A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  General Haig persisted. He wrote yet again, repeating his request for the general reserve to be well up behind the assault—“on the line Noeux-les-Mines-Beuvy by daylight on 25 September”: to this the field-marshal, committed in the first place by politicians to a battle he had no belief in—fearing to send untried troops into a forlorn hope, yet wishing to support his First Army commander with the loyalty of a good soldier—replied “Two divisions … will be in the area referred to in your letter by daybreak on the 25th September”.

  They were indeed there, shortly after daybreak; but in no condition to move forward.

  *

  The assault that morning, of which Phillip with his gas containers and “Spectre” West with his company of Gault-shires were but two small items in the wave of European life destroying itself, had been made by eighteen British brigades of infantry, against a comparatively small force of three German regiments—equivalent in numbers to three British brigades—with one Jäger battalion in support. At a quarter to eight that morning the German front was breached in two places; and at that hour the British reserves were still lying under the hedges and beside the ditches, six and seven miles away. When eventually they did march forward, a military policeman on duty at a railway crossing told the brigadier of the leading brigade that the troops could not enter the battle area, because he did not have in his possession a pass. The military policeman, a lance-corporal, was obeying orders; the leading brigade was halted for nearly an hour.

  *

  The field-marshal, with only his personal aides, had left his headquarters at St. Omer unexpectedly to visit the Château Philomel three miles south of Lillers on the evening before the battle. From the château there was no communication by wire with his armies; and only the civilian French telephone system to St. Omer. Sir Douglas Haig sent, at 7 a.m. the next morning, a staff-officer by motor car to inform the field-marshal of the success of the assault by the 47th London and 15th Scottish divisions towards Loos and Hill 70, and to ask that the two reserve divisions be put in immediately.

  Again at 8.45 a.m. General Haig sent another messenger, to report that all the brigades of the 1st and 4th Corps were either in the German trenches or on the move there; and to request that the reserve divisions be pushed in at once. Two valuable hours had already been lost.

  At 9.30 a.m. (when Phillip was dozing in the Fosse Way trench) the field-marshal replied by telegraph, that the divisions would “move forward to First Army trenches as soon as the situation requires and admits”.

  At 11.30 a.m. the field-marshal visited Sir Douglas Haig and told him, at last, that he would arrange to put the reserve divisions under his orders.

  From First Army at Hinges he motored to Noeux-les-Mines, where he arrived about noon. There he saw the corps general under whose command the divisions had been placed. Having discussed the general situation with him, the field-marshal, at 12.30 p.m., gave the corps general the order to move his divisions forward. Five and three-quarter most valuable hours had wasted away.

  Fifty minutes later, at 1.20 p.m., the corps general informed Sir Douglas Haig that the reserve divisions “were under him and marching to the areas ordered, but were delayed on the road”. Sir Douglas Haig, a devout man, had meanwhile spent some minutes in the privacy of his room, praying on his knees. He was a Scots Calvinist; his mind and conscience were settled in beliefs about righteous living in this world as well as in the next; so to his staff he was invariably courteous and restrained in manner, concealing his anxiety about the field-marshal’s procrastination like the Spartan boy with the fox under his cloak.

  *

  Meanwhile (as “Spectre” West was sinking into a coma), from various parts of the front, according to many regimental officers, the Germans were on the run. Some had thrown away arms and equipment: field-gun batteries had been abandoned. It was only when they saw that the British had paused after their efforts, and were not being reinforced, that they halted, and came back to their vacant trenches, and took up the fight once more.

  Messages sent back took a long time to deliver, owing to clogging mud, and the mêlée of movement upon degraded soil; thus Sir Douglas Haig believed for some hours that his First Army was “on the crest of the wave of victory, that it had broken through the second and last line of defence in two central and vital places, Cité St. Elie and Hulluch; and that a break-through at Haisnes and Cité St. Auguste was imminent”.

  The truth was the First Army had spent itself, like a wave with none behind to gather its waters and follow on.

  And the jetsam of that wave was two men out of every three men in the battalions of the original assault fallen, broken or dead, to the ground.

  Chapter 24

  “CRASHER” & Co

  THE sun was going down behind the battlefield like a septic wound upon a dying world of great loneliness. It was, by Phillip’s watch, a quarter-past seven. Father would now be walking down the gulley from the Hill, swinging along, strawyard in hand, to feel the wind on his forehead. Desmond, unless he were on searchlight duty, would by now have finished his supper, and perhaps be thinking of going down to Freddy’s. Would there still be tennis on the Hill, and rooks flying home to the elms, above whistles and warblings of boys in the twilight? A light in the turret bedroom of the top house of Hillside Road—would she have his photograph beside Bertie’s, or only Bertie’s, on her dressing-table? No, not his; that was gone now, for ever. Everything was gone. Perhaps if he were killed Desmond would soon forget him, happy with Eugene—with such melancholy sunset thoughts he walked on, aimlessly.

  *

  While Phillip, going towards the battle, was overtaking weary files of laden men in greatcoats trying to move along the margins of a narrow road congested with down-traffic, pocked with shell-craters, and lined with irregular rows of wounded recumbent and sitting amidst clustering blow-flies, a tattoo of gunfire arose from in front, from beyond the old front line crossing the Lens road upon a swell of the ground. Shells from the unseen German guns were dropping into the dip beyond. He could see red spots of bursting shrapnel in dirty drifting smoke. Some poor devils were copping it there, he said to himself.

  Soon he found out what had happened. Two Yorkshire battalions of the advance reserve brigade, in full marching order, in fours with a hundred yards’ interval between platoons, and horse transport following, had reached the crest of the slope leading down to the Loos valley, crossed the wooden bridges over the old front line, turned left-handed towards the Tower Bridge, and so come into full view of the German batteries hidden among the corons of Cité St. Pierre on the further slope of the valley. The transport was destroyed, and its wreckage blocked the road; the Yorkshiremen, followed by a battalion of Green Howards, having no idea of where they were, with no guides and only maps of the 1/100,000 scale, reformed and marched on towards Lens, and, as “Twinkle” said afterwards, “straight into the open jaws of ’ell”.

  Meanwhile Phillip had returned, and was hanging about, not wanting to reveal himself to the battalion about which he had so many mixed feelings; but, reassured by the thought that, being on light duty, he could go back at any moment he wanted to, continuing to find interest in all around him.

  *

  The sun was dead and its last light draining away as the reserve divisions began to form up two thousand yards behind the old front line, on the grass north of the Lens road. The rotund and steaming cookers, and the water-carts of the twenty-four new and untried infantry battalions, as well as their transport wagons, had been left behind by the unwritten order of some unknown officer, probably a deputy-assistant-adjutant-and-quartermaster-general in the rear areas. In lines of companies on a two-battalion frontage, with companies in columns of fours at ten paces’ intervals—each brigade upon a frontage of one hundred and twenty yards —the divisions rested in mass, a thousand yards apart.

  In front of the leading brigade Phillip saw red hat-bands, among them the red gorget patches of “Crasher” and “Little Willie”—evidently a
conference was being held. He moved away to find the Cantuvellaunians. They were on the left, the men squatting or lying on the chalky grass in their greatcoats, uneasily, with packs on backs. Their rifles were piled in lines beside them. The company officers were standing, their floppy service caps without wires, he noticed.

  He heard a slight cheer. Surprised, he saw men of his old company looking at him, their faces expectant. The cheer came again, more strongly. He looked behind him, expecting to see someone else. Could it be for himself? He went forward to them. Bellamy’s tired, but still grinning, face, said, “Hullo, sir! It’s lovely to see you, sir, honest!” Bellamy he remembered as the company comic.

  O’Connor, now with three pips, saw him and came towards him. Others crowded round.

  “I thought, with regret, that probably I had seen the last of you, my boy! Never was a face more welcome!” O’Connor glanced at the brassard.

  “Hullo, O’Connor, congrats. on your captaincy. I heard you fellows were here, and came along to see you.”

  “Very decent of you, Maddison!”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Have you seen our transport?”

  “Have the Germans gone?”

  “They told us we were in for a long march——”

  “They said the front was broken——”

  “What’s the arm-band for?”

  “Are there any billets in front? The men are dead beat.”

  “Where can we get water for the men?”

  “Has the cavalry gone through——”

  “We were held up on the road by squadron after squadron of lancers——”

  “Why haven’t they taken the wounded by the roadside away? It’s bad for the morale of our chaps——”

  Jonah the Whale, on long thin legs in tight breeches and canvas leggings, stalked up smiling grimly from his taller height, unshaven, tie awry, legs bowed a little, breeches-strapping rubbed dark by the horse-sweat of much riding. “Good evening, Maddison! Do you know this line of country? You do? Splendid! You’re the very man we want. Come and see the colonel.”

  “Strawballs” looked thinner and more stern, until he shook hands, when Phillip saw the white stubble on his chin and the lines between his eyes as the result of sleeplessness, the same strain on the faces of staff officers in the cellar of Le Rutoire farm. Captain Rhodes, now with crowns on his shoulders as second-in-command, spread a map and opened a compass. “We’ll be moving up about midnight, Rhodes,” said “Straw-balls”. “On a compass bearing of one hundred and twelve degrees.”

  So these were the people who had tried to crush him, and his ideas—these amateurs! Marching on a compass bearing, like Boy Scouts who could only light wood fires with paraffin! He could keep silent no longer.

  “Sir,” he said to the colonel, “why not get right up straightaway past Lone Tree and the Loos Road Redoubt, and send patrols forward until you find the Germans? It will be easy to go up now, before they come back, with their reserves. The front is open, sir. The Germans must be some distance off, judging by the fact that only a few field-gun shells with black smoke are visible. Then again, sir, the only small-arms crackle we can hear is on the right beyond the Tower Bridge on Hill 70, and on the left away out over by the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the Dump behind it.”

  “Come with me to the brigadier,” said the colonel. “And repeat to him what you have just told me.”

  “Crasher” looked very old and bloody irritable, thought Phillip. His brigade-major, tall crown of cap, long nose, long face with wispy moustache, looked more than ever like a caricature of the Crown Prince.

  “What happened?” asked O’Connor, when Phillip returned.

  “I told Crasher he ought to get up as soon as possible, while the men could see, and not wait for useless orders. Obviously we ought to go on and fill the gap. We ought to push on, the quicker the better. It’s common sense! Get up while it’s still light! I said that they’d find it hard to make out the crossing places in the dark. Also, to get up while the Germans were not there.”

  “You told Crasher that, did you, my boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say, then, my boy?”

  “Nothing. I was up there this morning, as far as the other, slope of the valley, and there were no Germans anywhere near when I turned back.”

  “Why did you turn back?” asked the eighteen-year-old captain nicknamed “Infant Hercules”, who now commanded Phillip’s old company.

  “I was only sight-seeing. I happened to be with the Gaultshires when a great friend of mine, Captain West, was badly hit, and asked me to take over his company for a bit. The colonel had been knocked out, too, and also the second-in-command, so I carried on. There was nothing in it. We walked round the flanks, and as the Welsh and the London Highlanders had already got behind the Lone Tree position, and others were attacking from the rear, the Germans surrendered. If I’d have obeyed staff orders, we’d all have been shot down in the third useless attack on the uncut wire in front of Lone Tree.”

  “So you took your own line, my boy?”

  “Of course. Everyone knows that the staff are no good.”

  “Did you tell Crasher that?”

  “No. He told me. By the way, are you chaps hungry? I’ve got some sandwiches if you care to have them.”

  “Thanks, but we’ve got our iron rations, also extra cheese and bread, and an issue of pea soup. We were told we were in for a long march, and would be on lines of communication.”

  “Yes, they always tell you that.”

  “Do you think the Germans are on the run?”

  “Not now. They were this morning. I met a major of the fifteenth division, which had gone right over Hill 70, which is the pivot of the advance, beyond the Tower Bridge over there. He asked me where you chaps were.”

  “We were told we wouldn’t be put into the attack until a gap was made.”

  “Those staff idiots again! Why didn’t they put you with regulars, as we were when we first went into the line? What can an entirely new division know, all on its own? You want to be sandwiched in with the old sweats. My God, if we’d have had the old first brigade here, which we were with at First Ypres! The Grenadiers and the Coldstream! And the Jocks! We’d have been through to the Haute Deule Canal now! Still, it will be good to get back to real soldiering, when this is all over, won’t it? Where’s old Brendon, by the way?”

  “He’s Home Service. Non est,” murmured O’Connor.

  More subalterns had come up, and were listening intently to this talk.

  “Can’t you persuade ‘Strawballs’, Maddison? If the German reserves aren’t here yet——”

  “It’s nothing to do with me, anyway. I saw regular officers before the attack weeping tears of blood about the inefficiency of the staff.”

  “Certainly what we have seen so far confirms what you say, my boy.”

  “We had it cushy at First Ypres, compared with this. We weren’t mucked about, you see.”

  O’Connor, the Dublin barrister, was convinced that what had been said was true. He went to the adjutant. He returned for Phillip. After some more talk, a brass-hat wearing the black-red brassard of corps ordered Phillip to stand by to act as guide to the brigade when the orders to move off should be given. Hell, I’m for it, thought Phillip. Oh, what an idiot I am, as the clouds in the sky broke, and a harsh rain shut down the last of the dimming battlefield. He could hear his mother’s voice saying, Why can you never leave well alone, my son? as when he had taken his first watch to pieces to see if it could be made to work faster.

  Faintly, like sad thoughts searching, the first calcium flares of night began to rise in the distance.

  *

  The General Officer commanding the First Army still knew nothing of the heavy losses of the battalions in the line by the time night had fallen. Sir Douglas Haig believed, with many others in the back area, that the Germans had been driven entirely from their first line; that their second and final line of defence, beh
ind the Lens-La Bassée road (until it turned at right angles, west of and around Lens) was but weakly held, and most of it without barbed-wire. If this last position were taken by an advance through its centre, the German position around Lens would be turned.

  But a division, occupying many miles of road when on the march, was not as easily manoeuvrable as a battalion, or better still, a Detached Force under its local commander.

  Sir Douglas Haig’s original plan of action was dependent on the French on his right. Lord Kitchener had ordered “a continuous and vigorous attack”; but an attack has flanks which are always vulnerable. They are like blows upon a man from the side. While he fights forward, he must be guarded. Enemy thrusts to get in at the flanks and so through to the undefended rear-areas, must be countered in advance by strong defensive flanks, so that frontal attack may be made with confidence. Not only had the French behind the Lorette Ridge failed to start until five hours after the First Army assault, but they had failed when they did start, about noon. The Vimy Ridge, which overlooks the wide plain stretching away to the Scheldt as the Hog’s Back in Surrey overlooks intervening English country to the Thames, remained in German hands. The French advance line still lay three miles away.

  So a break-through by the British north of the Vimy Ridge had its dangers from the southern flank. Two British divisions, the 47th London and the 15th Scottish (which, as Captain West had told Phillip, had gone through the first German position in the early morning) would have to dig in and wire their positions east of Loos and on Hill 70 to stop any heavy thrusts into the southern side of the First Army’s further attacks.