The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  When a man dies, does a wraith issue forth from the poor shell, to find its way across the sea, perhaps as suspended thought, to visit the world it has abdicated, by right of being of the European generation which has been called to account for itself? I write European generation for I know that our feelings are shared by those who are opposed to us. It is not easy to write this, in fact I feel damnably nervous, not so much about what is to be, but because what I think is, I feel, not acceptable to others.

  If it happens that my fate is already resolved, I ask you not to grieve. As I wrote to you before I went out in 1914, I have had a happy life, when I have not been selfish and contrary; and so what happiness I have had has been owed to you and Father, to my sisters, my Grandfather, too, and Aunt Marian, and my neighbours. If I have been in conflict with some of the latter, it was, I am sure, due to my fault, or error.

  Do you, Mother, remember our picnic on Reynard’s Common, before I left for the front last September? I remember all you told me about prayer helping to overcome fearful thoughts, by thinking of others before oneself, that is, of one’s men. They are very simple and trusting, these men, and so cheerful. For myself, to whom they look, I have accepted the idea of death, if it is to come, as pre-destined, “when the burning moment breaks”.

  Reynard’s Common, when we were little! It was wonderful to go by train to the end of the line, where Father in his bicycling suit was waiting to meet us. He used to wait patiently to allow us to watch the engine being disconnected, and then put on the wooden turn-table, which was wound round by hand, until the engine pointed back to London, to puff away until it came back to the guard’s van, ready for the return journey.

  I can see it all so vividly now, Reynard’s Common and the heated air over the pebble beds, where the gorse grew and the linnets nested, their breasts coloured as though with flame from so many fires in those dry summers long ago. Do you remember the chiffchaff’s nest near where we once picnic’d? Father made us bury our orange peel, but I left a little piece of yellow showing, because I wanted to go and watch the nest.

  I have met Father Aloysius, of St. Saviour’s, again. He is attached to the Liverpool Irish in our division. He came to dinner in the Colonel’s billet last night; I was invited, too—just the three of us. I told you about our C.O., he was a captain at Hornchurch, and lives at Tollemere Park, and is now in command. Both he and Fr. A. were Balliol men. It is very interesting to hear them talk; I now see what Aunt Dora was driving at, with her talk of ancient Greece, etc. Fr. A. told me that in France the symbol of religion is the mother and child, not the father as in Protestant countries.

  Below me, and to the north as I sit here on the hillside, I can see a cathedral half-broken, and the Golden Virgin on the campanile, leaning down—struck by a shell—but still holding the Babe in her arms. After dinner I went to Fr. A’s billet, and we had a frank talk. I told him how Desmond and I had quarrelled, and how the misunderstanding had come about; and how I knew that a bitter remark made by D. just before I left for the depot after the telegram, was only the measure of his affection turned to bitterness. So if it happens that my turn has come, please assure Desmond that his friend understands, and sympathises with all that he has suffered through me.

  The padre and I talked quite frankly about death. I told him that I had heard dying soldiers, both English and German, calling out for their mothers; he said the spiritual feeling between a mortally wounded boy and the image of his mother was of the same relation between the Son and Mary, the Mother of God, but lifted beyond the struggling human spirit into the realm of the soul, what the ancient Greeks called Eirene, which was everlastingly as a light over the Abyss.

  This Abyss, said the padre, is in every man until impersonal love for his fellow men comes into his life, as a motive force for living. In a war like this, he said, which is a manifestation of the Abyss, of the eternal war between love and hate, the individual is able to escape his own terrors of the mind only by encouraging, through prayer, the good within him to dominate his life; the greater love.

  He said that the Church was by no means perfect and admitted that dreadful things had been done in the past; for men were only human, and being human, could be one thing or the other. This is a bit muddled, I fear, but I think I know what he meant. Father Aloysius is very popular with the troops.

  I hope that Father’s allotment flourishes, and all goes well in Hillside Road, and that your jaunts to the Old Vic with Grandpa continue. Major Kingsman, who is keen on history, told me that Henry the Fifth crossed the Somme somewhere near here, on his way to fight one of his battles. Do you remember Grandpa reading the prologue of Henry the Fifth to us the night before Uncle Hugh and Uncle Sidney went off to the Boer War? Major Kingsman lent me his Shakespeare, and told me to read the passage where the King visited his troops round their camp-fires. I must say it was a revelation to me, after the impression of complete nothingness I got from having to do this play at school. The Prince of Wales, from what I’ve heard, is rather like that. When he was dining at the Officers’ Club at Boulogne one night he invited an officer I know to have a glass of port with him at his table. He (the officer) was badly hit at Loos, and came to this battalion recently, from the regiment to which I was originally gazetted, but now for various reasons he has returned to his battalion. I wonder if by any chance Percy Pickering will come across him, if and when Percy gets out here.

  No more now. By the time you get this, perhaps Father will be reading rather special news in The Daily Trident, which, by the way, seems to be the only paper to be bought out here, in the back areas. We never know what is happening out here until we read of it in the papers; though not everything we read is what we know has happened.

  I bought some excellent patisserie in the town below us this afternoon; almost as good as that we bought in Brussels five years ago. Do you remember?

  I watched a thrilling sight today—three of the German sausage balloons behind their lines brought down in flames, leaving black smoke in the sky—coal-gas, I suppose. I have seen other wonderful sights, but cannot tell you what they are!

  Your affectionate son,

  PHILLIP.

  Sursam corda! That’s what Father A. said to me. It means, broadly translated, Keep Smiling!

  After hesitation he added two words to the beginning; but seeing that the addition was obviously an after-thought he rewrote the first page, beginning My dear Father and Mother. Then doubts of what Father, who scorned the Roman Catholics, might think arose in him. The letter began to look fanciful; then the word throw-back, so often heard about himself in boyhood, rose before his mind like an apparition in black. He regarded the rapidly-written pages with indecision; then tore the letter up and buried the fragments.

  *

  If one of the least of temporary junior officers of what was called the Citizen Army suffered from frustration, so did the greatest soldier of the British Expeditionary Force. Neither the place nor the time of the offensive were of F.-M. Sir Douglas Haig’s choosing. He had wanted to make the attack farther north, in Artois and Flanders, later in the year; for while the New Armies were in good heart, they lacked both experience and sufficient training. His own ideas and wishes had been set aside when he responded to the French call for help; Maréchal Joffre had demanded an attack in Picardy, the country of the Somme, to relieve the sufferings and annihilations of French divisions upon “the anvil of Verdun”.

  Having subordinated his strategy to that of the French Maréchal, he had next to give way on tactical points. Sir Douglas Haig had wanted the infantry assault to start at first light, before the German machine-gunners could sight their targets properly; both Maréchal Joffre and his subordinate commander General Foch had declared that the battle must begin at 10 a.m., for their artillery observers to have a clear view of the infantry in horizon bleu advancing on the sector of the Sixth French Army south of the steep cliff-like right bank of the Somme.

  The British Field-Marshal had chosen one of his senior
generals, Rawlinson, to command the new Fourth British Army, which was to fight the battle, and had suggested to him the need for a quick preliminary assault, immediately the final intensive bombardment lifted, to rake back upon the successive German lines. Sir Henry Rawlinson had not agreed with this suggestion; the Field-Marshal had not pressed it since, having delegated responsibility, he was loyal to his subordinate’s wishes. To have forced his views upon Rawly would have been, in the English idiom, “not cricket”: a term often derided because misunderstood by those who did not play that game wherein only the better feelings of man, by the very nature of the game, can be exercised.

  *

  An obscure lieutenant of militia, holding the acting rank of lieutenant-colonel, had left his command during manoeuvres to address himself to Sir Henry Rawlinson, a guest of the Divisional Commander, without permission, without introduction. He had persisted in stating his uncalled-for views beyond the limit of what was considered good form. He had insisted on saying that a strong line of skirmishers should be sent to enter the enemy lines before the German machine-gunners had time to climb up and out of their dugouts: that this preliminary penetration must be made in the first light, the prima luce of the great commanders of the ancient world. Holding himself rigid against his discomposure in the presence of soldiers of high rank belonging to an assured caste of which, owing to his humble birth, he was ever conscious, with beads of sweat upon his forehead, “Spectre” West had quoted, in the original Greek, from Euripides, following it by a translation—“Danger shines like sunlight to a brave man’s eyes”—but, he said, with unseen machine-guns firing into those eyes from under the blaze of the risen sun in the east, it would be a fearful price to pay for courage thrown away.

  “With due respect, sir, and in humble duty to his Majesty the King-Emperor, I submit that, whatever the hour or state of light when the main assault takes place, that assault, or ordered advance of what are practically porters, must be preceded by a line of mobile skirmishers, thrusting forward immediately behind the barrage in order to contain, or to destroy, the enemy garrisons underground, until the impedimenta-laden waves of infantry arrive.”

  He was listened to in silence; and when he had seen that his remarks were apparently to be ignored, he asked formally to be permitted to see the Commander-in-Chief.

  Afterwards, at Querrieu, in the garden of the château which was General Rawlinson’s headquarters, he was courteously taken by the General’s A.D.C., together with his Brigadier, to the office of a Major-General in one of the many wooden huts of Army Administration. There the matter of the existence of deep German dugouts, “some possibly between thirty and forty feet underground,” which he had spoken about previously, was discussed.

  “You know, Colonel, one is inclined to be puzzled as to the reason why no subsequent report about the alleged existence of such deep shelters was sent in by you, after you took command of your battalion. A pity you did not think of it at the time. In war, and indeed in all aspects of life, everything depends on the question of timing. To cast doubt at this late hour, and without substantiation of what you say about the depth of the shelters, is only to cause uncertainty, even alarm, as by now you probably realise,” said the Major-General.

  Later, over a peg of whiskey-and-soda in his living quarters, he said, “How was ‘Nosey’ Orlebar when last you saw him at the War House? I was runner-up in the middle-weight boxing tournament at Aldershot in ’06, and had the distinction of helping to get ’im ’is nickname, you know. He put me down well and truly in the next round by way of retaliation! Now about this question of tactics that worries you. I think in the circumstances you may wish to consider yourself free of all responsibility in the matter. So if you will be so good as to come with me, I will take you to the D.A.G., and you can have a word with him about it.”

  In the Deputy Adjutant General’s office Col. West asked to be allowed to see the Field-Marshal. The response was curt. He was told that no useful purpose would be served by an interview, since he had already been relieved of his command. Any remarks he wished to make should be put in writing, and forwarded through the usual channels.

  “Meanwhile would you prefer to go home to England on long leave, or to rejoin a line battalion of your Regiment?”

  Captain West asked to be allowed to rejoin his Regiment.

  Having written his farewell message to the battalion through Major Kingsman, he went back to the 7th Gaultshires in the Eastern Division at Carnoy, which with another division of the XIII Corps was to attack opposite Mametz and Montauban, adjoining the French Sixth Army.

  *

  During the darkness of the next night four raids were carried out by units within the area of the Fourth Army. In one, near Carnoy, enemy trenches were found empty and damaged by shell-fire. In the second, north of Maricourt, the trenches were lightly held, and a prisoner was captured. The third raid took place south of La Boisselle, near the Schwarben Hohe. Here the trenches were strongly held, and the raiders were shot on the wire. The fourth raid was opposite Ovillers, upon the sector where, a fortnight before, Phillip’s party had scrambled into trenches ten feet deep, with a firing step seven feet below a loop-holed parapet built up by coloured dazzle sandbags, and revetted by stakes and withies. The trenches on this raid were full of Germans, one of whom was hauled back. To all questions, except those demanding name, number, and regiment, he replied Bitte! Nicht sprechen!

  No question about the depth of dug-outs was asked either prisoner of these raids; no requests for this particular information had come from Division, none from Corps, none from Fourth Army.

  *

  When was Z-day?

  It was still unknown to the troops in the valley of the Ancre. The company waited in barn and billet. Sentries with whistles stood outside to give warning of aeroplanes, revealed by irregular dots of white, the bursting shells of Archibald, the anti-aircraft gun. Well in front of drifting cotton-wool was a tiny white speck, as diaphanous as one of the pale watery ephemeral flies dancing in clouds among the poplars in the water-meadows. The whistle blew; no faces looked up, to where almost imperceptibly high in the blue was moving the frail wraith with black crosses.

  “Anyone got any rumours about Z-day, skipper?”

  “Nothing from the Adj yet, old sport.”

  Excitement among the herded men was intense. Bets were made, in plinketty plonk (vin blanc), rhum, and vin rouge—to be paid in Brussels; or Berlin.

  “A gunner officer told me the attack had been put off!”

  “Did you hear, the Hun has asked for an armistice, after mutiny down at Verdun!”

  “Well, you see, Asquith has shares in Krupps, and so he’s delaying the attack as long as possible, for the Germans to increase their armaments!”

  “That’s bloody rot, Cox! Like his wife visiting German officers at Donnington Hall!”

  “Well, don’t lose your wool, One-piecee!”

  Clouds moved in drifts across the summery blue, wind poured into the valley of the Ancre, tributary of the Somme, from the south-west. The shadow of Nimbus raced the golden glow of Phoebus across the undulating country that was to be the battlefield. Again the concentrated bombardment of destruction broke upon the air, while the ground seemed to be shaking in one continuous rumbling, as of the boiling of an immense cauldron. When it had boiled itself over individual salvoes of batteries could be heard, but seldom a moment in the day or the night passed without detonation.

  “Jerry’s copping it,” said Pimm to Phillip, with dark satisfaction. The bombardment continued all the next morning, but at 3.30 p.m. it ceased abruptly. The silence was blank and irritating.

  What had happened?

  Why were so many scout aeroplanes going over?

  Flight after flight of D.H.2’s, Nieuports, Sopwith two-seaters and F.E.2b’s passed in formation above slower reconnaissance B.E.s.

  A rumour went around that the Kaiser had offered to surrender, that the R.F.C. were sending planes to escort a delegation of staff
officers to deliver terms.

  “From the latrine, like all the others,” said Captain Bason. “Hell, I’m a platoon commander short, now Ray has gone sick, with a dose of clapp.”

  “So he’s got away with it?”

  “You’ve said it, old sport. He’s just been taken down to the field ambulance. You’ll take command of the company while we’re in, if anything happens to me.”

  “What about Cox?”

  “The order remains that all seconds-in-command of companies are to remain behind, with two sergeants per company, to form a cadre on which to reform the company in case of heavy losses. Cox is to be promoted to Captain.”

  “Does second-in-command go by seniority, skipper?”

  “Sure thing. Cox is senior, isn’t he, to you? Anyway, he’s going to the Chinese Labour Corps being formed now, as he speaks the lingo. He put his name in for it a week or two back, when we were at Querrieu. That rumour about the Kaiser asking for peace is bilge, by the way. Those aeroplanes went out to photograph the shelled sectors, protected by scouts. I saw Quarters just now. He’s just come from railhead, and says Duggie Haig has moved his advanced headquarters to Beauquesne, only a dozen miles back, so it won’t be long now.”

  Phillip walked down the muddy street to Cox’s billet. It had rained during the night and early morning. Cox was lying down on his flea-bag, a bundle of old letters and a bottle of whiskey beside him on the floor.

  “Hullo, One-piecee. What brings you here?”

  “Cox, why did you tell Bason you were senior to me? You know you’re not. I was gazetted ten days before you.”

  “So you’ve got the wind-up, have you, One-piecee? Have a choc.”

  “No thanks. I hear you’re going to the Chinese Labour Corps, anyway.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Cox, letting his eye-glass fall as he sat up. “Has it come through?”