Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  ‘Thanks. I expect she sent it to Frank too.’

  He turned, a shadow in the darkness, as he began to move away.

  ‘Curiously enough,’ he said, ‘she never even mentioned Frank.’

  It was almost impossible to sleep on the Ordenia and virtually impossible to eat. Housey-housey was interminable, with Eph Lott and his pals raking in the money from the youngsters like Murray who firmly expected to make a fortune and never did.

  Whenever we passed another ship there were vain shouts of ‘What mob are you?’ and efforts by the battalion signallers to read the messages which were flashed back and forth, followed by more efforts by amateur strategists to translate them into hard news. Spring got up a concert party but, as the only place they could find room to perform was in the officers’ lounge, the only people to get any benefit from it were the officers and Spring and his men, who returned below with wild tales of unbridled luxury and mouth-watering accounts of what they’d drunk and eaten.

  We arrived in Egypt towards the end of the year, white and ugly and uncertain of ourselves in our unaccustomed drill shorts and the bucket-like monstrosities they gave us to protect our heads from the sun. We were crammed into trains and shunted through a hot gritty wind towards Ismailia where we detrained, hot and sweaty and dirty, and already suffering from prickly heat, to suffer our final disillusionment. We’d not come to Egypt to take part in any campaign. We were there simply and solely for garrison duties on the canal.

  There’s little to remember of it now, beyond the flies and the bad food and the dust-storms that blew up, and once an Italian girl in a bar singing ‘Ilkla Moor’ to us in an accent that was enough to make them spit blood all the way from Middlesbrough to Sheffield. The authorities had clearly not lost sight of us, for we constantly trained for battles which now seemed farther away than ever. We went on forming fours, sloping arms, turning left and right, standing to attention, grounding arms, porting arms for inspection and fixing and unfixing bayonets. We dug trenches and went through the same old rigmarole about parapets and paradoses and how to advance across the desert under imaginary shell- or machine-gun-fire. We carried out exercises with non-existent field telephones and rode camels and bought carpets, and explored the bazaars in Port Said and acquired dozens of curios which, as it happened, never got sent home. We celebrated Christmas on duty with a ration of one bottle of beer apiece, one toffee and a couple of nuts, together with the usual Christmas egg for breakfast and a Christmas pudding made by the battalion cooks, chiefly out of dough and currants.

  We were buoyed up in our boredom by the thought that someone might learn who we were and finally throw us into the Dardanelles, but in the early New Year of 1916 the campaign there was abandoned and all the veterans of the peninsula began to arrive in the camps around us. They were mostly tall Australians and New Zealanders with a tremendous reputation as fighting men, sun-bronzed soldiers from a dead campaign, who looked on us as amateurs, and pretty poor amateurs at that, and enjoyed chilling our blood with tales of the Turk.

  ‘They came over in their thousands,’ they said. ‘Yelling like banshees, and we brought ’em down in rows, till they were in heaps three feet high and crying for mercy.’

  The British troops from the peninsula were almost all Kitchener men like ourselves, but they had a weariness about them that didn’t come entirely from fatigue. They’d seen their friends die around them and, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t comprehend what that meant.

  The guards continued and we marched up and down the side of that damned canal, wishing someone would steal it or, at least, that the Turks would produce some initiative and put on a show of capturing it so that we could feel our time there was worthwhile. The thing that bore down on us most was the degrading thought that we’d been relegated – even if only temporarily – to the duties of second-line troops.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Murray said bitterly, ‘they can have the bloody canal and good riddance to it. I don’t suppose we’d miss it, anyway.’

  As we patrolled through the mud they dredged from the canal during the day, our clothes grew filthy from the dust that blew up from the noisome drying heaps, then as night fell, and the dew came down, they became coated with mud as the dust in the creases was touched by the moisture and congealed.

  The Australians jeered that they’d been pulled out to win the war for us in France, and not even the greater freedom that came with being abroad took the ashes from our mouths, and we all started looking round for avenues of escape. De Burgh from A Company volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps, which was just beginning to expand and was calling for pilots and observers, and Arnold Holroyd, who had long since applied for a commission, found to his surprise that it had come through, and he disappeared to Cairo to get his uniform before leaving for a battalion stationed at Gibraltar. Several other men – Mason, Catchpole and Spring among them – promptly put in for commissions for themselves, but were told privately by Ashton that there wasn’t much chance of getting them while we were in the Canal Zone where things had a habit of getting lost.

  Mason was a little defensive about his application. He and Holroyd were the only ones from the group who’d been on the Post who’d tried, and Mason had made his application quietly, without suggesting it to anyone else, after he’d heard where Holroyd had gone. It was almost as though he were faintly ashamed of trying to leave us and he was a little noisy in his self-defence.

  ‘Dear old lad,’ Locky soothed him. ‘No one here minds who has a go for a commission. So long as you promise not to bother us too much if you get it.’

  Mason grinned, considerably relieved, and the nervous boisterousness went out of him as he realised no one disapproved. ‘I don’t know why you lot don’t have a go,’ he said. ‘They told us when we joined that we were all potential officer material.’

  Locky was thoughtful as he watched Mason clowning with Murray and Tom Creak, pretending to salute them both and force them to stand to attention before him.

  ‘Why don’t you put in for a commission, Fen?’ he asked me.

  ‘Bold would kick me from here to Cairo,’ I said. ‘He’s told me more than once that with my record he couldn’t even recommend me for a stripe.’

  ‘He might change his mind.’

  ‘If it comes to that,’ I said, ‘why don’t you?’

  ‘It’s crossed my mind,’ he said. ‘It might make the journey a bit easier. I’ve debated which would be more use to Molly – a bigger wage or my useless life – and I came to the conclusion that she’d prefer my life. A subaltern’s career seems to be short and sweet these days. And, curiously enough, I like the ranks. I like a man on either side of me. I suppose,’ he concluded, and I felt curiously closer to him than at any other time, ‘that, like you, I’m not the type.’

  Egypt grew more boring and the flies more troublesome. Parades devised to kill time seemed incessant, and inspections followed closely one on another. As the first city battalion they’d had in the command, all the bigwigs came out to stare at us – the Governor-General, the High Commissioner for Australia, the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, the Divisional General and half a dozen others – and morale took a plunge into the abyss.

  ‘If only there were something happening,’ Murray wailed. ‘If only there were even something to do.’

  ‘Washing and shaving’s a legitimate recreation,’ Locky said. ‘And you can always take off your boots. Why not go mad and get yourself tattooed?’

  The Australians and New Zealanders had left for France by this time. They’d marched past the camp cheering and jeering at us through the wire.

  ‘Look after the canal, you jokers,’ they’d shouted. ‘And lay off the sheilas. We’ve got a job to do in France, then we’ll come back and finish the Turk off for you.’

  Then the South Africans arrived, en route for England, big bronzed men who spoke occasionally in a strange language that only Catchpole and Corker and Bold could understand. After them came clouds of
Indians, bearded men in blue turbans, and the first of the Chinese labourers who were going to France to make up working battalions. The whole of the British Empire seemed to be heading past us for the big battles which rumour told us were to take place that spring, all moving west while we remained anchored to that damned canal.

  A youngster in C Company died of appendicitis in hospital at Ismailia and enjoyed the doubtful honour of being our first casualty, and a man in B got himself involved with an Egyptian girl and got her boyfriend’s knife in the kidneys for his trouble.

  We fretted and fumed more with every regiment and unit that disappeared. The papers were full of a tremendous battle which had started at Verdun where the French were being thrust farther and farther back. If the fortress fell, it was expected that the Germans would sweep onwards towards Paris and the war would end. It was vital that Verdun should be relieved, and latrine rumour had it that a new battle farther north was being planned by the British, to draw away the German reserves and relieve the pressure.

  France had suddenly woken up again after six months of quietude. The Germans had superiority in the air, and Little Willie, the German Crown Prince, had fourteen hundred guns almost wheel to wheel at Verdun. But the French were resisting and the battle was turning into a mincing machine which neither side seemed able to break off. Thousands of men were being poured in and the French Army was in danger of extinction.

  ‘They’ve got to do something to stop it,’ Murray said anxiously, staring at a newspaper outside the tent. ‘They can’t just go on letting it go on like this.’

  With the mercurial temperament of youth, he was unable to view the possibility of defeat without panic.

  ‘Ashton told me,’ Mason said, ‘that a new battle’s going to be fought entirely by the British and by the New Army. Duggie Haig’s in charge now and they say he’s just the chap for it.’

  ‘In South Africa they didn’t think he was much cop,’ Catchpole said.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Mason said knowledgeably, ‘he’s been C.-in-C., India, since then, and in command at Aldershot. He had charge of the fighting at Loos.’

  ‘And a bloody fine mess that was,’ Eph Lott said, unimpressed.

  ‘Well, that wasn’t Haig’s fault,’ Mason said angrily. ‘It was French’s. Why else was he pushed out and Haig put in his place?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Eph said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of that, of course.’

  ‘Oh! Did Haig tell you that?’

  Mason looked disgustedly at Eph. ‘I’ve got ears, haven’t I? I keep ’em open. I hear things.’

  ‘Latrine rumours mostly.’

  ‘It isn’t rumour about this new battle. It’s not going to be fought by the old lot who copped it at Loos. It’s going to be fought by the 4th Army, because it hasn’t been affected by casualties.’

  ‘We used to belong to the 4th Army,’ Murray said disconsolately, his eyes dreamy. ‘When we were at Romstone.’

  ‘Speaking personally,’ Locky said, curiously quiet, ‘I’ve had time since I came here to discover that I’d be quite happy to see the war out on the canal. Malaria and dysentery are the most dangerous things I have to contend with here, and I find them infinitely preferable to bullets.’

  Murray turned on him indignantly. ‘We didn’t join up for that,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Locky agreed. ‘We didn’t. But since then I’ve acquired a wife, and I gather from my last letter there’s a youngster on the way. It makes a difference.’

  ‘You could always back out,’ Murray said bitterly.

  Locky smiled. ‘It might be worth thinking about,’ he said. ‘Surely these damn’ people in Cairo could use a good clerk or a censorship corporal with a sound knowledge of news.’

  ‘You’d never do it.’ Murray was aghast at Locky’s treachery. It wasn’t the thought of Locky rejecting the chance of glory that troubled him. It was fear that the comradeship that had sustained him through all the past months might be breaking up at last. Arnold Holroyd had gone already, and Mason and Spring and Catchpole had applied for commissions and would inevitably go in the end. One of the transport corporals had joined some comic outfit belonging to an archaeologist called Lawrence, who was fighting the Turks in the desert with camels and armoured cars, and Murray seemed to sense that the reassurance he drew from the sight of familiar faces about him was in danger of disintegrating.

  ‘You’d never do it,’ he repeated, almost pleadingly.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Locky said thoughtfully. ‘Suddenly I find the overriding instinct in my make-up is the instinct to survive. I think I’ll look into it before it’s too late.’

  But Locky was already too late.

  We sent Murray up to the orderly room that tea-time to collect the mail. We knew a convoy had arrived in Port Said that morning and inevitably there’d be letters. He went off grumbling, because being the youngest he was always treated as a messenger boy by everyone else and, in spite of his complaints, he usually accepted it for the same reason. But within ten minutes he was on his way back again and we could hear him coming a hundred yards away.

  He was running as fast as he could, raising the dust as he turned the corner into D Company’s lines. His face was red and sweating and his eyes were bulging with excitement.

  ‘Now what?’ Locky said, watching him draw closer.

  ‘Leave’s cancelled,’ Murray was yelling, and heads began to appear through tent doors and under flaps to see what was wrong. ‘Nobody’s allowed out of camp.’

  ‘Well, Christ, what is there to get excited about in that?’ Eph asked disgustedly, and as Murray turned to fling the answer at him he caught his foot in a guy-rope and went down, flat on his face, scattering the letters in his hand like a shower of confetti.

  He was up at once, bounding to his feet as though he were on a spring.

  ‘They’ve come,’ he shouted. ‘They’ve come! Orders to move! We’re leaving! We’ve got to indent for everything we need! The orderly room’s gone batchy!’

  Eph threw the boot he’d been cleaning into the air. It described a neat arc and landed on the next tent. Several men started a jig, swinging round each other in a heavy-footed dance.

  ‘Where to? Where to? Out with it, man!’

  Murray seemed about to burst. ‘It’s France!’ he screamed. ‘It’s France! We’re in the Big Push, after all!’

  Everybody began to cheer and slap each other on the back. Eph started to throw tropical equipment at Henny Cuthbert.

  ‘Let’s go and flog this lot,’ he shouted. ‘We shan’t need it now and we can use the money to have a beano.’

  Locky’s face was sombre as he stood watching Murray cavorting with Catchpole and the Mandy brothers.

  ‘Well,’ he said soberly. ‘It looks as though I shan’t get my job as lickspittle to the mighty in Cairo after all. I’d thought I might find myself a cushy billet for the rest of the war, but now it seems I shan’t.’

  ‘Sorry, Locky?’ I asked.

  He turned to me and grinned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Curiously enough, I’m not.’

  Part Two

  Yea, how they set themselves in battle array

  I shall remember to my dying day.

  BUNYAN

  1

  The first sight of France had a sobering effect on us all and the excitement seemed to die out of us suddenly.

  This was what we’d joined up for, this was why we’d trained through eighteen or more solid months. This was why we’d learned to march and shoot and discipline ourselves. France! In spite of the Dardanelles and the sideshows in Mesopotamia and Salonika, this, we all knew – because we’d been often told so by the newspapers – this was where the war would be fought and won.

  ‘Well, there it is, Murray,’ I said, staring at the flat-fronted pink-and-blue houses of Marseilles through a thin driving rain that had flecks of snow in it. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘That’s what we came for.’ Murray seemed to be sniffing the air like an eager terrier, his ey
es bright, his fingers gripping the ship’s rail in an intensity of emotion that made his knuckles white.

  Mason was on the other side, staring at the shore, his eyes sombre, and his voice sounded strangely flat, as though he were trying to control emotions that were in danger of making it uneven. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘for better or worse, like marriage, you’ve got it now. And, like marriage, before you’re much older, my lad, you’ll probably wish you’d never seen it.’

  Murray was gazing at the square shuttered houses of the distant port, glimmering faintly in the rain through the sails and masts and smokestacks of all kinds of shipping – from transatlantic liners and sleek destroyers to barges and gaily painted Mediterranean fishing craft. Even he seemed to be suddenly impressed by the immensity of what he was facing.

  Here was death. I could almost see the thoughts passing in procession through his mind; here, possibly, were wounds, and maiming. But here was the enemy. Here was glory.

  My own thoughts were a confused mixture of excitement and dread. Here, I thought, was the unknown, and with the realisation came a mild depression that reached all the way back to childhood bogeys and dim backstreets and darkness.

  With the destroyers flirting playfully around us, we were edged into the harbour and butted by tugs alongside a fungoid-spotted green wall. We tramped down the wooden gangplank with the band standing on the wet porter-coloured cobbles playing the ‘Marseillaise’ as we formed up into companies and set off through the town in a thin sleety snow. The place had turned out to greet us, wrapped in coats and mufflers and shawls, they cheered us wildly and called out the name of the battalion in a foreign accent that made it sound like an act from a circus.

  We halted in the first square we came to, while Colonel Pine consulted his maps and got his bearings. The little white terrier which had attached itself to him when he’d first taken command of the battalion at Romstone seven months before was still with him. It had been smuggled on to the troopship and taken to Egypt, and had survived the heat and the dust and the attentions of all the pariah dogs that had haunted the camp, and had finally found its way to France with us. It was almost a mascot now. When we were on the march it rode in one of the waggons, or sat on the colonel’s saddle between his knees.