Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  “Of course not,” he answered gently. “Of course not. I don’t expect you to be like me. I’m a clumsy great lout; I’m not used to women. But I’m going back to-morrow, and I had to tell you. Poor little girl! But you like me a little…?”

  “Yes.” She was holding her lower lip between her teeth and staring out of the window.

  “Well then, perhaps…”

  “I like you; yes,” she interrupted gently. “But…”

  “But what? Is there anyone else?”

  She was silent for a moment, and then turned her head and looked at him. “In a way—yes.”

  “Ah!” He made a little gesture with his hands. “I’m sorry. You must forgive me. I didn’t know.”

  She sat gazing with contracted brows at the swiftly passing lights. “Listen,” she said suddenly. “It is only fair that I should tell you. Dicky Baron when he was home on leave—he asked me the same question. I told him that I didn’t know… and I don’t know now. I like him immensely, but…” She gave a little helpless shrug. “And we left it at that.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “I understand,” he said. “But I’m afraid I have spoilt your evening, little girl.”

  He took a cigarette from his case and squared his shoulders with an unconscious gesture.

  She glanced at him quickly. “For God’s sake, Gerard, don’t say that!” There was a catch in her voice. “I shall cry in a moment.”

  He turned a puzzled face towards her. “You must not do that. Why should you?”

  She beat her knees with her little clenched fists. “Why?” she exclaimed. “Why! Oh, for myself, for you, for the war, for life… for everything.”

  And then she tilted her chin and laughed a trifle unsteadily. “That is the girl-twin speaking. I must be the soldier-twin. Swear for me Gerard. Swear!” she cried fiercely. “Good round Flanders oaths. Let us damn fortune together.”

  IV

  Helen saw him off at Victoria on the following day. Here and there upon the crowded platform a white-faced girl stood in silent misery gazing at her bronzed, khaki-clad companion with eyes that spoke the unspeakable; and he fidgeted on his feet and cursed softly beneath his breath. But there were no scenes. The men’s train was the first to leave, and a half-stifled cheer went up as it moved slowly out. And then the whistle blew for the officers’ train. Bretherton got into his compartment.

  “Look after my young brother,” said Helen as the train began to move.

  “I will,” he assured her. “And Dicky Baron too,” he added.

  She thanked him with a look. “Take care of yourself, Gerard,” were her last words. He smiled and waved his hand, and withdrew his head from the window only when the train rounded a curve and the diminutive figure with the fluttering handkerchief was hidden from view.

  CHAPTER XIII

  I

  It was late in the afternoon on the following day when Bretherton trudged over the slope of the hill past a working party parading in clean fatigue and gas-helmets, and saw the prisoners-of-war cage and its grey cargo in the crowded valley below him. An aeroplane droned overhead, and he heard again the familiar rumble of the guns; and not till then did the depression that had accompanied him throughout the journey from Victoria lift.

  This was the life he knew and understood. Crude and elementary perhaps, but straightforward. A man’s job. He was unfitted for boudoirs and drawing-rooms, he told himself. He had no understanding of the subtleties of love-making or of the tortuous paths to a woman’s heart. To him love was a passion as elementary as a bayonet charge. Leave was a mistake; an unsettling interruption of the normal routine of war. And he wished devoutly that he could erase the memory of this last one from the tablets of his mind.

  But this was the life he understood; and he would throw himself the more whole-heartedly into it now that he was so much an alien in those unreal realms of peace. And therefore he was almost happy when he opened the door of the mess-hut and was greeted with shouts of: “Hullo, G. B.! Had a good leave?” “How’s old Piccadilly?” and “Have they heard there’s a war on yet?”

  Here nothing was changed. There were the same old jokes about quartermasters and the staff, the same old worries about ridiculous returns and impossible operation orders, and the same old smell of whisky, tobacco, and chloride of lime. It was the same old war.

  He waded through the chits that had come into the company office during his absence, picked up the thread of company and battalion events, and quickly dropped back into the worries and responsibilities of a company commander.

  The Somme battle thundered on its staggering course. Rattling tanks heaved their monstrous shapes slowly over the mud. Day after day the guns sustained their hound-like baying, and furiously and without respite men sweated to answer the never-ending call for ammunition. Day after day the rain poured down upon the lunar-like landscape; and day after day the casualties mounted up. Day after day the waves of steel-hatted figures floundered across the quivering, glutinous ground; and day after day a hundred yards or more of gory, stinking, pulverized hillside was wrested from the enemy.

  A Company was dismembered: Baron’s platoon alone remained intact. The other two platoons were scattered up and down the corps area; and Bretherton spent his days visiting detachments, motor-cycling over pot-holed roads, trudging over shell-pocked hillsides, or floundering along waterlogged trenches.

  II

  He returned to his headquarters one afternoon to find that corps had ordered a platoon into the line. An attack was to be made the next morning to straighten a dangerous salient, and a platoon was to go up to the support line and, as soon as the attacking troops reached their objective, was to move to a position indicated by Corps Headquarters and establish an observation post there.

  Baron, in his company commander’s absence, had given the necessary orders and had taken it for granted that he would accompany his platoon, which was the only one available. But Bretherton decreed otherwise. There were no bonds to hold him to the peace-time life, to which in the nature of things all could not hope to return. But Baron must return; his life was entangled with the happiness of others in that post-war, peace-time England.

  Thus Bretherton reasoned. As company commander his detailing of subalterns for particular duties might be a matter of life and death to them; and no conscientious commander would, without grave reason, substitute one officer for another. In the dangerous game of war each must take his chance in fair rotation. But it was permissible surely to make himself the substitute.

  He himself would take up the platoon, and Baron should remain behind with the details.

  Baron did not take kindly to the arrangement. He came into the hut of ammunition boxes that served as the company office, where Bretherton in his muddy field-boots was conning the orders from Corps Headquarters.

  “The Sergeant-Major tells me that you are taking up my platoon,” he began.

  “Um!” Bretherton nodded without looking up.

  “And I am to remain here with the details?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Baron picked up a map and put it down again. “Is there any need to leave an officer? The Q.M.S. is here.”

  “Quite. But there’s no need to send two officers with the platoon.”

  “But it’s my platoon, G. B.”

  “Quite.” Bretherton turned over a sheet.

  “What is the idea, then?”

  Bretherton shrugged his shoulders and threw the sheaf of orders on to the little table.

  “You’ve been out all day, G. B. The men are parading in an hour, and you’ve had nothing to eat yet.”

  Bretherton glanced at his wrist-watch. “Well, then, run along to the mess like a good chap and tell them to have something ready for me in ten minutes.”

  Baron did not move; he stood playing with the half-dozen rounds of revolver ammunition that lay on the table. “Do you think I’m not up to my job? Is that the reason?”

  “My dear fellow, of course not. Don’
t talk such rot.”

  Baron was frowning at the revolver round he was turning over and over in his hand. Suddenly he threw it decisively on the table and looked straight at Bretherton. “Look here, G. B., this isn’t fair on me. It looks uncommonly as though you wanted to take all the kudos for yourself. You’ve got your M.C. What are you after now—a D.S.O.? You might give someone else a chance. It’s my platoon and…”

  “Mr. Baron,” broke in Bretherton in his orderly-room voice, “I should be glad if you would refrain from criticizing my orders. I want you to inspect the platoon’s gas-helmets when they fall in; and just let the mess know I’m back, will you?”

  Baron allowed himself a tiny grimace of anger. He clicked his heels and saluted. “Very good, sir,” he said, and left the hut abruptly.

  Bretherton’s eyes remained fixed thoughtfully on the doorway for some seconds after Baron had disappeared through it; and then with a little shrug of his shoulders he turned again to the map and orders.

  III

  The platoon marched out at dusk. It was a moonless night and very quiet, except that every five minutes to the second a gigantic sack of coals was tipped down a chute in a hollow away to the right: Fritz shelling some target in his usual methodical manner. The cool night-breeze had a faint, sweet aroma of pear-drops. Occasionally by some copse or hollow a lightning-like flash illuminated the track, and was followed by the sudden bang of an invisible gun and the retreating shuffle of the shell. Then all was quiet till the next sack of coals was tipped into the distant hollow. Sometimes the quiet intervals were broken by the stutter of a machine gun, and one heard the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat grow loud and faint alternately as the gun traversed, and then it ceased as abruptly as it had begun, leaving the night the quieter for the sudden interruption. And occasionally a distant heavy shell detonated with the lone, muffled solemnity of a passing bell.

  The party halted in a shallow, sombre valley where the ground was pitted with shell-holes and littered with the debris of battle. Bretherton checked his position by a wood on his right—a number of ragged, leafless stumps like roughly trimmed clothes-props that showed against the sky—and gave the order to fall out. In a few shallow little burrows that had been scratched in the hillside the men made themselves as comfortable as possible and snatched a few hours’ sleep.

  They were up and on the move at dawn. Little files of steel-hatted figures were dribbling to and fro across the desolate valley that lay with all its scars and disfigurements revealed in the cold light of dawn. The guns were playing one of their favourite pieces, forte and allegro. Above the splintered poles of the leafless wood, tiny stars winked and little cotton-wool-like balls of white smoke appeared, grew rapidly in size, and drifted away on the breeze. Two or three contact planes flew low over the flayed hill-slopes.

  Number One Platoon reached its allotted position with the loss of only five casualties. The sector consisted of a number of deep shell-holes on a pulverized slope, connected by hastily scratched trenches, barely deep enough to allow a prone man to pass unseen. Fifty yards to the front were the ruins of a building of some kind. A few mounds of bricks with a ragged gable projecting from one of them and here and there a jagged wall a few feet above the ground was all that remained. The officer from whom Bretherton took over said that he had a post of three men there. “We found it too unhealthy for more,” he explained. “Fritz keeps pitching stuff into it all the time. And besides, you have a better field of fire here, and some wire.”

  Bretherton posted two men in the ruins, and when he had organized his little sector, went out to them himself. He spent the greater part of the afternoon with them, crawling back from time to time to his main position. The Germans had a trench-mortar close by, which every now and then threw flying pigs among the brick-heaps; and he determined to reconnoitre its position with a view to putting it out of action when night fell.

  Followed by his servant, he crawled out from his main position towards the ruined building. On the far side of the first heap of bricks he came upon one of his men with the side of his face blown away. He crawled on through the rubble and debris to find the other man. Suddenly he saw an arm swing up from behind a stump of wall, and the next moment a German egg-bomb struck him on the forehead without exploding, and he dropped senseless. At the same moment his servant, who was crawling some yards away to the right, collapsed silently with a bullet through his head.

  IV

  When Bretherton recovered his senses he was lying on the far side of the ruined building. Two German soldiers in coal-scuttle steel helmets, dazzle-painted in red, green, and yellow, were lying behind a heap of bricks ten or twelve yards away. Their backs were towards him, and the nail-studded soles of their clumsy shin-high boots were the most conspicuous things about them. For a moment or two in his half-dazed condition he found himself counting the number of nails in each sole. Then with fully recovered consciousness he turned his head and found himself looking into the face of a man lying close beside him.

  It was rather a pleasant face, that of a young man, tanned and with a little fair moustache upon the upper lip. The peak of a coal-scuttle steel helmet shaded his eyes, and the stiff collar of his grey tunic fastened closely about his neck. He grinned not unpleasantly as his eyes met Bretherton’s, and moved forward his right hand. Bretherton saw that it held an automatic pistol. “Prisonnier,” said the German officer in French. Bretherton grinned feebly in reply and nodded.

  Presently the officer signalled to his men to retire, and the whole diamond formation turned about and, with the officer, his orderly, and Bretherton in the centre, crawled away from the ruins.

  Thirty yards from the brick and rubble heaps they came upon a German post of four men roughly dug into a slight depression in the ground. They halted here for a few minutes, and then as they moved out on the far side, a British machine gun opened fire from a flank, and Bretherton had the unpleasant experience of lying with his body pressed close to the ground and hearing British bullets hissing and whipping a foot above his head. The gun ceased firing after a few seconds, and they crawled on and reached a trench in which they were able to rise to their feet. It had been made as a communicating trench of a reserve system, but now German soldiers in steel helmets and shirt-sleeves were digging furiously to convert it into a fire trench. They were hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, and many of them had that dazed look which is seen on the faces of men who have been subjected to long periods of heavy shell fire. It was evident that the strain of repeated attacks and bombardments was beginning to tell upon them.

  Bretherton was taken down half a dozen steps into a small dug-out, and was allowed to sit upon a wooden bench while the young officer reported to a plump little German in glasses. He was glad of the opportunity to rest; his head ached abominably, and a small cut on his thigh, though neither deep nor dangerous, made walking painful. His message-pad, glasses, and prismatic compass were taken from him, but his personal belongings were returned to him. He had got rid of his map whilst passing through a muddy shell-hole. He was asked his name, rank, and regiment in French; and he replied in that language, thinking it advisable to conceal his knowledge of German.

  After this preliminary examination he was marched off under the escort of a soldier with rifle and fixed bayonet and the young officer who had been responsible for his capture. This young man treated his prisoner very courteously. They were both fighting men, his attitude seemed to say, both initiates of the ancient order of mud, blood, and lice, though members of different lodges; this was a predicament in which any gentleman might find himself, and the positions might have been reversed. Bretherton was to discover later that hostility and hate increased in direct ratio to one’s distance from the firing-line.

  They passed slowly and, as far as Bretherton was concerned, painfully up a long zigzagging trench and out into a narrow, curved, sunken road where a long row of wounded were lying outside a dressing-station. Farther up the road, between high banks, a German fatigue party was paradi
ng with picks and shovels, and beyond them two British Tommies, prisoners, were seated on the ground with their backs against the bank. The face of one of them was swathed in bandages, but the inevitable cigarette protruded from the midst of them; the other, bare-headed and with a shock of tousled red hair, was playing “Mademoiselle from Armentières” on a mouth-organ. Bretherton gave them a cheery word as he passed, and the red-headed one took his instrument from his mouth, and with an obvious wink asked whether Bretherton ’ad ’eard that ’Aig was ’alf-way to Berlin!

  “He is probably there by now,” answered Bretherton, laughing.

  “There y’are, Jerry! Y’ear what the orficer says!” cried the Tommy, looking up at his escort, a big, raw-boned Saxon. “That’s what I’ve been a-tellin’ ’em square-’eads, sir,” he continued to Bretherton. “But they’re a nignorant lot o’ bastards—beggin’ your pardon, sir.” And he fell to with his instrument again and the strange classic adventures of the lady from Armentières.

  In the deepest part of the cutting Bretherton was led into a dug-out cut into the bank. A number of orderlies loitered about the door or sat upon the ground outside, and from this and other signs he concluded that it was a regimental headquarters. The dug-out was a large one, running parallel with the road under the bank, and was divided into compartments by wooden partitions. In one of these a typewriter was clicking, and in another he caught a glimpse of the Brigadier or Regimental Commander with a telephone held to his ear, bending over a map. He was left alone in one of these compartments for a minute or two, and then an intelligence officer who spoke fluent English came to question him.

  He was asked the number of our tanks, the names of the units in the line, about the reserves, the aircraft, and a number of other questions, all of which he refused to answer. A prisoner of war is bound to give his name and regiment, but nothing more. The intelligence officer, who was a hectoring, unhealthy-looking, middle-aged German, tried threats. To have carried out the threats would have been a grave breach of international law, but Bretherton did not feel altogether secure on that account. Nevertheless, he refused to answer all questions, protested that he was tired and hungry—which was an understatement—and suggested that the officer should cease to waste any more time. He was left alone for some minutes then, and the officer returned to say that since he would not answer the questions he must go to another headquarters.