later the battery was in action in the salient somewhere east of Ypres, and the reserves of ammunition were away back somewhere to the west, and Herbert Jones was with the reserves.