He saw Mr. Kerr the tailor, who made no comment when the offer of a tumbler of Dew of Benevenagh was refused; he had already observed a remote look on the young man’s face. Leaving Cundit Street, Phillip went to see the specialist in Harley Street, prepared for intramuscular injection in the thigh. But to his relief this did not take place; Mr. MacDougal, in morning coat, vest, and trousers, said that he would write to Dr. Farina, who would do what was necessary.
Should he try to find the girl in the green knitted ensemble, as she had called it, and warn her to go at once to a doctor? She was innocent of any knowledge of her condition, he felt sure. But where would she be—one of London’s four millions?
Where to go? After mooning about he went home. There he locked himself in the bathroom, for the second permanganate douching of the day; but feeling that this was of no use, before he went back he hid the glass syringe, stained brown, on the wooden casing of the bath pipes behind the lavatory pan, where in boyhood he had hidden his first penny packet of five Ogden Tabs cigarettes.
On his return to camp, he found an order awaiting him: to hold himself in readiness to proceed to Taranto in Italy, the port of embarkation for Suez and the East. After reading this, he hurried into Felixstowe, where Dr. Farina told him that the colloidal manganese had arrived from London. He was given an injection in the right buttock, after which he limped back to Manor Terrace, and feeling chilled, got into bed, where he lay in a fever of pain all night, his thigh feeling as though a bullet had gone through it. Renclair made him some tea, put on gramophone records to cheer him up, lit a fire, hummed songs from the Adelphi show, and then, as Phillip groaned and twisted, injected morphia in his arm. Ah, that’s better, sighed the patient, while Renclair, his eye-pupils no bigger than black pin-heads stroked his hair.
A week later the ante-room was more than half-empty. Even Renclair had gone with a draft. No embarkation order came for Phillip. News of the crumbling of the Central Powers was filling newspapers; Bulgaria had surrendered; Turkey was asking for an armistice; Allenby was in Damascus; the retreat of the German armies in the West was general from the North Sea to the Alps; there was a mutiny in the German navy at Kiel.
The order to stand by to proceed to Taranto was cancelled. This was followed by notification that no officers were required for the Indian Army. Every breakfast time there were maps in the newspapers, with half-familiar names—Valenciennes, Bruges, Mormal Forest—MONS.
It was over. It was ended. He sat in his bedroom of 9 Manor Terrace, at noon on 11th November, and mourned alone, possessed by vacancy that soon the faces of the living would join those of the dead, and be known no more.
But all was not yet done with. The officers paid an informal visit to the sergeants’ mess, where each drank one glass of beer, standing, the gracious bearded face of Lord Satchville rising above all. Phillip drank, too, dreading that his abstention be noticed. At night toasts were drunk in the officers’ mess, before all stood on their chairs, one foot on the table, and with linked arms sang Auld Lang Syne. At the top table Phillip, his rank of temporary captain confirmed, felt that at last he belonged to the old Regiment of Foot, as he saw before him the rows of 18-year-old fresh faces above standardised uniforms—cut close for economy, factory-made by commercial tailors become rich since the death of Kitchener’s Army on the Somme—modest youths, well-trained in the Cadet battalions, polite, respectful—and spared.
Up went the Very lights, scaling the edge of the sea; off went slabs of gun-cotton, mock shells of practice battle, tracers flicked away over the waves until stopped by a calm-spoken ‘Hen’ Sudley; down went the hot Irish whiskeys; up came the carpets; on went the hunt, scrums for waste-paper baskets across the parade ground and down passages outside the asbestos cubicles—even through some walls. The piano was surrounded, thumped by fists upon the upright case, the strings gave out twangings and occasional dumbness, being stuffed with papers, periodicals, and somebody’s boots, breeches, puttees, and tunic rammed in by a hitherto rather solemn red-headed subaltern combed out from the cavalry named Moynihan.
The owner of the clobber came in, swearing. He was a dark Jewish-looking fellow, wearing one wound stripe. Earlier that evening he had thrown a glass of whiskey and soda into the red-haired cavalry subaltern’s face. Royle had been drunk, of course, but just a little nasty with it.
Now he challenged Moynihan to a fight. Gloves were found, a ring made. There was but one blow, upon Royle’s chin: he staggered back, clawing the air and falling backwards all the way to the door, and beyond to the outer door, where, by the noise, he crashed over the threshold. But those who followed him could not find him. It turned out to be a put-up job; Royle had been a music-hall knockabout before the war, and that was part of his ‘business’, arranged with Moynihan.
The party ended in a midnight bathe, fully clothed, Phillip leading half-a-dozen of the pack into the sea.
Part I Battalion Orders by Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Satchville, G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., Commanding 3rd Battalion Gaultshire Regiment.
ISSUE NO. 277. Landguard. 19-11-18.
GERMAN SUBMARINES.
Section Order 2725 d/19-11-18 is republished for information—“Surrendered German Submarines are expected to arrive in Harwich Harbour on Wednesday and following days.
All ranks will refrain from making or taking part in any demonstrations of whatever description.”
The R.E. Pier and Harbour Front for 100 yards on either side of same are reserved for Officers and their families during the entry of the surrendered German Submarines into the Harbour. These submarines are expected in batches of 20 at about 12 Noon on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday next.
Phillip watched with others on the sea-wall. The submarines came in flying the Imperial German flag, red white and black, conning towers open and crews in white standing to attention upon the low decks. From each bow, rising at an angle of about thirty degrees, was extended a great jagged saw fixed to a cable which rose over the conning tower and sloped down to the stern—for cutting and passing through steel nets which were said to stretch from Dover to the French coast. But more immediately startling were the figureheads on the bows—Chinese dragons painted red and yellow, blue and white serpents, black wolves with open jaws, sharks’ heads, and even the profile of a red-faced laughing giant. They entered the harbour in line astern, two hundred yards between each craft. Some were rusty; they were of varying sizes; many of them had small quick-firing guns, but one, half as long again as the small fry, had what looked like a 6-inch gun. Not a movement among the crews, only the ribbons of their caps fluttering in the breeze; not a word from the onlookers as the U-boats went by in procession to surrender.
Such weariness; such sadness.
*
In the New Year the adjutant sent for Phillip and said, “The Colonel is asked to recommend the names of those officers who may wish to make the Army their career. It means an abbreviated course at Sandhurst, and as you will imagine, giving up temporary rank and also a certain amount of seniority. Private means are not essential, the scale of pay as you know has been stepped up, and for an unmarried officer should not present much hardship. How do you feel about the Army as a career, Phillip?”
“I don’t think I’m really cut out for it, Denis.”
“I think I know how you feel. Lord Satchville, by the way, wants you to accompany him tomorrow as his galloper, and to make notes of what happens when he addresses the disaffected troops at Ipswich. Odd, isn’t it, how the Old Man’s fame has spread?”
It was a matter of pride to the Gaultshires that their Colonel had succeeded where Generals had failed in the matter of pacifying other camps over demobilisation. The feeling was that the Frocks in Whitehall, eager for five more fat profiteering years in office, had rushed the Khaki election on slogans calculated to snatch votes, such as ‘Hang the Kaiser’, ‘Make Germany Pay’, and ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’, while failing to prepare for demobilisation; not only were there no new homes for heroes, but no concerted p
lans for the change-over from war to peace. Coal miners had gone, certainly, and classes for heavy industries, but for the great majority of those in other trades, particularly among the youngest soldiers, there was Sweet Fanny Adams; while many who had jobs waiting for them could not get away. It was the old free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can situation over again, summed up in the cynical soldier-phrase, ‘F—k you, Jack, I’m all right’.
Battalions were not going on parade; temporary colonels were usually on leave, eager to get back to the City, or the pickings of the Disposals Board sales, while the going was good and the shortages lasted. Some soldiers attempted to form Soldiers’ Councils, to take over command; their complaints were justified; who could speak for them? A name was passed about, ‘Lord Satchell’, which became in the Eastern Command a legend, a token of hope. Wisely the great man, who had been a Governor of one of the Indian States, and had deputised for the Viceroy for one period—the bearded Viking famous as sportsman and rowing blue—Grand Master of Freemasonry—was called to Eastern Command to put the case for the need for patience to the hundreds of thousands of Jacks who wanted to go home to the mis’es and the nippers.
“Will you be going, too, Denis?”
“Too much work here, old boy. You leave for Ipswich at ten ack emma tomorrow, by Rolling Royce.”
*
The character of Lord Satchville had been formed by a single-minded generosity directed upon the problems of others, to simplify their sense of duty. His courtesy was childlike in the pristine sense of the word. It was like the most simple poetry, which concealed the most skill. His manner was invariably kindly, which might by some be taken for softness; his mouth behind the yellow beard was gentle. His great height and appearance helped. Once, on a route march which passed through the town, Phillip’s company commander, Major Sir James Poins, a pre-war 3rd battalion militiaman, himself a tall figure with out-brushed moustaches, had said to him, as they marched at the head of the battalion behind the Colonel on his charger: “Have you noticed that every time Satchers goes by a plate-glass window he looks at his reflection?” Company commanders did not ride on route marches; only three chargers were kept for C.O., Second-in-command, and Adjutant, in reserve battalions at that time.
“I hadn’t noticed, Jimmy.”
“Vanity holds him together.”
“What’s the difference between vanity and pride?”
“There’s a distinction, of course. But Satchers knows he cuts a fine figure, and relies on it.”
The amusing thing about that remark was that when Satchville had gone on leave, and Poins had taken the battalion, riding the C.O.’s horse, Phillip had noticed Poins looking at himself in the same plate-glass window when they marched down the High Street.
When the Colonel addressed thousands of men in a camp near Ipswich he asked them to come as near as possible, “for I want to tell you the situation as clearly as I can, in my own words.
“There are millions of men in the Forces, and I am one of them. I think most of us want to get home to our jobs, to live again with our families, to be with our friends and children. Some of you will recall the difficulties of forming so many of us into new battalions, the hardships of living in fields, under canvas, which soon became seas of mud. You have lived through the greatest war in history, when millions like you have gone from their old lives to a strange new life, often beset with discomfort, and in some cases, hardship. These imperfect conditions arose through inexperience. But the character of our nation, which was formed by the overcoming of difficulties, whether it be a footballer who is determined to play better football, a mechanic who will do only his best work, a boxer who trains to win a contest, or a ploughman who takes pride in his horses and his straight furrows—the character of our nation has held us together in this terrible, and at times almost overwhelming period through which we have passed, leaving, alas, so many of our friends and comrades lying upon the field of battle.”
The Colonel paused, and blew his nose on a red bandanna handkerchief.
“Now we have a task before us, as a nation, a nation which is composed of us all, every man jack of us, to return our millions of soldiers, airmen, and sailors to a normal life of peace. It cannot be done in a few weeks. If ten thousand men go back to their homes and jobs daily, to send home a million men will take a hundred days. The machinery for demobilisation, and dispersal, cannot at the moment take a great many men, but as every day passes that machinery will be working smoother, expanding as it goes, until more and more men can be returned to their homes, after being given civilian suits, which are now being made during twenty-four hours of every day.
“To take the question of suits by itself: the factories all over Great Britain have been turning out bolts, or rolls, of serge cloth, dyed khaki and blue, for the Armies abroad and at home, and for our sailors. It isn’t easy to turn over, in the few weeks since the last bullets were fired, and the last shells have dropped upon the battlefields, to making cloths suitable for civilian life, now that peace has come.
“I am told, and I am only one of hundreds of junior officers commanding a battalion, that the Government wants every man to go back to a job, to help make articles for peaceful living, after more than four years of the factories pouring out materials for destruction. We do not want to see the long lines of men, waiting for work, that we saw before the war. We want better conditions. I think if all of us are patient, and face the problems of peace as we faced them in war, we shall do better than by trying to do too much, too soon.
“It can justly be asked, who am I to talk to you like this? I can reply that I am a man like you, with his own problems, for I am not a soldier by profession, but by necessity, and have tried to do always what I have thought to be my duty. I, too, want to go to my home in the country, to see my new trees, now in their rows in the nursery, planted out, to replace those trees which have been thrown in the war. I want to walk over grass again, to see my old friends in cottage and farm, to talk with them, to do what I can to make their new lives happy, before my time comes to lie in the ground where my parents lie, and their parents before them. But meanwhile there is a duty, to be patient, to await one’s turn, which will come when most of my old friends and comrades in the Regiment to which I belong have gone home before me.
“The General Officer Commanding Eastern Command has asked me to come before you today, to speak to you. It remains for me to thank you for listening to me, and to wish you all good luck in the days that lie ahead for us all.’’
Cheering faces, waving arms; tears streaming down the Old Man’s face; Phillip tremulous before the massed emotion.
*
Temporary infantry officers were invited to stay with the Forces for a period of one year, at increased rates of pay; a captain would receive 18s. 6d. a day, plus allowances. Phillip gave his name to Denis; and when next he went on leave, called on Colonel Vallum at the War Office, and was taken to lunch at the Naval and Military Club, where Phillip met again Major-General Mowbray, on leave from Cologne. Listening to the two great men talk, he learned much about the retirement of the German Armies from France, which Mowbray said was a marvel of foresight in preparation, and skill in withdrawal.
Phillip wrote the gist of it in his journal.
After we broke the Hindenburg Line, until Armistice, Mowbray said, we took a great number of prisoners, many of them deserters. The Censorship dealt lightly with this, and the bursting point of our Prisoner Camps, in order to keep up morale at home and the base.
Our aerial propaganda, by means of balloons with leaflets and other means, was cause of thousands of extra prisoners, virtually deserters.
The Germans deliberately left in our hands tens of thousands of bouches inutiles, to be fed and lodged and looked after, together with their own clerical staffs, hospital staffs, service corps, telegraphists; everyone they could spare was left behind to retard our advance, while withdrawing their fighting men—the Army proper and the engineers.
One of the f
irst signs civilians in occupied towns had of intended retreat was sudden departure of the numerous ‘camp followers’ including filles de joie, ‘the Frauleins’. The day after Germans evacuated Bruges, Mowbray was lunching at the Café des Milles Colonnes. It was stripped of every scrap of metal, as every other house and building in all towns: door handles, hat rails, gaseliers, fire-irons and fenders, etc. German officers had fed there since 1914. Daughter of proprietor told Mowbray that while ‘the Frauleins’ were there German officers always seemed to have plenty of money, but after they had left they were hard-up. “Which made one think,” commented M.
He said: “The Boche retreat was a marvel of logistique. They retired in light order, through undevastated country, where every means of transport was in good shape, and so their retreat was, for an army, at an exceptional pace. As for ourselves, we had to relay every railroad, for all the rails had been torn up. Every canal lock was smashed, water beginning to pour all over the country. Every railway bridge was blown up, blocking the road below it; all river-bridges lay in the rivers, every culvert was gone, all buildings utilisable as quarters and billets were razed. They left not one food building or munition store, only blackened ruins or shattered masonry”.
Main roads mined at regular intervals.
“Nothing impressed me more, as I followed the trail of the Boche in a staff motor, than the recurrent remarks of imperturbable Tommies stopping us to report, ‘Road mined, sir! You’ll have to go round by the fields—she’ll go up any minute!’”
He said the sappers did marvels laying down miles of light railways every day, but not half so many as the Boche had taken up the day before, having first “taken his munitions back with him, then lifted the rails, leaving us to bring up our ammunition and stores as best we could, after the long way round from the Channel bases”.
“We had also to build forward dumps for food, erect hospitalization units; and also build roads. Our main difficulty was food due to the delays of rolling stock, when got going, being blown up by delay-action mines dug-in under the permanent way.”
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