A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  “You mean Father forbidding me to go about with him?”

  “Yes, dear, that is what I meant.”

  “What’s all this leading up to?”

  “Well, dear, you are now in a position to help others, the men under you, and if you always bear it in mind when you say your prayers, it will give you strength to continue through bad times.”

  “The Germans pray to God, too.”

  “Even so, God’s help is always forthcoming when everything else seems to be lost.” She turned away her face, to hide the tears.

  Seeing them, he felt like scoffing; struggled against saying something unkind; strove to be kind; nearly gave way to black despair, but managed to say, “Cheer up, Hetty! I’m not dead yet. In fact, I’m rather glad to be going out again.”

  It seemed to her that her prayer was answered. “Of course, dear! You came through last time, and you will come through again! You always did scrape through, somehow!” she laughed. Memory bloomed in her. “What fun we had during our picnics here, when you were all children! Oh, the sun, the sun! How time flies—it seems only yesterday when you were my ‘little mouse’, and Father was so good and unselfish, nursing you night after night, so that I should get some sleep, and be able to feed you——” She sighed; a tear started; to be lost in a sudden smile. “And then, in answer to my prayers, one morning, very early, there stood the old man who lived opposite, with a little jug of special milk; and oh, the relief when at last you stopped crying, and fell into a peaceful slumber in my arms! And Father could sleep too—do you know, never in all that time when he was awake with you, night after night, did he once complain. He was splendid!”

  “Was—was Father really like that, Mum?”

  “Yes, dear, of course, naturally. He loved his little son, very very dearly.”

  He got up and wandered away, and stood again by the massive gorse bush, its spines radiating the sun’s heat with a strong sweet scent, and tried to feel clear, as he had when a child. Then Cranmer’s face came into his mind, while it seemed that the air about him was warm and kind, and he was no longer afraid. Cranmer, he thought, Cranmer, are you near me, and it seemed that Cranmer was with him in spirit.

  When he went back to his mother, and they spoke again, he felt that she was quite different, her way of talking was so assured, and there was now a sort of friendship between them, no longer that of mother and son, but of two friends who knew one another.

  This feeling lasted all the afternoon and evening, which he spent at home, playing cards with Mavis and Doris and Mother, while Father seemed happy as he read the paper in his chair. When the morning came, Phillip was surprised to feel that he was looking forward to being at the front again, in a strange sort of way. And if he should be killed—well, he would go where Cranmer had gone, and Baldwin, and all the others who were now fixed faces in his mind.

  Chapter 18

  A CUSHY JOB

  VICTORIA STATION. Thousands of soldiers, hundreds of officers returning from leave; a whole coach reserved for the staff, red tabs and gold-oakleaf hats; wives and mothers and sweethearts—some older women in black, with mourning veils, and crêpe upon their hats—kit-bags, valises, porters with hand luggage-trucks—tears, red-eyes, white-faces; serious old men in bowler hats and cavalry-cut of suits, and grey moustaches, standing by near-cheerful, pink-faced soldier sons in tall mahogany-polished riding boots and spurs—cavalry subalterns obviously going out for the first time.

  Phillip had gone up alone, after a hurried firm farewell in the hall. At the last moment he was persuaded to take his father’s mackintosh, despite his protest that he could get anything he wanted in France, at the base. He had not troubled about a revolver, or map-case; as for field-glasses, he would pick up a pair somewhere. Prismatic compass? Such gadgets were for the Fireside Lancers or “Strawballs” Staybacks. All he needed was a British warm, a haversack, and a walking-stick.

  There had been one moment of panic after breakfast, before he had removed braid and cloth stars from his tunic cuffs, and, from his mother’s work-basket, taken needle and thread with which to sew the pips on his shoulder straps.

  “Let me do it for you, dear, won’t you?”

  “Leave me alone! I must hurry! Please leave me alone!”

  The cuff badges would be obvious to snipers.

  Reporting to the R.T.O. at Victoria he was taken to his draft of sixty London Highlanders, and signed copies of the nominal-rolls handed over to him by one of their officers who had marched them from headquarters. They were to be conducted to an Infantry Base Depôt at Boulogne, where further orders would await him. Among the sixty was a familiar face, clean-shaven and faintly brown, with pince-nez spectacles—little Kirk, of the original battalion, whom he had last seen at Bleak Hill, when he had motored there with Desmond in the early spring.

  “How strange that we meet again, Kirky, old boy. By rights I should have been crossing yesterday, but got an extra twenty-four hours to take you blokes.”

  The uniform of the London Highlanders had been changed. The men wore a khaki tam-o’-shanter, with blue toorie and flash, instead of the old glengarry bonnet. They carried short rifles, wooded to the muzzle, and had boots and puttees half-way up their hose; but the old kilt of hodden grey was the same. He wished, in a way, that he was still with the regiment; but reflected that, as nearly all the old faces were gone, it was best as it was. What would his new crowd, the Gaultshires, be like?

  The crossing was without qualms, the sea being level and blue as the sky. Rolling thuds of gunfire came upon the ship, from the unseen Belgian coast. Having left the draft on a lower deck in charge of the sergeant, Phillip climbed to an upper deck among the officers, seeing, in a reserved place with cabins beyond railings, the group of brass-hats, immaculate in appearance, entirely remote from the swarm of subalterns and captains for’ard. There was also a reserved space for field officers, the ordinary majors and colonels. Phillip thought that these looked, somehow, much more approachable than the staff officers, whose tunics all bore ribbons.

  During the march up to the Base Camp on high ground above the town the draft sang Tipperary and other songs. It seemed rather flat; but he had made friends on the boat with two subalterns, one of whom had been out before, wounded at Neuve Chapelle, who told him of a good place where to get lunch in Boulogne. There was also an Officers’ Club, he said, where it was possible to wangle an extra night there if you were on your own; but with a draft you were tied like a nursemaid to a perambulator. There were other possibilities of a night in Boulogne, too. This officer confirmed the stories about the uncut wire, and lack of high-explosive shells.

  It was strange to see German prisoners working in the Base Camp, white-washing rows of stones leading to the big brown huts, painting doors, and even digging in garden plots. They had big round blue patches let into their grey tunics and trousers. Phillip spoke to one: immediately the prisoner leapt to attention, snatched off his pork-pie hat, and stood rigid before him.

  “Stand easy,” said Phillip. “Sprechen sie Englisch?”

  “A little, sir.”

  “I hope you are all right here. I had many talks with you chaps—prächtig kerls—last Christmas Day. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Prächtig kerls—I liked them. This war is no good.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “We are all homesick, you know. Well, keep smiling!”

  “Many grateful thanks, sir.”

  “Cheer-ho!”

  That night the draft had to be marched down the hill again, to the station. The destination was Béthune. Phillip thought, we are all for it: the talk in the officers’ mess had nearly all been of the coming push, in the mining country north of Arras. Béthune was the rail-head. Practice assaults, he learned, had been going on in the country round about since the middle of August. The attack was to take place south of the La Bassée canal, the objective being Lille, through which all the railways ran behind the German lines. With
Lille threatened, and cavalry pouring through the gap, the old Hun would have to go back to the Scheldt. Just as Gran’pa had said! It was all rather exciting.

  “And,” said someone, “the attack is to be preceded by a new kind of stupefying smoke which will conceal our advance right up to the German parapets, and lay out the Germans for a couple of hours, after one whiff. It’ll be a walk-over for our chaps.”

  “Like bloody hell,” said the chap who had been wounded at Neuve Chapelle. He seemed quite angry. “Latrine rumours!” he snorted.

  *

  Béthune. Enormous naval guns on multiple bogies standing in railway sidings, sixty-foot rifled snouts lifted eastwards, towards the German lines. Enormous stacks of shells in fields; rows and rows of Ford ambulance cars with khaki covers painted with red-crosses; thousands of mules and horses tethered to endless picket lines. Soldiers crowding square and market place; dingy buildings, tall water-tower, a few cracked roofs; shops with chocolate and bread and meat for sale; military police wearing revolvers and red caps at every street-crossing; rattle of wheels and hoofs, trail of white puffs in the high blue overhead following a white speck moving east, above the sullen booming of big guns. No beards, no fire-pails, no short overcoats, no boots worn to the uppers, with toes showing. All this looked like a new business!

  A peasant in peaked cap was being led away by red-caps, a handcart following loaded with brown army blankets. Officers on horses, long columns of wagons and limbers, scarlet-banded hats in motor cars. Rattle of wheels on cobbles, filthy grey drain-water in gutters half-dried in the sun, white chloride of lime sprinklings. Oh, for a base job, to be able to watch the war, all so tremendously interesting, without the dread of having to go over the top: the odds in the infantry were three to one against being killed.

  Beyond the town, in evening light, shocks of yellow-brown corn stood in fields, looking strange with vast dark mounds and pyramids rising above them, with tall chimneys and the tracery of iron-work above the coal pits.

  A fellow subaltern in the camp of khaki canvas huts told him that this was Artois. Coal seams ran everywhere under the skin of chalk. The whole depressing landscape was crowded with khaki, and hazy with smoke. Even so, he felt a sense of freedom to be in the midst of such varied movement, glad to be one of the hundreds of thousands of troops. Life was everywhere interesting, on such a vast new scale. He told himself that he would not have missed it for anything; and there was satisfaction in thinking that his army pay was accumulating, together with his salary from the office. This was the real thing, not life with that “Cantuvellaunian” lot! “Strawballs” ought to be covered with woad. Well, he had seen the last of them, thank God! What matter if the water tasted of chloride of lime, when whiskey was three francs fifty a bottle from the Expeditionary Forces Canteen? Grub was good, too.

  What luck, they seemed to have forgotten all about him. There were many decent restaurants in Béthune; and nobody bothered what time they got back to their Nissen huts. This was the life, lived against the flickering rumble of gunfire. Most of it was British; the Germans seldom replied. Roll on, the Great Push. Berlin this time!

  *

  On the fifth morning after his arrival, looking at the notice-board in the mess, he read that officers with experience in chemistry were requested to give their names to the office of the D.A.Q.M.G. What was that when it was at home?

  “Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General, old boy. Some sanitary job,” the Sussex officer beside him said.

  A cushy job, perhaps! He went to give in his name at once. After all, he had had some experience in the laboratory at school, and there was his shilling magician’s set years ago. There was a policy he had made out in Wine Vaults Lane, for a chemical factory at Silvertown in the East End somewhere, and Mr. Hollis saying one morning that he had inspected it. So I considered my experience entitled me, Mrs. Neville—— He imagined her shaking with laughter when he told her. Oh, there are no flies on you, Phillip!

  That evening he was called to the orderly room and ordered to proceed the next day to Helfaut, together with two other officers. Thither, wondering what they were in for, they went by Crossley tender—a wonderful journey, with a stop for lunch at a restaurant in Hazebrouck of many memories. The old Rossignol estaminet was still there, but the cabbage-painted Long Toms gone from the Grand’ Place. After the meal, which was taken with two bottles of champagne, the Crossley roared down the narrow cobbled road to St. Omer, past wide fields where corn was being carried in blue-painted tumbrils looking like wooden boats on high wheels. He enjoyed the thought of the last time he had come along that way in the darkness, nearly a year previously, riding beside Baldwin on the top of a London bus, and so into the battle for Ypres. All that was over!

  The course. A lecture given by a junior subaltern of the Royal Engineers, on the method of using liquid chlorine gas in trench warfare, illustrated by a sergeant unscrewing the rounded top of a cylinder and fitting the connecting or discharge pipes. Then a field demonstration in trenches dug for the purpose. Gas was turned on, damp grey P.H. goggled helmets worn over the head, the ends tucked under the collars of tunics. Phillip got hold of a spare one—what fun to ride up Hillside Road like that, on his bike!

  Squads, all of N.C.O.s, were formed, each to an officer. Phillip had three sergeants and thirty corporals, half of whom had been under fire in the infantry, the remainder specially enlisted as chemists. On the last afternoon of the course there was a lecture by a staff officer from G.H.Q. on the tactics of the use of gas, and its application in trenches before an infantry assault. The prevailing wind, said the staff officer, on the western front was from the Atlantic, from the south-west; and as the enemy lines were, generally speaking, to the E.N.E. of the Allied lines, the prevailing wind was in favour of the Allies. The idea was to drench the Hun positions with smoke and gas of such density as to render the infantry and machine-gunners hors de combat before the infantry assault; while the gunners, particularly during X and Y days and nights, already would have destroyed the Hun wire, emplacements, and dugouts.

  “The bayonet and the bomb, gentlemen, will eventually decide the issue. It is our job to saturate the enemy positions before the assault. In doing so, we shall only be paying the Hun back in his own coin, and with interest! It is known,” went on the staff officer, after a pause, “that the Hun infantry is supplied with respirators that will last for about a quarter of an hour only. After that, they require to be redipped. On the other hand, their machine-gunners have oxygen helmets which will protect them for about thirty minutes. There will, therefore, be two periods of discharge. The first period will continue for a period sufficient to ensure that, in the surprise caused by the use of gas, the Hun will neutralise his helmets during the preliminary dosage. The second period of discharge, the disabling one, will then follow. It will be accompanied by smoke from candles, to screen the infantry assault. I need hardly add that secrecy in every particular must be observed by every officer and non-commissioned officer here in this room. Upon your absolute discretion will depend the element of surprise, as much as upon the employment of the asphyxiating gases themselves.”

  *

  The cylinders were of steel, about thirty inches high, weighing over a hundredweight when filled with sixty pounds of liquid gas. The armoured parapet pipe was ten feet long; this was to be connected to a further pipe, flexible and about seven feet long, the other end of which was secured by a nut holding down the union joint to the cylinder head. This head was protected by a steel dome held over one end of the cylinder by a large hexagonal nut.

  When the course was ended, Phillip left with his squad in two motor lorries, and was “decanted” at Verquin, two miles south of Béthune. On the way there they passed the bivouacs and lines of many cavalry regiments, and also an aerodrome, on which biplanes were standing; and nearby, an observation balloon tethered by steel cable to a winch. Nearer the front were the great dumps: rolls of wire, piled boxes of S.A.A. under tarpaulins, boxes of bombs and h
and-grenades, limbers and wagons, shells, picks and shovels, angle iron and screw-pickets—acre upon acre of materials, all giving a feeling of power.

  *

  When the time was come to go into the trenches again, he felt curious, excited, and pleased; for it was to be a visit only, to observe the lie of the land, and to see, in particular, the emplacements in the new forward assault trenches that had been built for the cylinders.

  What surprised him was the length and order of the communication trenches, the only danger being from shelling so occasional that it was said the old Hun had pulled out most of his heavy artillery to face the major attack that was coming down south by the French, in Champagne.

  All across the gently sloping downland burdened with huge sombre pyramids and dumps of slag and stones, arising above the fringe of tall yellow grasses and weeds beyond parapet and parados, line upon line of chalk could be seen—the assault trenches. He was told by an infantry captain who invited him into a shelter dug under the parapet that the attack had been planned for two days previously, the 15th September, but it had been postponed. The day before, said the captain, who was in the first battalion of the Gaultshires, the old Hun hoisted a board before the wire in front of his trench just below the Lone Tree ridge—he had carried it and fixed it during the night, so that it could be read through field-glasses—

  WHY HAS YOUR ATTACK BEEN PUT OFF?

  The infantry captain, mug of whiskey in hand, looked at Phillip across the dugout table in his company headquarters, and spoke in a voice of deadly fury under his restraint.

  “They’ve removed all ranging marks for our artillery, and their rifle fire is conspicuous by its absence. Why, do you ask? Because they are saving ammunition. And why, you wonder? Because for weeks past bumff has been going around with full details of the push. Our staff has done everything except send a complete copy of the plan of attack to the Hun opposite, who has watched us digging jumping-off ditches, putting up wooden bridges over the trenches for the eighteen-pounders, and scaling-ladders for the infantry, from his comfortable quarters in the Tower Bridge; and so interested is he in it all, that he has not sent over so much as a whizz-bang. Why?”