“Must have had a touch of gas, sir.”
“Rot, man. Nobody else has. Get on with it.”
“It’s all very well for you, sir.”
I am tired and irritable, and I flare.
“Righto, sit down and wait for the Germans.”
He gives me an evil look, but I rather feel that I shall have no more trouble with the fellow.
As we wind along a valley and bear right towards the Peronne road I see that we are no longer the only caterpillar crawling over this vast grey-green leaf. I see silhouetted against the sky where the Peronne road follows the high ground an endless stream of mounted men, horses and wagons. It is a strange and a disturbing sight, masses of transport in retreat.
* * *
I do not know the name of this village in which we have unhitched for the night. I presume Fairfax knows it, for he has sent off one of our dispatch riders to report our whereabouts to Rankin. The extraordinary thing about this ruined village is that we find a deserted house with something of a roof on it, and we crowd in. The men are in semi-ruined cottages. We find a table in the chief room, and our mess-orderly and cook unpack the mess-stores. Our valises are carried in. We are all dead tired, and Fairfax is still very shaky.
We fall upon bully-beef and bread and tinned fruit like savages. I suggest to Fairfax that he had better turn in and get some sleep, and that Gibbs, Carless and I will take turns at sitting up. Fairfax agrees, and orders me to post a sentry at the entrance to the village to warn us of any sudden change in the situation.
I take first watch.
Our motor-cyclist returns. He has been unable to find Divisional Headquarters. The big farm where they were situated has become a Brigade Headquarters. This is pleasant news! The whole front must be in a state of flux.
* * *
Gibbs relieves me after two hours. I had been walking up and down the village street, smoking interminable pipes. I go in, and taking off my field-boots, step into my valise, which has been unrolled on the floor. I want to sleep. I feel I want nothing but sleep. It is more urgent than any sex-crave.
But I am not to be allowed to fall asleep in peace. I hear a sudden crash and the scattering of tiles and bricks. The railway runs through the village, and close to our house, and I realize that the Boche is shelling the railway with one of his damned high-velocity guns. Another shell follows, and more debris flies. I lie sweating and shaking, waiting for the next shell to arrive, and wondering where it will land. This is too much after a day of such alarums and excursions. I hear Carless swearing in his corner. “O, damn the old brute.” Fairfax, I am glad to say, sleeps through it all.
The shelling stops, and I try and recover the urge to sleep. I wonder what has happened to Harker and Potter, and I think of what our poor infantry have had to suffer, and must still be suffering. Poor devils, there is no relief for them, and no sleep, unless our reserves are coming up. And supposing we have no adequate reserves, and the front is badly broken? Disaster! I think of Sergeant Fosdyke’s fierce denunciation of authority, and of our wasted lives. How glad we should be now of all the men who were sacrificed at Passchendaele and on the Somme.
* * *
I have slept.
Bond has gone off with a wagon to try and find the A.S.C. and draw rations.
We do not know what to do, for we are marooned without orders in this village.
Fairfax has sent out a despatch rider to try and locate Divisional Headquarters, but the man comes back without having been able to find them.
The rumble of retreating transport has ceased. I go scouting along the deserted road. The landscape is distressingly empty. What the devil is happening? I fancy that I can hear machine-gun fire coming from the direction of Blaincourt.
I go back and tell Fairfax, and he decides to act on his own authority and to continue our retreat.
On the road. We meet Bond coming back with rations. The A.S.C. have not failed us. That is to be one of the marvels of this retreat, the enterprise and energy of the A.S.C. They send out mounted men each morning to get into touch with the various and scattered units of the Division. Such news as Bond has been able to collect is not cheering. Apparently, the Germans were able to overrun all our forward positions in the fog. We must have lost thousands of men, and hundreds of guns. And where are the troops who can restore the battle?
* * *
We see a Ford ambulance coming to meet us. In it is Colonel Rankin. He is looking tired and infinitely serious. We halt while he and Fairfax go aside to talk.
When Rankin has left us again in the Ford, I ride beside Fairfax. Our orders are to make for the Somme and cross it by one of the southern bridges. Peronne is chaos, and choked with transport. The outlook is very black. The remnants of the 81st are still fighting hard, and falling back. The 203 F.A. have managed to get away, but they have had an officer and a number of bearers taken prisoners.
And our reserves? Fairfax understands that we had but one division in reserve, and some cavalry behind us, and they are already engaged. I suppose the idea is to try and hold the line of the Somme river.
But what a debacle!
More foot-slogging. Our men are holding out very well. I get off my horse and march, and Gibbs joins me.
We have left the Peronne road and turned south. The landscape continues to be distressingly empty; no fresh troops coming up. A few of our ’planes go over. I remember coming to a hollow road partly shaded by a few bare trees, and here a solitary tank is squatting grimly, with an officer standing beside it. There is just room for us to pass, but the significance of that solitary steel slug depresses us. It is there to try and block the road, and perhaps to serve as a rallying point for our tired infantry.
The Somme. The river is blue and faintly wind-whipped under the March sky, and the reed beds look pale and strange. The bridge we have been making for is intact, but charges have been laid, and some R.E.s are stationed here, waiting for the order to fire the charges. We cross over, and looking at the river I am conscious of relief, for it seems to put a barrier between us and hypothetical Boche cavalry and tanks.
Surely we shall be able to hold the line of the Somme?
* * *
Dusk. We find ourselves in a hutted camp that a few hours ago was a Corps Headquarters. It is deserted. The huts are black against the fading sky. We explore and find signs of confusion and of an abrupt and tumultuous flight. The place is ours save for a few straggling members of a Labour battalion, who appear to be scrounging for possible loot. We take possession, and flatter ourselves that we shall be secure for one peaceful night. There are wire beds galore for the men. We select a comfortable hut, feed, and doss down for the night.
* * *
We have forgotten that the Boche has bombing ’planes. I had just got to sleep when the machines came over, and I wake to the crash of bombs. I feel exasperated and lie still. The beastly things do not sound too near us, and I say to myself that I am damned if I will leave my flea-bag just to scout around. But a minute later I hear the S.-M.’s voice, and he calls my name.
“Captain Brent, sir.”
“Hallo.”
“A hut has been hit.”
“Not one of ours?”
“No, one with some Labour Corps men in it.”
No one else moves. Is it that they are so dead tired that they are leaving the job to me? I get up and lace on my boots and join the Sergeant-Major. He tells me that he was just turning in when he heard the explosion and men’s screams. Luckily there were only half a dozen fellows in the hut. Four of them were killed outright, and the other two wounded.
I find that indomitable soul Corporal Block already at work on the two wounded men. We dress them, and are then confronted with the problem of disposing of them. We have nowhere to send them, and nothing to send them in, for our motor-ambulances have never returned to us. Also, Rankin warned Fairfax that the Casualty Clearing Stations might have ceased to function and would be sharing in this vast rout. I decide that the only
thing to do is to put the wounded in one of our horse-ambulances and carry them with us.
* * *
As I am making my way back to the hut where the others are in bed I am aware of the night becoming full of confused and urgent noise, voices, and the plodding of horses, and the creaking of wheels. A mass of transport is pouring past the camp, and with it groups of straggling men. It is like a sinister shadow-show of disaster and fear, and when I reach the hut I find Fairfax in the doorway, listening to the sounds of an army in retreat.
“I don’t like this, Stephen.”
He has a map in his hand, and he shines a torch on it.
“Can you see where we are? This road joins the Villers Carbonel cross-roads. I have had a brain-wave. Those cross-roads may be chaos. Unless we can get through there, we may be bogged.”
We stand and listen to the wheels on the road.
“It suddenly came into my mind when you went out. It was like you to go, Stephen.”
“Do you mean to move again, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Now? But the men are——”
“I know. But I shan’t be happy as long as we are on the wrong side of these cross-roads. You see, the country all round is impossible, old Somme country, old shell-holes and trenches.”
I have to confess that he is right. So we are not to sleep but to go on slogging, and join ourselves to that shadow-show of an army in retreat.
“Get hold of the S.-M., Stephen, and tell him to get the men up, and warn the transport.”
“Very good, sir.”
* * *
We are on the road again, and our tired men are less sullen than I expected them to be. Perhaps they understand that we are wise in our ruthlessness. Half an hour later I am to bless Fairfax’s inspiration. He and I walk on ahead, and before we come to those vital cross-roads, we are confronted with a problem that seems insoluble. Here is chaos. An artillery column has turned in the wrong direction and is blocking the wrong side of the road, and on the other side wagons and limbers are packed in one solid mass behind a lorry that has broken down. Fairfax and I push through to the cross-roads. Never have I seen such chaos. A solitary military policeman on traffic duty is rushing about like a madman, shouting and cursing, but the jam seems hopeless. It is like the Mansion House with all the traffic in London piled anyhow in chunks. The place is Bedlam. Thank God it is dark, and the Boche bombing ’planes are not over us.
But the man of destiny arrives in the shape of an A.S.C. major with a vast voice, and behind him a column of transport that is under control. He places himself in the middle of the mess, and backed by his N.C.O.s begins to sort out the tangle with a ruthlessness that is effective. The horses are unhitched from certain recalcitrant wagons, and the vehicles are man-handled and shoved off the road into the ditches. This example is suggestive. We go back down the side road to our own column of halted wagons, and find that more transport has piled up behind us.
The gunners are the people responsible for this block, for a lorry has broken down ahead of us, and the transport which is facing in the right direction cannot pull out and pass so long as the artillery wagons and limbers are where they are. Nobody seems to be in charge of this column. The men appear beyond caring, and are lying about in the ditches. I manage to get hold of a sulky sergeant.
“Where are your officers?”
He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care.
“Damn it, man, where are they? Gone on a binge to Amiens, I suppose.”
My sarcasm does not bite him. He stands and glares at me with dull, sleep-sodden eyes. But the stupidity of the thing enrages me. I go back to Fairfax and tell him that the gunner officers have left their column derelict, and that unless we do something drastic about it we shall never get through. He comes up with me, and tries to rouse the artillery column out of its apathy, but the men are sullen and done up.
That is the climax. We go back and collect Gibbs and the two S.-M.s and thirty of our stoutest men. Fairfax and the Transport S.-M. themselves unhitch the artillery horses, and our men upset wagons and limbers into the ditches. It is a rough and a ruthless business, but logical. There is a good deal of foul language, but our unit has the authority and example of its officers, and the gunners are a mob without authority. Gibbs and I are helping in the jettisoning of the wagons, and one fellow who may have had something to drink, gets hold of Gibbs by his belt.
“Blast yer ruddy eyes, who do you think you are? God almighty?”
Gibbs is not taking any sauce. He pushes the man off, smites him on the jaw, and the fellow disappears into the ditch.
We clear the road and go through. Thanks to that autocrat of a major the cross-roads are no longer a hopeless tangle, and our wagons and ambulances swing left into the main road. Our men are laughing. They have enjoyed the clash, and their tails are up. Fairfax remounts his horse. Gibbs and I light pipes and trudge along at the tail of the column. I ask him what has become of Carless.
“Asleep in one of the ambulances, my dear. His breeches seem a bit too superfine for this sort of thing.”
XXI
Fairfax’s wisdom is capped with compassion. His urge may be to conserve his unit in the midst of chaos, and to keep it ready for action should it be needed, but men must eat and sleep, and soon after daybreak we turn aside from the main road, and halt on some rough grassland near a place that was known as Nurlu. Fairfax retains his sense of humour. Carless is routed out of his horse-ambulance and appointed to be the officer whose eyes shall remain open while we sleep. The indefatigable Finch arrives with my valise and camp-bed, and he erects the bed in a quiet spot close to a stunted tree. I bless Finch, and tell him that he is the best batman on God’s earth, and I take my boots off and get into bed. Finch lies down beside me in his greatcoat and with his pack under his head. We sleep.
I wake to find Fairfax standing over me.
“Sorry, Stephen; no more sleep for the wicked.”
I sit up, feeling a fit man.
“What’s the time, sir?”
“About eleven. I have been out on my horse and found Rankin and D.H.Q. He doesn’t want us to stop here. We are to push on and come back into the main road well away from the Somme.”
“Any news?”
“Nothing good. The whole 5th Army front has given way. Things are almost as bad north of the river.”
I am lacing on my boots.
“No time for a shave, sir?”
“Not yet. There is just a chance that our people may manage to hold Jerry on the line of the Somme, but no one appears very hopeful.”
Cheering news this! Are we to suffer a debacle after all these years of blood and sweat?
* * *
Never shall I forget the Peronne-Amiens road on that morning in March, nor Fairfax’s face as we stand and watch this rout of an army.
“My God, Stephen!”
We have had to halt the Field Ambulance on the by-road behind us, for it is impossible for any formed body to insert itself into this disorganized mass of men and animals. It is a terrifying sight, wagons, limbers, lorries, hobbling stragglers, Labour Corps men, Chinese coolies, pouring along in panic. There is no cohesion save the gregarious fear that sends sheep stampeding along a road. There seems to be no beginning and no end to the procession. I see a Chinaman with a monstrous bundle on his back and a staff in his right hand go pattering by, his face smeared with sweat, his chest heaving. There are corpse-faced men who hobble and sway, but the thing that makes the most profound impression upon me is the silent, dumb ferocity of these fugitives. I am witnessing a veritable sauve qui peut. Figures jostle each other and bob along like brown corks on a river that is in flood. No one seems to trouble about his neighbour. All these hundreds of faces strain in one direction. Lorries grind and grumble, clogged in this glutinous, moving mass of humanity. I see a staff-car engulfed in the flood, and in it a furious, red-faced officer with a monocle. He seems to be the one vocal creature in the crowd, and leaning forward, screams at the cha
uffeur, or at the hobbling men who have ceased to regard authority. “Drive through them, man; drive through the damned swine.”
Again I hear Fairfax say, “My God, Stephen, this looks like the end of everything!”
I am conscious of a feeling of horrible helplessness in the presence of this ghastly rout. What does it mean? That there are no fighting men left who are capable of fighting or who are willing to fight? Are the Germans close on the heels of this stampeding multitude?
“What had we better do, sir?”
He answers that there is nothing to be done until the main road has emptied itself of this mob, and that he has no wish to expose our unit to the solvent of fear. And then, a yet more dramatic and terrifying thing happens. One of our aeroplanes appears flying fast and low above the road, and following it are three Boche ’planes, engines roaring, machine-guns crackling. Suddenly, with amazing swiftness the whole road spills its brown mess of panic into any hole or bit of shelter. Drivers jump from their wagons; lorries are left standing with their engines running. In a few seconds the long, straight road is empty of men, while those roaring ’planes with their black crosses and spitting machine-guns sweep on and past. The sight so fascinates me that I just stand and stare, and Fairfax is as paralysed as I am.
“My God, Stephen!”
The winged death has passed, and the brown crowd reappears like maggots out of the earth and resumes its fierce and sedulous flight. Drivers are back on their wagons; lorries roll on. The amazing thing is that no one appears to have been hit, and not a single horse that has been left exposed has suffered. Why did not those Boche ’planes drop bombs? The results might have been catastrophic. Mercifully, perhaps, for this crowd the German airmen had dropped their bombs elsewhere—if they carried any.
I happen to turn and look at our men. I am aware of their white, shocked, silent faces, for this debacle is sufficient to shake the morale of any unit. Also, I see someone strolling across the rough ground from a collection of huts set back about fifty yards from the road. It is Colonel Rankin. His brown eyes have a kind of blaze in them, and his face seems to sneer. We salute him and he comes and stands with us to watch this sorry show.
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