We worked our way back through the high velocity area, through the zone of shelled men, back to… And then I remembered I had on me my leave pass which the Colonel had caused to be dated as valid from 4.30 that day. I was to be picked up by a box-body car at the cross-roads of the village from which our attack had started. Of course such a point, well marked, easy to refer to by map reference co-ordinates, would be the focus of attention by enemy gunners. At that cross-roads I was to remain till picked up—alive or dead?—by the box-body.
The sun was still high. I leant against the warm brickwork and waited. The shelling was not heavy but it was accurate and monotonous. It blasted the houses of that cross-roads; they were rhythmically blotted out. I did not want to miss the box-body. I sat down on a chunk of masonry. It was like watching the ruined camp at Messines when time ceased to flow.
The gun—I decided that it must be a single one alone—was firing at extreme range or I would not have been able to hear its shells coming. I decided to lie down to save myself the bother of throwing myself flat each time. How boring it all was. I thought I heard the box-body coming. The driver was driving like hell. I also heard the shell coming—like hell. I thought it would be a dead heat.
As the smoke and rubble dust cleared I saw the box-body, stationary, with racing engine. I scrambled into the back. “Home John!” I bawled. By the time the next shell arrived we were clear of the cross-roads and a hundred yards away on the road to Boulogne.
38
I MUST have been fortunate in the timing of the journey for by 4.30 the next afternoon I was in the terminal stages of a turkish bath near Russell Square. It was quiet and two old fellows were discussing an item in the evening paper.
“I see”, said one mellow voice to the other, “we’ve been over the top again.” There was a note of complacency, of pride in his voice.
How nonplussed he would have been if he had known that one of ‘us’ was listening hot, indignant. ‘We’ indeedl Who the hell was he to say ‘we’? Now I can understand the genuine note of sadness for the comradeship that had passed him by, though it surprises me that I think of ‘comradeship’ in this context at all. I have no memory of thinking of the men of my crews in that action. I must have told them to report back to Company HQ. I remember joining with another crew who were going out of action with their tank—the only one, as it turned out, to survive the action—because I had to refuse a terribly mangled infantry soldier a lift. He was grotesque, like the German’s ‘kamerad’. He should have made me laugh if only I had retained my prep school sense of humour about physical deformity. “Hullo, fig-ear”, we said—if we were big enough to be safe from retaliation—to a boy whose ears bore a striking resemblance to that fruit. Or, “Look sharp Hobson!”, to a boy whose features were so distorted that he was known as ‘hatchet face’. What fun, what wit! If only one could have seen the funny side of a grown man with his trousers full of faeces because his leg had been blown past his earl Of course all that had been at 4.30 yesterday. At 4.30 today I was very comfortable in my turkish bath.
“Mother, Mother… You will write to my mother sir, won’t you?”
“No, blast you, I shan’t! Shut up! Can’t you see I don’t want to be disturbed?” These old ghosts, they never die. They don’t even fade away; they preserve their youth wonderfully. Why, you can even see the beads of sweat, still fresh, still distinct, against the pallor of their brows. How is it done? Like the dewdrops on the petals of Rédoutés roses. Marvellous isn’t it? So, so… death-like, isn’t it? But of course it’s just a trick—he’s not really dead, you know. Please, please shut up. I will write, I really will. To Mother England—that old whore!
The turkish bath was very refreshing; I felt so clean. It’s not real, you know; just a kind of trick. Really, of course, one stinks. They have a way of making people look so life-like, but really we are dead. I? Oh yes, I died—on August 8th 1918. We all had a good laugh about it at the Club where the rats—there was one old chap, bald, bloated, corpse-fed, who sat on my chest one night—it made me laugh because his whiskers tickled my face…
“Are you all right?” I awoke with a jolt, sense of humour all gone, to find the bath attendant peering into my face. “Excuse me sir, but I think you must have been dreaming.” I hurried. I had not left much time to catch my train to Cheltenham where my mother was staying to be near my sister at school.
Cheltenham was very beautiful. The weather was good too. The shops were very nice. I liked the school too; that, I thought, was very nice when I went to hear a school concert. I often said so when people asked me. I think they wanted me to be enjoying my leave, not to be dwelling too much on what I suppose they thought were the horrors of the war. In fact I was not dwelling on the horrors of anything. Yes, I certainly thought Cheltenham was very nice. I stressed how ‘very’ nice it was. But although I did my best I seemed unable to convey a convincing degree of appreciation. Once only I felt I had established an emotional contact and that with a maiden lady, Miss Collar, with whom I had stayed on my holidays from school when my parents were not in England.
Miss Collar was a stout lady who wore pince-nez which were always highly polished and added brilliance to the professional jollity—she was joint owner of a boarding house for missionaries—of her welcome to her patrons. I did not think she liked me, an impression which was deepened when I once heard her, in tragic tones, describing how I had helped her by scrubbing out one of the baths in the establishment. I had, I remembered, done it very thoroughly by actually scrambling about inside the bath the better to reach the less accessible parts. I think—but I am not sure—that I had removed my boots before getting in. “And do you know”, she was saying in an awe-struck whisper, “he actually used up one whole tin of Vim!” I realized she was talking about me; I slunk off thinking perhaps I may not have washed all the Vim out when I had finished. But when I saw her next she had recaptured her usual sparkle. I, however, never achieved the equanimity which I felt was expected of me.
On this occasion at Cheltenham she seemed less formidable though remaining physically undiminished, perhaps because her vegetarian diet had saved her from the worst rigours of rationing. She was ill at ease when she drew me aside to make a special and private request. After one or two cursory conventional questions about what it was like to be in action with tanks, she came to the point that was really exercising her.
“What was it like”, she asked, “when you drove your tank over people?”
To this I had to give some thought. Certainly I had been very afraid, when I was leading a tank from in front, outside, by signalling to the driver through his front flap. But I had never driven over anyone; I had to admit that the experience had so far escaped me. I thought she seemed disappointed when we rejoined the banalities of more general conversation.
Relations with anyone I respected were intolerable, notably with my mother; I wanted nothing except to get back to the Front just to get away from England and from her. I can only hope she had a similar wish to be rid of me.
At last I had said good-bye and was leaning out of the train window. “Mind the door”, I warned her, “it’s filthy.” “Everything”, she said, near to tears, “is dreadful… I mean nothing is really cleaned up nowadays.” And so we parted.
She died some months before it was certain that the war was to be fought again in 1939. Then her eyes rested on a vase of spring flowers and she was already confused. “The heads of the flowers are drooping. I can hold them up no longer. Will you hold them up for me?” She lost consciousness and died soon after.
39
THE battalion was again at Blangy when I rejoined it. It had changed out of recognition. Aitches had been reported by Carter to the Brigadier for having failed to be at his correct place in our last action. Since this was indistinguishable from the arrest of a senior officer by a junior, the Brigadier had strongly advised Carter to abandon his intention and Carter had wisely but reluctantly agreed. The matter was thus forgotten and a seal se
t upon oblivion by the return of Aitches to England to aid in the formation of a new battalion. As few people believed he would ever be so indiscrete as to be sent to a righting front again, it seemed to be wiser in everyone’s interest if his long experience in action with tanks could be employed in high rank in a training battalion. He had engaging manners and being in this respect unhampered by the regular army polish it was felt that he would be just the man to co-operate with the new democratic people’s army which was beginning to emerge.
Holden, now taking over from Aitches, was an intelligent ex-infantryman who had been heard to mutter, “Oh God our help in Aitches past” when Aitches’ promotion had first been announced on parade. In fact poor Aitches died of influenza within two weeks of being posted back to England. I like to think that his war memorial would set out his military virtues in glowing terms of appropriate splendour. But I doubt it for there was something unloved and pathetic about him.
The fact that Carter, Hauser and I were the only three officers who remained of our original company served as a link, perhaps the only one, between us. Carter was set in his ways and preserved the nervous, bigoted patriotism of a colonial age; Hauser seemed to have no views but to retain a lively, irritable impatience for the incompetence which he associated with all things British; I retained the remains of a disintegrated moral system in which I had been brought up and to which I clung because I had nothing better to put in its place.
The war situation had altered profoundly since our last refit and reinforcement at Blangy. Victory instead of defeat stared us in the face, but it wore so strange a look that it was scarcely less frightening. There were rumours that we would shortly be in action again, probably not far from the Drocourt-Queant Switch on which the Hindenburg defence system hinged.
Ultimately we moved by companies, not to be reunited again as a battalion in action, though right at the end we had orders to move just before the armistice came into effect. But of an armistice there were as yet not even rumours. In so far as the end of the war came into our calculations, it was dismissed as a very old joke from which the humour had long departed. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the battalion no longer had the outlook in which such jokes could thrive. Not enough time in which to absorb too many lessons inevitably led to the learning of one or two and the neglect of all others. It was evident that catch phrases such as ‘the first seven years are the worst’, ‘remember the hundred years war’, had no relevance in tank warfare, but no more appropriate form of wry humour had grown to take their place. Some tank commanders escaped being killed long enough to be promoted to command sections. As section commanders their expectation of life was greater; they might accordingly survive to reach to the command or second in command of companies. For noncommissioned ranks it was virtually impossible to reach safety by promotion—as Sergeant OToole had shown. Slight wounds were so rare that the avenues of escape were restricted to chronic invalidism or forms of elaborate foot-dragging. After August 8th there were no senior officers with actual experience of tanks in action, and no junior officers who could reasonably suppose they had a chance of survival to higher rank. My interventions in action convinced me I was not doing my job as a section commander, but I was unable to imagine how I should do it. The prospect of action was one of loafing about on a battlefield in a highly vulnerable position both with regard to wounds—though this was no worse than for the infantry—and to reputation. The latter I had seen with dreadful clarity in the last action just before the tank was destroyed. It was to be brought home to me again before the end at Sequehart.
Looking back now it amazes me that I do not remember any occasion when it occurred to me or any of my friends to debate the military wisdom of our procedures. It is the more surprising that a critical attitude was common enough but never took a constructive form. It did not occur to me, or any tank commander of whom I heard, to report that Ypres was unsuitable for tank warfare.
Someone had to think of Cambrai and apply its lessons at Amiens on August 8th. The tank commanders who might have provided the initiative and knowledge were either killed in action or too stunned, stupefied, to contribute anything.
We complained. We complained of the Guards, of the Engineers for having no pontoons or bridges available when the bridge collapsed under the tank at Cambrai; we complained that there were no reserves when the enemy’s feint attack succeeded in doing what his main attack could not do; we complained of the futility of the cavalry reserve, though I remembered thinking how impressive they looked as they went forward on the evening of November 20th; I remembered thinking how impressive they looked when I saw them lying dead in scores where they had been mown down by a solitary machine-gunner who had been presented by the Scots Greys with a target he had been unable to find in the open order advances of the infantry. I had been impressed by the 11th French Division who regarded their lunch as of more importance than a solitary machine-gunner who was whiling away the time by firing at nothing in particular; I had been impressed—so had we all—by the Commander of the 32nd Division who did not believe tank officers who thought their tanks required the protection of darkness, natural or artificial, against a resolute enemy gunner on August 12th, even after the German gunner officer at Cambrai had dropped a very broad hint by leaving his mark on our company. I was again impressed when I saw a photograph in The Times of postwar army manoeuvres; it showed a small number, three or four, of mounted cavalry men, the caption explaining that it was of a ‘Cavalry patrol bringing in a captured machine-gunner’. It did not say what bait they had used and I was too busy wondering how I was going to earn a living to write a letter asking my betters for enlightenment. Besides, wasn’t the war over? Had we not won? 1 was at Oxford then and no one had told me that in return for such privileges I was expected to contribute intelligence to the government of the country even if, as was certainly true, nobody would pay the slightest attention. I had not learned that any fool can engage in a successful action but that what was required, even in peace time, was the courage or brains to contribute one’s quota in the face of defeat or probable defeat.
Haig had won his war, but his blunders—which he must have been intelligent enough to know—are now becoming increasingly clear to anyone who can be bothered to learn of them. Why a man with the defects common to all men became and remained Commander-in-Chief is a question which can only be answered, if ever, when it is known why an ordinary man comes to be recognized as ‘great’ while all other ordinary men remain ordinary. Blangy itself was familiar but a change was taking place, confusing and made additionally complex by occurring in an unfamiliar domain, the domain of the mind, the personality, the spirit. Even now it is difficult to formulate the shift of emphasis; although the thing itself has been known to exist for countless generations there is still no adequate vocabulary for its comprehension. I can say that while the battalion was at Blangy it was receiving new tanks; it was being reinforced with new men many of whom came from mining districts and whose whole youth had been devoted to learning the ‘trade’ of a miner; weapons and ammunition were readily available to refit. But I cannot so easily say why there was a belief that the army was near to achieving victory over the enemy.
40
CONJECTURE must now take the place of facts which I was too inexperienced to observe when they were there to observe. I did not have the ability to recognize that I was in a state of inner turmoil in an external world of emotional upheaval. There were two events which had a powerfully stimulating effect upon me.
The death of Aitches was talked about in our company mess chiefly in terms of incredulity, hatred and contempt. In the course of these talks I heard from older men something of the world from which he came. It was a world of great wealth in which the values I had always taken as established, unalterable, eternal, were regarded as a curious aberration particular to the poor, the vulgar, the contemptible and the weak. Aitches belonged to nothing. I could see he was as much an outsider in his father’s world as I wo
uld be if I had had to associate with wealthy gaol birds, horse-racing addicts, the questionable type of journalism that thrived on the fringes of blackmail. Of this world I know more now, but only that part of it which strives, usually ineffectually, to escape from the thraldom which is felt but not apprehended. While I felt contempt for Aitches I was never sure that I was not the same kind of coward, separated only by the thinnest of thin partitions.
The second event was that news came through from a prisoner of war telling of the death of Asser. For some reason which was unclear, but I guessed to be the exhaustion of the crew, they were unable to continue fighting and Asser gave orders to evacuate. The enemy surrounded the tank calling on each man to surrender as he came out. They were helpless and put up their hands. Asser did not. To the call to surrender he replied, “I’m damned if I will.” He was apparently still holding his revolver and no enemy could take risks if that was so. So he was shot and died instantly, being left where he was found later by Cook.
Though this story added nothing to what had already been guessed it was extremely disturbing to me. The first impression was one of utter waste; then a feeling that I could never in such circumstances do my duty knowing that there could not possibly be any other outcome. After Cambrai it was obvious to me, though even then not till a considerable time had passed, that I could have been killed a number of times over by the sniper in the tree-top. In the last attacks made before we were relieved by the French at Wytschaete I knew in my heart that if the enemy reached our trenches I could not go on fighting. I do not understand courage such as Asser’s. I can easily understand all the explanations I have ever heard, but I cannot understand the thing itself. I have never heard of any instance of the hopeless war waged by individuals of any race or creed without feeling that in their position I could not be what they are. I cannot honestly say “With the grace of God there might I go also”.
The Long Week-End 1897-1919 Page 30