FOOTNOTE:[1]For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the process of registering consists of finding the exact range to a certain object from a particular gun or battery. To find this range it is necessary to obtain what is known as a bracket:i.e.one burst beyond the object, and one burst short. The range is then known to lie between these two: and by a little adjustment the exact distance can be found.
[1]For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the process of registering consists of finding the exact range to a certain object from a particular gun or battery. To find this range it is necessary to obtain what is known as a bracket:i.e.one burst beyond the object, and one burst short. The range is then known to lie between these two: and by a little adjustment the exact distance can be found.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the process of registering consists of finding the exact range to a certain object from a particular gun or battery. To find this range it is necessary to obtain what is known as a bracket:i.e.one burst beyond the object, and one burst short. The range is then known to lie between these two: and by a little adjustment the exact distance can be found.
Four weeks after his board Jim Denver once again found himself in France.
Having reported his arrival, he sat down to await orders. Boulogne is not a wildly exhilarating place; though there is always the hotel where one may consume cocktails and potato chips, and hear strange truths about the war from people of great knowledge and understanding.
Moreover—though this is by the way—in Boulogne you get the first sniff of that atmosphere which England lacks; that subtle, indefinable something which warina country produces in the spirit of its people....
Gone is the stout lady of doubtful charm engaged in mastering the fox-trot, what time a band wails dismally in an alcove; gone is the wild-eyed flapper who bumps madly up and down the roads on the carrier of a motor-cycle. It has an atmosphere of its own this fair land of France to-day. It is laughing through its tears, and the laughter has an ugly sound—for theHuns. They will hear that laughter soon, and the sound will give them to think fearfully.
But at the moment when Jim landed it was all very boring. The R.T.O. at Boulogne was bored; the A.S.C. officers at railhead were bored; the quartermaster guarding the regimental penates in a field west of Ypres was bored.
"Cheer up, old son," Jim remarked, slapping the last-named worthy heavily on the back. "You look peevish."
"Confound you," he gasped, when he'd recovered from choking. "This is my last bottle of whisky."
"Where's the battalion?" laughed Denver.
"Where d'you think? In a Turkish bath surrounded by beauteous houris?" the quartermaster snorted. "Still in the same damn mud-hole near Hooge."
"Good! I'll trot along up shortly. You know, I'm beginning to be glad I came back. I didn't want to particularly, at first: I was enjoying myself at home—but I felt I ought to, and now—'pon my soul—— How are you, Jones?"
A passing sergeant stopped and saluted. "Grand, sir. How's yourself? The boys will be glad you've come back."
Denver stood chatting with him for a few moments and then rejoined the pessimistic quartermaster.
"Don't rhapsodise," begged that worthy—"don'trhapsodise; eat your lunch. If you tell me it will be good to see your men again, I shall assault you with the remnants of the tinned lobster. I know it will be good—no less than fifteen officers have told me so in the last six weeks. But I don't care—it leaves me quite, quite cold. If you're in France, you pine for England; when you're in England, you pine for France; and I sit in this damn field and get giddy."
Which might be described as to-day's great thought.
Thus did Jim Denver come back to his regiment. Once again the life of the moles claimed him—the life of the underworld: that strange existence of which so much has been written, and so little has been really grasped by those who have not been there. A life of incredible dreariness—yet possessing a certain "grip" of its own. A life of peculiar contrasts—where the suddenness—the abruptness of things strikes a man forcibly: the extraordinary contrasts of black and white. Sometimes they stand out stark and menacing, gleaming and brilliant; more often do they merge into grey. But always are they there....
As I said before, my object is not to give a diary of my hero's life. I am not concerned with his daily vegetation in his particular hole, with Hooge on his right front and a battered farm close to. Sleep, eat, read, look through a periscope and then repeat the performance.Occasionally an aerial torpedo, frequently bombs, at all times pessimistic sappers desiring working parties. But it was very much the "grey" of trench life during the three days that Jim sat in the front line by the wood that is called "Railway."
One episode is perhaps worthy of note. It was just one of those harmless little jests which give one an appetite for a hunk of bully washed down by a glass of tepid whisky and water. Now be it known to those who do not dabble in explosives, there are in the army two types of fuze which are used for firing charges. Each type is flexible, and about the thickness of a stout and well-nourished worm. Each, moreover, consists of an inner core which burns, protected by an outer covering—the idea being that on lighting one end a flame should pass along the burning inner core and explode in due course whatever is at the other end. There, however, their similarity ends; and their difference becomes so marked that the kindly powers that be have taken great precautions against the two being confused.
The first of these fuzes is called Safety—and the outer covering is black. In this type the inner core burns quite slowly at the rate of two or three feet to the minute. This is the fuze which is used in the preparation of the jam-tin bomb: an instrument of destruction which has caused much amusement to thefrivolous. A jam tin is taken and is filled with gun cotton, nails, and scraps of iron. Into the gun cotton is inserted a detonator; and into the detonator is inserted two inches of safety-fuze. The end of the safety-fuze is then lit, and the jam tin is presented to the Hun. It will readily be seen by those who are profound mathematicians, that if three feet of safety-fuze burn in a minute, two inches will burn in about three seconds—and three seconds is just long enough for the presentation ceremony. This in fact is the principal of all bombs both great and small.
The second of these fuzes is called Instantaneous—and the outer covering is orange. In this type the inner core burns quite quickly, at the rate of some thirty yards to the second, or eighteen hundred times as fast as the first. Should, therefore, an unwary person place two inches of this second fuze in his jam tin by mistake, and light it, it will take exactly one-600th of a second before he gets to the motto. Which is "movement with a meaning quite its own."
To Jim then came an idea. Why not with care and great cunning remove from the inner core of Instantaneous fuze its vulgar orange covering, and substitute instead a garb of sober black—and thus disguised present several bombs of great potencyunlightedto the Hun.
The afternoon before they left for the reservetrenches he staged his comedy in one act and an epilogue. A shower of bombs was propelled in the direction of the opposing cave-dwellers to the accompaniment of loud cries, cat calls, and other strange noises. The true artist never exaggerates, and quite half the bombs had genuine safety-fuze in them and were lit before being thrown. The remainder were not lit, it is perhaps superfluous to add.
The lazy peace of the afternoon was rudely shattered for the Huns. Quite a number of genuine bombs had exploded dangerously near their trench—while some had even taken effect in the trench. Then they perceived several unlit ones lying about—evidently propelled by nervous men who had got rid of them before lighting them properly. And there was much laughter in that German trench as they decided to give the epilogue by lighting them and throwing them back. Shortly after a series of explosions, followed by howls and groans, announced the carrying out of that decision. And once again the Hymn of Hate came faintly through the drowsy stillness....
Those are the little things which occasionally paint the grey with a dab of white; the prowls at night—the joys of the sniper who has just bagged a winner and won the bag of nuts—all help to keep the spirits up when the pattern of earth in your particular hole causes a rush of blood to the head.
Incidentally this little comedy was destined to be Jim Denver's last experience of the Hun at close quarters for many weeks to come. The grey settled down like a pall, to lift in the fulness of time, totheblack and white day of his life. But for the present—peace. And yet only peace as far as he was concerned personally. That very night, close to him so that he saw it all, some other battalions had a chequered hour or so—which is all in the luck of the game. To-day it's the man over the road—to-morrow it's you....
They occurred about 2 a.m.—the worries of the men over the road. Denver had moved to his other hole, courteously known as the reserve trenches, and there seated in his dug-out he discussed prospects generally with the Major. There were rumours that the division was moving from Ypres, and not returning there—a thought which would kindle hope in the most pessimistic.
"Don't you believe it," answered the Major gloomily. "Those rumours are an absolute frost."
"Cheer up! cully, we'll soon be dead." Denver laughed. "Have some rum."
He poured some out into a mug and passed the water. "Quiet to-night—isn't it? I was reading to-day that the Italians——"
"You aren't going to quote any war expert at me, are you?"
"Well—er—I was: why not?"
"Because I have a blood-feud with war experts. I loathe and detest the breed. Before I came out here their reiterated statement made monthly that we should be on the Rhine by Tuesday fortnight was a real comfort. We always got to Tuesday fortnight—but we've never actually paddled in the bally river."
"To err is human; to get paid for it is divine," murmured Jim.
"Bah!" the Major filled his pipe aggressively. "What about the steam-roller, what about the Germans being reduced to incurable epileptics in the third line trenches—what about that drivelling ass who said the possession of heavy guns was a disadvantage to an army owing to their immobility?"
"Have some more rum, sir?" remarked Jim soothingly.
"But I could have stood all that—they were trifles." The Major was getting warmed up to it. "This is what finished me." He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. "Read that, my boy—read that and ponder."
Jim took the paper and glanced at it.
"I carry that as my talisman. In the event of my death I've given orders for it to be sent to the author."
"But what's it all about?" asked Denver.
"'At the risk of repeating myself, I wish again toasseverate what I drew especial attention to last week, and the week before, and the one before that; as a firm grasp of this essential fact is imperative to an undistorted view of the situation. Whatever minor facts may now or again crop up in this titanic conflict, we must not shut our eyes to the rules of war. They are unchangeable, immutable; the rules of Cæsar were the rules of Napoleon, and are in fact the rules that I myself have consistently laid down in these columns. They cannot change: this war will be decided by them as surely as night follows day; and those ignorant persons who are permitted to express their opinions elsewhere would do well to remember that simple fact.'"
"What the devil is this essential fact?"
"Would you like to know? I got to it after two columns like that."
"What was it?" laughed Jim.
"'An obstacle in an army's path is that which obstructs the path of the army in question.'"
"After that—more rum." Jim solemnly decanted the liquid. "You deserve it. You...."
"Stand to." A shout from the trench outside—repeated all along until it died away in the distance. The Major gulped his rum and dived for the door—while Jim groped for his cap. Suddenly out of the still night there came a burst of firing, sudden and furious. The firing was taken up all along the line, and thenthe guns started and a rain of shrapnel came down behind the British lines.
Away—a bit in front on the other side of the road to Jim's trench there were woods—woods of unenviable reputation. Hence the name of "Sanctuary." In the middle of them, on the road, lay the ruined château and village of Hooge—also of unenviable reputation.
And towards these woods the eyes of all were turned.
"What the devil is it?" shouted the man beside Jim. "Look at them lights in the trees."
The devil it was. Dancing through the darkness of the trees were flames and flickering lights, like will-o'-the-wisps playing over an Irish bog. And men, looking at one another, muttered sullenly. They remembered the gas; what new devilry was this?
Up in the woods things were moving. Hardly had the relieving regiments taken over their trenches, when from the ground in front there seemed to leap a wall of flame. It rushed towards them and, falling into the trenches and on to the men's clothes, burnt furiously like brandy round a plum pudding. The woods were full of hurrying figures dashing blindly about, cursing and raving. For a space pandemonium reigned. The Germans came on, and it looked as if there might be trouble. The regiments who had just been relievedcame back, and after a while things straightened out a little. But our front trenches in those woods, when morning broke, were not where they had been the previous night....
Liquid fire—yet one more invention of "Kultur"; gas; the moat at Ypres poisoned with arsenic; crucifixion; burning death squirted from the black night—suddenly, without warning: truly a great array of Kultured triumphs.... And with it all—failure. To fight as a sportsman fights and lose has many compensations; to fight as the German fights and lose must be to taste of the dregs of hell.
But that is how theydofight, whatever interesting surmises one may make of their motives and feelings. And that is how it goes on over the water—the funny mixture of the commonplace of everyday with the great crude, cruel realities of life and death.
But as I said, for the next few weeks the grey screen cloaked those crude realities as far as Jim was concerned. Rumour for once had proved true; the division was pulled out, and his battalion found itself near Poperinghe.
"Months of boredom punctuated by moments of intense fright" is a definition of war which undoubtedly Noah would have regarded as a chestnut. And Ishould think it doubtful if there has ever been a war in which this definition was more correct.
Jim route marched: he trained bombers: he dined in Poperinghe and went to the Follies. Also, he allowed other men to talk to him of their plans for leave: than which no more beautiful form of unselfishness is laid down anywhere in the Law or the Prophets.
On the whole the time did not drag. There is much of interest for those who have eyes to see in that country which fringes the Cock Pit of Europe. Hacking round quietly most afternoons on a horse borrowed from someone, the spirit of the land got into him, that blood-soaked, quiet, uncomplaining country, whose soul rises unconquerable from the battered ruins.
Horses exercising, lorries crashing and lurching over the pavé roads. G.S. wagons at the walk, staff motors—all the necessary wherewithal to preserve the safety of the mud holes up in front—came and went in a ceaseless procession; while every now and then a local cart with mattresses and bedsteads, tables and crockery, tied on perilously with bits of string, would come creaking past—going into the unknown, leaving the home of years.
Ypres, that tragic charnel house, with the great jagged holes torn out of the pavé; with the few remaining walls of the Cathedral and Cloth Hall cracked and leaning outwards; with the strange symbolicaltouch of the black hearse which stood untouched in one of the arches. Rats everywhere, in the sewers and broken walls; in the crumbling belfry above birds, cawing discordantly. The statue of the old gentleman which used to stand serene and calm amidst the wreckage, now lay broken on its face. But the stench was gone—the dreadful stench of death which had clothed it during the second battle; it was just a dead town—dead and decently buried in great heaps of broken brick....
Vlamertinghe, with the little plot of wooden crosses by the cross roads; Elverdinghe, where the gas first came, and the organ pipes lay twisted in the wreckage of the unroofed church; where the long row of French graves rest against the château wall, graves covered with long grass—each with an empty bottle upside down at their head.
And when Thyself with shining Foot shall passAmong the Guests star-scatter'd on the Grass,... turn down an empty Glass.
And in the family archives are some excellent reproductions—not photographs of course, for the penalty for carrying a camera is death at dawn—of ruined churches and shell-battered châteaux. Perhaps the most interesting one, at any rate the most human, is a"reproduction" of a group of cavalry men. They had been digging in a little village a mile behind the firing-line—a village battered and dead from which the inhabitants had long since fled. Working in the garden of the local doctor, they were digging a trench which ran back to the cellar of the house, when on the scene of operations had suddenly appeared the doctor himself. By signs he possessed himself of a shovel, and, pacing five steps from the kitchen door and three from the tomato frame, he too started to dig.
"His wife's portrait, probably," confided the cavalry officer to Jim, as they watched the proceeding. "Or possibly an urn with her ashes."
It was a sergeant who first gave a choking cry and fainted; he was nearest the hole.
"Yes," remarked Jim, "he's found the urn."
With frozen stares they watched the last of twelve dozen of light beer go into the doctor's cart. With pallid lips the officer saw three dozen of good champagne snatched from under his nose.
"Heavens! man," he croaked, "it wasdrytoo. If our trench had been a yard that way...." He leant heavily on his stick, and groaned.
The moment was undoubtedly pregnant with emotion.
"'E'ad a nasty face, that man—a nasty face. Oh, 'orrible."
Hushed voices came from the group of leaners. The "reproduction" depicts the psychological moment when the doctor with a joyous wave of the hand wished them "Bonjour, messieurs," and drove off.
"Not one—not one ruddy bottle—not the smell of a perishing cork. Stung!"
But Jim had left.
Which very silly and frivolous story is topsy-turvy land up to date, or at any rate typical of a large bit of it.
However, to be serious. It was as he came away from this scene of alarm and despondency that Jim met an old pal who boasted the gunner badge, and whom conversation revealed as the proud owner of an Archie, or anti-aircraft gun. And as the salient is perhaps more fruitful in aeroplanes than any other part of the line, and the time approached five o'clock (which is generally the hour of their afternoon activity), Jim went to see the fun.
In front, an observing biplane buzzed slowly to and fro, watching the effect of a mother[1]shooting at some mark behind the German lines. With the gun concealed in the trees, a gunner subaltern altered his range and direction as each curt wireless message flashed from the 'plane. "Lengthen 200—half a degree left." And so on till they got it. Occasionally, with a vicious crack, a German anti-aircraft shell would explode in the air above in a futile endeavour to reach the observer, and a great mass of acrid yellow or black fumes would disperse slowly. Various machines, each intent on its own job, rushed to and fro, and in the distance, like a speck in the sky,a German monoplane was travelling rapidly back over its own lines, having finished its reconnaissance.
Behind it, like the wake of a steamer, little dabs of white plastered the blue sky. English shrapnel bursting from other anti-aircraft guns. Jim's gunner friend seemed to know most of them by name, as old pals whom he had watched for many a week on the same errand; and from him Jim gathered that the moment approached for the appearance of Panting Lizzie. Lizzie, apparently, was a fast armoured German biplane which came over his gun every fine evening about the same hour. For days and weeks had he fired at it, so far without any success, but he still had hopes. The gun was ready, cocked wickedly upon its motor mounting, covered with branches and daubed with strange blotches of paint to make it less conspicuous. Round the motor itself the detachment consumed tea, a terrier sat up and begged, a goat of fearsome aspect looked pensive. In front, in a chair, his eye glued to a telescope on a tripod, sat the look-out man.
It was just as Jim and his pal were getting down to a whisky and soda that Lizzie hove in sight. The terrier ceased to beg, the goat departed hurriedly, the officer spoke rapidly in a language incomprehensible to Jim, and the fun began. There are few things sotrying to listen to as an Archie, owing to the rapidity with which it fires; the gun pumps up and down with a series of sharp cracks, every two or three shots being followed by more incomprehensible language from the officer. Adjustment after each shot is impossible owing to the fact that three or four shells have left the gun and are on their way before the first one explodes. It was while Jim, with his fingers in his ears, was watching the shells bursting round the aeroplane and marvelling that nothing seemed to happen, that he suddenly realised that the gun had stopped firing. Looking at the detachment, he saw them all gazing upwards. From high up, sounding strangely faint in the air, came the zipping of a Maxim.
"By Gad!" muttered the gunner officer; "this is going to be some fight."
Bearing down on Panting Lizzie came a British armoured 'plane, and from it the Maxim was spitting. And now there started a very pretty air duel. I am no airman, to tell of spirals, and glides, and the multifarious twistings and turnings. At times the German's Maxim got going as well; at times both were silent, manœuvring for position. The Archies were not firing—the machines were too close together. Once the German seemed to drop like a stone for a thousand feet or so. "Got him!" shouted Jim—but the gunner shook his head.
"A common trick," he answered. "He found it getting a bit warm, and that upsets one's range. You'll find he'll be off now."
Sure enough he was—with his nose for home he turned tail and fled. The gunner shouted an order, and they opened fire again, while the British 'plane pursued, its Maxim going continuously. Generally honour is satisfied without the shedding of blood; each, having consistently missed the other and resisted the temptations of flying low over his opponents' guns, returns home to dinner. But in this case—well, whether it was Archie or whether it was the Maxim is really immaterial. Suddenly a great sheet of flame seemed to leap from the German machine and a puff of black smoke: it staggered like a shot bird and then, without warning, it fell—a streak of light, like some giant shooting star rushing to the earth. The Maxim stopped firing, and after circling round a couple of times the British machine buzzed contentedly back to bed. And in a field—somewhere behind our lines—there lay for many a day, deep embedded in a hole in the ground, the battered remnants of Panting Lizzie, with its great black cross stuck out of the earth for all to see. Somewhere in the débris, crushed and mangled beyond recognition, could have been found the remnants of two German airmen. Which might be called the black and white of the overworld.
FOOTNOTE:[1]9·2" Howitzer.
[1]9·2" Howitzer.
9·2" Howitzer.
But now rumour was getting busy in earnest—things were in the air. There were talks of a great offensive—and although there be rumour in England, though bucolic stationmasters have brushed the snow from the steppes of Russia out of railway carriages, I have no hesitation in saying that for quality and quantity the rumours that float round the army in France have de Rougemont beat to a frazzle. In this case expectations were fulfilled, and two or three days after the decease of Panting Lizzie, Jim and his battalion shook the dust of the Ypres district from their feet and moved away south.
It was then that our hero raised his third star. Shades of Wellington! A captain in a year. But I make no comment. A sense of humour, invaluable at all times, is indispensable in this war, if one wishes to preserve an unimpaired digestion.
But another thing happened to him, too, about this time, for, owing to the sudden sickness of a member of his General's Staff, he found himself attached temporarilyfor duty. No longer did he flat foot it, but in a large and commodious motor-car he viewed life from a different standpoint. And, solely owing to this temporary appointment, he was able to see the launching of the attack near Loos at the end of September. He saw the wall of gas and smoke roll slowly forward towards the German trenches over the wide space that separated the trenches in that part of the line. Great belching explosions seemed to shatter the vapour periodically, as German shells exploded in it, causing it to rise in swirling eddies, as from some monstrous cauldron, only to sink sullenly back and roll on. And behind it came the assaulting battalions, lines of black pigmies charging forward.
And later he heard of the Scotsmen who chased the flying Huns like terriers after rats, grunting, cursing, swearing, down the gentle slope past Loos and up the other side; on to Hill 70, where they swayed backwards and forwards over the top, while some with the lust of killing on them fought their way into the town beyond—and did not return. He heard of the battery that blazed over open sights at the Germans during the morning, till, running out of ammunition, the guns ceased fire, a mark to every German rifle. The battery remained there during the day, for there was not cover for a terrier, let alone a team of horses, and between the guns were many strange tableaux as Death claimedhis toll. They got them away that night, but not before the gunners had taken back the breech-blocks—in case; for it was touch and go.
But this attack has already been described too often, and so I will say no more. I would rather write of those things which happened to Jim Denver himself, before he left the Land of Topsy Turvy for the second time. Only I venture to think that when the full story comes to be written—if ever—of that last week in September, or the surging forward past Loos and the Lone Tree to Hulluch and the top of 70, of the cavalry who waited for the chance that never came, and the German machine-guns hidden in the slag-heaps, the reading will be interesting. What happened would fill a book; what might have happened—a library.
It was a couple of days afterwards that he saw his first big batch of German prisoners. Five or six miles behind the firing-line in a great grass field, fenced in on all sides by barbed wire, was a batch of some seven hundred—almost all of them Prussians and Jägers. Munching food contentedly, they sat in rows on the ground; their dirty grey uniforms coated with dust and mud—unwashed, unshaven, and—well, if you are contemplating German prisoners, get "up wind." All around the field Tommies stood and gazed, now andagain offering them cigarettes. A few prisoners who could speak English got up and talked.
It struck Jim Denver then that he viewed these men with no antipathy; he merely gazed at them curiously as one gazes at animals in a "Zoo." And as we English are ever prone to such views, and as the Hymn of Hate and like effusions are regarded, and rightly so, as occasions for mirth, it was perhaps as well for Jim to realise the other point of view. There are two sides to every question, and the Germans believe in their hate just as we believe in our laughter. But when it is over, it will be unfortunate if we forget the hate too quickly.
"What a nation we are!" said a voice beside Jim. He turned round and found a doctor watching the scene with a peculiar look in his eyes. "Suppose it had been the other way round! Suppose those were our men while the Germans were the captors! Do you think the scene would be like this?" His face twisted into a bitter smile. "There would have been armed soldiers walking up and down the ranks, kicking men in the stomach, hitting them on the head with rifle butts, tearing bandages off wounds—just for the fun of the thing. Sharing food!"—he laughed contemptuously—"why, they'd have been starving. Giving 'emcigarettes!—why, they'd have taken away what they had already."
He turned and looked up the road. Walking down it were thirty or so German officers. From the button in the centre of their jackets hung in nearly every case the ribbon of the Iron Cross. Laughing, talking—one or two sneering—they came along and halted by the gate into the field. They had been questioned, and were waiting to be marched off with the men. A hundred yards or so away the cavalry escort was forming up.
"Man," cried the doctor, suddenly gripping Jim's arm in a vice, "it's wicked!" In his eyes there was an ugly look. "Look at those swine—all toddling off to Donington Hall—happy as you like. And think of the other side of the picture. Stuck with bayonets, hit, brutally treated, half-starved, thrown into cattle trucks. Good Heaven! it's horrible."
"We're not the sort to go in for retribution," said Jim, after a moment. "After all—oh! I don't know—but it's not quite cricket, is it? Just because they're swine...?"
"Cricket!" the other snorted. "You make me tired. I tell you I'm sick to death of our kid-glove methods. No retribution! I suppose if a buck nigger hit your pal over the head with a club you'd give him a tract on charity and meekness. What would our ranting pedagoguessay if their own sons had been crucified by the Germans as some of our wounded have been? You think I'm bitter?" He looked at Jim. "I am. You see, I was a prisoner myself until a few weeks ago." He turned and strolled away down the road....
And now the escort was ready. An order shouted in the field, and the men got up, falling in in some semblance of fours. Slowly they filed through the gate and, with their own officers in front, the cortège started. Led by an English cavalry subaltern, with troopers at four or five horses' lengths alongside—some with swords drawn, the others with rifles—the procession moved sullenly off. A throng of English soldiers gazed curiously at them as they passed by; small urchins ran in impudently making faces at them. And in the doors of the houses dark-haired, grim-faced women watched them pass with lowering brows....
A mixture, those prisoners—a strange mixture. Some with the faces of educated men, some with the faces of beasts; some men in the prime of life, some mere boys; slouching, squelching through the mud with the vacant eyes that the Prussian military system seems to give to its soldiers. The look of a man who has no vestige of imagination or initiative; the look of a stoical automaton; callous, boorish, sottish as befits a man who willingly or unwillingly has sold himself body and soul to a system.
And as they wind through the mining villages on their way to a railhead, these same grim-faced French women watch them as they go by. They do not see the offspring of a system; they only see a group of beast-men—the men whose brothers have killed their husbands. After all, has not Madame got in her house a refugee—her cousin—whose screams even now ring out at night...?
For a few days more Jim stayed on with the general. Their feeding-place was a little café on the main road to Lens. There each morning might our hero have been found, in a filthy little back room, drinking coffee out of a thick mug, with an omelette cooked to perfection on his plate. Never was there such dirt in any room; never a household so prolific of children. Every window was smashed; the back garden one huge shell hole; but, absolutely unperturbed by such trifles, that stout, good-hearted Frenchwoman pursued her sturdy way. She had had the Boches there—"mais oui"—but what matter? They did not stay long. "Une omelette, monsieur; du café? Certainement, monsieur. Toute de suite."
It might have been in a different world from Ypres and Poperinghe—instead of only twenty miles to the south. Gone were the flat, cultivated fields; great slag-heaps and smoking chimneys were everywhere. Andin spite of the fact that active operations were in progress, there seemed to be no more gunning than the normal daily contribution at Lizerne, Boesinge, and Jim's old friend and first love, Hooge. Aeroplanes, too, seemed scarcer. True, one morning, standing in the road outside the café, he saw for the first time a fleet of 'planes starting out on a raid. Now one and then another would disappear behind a fleecy white cloud, only to reappear a few moments later glinting in the rays of the morning sun, until at length the whole fleet, in dressing and order like a flight of geese, their wings tipped with fire, moved over the blue vault of heaven. The drone of their engines came faintly from a great height, until, as if at some spoken word from the leader, the whole swung half-right and vanished into a bank of clouds.
But the grey period for Jim was drawing to a close. To-day it's the man over the road that tops the bill; to-morrow it's you, as I said before: and a change of caste was imminent in our friend's performance. One does not seek these things—they occur; and then they're over, and one waits for the next. There is no programme laid down, no book of the words printed. Things just happen—sometimes they lead to a near acquaintance with iodine, and a kind woman in a grey dress who takes your temperature and washes your face; and at others to a dinner with much good wine where the laughter is merry and the revelry great. Of course there are many other alternatives: you may never reach the hospital—you may never get the dinner; you may get a cold in the nose, and go to the Riviera—or you may get a bad corn and get blood-poisoning from using a rusty jack knife to operate. The caprice of the spirit of Topsy Turvy is quite wonderful.
For instance, on the very morning that the Staff Officer came back to his job, and Jim returned to hisbattalion, his company commander asked him to go to a general bomb store in a house just up the road, and see that the men who were working there were getting on all right. The regiment was for the support trenches that night, and preparing bombs was the order of the day.
Just as he started to go, a message arrived that the C.O. wished to see him. So the company commander went instead; and entered the building just as a German shell came in by another door. By all known laws a man going over Niagara in an open tub would not willingly have changed places with him; an 8-inch shell exploding in the same room with you is apt to be a decisive moment in your career.
But long after the noise and the building had subsided, and from high up in the air had come a fusillade of small explosions and little puffs of smoke, where the bombs hurled up from the cellar went off in turn—Jim perceived his captain coming down the road. He had been hurled through the wall as it came down, across the road, and had landed intact on a manure heap. And it was only when he hit the colonel a stunning blow over the head with a French loaf at lunch time that they found out he was temporarily as mad as a hatter. So they got him away in an ambulance and Jim took over the company. As I say—things just happen.
That night they moved up into support trenches—up that dirty, muddy road with the cryptic notices posted at various places: "Do not loiter here," "This cross-road is dangerous," "Shelled frequently," etc. And at length they came to the rise which overlooks Loos and found they were to live in the original German front line—now our support trench. They were for the front line in the near future—but at present their job was work on this support trench and clearing up the battlefield near them.
Now this war is an impersonal sort of thing taking it all the way round. Those who stand in front trenches and blaze away at advancing Huns are not, I think, actuated by personal fury against the men they kill. You may pick out a fat one perhaps with a red beard and feel a little satisfaction when you kill him because his face offends you, but you don't really feel any individual animosity towards him. One gets so used to death on a large scale that it almost ceases to affect one. An isolated man lying dead and twisted by the road, where one doesn't expect to find him, moves one infinitely more than a wholesale slaughter. The thing is too vast, too overpowering for a man's brain to realise.
But of all the things which one may be called on to do, the clearing of a battlefield after an advance bringshome most poignantly the tragedy of war. You see the individual then, not the mass. Every silent figure lying sprawled in fantastic attitude, every huddled group, every distorted face tells a story.
Here is an R.A.M.C. orderly crouching over a man lying on a stretcher. The man had been wounded—a splint is on his leg, while the dressing is still in the orderly's hand. Then just as the orderly was at work, the end came for both in a shrapnel shell, and the tableau remains, horribly, terribly like a tableau at some amateur theatricals.
Here are a group of men caught by the fire of the machine-gun in the corner, to which even now a dead Hun is chained—riddled, unrecognisable.
Here is an officer lying on his back, his knees doubled up, a revolver gripped in one hand, a weighted stick in the other. His face is black, so death was instantaneous. Out of the officer's pocket a letter protrudes—a letter to his wife. Perhaps he anticipated death before he started, for it was written the night before the advance—who knows?
And it is when, in the soft half-light of the moon, one walks among these silent remnants, and no sound breaks the stillness save the noise of the shovels where men are digging their graves; when the guns are silent and only an occasional burst of rifle fire comes from away in front, where the great green flares go silentlyup into the night, that for a moment the human side comes home to one. One realises that though monster guns and minenwerfer and strange scientific devices be the paper money of this war, now as ever the standard coinage—the bed-rock gold of barter—is still man's life. The guns count much—but the man counts more.
Take out his letter carefully—it will be posted later. Scratch him a grave, there's work to be done—much work, so hurry. His name has been sent in to headquarters—there's no time to waste. Easy, lads, easy—that's right—cover him up. A party of you over there and get on with that horse—there's no time to waste....
But somewhere in England a telegraph boy comes whistling up the drive, and the woman catches her breath. With fingers that tremble she takes the buff envelope—with fearful eyes she opens the flimsy paper. Superbly she draws herself up—"There is no answer...."
Lady, you are right. There is no answer, no answer this side of the Great Divide. Just now—with your aching eyes fixed onhischair you face your God, and ask Why? He knows, dear woman, He knows, and in time it will all be clear—the why and the wherefore. Surely it must be so.
But just now it's Hell, isn't it? You know so little: you couldn't help him at the end; he had to go intothe Deep Waters alone. With the shrapnel screaming overhead he lies at peace, while above him it still goes on—the work of life and death: the work that brooks no delay. He is part of the Price....
All the next day the battalion worked on the trenches. To men used to the water and slush of Ypres they came as a revelation—the trenches and dug-outs in the chalk district. Great caves had been hollowed out of the ground under the barbed wire in front, with two narrow shafts sloping steeply down from the trench to each, so small and narrow that you must crawl on hands and knees to get in or out. And up these shafts they hauled and pushed the dead Germans. Caught like rats, they had been gassed and bombed before they could get out, though some few had managed to crawl up after the assaulting battalions had passed over and to open fire on the supporting ones as they came up. Jim and his men threw them out to be buried at night, and they confined their attention during the day to building up the trenches and shifting the parapet round. German sandbags look like an assortment out of a cheap village draper's—pink and black and every kind of colour, but they hold earth, which is the main point. So with due carethe battalion patted them into shape again and then took a little sleep.
That night they moved on again. Now the first trench which they had occupied had been behind Loos, and there our new line was a mile away to their front on the side of a hill. The place they were now bound for was nothing like so peaceful. It was that part of the original German front where their old line marked the limit of our advance. We had not pushed on beyond it, and the fighting was continuous and bloody.
Now without going into details, perhaps a few words of explanation might not be amiss. To many who may read them, they will seem as extracts from the "Child's Guide to Knowledge," or reminiscent of those great truths one learned at one's nurse's knee. But to some, who know nothing about it, they may be of use.
When one occupies the German front line and the Hun has been driven into his second, the communication trenches which ran between are still there. The trenches which used to run to their rear now run to your front and are a link between you and the enemy. And as somewhat naturally their knowledge of the position is accurate and yours is sketchy, the situation is not all it might be. Moreover, as no communication trenches exist between the two old front lines—over what was No-man's-land—any reserves must comeacross the open, and should it be necessary to retire, a contingency which must always be faced, the retreat must be across the open as well.
But when you're in a German redoubt, where the trenches would have put a maze to shame, the work of consolidating the position is urgent and difficult. Communication trenches to your front have to be reconnoitred and partially filled in; wire put up; Maxims arranged to shoot down straight lengths of trench; new trenches dug to the rear. Which is all right if the enemy is half a mile away, but when the distance is twenty yards, when without cessation he bombs you from unexpected quarters, your temper gets frayed.
This type of fighting ceases to be impersonal. No longer do you throw bombs mechanically from one trench to another. No longer do you have no actual animosity against the men over the way. You understand the feelings of the guard when their German prisoners laughed on seeing men gassed—earlier in the war. And you realise that when a man's blood is up, you might just as well preach on the wickedness of retribution as request a man-eating tiger to postpone his dinner. The joy of killing a man you hate is wonderful; the unfortunate thing is that in these days, when far from leading to the hangman, it frequentlyleads to much kudos and a medal, so few of us have ever really had the opportunity....
In the place where Jim found himself it was at such close quarters that bombs were the only possible weapon. For two days and two nights it went on. Little parties of Germans surged up unexpected openings, sometimes establishing themselves, sometimes fighting hand-to-hand in wet, sticky chalk. Then, unless they were driven out—bombers to the fore again: a series of sharp explosions, a dash round a traverse, a grunting, snarling set-to in the dark, and all would be over one way or the other.
Then one morning Jim's company got driven out of a forward piece of the trench they were holding. Worn out and tired, their faces grey with exhaustion, their clothes grey with chalk, heavy-eyed, unshaven, driven out by sheer weight of numbers and bombs, they fell back—those that remained—down a communication trench. But they were different men from the men who went into the place three days before; the primitive passions of man were rampant—they asked no mercy, they gave none. Back, after a short breather, they went, and when they won through by sheer bloody fighting, they found a thing which sent them tearing mad with rage. The wounded they had left behind had been bombed to death. The juniorsubaltern was pulled out of a corner by a traverse—mangled horribly—and he told Jim.
"They packed us in here and between the next two or three traverses and lobbed bombs over," he whispered. And Jim swore horribly. "They're coming back," muttered the dying boy. "Listen."
The next instant the Germans were at it again, and the fighting became like the fighting of wild beasts. Men stabbed and hacked and cursed; rifle butts cracked down on heads; triggers were pulled with the muzzle an inch from a man's face. And because the German face to face is no match for the English or French, in a short time there was peace, while men, panting like exhausted runners, bound up one another's scratches, and passed back the serious cases to the rear. They knew it was only a temporary respite, and while Jim eased the dying boy, they stacked bombs in heaps where they could get at them quickly. It was then that the German officer crawled out. Down some hole or other in a bomb recess he had hidden during the fight—and then, thinking his position dangerous, decided for peaceful capture. It was unfortunate for him the junior subaltern was still alive—but only Jim heard the whisper:
"That's the man who told them to bomb us."
"That's interesting," said Jim, and his face was white, while his eyes were red.
Quietly he picked up a pick, and moved towards the German officer. Through the Huns who had come back again, fighting, stabbing, picking his way, Jim Denver moved relentlessly. And at last he reached him—reached him and laughed gently. The German sprang at him and Jim struck him with his fist; the German screamed for help, but there was none to help; every man was fighting grimly for his own life. Then still without a word he drove the pick.... Once again he laughed gently, and turned his mind to other things.
For hours they hung on, bombing, shooting, at a yard's range, and in the forefront, cheering them, holding them, doing the work of ten, was Jim. His revolver ammunition was exhausted, his loaded stick was broken; his eyes had a look of madness: temporarily he was mad—mad with the lust of killing. It was almost the last bomb the Germans threw that took him, and that took him properly. But the remnant of his company who carried him back, when relief came up from the battalion, contained no one more cheery than him. As a fight they'll never have a better; and it's better to take it when the fighting is bloody, and it's man to man, than to stop a shrapnel at the estaminet two miles down the road. That isn't even grey—it's mottled; especially if the red wine is just coming....
So they carried him home for the second time—back to the Land of Sanity: to the place where the noise of the water sounded ceaselessly over the rounded stones. And resting one afternoon on a sofa in the drawing-room Jim dozed.
The door burst open, and Sybil came in. "Boy, do you see, they've given you a D.S.O. 'For conspicuous gallantry in holding up an almost isolated position for several hours against vastly superior numbers of the enemy. He was badly wounded just before relief came.'"
Her eyes were shining. "Oh! my dear—I'm so proud of you! Do you remember saying it was a glorious madness?"
Into his mind there flashed the picture of a German officer's face—distorted with terror—cringing: just as a pick came down....
"Yes, girl, I remember," he answered softly. "I remember. But, thank God! I'm sane again now."
And now I will ring down the curtain. For Jim Denver the black and white have gone; even the grey of the Land of Topsy Turvy is hazy and indistinct. The guns are silent: the men and the women are—sane.
The shepherd is out of sight amongst the trees; the purple is changing to grey, the grey to black; there is no sound saving only the tireless murmur of the river....