A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  Chapter 21

  LONE TREE

  THE gas was already rising into the air and forming into a rolling grey cloud. Showers of small chalk fell among the waiting men. The top layer of hessian bags on the parapet was breaking, lifting ragged ears to the dull sky. Through the rolling thunder of the bombardment could be heard a shearing-of-glass noise, as the air above the trench was torn across by machine-gun bullets. Distant rockets soared and broke into colours; down fell the German shells. The waiting men crouched.

  Away to the north a big mushroom of dark smoke hung in the sky, above a blown mine. In places along the German lines fires were being lit, to dissipate the gas which was moving slowly towards them. It seemed to be hanging about in No Man’s Land, eddying.

  Followed by four runners, Phillip pushed his way down the trench, to visit his emplacements. Shrapnel was cracking above; men were being hit. In all the first four emplacements some connecting pipes were broken, and gas had come into the trench. The sergeants in charge had turned off the flow. Smoke candles were billowing away. He felt he could get no farther: he told the runners to tell their respective sergeants to use smoke only, rather than let their own men be gassed. When they had gone he put on his smoke helmet, and soon felt an almost insufferable heat. The eye-pieces misted over with sweat; he could hardly breathe; he stood as nearly upright as he dared, remembering that chlorine was heavier than air.

  Some of the infantry lifted the bottom edge of their helmets to get a breath of fresh air. He saw, as from undersea, several figures doubling up, staggering about retching, wrenching off helmets and clutching at the air. They made movement in the trench almost impossible.

  Phillip looked at his watch, but it was invisible. He must wipe the eye-piece of his good eye. Holding his breath, he felt up from the end of the grey cloth tucked under his tunic. It was a desperate movement, made with the right hand while with his left he clutched the damp cloth round his neck to stop any gas coming in. It felt as though his right hand were trying to fight his left, the guardian hand. If it did let in gas, there would be no escape out of the trench. The top bags of the parapet were now in rags as machine-gun bullets struck them.

  Smoke from the candles poured into the trench. This was not deadly, like chlorine, but it made breathing most heavy.

  He tried to get back to Captain West’s shelter. He would be able to see the face of the alarm clock. While he was shoving his way forward, there was a change in the muddle of the trench; men were forming into some sort of line about the scaling ladders. The smoke having drifted a little, he could see through the eye-pieces that bayonets were already fixed. He got back in time to see the first wave of the Gaultshires climbing up the ladders. It was zero plus forty minutes. One of them appeared to slip. He fell back into the trench. Others pushed past him. All were wearing pulled-down smoke helmets. The helmet of the man who had slipped was torn. He lay in the trench, in an attitude of relaxation, while the helmet trickled blood.

  More waves of attackers were coming from behind, up the communication trenches. Near the entrance to the fire-trench they began to cough and choke. Those who could do so, climbed out, and hurried along behind the parados, trying to find the crossing bridges. There was some confusion, as the trench was under fire; but somehow they got across, extended, advanced; and one by one dropped out of the advance.

  *

  From where he was standing behind the parados of the trench, under a continuous screaming of eighteen-pounder shells passing, it seemed, just over his short-hairs, Phillip could see pale-yellow grasses stretching away in front of him to the crest behind which lay the concealed German lines; but now all between sky and grass was hidden in smoke and gas. Into the hanging fog, in twos and threes and fours, shells were bursting. The waves of advancing men were disappearing in the smoky drag of the horizon. He thought that to call them waves was the opposite of what they were; the waves were against them, throwing up black spray, surging over little figures like specks of jetsam.

  A continuous flight of bullets was passing, most of them whipping the air, but a few striking the ground and whining away as they spun over and over. As he watched a voice shouted in his ear, “Your blasted gas has done enough damage already, and I don’t want you on my conscience as well, so get down, damn your eyes.”

  Phillip got down; but Captain West, now marble-calm, stood as before and focused his field glasses upon the advance.

  *

  The German first line, curtained by their own protective fire, was not in view from where Captain West was observing; it lay just behind the turn-over of the imperceptible slope, marked by a stark and solitary tree near the wire-belt concealed by the grass. This front line, on the reverse slope, was connected laterally with the Loos Road Redoubt on Hill 69. The Redoubt was a massive work, the centre one of three dominating the British positions, with the Hohenzollern to the north and Hill 70 to the south. There were many steel cupolas, with splayed slits for machine-gun fire, a few inches above ground level, each so placed that it could enfilade attacking troops at a distance; and the German machine-gunners were equipped with oxygen masks. The German defensive system of cross-fire was designed to strike attacking waves sideways on; and as Captain West watched, he saw men falling like stalks in the sweep of a scythe.

  The Loos Road Redoubt was the objective of the brigade of which the Gaultshires was the leading battalion. Its garrison had been safe from heavy shell-fire in dugouts twelve metres underground; now it was protected in fire-trenches revetted with stakes and faggots, made with firing-steps well above a deeper trench which provided a passing place as well as shelter from shrapnel. The deepness of such shelter was its security from shells and bullets; but that very deepness, filled by asphyxiating gas heavier than air, would be as the deepness of a grave.

  The Loos Road Redoubt, from where Captain West stood, was visible only as a skyline above the slightest of rises in the down-like landscape. It was sixty-nine metres above sea-level; the British front line, where the gas was still eddying in places, was between forty and forty-five metres.

  The wounded and gassed began to totter, crawl, and drag themselves back through the sere grasses, some helped by others, but this was rare; most of them struggled alone, desperate for safety, for water, for rest. Nothing could be done for them; there were too many; the first-aid post had been blown in, the doctor and his corporals killed. Some got over the trench bridges; others fell in, and writhed about, gurgling and retching in chlorine which lay there stagnant. The Vermorel sprayers had used all their liquid.

  The crackle of rifle-fire came undiminished from over the grassy battlefield pocked by white craters of chalk, and strewn with figures in khaki, their heads defaced by grey masks set with circular goggles, with little rubber beaks or mouths giving them an appearance of miming in death to the hammering of machine-guns, the rending of shells, and the crackle of rifle-fire that told its own tale of what had happened to the Gaultshires and their sister battalions in the brigade.

  To Captain West, ordered to remain behind during the first assault, it was happening to himself. He longed to rush upon the wire. Indifferent to the whip and hiss of bullets passing over, he continued to stand on the parados, and, looking up, Phillip saw his face working with curses.

  Phillip stood up. Unknown to him, the effect of his presence upon “Spectre” West was calming. Phillip felt no fear. He was a mere spectator; he had no part in what was happening. He was free.

  “We should be getting a message back soon,” said Captain West, sitting down. “When are you taking your section away? Here, get behind the parados. I told you before, I do not want to have you on my hands——”

  “They’ve gone. I sent them back under the senior sergeant.”

  “What were your orders?”

  “I ordered myself. I said I’d follow on later. I want to see what happens.”

  Captain West focused his glasses to search the ground to the south, towards Loos and the Double Crassier just perceptible in th
e mist and smoke. “If I apply for you, will you join my company?”

  So far Phillip had put away the thought of rejoining the infantry; the direct question came as a shock. Before he could think what to reply, the company sergeant major came up to Captain West and said, “Runner coming, sir. Looks like Croot, sir.”

  The runner came limping towards them. His boots were clogged with loam and grasses, his puttees balled with mud, his trousers ragged. He carried his smoke-helmet in one hand. His face was red, his hair matted with sweat. He picked his way over a wooden bridge, took a crumpled sheet of message paper from his pocket, and gave it to Captain West. While Captain West was reading it, the orderly spoke to the C.S.M. in a high, hoarse, wheezing voice. The boys were lying before the wire. Many had fallen down on the way, owing to gas. They were in the grass. The shell-holes were full of gas. Stretcher-bearers were wanted. He showed a small hole in the back of one trouser leg, where a shrapnel ball had gone into his thigh.

  “Well, you’ve got the blighty one you wanted, Croot.”

  “Yes, Major, but the boys——”

  “We’ll take care of them. Now, my lad, you look after Number One now. That’s your way!” The C.S.M. pointed to a communication trench marked Walking Wounded Only.

  *

  Captain West spoke on the telephone to Colonel Mowbray. After giving his report, he seemed to be listening for a long while. Phillip was transfixed with fear at the thought of being ordered immediately to join the battalion. At last he heard Captain West say, “They should soon be in a position to pinch off the Hun opposite, Colonel.” Then, “Yes, Colonel. I’ll come now. Yes, I’ll bring Maddison with me.”

  Putting down the instrument, Captain West said to Phillip, “Those damned fornicating idiots on the staff! They do not even listen to one of the finest surviving regular soldiers of the original British Expeditionary Force, Edward Mowbray! Their minds are paper, paper, paper! They stare at maps, they stick in their little pins with flags on them, and that is all a battalion means to them! They’ve never been stopped by barbed-wire, unless it was the wire outside a prisoners’ cage! They can think only frontally, from staring at reams and reams of their own bumff! They have now ordered us to make another frontal attack on uncut wire! Do you realise what I am saying? Then what in Christ’s name are you grinning at?” yelled Captain West, his face contorted, a thin white lather working in the corners of his mouth. “Take that grin off your face, and listen to me, you horrible gas-merchant! The London Division is over there.” He stabbed the air towards the Double Crassier. “They are on the extreme right. They have got into the Hun front line with little opposition, but have had to stop to make a defensive flank, because the French next to them haven’t started yet. Don’t ask me why! They have not yet started! That is a fact! So the Londoners’ advance is stopped; while the Scottish Division next to us are going strong towards Loos. Their left flank is exposed, because we are held up. On our left flank”—Captain West’s voice was now less strident—“on our left flank the First Brigade has got through both fire and support trenches of the Hun first position, and the leading troops when last seen were crossing the Loos-Haisnes road. So their right flank is exposed, because our fellows, or what is left of them, are lying down before belts of uncut wire. That is the situation. The Hun position behind Lone Tree is threatened on both flanks. So what does the staff order? Shall I tell you?” screamed Captain West, above the screaming of eighteen-pounder shells. “The staff has ordered a second frontal attack against uncut wire! Does that, or does that not, strike you as the quintessence of criminal stupidity? Well? Well? Say something!”

  Phillip did not know what to say.

  “God’s teeth, I thought you had brains!” went on Captain West, contemptuously, the froth working in the corners of his mouth. “Look at this!” He flung open his map, knelt down to spread it on the ground, and pressed it with a finger as he cried, “Here is Lone Tree. And here”—the finger shook on the linen-backed, squared paper—“is where the First Brigade is now, just about to outflank Lone Tree to the north. And here”—another prod—“is where the Jocks on our right have got to. Yet here”—driving his finger through the map into the loamy clay underneath—“is where we are ordered to attack the same uncut wire frontally! And this in modern war—not in the Crimea!”

  The C.S.M., lying a few yards away, grinned at Phillip, as much as to say that he knew the captain of old, and there was nothing to be done about anything anyway. Phillip said, “Surely the reserves should follow the First Brigade and get round behind Lone Tree? Why, as a Boy Scout I learned that!”

  “The staff,” said Captain West, “have never been Boy Scouts. They know everything except nothing. Now come with me.” To his batman he said, “Fill my water-bottle with the remains of the Johnny Walker, Boon—and no chlorinated water this time.” Then to Phillip, “Come with me to the colonel.”

  *

  Outside a dugout among the lines of chalk-white trenches stood Colonel Mowbray with his adjutant and R.S.M. The colonel wore a trench-coat concealing his rank. With his walking-stick and air of authority the massive deliberate figure looked like a country gentleman with his steward come to inspect part of his estate. Phillip saluted, and the feeling of awe before the colonel’s massiveness vanished when the big red face became kindly with a smile, and “Good morning!” said the colonel. The words, spoken with the charm of an open face, made Phillip feel happier, yet with a certain nervousness that he did not deserve to be treated as a proper officer. He moved away a few paces, in case the colonel wanted to speak to Captain West alone, but hurried forward when the voice called to him, and the colonel held out his hand. When they had shaken hands, the colonel said, “How much gas have you left in your cylinders, Maddison?”

  Pleased and surprised that so important a figure already knew his name, he replied with a slight stutter, “N-none now, sir, it was all 1-let off before the assault.”

  “Then your duties on detachment are ended?”

  “I have to send in my report, sir.”

  Colonel Mowbray began to talk to Captain West, so Phillip once more went a few yards away, and looked towards the smoke of battle. Bullets passed; he was pleased that he did not flinch. He hastened forward when the R.S.M. said the colonel wanted him. “You had better hear what I have to say, Maddison.” Colonel Mowbray went on to say that the attack was generally going well on both flanks: that the temporary check on the brigade front was to be dealt with by the Divisional Detached Force, consisting of mixed troops. They were about to advance from their assembly trenches of the Fosse Way, and occupy the front line, with a view to carrying on the attack towards Lone Tree.

  Phillip wondered if he would be ordered to go with the attack. If he said that his gas brassard prevented him going, would they know he was afraid? How could he get away? The colonel was explaining that the rôle of the Detached Force, as originally intended, was to fill the gap between the two brigades when the first enemy position had been carried, and maintain touch with them.

  “The First Brigade, as you know, is advancing due east to Hulluch, while our brigade has still to strike east-south-east over the Loos Road Redoubt to the slag-heaps of Puits Fourteen. Now the Detached Force, the liaison force, is, unless the brigadier can prevail upon division to prevent it, to be thrown in to repeat our attack, with Lone Tree as their centre. We are concerned in that the reserve company of the Gaultshires is to support the attack.”

  Captain West replied with distinctness, “Surely division knows, Colonel, that the Hun position behind Lone Tree is now a salient, and that it should be pinched off? If the reserve company were to debouch to the left, by the Bois Carré, which has been overrun by the First Brigade, we could outflank the entire position.”

  “I know, Harold, I know. But those are my orders.”

  Colonel Mowbray then said very quietly, “The reserve company has only two junior subaltern officers left, as Hopkins was killed and Whitfield wounded by the same shell this morning, so
I am putting you in charge of the attack. I’m afraid you will have to go straight for Lone Tree again, Harold. I asked to be allowed to go myself, but the brigadier has ordered me to remain with the cadre. Ah, here’s Bimbo—he may have some news——” The staff-captain was coming towards the dugout. The colonel went to meet him.

  Phillip, feeling icy cold, watched Captain West staring into the sky. He strove against a feeling of being fixed to the ground; he wanted to go away, while the chance was there; but he could not move. Westy would know why he went, if he went. Then Westy went towards the dugout, and suddenly he felt free; and with trepidation, and sickness of his fear, he set off to Le Rutoire farm, with the excuse to get the correct time. His wristlet watch had stopped, due either to grit or gas, probably both. He lit a cigarette, to show his nonchalance; but the smoke tasted of rotten eggs. The Germans must be sending over lachrymatory shells, called pear-drops by the men, after the farthing-an-ounce fruit-drops in the sweetstuff shops at home.

  It was shortly before eight o’clock, he learned at brigade headquarters. He thought it best not to be seen hanging about, so he made for the white line of trenches beside the track leading to the Chapel of Consolation, where he had talked with the London Highlanders the previous night. Would it have been wiser to have gone back to the billet in Mazingarbe with his section? But if he had gone back, by now he might have been ordered to join an infantry battalion, his detachment duty being over. And while he remained where he was, no-one would be able to find him, even if anyone thought of him, which was unlikely in the continual movement of all kinds of troops, once he was clear of the Gaultshires.

  He walked in the direction of the chalk thrown up beside the Fosse Way; and was almost at the beginning of them when shells began to drone down, as salvo upon salvo dropped upon and around Le Rutoire farm. The air, too, was again being scorched with swift hissings like water spilled on red-hot iron. The smoke and gas had cleared across the dim, dull plain; and the old front line was under fire again from machine-guns and rifles.