On Christmas Eve the platoon commander, Mr. Thorverton, said to his men standing around him in Prince’s Street, as the reserve line in the wood was called,
“We have a special task tonight, and I thought I would tell you what I know about it before we start. In the event of having to reinforce the Diehard T-trench during a daylight attack, supports will have to go across open ground from the edge of the wood, since the communication trench is flooded too deep for use. Tonight the brigadier has entrusted the battalion with the special task of making a wire fence from the wood to the trench itself, or rather two fences, about six feet apart. Against the wire, on either side, the idea is to lay hurdles, to give cover from view. Thus reinforcements will be able to get to the firing trench on more or less dry ground. The brigadier considers that, at first, the enemy will fire through the hurdles, hoping to catch an occasional runner by chance, but they will soon get tired of it. There are a fair quantity of hurdles, used for tobacco drying, in the tarred wooden shed near the Château. The task has been specially entrusted to the battalion; and Number Three Platoon has been given the honour of carrying out this task tonight. I need not tell you that we must all work as quietly as possible.”
Mr. Thorverton, fresh from Cambridge University O.T.C., delivered this description of the work to be undertaken in a quiet and amiable voice, the very quietness of which sent some hearts, including Phillip’s, bootwards; for the Germans were only eighty yards from the T-trench at the farthest point, and less than fifty at the nearest.
“We must of course be as quiet as possible, in order not to draw the enemy’s fire. Before Sergeant Douglas details the wire-carriers, and those who will knock in posts with the wooden betels provided, would any man care to ask a question?”
This was so unexpected from an officer that complete silence followed. Then Phillip said, more to continue the feeling of part-intimacy with the officer than for information, “Sir! If you please, why is it called the Diehard trench, when it is so easy to get sniped there?”
Sergeant Douglas looked sharply at the speaker, as though suspecting impertinence.
“The regimental nickname of the Middlesex Regiment is ‘The Diehards’, and I suppose the trench was dug by them originally,” replied the new officer, courteously. “But that is only my idea—I am, of course, a newcomer among you all.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Phillip.
“Any further questions?”
Feeling grateful to Mr. Thorverton, Phillip uttered his thoughts, without lesser thought that he was betraying his fear, “Sir! If the posts are driven in by big wooden betels, won’t the noise be heard by the Germans?”
Mr. Thorverton turned to Sergeant Douglas.
Sergeant Douglas had a restrained, near-impatient look on his face. Fearing that Douglas despised him, almost desperately Phillip went on, “I once watched posts being put in yellow clay, rather similar to this, sir. The navvies dug the holes first with spades, sir. Then they tumped the clay around the posts, with tumpers, sir, thus making sure that the posts were quite firm; It made little noise. It was when they were putting up scaffolding, before building in the field behind my house, at home, sir.”
Mr. Thorverton stood as though undecided; then he said in the same easy tones, “I quite appreciate what you, as one of the original members of the battalion, have just said; but the ground is frozen fairly hard, and I doubt if digging will make much impression. And in any case we have to carry out implicit directions from Brigade. Now Sergeant Douglas will detail the various carrying parties.”
Phillip felt sympathy with the new officer for the way he had spoken to him. All the same, the orders were wrong. He knew the proper way to put posts into clayey ground. He saw again the navvies in the Backfield, a pail of water between two, each dipping his spade before a thrust, each with a wooden scraper tucked into the leather strap holding up his corduroy trousers below the knee, to clean the spade off when the yellow clay clung to the bright steel. When Father had dug out the garden to make the lawn, when they had first come to Hillside Road, he was three years old; but he remembered Father making a similar little wooden scraper for his spade.
The platoon filed away singly. With a stab of fear he thought of knocking in posts, into frozen ground, a stone’s-throw from the Germans, and in moonlight! It was like sending the battalion into action for the first time on Hallow’e’en, never having fired their rifles, and dishing out pointed Mark Seven ammunition that would not feed into the breech of the Mark One Lee-Mitfords.
“No talking!” whispered Mr. Thorverton, to the silent men.
*
It was most strangely quiet when, with posts, rolls of wire, hammers and staples, and R.E. wooden betels, they picked their way on the path of frost-cobbled mud leading to the open grey blankness beyond the wood. No flares were to be seen anywhere in the silent night. Not a shot was to be heard over the frozen battlefield. Did the silence mean that they were to be trapped? Were the Germans waiting until they were all out in front of the wood, before mowing them down with machine-guns? Yet, despite the thought, Phillip rejoiced that he was not afraid; he did not think beyond the moment; he was walking quietly through the silence of a night sparkling gently with stars and frost, walking easily into the whiteness of the moon.
Their breath hung in the still air as they crept over the hard silver ground to their tasks, rifles slung, free of all equipment save a cloth bandolier across the front of their goat’s-skin jerkins. Soon they were used to the open moonlight, in which all life and movement seemed unreal. Men were laying down posts, arranging themselves into parties to hold and knock; others preparing to unwind the rolls of wire. Phillip went with Mr. Thorverton and three men to a tarred wooden barn or shed, to fetch and carry hurdles, hung with long dry tobacco leaves, which they brought out and laid on the site of the fence.
Not a shot was fired; not a sound came from the Germans. The unbelievable soon became the ordinary, so that they talked as they worked, without caution, while the night passed as in a dream. The moon moved down to the top of the wood behind them; always, it seemed, they had been moving bodylessly with their own shadows.
Sometime in the night Phillip saw what looked like a light on top of a pole put up in the German lines. It was a strange sort of light. It burned almost white, and was absolutely steady. What sort of lantern was it? He did not think much about it; it was part of the strange unreality of the silence of the night, of the silence of the moon in the sky, of the silence of the frost mist. He was warm with the work, all his body was in glow, not so much with warmth, but with moonlight.
Suddenly there was a short quick cheer from the German lines, Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!, and with the others he flinched and crouched, ready to fling himself flat; but no shot came from the enemy lines.
They talked about it, for other cheers were coming across the blank space of No Man’s Land. Then they saw dim figures on the German parapet, about more lights; and with amazement he saw that it was a Christmas tree being set there, and around it were Germans talking and laughing together. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch! They were cheering.
Mr. Thorverton, who had gone from group to group during the making of the twin fences, looked at his wristlet watch and said, “It’s eleven o’clock. One more hour, men, then we go back. By Berlin time, it is midnight. A merry Christmas to everyone! I say, that’s rather fine, isn’t it?” for from the German parapet a rich baritone voice had begun to sing a song Phillip remembered from his nurse Minny singing it to him. Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht—Tranquil Night! Holy Night!
The grave and tender voice rose out of the frosty mist; it was all so strange; it was like being in another world, to which he had come through a nightmare; a world finer than the one he had left behind, except for beautiful things like music, and springtime on his bicycle in the country.
*
It was so strange that they had not been fired upon; it was wonderful that the mud was gone: wonderful to walk easily on the paths; wonderful to be dry, to be able
to sleep. The wonder remained in the low golden light of a white-rimed Christmas morning. Phillip could hardly realise it; but his chronic, hopeless longing for his home was gone.
The longing for home returned with the loss of warmth, while lying in the bunker; so he got up and went for a walk down Prince’s Street. Here by day were visible some of the officers’ bunkers, some with trellis-work doorways, and tables inside, taken from the Château beside the road. One had a stove in it, a white enamelled affair; smoke went straight up from the pipe sticking out of the sandbag roof. Phillip had often seen one of the officers who lived here: he was red-haired, red-bearded, and his tunic sleeves showed where sergeant’s stripes had been. On each cuff was marked, in indelible pencil, the braid and star of a second-lieutenant. He looked to be a sort of Canadian backwoodsman. What was rather nice in the wood was that you did not have to salute officers, and no officer ever spoke as though on parade. These regular officers seemed to be very decent to their men.
He went on down the ride, coming to a clearance which seemed almost of a fairy world, until he saw wooden crosses in rows. There was not a sound, as he stood there. It was as though all the soldiers had gone, except the dead. He remained still, his eyes closed, feeling himself to be a ghost inside his body. Then the quirking pains started again, and going among the trees, where ice gleamed on the shell-craters, he squatted, wondering if the scalding looseness, so thin and slight despite the pain, was due to the everlasting bully-beef.
He felt weak, and grey like the frozen wood, and went back the way he had come. He got his valise, and collecting dead leaves and grasses, re-entered the bunker and, taking off his boots, put his feet into the pack and after a while was asleep.
In the morning his boots were white, and frozen hard. It was agony putting them on, worse trying to walk in them. However, the sun was shining, it was Christmas morning, the post had come. He sat on an unopened box of 28 pounds of 2-ounce Capstan tins, and read his letters—two from Mother, one from Doris, another from Desmond; a parcel from home as well, including a present from Father of a 2-ounce air-tight tin of Capstan. Poor old Father, and he didn’t know. There were no parades, so after making a fire and frying and eating his breakfast bacon, he sat down again and drank his tea, while opening the Gift Package from Princess Mary—a brass box containing a packet of cigarettes, another of tobacco, and a small Christmas card. These he decided to send home to his mother; and as it was Christmas Day, why not walk to the village, and have lunch in one of the estaminets there?
The only sound in the wood, as he walked down the corduroy path, was the kee-kee-kee of a kestrel being chased by two carrion crows above the treetops. The kestrel’s wing-feathers looked redly brown against the blue sky as the bird turned, just as they did in England; but the sight held little interest. This was not England.
*
The sun was shining as he walked stealthily out of the wood, opposite the Château. This red-brick building had its roofs broken, ragged holes in its walls and a lot of fallen masonry about what once were lawns, now pitted with ice-craters. He had never before seen it by day. All was quiet, no-one was about, so he decided to explore.
He crossed the road, almost expecting to be fired at; but the quietness everywhere remained. He walked round to the back, picking his way through heaps of fallen bricks. In some of the walls, low down, were loop-holes. He came to a splintered door, half-open; he crept through, to find himself in a small room, with ceiling plaster on the floor, and signs that it had been used in all four corners as a latrine. A door led into a kitchen, a mess of upturned tables, pots, bashed pewter dishes and jugs, broken china, the whole littered with ceiling plaster. An open door at the farther end led up some wooden stairs; and after listening, while the hair on his neck seemed to twitch, he started to go up, on tip-toe. It was all rather eerie: only the sounds of his foot-falls, and his beating heart.
At the top was a landing, the wooden floor showing signs of polishing at the edges, where plaster flakes had not been trodden upon. The corridor was bare, with very wide boards. One board, he saw, was gouged for about a foot in one place, the gouge being half-an-inch deep: could it have been made by a goat-moth caterpillar? Many dead bees lay shrunken on the planks. Walking softly down the passage, he came to an open bedroom door. The lath-and-plaster of the wall beside the door-jamb was broken where bullets had burst through. Looking round the splintered door, he saw a dried brown splosh of blood, with hair stuck to it, on the wallpaper around the bullet holes. On the floor lay a dead German, with thighs and arms and body tight in the grey uniform. The back of his head was broken open. Obviously he had been standing by the door when he had been shot.
Walking into the room, he saw another dead German lying on a bed, also swelled. The pocket-linings of his tunic, and trousers, like the one on the floor, were pulled out. Letters were scattered about. He picked one up. It was written in queer German lettering; he put it in his breast pocket. Then, noticing the buttons on the tunic, he opened his knife and cut some off. They had a crown and a W on them. The tunic thus open, with wonder he saw that instead of the ordinary single trouser buttons to hold up the braces, the German trouser buttons were sewn on in pairs, side-by-side. The other German’s trousers also had a complete spare set; the buttons were of aluminium, obviously for lightness. How even tiny details had been thought out!
He cut two off, to add to his souvenirs. Then, instinctively smelling his fingers, he realised with nausea that the corruption of the bodies had saturated the grey cloth.
The Germans must have been dead at least six or seven weeks, since the battle of Ypres. Cranmer would look like that now, and Baldwin, Elliott, the Wallace brothers—the Earl of Findhorn and the Adjutant, and all the other faces which he had known. Their faces and hands, too, would be the colour of whitish-pink wax. How still the dead lay; and these two in the Château had lain exactly in the same position every moment of the days and nights since they had been surprised up there. Then, after racing heart-beats, a long fixed moment, then a flash … and ever afterwards, complete stillness. He could feel the idea of death creeping into him, like an invisible fungus. Without thinking, he made the sign of the Cross.
The German on the bed looked as though he had been sleeping, or waking up at the time of death: one knee was raised as he lay on his back, an arm flung sideways, the hand loose over the edge of the bed. He must have been shot in his sleep. Perhaps he had been drunk; or very, very tired. Was the other his friend, and looking after him? Did the German soldiers have friends, or was all that brutalised out of them?
He went into another room, with open tattered roof timbers, and creeping across the floor joists, looked through a window towards the German lines. They must have a full view of the place, from a little hill only a few hundred yards in front. Supposing he were sniped? Suddenly he wanted to leave the place; not for any possible danger, but because an extra chillness of death hung about the whole ruin. On the way down another staircase he saw a cage hanging up, near a torn-open desk, all papers thrown about. A canary was lying on the bottom of the cage, withered and flat.
The dreadful smell on his fingers remained after he had rubbed them in mortar, then mud and water, then with a dock leaf. It was more than a smell; it was a deadly black essence, almost spectral, on his fingers. He lit a Robin cigarette to try and clear his nostrils. Then finding an outside lavatory, he sat on it, after inspection of the seat and pan, and for several minutes enjoyed a reverie of pure aloneness, despite the scalding and the straining.
His feet were now aching again in the partly-frozen leather, and the thought of sitting in an estaminet, and thawing them out by the stove became urgent. He would run part of the way, and restore the circulation; but the sight of a bicycle in an outhouse made him change his mind. There was a bowler hat hanging on a peg in the shed; and putting this over his balaclava, he thought how funny it would be if he cycled down the road like that. The tyres were almost flat, but what did that matter? Wheeling it past the rubble hea
ps, he mounted, and wobbled down the grassy carriage sweep between iron fencing and so to the narrow cobbled road, scarcely wider than a Belgian farm wagon. It was great fun riding up and down over the frozen humps, and round the iced pot-holes. If only Desmond, his great friend at home, were with him!
He had never seen this road by daylight, and was surprised that the farmhouses on either side were still occupied by civvies. They were less than a mile from the front line. He waved at them; but they only stared. Louts! He waved the bowler; then pushed it hard on his head, so that it sat down on his ear-stubs; the saddle was low, and he had to be careful not to knock his kneecaps on the handlebars, while pressing the pedals with his insteps.
The sight of the tall thin soldier, in bowler and kilt, coming unsteadily towards them, caused some gunners to stare at the approaching apparition, then to make various remarks as it raised the bowler to them as he went past, calling out, “Cheer-ho! Merry Christmas!” so glad was he to be approaching the village again.
But as the church, with the big shell-hole through it, grew near enough for the grey stones of its coigns and arches to be seen among the red bricks, caution overcame his sense of fun. It would be advisable to discard the bowler before reaching the village, just in case any officers were about. He left it with the bicycle behind a clamp of mangold-wurzels.
He called at his billet, where as usual the three grown sons of the little wizened woman were lounging, in sabots and cloth caps, smoking and spitting around the kitchen stove. These young men, red-faced Flamands, with large tawny moustaches, were considered to be a lot of slackers by the Highlanders, smeerloops (a word picked up) who lounged about all day, having no work to do. They were farm labourers, who had fled with their parents from a small holding now behind the German lines; and the question Phillip and others of the billet often asked themselves was, why hadn’t the slackers joined up? Why didn’t they do their bit to save Gallant Little Belgium, instead of doing damn-all except loaf around, eating pinched bully beef and smoking ditto British tobacco?
A Fox Under My Cloak Page 4