Once again Hinchcliffe—bless his heart !—was the deus ex machina. We noticed him followed by his satellites of Company Quartermaster-Sergeants bustling about the camp, stumping off to the lines of the 2nd Scottish Rifles, another regiment of our brigade who were billeted alongside us, and presently saw him return with triumph written on his face. Marvellous man ! By some miracle of barter known only to Quartermasters, he had borrowed us a meal ! Not that it was ready on the instant, still the news was encouraging, and it was not long before orderlies were told off to fetch the borrowed dixies of stew,
How good that stew tasted ! It confirmed the opinion I already held that on a cold, wet day or after a long march the meals the men got from the cookers were better fitted to the occasion than those the officers enjoyed. True, it was ordinarily just “stew” — a nondescript dish, ranking possibly low as a specimen of the culinary art, into which had been put any and all sorts of comestibles that were available and which had often simmered far too long. But it was wet, it was hot, and it was appetising. Whatever the ingredients, it smelt right, and usually tasted good, even if, as sometimes happened, a kipper or two had found their way among the meat, vegetables, biscuits, “Maconochies,” and beans. Moreover, it was normally ready as soon as the troops, for even on the Somme actual breakdowns in the Quartermaster's department were rare. By contrast the officers, being privileged beings, had to wait until their mess servants had unpacked their cooking-pots and crockery. Then an attempt was hurriedly made to lay some sort of table. All this reduced the time available for preparing any hot food, so that often, after watching the men gulping down steaming mess-tins of savoury meat, we were constrained after a gruelling march to sit down to a meal of cold slices of bully-beef, to imperfectly heated “Maconochies,” or sometimes to rashers of fried ration beef. Certainly we managed to score in the evening when the servants had time to put up a respectable dinner, but whenever we were on the move I envied the men their midday meal.
On this occasion we shared it with avidity, and our outlooks speedily changed as a result. After all, things were not so bad. Here we were, safely in camp, out of the line, and to all intents and purposes out of danger, for the enemy seldom bothered to shell areas so far in rear, while bombing by aircraft was not the terror that flieth by night which it was afterwards to become. Better still, unless rumour was again unreliable, we were going right back for the rest we had hoped for for so long. What had we to worry about ? Let us make ourselves snug and look forward to a “cushy” time ahead. What matter if it was dark by the time we had finished eating ? A few candles and a brazier made the tent look all the warmer.
I wandered down to the Battalion Headquarters tent to have a word with Matheson and see if I could glean any advance information as to our movements. I found him very wroth. The Headquarters mess was worse off than we had been, for though the transport had by now arrived, the Headquarters wagon had not. It was reported to be broken down some miles from camp. Matheson was in no mood to be probed with impunity, and any way the brigade mail had not reached him, so he probably knew no more than the rest of us. I left him and went back to the company tent.
There you behold the three of us once again, sitting on our flea-bags, smoking cigarettes, sipping a very welcome whisky and water out of tin mugs and coughing from the coke fumes given off by the brazier. The wheel had turned full circle. We were back within a hundred yards of the spot whence we had set out a week before. Much water had flowed in the interval. Many lives had been lost, some out of our own immediate circle, but, except that we were demonstrably more cheerful, there was otherwise no difference in our thoughts or conversation. The topic was still the all-absorbing one of what was going to happen next. Were we going out, were we going to stay, or were we going back into the line ? We argued about it and about.
Dinner-time came and went. The rum ration was announced, and I went out to supervise the issue of it myself. This I did personally as often as was possible, not so much from a sense of duty as because I had a sneaking feeling that by so doing I was identifying myself with an important and welcome piece of ritual. It was one way of showing the men that I was taking some interest in their wellbeing. Besides, I flattered myself I knew the deserving fellows, and saw to it that they got an extra liberal allowance, though I was never a believer in letting any rum go back to store, or in hoarding it for the use of officers. Rum issue was a cheery occasion on even the most cheerless day. Company-Sergeant-Major Scott of course escorted me, and came back to the officers' tent afterwards to join us in a tin-mug of whisky and water.
It was always a joy to have Scott in for an informal talk. Quiet-voiced, phlegmatic to a degree, with sandy hair, ruddy face, and blue eyes, he was the antithesis of the bellowing warrant officer beloved by cartoonists. A man of considerable education and marked gentleness of manner, he got results by the affectionate regard in which he was held by officers and men rather than by obvious resort to discipline. Possibly the fact that he had been for years the best full-back in the regimental soccer teams, and that his gruff humour could be a very cutting weapon were valuable assets ! Except on the football field, I never saw him hurried. Without any especial gifts of command, he managed to be gently but firmly efficient, and one of whom an officer could gratefully say he was at once a trusted subordinate and a faithful friend. Poor Scott ! He got his commission later, but little good it did him. Taken prisoner towards the end of the war, he survived only to be shot in Dublin during the Irish trouble. For the moment he was one of us, and we discussed with him what we would do to pull the Company together as soon as we got back to some training area. After all, we argued, we should have a good chance of preliminary cleaning-up and getting acquainted while we were at the Citadel. We should probably have two or three days with nothing more to do than straighten the tangle into which a unit largely composed of new men under recently-promoted N.C.O.'s was found to get into in circumstances like those in which we had been living for the past week. So we planned, with all the keen enthusiasm of the young officer, arguing the merits of the younger lance-corporals and corporals, the improvements noticed in the behaviour of some of the “tougher” characters, the backslidings of one or two of the more promising.
Miserable mice ! Our fond schemes were destined to go sadly “agley.” An ominous rap on the tent—the delivery of Battalion orders— shattered our dreams. Orders were brutally short. One item was enough. “The Battalion will find a working party of 6 officers and 300 men to-morrow, November 16th. . . .”
For a second words failed us. Then with a “Well, I'm ... !” we each exploded, bitter anger striving to get the better of bitter disappointment. Technically the Division was in Corps Reserve. Officially on the disposition charts back at General Headquarters we would be shown as “Resting.” Staff-officers with red and blue arm-bands and polished field boots were probably saying, as they scanned the charts, “Good, the 8th Division is having a rest. They have had a pretty strenuous time lately.” Rest ! The irony of the word. Here were tired men, men rejoicing on at last being free of the fears and discomforts of the forward areas, called upon to parade in the darkness at 6 a.m., to go back into the danger zone and to work there all day, not indeed as soldiers, but as navvies. Thus was insult added to injury. The party was scheduled to work till 4 p.m. and was required to supply the labour for a decauville railway track which the sappers were laying at Guillemont, of all unhealthy places. Nor was just a handful needed. That would have been tolerable, since the number might have been found from the fortunate ones who had stayed at transport lines while the Battalion was in the trenches. From sheer force of habit, resignation triumphed over anger. The job had got to be done.
“That means seventy-five from us, Sergeant-Major,” I said. “You'd better go and warn the poor devils before they go to sleep.” “The remainder of the Battalion will parade for baths,” I read. What an anti-climax. “I'll send orders over as soon as I've written them,” I told Scott, and he left us. I turned to Mac and Georg
e. “Apparently one of you two has to go. I'm sorry. You'd better toss for it.” They did, and Mac won. We both sympathised with George, who took his bad luck with characteristic Yorkshire stolidness and not a murmur of a “grouse.”
Whatever they may have felt, the men received the news in much the same way. The tents being close together, we could not fail to overhear one conversation between a man just warned for parade, and his platoon sergeant. “Do we go by train to that working party to-morrow, Sergeant ?”
“Yes,” was the prompt reply, “and don't any of you young soldiers get down to pick flowers on the way, because they've got A.P.M.'s along the line and they'll run you in if you do.”
A loud laugh greeted this sally, in which we joined, the idea of flowers growing in such a Slough of Despond being ludicrous in the extreme.
Actually orders had specified that the party should leave by decauville train from the Citadel Station, so-called, which was alongside the Camp. And this was the small measure of consolation we could find as we turned into our flea-bags. It was something to know that at last a light railway was being laid nearer to the line. Our efforts would help to make easier the lot of ration-parties and of the wretched pack animals which now carried ammunition right up to the guns. But the conviction could not be dispelled that somewhere in the Army fresher labour might have been found for the task. And so to sleep.
The departure of the workers did not disturb either Mac or me. Nights in camp were in many ways noisier than in the trenches. There was the continuous growl of distant gunfire, the startling crash as some long-range gun or heavy howitzer fired from an emplacement close at hand. There was the occasional throbbing drone as a night-flying plane passed overhead, the chug-chugging of motorcycles as dispatch riders came and went. There were the challenges of sentries, the whinnying and fretting of picketed animals, the creak and rumble of moving transport. Voices called to one another out of the darkness. Though half the Army might sleep, the other half was awake. Never, as in even the greatest cities, was there a brief period when all seemed still. The war machine knew no rest.
So it was small wonder that the additional noise of men parading in the lines passed unheard by us. Subconsciously we were aware that George had risen and left the tent, but it was not till three hours later that we were with difficulty aroused. And to what a morning did we reluctantly awake ! Winter had stolen upon us in the night, determined to show that all his previous attempts at “fright-fulness” had been child's play. He had already demonstrated his powers in the matter of rain. Now he would give up a snap of real cold. At first the change was not unwelcome. With our bodies still warm from sleep and a substantial breakfast, we could congratulate ourselves that the rain had stopped. If it would only keep fine for a day, some of the mud which washed ankle deep round the tents might dry up. Even a hard frost might be preferable to the everlasting torture of wet feet. But as the morning wore on and we tried to keep moving about on self-appointed routine jobs in a half-empty camp, the cold began to strike home. God ! How cold it was ! There was no frost, and but little wind. But an implacable grey sky seemed to have drawn every element of warmth out of the sodden earth. Soon probably it would snow, and that would be even worse. Had there been any stretch of hard, open ground nearby we could have made an effort to keep warm by organising some “physical jerks” or games of a sort, but the mud lay thick over everything. There was nothing to do but to keep up as much movement as possible until noon brought temporary relief in the shape of a hot meal. Afterwards the depleted company fell in, as detailed in orders, to march to the divisional baths near Meaulte.
It was a joy to get outside the camp boundary and to be moving somewhere with a set purpose, and Mac and I felt our spirits rise with the temperature of our bodies as we set out at the head of the column with our towels and clean underclothes in the pockets of our British warms. Behind us the men sang, a good sign, though the vulgarity of the songs they chose was an even better indication that they were feeling cheerful.
We had now more energy to look about us and to note details of the vast concentration of men, beasts, and machines which spread as far as the eye could see across the countryside. We saw strange-looking guns, great hump-backed howitzers being drawn along by tractors. We looked out eagerly but without success for those new monsters, the “tanks,” which had burst so dramatically upon friend and enemy alike at Flers some six weeks before. So far we had not seen one, and our only idea of what they looked like had been gleaned from very foggy newspaper illustrations. We passed through lines of Australians, seeing them at close quarters for the first time, and marvelled at the difference in their physiognomy, their stature, and their equipment. The slouch-hats we knew already, but how odd their shirt-like jackets looked ! We commented on their dirty, slipshod appearance, which we did not then realise masked a deadly efficiency as fighting-men; and on the curious lope of their long-maned horses. German prisoners were working on the roads under lanky Anzac guards. Few of them were our idea of “Squareheads.” Some were mere boys, others myopic bespectacled scarecrows. Many were bearded, some having fringes of whiskers framing their faces after the manner of the great-crested grebe. All wore the long-skirted field-grey coats, the trousers stuffed into clumsy boots. It gave us a strange feeling to see our enemies at such close range. Except for dead ones, for an occasional miserable prisoner dragged back half-dead with fright from some raid, or for groups seen through field-glasses far behind their lines, many of us had never seen any Germans. That was one of the oddest aspects of the war. There must have been hundreds of men who were in France and in the trenches for months, even years, who never set eyes on the men they were fighting. The enemy early became a legend. The well-wired trenches that faced ours frequently at a distance of only a few yards, gave shelter, we understood, to a race of savages, Huns, blond beasts who gave no quarter, who crucified Canadians and bayoneted babies, raped Belgian women, and had actually built kadaver works where they rendered down the bodies of their dead into fats ! It was perhaps as well that we should believe such tales. But were these pallid, serious youths really capable of such enormities ?
We noticed too, how the tide of mud was flowing rearwards. Even country that had been behind the original battle-line of July 1st had now become engulfed. Not so long ago Meaulte had been a trim village, with its houses thrusting white-washed fronts on the pavé streets. But now the pavé was broken and the streets ran mud, while down them jostled men of every branch of the British Army and of many nationalities. English gunners and supply men, tall “Aussies,” stockier New Zealanders, and mournful Germans rubbed shoulders with French infantry and gendarmes, bearded Sikh cavalrymen, and grinning negroes from the British West Indies. Even in such an international medley, drab was the dominant note, and the horizon blue of the French failed to stand out from the more sombre tones of khaki and field grey. Meaulte was one of the bottle-necks through which was fed the flood of men and munitions for the Somme offensive. Here hundreds of regiments and batteries had spent a last night's rest before moving on nearer the line. We had ourselves spent a very uncomfortable twenty-four hours there some three weeks previously. Night after night unit had succeeded unit since the battle began. Morning after morning they had been pitchforked out towards the fires through which they must pass to Moloch. With each departure, the place had become dirtier, lousier, more disreputable. So now the houses, once so neat and well-kept, were foul and rickety, crammed to bursting with troops or commandeered for offices or stores. What was once a cheerful, flagged kitchen, was now a billet, its only furniture the tiers of wooden frames covered with rabbit wire which served as beds for the fifty men who would occupy the room for one night—and then on. A baker's shop had become the office of the French Mission in the area, a grubby tricolour hanging listlessly from the pole outside. Some farm buildings round a midden sheltered the mobile workshops of a brigade of heavy artillery, and 8-inch howitzers stood to have their recoil-buffers repaired where once Percheron plough-horses
had waited to be unharnessed.
Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916 Page 11