“Well, your men seem a steady crowd, Fairfax. You can take the credit.”
“They are good lads, sir.”
“Nor must we take this horrid sight too seriously.”
“You think not, sir?”
“This is just the army’s rubbish. Our infantry are sticking it, or what is left of them.”
“That’s good news. This made one think that the end had come.”
Rankin’s sneer becomes a smile.
“Our damned old country isn’t done with yet.”
* * *
We are at our ease in a field beside the Amiens road, not far from the hutments that have become Divisional Headquarters. We have fed. Bond has drawn rations, and Gibbs and I sit on a little grass mound and watch the road. Fairfax is asleep on a stretcher at the bottom of what was once a trench. The road has become strangely empty and silent, a straight and dusty streak between the tumbled greenness of old battlefields. There is not a cloud in the sky. Gibbs and I smoke our pipes.
Now and again a few stragglers hobble by, or a belated lorry or G.S. wagon rumbles past. Both road and the green wilderness have a disturbing emptiness. We understand that the remnant of our die-hards are making a brave attempt to hold the river. We have a feeling that there is nothing between us and these sticky rearguards. Part of the 201 F.A. has been sent up to help the weary 203rd. We are being kept in reserve.
We watch the remnants of a Machine Gun Company march back down the road. That, too, is a sight I shall not forget. A big, swarthy, unshaven officer marches at their head. He has no steel helmet. He walks with a tired, hobbling swagger, and a little set smile on his face. Pride, pride that is dirty and weary, and unsubdued! Something makes me jump up and salute him.
He waves his hand at me, and passes on.
“Why are they going back?”
“Wait a moment.”
We see the little company leave the road and disappear into the crumple of shell-holes. I suppose that they are taking a position there, and we are in front of them! Or is it that they have fought their fill, and are being rested and saved for some future ordeal?
Two figures appear against the sky, infantrymen with their rifles sloped. They seem to be strolling casually in the wrong direction. I get up, walk across and intercept them. I find that they belong to one of our battalions.
“Where are you two lads going?”
The nearer of the two gives me an ugly look. They do not pause or salute me.
“Brigade Headquarters.”
“You are going the wrong way. Divisional Headquarters is just over there. You had better face about.”
The man nearest me slaps the breech of his rifle.
“You mind your bloody business. I’ve got a cartridge left in here.”
The man’s eyes are mad and dangerous, and I realize that he is like a fierce wild beast who is beyond control. They stride on, mount an old grassy parapet, leap down and disappear. It is not fear that makes me let them go, but a feeling of helplessness in the presence of a temper that has become savagely insubordinate.
* * *
Sunset. We dine like a picnic party with our plates on the ground between our knees. We have not much to say to each other. Divisional Headquarters has gone back, leaving an advanced Headquarters in those hutments. Bliss comes across and has a drink with us. He looks very tired. The last news is that we seem to be holding the line of the Somme.
I do not welcome the prospect of darkness. It is like being blindfolded and left to sit and listen in a dark room for the footsteps of some stealthy enemy. Bliss has told us that the Germans are practising a new method of penetration; they appear to have specially trained platoons who feel their way forward, groping for some weak place in our line, and when they find it they push through. It is like acid eating away metal, or the sea stealing stealthily in and undermining the land’s defences. Why had we not evolved methods of this description, instead of rushing bull-headed at concrete and barbed-wire? After all, the Boche’s scheme of infiltration is so simple, just common sense. Find the weak places and exploit them.
I go to sleep on a stretcher at the bottom of an old trench. It is a cold night, with a ground frost, and I wake very early feeling that my loins are frozen. Another beautiful day. The dawn comes up pale gold above the black crumple of this old battlefield. To warm myself I walk along the road, and meet not a living soul. There is a great silence everywhere.
Where is brother Fritz? It would not have surprised me to see one of those coal-scuttle steel helmets rising out of a hole in the ground.
* * *
The Germans are across the Somme. We receive an urgent order to move, and we do move. I have never seen our transport men so spry and eager in harnessing up. It reminds me of a fire brigade competition. Our wagons go bundling out into the road, and I notice that the harness is half-off one horse. Fairfax rides out after them, using his voice. I hear him tell our A.S.C. fellows that they are not competing in a gymkhana.
We march, Gibbs and I at the rear. I notice that some of our men keep looking back at our faces, and at the empty road behind us. I suppose they are wondering, as we are, whether men in field grey will appear against that clear blue sky, or whether ’planes will come over to bomb or machine-gun us.
* * *
This long, straight road takes to itself untortured trees, great poplars whose grey branches meet overhead. This means that we have left the devastation behind us, and are back in country that for years has trembled on the edge of all this horror. Here are cultivated fields, and orchards, and suddenly I realize the added bitterness of this disaster. It will mean, for the poor French, another exodus.
Will they feel bitter towards us?
* * *
We have turned right, and marched into a village called Proyart. Fairfax has halted the unit in the yard of a tile-factory where our transport can be parked. The door of the house is open, and thinking that the owners have left we officers walk in. There is a little vestibule, and I see Fairfax pause, and raise his hand to his steel helmet.
“Pardon. We thought the house empty.”
An elderly Frenchman is sitting astride on a chair, smoking a cigarette and watching a young woman packing a basket. He gives us a look which is both sardonic and contemptuous. He shrugs his shoulders.
“Entrez, messieurs.”
This French girl fascinates me. She is very tall, very dark, with one of those white, clear skins, a beautiful creature, but it is not her mere physical beauty that makes me marvel. It is her young, dark-eyed dignity, the deliberate and calm way in which she is packing that basket. All her movements have a smooth, unflurried grace. She does not look at us. We might be mere shadows on the wall, and her calm, tragic aloofness troubles me. Is her young stateliness so crowned with scorn? Are we, the scourings of a defeated army, not deserving of one glance of compassion or of reproach?
The others must feel as I do, for her aloofness removes us like rude, gaping boys. We betake ourselves to the room on the other side of the passage, but I can hear the voices of the Frenchman and his daughter. He asks her if she is ready, and her reply is a quiet, monosyllabic yes.
He says, “Good, I will put the horse in. We will leave everything to our brave allies.”
That hurts me. I know that this business must be bitter to the French, and to me this young woman somehow is France symbolized. I stand at the window and watch the man lead an old grey horse and black buggy out of a tiled shed. He gathers up the reins and climbs into the seat. The young woman has put on a little black chapeau and a coat. I see her cross the yard, pass the basket up to her father, and climb up calmly as though she were going to market. The man turns the grey horse, and the funny old vehicle trundles out on to the road.
I find Gibbs beside me. He, too, has been watching this exodus.
“Damn it, Steevie, that makes one feel small. I think I’ll give up doctoring and take to a gun.”
I fill my pipe and light it.
“It must be pr
etty bitter for them.”
But our reflections are interrupted by Bond, who comes bucking into the room flourishing a bottle.
“Plenty of wine below in the cellar.”
Gibbs snubs him.
“Shut up. That’s looting, my lad.”
Bond giggles.
“Well, if we don’t drink it, the Boches will.”
* * *
I might quote Bond’s proverbial philosophy were I to be acting as counsel for the defence for others who are drinking unwisely and too well. Our Sergeant-Major is a serious-minded young man to whom this debacle has been a shocking disillusionment. We have just finished an impromptu tea when he comes to tell us that there is a disgraceful orgy going on in the village. Surprisingly, Proyart possesses a quite considerable wine merchant’s store, and the troops have discovered it.
“I happened to miss Bubb and Cufnell, sir”—Bubb and Cufnell are our two bad eggs—“and I thought I had better look round. The men are getting drunk by scores.”
“Our men, S.-M.?”
“No, sir. There’s a battalion of infantry in the village—or what’s left of it—with only two officers, and they are, excuse me, sir, blotto.”
Fairfax is in the act of lighting a pipe, but he puts it away in his pocket. This is a serious business, for though we do not wish to act as spoil-sports, drunken troops will be easy meat for brother Boche. Fairfax, Gibbs and I go out to explore the situation. We find the centre of the village staging a bacchanalian scene. The men are completely out of hand. All the stragglers for miles around seem to have gathered like flies to beer and treacle. Men are lying by scores under the horses, noisily and genially intoxicated, or in the process of becoming so. A string of figures is emerging from the door of the wine-store, or entering it. I can quite understand the inspiration of this vast and insubordinate binge. Some of these fellows have had no sleep for days, and very little food, and their mood damns everything and makes the most of the moment.
Fairfax walks into the crowd and tries the effect of his voice on these celebrants. It is completely without effect. He confronts two men who have just emerged with their loot. He orders them to put their bottles down, and they grin at him insolently, and make off up the street. A drunken scallywag, with three days’ beard on his chin and his tunic unbuttoned, reels up to Fairfax. His mouth is all slobber, and his language not of the lily.
“You leave us alone, see. We’ve ’ad enough of the bloody war, and we’ve ’ad enough of bloody toffs in tunics.”
He has a half-empty bottle in his fist, and he flourishes it.
“No more bloody war. No more bloody officers. We’re going to get —— drunk, and you —— off, see.”
It is quite obvious to us that authority has ceased to be, and that there is every likelihood of our being roughly handled by these drunken fools. Fairfax’s blood is up, and we have to persuade him to make a strategic movement to the rear, while formulating other methods of attack. It is Gibbs who supplies the solution.
“Why not empty the cellars, and smash all the bottles?”
It is an inspiration. I race back and get hold of the S.-M. and tell him to parade C Company. I can rely on C Company. I explain the situation to them, and I make a laugh of it, but assure them that we shall be helping to win the war. I see by their faces that they are mine, and I tell them that they can salve a dozen bottles for the benefit of the unit.
I march through Proyart at the head of C Company. We pick up Fairfax and Gibbs, and force our way into the building. Sundry casual looters are ejected, and the door held by six of our men. The building possesses a courtyard surrounded by a high wall, and stout gates that can be closed. We string the men out in a chain down the cellar steps, and they pass the bottles out to Fairfax and myself, while Gibbs and a few stalwarts see to it that the gates are not forced. Fairfax and I smash bottle after bottle, flinging them against the courtyard walls. I do not know what the bag is, but the yard is littered with broken glass and bloody with red wine. The walls are splashed and stained, and the yard suggests some horrid slaughter, but we empty that cellar and make sure that no more tired and disorganized troops shall become victims of the bottle.
* * *
Night. Fairfax has had his valise spread on the Frenchman’s bed. Gibbs and I have decided to sleep on stretchers in the little salon, for somehow the French girl’s bedroom scares us. I suppose we are sentimentalists, and regard her bed as sacred and inviolate. Silly asses! We miss Carless, and since it is Carless’s duty to take first watch we shout for him. A sleepy voice answers from the French girl’s room, and Gibbs and I look at each other.
“Damn the fellow!”
We are a little bored with Carless, for he has proved himself too much of a passenger during these strenuous days. Gibbs opens the door and flashes a torch into the room. We see Carless not on the bed, but well and truly in it, and wallowing in suggestions of sensuous femininity.
Gibbs tosses the bedclothes off, and lugs Carless out by the leg. He is in his pants and vest, and since, even in a place like Proyart, French women—or some of them—use exotic perfumes, Carless is scented like a tuberose.
He is indignant.
“What’s the idea?”
“A little job of work, my lad. Didn’t you hear Fairfax order you to take first watch?”
“Plenty of time. I thought I would have a few winks. My chap was going to wake me.”
“We’ve done it for him,” says Gibbs. “Poof! You stink like Paris leave. Getting into a girl’s bed!”
“It’s a damned good bed. Try it.”
“Not bloody likely. What you have to do is to go out on the road and keep your eyes and ears skinned, or Jerry may catch you.”
* * *
About midnight I relieve Carless. It is a very black night, and strangely still, and as I walk up and down in my greatcoat I see the eastern sky lit up in half a dozen places. Our dumps are burning, and by climbing on a bank beside the road I can see the fires like great braziers flaring on the horizon. Flowers of disaster! I know that we must deny these masses of food and equipment to our enemy, but the colossal waste seems part of our tragedy. Also, there is a quality of terror in those distant and silent conflagrations. They conjure up to me pictures of old, dead disasters, Rome in flames, an empire going up in smoke.
Corporal Block and two of C Company are patrolling Proyart and the road beyond it, for we are realizing that in this gigantic game of blind-man’s-buff we must rely on our own wits and senses. Orders may not reach us, or no orders may be issued. Our world of authority is in a state of chaos and of flux.
I hear footsteps, and Corporal Block joins me. He is laconic and leanly facetious.
“Pity to burn all that, sir.”
“Why, Block?”
“Well, it might have been good business to leave old Jerry thousands of rum rations to get drunk on. Might have cramped his style a bit.”
“Yes, there might be something in that.”
And it occurs to me that a more subtle policy would have left all those wine bottles unbroken to fuddle Brother Boche.
* * *
I am shaving when a dispatch rider brings us orders. Fairfax calls to me, and I go in to him with half my face still lathered. He is sitting on the bed.
“We are to open a mobile A.D.S. at a place called Harbonnieres. Pass me my map, Stephen.”
“I don’t quite like the word mobile, sir. And where are our ambulances?”
“Rankin says that three will report before 8 a.m. He hopes to get us a couple of lorries in addition. I am to detail one officer and a sub-section. Headquarters are to move to La Motte.”
I am feeling full of beans, and I ask to be detailed for the job. The strange thing about the war is that on some days one feels the complete hero, on others a mere windy worm. Are courage and a debonair and gaillard spirit dependent upon the nice functioning of one’s glands and digestive organs?
Fairfax looks at me.
“Like Carless with you?�
��
“I’m not very keen, sir.”
“All right. You and Gibbs can relieve each other every forty-eight hours. I’ll keep Carless with me.”
It is a cross-country journey to Harbonnieres and I see its funny old church rising above the flat fields. At one point we pass a little crowd of infantry who appear to be constituting themselves a rallying point under an elderly Scotch major in trews and a Glengarry. Most of the men are lying on the grass beside the road. They have the starved faces and staring eyes of men who endure in spite of exhaustion, a tough, fierce lot. I notice that they belong to two or three different divisions, and are a composite crowd. One figure in particular attracts my attention. It is that of a young corporal in one of our 81st battalions, a tall, fair, good-looking boy, whose uniform and equipment are meticulously clean. He is walking up and down with a kind of fierce restlessness, head cocked, profile proud and tense. His uniform would lead one to believe that he had just returned from leave, but one glance at his face contradicts that conclusion. It is a bleached face, tinged with yellow, and somehow infinitely old in spite of its youth. His fierce young pride and his starved swagger move me strangely. May death be merciful to him and pass him by.
Harbonnieres is a sight for the gods. It contains two Divisional Headquarters, and red hats are like roses in June. All these staff officers look clean and debonair, if a little tired, and to see so much splendour rather encourages one. But the French are still in Harbonnieres, women at doorways, children enjoying the show. It would appear that these civilians are sceptical as to the imminence of the Boche, with all this red-hatted splendour pervading the place. On this sunny morning, without a gun to be heard, Harbonnieres is like a village enjoying the pomp and ceremony of peaceful war.
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