I said my good-nights and sallied forth into the night air. Could I walk to my tent ? Could I even stand ? No ! Two whiskies and soda on an empty stomach and in my exhausted physical condition had made me so drunk that I had to crawl home on all fours. Too tired and too fuddled to undress, I struggled out of jacket and boots, rolled into my flea-bag, and almost before I lay down had joined my snores to those of Mac and George.
V
THE WAY BACK
BY the Colonel's dispensation, we rose at a very unregimental hour next morning, and it was after 9 a.m. when Briggs undid the tent-flap and brought in a mug of hot water for shaving. Here was luxury indeed ! Not for five days had I washed, shaved, or looked at myself in a glass. Now when, still too drowsily comfortable to get up, I sat up in my flea-bag and saw what I looked like, I burst out laughing. “Bearded like the pard” does an injustice to that noble animal. The beard which covered my face could better be likened to some charred gorse-bush. And Mac said as much. What joy it was to lather and feel the razor shearing off this unwelcome growth ! How different, how much fresher I felt when the somewhat painful operation was complete. Then and not till then, I got up, stretched, put my head in the canvas bucket of water outside the tent, and washed. The transformation was magical. Spiritually and in appearance I was a different being. Youth has a surprising resilience, and memories of the dirt, discomforts, and dangers of the past four days were sloughed off with the soap and water and the application of a razor.
We were ready for breakfast, a real breakfast once more, with bacon and fried bread and hot tea. This we devoured seated on our flea-bags, interrupted only by a Headquarters' runner to say that the Colonel was holding orderly room at 11 a.m.
We were so late in finishing breakfast that we were forced to scramble down to the Company lines in some haste to satisfy ourselves that there were no defaulters, before I had to repair to Battalion Orderly Room. Here were many cheery reunions as officers and warrant officers assembled, especially with Palmes and others who had been left out of the line. Pym's disappearance was the topic of the hour. The fact that he was only a few yards from Fall Trench when he had vanished; the fact that he had ordered his men back when the enemy machine-gun had opened fire, suggesting that he had not himself been hit; the fact that he had never answered our calls to him nor had any trace of him been found—these were agreed by all to present a mysterious picture. What had happened to him ? We were busy with conjecture when the Colonel arrived with the Brigadier, who announced himself as very pleased with the work the Battalion had done while in the front line. He also complimented the Colonel on the smoothness and rapidity with which the relief had been carried out, and so far away already was the memory of that age-long march of a few hours previously that no one saw anything in his remark to smile at. We were all standing round him, I right in front of him, when he turned to ask the Colonel where I was. Amid general laughter it transpired that having only seen me in my unshorn and mud-plastered state he did not recognise me. It was a long time before I heard the last of that !
Following the G.O.C.'s departure, the routine duties of Battalion office were soon over, and we dismissed to our respective commands to bear the glad news that the day would be spent in cleaning up, that there would therefore be no parades other than the necessary fatigues, and that on the morrow we were to move back again to the Citadel whence we had set out a week before. “Cleaning-up” was in itself no mean task, involving as it did, not only the scraping and brushing of kits and boots, the cleaning of rifles and bayonets and the polishing of buttons, but the more intimate details of “de-lousing,” or as the Yorkshiremen termed it, “chatting” themselves. In every tent I visited, one or more men were to be seen sitting naked to the waist exploring the seams of their shirts with a lighted candle to destroy the “chats” which had bred and mustered during the past four days. This operation was a never-failing source of crude humour. “I'm making a collection, Nobby,” I heard one man say, “I've got all kinds now except one with pink eyes and revolving teeth,” and “Have you got any swaps, Nigger ?”
On my way back to my tent I met the Doctor, who had only been posted to the Battalion ten days previously, his predecessor having been killed during our last tour in the line.
“I suppose you had a ‘cushy’ time of it, Doctor,” I said. “Two officers and sixteen ranks isn't a very big bag for four days, is it ?”
“No,” he replied, with a grim smile, “but you forget that this is a war of attrition. It's not only the enemy that causes the casualties. Why, I had more men at sick parade this morning than we lost in the line ! And I had to evacuate four of them. I can do nothing for any one who is really sick.”
“Is there much sickness ?” I asked.
“There are a good many cases of p.u.o. and nephritis at the moment. Oh, if you want to know what those are, p.u.o. means ‘pyrrhexia of unknown origin,’ commonly known as trench fever; and nephritis is a form of kidney trouble caused by all this wet and cold. But what amazes me is that there is practically no malingering and comparatively little serious illness. Still, I should like to see a comparison made between the losses per battalion on the Somme now from enemy action and from the wastage caused by minor ailments, such as frostbite, trench-feet, and other causes. I think it would be illuminating.” He nodded and moved off.
A lugubrious person the new Doctor, I thought, but two of his observations set me thinking. First, it was extraordinary that a trivial complaint which in the easy days of peace would have been sufficient to warrant medical attention, medicine, or a day away from work, was not nowadays deemed to justify the sufferer reporting sick, possibly because he knew that he had to be ill indeed before he got his ticket of escape from “the Somme.” Secondly, and even more astonishing, was the policy of the British Army regarding regimental doctors. At a time when all the medical skill the world could mobilise was so desperately wanted, we alone of the nations engaged were content to waste so many qualified men by maintaining a medical officer with each battalion. As the Doctor had observed, the regimental medical officer had practically no opportunities of making use of his special knowledge. All he could do was to ensure that the latrines were properly sited and disinfected; take the daily sick parade, and evacuate any one who was ill to the Field Ambulance; and see that his orderlies and stretcher-bearers were well-drilled and capable of discharging their duties efficiently. He could, in short, accomplish little more than a trained Royal Army Medical Corps non-commissioned officer. The stock argument for his being maintained was the familiar one that a doctor was necessary for morale. But it was a heavy price we had to pay. Our present doctor was the third we had had in as many months, and doctors are not trained in a year.
Despite the late hour at which we had breakfasted we were more than ready for luncheon, the menu for which Parkin announced in his richest Rotherham accents as “Stewed beef and sixty-pounders, sir, and deaf'uns and coostard,” which may be translated as stewed beef with suet dumplings and figs and custard ! Anyway it was, if memory serves, a very sumptuous and succulent repast, to which we did ample justice, and, afterwards, contentedly full, curled ourselves up for a post-prandial snooze.
From this we were awakened by the sound of music, and hastened out to find the band of one of the Guards regiments playing in an adjoining camp. This phenomenon was proving a great draw, and men were trekking from all points of the compass to witness a spectacle so unexpected albeit so welcome. There was something curious to us in the appearance of these trim, well-drilled bandsmen, so reminiscent even in their khaki of the Mall or the Horse Guards, as there was in the civilised or civilising effect of their music in this vast rubbish heap populated with human ants. It gave us each a secret glow of satisfaction to feel that such things could still be, to know that people were still being trained for other things than digging, bombing, or bayonet-fighting. We stayed till the performance ended, then turned back to our tents with a lighter step. Music hath power as well as charms.
&nb
sp; There was a message awaiting me from Palmes that I should go and dine with him and C Company's other officers. That meant there was only the interval between tea and dinner to fill in, and apart from a visit to the company lines, this was accomplished with the aid of a bottle of whisky and some cigarettes, over which Mac, George, and I discussed Pym's disappearance again from all angles. None of us could make head or tail of it. George told us that the men were saying openly that Pym had been a German spy. We laughed, of course. “But,” George went on, “Where did he come from ? The Canadians ! I know ! but which Canadians ? What battalion ? Who knew him ? Came here from an officers' school. Yes, but couldn't any one pinch another bloke's papers and come the same way ? And who knew him when he was with the Battalion ? Going off every night to Beuvry, Bethune, or some other ‘red-lamp’ place. The other A Company officers never knew him. You ask them when you go round there to-night.”
I promised to do so. Naturally the mystery was further discussed over dinner—made noteworthy by a very realistic if sooty imitation of a sweet omelette prepared by Palmes' cook—without further elucidation. The discussion did, however, draw from Palmes a few pithy comments on discipline. “Whatever did happen to Pym,” Palmes said, “the incident proves what I have always held to be true. It's not a ha'porth of good being a brave man or a gallant leader if you don't take the trouble to know your men or get them to know you while you are out at rest. From the little I saw of him—Pym only joined us in the Hohenzollern about six weeks ago— I should say he was full of guts. In the line he was personally brave and ready to go anywhere. Out of the line he was quite different. He wouldn't bother himself with the men or interest himself in them. You can see it in the way he went out finally. Did he go along the trench and detail three or four men by name, men he knew, to follow him out to dig the sap ? No—he stood up on the parapet in the darkness and said, ‘You, and you, and you, get a spade and come out here !’ He did not know whom he had with him. They hardly knew him by sight. The result was that when that machine-gun opened and he called to them to get back, they all went. If he had been known to his men, you don't tell me one or two of them would not have stayed to see he too was coming in with them. And the awful part of that sort of thing is that not only is Pym himself missing, but a good boy like young Skett gets killed.”
This question of the relative values of discipline and gallantry was a favourite thesis of Palmes', but it did less than justice to Pym. When he called “Retire” out of the darkness, the best men would, and should have obeyed, not doubting in the scramble that their officer was with them. Then it was probable, we argued, that he had been mortally wounded with just enough breath left in his body to call the one word before collapsing. Or again, he might have been badly hit and have been seized by a German patrol, dragged back unconscious to the enemy lines, and died there. So we discussed the matter at great length until the growing chilliness of the tent warned us that it was time to turn in and try and make up some of the sleep that we had missed during the past four days.
But the disappearance of Pym must remain a real mystery of the Great War.
There was no long lie-in next morning. Reveille on the 15th was at 6 a.m. of a damp morning. The Battalion was to move off at 9 a.m. As we dressed, shivering and miserable, the servants were busy packing up our kits and blankets. Breakfast was the usual hurried, unsatisfying affair, eaten in haste with Parkin muttering that the “Transport officer is waiting for the baggage, sir.” Oh ! the discomfort of those winter moves—the rolling, stacking, and loading of blankets, the packing of valises, of cooking-pots and utensils, the haste, the sweat, the cursings, and the bad tempers ! But, as usual, out of apparent chaos the miracle of order and punctuality was contrived, and the Battalion fell in by companies outside their tents to drag themselves and their Lewis-gun carts across the five and a half miles that separated La Briqueterie from the Citadel. As soon as we were fairly on the road the congestion was found to be worse even than that we had experienced before. Moreover, we now had with us those accursed Lewis-gun carts. Never were invented such lunatic vehicles ! It was as if the designer had deliberately set out to evolve the most difficult item of infantry transport. Resembling a species of shortened coffin, they were mounted on two low wheels and provided with handles which were so near the ground that the wretched pusher had to bend almost double to grip them. Of effective leverage he could have none, and even with a human trace-horse pulling in front, the task of moving or steering the carts on a good road was not a light one. On the slowly moving river of transport and mud on which we found ourselves embarked it was impossible. As a choice of evils it was decided to detail sufficient men to take them by a geographically short cut across country, while the remainder of the Battalion fought their way down the road. It is useless to attempt to describe the efforts and sufferings of those Lewis-gun teams.
To any one not there to see for himself, it is difficult even to give a picture of the back areas of the Somme in that winter of 1916.
Imagine a countryside resembling, though not so steeply hilly as, the South Downs around Alfriston and Seaford. Strip it of every vestige of green. Denude it of every wood, copse, or village. Pound it with shell-fire until it is a putty-coloured wilderness, showing white scars here and there where deeper explosions or tunnel dug-outs have penetrated to the chalk. Litter it with all the dirt and débris of the battlefield. Then dump on it a vast army of men, housed in tents, hutments, bivouacs, and dug-outs, so close to one another that the area is one great camping-ground, scattered with horse-lines, drinking-troughs, battery and wagon standings, with here and there a long-range gun emplacement or a heavy howitzer poking its snub nose skywards. Finally, plaster the whole incredible scene with a thick layer of mud, and you will have some picture, if but an inadequate one, of what it looked like. See the poor animals, horses and mules, standing patiently up to the hocks in slush, their coats, despite the devoted attentions of their owners, caked with mud. The mules, be it noted, were less objects for sympathy than the horses, for the mule was a comical, self-reliant brute, and though his face was a mask of clay there was something very humorous in the way he semaphored with his long ears, and cocked them at droll angles. The day being relatively fine, a number of observation balloons, like inflated pigs, swung on their mooring ropes in the sky. How like an overturned nest of slow termites the scene below them must have appeared to the observers.
But whether we jostled and splashed along the road or sweated and laboured with the Lewis-gun carts across country, we had neither the time nor the spirit to look about us. That march was a repetition of our journey up the line, with the one difference, that it now forgot to rain. Otherwise there was the same plodding in Indian file, ankle deep in mud, dodging the interminable chain of wagons, guns, ambulances, and staff cars, the same wearisome halts, the same panting starts to recover lost distance. After some time the road improved and the traffic thinned enough to enable something approaching column of route to be formed. At any rate the battalion managed to proceed in fours by platoons, although at large and irregular intervals. And this was as well, as all of a sudden with a steady swing a battalion of the Guards passed us, marching towards the line. Very fine and soldierlike they looked, all big men, carrying their marching order with an enviable ease, and with their khaki new and clean. There was not a man among us who did not brace himself up and strive to look his best as they went by, determined to uphold the prestige of a line regiment in the face of these picked troops, whom we secretly looked up to, but openly envied for what we imagined to be the favoured treatment they received. Did they not have five mess-carts per battalion as against our one ? Did they not usually get the best billets ? Did they not have the pick of the men ? Why, a Guards recruit earned the recruiting sergeant 2s. 6d. instead of the humble shilling he got for a linesman. These were but some of the comments to be overheard in the ranks, together with many other grouses as to better food and more plentiful issues of clothing and stores, which were possibly un
just. Acting on the Colonel's principle that we must never let the men run down the Guards, I reminded one of the grousers that, whatever their privileges, the Guards were in every big scrap and were never known to let a show down. “Yes, sir, but they ought to do well, going in with full bellies and new kit, and having pioneers to dig their trenches for them.” This last was a libel, but I recognised in it an allusion to the Guards Pioneer Battalion we had recently seen improving a camp for one of the regiments of the Guards Division. Anyway, I thought, however many suits of clothes the Guards might have, we did not cut such a bad figure by comparison with them. Granted that our men were shorter, and that we were coming out after a week in the mud, the regiment were surprisingly spick and span. The one day spent at La Briqueterie had been well-spent in cleaning up. Colonel Jack's diary describes the incident in a nutshell:
“Passed Guards Battalion on way to front. Very clean and smart. But 2 W. York. had got themselves marvellously straightened up in the two days of semi-peace under bad conditions. Very fine fellows indeed.”
Which shows that he, too, did not fear the comparison.
At long last we came in sight of the familiar, dirty bell-tents and the high bank, riddled with old German dug-outs, of Citadel Camp. Turning thankfully off the road on to the softer mud of the Camp, Companies were led by guides to their tents. It was 12.30 p.m. That five miles of marching had occupied three and a half strenuous hours of labour. No wonder that we were again tired, nor that our stomachs reminded us that we had breakfasted early. But once again our hopes of food were shattered. Before the tents were allotted or the men had had time to take off their equipment, the rumour fled round that the transport had not arrived. With the transport were the cookers, and in the cookers were the regiment's dinners ! A bitter blow indeed. It was not that we were merely angry at being cheated out of a meal. Ravenous and tired though we were, our disappointment was something more than that of a diner who comes to table to find the meal on which he had set his heart is not ready, that the cook is out, and the provisions have not arrived. Figure it for yourself. Here were we arrived in our camp, actually in occupation of our tents, we could take off our marching order and ease our shouders, but could we make ourselves at home ? Of course not. Not only were the cookers miles behind, in that jam of transport, but so were the wagons with our blankets and all the precious odds and ends that were to enable us to transform a bell-tent from a mere canvas shelter on uncompromising bare boards into the fuggy, furnished habitations in which we could with a little ingenuity and luck imagine ourselves to be comfortable. The most we could do at the moment was to moon about, waiting for the missing vehicles to turn up, momentarily becoming more conscious of wet feet and the chilliness of the November breeze. We just hung around, shivering, talking idly to one another and cursing the Somme, the roads, and everything on which we could blame this misfortune. Those lucky enough to have any, smoked cigarette after cigarette; not only did even “Ruby Queens” or “Red Hussars”—whoever named those weird war-brands of “gaspers” ?—help to quieten the pangs of hunger, but they gave an illusion of warmth.
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