The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  This was the life. He sang to the bowing of the fiddle, making up words as he thought of the fine green hairs of the ryegrass, the first paired-leaves of clover and cowgrass, and later the delicate yellow flowers of medick, cover for lark and partridge.

  The wind-wave hissing in the grass

  The pollen come to blow

  And dream arises, but to pass

  To regions where man cannot go.

  So I who tread this fallow earth

  Must think of ‘fulness after dearth’.

  Striding up and down from hedge to hedge he began to calculate how many paces would cover the field, taking a pace to be one yard. If Lobbett’s took five miles to walk, that was one mile to every two acres. So he would have walked forty-five miles when the last of the ninety acres was sown. Say four days in all. He went on happily, until his thought attached itself to the number of seeds he was sowing. A stroke of the bow every pace, say a thousand seeds a yard. He sat down, and with pencil and paper began to calculate, allowing one seed to fall, on average, upon every square inch. He figured out 6,272,640 square inches to the acre. By the end of four days he would have cast ninety times that number of seeds—564,537,600.

  The weather was fine, the work was done by the end of the week.

  Now rain was needed.

  *

  The plain of Colham, seen from high ground, was changing its hues perceptibly; the wild roses of the hedges—Shakespeare’s eglantine—had shed their petals; the cuckoo was singing out of tune. No rain fell.

  On the last day of the month he did not return to breakfast at his usual hour of 7.30 a.m. There was nothing to hold him up on the farm; the men were waiting for the dew to dry off before turning the hay. It was the rising heat and light, the sudden memory of July the First which drew him on past the borstal to the rim of the down beyond. As he climbed the western slope to the site of an ancient encampment a phrase quoted by Aunt Dora, long ago, from Euripides, ‘danger shines like sunlight in a brave man’s eyes’, came into his mind; and when the sun blazed suddenly upon his face he sank down upon the sward and hid his face in his hands for a few moments before turning to run home with an overwhelming impulse to write down, while the immediacy of memory lasted, that which had overwhelmed him.

  The post had been delivered when he got back to the farmhouse. There was a letter from Uncle Hilary to Lucy, which she thought he should see, since he insisted that they always have what he called liaison between them.

  “All right, all right, read the damned thing if you must!”

  “You did ask me always to tell you——”

  “Well, tell me. Quick.”

  “Uncle Hilary says he is arriving on Thursday afternoon, bringing Aunt Dora from Lynmouth with him. He wants to stay here for the christening, since Uncle John hasn’t been able to get the bedrooms ready yet. Well, ‘Mother’ will be here on Saturday, with Billy’s other grannie, so I’m afraid it will mean turning you out of your study, but it’ll be for two nights only.”

  “How can we get them all in?”

  “Well, Mrs. Lushington can have our bedroom, for one, and I can manage in the boxroom with the little boys. That will leave the three other rooms for Mother, Aunt Dora, and Uncle Hilary.”

  “Where do I sleep, among the owls?”

  “Oh, poor you. Of course, I can have a tent in the garden with the children. I’d simply love it.”

  There were five upper rooms in the farmhouse, not counting the bathroom: the main bedroom occupied by the children and Lucy, Phillip occasionally joining his wife in the double bed; two smaller bedrooms; a boxroom, and the study.

  “Oh damn, I’ve forgotten to get the distemper and brush for the walls of those two replastered bedrooms. There’s no time to lose. I must get off an article for the Crusader, and put it on the afternoon train to London. The middle page is being made up now for tomorrow’s paper. I must telephone it. Sorry, no time for breakfast. Not now, Billy—Daddy’s busy.”

  “Bug off, Daddy.”

  On July the First, eleven years ago, the sun rose up out of the east across the thistly chalk fields of Picardy known to us as Noman’s land. A great battle was imminent. Over 250,000 English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, and Colonial troops, nearly all amateur soldiers, waited in chalk trenches along a twenty-mile front for the final bombardment to open.

  This, it had been declared, would annihilate the German redoubts and trenches opposite and prepare the way for a general advance to the high ground several miles into enemy-held territory. There, along the Pozières—Bazentin—Longueval—Gillemont ridge we were ordered to dig in and prepare for the counter-attack. Then, the enemy having broken, the cavalry would go through the gap, and so the end of the war would come in sight. Such were the hopes of the new, the proud, the untried Kitchener’s Army.

  The final bombardment started at 6.30 a.m. Across the hundreds of yards of Noman’s land rising smoke and dust turned the sunshine brown. At times the sun’s disc was occluded. Surely no German could live in that inferno of shells bursting like waves on a distant reef? Roaring and screaming overhead, shells of all weights and sizes, from 13-pounder shrapnel to ton-weight 15-inch howitzer shells, and 12-inch armour-piercing stuff from naval guns mounted on multiple bogies on the railway behind the valley town of Albert, fell for an hour. The rising sun glinted on the Leaning Virgin holding the Babe in arms on the campanile of the shell-broken basilica, built of grey stone and red-brick—what the newspapers called the ‘Golden Virgin of Albert Cathedral’.

  For months this attack had been rehearsed in back areas. Every man knew his job. Coloured ribands were tied to shoulder-straps to distinguish bomber from bayonet-man, Lewis-gunner from rifle-grenadier. Patches of coloured cloth sewn upon tunic backs, and again in paint stencilled on steel-helmets, distinguished battalions and infantry brigades. Each division had its device of animal, shield, flower, butterfly, or other ‘sign’.

  Each infantry soldier carried about 66 lb.: rifle and bandolier of ammunition, bayonet, shovel or pick, bombs, extra water, food, barbed wire, sandbags, and so on. It was to be, as the phrase went in those days, a cakewalk—a popular Edwardian dance.

  The General commanding the attacking Army—the Fourth British Army—Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose banner bore the sign of a wild boar (he had a tame boar at his H.Q. at Querrieu château near Amiens) based his plan on an overwhelming bombardment which would destroy all the 10-foot enemy trenches, bury what barbed-wire obstacles were not torn to pieces, and smash-in all German dugouts. ‘All opposition will be overwhelmed in the preliminary bombardment’ ran part of the orders to the Corps’ commanders.

  So the troops making the assault were used virtually as carrying parties. They were to go forward in six extended lines with 100-yard intervals between the ‘waves’. The first waves were to deal with any survivors of the bombardment, the second would support the first and supply escorts for prisoners to the rear; the remaining waves were to advance to the Pozières Ridge, three miles to the east, dig in, put out wire, and await the counter-attack.

  The bombardment concentrated on that morning of July the First, 1916, lifted at zero hour, 7.30 a.m. The sun, low in the clear eastern sky in which larks were singing, blazed into the eyes of the men of nearly 200 infantry battalions of fresh troops, many now white-faced and trembling, others swearing and shouting to free themselves from fear as they climbed up the trench ladders above the sandbags filled with chalk. The parapets in places were already spurting and breaking with German machine-gun bullets. Each soul found itself as though naked and alone in the dreaded Noman’s land where, strangely, men were dropping rifles and sinking to their knees. While those remaining upright advanced in line, monstrous shells began to burst blackly and noises like a hundred engines blowing off steam in a railway terminus filled the air——

  The door of the writing-room opened and Lucy came in.

  “The ’bus is going into Colham in about forty minutes. If you tell me the colour you want for the distemper I can go in
and get it as well as a brush.”

  She saw his drawn face, with its fixed stare, as he turned round to say, “What are you talking about? Who cares a damn about distemper or brushes.” Then throwing his pen against the wall, where it sprinkled ink and fell, he shouted, “I shan’t be here for the christening anyway.”

  “I can just as well brush off the flaky bits, you know, if you’ll let me.”

  He picked up his pen. The point of the nib was at right angles to the shoulders.

  “I’m so sorry to break-in on you like this. I’ll fetch my pen, I won’t be a moment.”

  When she returned he was contrite. “I’m sorry, Lucy. Don’t take any notice of what I say.”

  “Well, you’ve got so much to think about. Now don’t worry any more about the rooms, leave them to me. I’m sure the walls don’t really matter, not for the moment, anyway. I’ve asked Mrs. Rigg to bring you a bacon sandwich, and a cup of coffee.”

  After the many raids, to identify the regiments and therefore the Divisionen opposite the 4th Army front, only one report from all the infantry battalions taking part mentioned that the German dugouts had as many as 40 wooden steps leading down into the tunnels below and that the dugout rooms, with walls and ceilings similarly boarded, lay at a depth of 30 feet. In the battle of Loos in the preceding September the enemy shelters had been more or less open, with heavy timber baulks shoring up roofs of layers of sandbags filled with chalk. They were seldom more than 10 feet below ground level; and most of them in the front line had been wrecked by our 6-in. howitzer shells. Now, during the final rehearsal of our Division at Querrieu, my Commanding Officer, Lt.-Col. H. J. West, who had been wounded twice during the abortive attacks of early 1915, and again (badly) at Loos, protested to the 4th Army Commander, present as a guest of the Corps commander, that the plan was based on a fallacy: for the German dugouts were too deep for any shell of less than 9.2-inch to penetrate by a direct hit, he declared.

  For this breach of military etiquette he was relieved of his command.

  During the preliminary bombardments, and the final concentrated bombardment between 6.30 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. on July the First the enemy dugouts, deep in the chalk, were not smashed in. German machine-gunners, sheltering below in comparative safety, came up at 7.31 a.m., as they had rehearsed many times. Some carried parts of their Maschinengewehre into shell-holes in Noman’s-land, in some places before the tumble of their own wire, where they re-assembled these weapons, and awaited the slow advance of six waves of British infantry.

  He put down the pen and walked about the room, trembling, while tears dripped from his eyes. Lucy returned very soon, it seemed.

  “How is it going?” she asked, happily.

  “It’s stopped, except on our left, where the Ulster division has got into the Schwaben redoubt. They had better brigadier-generals, who got them up out of Thiepval wood and across to the wire during the bombardment, and so into the enemy trenches, while the more amateur officers in the southern divisions obeyed orders. The machine-guns flanking Ovillers started firing before zero hour, and our lot has copped it. In a few minutes, or hours, I’ll be seeing Father Aloysius sliding down into my shell-hole holding his ‘little book’ in his hands, reading his ‘office’, while I can’t feel my legs at all.” Looking up, he went on quietly, “Not that I gave a damn for myself, but I wasn’t able to do anything to help my platoon. They were laid out almost in a row, among innumerable others looking as though they’d come away from a Cup-tie final, blind-drunk, and were sleeping it off.”

  “I’ll bring you up a bowl of soup, and some toast, in a minute or two.”

  In one part of the line, opposite Ovillers, a downland village among shattered trees, there was a gentle declension south to the Albert-Bapaume road. Lined by poplars, its metalling weed-grown, this road led direct through what had been corn and beet-sugar fields to the distant ridge. Within a few minutes all officers of our battalion which had gone over—25—were casualties. Mash Valley, as the declension was called on the trench-maps, looked to be filled by a Crystal Palace cup-tie crowd lying down to rest, some on their backs, others on their faces, after the long wait and excitement of the game.

  Durhams, Green Howards, Staffordshires, Devons, Middlesex, Gaultshires—these and other county regiments had failed to reach their first objective. Farther south the infantry had better luck, as the saying went, and took the fortified village of Mametz. But north of the straight Albert-Bapaume road, across the gently rolling downland to its decline into the Ancre Valley, over the marshes and up again to the rising ground to Beaumont Hamel and onwards to Gommecourt, the most northerly bastion or flank of the attack—a dozen miles or so of the 20-mile front—the assault was everywhere shattered. By evening nearly 60,000 British soldiers, most of them of the new keen Kitchener divisions, had gone down under the mort blast of Spandau rifles and machine-guns. When the sun’s rays were from the west the survivors were back again in their own trenches.

  Opposite Mash Valley—lying north of Sausage Valley, where Tynesider troops lay almost as thickly as their comrades in Mash—the Germans lost about 150 men, most of them wounded. Their British opponents, belonging to the 8th and 34th divisions, lay outside the German wire, 12,000 of them. When the firing ceased German doctors and Red Gross orderlies came out and helped bind up some of our wounded; but there were so many that for the next three days khaki figures were still crawling, or being carried, back to the dressing station below the Golden Virgin of Albert.

  Thus began the Battle of the Somme.

  Hilary was on his way from Pembrokeshire, having left his caravan behind in a cove near Solva Bay before dawn. He had arranged to bring his sister Dora from Lynmouth, which meant a long, slow, out-of-the-way journey from Chepstow ferry down the southern coast of the Severn Sea from Bridgwater to Lynmouth, and back again to Bridgwater—an extra seventy-four miles.

  He had insisted on fetching Dora by motor, although she had written to say that she would not find the journey by rail too much for her. The real reason for her not wanting him to come to the cottage was on account of her ‘Babies’, two small and aged spinster sisters, one blind, and the other suffering from delusions which sometimes made her suspect that her food was poisoned. When Hilary had last visited the cottage she had screamed and hurried upstairs to her blind sister, crying out that a strange man wanted to murder them.

  That incident had led to an unhappy discussion between brother and sister; for in his ‘direct sailor’s manner’ Hilary had asked her how long would she insist on looking after those two idiots. She was wasting herself, he declared. What sort of life did she have? What they needed was a professional nurse, who would stand no nonsense; but not in a small cottage. They should be in an institution.

  Hilary knew the story of how a neighbour, soon after the war—a relation of the two old women who was in charge of them—had asked his sister to look after them for a week-end and had never returned. Good God, that was now nearly ten years ago. Something must be done about it. He couldn’t have his kidlet sister working herself prematurely into the grave.

  This time Dora had arranged with the parish nurse to take over the care of her ‘Babies’ before Hilary was due to arrive; and a rendezvous in Lynton, at the top of the water-lift, she wrote, would save him a journey down the steep hill to Lynmouth and up again.

  At first the motor-ride was enjoyable for Dora, the feeling of freedom brought back youthful memories, leading to keen anticipation at the thought of seeing Hetty again. Hilary remarked that she seemed to have found a new lease of life, and optimistically began to talk about a subject which, he declared, was very close to his heart.

  “You ought not to continue having the responsibility for your two old ladies, Dora. Surely they’d be better off in a home? You’d find no trouble in getting them certified under the Lunacy Laws, you know.”

  “Well, as I have said before, dear brother, I feel for them as though they really are my own.”

  “Well, you know wha
t I feel about it, Dora.”

  After that the meadows and paddocks of Somerset, divided by rhines and planted with withies, held only fleeting interest for Dora. Over the Dorset border, when they stopped for lunch, she was not able to eat the lettuce sandwiches she had brought with her. More nervous energy was lost while she tried to persuade her brother that she would be happy to be left to sit in the shade of the field beside which they had stopped, instead of going into the hotel Hilary had chosen from his A.A. book.

  After vain persuasion he went in to eat alone without enjoyment a full meal of pea soup, roast beef, baked potatoes, cabbage, and batter pudding, followed by apricot pie with cream, and bread and cheese. Dora was cracked; he gave her a generous allowance, and instead of enjoying what was left of her life she had made herself a slave to a couple of imbecile strangers, who repaid her by … etc., etc.

  The journey was continued, both enduring one another and partly sustained by thoughts of Lucy’s face greeting them.

  *

  Ignoring the lunch awaiting him downstairs, Phillip blinded on the Norton to the railway junction and gave his envelope to the guard. It was to be collected at Paddington. Returning as the clock struck four he set about distempering the bedroom walls, which had been colour-washed by the builder before the new plaster had dried out, so that the distemper had powdered in patches. He worked fast, driven by the need to get the work done. Creamy drips fell on his jacket, trousers, and hair. Having done the walls, he thought to use up the remainder of the second tin by putting it on the ceilings, not knowing that the petrifying liquid would fail to key to the soft, porous whiting already there. As soon as the distemper had dried out, above the blue flames of the oil stove, it began first to crack, then to flake and hang down in small loose scales.