We climbed over the parapet soon after dark. I went first with my covering party, whose duty was to lie out beyond the wire and intercept any enemy patrols that might be prowling in the neighbourhood. Behind us came G. B. and his wiring party loaded with iron screw pickets, reels of barbed wire, wire cutters and wiring gloves. We reached our position and began our long vigil, whilst behind us G. B.’s party spread out and began work.
The night was very quiet and dark except for the soundless gun-flashes in the French area far south and the lazy rise and fall of Verey lights. These moving lights cast running shadows on the ground, and anyone lying out in no-man’s-land at night and having imagination will see more than is actually there. But although they give a fairly brilliant light, it is very difficult to pick out an object unless it moves. In spite of my knowledge of this fact, however, a light soaring up near me always made me feel as though I were lying naked in Piccadilly Circus.
After ten o’clock I glanced rather often at my luminous wrist-watch; for although the mine was not timed to blow till eleven forty-five, the hour of these shows was sometimes advanced at the last moment, and I had no wish to witness the spectacle from the middle of no-man’s-land, since the first big crash was sure to be the signal for bedlam to break loose. At last I heard the signal warning me that the wiring party had returned to the trench and, with a sigh of thankfulness, I passed the order to move back.
Just outside our own wire I was going on all-fours and had raised an elbow to crawl over what I took to be a low ridge of earth, when a bursting light showed me that the supposed ridge was a dead Bosche. But my weight was already too far over for me to draw back, and my forearm came down on the faded grey cloth. Down it went, but not against resistance; it clove through a damp sticky substance like rotten pears to the earth beneath, and I snatched it away covered with green frothy slime, having raised a stench that is indescribable.
The relief was just complete when we got back to the trench, and we had time to drink a mug of hot tea before standing-to for the mine. At the moment the activity was if anything a little below normal: an occasional shell bursting flower-like in the darkness, the mournful whimper of a stray round passing down the valley, and the periodical stutter of a machine gun; and I could plainly hear the rumble of transport behind the German trenches.
Then suddenly the night lifted as though a curtain had been tom down. The earth shook. The clouds overhead glowed blood red; and away on the left a vast sheet of flame shot up to the apex of the sky. Then came a crashing roar that stunned the senses and gradually subsided in lesser rumblings encircling the horizon. Immediately countless lightning-like flashes outlined the dark irregular line of the slope behind us as with a sound like the beating of side-drums our field guns opened fire; and the passage of their shells through the night was like a covey of partridges passing over.
The alarmed Germans signalled to their gunners. Tiny points of fire traced vertical patterns against the night, burst with a faint pop, and glittering balls of red, green, and white floated downwards; Verey lights soared up like sparks from a furnace. A sudden crackle of rifle fire broke out, followed a few minutes later by the steady tat-tat-tat-tat of a machine gun that I recognized as one of our own. That was Fanny Adams in action on the far lip of the crater. Then the German gunners got to work and made our neat and nicely revetted trench look like a ditch that had been trampled by elephants.
Then suddenly the night lifted as though a curtain had been torn down.
VI
It was about half past one when I turned in, and at about half past two G. B., who was still on duty, came and roused me. “Turn out, Baron,” he said. “I want you to take over for a few minutes. The Colonel wants me at Battalion H.Q. Sorry, old bird, and all that.”
When G. B. returned some fifteen minutes later he said, “Somebody has made a mess of it again. We should have gone out with the K.L.I. This battalion has no orders about us, and so they rung up Brigade to ask. We are to go out at once; and the K.L.I. will give us billets in Morlancourt.”
“Bit rough on the men just as they are getting a spot of rest,” I grumbled. “However…”
We paraded the men and filed back along the communicating trench. We trailed slowly through the narrow trench, over the hill, and down into the dark valley where the Verey lights were obscured by the slope behind us. Those who have not taken a column of tired men through a long communicating trench at night cannot appreciate the exasperation of the task, but those who have done so will understand and sympathize. At length we filed out on to the pale ribbon of road in the little dark valley and formed up.
“It’s a hell of a march through Bray to Morlancourt,” I said to G. B.
“I know,” he said. “But I’m going to cut across country.”
“Pretty risky in the dark without a compass, isn’t it?” I asked.
“A little,” he admitted. “But it’s worth it. I know this country pretty well. We go straight up over the hill till we strike the Bray-Albert road; there are three trees together almost in a straight line from here, and from them we leave the road at right-angles and go straight down into Morlancourt.”
“If we are lucky,” I said doubtfully. “It’s a good seven miles, and plenty of latitude to go astray in.”
We had one cycle with us that had been left at the end of the communicating trench. G. B. called up his servant and gave him the cycle.
“Take off your equipment,” he said. “I’ll carry that. Ride into Morlancourt; find the Quartermaster of the K.L.I. and tell him I want billets for sixty men. And try to get something hot to drink, if possible.”
The man saluted and rode off into the darkness. G. B. looked about him once or twice to get his bearings, and then led the way off the road towards the dark hill-slope.
“You keep a look-out ahead for shell-holes,” he said. “I will do the navigating.”
The men were inclined to grumble. They were dog-tired and had been deprived of their overdue rest by a careless mistake, and Hubbard’s platoon was not as well disciplined as my own. I staggered along half asleep through the darkness and found the shell-holes only by falling into them. G. B., who had had no rest whatever, must have been even more tired than I was, but presently he began to whistle. He whistled the chorus of “You Beautiful Doll” three times without result, but as he began the fourth repetition, shame triumphed over fatigue, and I pulled myself together and joined in. By the end of the sixth repetition my sergeant and two of the men had joined in, and at last someone produced a mouth-organ. Presently we could feel the party pull together and get into something of a swing behind us. G. B. stopped whistling with a sigh and turned his whole attention to guiding us.
After tramping for what seemed to be ages in a dream with the fitful wail of the mouth-organ in my ears, I spied three tall trees standing up dark against the sky less than twenty yards to my right. G. B. gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“Pretty good without a compass, G. B.,” I said admiringly.
“Not bad,” he admitted.
We crossed the road by the trees, and the men’s feet rang out sharply and suddenly as they left the soggy ground for the few paces of hard surface. Then we tramped on and on through an interminable darkness towards a dim, ever-receding skyline. Hours later, it seemed, we were descending a hill into darkness.
“Scout out to the right and see if you can find a track, will you?” said G. B.
Thirty yards away I came upon a narrow rutted track converging upon our line of march. I shouted to G. B., and he led our little column towards it. Presently a barn loomed upon the right, and then another upon the left, and then we were in a dark narrow tunnel between cottages.
“Morlancourt,” said G. B.
In the silent cross-roads a dark figure rose up and saluted G. B. It was his servant.
“The billets are in a barn, sir, over there,” he said. “I had a little difficulty in getting them. The Quarter-master was in bed and did not want to be disturbed. He said
we might use the cookhouse. I found the remains of a fire and made it up. I also made love to the cooks and borrowed some tea. A couple of dixies will be ready in a few minutes.”
“Good man,” said G. B. “Lead the way to the barn.”
Whilst G. B. had been talking to his servant, I had been speaking to my sergeant, and I spoke loudly so that the men, and especially Hubbard’s platoon, might hear. “Mr. Bretherton has saved us three or four miles by bringing us across country,” I said. “A very difficult thing to do on a cloudy night without a compass.”
G. B. halted the party outside the barn and, in spite of their fatigue, pulled them to attention with his sharp word of command as though on C.O.’s parade.
“When you dismiss and go to your billets,” he cautioned them, “don’t make a row. Troops are asleep in this village. There will be two dixies of tea ready in a minute or two. Two men from each platoon will go with my servant to fetch it. Fall out, Mr. Baron.”
I saluted and fell out. G. B. continued: “Party—’shun. Dis—miss!” The men turned to the right, smacked their butts, and stumbled into the barn. G. B. and I found a comparatively undraughty corner, and I was asleep even before G. B.’s admirable servant had brought his master a jug of hot tea.
CHAPTER VIII
I
One afternoon Melford, Groucher, Harding, and I were returning up a communicating trench near Vaux Wood which spills over the flank of a steep hill fringing a great loop of the Somme. Perched up there, one looked down upon the tree-bordered river zigzagging among a criss-cross pattern of dykes and lakes of shining water. The opposite hill-slopes were scarred with German trenches. This loop of the river-valley was no-man’s-land and impassable to troops except by the narrow road from Vaux and one or two precarious footpaths threading the swamp.
We had been spying out the lie of the land, for it was to be our duty each night to patrol these paths. After the reconnaissance we had stayed a few minutes to watch a shoot by our gunners on the German trenches across the valley, and had then turned back up a trench on the forward slope of the hill. We had just passed a turn where three stark, ragged trees stood like sentinels in the bordering mound of excavated chalk and entered a longish straight stretch of trench, when without warning a heavy strafe opened on us.
At the first hurtling whistle I dropped flat. The air was rent with repetitions of that demoniacal shriek a shell makes a second before it lands; the ground shook at each ear-splitting detonation. The continuous patter and smack of bits of iron striking the ground sounded like a moderate performer on a typewriter; smoke drifted across the top of the trench in clouds, inky black, dirty grey, and vivid green; and at each explosion earth showered in upon me. The acrid smoke rocked with concussion and made my head ache abominably.
How long I lay there I do not know, possibly only a few minutes, but it seemed hours; and then came an explosion louder than the rest, and a great weight of earth descended on top of me, blotting out the daylight and the acrid smell of high explosive. My immediate dread of being buried alive was greater than that of being dismembered by chunks of flying metal, and I heaved upwards wildly with my shoulders. To my great relief, my head rose above the mound of loose earth, and at the same moment I saw Harding’s head emerge less than a yard away. He shook the earth out of his eyes and hair like a dog and bawled, “Some guy has given them our ad-dress!” I grinned in reply, and then hastily buried my nose in the earth again as resounding smacks smote the sides of the trench and fresh showers of earth came over me.
Then followed a lull, which Groucher, who was in front of me, took advantage of to run the fifteen odd yards out of that dangerous straight bit of trench. I was about to follow him, when the tornado began again, and for the next nine or ten minutes I dared not raise my nose from the ground. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun, like the ceasing of an April shower when the sun comes out.
Harding and I stood up, grinned rather foolishly at each other, and brushed the dirt from our uniforms. The trench was in a filthy mess. Great mounds of earth blocked it in front and behind, and the sides had been knocked in and gaped widely all along.
“That’s that,” said Melford. “Better get back now it’s fine.”
We moved on in single file up the straight bit of trench, and just round the bend I nearly fell over Groucher, who was still lying prone by a great heap of debris.
“Get a move on, Groucher,” I cried. “It’s all over for this performance.”
And then I saw that his tunic was ripped across one shoulder and that the frayed edges of the cloth were stained a dark brown.
“Look out!” I cried, pulling up short. “Groucher’s been hit.”
We turned him over gently, and he cursed us faintly for our clumsiness. Harding knelt down beside him and slit open the tunic with a pocket-knife. “You’ve got a Blighty one all right this time,” he announced. “Give me a shell dressing, somebody; and one of you cut along for a stretcher.”
II
Groucher was evacuated that night; and I do not think that anyone in the mess sorrowed over his going. His departure left vacant the position of Second-in-Command, which in the ordinary course of events G. B., as next in seniority, would have stepped into, but the affair of the photograph prejudiced Headquarters against him. Melford sent in his name, but Headquarters struck it out and substituted that of Hubbard, the next on the list; and in due course our Mother Hubbard added a stripe and a star to his tunic cuff.
If Groucher had erred on the side of officiousness and bully-ragging, Hubbard went to the other extreme. He was pathetic in his anxiety to avoid Groucher’s faults, and he never gave us an order off parade without prefacing it by some such remark as “Awfully sorry to trouble you, old buster; would do it myself, but I have to pay out the men.” And he was absurdly afraid that he might incur the enmity of G. B. “I’m awfully sorry, old buster,” he said. “You ought to be Second-in-Command unquestionably; but it really isn’t my fault. I didn’t want the job; Headquarters put me in it, you know, and—well, I couldn’t help it.”
“You needn’t worry,” G. B. told him contemptuously. “I shall not refuse to obey orders. Pip collecting has never been one of my hobbies. I’m quite satisfied with the platoon.”
And his platoon was quite satisfied with G. B. They were indignant that their officer had been passed over in favour of Hubbard, of whose military abilities they had no great opinion; but as the platoon sergeant was heard to remark, “We should have lost G. B., and we might have got Mother as platoon officer—Gawd help us!”
III
Meanwhile we lay under the baffled displeasure of Divisional Headquarters, which was manifested in the prompt raps over the knuckles that were delivered whenever Melford gave them an opening, which, to do him credit, was seldom. The subject of the photograph was never reopened in the mess; officially G. B. was exonerated from blame, but the mystery was still unexplained, and there remained a constant reminder of the fact in our strained relations with the staff. Therefore, any manifestation of official displeasure, which usually filters from the Commanding Officer down through the chain of command to the lowly private, with us found its billet in G. B.
But one of his exploits when patrolling the Somme swamp went far towards restoring him and the company to favour. He returned to the trenches one night with a German officer and two men as prisoners. When near the middle of the swamp he had told his patrol to wait and had himself gone on alone. He had run into an enemy patrol and replied to its challenge in his fluent German, and his deception had passed muster in the darkness. He had persuaded the officer and two of the men to follow him and had led them into his own patrol. I learned afterwards that it was G. B.’s custom to leave his patrol for a time and wander on alone.
Thus our name was re-entered in the good books of Headquarters; and shortly afterwards the General himself came to inspect us and our billets. Melford was well versed in the foibles of Generals and of this one in particular. Our billets were equipped with al
l the gadgets dear to the hearts of inspecting Generals: wire-netting beds, canteen, spick-and-span cook-house with white-garbed cooks and daily diet sheet, grease traps, latrines with fly-proof lids, and other eye-wash. And on our inspection we had the good fortune to stand next to a unit whose dirtiness and slovenly appearance acted as a foil to our spit and polish.
The General expressed himself as being very pleased with what he had seen, though whether this was really due to our turnout or was merely the effect of a good luncheon I will not venture to decide. He said that he expected a high standard of efficiency from us because we should be called upon to perform difficult and specialized work. “You have never yet seen a great battle,” he concluded darkly, “but you will before very long.”
Indeed, the signs and portents of this approaching battle were gathering thick about us. Guns of every size, queer deformed monsters many of them, rumbled through the village at night and were secreted among the hills before dawn; new roads were being made and old ones widened; field-gun ammunition was being taken far forward and buried; and last but not least significant, the infantry back in billets were assiduously practising bayonet fighting.
Headquarters began to take an unhealthy interest in our tactical schemes. Brass-hats appeared mysteriously from the hillsides to watch my point at work, and twice when I had halted on a main bound, the G.S.O.I. rode up, and after inspecting the position, offered friendly and helpful advice.
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