Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  And there were rumours of a coming change in the organization of cyclist companies: we were to be corps instead of divisional troops, it was whispered, and companies were to be amalgamated to form battalions.

  IV

  Leave had been running fairly regularly in the company, and I was fortunate to get it sooner than I had anticipated. Headquarters unexpectedly allotted us another vacancy, and I was told one afternoon that I might go on leave that evening. It was my turn for patrol duty, but since the train did not leave railhead till four o’clock in the morning, I thought I could just manage it.

  I was in a beatific mood that night as I trod the dark, labyrinthine solitudes of the Somme marshes. Above the dark hill-crests on either hand shone the same stars that I should soon be gazing upon from Piccadilly Circus; away to the northward, where the flicker of distant gunfire lit the sky, I should soon be seeing the coasts of England lift above the sea.

  On my return to the trenches from the first patrol I found G. B. in the Infantry Company Headquarters dug-out.

  “Hullo, Baron!” he said as I pulled aside the gas-curtain and stumbled down the steps. “You cut off on leave now; I’m taking over. You would have to go hell for leather all the way to railhead if you did the other patrols.”

  I was very grateful. By the guttering candle-light we had a tot of whisky together out of an enamel mug, and then I said good-bye.

  “Cheerio!” said G. B. “Give my love to George Robey, Messrs. Cox & Co., and the other seven wonders of the war.”

  I left the dug-out and its aroma of damp clothes, whisky, and stale tobacco, and made my way up the dark, silent communication trench. At the top of the hill I climbed out and cut across country. I reached my billet a little after midnight, told my servant to wake me at half-past two, and then turned in for a couple of hours.

  A few minutes later, it seemed, the sound of soft footsteps awakened me, and I lay blinking sleepily at the narrow band of yellow light beneath the door; from outside came the soft soothing buzz of my little primus stove. Then in a flash came remembrance, and I was wide awake. I was going on leave.

  In the passage I could hear my servant polishing my buttons and belt, and presently the door opened softly, and he tiptoed across the room. He hung my tunic on the back of a chair and lighted a candle. “Just half past two, sir,” he said.

  I shaved and dressed, put my washing kit, pyjamas, and a pair of slacks into a haversack, donned my trench coat, and set out. It was a cold morning, and metallic stars glittered above the poplars as I rode happily towards railhead. The village street was dark, silent, and deserted at that early hour, but the station, a very small one in which stood a very long train, though dark was neither silent nor deserted. Dim figures moved upon the platform, and against the sky one caught the sharp outline of a peaked cap and the up-jutting barrel of a rifle. The murmur of many voices came from the darkness, and every now and then a match flared up in the interior of the shadowy train and revealed for a second a little group of faces. All this subdued movement and murmur in the darkness of early morning had an air of expectancy of big things that set the pulses galloping. I wedged myself into a compartment, put my haversack between my feet, and watched the glow of cigarettes in the darkness.

  We started. Dawn came, revealing the Picardy countryside moving slowly past the windows. It was after seven when we crawled through Amiens, and I was already stiff from sitting wedged with five people on a seat that was intended to hold only four. The train stopped with a jerk, and it was then that a bundle of blankets on the rack above the opposite seat stirred and the tousled head of a French soldier emerged; he lit a cigarette and grinned down upon us from his unconventional retreat.

  Hour after hour we meandered through the green valleys of Normandy, and late in the afternoon puffed into the little station of Buissy. Here was a halt of half an hour, and I knew what to do. Before the train had ceased to move, I dropped from the footboard and sprinted towards the solitary little café by the railway bridge. Around me surged a horde of khaki, but I arrived breathless among the first half-dozen. Coffee and omelette was the prize of victory, coffee and omelette whilst the indignant vanquished gnawed their ration biscuits and filled their water-bottles at the pump. Then back once more to the crowded compartment thick with tobacco smoke.

  Dusk fell and then night; conversation tailed off and ceased, and only the little red glow of pipes in the darkness showed that the compartment was occupied. Presently we were descending a steep incline; a breath of keen salt air blew in through the broken windows, and a semicircle of lights appeared below in the distance. “Harfleur,” said somebody, and added, “Thank Gawd!”

  Now the train was passing slowly through streets; lamplight fell upon brick walls and large open sheds piled with bales and cases. We moved slowly past trucks loaded with G.S. waggons, gun-limbers, and eighteen-pounder shells. Ragged urchins ran beside the train and begged in their shrill voices for “biscuit” and “bullee bœuf.” Then with many jerks the train came to a halt.

  A tall red-capped Military Police corporal stood beside the Railway Transport officer in the deserted yard. The train vomited khaki. The Police corporal shouted, “This way,” and turned on his heel. We streamed after him—through a large go-down, along a cobbled street open on one side to darkness and a strong salt wind, round the angle of another shed; and two rakish masts stabbed the night sky, and two black funnels belching smoke loomed above us, the leave-boat ready to sail.

  I was aboard; the gangway was up and a widening lane of inky water lay between the ship and the quay. The M.L.O. and his sergeant slid slowly astern. We were off. We glided swiftly on through the night, and then a sudden curtsy of the ship and a smother of salt spray upon my face told me that we were at sea. A tremor shook the ship and she began to throb like a thing alive. Submarines were in the Channel and we had no escort; it was all lights out and “hell for leather” through the darkness for Blighty.

  It was a dirty night and Tommy is notoriously a bad sailor. Down below there was not room to move; men were sitting back to back with their knees up. I preferred the slippery decks and the drenching spray to the stench below. I wedged myself into a corner in the lee of the weather-screens under the bridge and dozed, but all night long I was aware of the movement of the ship, the drumming of the wind, the crash of seas over the bows followed by the rattle of spray on the deck, and the racing of the screws as the stem lifted clear of the water.

  Night was waning when I opened my eyes after a long stretch of dozing. Dawn had not broken, but the heavy pall of darkness had thinned, and one could distinguish water from sky and the great white-capped seas foaming up out of obscurity. I staggered to the bows and saw a dark line of coast on either beam. A light winked in the gloom ahead; the throb of the engines slackened, and we drove on more slowly towards the dark enfolding lines of coast. Behind us dawn was streaking the eastern sky; ahead a chessboard-painted fort parted the racing seas; on either beam the reeling coast was fast shedding the wrappers of night and stood revealed—Blighty.

  Dishevelled, pale-faced troops appeared on deck as we steamed up Southampton Water and berthed by a shining rain-washed quay on which tall arc standards still burned. We trooped happily down the gangways through a large lighted go-down to the train.

  We stopped only once—at Basingstoke. The platform was deserted at that early hour except for two girls with trays of chocolates and biscuits. A Gunner captain and I put our heads out of the window and called to them; it was not that we really needed the chocolates we bought, but we wanted to hear an English girl speaking English.

  We glided into Waterloo, and even at that hour a little group of people was there to watch the leave-train disgorge its cargo of goat and sheepskin coats, British-warms and trench-coats.

  From the pavement outside the station I surveyed the world and found it very good. I sniffed the smoky, petrol, tar-block smell with dilated nostrils; I read the old familiar advertisements of pills and mustard; I took deep
draughts of the good old London air.

  V

  I will not attempt to describe that leave. A mere catalogue of dinners, dances, theatres, and jollifications would be boring. Contrast is the spice of life; and leave is a super-illustration of that truth.

  I rang up Helen Gurney on the telephone the first morning and met her at the Piccadilly tube that afternoon. It is useless to attempt to describe Helen. The war was a time of brilliant high lights and inky shadows, and with certain few exceptions those war-time English girls were wonderful—and Helen was the most wonderful of all. I saw a good deal of her during that leave, and I can see her now as we sat in some cosily lighted restaurant, her calm healthy face and thoughtful grey eyes, and her hair like spun gold in the light of the table-lamp; or as we traversed the streets of London in a taxi, the lights flashing through the windows and giving me glimpses of her face, absurdly like her brother, young Gurney. London… leave… Helen…

  One night—I have forgotten how it came about—we emerged from the tube at Finsbury Park to find that we had missed the last train. The streets were deserted, and taxis seemed non-existent; the only course open was to walk. We tramped on through endless, dull streets of villas and lost our way. Then we sat down, and I shall always remember Helen in her evening frock and cloak and myself in my blue patrol-jacket side by side on a doorstep. Then a sympathetic policeman put us on the right path.

  Helen was growing tired, and I felt her arm link gently in mine. It was my last night of leave, and just before we reached the house, I blurted out, “Helen, old girl, I’m absolutely crazy about you.”

  She was silent for a moment or two and then pressed my arm slightly. “Are you?” she said in a low voice.

  “Absolutely,” I repeated inanely.

  “I know,” she said, and then was silent again.

  “You do like me, Helen, don’t you?” I pleaded. “Just a little bit?”

  She laughed softly. “Of course. You are a great dear, Dicky boy. I like you… awfully…”

  “Well, then,” I broke in jubilantly.

  “Let me finish, Dicky,” she said. “Love is such a great big thing; it should sweep everything away and transform heaven and earth.”

  “It does,” I agreed.

  “I do like you, Dicky boy—awfully,” she went on; “but not quite like that yet. It may grow to be like that, and if it does, it will be too… too…”

  “Wonderful,” I put in.

  “Wonderful,” she agreed in a low voice. “But until it does, don’t let us spoil it all. Love is too big a thing to take risks with; it would be too horrible if we made a mistake. Let us go on as we are now… till I am sure… good pals and… and a little more perhaps.”

  “I’ll promise anything on earth so long as I have a hope,” I answered fervently.

  She squeezed my arm and then suddenly threw her arms round my neck. “That’s because you are going back to the front tomorrow, my poor old Dicky,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER IX

  I

  At dusk on the following day we steamed down Southampton Water. The boat was less crowded than on the previous journey, and I managed to find a space in which I could lie full-length. It was a quiet night, and when I awoke we were already inside the breakwater at Havre. I reported at the R.T.O.’s office and found a note from G. B. awaiting me. “Get off at Corbie,” it ran. “Great doings.—G. B.”

  It was half past four in the afternoon when we crawled into Corbie. I heaved my cramped limbs out of the compartment and was on my way to the R.T.O.’s office to inquire the whereabouts of the company when I noticed a couple of men with Army Cyclist Corps badges standing by a mess-cart outside the station. I went across to them, and one of the men, a lance-corporal, saluted and said, “Lieutenant Baron, sir? We have been sent to meet you.”

  I thought I knew every man in the company by sight, but both these faces were new to me, and the mess-cart was not ours. The lance-corporal saw that I was mystified, and as I got into the cart, said, “The battalion is at Ligny, sir.”

  “Battalion!” I echoed.

  “Yes, sir. Corps troops now.”

  Then he told me all about it. Three days after I had gone on leave the changes of which we had heard rumours had been made. Two of the old divisional companies had been amalgamated to form a battalion. Melford had gone to be Second-in-Command of an infantry battalion, and a new man, Major Twist, had come to command us. There were three companies: A, B, and C. C Company was composed of officers and men from the other divisional company amalgamated with us and were all new to me; Hubbard commanded B and had Pagan as one of his subalterns; and G. B. had got his captaincy at last and was in command of A, with Gurney, Dodd, and myself as platoon officers. Harding was still with us as Medical Officer.

  I found my battalion, as I must now call it, in a delightful little village on the banks of the Somme a few miles from Corbie. The village school had been turned into the mess, and G. B., Gurney, and I were billeted together in a clean little cottage on the river-bank. Fresh cream, butter, and eggs were obtainable in this undevastated country, and we were a very jolly party in the mess, quickly making friends with our new comrades and settling down into a well-knit battalion. We had found a piano in one of the rooms, and every night after dinner G. B. sat at the keyboard with his glass on top of the piano, and we bawled the profane old choruses:

  Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley-vous,

  Mademoiselle from Armentières, parley-vous,

  Mademoiselle from Armentières,

  Never been kissed for forty years,

  Inky pinky parley-vous!

  But we were not allowed to enjoy this arcadian retreat for long. C Company was the first to go; they were attached to the Corps Provost-Marshal and moved off to various destinations up and down the corps area. And then Hubbard’s company, B, was ordered to provide snipers for the corps front and to man the corps observation posts. This last job was given to Pagan and his platoon, and Gurney and I chipped him mercilessly with having to leave our peaceful village.

  “Get thee to a nunnery: go!” he retorted. “Must B Company win the whole bloomin’ war for you?”

  “He that bridleth his tongue is greater than he that taketh a city,” I quoted sententiously from where I sat on the pole of a farm-waggon.

  “Ye gods!” cried Pagan with a grin as he rode off. “The bold, bad Baron lapses into Paganism!”

  And then it was our turn. A Company was ordered up to dig pits for the trench-mortars that were to cut the wire for the now rapidly approaching big push; and we set about getting the company into light mobile trim.

  G. B. had his valise spread out on the red-tiled floor of his billet and was on his knees beside it sorting the less necessary articles from the indispensable.

  “We ought to cut our kit down to the minimum,” he said. “Once this push gets started, we shall be pretty much on the move, and it will be less trouble to get rid of the stuff now than to have to dump and lose it later on.”

  I had strolled in from my room across the passage and was idly turning over some paper-backed novels and old photographs he had thrown on the bed.

  “Hullo!” I exclaimed. “Is this you, G. B., dressed up?” I had picked up a photograph of an officer in the smart, tight-waisted German greatcoat and rakish peaked cap.

  G. B. screwed his head round to look at it.

  “What?” he asked. “Oh, that: no, that’s a fellow I shared rooms with in Berlin.”

  I looked at the photograph with interest. “You certainly are alike,” I told him. “He is a bit fatter perhaps, and of course the uniform makes a difference; otherwise it might be your ugly mug. Looks a bit of a swine,” I added with a grin.

  G. B. took the photograph from me and pushed it into the stove. “He was rather a good fellow really,” he retorted.

  “Oh ho, G. B., you’ve been making pals with the unspeakable Hun!” I ragged, wagging a finger at him.

  He shrugged his shoulders and glanced at hi
mself in the little polished steel field-mirror he had picked out of his kit. “They are quite a good lot individually when you really know them.”

  “Yes, they need a lot of knowing,” I answered sceptically. “I knew a Bosche barber once, but I expect I didn’t know him well enough.”

  He slipped the thin plate of steel back into its case and threw it on to the valise. “You are bigoted, Baron. You can’t damn a whole nation like that.”

  “What about Louvain?” I retorted.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not defending that. But there are good and bad in every crowd.”

  “Well, I’ve met the bad, and you seem to have met all the good,” I retorted.

  “Well,” he answered patiently, “I have met hundreds. Till I was eight I lived in Germany—spoke German better than English at one time. And then I had three years at Heidelberg. I met some rotters, of course, but I met a lot of damn good fellows too.”

  “And supposing you meet this chap in the photograph—out in no-man’s-land! What will you do? Kiss each other on both cheeks?”

  “That’s a French custom,” he snapped. “And we shall not meet anyway, so why talk tripe?” He got up from his knees and took a cigarette-case from the breast pocket of his tunic. “Have a gasper, and don’t be an ass,” he said with a grin.

  II

  On the following morning we rode out. It was the first time that A Company had moved off in full kit as an independent unit under the command of its captain, and we were all in high spirits. As soon as G. B. gave “March at ease,” the men began to sing, to the tune of “The Church’s one Foundation”:

  We are Fred Karno’s army:

  What blinking good are we?

  We cannot shoot; we cannot ride