The departure platform of a great station (for such as have eyes to see) is always a sad place, but now-a-days it is a place of tragedy.
He was tall and thin—a boyish figure—and his khaki-clad arm was close about her slender form. The hour was early and their corner bleak and deserted, thus few were by to heed his stiff-lipped, agonised smile and the passionate clasp of her hands, or to hear her heartbreaking sobs and his brave words of comfort; and I, shivering in the early morning wind, hasted on, awed by a grief that made the grey world greyer.
Very soon London was behind us, and we were whirling through a country-side wreathed in mist wherein I seemed to see a girl's tear-wet cheeks and a boy's lips that smiled so valiantly for all their pitiful quiver; thus I answered my companion somewhat at random and the waiter's proffer of breakfast was an insult. And, as I stared out at misty trees and hedgerow I began as it were to sense a grimness in the very air—the million-sided tragedy of war; behind me the weeping girl, beforeme and looming nearer with every mile, the Somme battle-front.
At a table hard by a group of clear-eyed subalterns were chatting and laughing over breakfast, and in their merriment I, too, rejoiced. Yet the grimness was with me still as we rocked and swayed through the wreathing mist.
But trains, even on a foggy morning, have a way of getting there at last, so, in due season, were docks and more docks, with the funnels of ships, and beyond these, misty shapes upon a misty sea, the gaunt outlines of destroyers that were to convoy us Francewards. Hereupon my companion, K., a hardened traveller, inured to customs, passports and the like noxious things, led me through a jostling throng, his long legs striding rapidly when they found occasion, past rank upon rank of soldiers returning to duty, very neat and orderly, and looking, I thought, a little grim.
Presently the warps were cast off and very soon we were in the lift and roll of the Channel; the white cliffs slowly faded, the wind freshened, and I, observing that everyone had donned life-belts, forthwith girded on one of the clumsy contrivances also.
In mid-channel it blew hard and the destroyers seemed to be making heavy weather of it, now lost in spray, now showing a glistening height of free-board, and, as I watched, remembering why they were there, my cumbrous life-belt grew suddenly very comfortable.
Came a growing density on the horizon, a bluestreak that slowly and little by little grew into roofs, chimneys, docks and shipping, and France was before us, and it was with almost reverent hands that I laid aside my clumsy cork jacket and was presently on French soil. And yet, except for a few chattering porters, the air rang with good English voices hailing each other in cheery greetings, and khaki was everywhere. But now, as I followed my companion's long legs past these serried, dun-coloured ranks, it seemed to me that they held themselves straighter and looked a little more grim even than they had done in England.
I stood, lost in the busy scene before me, when, hearing K.'s voice, I turned to be introduced to Captain R., tall, bright-eyed, immaculate, and very much master of himself and circumstances it seemed, for, despite crowded customs-office, he whisked us through and thence before sundry officials, who glared at me and my passport, signed, stamped, returned it and permitted me to go.
After luncheon we drove to a great base hospital where I was introduced to the Colonel-Surgeon in charge, a quiet man, who took us readily under his able guidance. And indeed a huge place was this, a place for me of awe and wonder, the more so as I learned that the greater part of it had come into being within one short year.
It lies beside the sea, this hospital, where clean winds blow, its neat roadways are bordered by green lawns and flanked by long, low buildings that reach away in far perspective, buildings of corrugatediron, of wood and asbestos, a very city, but one where there is no riot and rush of traffic, truly a city of peace and brooding quietude.
And as I looked upon this silent city, my awe grew, for the Colonel, in his gentle voice, spoke of death and wounds, of shell-shock, nerve-wrack and insanity; but he told also of wonderful cures, of miracles performed on those that should have died, and of reason and sanity won back.
"And you?" I questioned, "have you done many such wonders?"
"Few!" he answered, and sighed. "You see, my duties now are chiefly administrative," and he seemed gently grieved that it should be so.
He brought us into wards, long, airy and many-windowed, places of exquisite neatness and order, where calm-faced sisters were busied and smart, soft-treading orderlies came and went. Here in white cots lay many bandaged forms, some who, propped on pillows, watched us bright-eyed and nodded in cheery greeting; others who lay so ominously still.
But as I passed between the long rows of cots, I was struck with the look of utter peace and content on so many of the faces and wondered, until, remembering the hell whence they had so lately come, I thought I understood. Thus, bethinking me of how these dire hurts had been come by, I took off my hat, and trod between these beds of silent suffering as softly as I could, for these men had surely come "out of great tribulation."
In another ward I saw numbers of German wounded, most of them bearded; many there were who seemed weakly and undersized, and among them were many grey heads, a very motley company. These, the Colonel informed us, received precisely the same treatment as our own wounded, even to tobacco and cigarettes.
We followed our soft-voiced conductor through many other wards where he showed us strange and wondrous devices in splints; he halted us by hanging beds of weird shape and cots that swung on pulleys; he descanted on wounds to flesh and bone and brain, of lives snatched from the grip of Death by the marvels of up-to-date surgery, and as I listened to his pleasant voice I sensed much of the grim wonders he left untold. We visited X-ray rooms and operating theatre against whose walls were glass cases filled with a multitudinous array of instruments for the saving of life, and here it was I learned that in certain cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a far more delicate tool than the finest saw.
"A wonderful place," said I for the hundredth time as we stepped out upon a trim, green lawn. The Colonel-Surgeon smiled.
"It took some planning," he admitted, "a little while ago it was a sandy wilderness."
"But these lawns?" I demurred.
"Came to me of their own accord," he answered. "At least, the seed did, washed ashore from a wreck, so I had it planted and it has done rather well. Now, what else can I show you? It wouldtake all the afternoon to visit every ward, and they are all much alike—but there is the mad ward if you'd care to see that? This way."
A strange place, this, divided into compartments or cubicles where were many patients in the familiar blue overalls, most of whom rose and stood at attention as we entered. Tall, soldierly figures they seemed, and yet with an indefinable something in their looks—a vagueness of gaze, a loose-lipped, too-ready smile, a vacancy of expression. Some there were who scowled sullenly enough, others who sat crouched apart, solitary souls, who, I learned, felt themselves outcast; others again crouched in corners haunted by the dread of a pursuing vengeance always at hand.
One such the Colonel accosted, asking what was wrong. The man looked up, looked down and muttered unintelligibly, whereupon the Sister spoke.
"He believes that everyone thinks him a spy," she explained, and touched the man's bowed head with a hand as gentle as her voice.
"Shell-shock is a strange thing," said the Colonel-Surgeon, "and affects men in many extraordinary ways, but seldom permanently."
"You mean that those poor fellows will recover?" I asked.
"Quite ninety per cent," he answered in his quiet, assured voice.
I was shown over laundries complete in every detail; I walked through clothing stores where, in a single day, six hundred men had been equipped from head to foot; I beheld large machines for thesterilisation of garments foul with the grime of battle and other things.
Truly, here, within the hospital that had grown, mushroom-like, within the wild, was everything for the alleviation of hurts and suffering more awful than our fighting ancestors ever had to endure. Presently I left this place, but now, although a clean, fresh wind blew and the setting sun peeped out, the world somehow seemed a grimmer place than ever.
In the Dark Ages, humanity endured much of sin and shame and suffering, but never such as in this age of Reason and Culture. This same earth has known evils of every kind, has heard the screams of outraged innocence, the groan of tortured flesh, and has reddened beneath the heel of Tyranny; this same sun has seen the smoke and ravishment of cities and been darkened by the hateful mists of war—but never such a war as this of cultured barbarity with all its new devilishness. Shell-shock and insanity, poison-gas and slow strangulation, liquid fire and poison shells. Rape, Murder, Robbery, Piracy, Slavery—each and every crime is here—never has humanity endured all these horrors together until now.
But remembering by whose will these evils have been loosed upon the world, remembering the innocent blood, the bitter tears, the agony of soul and heartbreak, I am persuaded that Retribution must follow as sure as to-morrow's dawn. The evil that men do lives after them and lives on for ever.
Should they, who have worked for and planned this misery, escape the ephemeral justice of man, there is yet the inexorable tribunal of the Hereafter, which no transgressor, small or great, humble or mighty, may in any wise escape.
A fine, brisk morning; a long, tree-bordered road dappled with fugitive sunbeams, making a glory of puddles that leapt in shimmering spray beneath our flying wheels. A long, straight road that ran on and on unswerving, uphill and down, beneath tall, straight trees that flitted past in never-ending procession, and beyond these a rolling, desolate countryside of blue hills and dusky woods; and in the air from beyond this wide horizon a sound that rose above the wind-gusts and the noise of our going, a faint whisper that seemed in the air close about us and yet to be of the vague distances, a whisper of sound, a stammering murmur, now rising, now falling, but never quite lost.
In rain-sodden fields to right and left were many figures bent in diligent labour, men in weather-worn, grey-blue uniforms and knee-boots, while on the roadside were men who lounged, or sat smoking cigarettes, rifle across knees and wicked-looking bayonets agleam, wherefore these many Germanprisoners toiled with the unremitting diligence aforesaid.
The road surface improving somewhat we went at speed and, as we lurched and swayed, the long, straight road grew less deserted. Here and there transport lorries by ones and twos, then whole convoys drawn up beside the road, often axle deep in mud, or lumbering heavily onwards; and ever as we went that ominous, stammering murmur beyond the horizon grew louder and more distinct.
On we went, through scattered villages alive with khaki-clad figures with morions cocked at every conceivable angle, past leafy lanes bright with the wink of long bayonets; through country towns, whose wide squares and narrow, old-world streets rang with the ordered tramp of feet, the stamp of horses and rumble of gun-wheels, where ruddy English faces turned to stare and broad khaki backs swung easily beneath their many accoutrements. And in street and square and by-street, always and ever was that murmurous stammer of sound more ominous and threatening, yet which nobody seemed to heed—not even K., my companion, who puffed his cigarette and "was glad it had stopped raining."
So, picking our way through streets athrong with British faces, dodging guns and limbers, wagons and carts of all descriptions, we came out upon the open road again. And now, there being no surfaceat all to speak of, we perforce went slow, and I watched where, just in front, a string of lorries lumbered heavily along, pitching and rolling very much like boats in a choppy sea.
Presently we halted to let a column go by, officers a-horse and a-foot with the long files behind, but all alike splashed and spattered with mud. Men, these, who carried their rifles anyhow, who tramped along, rank upon rank, weary men, who showed among them here and there grim evidence of battle—rain-sodden men with hair that clung to muddy brows beneath the sloping brims of muddy helmets; men who tramped ankle-deep in mud and who sang and whistled blithe as birds. So they splashed wearily through the mud, upborne in their fatigue by that indomitable spirit that has always made the Briton the fighting man he is.
At second speed we toiled along again behind the lorries who were making as bad weather of it as ever, when all at once I caught my breath, hearkening to the far, faint skirling of Highland bagpipes, and, leaning from the car, saw before us a company of Highlanders, their mud-splashed knees a-swing together, their khaki kilts swaying in rhythm, their long bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the regular tramp of their felt and the wild, frenzied wailing of their pipes. Soon we were up with them, bronzed, stalwart figures, grim fighters from muddyspatterdashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes turned to stare at us—eyes blue and merry, eyes dark and sombre—as they swung along to the lilting music of the pipes.
At the rear the stretcher-bearers marched, the rolled-up stretchers upon their shoulders; but even so, by various dark stains and marks upon that dingy canvas, I knew that here was a company that had done and endured much. Close by me was a man whose hairy knee was black with dried blood—to him I tentatively proffered my cigarette case.
"Wull ye hae one the noo?" I questioned. For a moment he eyed me a trifle dour and askance, then he smiled (a grave Scots smile).
"Thank ye, I wull that!" said he, and extracted the cigarette with muddy fingers.
"Ye'll hae a sore leg, I'm thinking!" said I.
"Ou aye," he admitted with the same grave smile, "but it's no sae muckle as a' that—juist a wee bit skelpit I—"
Our car moved forward, gathered speed, and we bumped and swayed on our way; the bagpipes shrieked and wailed, grew plaintively soft, and were drowned and lost in that other sound which was a murmur no longer, but a rolling, distant thunder, with occasional moments of silence.
"Ah, the guns at last!" said I.
"Yes," nodded K., lighting another cigarette, "I've been listening to them for the last hour."
Here my friend F., who happened to be the Intelligence Officer in charge, leaned forward to say:
"I'm afraid we can't get into Beaumont Hamel, the Boches are strafing it rather, this morning, but we'll go as near as we can get, and then on to what was La Boiselle. We shall leave the car soon, so better get into your tin hats." Forthwith I buckled on one of the morions we had brought for the purpose and very uncomfortable I found it. Having made it fairly secure, I turned, grinning furtively, to behold K.'s classic features crowned with his outlandish-seeming headgear, and presently caught him grinning furtively at mine.
"They're not so heavy as I expected," said I.
"About half a pound," he suggested.
Pulling up at a shell shattered village we left the car and trudged along a shell-torn road, along a battered and rusty railway line, and presently struck into a desolate waste intersected by sparse hedgerows, and with here and there desolate, leafless trees, many of which, in shattered trunk and broken bough, showed grim traces of what had been; and ever as we advanced these ugly scars grew more frequent, and we were continually dodging sullen pools that were the work of bursting shells. And then it began to rain again.
On we went, splashing through puddles, slipping in mud, and ever as we went my boots and my uncomfortable helmet grew heavier and heavier, while in the heaven above, in the earth below and in the air about us was the quiver and thunder of unseen guns. As we stumbled through the muddy desolation I beheld wretched hovels wherein khaki-clad forms moved, and from one of these damp and dismal structures a merry whistling issued, with hoarse laughter.
On we tramped, through rain and mud, which, like my helmet, seemed to grow momentarily heavier.
"K.," said I, as he floundered into a shell-hole, "about how heavy did you say these helmets were?"
"About a pound!" said he, fierce-eyed. "Confound the mud!"
Away to our left and high in air a puff of smoke appeared, a pearl-grey, fleecy cloud, and as I, unsuspecting, watched it writhe into fantastic shapes, my ears were smitten with a deafening report, and instinctively I ducked.
"Shrapnel!" said F., waving his hand in airy introduction. "They're searching the road yonder I expect—ah, there goes another! Yes, they're trying the road yonder—but here's the trench—in with you!"
I am free to confess that I entered that trench precipitately—so hurriedly, in fact, that my helmetfell off, and, as I replaced it, I was not sorry to see that this trench was very deep and narrow. As we progressed, very slowly by reason of clinging mud, F. informed us that this trench had been our old front line before we took Beaumont Hamel; and I noticed many things, as, clips of cartridges, unexploded bombs, Lewis gun magazines, parts of a broken machine gun, and various odds and ends of accoutrements. In some places this trench had fallen in because of rain and other things and was almost impassable, wherefore, after much floundering and splashing, F. suggested we should climb out again, which we did forthwith, very moist and muddy.
And thus at last I looked at that wide stretch of country across which our men had advanced unshaken and undismayed, through a hell the like of which the world had never known before; and, as I stood there, I could almost see those long, advancing waves of khaki-clad figures, their ranks swept by the fire of countless rifles and machine guns, pounded by high explosives, blasted by withering shrapnel, lost in the swirling death-mist of poison-gas—heroic ranks which, rent asunder, shattered, torn, yet swung steadily on through smoke and flame, unflinching and unafraid. As if to make the picture more real, came the thunderous crash of a shell behind us, but this time I forgot to duck.
Far in front of us I saw a huge puff of smoke, and as it thinned out beheld clouds of earth and broken beams that seemed to hang suspended a moment ere they fell and vanished. After a moment was another puff of smoke further to our right, and beyond this another, and again, beyond this, another.
"A battery of heavies," said F.
Even as he spoke the four puffs burst forth again and upon exactly the same ground.
At this juncture a head appeared over the parapet behind us and after some talk with F., came one who tendered us a pair of binoculars, by whose aid I made out the British new line of trenches which had once been German. So I stood, dry-mouthed, to watch the burst of those huge shells exploding upon our British line. Fascinated, I stared until F.'s hand on my arm aroused me, and returning the glasses with a hazy word of thanks I followed my companions, though often turning to watch the shooting which now I thought much too good.
And now we were traversing the great battlefield where, not long since, so many of our bravest had fallen that Britain might still be Britain. Even yet, upon its torn and trampled surface I could read something of the fight—here a broken shoulder belt, there a cartridge-pouch, yonder a stained and tattered coat, while everywhere lay bombs, English and German.
"If you want to see La Boiselle properly we must hurry!" said F., and off he went at the double with K.'s long legs striding beside him, but, as for me, I must needs turn for one last look where those deadly smoke puffs came and went with such awful regularity.
The rain had stopped, but it was three damp and mud-spattered wretches who clambered back into the waiting car.
"K.," said I, as we removed our cumbrous headgear, "about how much do you suppose these things weigh?"
"Fully a ton!" he answered, jerking his cap over his eyes and scowlingly accepting a cigarette.
Very soon the shattered village was far behind and we were threading a devious course between huge steam-tractors, guns, motor-lorries and more guns. We passed soldiers a-horse and a-foot and long strings of ambulance cars; to right and left of the road were artillery parks and great camps, that stretched away into the distance. Here also were vast numbers of the ubiquitous motor-lorry with many three-wheeled tractors for the big guns. We sped past hundreds of horses picketed in long lines; past countless tents smeared crazily in various coloured paints; past huts little and huts big; past swamps knee-deep in mud where muddy men were taking down or setting up other tents. On we sped through all the confused order of a mighty army, until, chancing to raise my eyesaloft, I beheld a huge balloon, which, as I watched, mounted up and up into the air.
"One of our sausages!" said F., gloved hand waving. "Plenty of 'em round here—see, there's another in that cloud, and beyond it, another."
So for awhile I rode with my eyes turned upwards, and thus I presently saw far ahead many aeroplanes that flew in strange, zig-zag fashion, now swooping low, now climbing high, now twisting and turning giddily.
"Some of our 'planes under fire!" said F., "you can see the shrapnel bursting all around 'em—there's the smoke—we call 'em woolly bears. Won't see any Boche 'planes, though—rather not!"
Amidst all these wonders and marvels our fleet car sped on, jolting and lurching violently over ruts, pot-holes and the like until we came to a part of the road where many men were engaged with pick and shovel; and here, on either side of the highway, I noticed many grim-looking heaps and mounds—ugly, shapeless dumps, depressing in their very hideousness. Beside one such unlovely dump our car pulled up, and F., gloved finger pointing, announced:
"The Church of La Boiselle. That heap you see yonder was once the Mairie, and beyond, the schoolhouse. The others were houses and cottages. Oh, La Boiselle was quite a pretty place once. We get out here to visit the guns—this way."
Obediently I followed whither he led, nothingspeaking, for surely here was matter beyond words. Leaving the road, we floundered over what seemed like ash heaps, but which had once been German trenches faced and reinforced by concrete and steel plates. Many of these last lay here and there, awfully bent and twisted, but of trenches I saw none save a few yards here and there half filled with indescribable débris. It was, indeed, a place of horror—a frightful desolation beyond all words. Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful death—they came to one in the very air, in lowering heaven and tortured earth. Far as the eye could reach the ground was pitted with great shell holes, so close that they broke into one another and formed horrid pools full of shapeless things within the slime.
Across this hellish waste I went cautiously by reason of torn and twisted tangles of German barbed wire, of hand grenades and huge shells, of broken and rusty iron and steel that once were deadly machine-guns. As I picked my way among all this flotsam, I turned to take up a bayonet, slipped in the slime and sank to my waist in a shell hole—even then I didn't touch bottom, but scrambled out, all grey mud from waist down—but I had the bayonet.
It was in this woeful state that I shook hands with the Major of the battery. And as we stood upon that awful waste, he chattered, I remember, of books. Then, side by side, we came to the battery—four mighty howitzers, that crashed and roared and shook the very earth with each discharge,and whose shells roared through the air with the rush of a dozen express trains.
Following the Major's directing finger, I fixed my gaze some distance above the muzzle of the nearest gun and, marvel of marvels, beheld that dire messenger of death and destruction rush forth, soaring, upon its way, up and up, until it was lost in cloud. Time after time I saw the huge shells leap sky-wards and vanish on their long journey, and stood thus lost in wonder, and as I watched I could not but remark on the speed and dexterity with which the crews handled these monstrous engines.
"Yes," nodded the Major, "strange thing is that a year ago theyweren't, you know—guns weren't in existence and the men weren't gunners—clerks an' all that sort of thing, you know—civilians, what?"
"They're pretty good gunners now—judging by effect!" said I, nodding towards the abomination of desolation that had once been a village.
"Rather!" nodded the Major, cheerily, "used to think it took three long years to make a gunner once—do it in six short months now! Pretty good going for old England, what? How about a cup of tea in my dug-out?"
But evening was approaching, and having far to go we had perforce to refuse his hospitality and bid him a reluctant good-bye.
"Don't forget to take a peep at the mine-craters," said he, and waving a cheery adieu, vanished into his dug-out.
Ten minutes walk along the road, and before us rose a jagged mount, and beyond it another, uncanny hills, seared and cracked and sinister, up whose steep slopes I scrambled and into whose yawning depths I gazed in awestruck wonder; so deep, so wide and huge of circumference, it seemed rather the result of some titanic convulsion of nature than the handiwork of man.
I could imagine the cataclysmic roar of the explosion, the smoke and flame of the mighty upheaval and war found for me yet another horror as I turned and descended the precipitous slope. Now, as I went, I stumbled over a small mound, then halted all at once, for at one end of this was a very small cross, rudely constructed and painted white, and tacked to this a strip of lettered tin, bearing a name and number, and beneath these the words, "One of the best." So I took off my hat and stood awhile beside that lonely mound of muddy earth ere I went my way.
Slowly our car lurched onward through the waste, and presently on either side the way I saw other such mounds and crosses, by twos and threes, by fifties, by hundreds, in long rows beyond count. And looking around me on this dreary desolation I knew that one day (since nothing dies) upon this place of horror grass would grow and flowers bloom again; along this now desolate and deserted road people would come by the thousand; these humble crosses and mounds of muddy earth would become to all Britons a holy place where so many of our best and bravest lie, who, undismayed,have passed through the portals of Death into the fuller, greater, nobler living.
Full of such thoughts I turned for one last look, and then I saw that the setting sun had turned each one of these humble little crosses into things of shining glory.
The great training camp lay, a rain-lashed wilderness of windy levels and bleak, sandy hills, range upon range, far as the eye could see, with never a living thing to break the monotony. But presently, as our car lurched and splashed upon its way, there rose a sound that grew and grew, the awesome sound of countless marching feet.
On they came, these marching men, until we could see them by the hundred, by the thousand, their serried ranks stretching away and away until they were lost in distance. Scots were here, Lowland and Highland; English and Irish were here, with bronzed New Zealanders, adventurous Canadians and hardy Australians; men, these, who had come joyfully across half the world to fight, and, if need be, die for those ideals which have made the Empire assuredly the greatest and mightiest this world has ever known. And as I listened to the rhythmic tramp of these countless feet, it seemed like the voice of this vast Empire proclaiming to the world that Wrong and Injustice must cease among the nations; that man, after all, despite all the "Frightfulness" that warpedintelligence may conceive, is yet faithful to the highest in him, faithful to that deathless, purposeful determination that Right shall endure, the abiding belief of which has brought him through the dark ages, through blood and misery and shame, on his progress ever upward.
So, while these men of the Empire tramped past through blinding rain and wind, our car stopped before a row of low-lying wooden buildings, whence presently issued a tall man in rain-sodden trench cap and burberry, who looked at me with a pair of very dark, bright eyes and gripped my hand in hearty clasp.
He was apologetic because of the rain, since, as he informed us, he had just ordered all men to their quarters, and thus I should see nothing doing in the training line; nevertheless he cheerfully offered to show us over the camp, despite mud and wind and rain, and to explain things as fully as he could; whereupon we as cheerfully accepted.
The wind whistled about us, the rain pelted us, but the Major heeded it nothing—neither did I—while K. loudly congratulated himself on having come in waders and waterproof hat, as, through mud and mire, through puddles and clogging sand, we followed the Major's long boots, crossing bare plateaux, climbing precipitous slopes, leaping trenches, slipping and stumbling, while ever the Major talked, wherefore I heeded not wind or rain, for the Major talked well.
He descanted on the new and horribly vicious methods of bayonet fighting—the quick thrust andlightning recovery; struggling with me upon a sandy, rain-swept height, he showed me how, in wrestling for your opponent's rifle, the bayonet is the thing. He halted us before devilish contrivances of barbed wire, each different from the other, but each just as ugly. He made us peep through loopholes, each and every different from the other, yet each and every skilfully hidden from an enemy's observation. We stood beside trenches of every shape and kind while he pointed out their good and bad points; he brought us to a place where dummy figures had been set up, their rags a-flutter, forlorn objects in the rain.
"Here," said he, "is where we teach 'em to throw live bombs—you can see where they've been exploding; dummies look a bit off-colour, don't they?" And he pointed to the ragged scarecrows with his whip. "You know, I suppose," he continued, "that a Mills' bomb is quite safe until you take out the pin, and then it is quite safe as long as you hold it, but the moment it is loosed the lever flies off, which releases the firing lever and in a few seconds it explodes. It is surprising how men vary, some are born bombers, some soon learn, but some couldn't be bombers if they tried—not that they're cowards, it's just a case of mentality. I've seen men take hold of a bomb, pull out the pin, and then stand with the thing clutched in their fingers, absolutely unable to move! And there they'd stand till Lord knows when if the sergeant didn't take it from them. I remember a queer case once. We were saving the pins to rig updummy bombs, and the order was: 'Take the bomb in your right hand, remove the pin, put the pin in your pocket, and at the word of command, throw the bomb.' Well, this particular fellow was so wrought up that he threw away the pin and put the bomb in his pocket!"
"Was he killed?" I asked.
"No. The sergeant just had time to dig the thing out of the man's pocket and throw it away. Bomb exploded in the air and knocked 'em both flat."
"Did the sergeant get the V.C. or M.C. or anything?" I enquired.
The Major smiled and shook his head.
"I have a good many sergeants here and they can't all have 'em! Now come and see my lecture theatres."
Presently, looming through the rain, I saw huge circular structures that I could make nothing of, until, entering the larger of the two, I stopped in surprise, for I looked down into a huge, circular amphitheatre, with circular rows of seats descending tier below tier to a circular floor of sand, very firm and hard.
"All made out of empty oil cans!" said the Major, tapping the nearest can with his whip. "I have 'em filled with sand and stacked as you see!—good many thousands of 'em here. Find it good for sound too—shout and try! This place holds about five thousand men—"
"Whose wonderful idea was this?"
"Oh, just a little wheeze of my own. Now,how about the poison gas; feel like going through it?"
I glanced at K., K. glanced at me. I nodded, so did K.
"Certainly!" said I. Wherefore the Major led us over sandy hills and along sandy valleys and so to a dingy and weather-worn hut, in whose dingy interior we found a bright-faced subaltern in dingy uniform and surrounded by many dingy boxes and a heterogeneous collection of things. The subaltern was busy at work on a bomb with a penknife, while at his elbow stood a sergeant grasping a screwdriver, who, perceiving the Major, came to attention, while the cheery sub. rose, beaming.
"Can you give us some gas?" enquired the Major, after we had been introduced, and had shaken hands.
"Certainly, sir!" nodded the cheerful sub. "Delighted!"
"You might explain something about it, if you will," suggested the Major. "Bombs and gas is your line, you know."
The sub. beamed, and giving certain directions to his sergeant, spake something on this wise.
"Well, 'Frightful Fritz'—I mean the Boches y'know, started bein' frightful some time ago, y'know—playin' their little tricks with gas an' tear-shells an' liquid fire an' that, and we left 'em to it. Y'see, it wasn't cricket—wasn't playin' the game—what! But Fritz kept at it and was happy as a bird, till one day we woke up an' started bein' frightful too, only when we did begin we were frightfuller than ever Fritz thought of bein'—yes, rather!Our gas is more deadly, our lachrymatory shells are more lachrymose an' our liquid fire's quite top-hole—won't go out till it burns out—rather not! So Frightful Fritz is licked at his own dirty game. I've tried his and I've tried ours, an' I know."
Here the sergeant murmured deferentially into the sub.'s ear, whereupon he beamed again and nodded.
"Everything's quite ready!" he announced, "so if you're on?"
Here, after a momentary hesitation, I signified I was, whereupon our sub. grew immensely busy testing sundry ugly, grey flannel gas helmets, fitted with staring eyepieces of talc and with a hideous snout in front.
Having duly fitted on these clumsy things and buttoned them well under our coat collars, having shown us how we must breathe out through the mouthpiece which acts as a kind of exhaust, our sub. donned his own headpiece, through which his cheery voice reached me in muffled tones:
"You'll feel a kind of ticklin' feelin' in the throat at first, but that's all O.K.—only the chemical the flannel's saturated with. Now follow me, please, an' would you mind runnin', the rain's apt to weaken the solution. This way!"
Dutifully we hasted after him, ploughing through the wet sand, until we came to a heavily timbered doorway that seemingly opened into the hillside, and, beyond this yawning doorway I saw a thick, greenish-yellow mist, a fog exactly the colour of strong absinthe; and then we were in it. K.'s tallfigure grew blurred, indistinct, faded utterly away, and I was alone amid that awful, swirling vapour that held death in such agonising form.
I will confess I was not happy, my throat was tickling provokingly, I began to cough and my windpipe felt too small. I hastened forward, but, even as I went, the light grew dimmer and the swirling fog more dense. I groped blindly, began to run, stumbled, and in that moment my hand came in contact with an unseen rope. On I went into gloom, into blackness, until I was presently aware of my companions in front and mightily glad of it. In a while, still following this invisible rope, we turned a corner, the fog grew less opaque, thinned away to a green mist, and we were out in the daylight again, and thankful was I to whip off my stifling helmet and feel the clean wind in my hair and the beat of rain upon my face.
"Notice the ticklin' feelin'?" enquired our sub., as he took our helmets and put them carefully by. "Bit tryin' at first, but you soon get used to it—yes, rather. Some of the men funk tryin' at first—and some hold their breath until they fairly well burst, an' some won't go in at all, so we carry 'em in. That gas you've tried is about twenty times stronger than we get it in the open, but these helmets are a rippin' dodge till the chemical evaporates, then, of course, they're no earthly. This is the latest device—quite a top-hole scheme!" And he showed us a box-like contrivance which, when in use, is slung round the neck.
"Are you often in the gas?" I enquired.
"Every day—yes, rather!"
"For how long?"
"Well, I stayed in once for five hours on end—"
"Five hours!" I exclaimed, aghast.
"Y'see, I was experimentin'!"
"And didn't you feel any bad effects?"
"Yes, rather! I was simply dyin' for a smoke. Like to try a lachrymatory?" he enquired, reaching up to a certain dingy box.
"Yes," said I, glancing at K. "Oh, yes, if—"
"Only smart for the time bein'," our sub. assured me. "Make you weep a bit!" Here from the dingy box he fished a particularly vicious-looking bomb and fell to poking at it with a screwdriver. I immediately stepped back. So did K. The Major pulled his moustache and flicked a chunk of mud from his boot with his whip.
"Er—I suppose that thing's all right?" he enquired.
"Oh, yes, quite all right, sir, quite all right," nodded the sub., using the screwdriver as a hammer. "Only wants a little fixin'."
As I watched that deadly thing, for the second time I felt distinctly unhappy; however, the refractory pin, or whatever it was, being fixed to his satisfaction, our sub. led the way out of the dingy hut and going some few paces ahead, paused.
"I'm goin' to give you a liquid-fire bomb first!" said he. "Watch!"
He drew back his hand and hurled the bomb. Almost immediately there was a shattering report and the air was full of thick, grey smoke and yellowflame, smoke that rolled heavily along the ground towards us, flame that burned ever fiercer, fiery yellow tongues that leapt from the sand here and there, that writhed in the wind-gusts, but never diminished.
"Stoop down!" cried the sub., suiting the action to word, "stoop down and get a mouthful of that smoke—makes you jolly sick and unconscious in no time if you get enough of it. Top-hole bomb, that—what!"
Then he brought us where those yellow flames leapt and hissed; some of these he covered with wet sand, and lo! they had ceased to be; but the moment the sand was kicked away up they leapt again fiercer than ever.
"We use 'em for bombing Boche dug-outs now!" said he; and remembering the dug-outs I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of their own vile methods.
"This is a lachrymatory!" said the sub., whisking another bomb from his pocket. "When it pops, run forward and get in the smoke. It'll sting a bit, but don't rub the tears away—let 'em flow. Don't touch your eyes, it'll only inflame 'em—just weep! Ready? One, two, three!" A second explosion louder than the first, a puff of blue smoke into which I presently ran and then uttered a cry. So sharp, so excruciating was the pain, that instinctively I raised hand to eyes but checked myself, and with tears gushing over mycheeks, blind and agonised, I stumbled away from that hellish vapour. Very soon the pain diminished, was gone, and looking up through streaming tears I beheld the sub. nodding and beaming approval.
"Useful things, eh?" he remarked, "A man can't shed tears and shoot straight, an' he can't weep and fight well, both at the same time—what? Fritz can be very frightful, but we can be more so when we want—yes, rather. The Boches have learned that there's no monopoly in Frightfulness."
In due season we shook hands with our cheery sub., and left him beaming after us from the threshold of the dingy hut.
Britain has been called slow, old-fashioned, and behind the times, but to-day she is awake and at work to such mighty purpose that her once small army is now numbered by the million, an army second to none in equipment or hardy and dauntless manhood.
From her Home Counties, from her Empire beyond the Seas, her millions have arisen, brothers in arms henceforth, bonded together by a spirit of noble self-sacrifice—men grimly determined to suffer wounds and hardship and death itself, that for those who come after them, the world may be a better place and humanity may never again be called upon to endure all the agony and heartbreak of this generation.
It was raining, and a chilly wind blew as we passed beneath a battered arch into the tragic desolation of Arras.
I have seen villages pounded by gun-fire into hideous mounds of dust and rubble, their very semblance blasted utterly away; but Arras, shell-torn, scarred, disfigured for all time, is a city still—a City of Desolation. Her streets lie empty and silent, her once pleasant squares are a dreary desolation, her noble buildings, monuments of her ancient splendour, are ruined beyond repair. Arras is a dead city, whose mournful silence is broken only by the intermittent thunder of the guns.
Thus, as I paced these deserted streets where none moved save myself (for my companions had hastened on), as I gazed on ruined buildings that echoed mournfully to my tread, what wonder that my thoughts were gloomy as the day itself? I paused in a street of fair, tall houses, from whose broken windows curtains of lace, of plush, and tapestry flapped mournfully in the chill November wind like rags upon a corpse, while from some dim interior came the hollow rattle of a door, and, in everygust, a swinging shutter groaned despairingly on rusty hinge.
And as I stood in this narrow street, littered with the brick and masonry of desolate homes, and listened to these mournful sounds, I wondered vaguely what had become of all those for whom this door had been wont to open, where now the eyes that had looked down from these windows many and many a time—would they ever behold again this quiet, narrow street, would these scarred walls echo again to those same voices and ring with joy of life and familiar laughter?
And now this desolate city became as it were peopled with the souls of these exiles, they flitted ghostlike in the dimness behind flapping curtains, they peered down through closed jalousies—wraiths of the men and women and children who had lived and loved and played here before the curse of the barbarian had driven them away.
And, as if to help this illusion, I saw many things that were eloquent of these vanished people—glimpses through shattered windows and beyond demolished house-fronts; here a table set for dinner, with plates and tarnished cutlery on a dingy cloth that stirred damp and lazily in the wind, yonder a grand piano, open and with sodden music drooping from its rest; here again chairs drawn cosily together.
Wherever I looked were evidences of arrested life, of action suddenly stayed; in one bedroom a trunk open, with a pile of articles beside it in the act of being packed; in another, a great bed, itssheets and blankets tossed askew by hands wild with haste; while in a room lined with bookcases a deep armchair was drawn up to the hearth, with a small table whereon stood a decanter and a half-emptied glass, and an open book whose damp leaves stirred in the wind, now and then, as if touched by phantom fingers. Indeed, more than once I marvelled to see how, amid the awful wreckage of broken floors and tumbled ceilings, delicate vases and chinaware had miraculously escaped destruction. Upon one cracked wall a large mirror reflected the ruin of a massive carved sideboard, while in another house, hard by, a magnificent ivory and ebony crucifix yet hung above an awful twisted thing that had been a brass bedstead.
Here and there, on either side this narrow street, ugly gaps showed where houses had once stood, comfortable homes, now only unsightly heaps of rubbish, a confusion of broken beams and rafters, amid which divers familiar objects obtruded themselves, broken chairs and tables, a grandfather clock, and a shattered piano whose melody was silenced for ever.
Through all these gloomy relics of a vanished people I went slow-footed and heedless of direction, until by chance I came out into the wide Place and saw before me all that remained of the stately building which for centuries had been the Hotel de Ville, now nothing but a crumbling ruin of noble arch and massive tower; even so, in shattered facade and mullioned window one might yet see something of that beauty which had made it famous.
Oblivious of driving rain I stood bethinking me of this ancient city: how in the dark ages it had endured the horrors of battle and siege, had fronted the catapults of Rome, heard the fierce shouts of barbarian assailants, known the merciless savagery of religious wars, and remained a city still only for the cultured barbarian of to-day to make of it a desolation.
Very full of thought I turned away, but, as I crossed the desolate square, I was aroused by a voice that hailed me, seemingly from beneath my feet, a voice that echoed eerily in that silent Place. Glancing about I beheld a beshawled head that rose above the littered pavement, and, as I stared, the head nodded and, smiling wanly, accosted me again.
Coming thither I looked into a square opening with a flight of steps leading down into a subterranean chamber, and, upon these steps a woman sat knitting busily. She enquired if I wished to view the catacombs, and pointed where a lamp burned above another opening and other steps descended lower yet, seemingly into the very bowels of the earth. To her I explained that my time was limited and all I wished to see lay above ground, and from her I learned that some few people yet remained in ruined Arras, who, even as she, lived underground, since every day at irregular intervals the enemy fired into the town haphazard. Only that very morning, she told me, another shell had struck the poor Hotel de Ville, and she pointed to a new, white scar upon the shapeless tower. Shealso showed me an ugly rent upon a certain wall near by, made by the shell which had killed her husband. Yes, she lived all alone now, she told me, waiting for that good day when the Boches should be driven beyond the Rhine, waiting until the townsfolk should come back and Arras wake to life again: meantime she knitted.
Presently I saluted this solitary woman, and, turning away, left her amid the desolate ruin of that once busy square, her beshawled head bowed above feverishly busy fingers, left her as I had found her—waiting.
And now as I traversed those deserted streets it seemed that this seemingly dead city did but swoon after all, despite its many grievous wounds, for here was life even as the woman had said; evidences of which I saw here and there, in battered stovepipes that had writhed themselves snake-like through rusty cellar gratings and holes in wall or pavement, miserable contrivances at best, whose fumes blackened the walls whereto they clung. Still, nowhere was there sound or sight of folk save in one small back street, where, in a shop that apparently sold everything, from pickles to picture postcards, two British soldiers were buying a pair of braces from a smiling, haggard-eyed woman, and being extremely polite about it in cryptic Anglo-French; and here I foregathered with my companions. Our way led us through the railway station, a much-battered ruin, its clock tower half gone, its platforms cracked and splintered, the iron girders of its great, domed roof bent andtwisted, and with never a sheet of glass anywhere. Between the rusty tracks grass and weeds grew and flourished, and the few waybills and excursion placards which still showed here and there looked unutterably forlorn. In the booking office was a confusion of broken desks, stools and overthrown chairs, the floor littered with sodden books and ledgers, but the racks still held thousands of tickets, bearing so many names they might have taken anyone anywhere throughout fair France once, but now, it seemed, would never take anyone anywhere.
All at once, through the battered swing-doors, marched a company of soldiers, the tramp of their feet and the lilt of their voices filling the place with strange echoes, for, being wet and weary and British, they sang cheerily. Packs a-swing, rifles on shoulder, they tramped through shell-torn waiting-room and booking-hall and out again into wind and wet, and I remember the burden of their chanting was: "Smile! Smile! Smile!"
In a little while I stood amid the ruins of the great cathedral; its mighty pillars, chipped and scarred, yet rose high in air, but its long aisles were choked with rubble and fallen masonry, while through the gaping rents of its lofty roof the rain fell, wetting the shattered heap of particoloured marble that had been the high altar once. Here and there, half buried in the débris at my feet, I saw fragments of memorial tablets, a battered corona, the twisted remains of a great candelabrum, and over and through this mournful ruin a coldand rising wind moaned fitfully. Silently we clambered back over the mountain of débris and hurried on, heedless of the devastation around, heartsick with the gross barbarity of it all.
They tell me that churches and cathedrals must of necessity be destroyed since they generally serve as observation posts. But I have seen many ruined churches—usually beautified by Time and hallowed by tradition—that by reason of site and position could never have been so misused—and then there is the beautiful Chateau d'Eau!
Evening was falling, and as the shadows stole upon this silent city, a gloom unrelieved by any homely twinkle of light, these dreadful streets, these stricken homes took on an aspect more sinister and forbidding in the half-light. Behind those flapping curtains were pits of gloom full of unimagined terrors whence came unearthly sounds, stealthy rustlings, groans and sighs and sobbing voices. If ghosts did flit behind those crumbling walls, surely they were very sad and woeful ghosts.
"Damn this rain!" murmured K., gently.
"And the wind!" said F., pulling up his collar. "Listen to it! It's going to play the very deuce with these broken roofs and things if it blows hard. Going to be a beastly night, and a forty-mile drive in front of us. Listen to that wind! Come on—let's get away!"
Very soon, buried in warm rugs, we sped across dim squares, past wind-swept ruins, under battered arch, and the dismal city was behind us, but, for a while, her ghosts seemed all about us still.
As we plunged on through the gathering dark, past rows of trees that leapt at us and were gone, it seemed to me that the soul of Arras was typified in that patient, solitary woman who sat amid desolate ruin—waiting for the great Day; and surely her patience cannot go unrewarded. For since science has proved that nothing can be utterly destroyed, since I for one am convinced that the soul of man through death is but translated into a fuller and more infinite living, so do I think that one day the woes of Arras shall be done away, and she shall rise again, a City greater perhaps and fairer than she was.
To all who sit immune, far removed from war and all its horrors, to those to whom when Death comes, he comes in shape as gentle as he may—to all such I dedicate these tales of the front.
How many stories of battlefields have been written of late, written to be scanned hastily over the breakfast-table or comfortably lounged over in an easy chair, stories warranted not to shock or disgust, wherein the reader may learn of the glorious achievements of our armies, of heroic deeds and noble self-sacrifice, so that frequently I have heard it said that war, since it produces heroes, is a goodly thing, a necessary thing.
Can the average reader know or even faintly imagine the other side of the picture? Surely not, for no clean human mind can compass all the horror, all the brutal, grotesque obscenity of a modern battlefield. Therefore I propose to write plainly, briefly, of that which I saw on my last visit to the British front; for since in blood-sodden France men are dying even as I pen these lines, it seems only just that those of us for whom they are giving theirlives should at least know something of the manner of their dying. To this end I visited four great battle-fields and I would that all such as cry up war, its necessity, its inevitability, might have gone beside me. Though I have sometimes written of war, yet I am one that hates war, one to whom the sight of suffering and bloodshed cause physical pain, yet I forced myself to tread those awful fields of death and agony, to look upon the ghastly aftermath of modern battle, that, if it be possible, I might by my testimony in some small way help those who know as little of war as I did once, to realise the horror of it, that loathing it for the hellish thing it is, they may, one and all, set their faces against war henceforth, with an unshakeable determination that never again shall it be permitted to maim, to destroy and blast out of being the noblest works of God.
What I write here I set down deliberately, with no idea of phrase-making, of literary values or rounded periods; this is and shall be a plain, trite statement of fact.
And now, one and all, come with me in spirit, lend me your mind's eyes, and see for yourselves something of what modern war really is.
Behold then a stretch of country—a sea of mud far as the eye can reach, a grim, desolate expanse, its surface ploughed and churned by thousands of high-explosive shells into ugly holes and tortured heaps like muddy waves struck motionless upon this muddy sea. The guns are silent, the cheers and frenzied shouts, the screams and groans have longdied away, and no sound is heard save the noise of my own going.
The sun shone palely and a fitful wind swept across the waste, a noxious wind, cold and dank, that chilled me with a sudden dread even while the sweat ran from me. I walked amid shell-craters, sometimes knee-deep in mud, I stumbled over rifles half buried in the slime, on muddy knapsacks, over muddy bags half full of rusty bombs, and so upon the body of a dead German soldier. With arms wide-flung and writhen legs grotesquely twisted he lay there beneath my boot, his head half buried in the mud, even so I could see that the maggots had been busy, though the — had killed them where they clung. So there he lay, this dead Boche, skull gleaming under shrunken scalp, an awful, eyeless thing, that seemed to start, to stir and shiver as the cold wind stirred his muddy clothing. Then nausea and a deadly faintness seized me, but I shook it off, and shivering, sweating, forced myself to stoop and touch that awful thing, and, with the touch, horror and faintness passed, and in their place I felt a deep and passionate pity for all he was a Boche, and with pity in my heart I turned and went my way.
But now, wherever I looked were other shapes, that lay in attitudes frightfully contorted, grotesque and awful. Here the battle had raged desperately. I stood in a very charnel-house of dead. From a mound of earth upflung by a bursting shell a clenched fist, weather-bleached and pallid, seemed to threaten me; from another emerged a pair ofcrossed legs with knees up-drawn, very like the legs of one who dozes gently on a hot day. Hard by, a pair of German knee-boots topped a shell crater, and drawing near, I saw the grey-green breeches, belt and pouches, and beyond—nothing but unspeakable corruption. I started back in horror and stepped on something that yielded underfoot—glanced down and saw a bloated, discoloured face, that, even as I looked, vanished beneath my boot and left a bare and grinning skull.
Once again the faintness seized me, and lifting my head I stared round about me and across the desolation of this hellish waste. Far in the distance was the road where men moved to and fro, busy with picks and shovels, and some sang and some whistled and never sound more welcome. Here and there across these innumerable shell holes, solitary figures moved, men, these, who walked heedfully and with heads down-bent. And presently I moved on, but now, like these distant figures, I kept my gaze upon that awful mud lest again I should trample heedlessly on something that had once lived and loved and laughed. And they lay everywhere, here stark and stiff, with no pitiful earth to hide their awful corruption—here again, half buried in slimy mud; more than once my nailed boot uncovered mouldering tunic or things more awful. And as I trod this grisly place my pity grew, and with pity a profound wonder that the world with its so many millions of reasoning minds should permit such things to be, until I remembered that few, even the most imaginative, could realisethe true frightfulness of modern men-butchering machinery, and my wonder changed to a passionate desire that such things should be recorded and known, if only in some small measure, wherefore it is I write these things.
I wandered on past shell holes, some deep in slime, that held nameless ghastly messes, some a-brim with bloody water, until I came where three men lay side by side, their hands upon their levelled rifles. For a moment I had the foolish thought that these men were weary and slept, until, coming near, I saw that these had died by the same shell-burst. Near them lay yet another shape, a mangled heap, one muddy hand yet grasping muddy rifle, while, beneath the other lay the fragment of a sodden letter—probably the last thing those dying eyes had looked upon.
Death in horrible shape was all about me. I saw the work wrought by shrapnel, by gas, and the mangled red havoc of high-explosive. It only seemed unreal, like one that walked in a nightmare. Here and there upon this sea of mud rose the twisted wreckage of aeroplanes, and from where I stood I counted five, but as I tramped on and on these five grew to nine. One of these lying upon my way I turned aside to glance at, and stared through a tangle of wires into a pallid thing that had been a face once comely and youthful; the leather jacket had been opened at the neck for the identity disc as I suppose, and glancing lower I saw that this leather jacket was discoloured, singed, burnt—and below this, a charred and unrecognisable mass.
Is there a man in the world to-day who, beholding such horrors, would not strive with all his strength to so order things that the hell of war should be made impossible henceforth? Therefore, I have recorded in some part what I have seen of war.
So now, all of you who read, I summon you in the name of our common humanity, let us be up and doing. Americans—Anglo-Saxons, let our common blood be a bond of brotherhood between us henceforth, a bond indissoluble. As you have now entered the war, as you are now our allies in deed as in spirit, let this alliance endure hereafter. Already there is talk of some such League, which, in its might and unity, shall secure humanity against any recurrence of the evils the world now groans under. Here is a noble purpose, and I conceive it the duty of each one of us, for the sake of those who shall come after, that we should do something to further that which was once looked upon as only an Utopian dream—the universal Brotherhood of Man.