Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  “Thanks; yes, do. And send the fellow along himself—some time; not now.”

  “Very good, sir. Your car is ready now. And the General wished me to say that Colonel Jagenburg will be there ready to take over when you arrive.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  I

  Bretherton sat alone in his room at Divisional Headquarters. He had handed over the division to Colonel Jagenburg, though in the written authority for the change of command, A.H.Q. had emphasized the temporary nature of the appointment and had instructed Colonel Jagenburg to relinquish it in favour of General von Wahnheim whenever and wherever that officer returned. His staff had been visibly depressed by the news, and only the barrier of rank had saved him from too pressing offers of help that would have been embarrassing. He asked them not to bother about him. He did not know yet where he was going even—back somewhere for a day or two. He would go off by himself presently. He preferred it that way. And he would say good-bye to them now.

  He felt mean leaving these men who had served him faithfully, and he found difficulty in meeting the appealing look in Leo von Arnberg’s eyes as he shook hands with him. But that was over now, and he was alone in his room, free to go.

  He rose from his chair and put on his grey overcoat and cap. He parted the heavy curtains covering the window and saw that it was already dark outside. He crossed to a bureau and took therefrom a map and an electric torch, which he put into the pockets of his coat. Then he returned to the centre of the room and stood a few moments rubbing his chin and looking thoughtfully at the familiar possessions of General von Wahnheim that surrounded him—the row of polished military boots by the window, the tunic with the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross hanging over the back of a chair, the sword in its polished steel scabbard, and the open chest of drawers before which lay a little heap of clothing, left by his servant, who had been interrupted in packing.

  His face relaxed in a half-smile as his eyes wandered slowly over these familiar objects, and, catching sight of himself in the long mirror of the wardrobe, he drew himself up and saluted in the German manner. These were his last few moments as a General in the German Imperial Armies, he reflected. Presently—if he were lucky—he would be Captain Gerard Bretherton, M.C., who had rather badly bungled an important mission entrusted to him by G.H.Q. Automatically he felt in his pockets for his pipe, and then realized, with a whimsical smile, that General von Wahnheim smoked only cigars. A pipe and tobacco from the E.F.C. must be his first purchase on the other side. He took a few cigars from a box on the table, turned up the collar of his coat, and with a final glance round the room, passed out through the door.

  There was nobody about, and he went down the stairs and reached the courtyard without meeting any of the staff. He walked quickly to the stables and ordered a driver he found reading Simplicissimus to get out one of the cars. Five minutes later he had passed down the drive, through the château gates, and was speeding along the dark road westwards. He had told the driver to take him to a unit Headquarters that lay within a mile of the outposts; but he stopped the car fifty yards from the Headquarters.

  When the car had driven off, he followed the road for some two hundred yards, and then, in the shelter of a copse, examined the map by the light of the torch. Then he set off walking westward. He had a very good idea of the positions of the posts, and the occasional round that echoed from the darkness ahead guided him. Presently a cottage loomed indistinctly in the gloom, and figures stirred in the shadows. With his collar well up about his ears and his cap well down over his face, he questioned the men. An N.C.O. answered that their officer was visiting posts; the first was away half-left, some two hundred metres, across that field and on the far side of a copse where two tracks forked.

  Bretherton scrambled through the hedge and set off half-left across the field. Presently trees loomed against the night sky. He skirted the copse cautiously, stumbled on to a rutted track, and a moment later was challenged in a low voice. He found the post dug in with a machine gun at the point where the tracks forked. The N.C.O. in charge said that his officer had just passed on to the next post, and he pointed out its direction. Bretherton asked about the enemy. Could he see that slightly darker line against the sky? the man asked; well, that was a largish wood, and the enemy had a post somewhere there. Some of their cavalry had moved out from it just before dark, but had been driven back by machine-gun fire, and there had been a little firing from that direction off and on ever since.

  Bretherton said that he hoped to catch the officer at the next post. He moved off to the left into the darkness as though with that intention, but when he had covered about a hundred yards, he turned sharply to the right and moved towards the line of trees the N.C.O. had pointed out.

  He went very cautiously. He knew that he was in danger of being fired on by both sides. After a few minutes’ very careful going, he reached a fence and a ditch running obliquely to his line of march. He dropped into the ditch and followed it cautiously. Away to his right, a rifle cracked with startling suddenness, and he heard the bullet travelling across the slight depression like a stick drawn swiftly through shingle. Then all was still again, except for his own stealthy movements in the ditch. Then a hedge loomed above his head, and he pulled up short with beating heart as his eye caught a pale flicker of movement at its base. And then, close in his ear, came a hoarse stage whisper in English: “Put your bleedin’ ’ands up, Jerry.” And a bayonet was pressed against his chest.

  He obeyed the command sharply, and said: “All right. I am your prisoner.”

  “Perfeck little gent; an’ speaks the langwidge like a bleedin’ native,” came again the whisper.

  And then another form rose beside Bretherton, and he felt large hands searching him for weapons.

  “Edycited at Oxford Collidge, was you, Jerry?” murmured this new figure in a conversational whisper. “Any of yer collidge chums be’ind?”

  II

  Half an hour later Bretherton was in a tiny cottage room explaining the situation across a coffin-shaped stove to a puzzled infantry colonel. The Colonel stood with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets and sucked jerkily at his briar pipe. He stared down at his muddy field-boots and from time to time frowned at his shadow on the aeroplane fabric that did duty for glass in the window.

  “I cannot do that,” he said at last. “I can’t even send you to Corps direct—let alone Army or G.H.Q. For one thing, you would have to walk—and it’s a long way. But I will ring up Advance Guard H.Q. and put it to them to get on to Corps; and maybe Corps will get on to Army.”

  “And Army to G.H.Q.—through the usual channels,” put in Bretherton, with a smile.

  The Colonel grinned. “Well, I will do my best, young feller. But you may be a Bosche for all I know to the contrary. But, Bosche or no Bosche, have a drink—Scotch, not lager!”

  “Tell them,” said Bretherton as the Colonel went out to telephone, “to get through to Colonel Liddel at G.H.Q. and to say that Bretherton or von Wahnheim has come back.”

  Ten minutes later, an order came for him to go to Corps; and he set out escorted by an interested subaltern and a private soldier in fighting kit. A tramp of two or three miles through dark and deserted country brought them to a large farmhouse, guarded by a pacing sentry and distinguished by the familiar coloured lamps of a headquarters. Here he parted from his escort and made the journey from Advance Guard Headquarters to Corps by car.

  Corps, it appeared, had got through to Army, and Army had been in touch with G.H.Q. He was to report at G.H.Q. at once; the Corps Flying Squadron would provide transport. The car passed back through the dark streets of the little town that was Corps Headquarters and climbed to the aerodrome on the flat hilltop beyond. He had to wait a few minutes in the mess while a plane was wheeled from a hangar, and in his German uniform he found himself a centre of interest.

  “So you have been playing Brother Bosche in Boscheland!” said Major Impson, the squadron commander, a tall, fair, imma
culately dressed youth wearing a monocle and a row of ribbons that gave the lie to any hasty estimate of his character. “Stout feller! Perhaps you can tell us what that gadget is at C.11.b.83.” He crossed to a large map on the wall and pointed with the stem of his pipe. “We have taken a couple of photographs from three thousand feet, but we can’t make head or tail of it.”

  “It looks rather like a latrine for elephants,” put in a flight commander, “but it seems hardly likely.”

  Bretherton was able to tell them that the mysterious building was no more than a new pattern delousing station. Then, in a borrowed flying suit, he went out on to the aerodrome, climbed into the observer’s cockpit, and a few minutes later the lights of the aerodrome lay far below.

  He landed at G.H.Q. in the early hours of the morning, and Colonel Liddel, in pyjamas and British-warm, heard his story. Intelligence, it appeared, had a fairly accurate knowledge of his movements, and had guessed what had occurred.

  “We tried to get into touch with you once or twice,” said Colonel Liddel. “One of our fellows managed to speak to you, but you did not take the hint, and he was afraid of giving himself away.”

  “It wasn’t Hubbard, was it?” asked Bretherton.

  “Hubbard? Hubbard? No. Never heard of him,” answered the Colonel. “You have had hard luck, Bretherton. Your information comes too late to be of any great value, but that is not your fault. At any rate, we are glad to have your confirmation of the fact that the Bosche is finished. But most of what you have to tell us is of local value only. You had better get some sleep now, and then we will fit you up with some clothes and send you to the Corps that was your opposite number when you were a Bosche. You will be able to tell them a lot of useful things. And I will give you a chit-to-all-whom-it-may-concern sort of thing—so that you can go wherever you think will be of most use.

  “And you had better turn in. I am going to put you in my bed, if you don’t object; I shall be busy till morning.”

  And then, as he left Bretherton at the door of the room, he added, “You will be glad to know that the little lady is all right. I saw her a week or two ago and put her mind at rest as far as possible. Good night!”

  III

  A few hours later, Bretherton, in a borrowed uniform and accompanied by a junior staff officer, was being driven towards the line. The first part of their journey lay through the pleasant, undevastated country into which the German Armies had failed to penetrate; but soon the appearance of cropless fields and battered farmsteads showed that the battle-area had been reached. Crumbling, deserted trenches in the chalk and tangles of rusty wire among the rank grass marked the position of the old front line, and thence for thirty miles the road ran eastwards across the dreary tundra of the old Somme battlefield to the wire-draped slopes of the Hindenburg Line. Beyond that, life began again. Trees put forth leaves, and villages were more than mere heaps of rubble.

  The staff officer had to visit a division on the fringes of the great woods, and it was after midday when he turned back towards the Corps Headquarters that was Bretherton’s destination. The car was travelling fast, and at the head of a long straight slope it passed an officer tramping upwards, with a bicycle. Bretherton, noticing the familiar green service cycle with the rifle clips and the company letter and number in white paint on the back mudguard, looked again at the toiling figure beside it and recognized a comrade of the old battalion.

  “Gurney! Gurney!” he called.

  The driver stopped the car and ran back in reverse.

  “Good Lord, it’s G. B.!” exclaimed Gurney, leaning across the saddle of his cycle as the car slowed beside him.

  “And what are you doing?” asked Bretherton.

  “Oh, just finishing off the war,” answered Gurney cheerfully. “Vanguard to this old army—doing our pukka job at last.”

  “Gad! That’s interesting,” Bretherton exclaimed. “And is it anything like the stunts we used to do on the Plain and in back areas?”

  “It is exactly like a scheme,” Gurney assured him, “only vastly more entertaining.”

  “Gad, I wish I were with you!” exclaimed Bretherton, wistfully. “And you have got a company now, I suppose,” he added, noticing the three stars on Gurney’s shoulder-straps. “Which?”

  “A—your old one, G. B. And they are as keen as mustard.”

  Bretherton opened the map. “What ground are you covering?” he asked.

  Gurney pointed out the battalion front, and Bretherton noted that their line of advance, if continued, would bring them to the position that Colonel Jagenburg’s division was to hold to the last. But the staff officer, who was becoming anxious about the luncheon he had planned to take at Corps Headquarters and had been fidgeting and looking at his watch, now put an end to the conversation. Bretherton waved good-bye to Gurney, and the car slid on down the slope.

  He was glad he had met Gurney, and he was interested in what Gurney had told him. It turned his thoughts back to his days with the old battalion, which he still regarded as his own. He debated whether he could ask Corps to allow him to be with the battalion during these last few days. He longed to be with A Company now that, at last, it was doing the work for which he had taken such pains to train it. Not in any capacity of command, of course—that would be unfair to Gurney and the other officers—but as a supernumerary. They would push along until they ran into Jagenburg’s force, and then play about, as he phrased it, till an armistice was signed. For now that the war was on its last legs, so to speak, Corps could not order a serious attack upon a position defended by desperate men—an attack that must cost many lives and could not affect the end that was now within sight.

  He passed the afternoon before the large map at Corps Headquarters, pointing out the positions of German troops, of dumps, and of delay-action mines, and giving other information of local importance. Major Impson, of the Corps Flying Squadron, was present, and asked many questions about the country far back behind the German lines.

  Bretherton had given the B.G.G.S.—the Brigadier-General-General-Staff—the position of Colonel Jagenburg’s division and had ventured to point out the futility of attempting to dislodge it. Then he went to tea.

  It was early in the evening, in the course of conversation with the G.S.O.3 that he learnt, to his dismay, that the advance was to be continued as though Colonel Jagenburg’s division did not exist. The point of view was that an armistice was the affair of the Higher Command alone, and that till one was actually signed, it was the duty of other commands to attack the enemy as vigorously as possible.

  Bretherton went at once to protest against this decision, but both the B.G.G.S. and the G.S.O.2 were out and the Corps Commander was too busy to see him. He protested strongly, however, to the G.S.0.3.

  “What good can this do?” he demanded. “That division, I tell you, will fight to the last, and there will be heavy casualties on both sides. Surely there has been enough bloodshed in this wretched business already.”

  The G.S.O.3 agreed.

  “How many men have we lost, do you think?” continued Bretherton.

  “Close on a million killed, I believe,” answered the G.S.O.3.

  “A million dead!” echoed Bretherton. “And more than twice that number wounded, I suppose. And then there are the French—they must have lost well over a million. And the Germans the same. And all the others, the Russians, Austrians, Belgians, Italians, Americans, and the rest. There must have been six millions killed at the very least. Isn’t that enough for one war?”

  “More than enough, old lad,” answered the G.S.O.3. “But I can’t do anything; nor can you. I would if I could… but there it is.”

  IV

  Some minutes later, Bretherton was left alone in the office, brooding over the subject. The remains of that veteran division of storm troops that he had led would fight to the last. Against them would come, in the first place, the men of his old battalion, and then others. There would be heavy casualties on both sides. Was ever man in such a posit
ion? The men that he had trained and led on both sides would annihilate one another. The old battalion would suffer heavily in what would be its last battle. His old comrades would be killed on the eve of peace—among them perhaps young Gurney, Helen’s brother. And he was helpless. A mere captain, he could do nothing to prevent this tragedy. On the other side, he had been a man of some consequence; he could have ordered the division to retire and they would have retired. Here he was nobody.

  He rose suddenly to his feet and frowned at the map. Then he turned with sudden resolution and took up the telephone.

  “Give me the Corps Flying Squadron,” he called. “Is Major Impson there?” he asked presently. And then as he heard Major Impson’s voice at the telephone: “This is Bretherton speaking from Corps. Can you drop me behind the German lines to-night? No, it is not your usual line of business, I know, but the circumstances are unusual. I will bring my authority with me—yes. In about an hour. Right-oh! Good-bye.”

  He put down the telephone and hurried to his room. He took General von Wahnheim’s uniform from the pack in which he had brought it from G.H.Q. and put it on. Over it he put the borrowed burberry; and the grey German greatcoat he placed inside-out upon his arm. He put his British service cap upon his head and hid the German cap beneath the coat.

  “I am a damn fool, I suppose,” he muttered to himself. “But there is no other way.”

  He reached the street without meeting anyone and set off through the darkened town. Major Impson was waiting for him.

  “Here is my authority,” said Bretherton, producing the paper Colonel Liddel had given him.

  The Squadron Commander read it and handed it back.

  “Look here, Bretherton,” he said, “that is all right as far as it goes, but it hardly covers a job like this. Corps are the people that say ‘Come!’ and I cometh, and ‘Go!’ and I goeth; and I have no authority from them.