A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  “I put him under arrest for using language unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, sir—then I thought it best to clear off.”

  After a long pause, the colonel said, “Did you manage to pick up any information as to Mr. Lambert’s whereabouts?”

  “No, sir.”

  “O-oh,” growled the colonel once more. “Jonah, why didn’t you send——” The brigadier and his brigade major were standing beside “Strawballs”.

  “What’s ’at I hear, damme?” said “Crasher”.

  “Did you make enquiries?” asked the brigade major.

  “Yes, sir. The traffic blocks extended for miles. It was the artillery, sending back their limbers for shells, and the ambulances for the wounded going down, with the transport coming up at the same time, from the other direction, sir.”

  “Did you see the batteries in position, as you came up?”

  “Yes, sir, everywhere in the mist the other side of the Lone Tree ridge. I thought they were in the wrong place, sir.”

  “You are being asked for facts, not for opinions, Mr. Maddison,” said the colonel, very distinctly.

  “I thought it might be useful to know, sir. I thought that negative information would be important at this juncture, sir. The batteries are all in the open, sir, and in full view of the German observers where they are now, almost wheel to wheel. I think they missed the way, sir, and also the place.”

  At that moment salvoes of German shells began to scream overhead, to burst in unseen ground below the Lone Tree ridge.

  “You can go now,” said Jonah to Phillip, quietly.

  He saluted and left the long narrow chalk pit, fringed by trees, and went back in the pallid light of early morning to where O’Connor was sitting with his company beside little scrapings in the chalk hacked out by entrenching tools. This trench was perhaps fifteen inches deep, and wandered for a couple of hundred yards in the wet and flattened grasses beside the Lens-La Bassée road, whither the brigade had moved before dawn. A guide, left by the old position, had led the ration party there, three-quarters of a mile eastwards. This was now the front line. A yellow flag, stuck in the ground near others with broken shafts, showed where the advance had reached the previous day.

  “What did they say, Phil?”

  Seeing the bleak look on the other’s face, O’Connor got up to stand beside him. “Look out, sir, there’s a sniper active!” cried out a voice from the ground. “Better get down,” said O’Connor. Lying beside Phillip, he said, “Don’t let it worry you, Phil. You did your best, I am sure.”

  “It’s all been such a frightful muck-up, from start to finish! Like my life, before and during this war. I begin to see why most people never liked me. I’ve often thought of that ragging I got. I thought it was because, as Baldersby said, I couldn’t speak the King’s English. Was it?”

  “Well, pronunciation of words varies from place to place, and from age to age, my boy. For myself, I doubt if I can speak the King’s English—I can only be reasonably sure that it approximates to the English spoken by m’forefathers who out of politeness—for I cannot think there can have been any other reason—began to imitate the immigrants from a foreign country in the reign of your Queen Elizabeth. But to answer your particular question, I consider that your voice is both soft and pleasant, generally speaking, so do not let the idle remark of a vain fellow put you out of harmony with yourself.”

  An orderly arrived, bent low at the double, with a message in a pale buff envelope. Captain O’Connor read it.

  “We are advancing to their second line at eleven o’clock this morning, Phillip. It should not be too difficult, for at the company commanders’ conference we learned that it consists of a single trench, and no wire in front of it at all. It is also unoccupied. You will be going back now, I suppose? What about your gas job?”

  Phillip looked away into the sky, and after an inner struggle he said, “Do you mind if I come with you? I don’t like leaving you in the lurch, now.” He stuttered as he went on, “I—I’ve done this sort of job before, y’know.” Leave me alone, leave me alone, he cried within himself, to his mother’s imagined face.

  *

  Unknown to the brigadier, the attack had been postponed by First Army until midday; but as no counter-order had arrived by 11 a.m., the advance went forward without artillery support.

  Moving in various directions, some of the untried units, mistaking other advancing troops for Germans, lay down and fired at them. The fire was returned; but the main attack straggled eastward across a long and bare stretch of ground between the strongly-held flanks of a bastion, its objective being the second German position a thousand yards beyond the Lens-La Bassée road.

  This second German position, empty and unwired the previous evening, was now protected by wire almost as thick as brambles, as high as the waist of a man and five to seven yards deep. The wire had been put up by newly-arrived German reserves, who had worked without interference in the moonlight.

  A strip of copse, originally planted as covert for pheasants, and known as Bois Hugo, lay down the centre of the advance. Here German machine-guns had been placed early that morning.

  Thus the advance, caught in a cross-fire of machine-gun and rifle fire from the flanks of the bastion, was also enfiladed by machine-gun fire at short range from the edge of the wood; while German field-guns fired shrapnel and tear-gas shells over open sights from Hulluch.

  The straggling lines faltered, became thin, fell away.

  Jonah the Whale was cut across by a dozen bullets, which spun him round twice as he fell.

  The colonel, no man of straw, continued to go on at a crouch, swearing loudly, until he appeared to stumble, and was no more.

  Major Rhodes ran forward to take his place and wave the battalion on. He and a score of men in line with him went down almost together in the screeching amazement of machine-gun death.

  Phillip saw Captain O’Connor, his hand vaguely seeking his pince-nez spectacles which had been splintered into the space left vacant by his nose and eyes, blundering about; and then the line, thin and useless, faltered and lay down, Phillip with them, wondering why he had not felt any fear at all, why his own self seemed to be entirely detached from it all, away from what was happening.

  Chapter 25

  FRIENDLY FACES

  HE seemed to have been lying in the grass, his nostrils near to clover leaves, his arms and legs swelled with heat, for a long time, when he realised that firing had stopped. There was only the sound of distant guns booming, the distant racket of small-arms fire; no immediate crackling and swishing of bullets. Cautiously, slowly raising his face, he saw with a clutch of sickness that Germans were very near, looking among the grasses. He lay down again, but when nothing happened, no shot or shout, he lifted his head once more. Two Germans came towards him, rifles slung on leather thongs on shoulders. He stared up at them, trying to speak, but his tongue was stuck in his mouth. He was trying to say prächtig kerl. Then with an incoherence of trembling he saw that several Germans behind the leading two had red cross brassards, carrying stretchers. He held up his hands, to show he was unarmed, and rose shakily to his feet.

  “Are you wounded?”

  He shook his head. How strange to be taken prisoner. He kept his hands up, until motioned to put them down.

  “Gas?”

  He thought they meant his brassard. “Yes, but it came back on our men,” he said shakily.

  “There are too many of your wounded for us to deal with,” said one of the Germans. “So our Oberst has ordered us to tell you that you may take your wounded back the way you came.”

  Phillip stared, shaking uncontrollably. He tried to speak, impotently.

  “Does it surprise you that a German colonel should give such an order?”

  When he could speak he said, “I met some of your fellows, prächtig kerls, last Christmas Day, when we were all good friends.”

  This remark was ignored. “Are you an officer? Yes, then you may lead back your wo
unded who can walk, back to your own lines. You will not be fired on. The order has gone forth from our Oberst! We are not ‘perfidious Germany!’ Let me explain one moment, please! What did your Coldstream Guards do last month, in the trenches by the mine craters of Cambrin? I will tell you, Herr Offizier Engländer! Your Guards had their band in the trenches, and played Die Wacht am Rhein, then your God Save the King. Just before one o’clock Berlin time, when our soldiers were clapping hands and applauding in polite manner, what did your Guards then do? Even before the last note of Rule Britannia sounded, they responded with a drumfire of bombs, grenades, and mortars, killing and wounded many of their musical guests. So what did your clever gentlemen do? The very next night they played the band again! But this time ‘Fritz’ was not fooled by Tommy! So do not ask me if you will be fired upon now! Deutsche treu, Herr Engländer!”

  “It was a dirty trick, I agree,” said Phillip. “My father is half-German, I am proud of it. You are very kind people, I think. Prächtig kerls, in fact!”

  They exchanged salutes. Phillip was light-bodied, his spirit fluttered in his throat, he felt the darkness of the world to be overcome.

  He walked to a quiet waiting group in khaki, with yellow, drained faces, some with bandages on heads, others with arms in slings under cut-away jackets, or standing with slit trousers revealing flesh-wounds that had been bound.

  “Don’t bunch, men, don’t bunch,” he told them as they hobbled away. “Single file is safest, and don’t look about you.

  We’re in luck, my boys, but show no interest in anything, and for God’s sake don’t loiter! It’s almost as though it’s over, not a shot anywhere.” He was speaking to himself, the only unwounded man. He waited for them to pass him, seeing them as a mixed lot, some Jocks, all sorts of regiments. They moved on slowly, faces set, they had lost blood, they were unspeaking with thirst and the puffy feeling of mind and body stretched after tension.

  They came to the main road, and he saw in the wide spaces before him hundreds, thousands of walking figures, extending as far as he could see, on all sides. Good God, what had happened, was the war suddenly over? The entire British Army seemed to be leaving the battlefield.

  *

  The centre of the British front had broken, beyond shame and the fear of death, in a mass movement of starved, dry-throated troops of the reserve divisions extending from the higher slopes of Hill 70 on the right to the Hulluch–Vermelles road on the left, a distance of nearly three miles. The brigades of the two reserve divisions, after every other man had become a casualty, had lost cohesion, and individual men, and groups of unspeaking men, were leaving the battle. The Germans stood up and watched them go.

  But not all had gone. A few remained. Some of the stragglers, coming upon steady troops, hesitated, and joined them. Phillip, mind set on billet, walked at the head of the slow file of wounded. He led them down into the long dip of Loos valley, and hearing sporadic rifle and machine-gun fire from Hill 70 over his shoulder, guessed what had happened. And bloody sensible, too, he thought, to want to leave that ghastly and meaningless hell behind.

  He led the way down the track to Le Rutoire, which he was beginning to know now. God’s teeth, was it only yesterday that he was listening to “Spectre” West, eye hanging on cheek, as he whispered the order to get round the flanks? It was a lifetime. Here was the Lone Tree rise. How was little Kirk, and Douglas with his bloody behind and kilt in rags? Wounded were still lying in the grasses, calling out, raising arms, crying for help. He saw them without emotion. There were too many. He was not being stopped this time. He was going to get out of it. If only he had had a bullet through an arm. They were all dragging feet now, his rag, tag and bobtail brigade—the man beside him, with head-bandage and skewed jaw set with smashed teeth, was gurgling with every breath; but shook his head when asked if he wanted to rest. Surely there would be ambulances at the farm?

  The batteries he had seen in the first light, the prima luce of the dear old Magister (Phillip had had a pleasing letter from him, and ever since had thought he was a fine old boy, really), had copped it. Dead horses lay about in dozens, guns turned over, ripped and pocked and knocked skewwiff by the old Hun. What a tragedy it all was.

  *

  The file of hobbling wounded was now one of many little groups going back; but coming towards them were about a dozen officers and men whose appearance was in striking contrast to the battle stragglers, with their torn and chalk-mud uniforms, slacked-off puttees, and faces fixed in exhaustion. The soldiers coming towards them bore themselves upright, the officers walked with an easy stride, withal bearing themselves with a calmness that seemed to take in nothing about them, as though indifferent to the scene. The officers’ moustaches were brushed towards the lobes of their ears, their caps set level on their heads, the peaks correctly aligned; while the stars on their shoulder-straps, though in miniature like their buttons, were more spread, efflorescent, than the miniature pips of ordinary officers. The men following in step bore their ruddy faces and necks upright, giving the impression that their rations were better in every way than those of ordinary soldiers; as was their bearing, which had a kind of brutal pride about it, the effect heightened by their cap-peaks drawn down to an even level with their eyes, so that their chins were drawn in, and the backs of their powerful necks pronounced.

  When this group was about fifty yards distant from Phillip and his party, they stopped; and he saw the leading officer speak to a straggle of retreating men. A sergeant shouted at them to stand to attention before an officer. At this other stragglers stopped, and stared at the group. The officer, who was elderly, and a captain, said something; but the stragglers addressed began to move on as before, when a younger officer near the captain raised his hunting whip, and seemed to throw the plaited leather thong at one of the men, who held up an arm as the cotton lash cracked in his face. The officer, with similar stroke of lower arm and flick of wrist towards another man, caused a howl as the lash whipped a second cheek.

  “About turn, you damned cowards!” shouted the officer, who was a full lieutenant, Phillip saw. Near him another officer, a second-lieutenant, had on his face a look of faint scorn; and staring at the face, Phillip, standing still with his party, some of whom had mouths open with fatigue, saw that the officer was his cousin Bertie.

  At the same time Hubert Cakebread recognised Phillip. With a slight smile he said, “What are you doing here, young Phil? How long have you been out?”

  “About a fortnight.”

  “Are you wounded?”

  “No.”

  “Going the wrong way, aren’t you, old man?” said Bertie, coming near to him. “Where’s your battalion?”

  “I haven’t got one, really. I’m——” He could not say anything further.

  “What is your division?”

  “It was the First.”

  “Was?” said Bertie, sharply. Then, “Better come along with me, I think. These walking wounded can find the dressing-station by themselves. They don’t need an officer to conduct them, you know. There are ambulances at Le Rutoire farm.”

  “Oh good. That’s what I wanted to find out.”

  Phillip found himself walking beside the broad upright figure of his cousin towards Lone Tree for the third time in the past two days. “Mustn’t let the side down, you know, old man,” said Bertie, now his amiable self.

  Phillip walked with the others in silence. No more wounded were coming back now; but on the ground arms were still being raised, voices were calling. The elderly Coldstream captain spoke to some, saying that help was on the way.

  At the old German front line beyond the scarred cherry tree some sort of reorganisation seemed to be taking place. Two staff officers with red-tabs were moving about, urging slow and exhausted troops to organise the line for defence, though it was very deep and narrow, revetted by board and posts, and a boarded fire-step: much better-made than the British trenches. The party of Guards officers crossed by a plank. Here Phillip forced himself to
say, “I am a gas officer, Bertie. I’m supposed to be at Mazingarbe.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I was excused duty after we let the gas go, so I came up to have a look round.”

  “Been out all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “When are you on duty again?”

  “In two days’ time.”

  Bertie laughed. “I’ve heard of some odd ways of spending leave, but yours takes the biscuit. But you were always a bit crazy. How did you leave them all in England?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “I heard you’d been in to see the Rolls. Plucked a cockerel didn’t you, and then weren’t asked to help eat it? Old man Rolls likes his Friday night dinner strictly in the bosom of his family.”

  Hubert went on to say that his advance party was going up to look at part of the line they were taking over that night, relieving part of the Fifteenth Division.

  “You look a bit tired, Phil, why not get back to Mazingarbe?”

  “Yes, I think I will, now you mention it. Goodbye!” He gave his cousin a long look, in which resignation, sympathy, appeal were mingled; and holding out his hand to be shaken, turned away and walked back, his eyes ringed with tears.

  Coming to the old German trench, he put on his brassard; if questioned again, he would say that he had come to inspect the effects of the gas—as, in a way, he had.

  But no staff or other officer took any notice of him. Thinking of Kirk, he went along the uncut wire to see if he had been rescued. Voices, feeble and croaking, called out at his passing; hands were raised among the grasses. Two men, one behind the other, were laboriously going back on hands and knees; others dragged themselves on elbows, one with a twisted, shattered leg, alive with maggots. “The ambulances are up at Le Rutoire; it won’t be long now, boys,” he said, again and again. Haggard faces responded with such gratitude that he could hardly keep back hysteria.