I was hauled before the General. I had to go through it all again. It seemed a bit of a job to find someone to be a VC. It was clear that not just anyone would do; on the other hand, if it had to be someone brave—’for valour’—how was that to be found? He looked at me—a bit reminiscent of Collinson I thought, but with somewhat different anxiety. Would I do? Could I possibly be made to look, with some degree of plausibility, like a hero? He seemed to doubt it. So did I. I had not forgotten that ridiculous college cap and the moon-face under it. To make matters worse I was feeling in a bad temper. If the General or Gatehouse wanted someone to be a VC why the devil didn’t they go and win one themselves?
“But you say you didn’t actually see any enemy falling?”
I considered this for a moment. “Well, there were some people falling, but I thought they were taking cover.”
He looked very disappointed and distressed. I felt sorry for the poor fellow— in so far as it is possible for a second lieutenant to be sorry for a General. I could see it was a terrible job to have to find war heroes out of people like me.
“You couldn’t—you are sure?—be sure any of them were killed?”
“No sir; they looked far too much alive for my health I thought.”
For a moment he almost smiled, though he must in fact have been having an anxious time.
“Somebody said there were a lot of German dead where I had been firing over the wall, but of course I couldn’t be sure how they got there.”
He didn’t seem to feel that this was very convincing. Nor did I. It had all the elements of a first class drama but obviously a hopeless cast.
He tried again. “The 51st Division sent a report about you…”
My mind went back to Edwards with his brain oozing out. It was too much. Though I had only had a few words with him I had seen his men’s response to his death; it was not all hate.
I looked at the General. He seemed a decent sort; quite different from Gatehouse whom at that moment I hated.
“Yes sir, Major Gatehouse told me. I thought it was exaggerated sir. I am sorry; I don’t know why they put in such a report.”
“Do you know the report?”
“No sir. Only Major Gatehouse said that after he had read it he decided to recommend me for a VC. I thought he meant the infantry report suggested that.”
“Well, don’t you want one?”
I wanted to explain that I thought the VC should be kept for people who deserved it. But all I could manage was, “Oh yes sir, very much… well, not really sir”, I finished lamely and miserably.
He did not seem entirely uncomprehending. “I shall of course have to send the report in—but it doesn’t rest with me.” He pushed back his chair. I felt it was a sign to me to leave and out I went.
I was exhausted. Probably the prolonged strain before action, screened by the battle itself, was now coming to the surface. Carter met me.
“Well, how did it go? Did you get a VC?” he asked ironically.
“I shouldn’t think so—I couldn’t think of anything to say.” “You ought to have learnt up your past properly beforehand.” I could not guess what was in the mind of this strange, grizzled, disillusioned but determined man. “See you later”, and he loped off with his long walking stick and swinging unmilitary stride.
17
THE next morning Carter, Quainton and I were having breakfast just below the Gouzeancourt Ridge by the edge of the wood. A gun limber with two panicky horses came over the ridge and raced towards us. “Looks as if someone’s in trouble—lost his limber for good I would think.” We went on with our breakfast.
I began to feel that something was wrong with the morning. It was rather like a bad dream without a dream. “Do you know”, I said to the others, “I keep on thinking I hear machine-guns. Like having goose flesh—”
Gatehouse appeared from his tent.
“I think something’s up sir”, said Carter. “Why, what’s…” Before he had finished his sentence an all too familiar sound froze us into silence.
“By God! You’re right!” Carter said to me. ‘You are hearing guns.”
We listened, taut, to the slow unmistakable pulse of a German machine-gun. The whine of bullets overhead clinched it.
“But the Line is a good ten miles away!”
Carter was grim. “The Line is now here. Back to where we started from—or further.”
The news, when we got it during the next hour or so, was this: the enemy had attacked the Salient formed by the successful attack on the 20th. After bitter fighting the Prussian Guard at Bourlon Wood had held our advance. His counter-attack was expected and his main attack on our left had been bloodily repulsed. His feint attack on our right had broken through our flimsy defence and what we were now watching as helpless unarmed spectators—we had two men, no tanks and the four of us—was the clever exploitation by the enemy of our disaster.
Watching from our cover at the end of the wood we were now able to see a sight that I have never forgotten—the Guards Division going into action. The operation was almost nonchalant, it was unfolded with such ease. Right across the plain to our right front the Guards advanced in open order. But for the rattle of machine-guns one might have been watching a troop exercise. They moved steadily up the slope, reached the Gouzeancourt Ridge and disappeared behind and beyond it. The sound of German machine-guns, so threatening, so close and so insistent, died away.
The Guards had been ordered to retake Gouzeancourt; they had done just that.
The battalion, though not our company, had been continuously engaged since November 20th. Now, ten days later, it was without tanks, having suffered very heavily at Bourlon Wood and after. It was therefore withdrawn to winter quarters where it was to be brought up to full strength and re-equipped.
It was a ‘permanent’ camp, that is, one made up of wooden huts. It was disposed on the slope near the crest of a hill and lay within the devastated area of the Somme battlefields. By the time that the remnant of our battalion was installed the rains had started. In the usually pouring rain Quainton, Hauser, Carter and I did our parades with a handful of men, and in between whiles visited the rest of the battalion to gather news of how they had fared.
We knew that our company casualties were exceptional; but for three tank crews who had not gone into action, and Quainton, Hauser and myself, we had been wiped out on the advance up the slope from the Grand Ravine. What we did not know was that the exceptional nature of the disaster lay only in the speed with which it had occurred.
Our visits showed us that news was hard to come by; only a few newly-joined subalterns seemed to be about and they could not answer any of our inquiries. The battalion officers’ mess was not yet in being, officers messing in the quarters of their respective companies; therefore there was no way of meeting the officers assembled as a whole. However, I met a Sergeant Robinson of A Company. He could not tell me much as he had missed the action through illness, but his officer was a man called Green — in peace time a barrister, intelligent and with a kindly but acute wit, with whom I had spent a Saturday in Bournemouth. There had been nothing to do, but it was a fine afternoon and we wandered about the lifeless resort. He, and his barrister friend Ball who was with us, made the desperate nullity pass easily till we could at last decently return to camp. If I could find him we might even relieve the ugliness of this desolate hole. I asked Robinson how he was; I cannot imagine why I was surprised to hear he was dead. I did not ask about Ball. Later, when I heard from Gull about other officers, I was glad I had not, for Ball was said to have broken down and crawled underneath his tank and refused to move.
Later in the afternoon I met an officer of C Company, Dawson, whom I knew by sight. Yes, he had come through all right. No, he didn’t know about the others; he thought one or two may have been wounded—no use to ask about the ones who had not possibly been wounded. I asked how he had got on. He appeared vague. What had impressed him most was the Prussian Guard. “They finally got right on
top of the tank, trying to shove their bayonets through our loop holes. Twice I got a Mills grenade onto the roof and blew the lot of them off. Do you know, they got our Lewis guns under their arms so we couldn’t fire! I think the whole damn lot were doped. They came at us in mass formation and while we could fire it made no difference.” Dawson was a solid unimaginative man; when he said these things had happened I was sure they had. He began to repeat himself, reciting monotonously bits of the story I had already heard.
Quainton and I disengaged ourselves to see if we could find anyone else. We met the Colonel, spruce and soldierly as ever, making the rounds with Gull who was equally dapper. Quainton was wearing a beautiful beaver lamb trench coat. The Colonel looked at him enviously. Next to the Prince of Wales, Quainton was more likely than anyone else to cause the bleating note to come into Gull’s voice. He tolerated me because, like Cohen, I was usually in Quainton’s company. The Colonel who knew all his officers by name—”a truly Royal Attribute”, said Gull—spoke to both of us. We could not very well ask how things had gone with him and we did not expect him to know any more than he knew about Lewis guns in a tank. “Did you see how he looked at my coat?” Quainton asked me gleefully as we saluted and took our leave.
As the days went by new faces appeared. Robinson, a small, dapper, alert ex-infantryman; Cartwright, a tallish, pale-complexioned, newly commissioned officer without war experience or, it sometimes seemed to me, any other. Both these were posted to my section and when I was promoted Captain to command it Cartwright took over my crew—O’Toole, L/Cpl Forman, Driver Allen, Gunner Hayler, Gunner Allen.
Hauser, although in our battalion in England, was hardly known to me. He was promoted to section commander; from now on he played an increasing part in my life. He and his crew seemed to live on terms of mutual exasperation. At Ypres, before we went into action, he and his crew were one day on more than usually bad terms. In sudden exasperation he put his driver out of the tank saying, “Here, give me the controls”, and drove it straight into a large water-filled shell-hole. Getting out he addressed them. “Now you’ve got something to grouse about! Fix the unditching beam, get it out of that mess, and come and tell me when you’ve cleaned it up.”
We were none of us surprised to hear one of the men mutter behind his stocky retreating figure, “I’ll shoot that bloody little German bastard first time we get into action, you see if I don’t.” They never did. They came near to worshipping him, and if it were possible to make an idol out of a short-sighted, crop-headed, dark-haired, irascible little man they would have done it. I tried to find out from him how he had managed, with a name like that, to be accepted by the army, but never succeeded. It was the only subject which made him look as if he was feeling amused by the recollection. “I told them I came over from the Hanseatic League and was meaning to work my passage back to Germany.” He wrinkled up his nose with a characteristic cross between a sniff and a snuffle. It was difficult to tell whether he was amused or irritated.
We both knew we were in the running to be promoted to section commanders. More highly favoured than either was Quainton who was popular with most, but hated by Clifford, Homfray, Broome and others who considered him, like me, to be one of the smug, pious crowd. Homfray was a Carthusian who affected superior, lackadaisical ignorance of anything so vulgar as soldiering. The affectation concealed a genuine and profound unfitness for his job. I now think it was a by-product of the cover-up system of the public schools’ unfitness for training the leaders of a great nation.
Looking back it seems to me we never allowed ourselves to realize that the 5th Battalion, to which we had become so attached in England, had ceased to exist. A new battalion was taking shape under our eyes.
Bagshaw had gone, no one knew why. He was probably useless when he came to us as a section commander and was certainly useless afterwards. Our Major had gone and his place had been taken by Gatehouse. Clifford—’tape worm’, he was tall and thin—Homfray, and Captain Cook, promoted to second in command, were our senior officers. A swarthy, greasy-faced young man called Green completed our company officer strength. Drafts of twenty or thirty new men came in from day to day. Their names had to be learned and our lists of crews amended as they were allocated.
The Colonel sent for me. I was to return to Harrincourt Wood with two tank crews chosen from the men in the battalion who had not been in action. There were three tanks in working order there; these I was to take over from Corps Workshops who expected us. Our job?
The front was now stabilized, but the gunners wanted our help. To the right of Gouzeancourt there were some half dozen 9.2 howitzers. The gunners would tell us where they were; they were stranded between British and German lines. It was imperative that we should get them back and not let them fall into German hands. The gunners thought—and, said the Colonel, he quite agreed with them—it would be easy for a tank to go up to them at night, shackle tow lines to them and pull them out of non-man’s land to safety behind our lines.
It was dangerous of course. Nobody could be such a fool as to suppose that one could clank enormous cables and towing chains about no-man’s land at dead of night in the neighbourhood of valuable big guns without setting off retaliatory fire. The Germans had now become sensitive to the presence of tanks. Indeed, they learned then a lesson which became useful to them in 1939.
The orders might have been less unwelcome had I thought the Colonel had any idea of the nature of the hazard to which we were committed. But I doubted it. I had achieved a state of mind in which I felt aggrieved that I had to fight. Romance, such as sustained me before Ypres, had gone; yet I could not say what was the matter.
I unburdened myself to Quainton. His contribution must have impressed me for I have never forgotten it. On a slip of paper he wrote, “Above all do not forget you are in good hands”, and slipped it into my pocket. ‘God’s hands’ he meant of course. It soothed me. But there was something wrong with me—or religion. For one thing the words had an ephemeral value, short-lived like the military music of the massed bands of the 51st Division before action, or a tot of rum after it. I felt self-conscious as I had when I knelt publicly to say my prayers in the marquee.
The journey was interminable, but I was relieved to be out of the camp. Preparations had already started for the Christmas celebrations—casks of beer, great joints of meat, meaningless decorations in the mess hut. I do not remember ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men’, but it would not even have seemed incongruous had it been there. On the great day itself they would be canned to a man: that I did know.
One advantage of army travel was that one became a postal packet, someone else’s responsibility. When I arrived at rail-head I was turned out into the darkness and pouring rain by the RTO. He had to see that an officer got off that train at that rail-head. Having done so he could go back to the shelter of the warm, dimly-lit fug of his office. Someone saluted; it was the driver of the car to take me to Brigade HQ. My men I would meet the next day where they had gone to take over the tanks.
The car stopped, I got out and a guide took me along a communication trench to Brigade HQ. The Very lights along the front floated up into the darkness, burned white for a while and flickered away. It was a silent, rhythmical display.
I suggested I should look at the first of the guns we were to tow out. The guide was uncommunicative; I was in the way, a bloody nuisance who had spoiled a potentially quiet evening. We came to a spot where I had to leave the trench and crawl. A monstrous shape rose out of the ground; it was the first of the howitzers. I could make nothing of it till a Very light flared up and showed the silhouette. Someone had painted on it in large white letters, ‘Crack O’Doom’. The enemy gunners had registered on it with such accuracy that it was a total wreck. It could not possibly have been towed anywhere. I stumbled and a burst of machine-gun fire warned me to mend my ways. There was nothing to be done; I collected enough detail to report and crawled back to the trench. The guide was waiting.
At
HQ I made my report. No one was interested; I gathered that the HQ staff were against the project from the first. The next day I was ordered to take my men back to the battalion; the scheme had been cancelled.
18
CHRISTMAS Eve. Now for the jollifications.
The camp was dilapidated. When snow fell that night there was not a hut into which it had not driven, covering the sleeping men with an inch of freezing slush by morning. I was not surprised that I saw the first drunks by 9.30. An A Company sergeant arrested them and put them in the Guard room.
It was customary for the officers to wait on the men at Christmas dinner. Surprisingly this was not an occasion for settling scores; in spite of the opportunity it offered it passed off in good humour and friendly expressions. By the time it had become alcoholic the officers had withdrawn. I was disconcerted to find that the men were not known to us. I was fortunate in having four of my original crew present, but Hauser, Quainton and Broome had none, and men of other crews were still not more than faces to us.
After our own dinner the three of us, with Cartwright, Green and Robinson, sat on in the hut that served as our company mess. We must all have been oppressed by the lack of familiar faces. The new officers were surprised that we knew as little of the men as they did. When we talked of this and explained why, the conversation rapidly petered out. Either we knew little of our job as officers or else…
It was clear that something terrible must have happened at Cambrai. Robinson, who had been wounded during previous service with the infantry, asked if the battalion had been “unlucky”. No; it had not occurred to us that the battalion had been unlucky.
“On the contrary”—it was Hauser speaking—”we’ve been damned lucky. The 51st Division had never had so few casualties—not even in trench warfare. They told us that in an advance of over five miles they had had only six men wounded.”
The Long Week-End 1897-1919 Page 20