A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  *

  So the pumping at that dangerous three-way place came to be abandoned. Sitting in the ruins of Swamp Villa, Phillip thought of the hot days of August during the march into Surrey and Sussex: O, why had he not appreciated them properly at the time. Never again would he complain of blisters on his feet, thirst, or aching shoulders.

  Life was one shivering moment to another shivering moment, awaiting relief: long moment after long moment of deadly cold, in a world of glissading yellow clay below black thin twigs of ragged hedge dripping its drops mournfully upon a little row of collapsed roofs of straw and tobacco-leaves.

  The grey day spread greyer upon the almost level sameness of a landscape of skeleton farmhouses fringed with bare trees, diminishing figures of dead animals, the fragile crosses in No Man’s Land; the little dying world of men waiting in water to their bellies, head sunken on chins, beyond speaking, waiting for night.

  At last the dead weight and inertia of life in the T-trench yielded to the hopes of relief. The sniper could not see you as you got out of the trench, which was low after many cavings-in, and now perilously shallow; but if you lost your balance as you struggled to climb up the collapsing back wall in the quarter-light, and fell back into the marn, and were not seen and pulled out, you could at the worst drown in voiceless feebleness; while at the best you would have to stand on the ground above and drain off, shuddering and heavy with mud up your sleeves, your hands and arms and face thick with clay, icy cold on your spine and upon your stomach.

  This minor calamity happened to Lance-corporal Blunden when the order came to leave the trench, on the fifth night. The prolonged spell in the front line was due to the casualties in the brigade, in the local attacks of 19 December. There was no relieving platoon; the T-trench was now to be held, until breastworks of sandbags could be built behind it, by machine-guns posted on the flanks, to give cross-fire. Two Maxims had just been issued to the London Highlanders, to replace the lost pride of Vickers guns which had been bought privately out of battalion funds before the war: the only two Vickers guns in the British Expeditionary Force in 1914.

  Lance-corporal Blunden, disinterred troglodyte, was lugged into the wood by Sergeant Douglas holding the arms and two men each holding a leg of that living weight of wool and flesh, seemingly the heavier for being unconscious. Before he went away, Sergeant Douglas left Phillip, as the oldest soldier, in charge of the rest of the half-platoon left to cover the withdrawal.

  “Do not fire unless there is an attack,” were his orders. “I will send a runner to tell you when to bring the men to the rendezvous on the road by the Château. Is that clear?”

  “Very good, Sergeant.”

  After twenty minutes waiting, the runner came; and Phillip, with a little reserve energy from his nerves, helped to push others up, while those already out pulled from above. It was a long, slow affair, amidst gasps and cramps and collapsings of men and clay into the water. Phillip, his life feeling wider with responsibility, was last in the trench. Searing pains transfixed him. He must be alone when he squittered; have one last peaceful moment alone.

  “Lead on you fellows. I’ll follow in a moment. I can get out by myself.”

  The hot stream relieved his pain; and feeling now content, he gave himself two minutes rest, before the effort of climbing out. Closing his eyes, he sank into the desired moment of nothingness, which soon enclosed him.

  When he opened his eyes again it was to an awareness of a face staring down at him. He saw the face quite clearly to be that of Tommy Atkins, the stretcher-bearer. Tommy’s voice said that he must get out, he must not go to sleep there. The voice urged him to try again when he slipped back. He wanted to be alone, but the face was so insistent that he began to push with deadened fingers at his web belt, to lighten himself of equipment that was carrying only mud. Then it began to rain heavily. Somehow he got out of the trench, and was staggering among watery boot-impressions gleaming in the mud of the field behind. He sat down to rest, indifferent to the wind-up beginning to move down from Ypres. He was quite clear as to what was happening; everything around him was distinct in the light of flares popping up from the German trenches, making bright the rain hissing all around him. He saw drops spirting up from watery boot-holes, miniature craters of heel and sole sharply outlined by greenish light above the musketry crackle. He lay down, indifferent to rain, bullets, flares. He sank from it all in thoughts of sleep, sleep, sleep.

  When the firing had gone away down the line, he heard again the voice of Tommy Atkins telling him to get up. It was all he could do to get on elbows and knees to empty the pouches of ammunition. He heard Tommy Atkins saying that he must not go to sleep.

  When he reached the road by the Château he was warmer, and more sure of his balance. Mr. Thorverton told him that Sergeant Douglas and Glass had gone back to look for him. The officer stood by the wagon waiting behind the wall of an outbuilding. Figures were lying in the wagon.

  When Sergeant Douglas returned, he was furious; but in a level voice said:

  “Why didn’t you come with your party?”

  “I couldn’t get out, Sergeant.”

  “Why did you wait behind, instead of accepting their help?”

  “I wasn’t very well, Sergeant. It’s this gastritis.”

  “All the more reason why you should have been helped out.”

  “I was, Sergeant, by Tommy Atkins.”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy Atkins, Sergeant.”

  The reply confirmed Douglas’ doubts about Maddison. Mr. Thorverton, since the good example set by the voluntary pumping effort, had spoken to him about giving Maddison a stripe. He was now the oldest soldier, and Lance-corporal Blunden was due for promotion to corporal. Sergeant Douglas had demurred. Now he thought that Maddison was a stupid liar, as well as being irresponsible: for less than half an hour ago he had heard, from the driver of the wagon, that Tommy Atkins had died of pleuro-pneumonia in hospital at Kemmel that morning.

  “Very well, get up in the wagon.”

  “I’d rather walk, and get warm, Sergeant.”

  Sergeant Douglas turned away abruptly and reported all present to Mr. Thorverton.

  “Thank you,” replied the voice of Mr. Thorverton. “Lead on, men.”

  Chapter 6

  HOSPITAL

  THE transport wagon followed the lurching figures along the road to rest billets, leaving behind the line of flares diminishing with the crackle of musketry. It was not a march back, but a slouch; nobody spoke, nobody kept step. They entered billets dazed by oil-light, buffeted by heat of pot-belled stove. To Phillip the faces of the old woman with her sons and daughters standing by the open back-kitchen door were flat like an old painting. Potage? After the hot cabbage soup he floated in warm thoughts of sleep, sleep, sleep. His goat-skin was a drowned object on the floor; buttons of greatcoat thick, thick in hard shrunken cotton-holes. With fingers of pale canvas he took his little packet of letters, and sat down again, but could not read them, and flopping down with clenched eyes sank into a wave of contentment that he could sleep, sleep, sleep. The others were getting down on the straw, too, and the oil-lamp disappeared with the kitchen door closing to the old woman’s “C’est triste, si si! Quel pauvres!” while in the darkness of the room the top of the stove began to glow dull red.

  The next thing he knew was that it was morning, and his body was achingly comfortable in half-dry clothes. He lay for some time enjoying the thought that he could lie there all day, and it was after noon before he sat up, with others, to remove tunic, unwind puttees, and take off boots. This last act was done with difficulty, for his feet hurt sharply. When the socks were peeled off, he saw that they were puffy from toes to ankles. Within half an hour they had swelled red, while the little toes remained greenish-grey.

  After dinner, wearing borrowed sabots, he hobbled along to sick parade. Iodine was painted on his feet, a No. 9 pill for bowel disorder was dropped into his hand. He had to swallow the fearsome thing while the
R.A.M.C. corporal watched; and spent the afternoon and evening, when he was not lying down, straining in the cabinet at the bottom of the cottage garden. He ate only a little soup, between periods of delicious drowsiness. Glass had a thermometer, and by it he saw that his temperature was 101. Happiness filled him; he floated deliciously in the straw.

  When the company paraded for the trenches again, three days later, he remained behind in the billet, well content that his feet, still swelled and painful with frost-bite, would keep him on light duty in his billet.

  It was quiet and peaceful, alone in the cottage. About noon he clobbled woodenly to the estaminet for a café-rhum and omelette. At night he looked away east over the fields, thinking that the low rising parabolas of the flares were the lilies of the dead. Night after night it was going on, the misery and the sadness; night after night the pale horizon quivering as with a thousand, thousand sighs. It was a spotted horizon. The line of lights stretched away south along the crest of Messines, ever pale, ever sad. How long would it all last? The Russian steam-roller had apparently failed; the Wolff Wireless, or Liarless as The Daily Trident called it, claimed a great German victory at Tannenberg, with hundreds of thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns. Why call it the Wolff Liarless, when liarless meant you were less a liar? Rather like the Corps Bulletin, which had claimed that the local attacks of 19 December were successful, in that they had held down German reinforcements to Russia. But, according to the Saxons on Christmas Day, the Prussians had already gone by then.

  He thought about the brigadier’s parting message to the colonel, which Sergeant Douglas had read to them in the billet. After the usual compliments, it had said that, “when hard fighting comes, your men will stick it out both in attack and defence with the tenacity and courage that your battalion has displayed unfailingly in every phase of its service in the field”. The brigadier was going away, to command a division. When hard fighting comes … was there no end to what they would have to go through? But putting away his thoughts, he wrote a letter to the Magister of his school. Dare he address him as Dear Magister?

  Dear Sir,

  I hope you are well, and that the Old School flourishes. Indisposition enables me to rest in my billet and send you my news. We have had rather a stiff time at the front. The chief trouble is the mud. We sleep on mud, we freeze on mud, we get mud on our rifles, on our clothes, in our hair, in our food. We have been holding trenches in front of a wood in Flanders. Pumping had to be done day and night, also baling, but it availed little. The parapets of the trenches slipped down, the sides fell in, the trench got dangerously shallow. It was impossible to dig, and we were compelled to crouch down in the daytime and wait for the night. When night came we worked in the trenches, put up barbed wire in front (the Germans were about eighty yards off), went and fetched water and rations, and exercised ourselves a bit. All this, remember, under intermittent rifle and maxim-gun fire, and a continuous shower of white rockets that lit up the country for two or three miles around.

  Then, when work was done, sentries were posted. Each man did one hour off and one hour on all the night. When wet and freezing up to one’s thighs in mud and water the game is apt to get a bit trying at times; but, when the relief comes, oh, blessed hour! We troop back indescribably muddy but cheerful. Woollen caps on most of our heads, some with equipment over goat-skin coat, others with helmets and other souvenirs, we reach our billets (peasants’ cottages) about 1½ miles away, take our soup and then lie down on the floor.

  The stove is burning brightly, we are warm and well filled. A good post of letters and parcels awaits us, “grub” is not scarce. We are men who live in the moment only; we cannot tell when a bullet will find us or a shell hasten our end, but for the moment the room is warm, the roof over our heads keeps out the rain, we are happy and contented. Three days later, another week of wet and mud. Thus our little life goes on. The past appears to have belonged to another world. We hope and pray that it will come again, and hope inwardly that, if we are spared, the day is not so very far away when, having done our duty to our country, we shall look back on the days of fighting as but a memory, and not a very pleasant one.

  The recent Xmas Day was a curious one. The Saxons opposite us wanted a truce and we exchanged souvenirs and gifts. They promised not to fire until we did. This was kept up for a day or so when we sent over a note to the Germans saying our artillery was going to begin and would they please keep under cover. Before this, they had asked us the same, when their maxims were going to fire. So ended the truce.

  Please give my kindest regards to all at the School, and accept,

  Sir,

  my respectful good wishes towards yourself,

  yours sincerely

  P. S. T. Maddison.

  Having written this letter, Phillip had to hasten away to the closet in the garden. The usual scalding stream, which by now had made him so sore that only by gritting his teeth and holding his breath dare he wipe himself.

  The next day, to his concealed delight, he was sent in the horse ambulance to the Field Hospital at Kemmel. His feet were examined by R.A.M.C. doctors in new uniforms who looked more kindly than those he had met so far. Then he had to provide a “specimen stool”. Severe enteritis and frostbite, suspected gangrene of little toes was written on his chart. It was better than he had dared to hope. He must lie very still, as though he were really ill. It was wonderful to lie between army blankets again. The blankets were lousy, but what matter: so was he, so what were a few extra sharp itching pin-points? He kept telling himself that he was warm, he was under a roof, he was in a bed. Unfortunately his temperature was only 100. If only it would go up. Then his chart might be marked Train.

  In the evening came the deciding inspection—the lieutenant, the captain, the colonel of the Field Hospital all together by his cot.

  “How long have you been out?”

  “Since September, sir.”

  “What were you in civil life?”

  “Junior clerk, sir.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen, sir.”

  He heard the R.A.M.C. captain say to the sergeant, as they moved to the next cot, “Base.”

  The Base! Never did bread and butter and cocoa for supper taste so good.

  A motor-car ambulance took him and three others to the train next morning.

  He had never imagined that there could be such a train. It had red crosses on its outside; and inside the big coaches were wide compartments of soft grey upholstery, electric lights over each seat (though they did not switch on) and thick grey carpets. Wagon lits, much better than the Belgian trains he had ridden in before the war, with Mother and Mavis, and cousin Petal. It was almost unbelievable, but the nurses on the train were actually English. One nurse came into the compartment with a basket of apples. She wore a grey and red uniform, with the letters Queen Alexandra and stars of rank on her shoulder. She was an officer nurse; and a little subduing as she smiled frostily when he said, before he could stop himself, “Oh, are you English, how wonderful! “Then she said, “You are the enteritis case, no fruit for you!” with a little warning wag of her finger and left the carriage as swiftly as she had entered it.

  Somewhere in France

  Date unknown

  Dear Mother,

  I write hurriedly to let you know that I am now on my way to the base, where I shall be in hospital. I am suffering from “enteritis”. My insides have been rotten for 3 weeks. There is no cause for worry at all. I am thin and pale but I am not downcast. I am writing in the Red Cross train, which accounts for the uneven writing.

  The arrangements for “malades” are ripping and the authorities are kindness itself. Will drop a card later.

  Yours affectionately,

  Phil.

  Étretat,

  19 February 1915

  Dear Father,

  I am in hospital now: writing in bed. The hospital is an hotel on the sea-front, with chalk cliffs below. Am weak and in slight pain occasion
ally. Hope you are all well at home. The sea is roaring on the beach about 50 yards away.

  I received your most welcome letter last night, for which many thanks. If I were you, I should chuck the special constable work. It must be very fatiguing, especially as you are so busy in Haybundle Street. Also, the Defence Force you mention (composed of elderly men, I presume?) may be very nice as a sort of hobby, but, believe me, in case of invasion (by invasion I mean at least two corps landing) they would be of no use whatsoever, unless under the control of the Army Authorities.

  Suppose a hostile army managed to establish itself in England. It would have to advance on London, the centre of all railways to the Channel. It might get to, say, Romford. The streets of London, would, perhaps, swarm with patriotic men armed with rifles and bandoliers eager to repel the Hun. The Huns have met our army at Romford, and the armed citizens are in reserve, waiting. Suddenly a most awful bombardment would begin. No sign of an enemy, yet huge shells would hurtle out of the heavens and with a terrific “womp” would explode. Houses would crumble up, huge holes appear in the road-ways, factories and warehouses burn furiously. We will suppose that our army before Romford is overcome: and the reserves are coming up, from the Midlands and South-west. Meanwhile London would be a smoking heap of ruins, dead women and civilians bestrewing the streets. Where would the patriotic but wholly useless men be, who are not in the regular army? Perhaps a day later the Germans would appear with field-guns and maxims, and another fearful carnage would ensue. A few might be killed by the citizens, but then no mercy would be shown to the rest, and an awful state would ensue.

  Supposing the armed civilians have withstood the bombardment, the flames, the falling buildings, they would then have a chance to show their mettle: they would snipe the invaders. Result—all civilians ruthlessly slaughtered. That is what happened in Belgian towns. Civilians, otherwise francs-tireurs, are barred by the Hague Convention from taking part in military operations.