“Look around Pimple, ’tis an interesting sight. Some war artist ought to paint it.”
He walked to the highest point of the plateau, for the view. Here the waterless shell-craters looked to be as fresh as when they had burst out of the dark brown soil, except for one difference. Lying lip to lip, the holes, six to eight feet deep and with sloping sides, each held its relic of privacy and meditation. Here had come solitary man to escape from the world as he knew it, to be alone for a while, and ease himself of constricting thought. Here each shell-hole had its offering, with an appearance of having been placed precisely as pollen in the cells of a bees-comb. A few moments of freedom, of dissolved self-in-servitude, for the private soldier who had none of the comforts of the officer, or of the officer’s escape from his private self through responsibility.
As the contour line descended, so did water begin to lie in the craters. He saw in front of him a slight mound, a stalkless mushroom of earth, which might have been the part-levelled tumulus of some ancient chieftain. A score of dead Germans lay sprawled around The Pimple, down into which went the shaft of a dug-out. Others lay in shell-craters half-filled with crimson water. He decided the colour was not due to blood, for other craters, without corpses, held water of the same hue. Every pocket of trouser and jacket had been either pulled out or razor cuts made to get at the contents. None wore equipment or had carried rifles: a massacre of surrendered prisoners had taken place. All had young faces. When he got back he asked what had happened. Fenwick said it was done before they came up, but as the Guards, who never took prisoners, hadn’t been in the line there, it must have been the work of rookies enjoying their first taste of heroism.
“We’re fighting a system, which keeps down the working man, an’ I believe t’ working man everywhere in the world should have a proper chance. We must smash militarism,” he said sombrely, as he puffed his pipe. “I don’t believe in injustice to prisoners. Such acts prolong ’atred. ‘All Weather Jack’ agrees with me. He’s a real gentleman, money or no money. Ah, here he comes.” Footfalls echoed down the steep wooden steps.
Captain Hobart said, “I’m afraid the horse doctor’s got it in for you, Sticks. The Brigadier wants to see you about those three mules you had to destroy. Fortunately the report forwarded to Brigade by Division was couched in pretty strong terms, which reveal well that the A.D.V.S. is no friend of yours. I’ve done what I could to put things right with the brigade major. You know where he hangs out? About a hundred yards up the Pusieux road, on the left in an old Boche dug-out at the foot of the steep escarpment you’ll see there. Let’s have a spot before you go.”
Escarpment, it sounded like a brown cliff of sandstone. He asked what it meant.
“A precipitous side of a hill or valley. You see a natural escarpment on the Wiltshire downs, where weather has eroded a cattle path, and chalk and flints have fallen. Keep smilin’, and tell the General what happened. They were goners when you gave them the coup de grâce.”
On the way back whizzbangs shrieked down and spirted up earth beside the road. He walked on. The general was sitting at a table just behind a blanket hung over a door-frame with broken hinges. Someone had taken the door for firewood. The room had been the telephonists’ room in a German brigade head-quarters, judging by the panel on one wall. White-haired, quiet-voiced, ruddy of face, with impersonal blue eyes, the fifty-five-year-old Brigadier pushed the report across the table. He himself had been up before the Corps Commander, when one of his battalions, in the line for the first time a fortnight before the machine-gun company had joined his brigade, had left in so disillusioned, otherwise exhausted a condition that some of the feebler troops had thrown away their rifles, Lewis guns, and equipment. The battalion commander had already gone home “sick”; the brigadier wondered when he would be “stellenbosched”. He was what was called by younger men a Dugout: a colonel in the Boer War, he had retired in 1912. As for the Major-General commanding division, he had come from Gallipoli, which had been a “poor show”; while, senior to the Divisional General, the Corps Commander felt that his Army Commander, a thrusting cavalryman who in two years had advanced from a brigade to an army, might at any moment render him degommé for lack of aggressive spirit. Phillip’s eyes skated over the typed page.
This officer has repeatedly ignored General Routine Orders, culminating in arbitrary and unnecessary destruction of miltary property at a time when submarine sinkings of mule boats——
He read no further, but waited with lowered eyes for what was coming, trying to appear calm. Was it to be a court martial? The Brigadier barely looked at him.
“What is your side of the matter?”
“Sir?”
“Why did you shoot three of your mules?”
“If I hadn’t shot them, sir, they would have been dead in half an hour. They were beat, sir. We tried to get them up, but they wouldn’t move. I think they had pneumonia, sir.”
“You should report sickness or wounds without delay to your officer commanding, so that the appropriate action can be taken in time.” He was dismissed.
Followed by the thin figure of Morris, peaky upon Jimmy the mule, Phillip walked his horse down Railway Road, feeling jubilant. The mud was hardening. A purple sun went down upon a scene soon to become rock.
That night the boots of Cutts, the first man on picket duty, froze to the ground as he tried to fan with his helmet yellow heatless flames from sodden poplar logs picked up in the marsh. Phillip, returning from taking rations, fell asleep before his stove and found on awakening that the toecaps of his boots were brittle and cracked.
The next day the drivers’ red-rimmed eyes ran with tears that glazed upon their cheek-bones. Iron leggings of wheel-drivers—those nearest the limber whose right legs were protected from being crushed against the pole—caused some pain; finger-tips stuck to the iron when touched. Through the opaque valley air the rolling wheels came loud and continuous under the pall of frost, which dulled the glitter of stars and made milky the distant flares. It was Sergeant Rivett’s turn to take up rations. Phillip could not keep warm on his camp bed; there was not enough fuel for his stove and the picket’s fire-bucket, so his sand-bag shelter was cold. He spent an hour walking about to keep warm, and then, seeing a light on the hillside—he had walked to Station Road—he went up, to find a party of Canadian railway engineers in a hut with a roaring fire, drinking rum. Soon he was sitting among smiling faces; some time later he staggered home, and had the luck to meet the ration limber returning from the line. He got in and lay in the back of the vehicle, on what seemed to be an endless bumpy journey, careless and happy.
*
Sergeant Rivett brought to him, one morning after the post had arrived, a driver with fixed staring eyes. A letter from home had told him that his wife and two small children had been killed in the explosion at Silvertown, the Thames-side chemical factory of Brunner, Mond & Co. Acres of small houses had been flattened. Driver Tallis had one son, of five years, left; and the little boy was crying all the time for his father. Would Mr. Maddison, sir, forward his application for compassionate leave to the Officer Commanding?
“I’ll go right away. I am very sorry, Tallis. Of course the police will have to verify this, you know. It is the usual rule.”
“I have already advised Driver Tallis to write to the police at Silvertown, and ask them to send verification at once to Captain Ho-bart,” said Rivett.
“Well done. Good man. But I think it would be as well for it to come officially to the Officer Commanding, sergeant. Anyway, I’ll go at once to the orderly room, and see that a wire is sent off.”
Three days later Driver Tallis left for home—or what was left of it—on six days’ compassionate leave.
*
Paper orders arrived every day. The most important was that mules were to be used as pack animals wherever possible, over unmetalled tracks. Thereafter was some easement for the donks, and warmth for dismounted drivers, one leading an animal. Mule robberies occurred; lin
es were raided by other units, to make good losses and so avoid strafing by the Blue-banded Dogsbody, as the A.D.V.S. was called. Two mules were lost one night, one of them Jimmy. But the tall and very hairy grey Jimmy was not easily concealed; and four evenings later he was seen to be walking contentedly in an R.F.A. string of mixed mules and horses, with a wooden box containing four 18-pounder shells strung through each stirrup leather—improvised pack equipment. Phillip stopped the man leading Jimmy, saying, “That’s my mule! That’s Jimmy! Hand him over.” The man was embarrassed: what would he do with the shell boxes? Phillip said he didn’t care; Jimmy had been scrounged, the company mark, HO, was clipped on his flank. So the big grey mule came back to the company, as quietly as he had left it, and as though with complete indifference to what unit he worked with.
A stray dog came into the lines, to accept many caresses and lumps of bully beef. The men said it was a German dog, because it had one blue and one brown eye. Little Willie was as undemonstrative as Jimmy the Mule, and remained on the stretcher-bed before the stove until a thaw came. Then, apparently seeking nicer food, it was next seen riding in an A.S.C. lorry in Albert, looking out of the window beside the driver, and licking its chops. It rode there for a week or so, and then, according to the driver, transferred itself to the Canadian Railway Engineers, for a diet of tinned salmon.
About this time an order was sent that transport officers were to supervise the making and planting of vegetable gardens adjacent to their lines.
“What do you think we could plant in this mud, Nolan?”
“Well, sir, I hardly know. We might try rice in the swamps down there, or watercress.”
“How about toadstools? We can present then to the Blue-banded Dogsbody.”
Pinnegar’s comment was, “That’s the sort of tripe you’d expect, after they’ve given the Master-baker at Rouen the Military Cross!”
*
One morning he took two limbers to Englebelmer, for the task of moving boxes of bombs and small ammunition from the dump at Vitemont to another beside the cemetery at Auchonvillers. They passed a windmill on the right of the road, where the ground stood high. It was now the fourth week of February. The frost having lifted, in places the wind had dried out patches of metalling on the road. At twilight, having delivered the load, and when he was about to turn round, M’Kinnell, an old and steady Scots driver with two sons serving in the B.E.F., pointed his whip to the east, where the new moon was rising over the old battlefield, and said, “Yon fires, have you seen them?” Nolan, the other driver, remarked, “Jerry seems to be having some fun over there, sir.” Three fires were visible in the far distance.
When they reached Englebelmer more fires were speckling the country lying to the east under the night; and on returning to the transport lines in Mesnil, lit by the flashes of a bombardment, he found Teddy Pinnegar waiting with the news that the Germans were evacuating their forward trenches, and the transport must be ready to pull out at four hours’ notice.
M’Kinnell and Nolan had brought back a good load of firewood. Phillip and Teddy sat before the stove, and had a drink or two of whiskey before they went up the line together, both on foot, leading the limbers with rations and ammunition. The road was lit by blue and white flashes.
“The gunners are pooping off all the shells they can, before the move forward,” said Teddy.
The next morning the transport lines were advanced about a mile to beyond Hamel. The new camp was in a gully which had lain in Noman’s-land until the battle of 13 November. There a tank was stuck, bellied in the ground, its guns taken away. Phillip moved in with his stove, the carpenter making a frame to take his bed. There he slept, beside the stove, which burned dull red near a rack of 6-pounder shells, which, however, did not explode. He found them there after a week; and deciding that they were by now acclimatised, left them alone.
About this time he began to wonder if it was poverty and suffering which brought out character, and made fine men. There was Daddy M’Kinnell, as the drivers called him. Upright, faithful, dutiful, polite but never obsequious: a man nearer fifty than forty, who had once done him the honour of showing him a photograph of himself and family—in two rows; himself and “Mother” almost deadly serious; the three boys grinning, wearing their Sunday best suits with celluloid collars and elastic bow ties, their heads close-cropped against nits. The boys having grown up, Daddy M’Kinnell had joined the Army.
*
At the beginning of March heavy howitzers were being pulled along Railway Road by tractors. On the 10th there was a dawn bombardment; towards noon prisoners came back, hatless and helmetless, in loose grey uniforms and knee boots, shorn heads, some with beards and spectacles, shuffling along covered with mud, looking (except for beards, spectacles, and cropped heads) like the unemployed he remembered at home, about 1906.
Rations and ammunition that night were taken up by twelve pack mules, to a mile beyond Baillescourt farm, where stood the remains of a village of shattered walls and rubble heaps which already had its own mysterious life underground in cellars, judging by the candle rays which twinkled at road level, and the tinkle of a gramophone heard as they halted awhile amidst other strings of pack animals waiting anxiously lest shells fall upon the congestion. At last they could move on, and following the guide, turned left-handed to Beauregard Dovecote, an abandoned strong point on the edge of rising ground, as he saw from the occasional gun-flashes on low clouds. A guide led them past a fork in the lane, when gas shells began to pass over with soft noises of whooe-er whoo-er, pop pop, to fall into what the guide said was the Brickfield. They sounded like phosgene, which had a delayed action on the heart. Should he order box-respirators, hanging at the alert across greatcoat chests, to be put on? Seeing was already difficult; there were no Very lights. He wished he had not brought Prince, whom he was leading, when 4.2s began to spout smoky-red fans two hundred yards across the Brickfield. Where was the ration party meeting them? The guide then said he thought he had lost the way. Rifle bullets cracked past. Phillip put the pack animals under Nolan and telling him to wait there went on with the guide to find the front line. They came suddenly upon a post. “Who are yer?”
“Ration party.”
It was one of the company guns. They had overshot the dump by a quarter of a mile, where Beauregard Alley began at the northern horn of Miraumont. He apologised to Teddy Pinnegar, who said, “That’s all very well, but where the hell have you been all the time?”
The shelling began again. He thrust himself forward into it, with a sort of sneer. Who cared? The men followed. The shelling stopped. At 1 a.m. they were back, without loss, at the picket line, three miles down Railway Road. Entering Tank Hotel, as the men called it, he found that his shirt and tunic were soaked with sweat. His servant had kept the stove going, and the heat, together with hot tea containing rum, soon hung down the old eye-lids.
Three days later the Germans had abandoned their second position on rising ground covering Loupart Wood to Achiet-le-Petit. A further bombardment lit the dawn. More prisoners shuffled back, as the transport moved forward in daylight through Miraumont while bearded, turban’d, dark-skinned cavalrymen passed them, pennons on lances scarcely fluttering in the windless air. The Bengal Lancers! He felt the romance of the scene: perhaps it was open warfare at last!
In a hollow of the road where the Ancre stream had been diverted to flood the village cellars, railway sleepers had been laid. As he rode over the moving baulks, he saw a hand sticking up between two sleepers. A Yorkshire soldier among others repairing the road laughingly put the handle of a broken spade between the waxen fingers, saying, “Now then, Jerry, get on wi’ it; no bluudy skrimshankin’ ’ere!”
The road went on up rising ground beyond the village, and passing a culvert in the railway embankment, Phillip saw where the stream had been dammed. “I don’t care for that!” remarked Hobart. “Think of the trout that will be left high and dry!” It was strange to see green fields again, torn by only a few shell-craters.
They passed through the brick-and-rafter heaps of Achiet-le-Petit, and he slept that night near the blown-up railway station, sharing a bell tent with Jack Hobart, warmed by the German stove, its pipe sticking out of the door flap.
Before going to sleep, he wrote in his Charles Lett’s Self-Opening Pocket Diary and Note Book for 1917 by candle-light, Heard a chiff-chaff in Miraumont, among some willows.
“Here’s Comic Cuts,” said Hobart, tossing over the latest CORPS SUMMARY OF INTELLIGENCE, which had just come in, marked CONFIDENTIAL: Not to be issued to Commanders of lower rank than Battalion, Battery, and Field Company Commanders, and not to be taken into Front Line trenches.
1. The enemy continued his withdrawal throughout the night of 17/18th March, evacuating COURCELLES, DOUCHY, AYETTE, GOMIECOURT, and ERVILLERS. These villages are now occupied by our troops. The Corps on our right have now extended their line from FREMIGOURT … to SAPIGNIES, and have reached MORY. The Corps on our left … ADINFER WOOD … to FICHEUX … no opposition…. See attached map.
2. Owing to the rapidity of the enemy’s retreat, it has been difficult to keep touch … no information to hand of the dispositions of his main troops, but his nearest line is part of the HINDENBURG LINE or SIEGFRIED STELLUNG, running in a S.E. direction East of St. MARTIN-sur-COJEUL and CROISELLES through BULLECOURT. Mobile cavalry patrols have been seen on the road between ERVILLERS and ST. LEGER.
3. A very severely wounded prisoner of the 3rd Coy. 55th R.I.R. (220 Division) was taken at QUESNOY FARM early this morning. From his statements it appears that the 220th Div. came into RANSART area on 28th February. He was ignorant of the order of battle, but said the 207th Regt, was on his left. As this prisoner was in a dying condition and half unconscious from morphia, his statements should be taken with reserve.
But a dying man would instinctively tell the truth: it is all he has to hold on to, thought Phillip.
4. Fires are reported this afternoon in scores of villages in the East.
Love and the Loveless Page 13