We climbed up from the hold next morning to find ourselves in Portsmouth harbour. The word submarines ran about the decks. There we waited all day, and again under cover of dark made our way out to open water, reaching Havre about six o’clock next morning.
We were marched ashore in the afternoon and transferred to another boat. Nobody knew our destination and the wildest guesses were made. The new boat was literally packed. There was no question of going downinto a hold. We were lucky to get sufficient deck space to lie down on, and just before getting under way, it began to rain. There were some London Scottish at our end of the deck who, finding that we had exhausted our rations, shared theirs with us. There was no question of sleeping. It was too cold and too uncomfortable. So we sang. There must have been some two thousand of us on board and all those above deck joined in choruses of all the popular songs as they sat hunched up or lying like rows of sardines in the rain. Dawn found us shivering, passing little villages on either bank of the river as we neared Rouen. The early-rising inhabitants waved and their voices came across the water, “Vivent les Anglais! A bas les Boches!” And the sun came out as we waved out shaving brushes at them in reply. We eventually landed in the old cathedral city and formed up and marched away across the bridge, with everybody cheering and throwing flowers until we came to La Bruyère camp.
Hundreds of bell tents, thousands of horses, and mud over the ankles! That was the first impression of the camp. It wasn’t until we were divided off into tents and had packed our equipment tight round the tent pole that one had time to notice details.
We spent about nine days in La Bruyère camp and we groomed horses from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, wet or fine. The lines were endless and the mud eternal. It became a nightmare, relieved only by the watering of the horses. The water was about a kilometre and a half distant. We mounted one horse and led two more each and in an endless line splashed down belly-deep in mud past the hospital where the slightly wounded leaned over the rail and exchanged badinage. Sometimes the sisters gave us cigarettes for which we called down blessings on their heads.
It rained most of the time and we stood ankle-deep all day in the lines, grooming and shovelling away mud. But all the time jokes were hurled from man to man, although the rain dripped down their faces and necks. We slept, if I remember rightly, twenty men in a tent, head outwards, feet to the pole piled on top of each other,—wet, hot, aching. Oh, those feet, the feet of tired heroes, but unwashed. And it was impossible to open the tent flap because of the rain.—Fortunately it was cold those nights and one smoked right up to the moment of falling asleep. Only two per cent. of passes to visit the town were allowed, but the camp was only barb-wired and sentried on one side. The other side was open to the pine woods and very pretty they were as we went cross-country towards the village of St. Etienne from which a tram-car ran into Rouen in about twenty minutes. The military police posted at the entrance to the town either didn’t know their job or were good fellows of Nelsonian temperament, content to turn a blind eye. From later experience I judge that the former was probably the case. Be that as it may, several hundreds of us went in without official permission nearly every night and, considering all things, were most orderly. Almost the only man I ever saw drunk was, paradoxically enough, a police man. He tried to place my companion and myself under arrest, but was so far gone that he couldn’t write down our names and numbers and we got off. The hand of Fate was distinctly in it for had I been brought up and crimed for being loose in the town without leave it might have counted against me when my commission was being considered.
One evening, the night before we left for the front, we went down for a bath, the last we should get for many a day. On our way we paid a visit to the cathedral. It was good to get out of the crowded streets into the vastgloom punctured by pin-points of candlelight, with only faint footfalls and the squeak of a chair to disturb the silence. For perhaps half an hour we knelt in front of the high altar,—quite unconsciously the modern version of that picture of a knight in armour kneeling, holding up his sword as a cross before the altar. It is called the Vigil, I believe. We made a little vigil in khaki and bandoliers and left the cathedral with an extraordinary confidence in the morrow. There was a baby being baptised at the font. It was an odd thing seeing that baby just as we passed out. It typified somewhat the reason of our going forth to fight.
The bath was amusing. The doors were being closed as we arrived, and I had just the time to stick my foot in the crack, much to the annoyance of the attendant. I blarneyed him in French and at last pushed into the hall only to be greeted by a cry of indignation from the lady in charge of the ticket office. She was young, however and pretty, and, determined to get a bath, I played upon her feelings to the extent of my vocabulary. At first she was adamant. The baths were closed. I pointed out that the next morning we were going to the front to fight for France. She refused to believe it. I asked her if she had a brother. She said she hadn’t. I congratulated her on not being agonized by the possibilities of his death from hour to hour. She smiled.
My heart leaped with hope and I reminded her that as we were possibly going to die for her the least she could do was to let us die clean. She looked me straight in the eye. There was a twinkle in hers. “You will not die,” she said. Somehow one doesn’t associate the selling of bath tickets with the calling of prophet. But she combined the two. And the bath was gloriously hot.
That nine days at La Bruyère did not teach us very much,—not even the realization of the vital necessity of patience. We looked upon each day as wasted because we weren’t up the line. Everywhere were preparations of war but we yearned for the sound of guns. Even the blue-clad figures who exchanged jokes with us over the hospital railing conveyed nothing of the grim tragedy of which we were only on the fringe. They were mostly convalescent. It is only the shattered who are being pulled back to life by a thread who make one curse the war. We looked about like new boys in a school, interested but knowing nothing of the workings, reading none of the signs. This all bored us. We wanted the line with all the persistence of the completely ignorant.
The morning after our bath we got it. There was much bustle and running and cursing and finally we had our saddles packed, and a day’s rations in our haversacks and a double feed in the nose-bags.
The cavalry man in full marching order bears a strange resemblance to a travelling ironmonger and rattles like the banging of old tins. The small man has almost to climb up the near foreleg of his horse, so impossible is it to get a leg anywhere near the stirrup iron with all his gear on. My own method was to stick the lance in the ground by the butt, climb with infinite labour and heavings into the saddle and come back for the lance when arranged squarely on the horse.
Eventually everything was accomplished and we were all in the saddle and were inspected to see that we were complete in every detail. Then we rode out of that muddy camp in sections—four abreast—and made ourway down towards the station. It was a real touch of old-time romance, that ride. The children ran shouting, and people came out of the shops to wave their hands and give us fruit and wish us luck, and the girls blew kisses, and through the hubbub the clatter of our horses over the cobbles and the jingle of stirrup striking stirrup made music that stirred one’s blood.
There was a long train of cattle trucks waiting for us at the station and into these we put our horses, eight to each truck, fastened by their ropes from the head collar to a ring in the roof. In the two-foot space between the two lots of four horses facing each other were put the eight saddles and blankets and a bale of hay.
Two men were detailed to stay with the horses in each truck while the rest fell in and were marched away to be distributed among the remaining empty trucks. I didn’t altogether fancy the idea of looking after eight frightened steeds in that two-foot alleyway, but before I could fall in with the rest I was detailed by the sergeant.
That journey was a nightmare. My fellow stableman was a brainless idiot who knew even less about the handling of horses than I did.
The train pulled out in the growing dusk of a cold November evening, the horses snorting and starting at every jolt, at every signal and telegraph pole that we passed. When they pawed with their front feet we, sitting on the bale of hay, had to dodge with curses. There was no sand or bedding and it was only the tightness with which they were packed together that kept them on their feet. Every light that flashed by drew frightened snorts. We spent an hour standing among them, saying soothing things and patting their necks. We tried closing the sliding doors but at the end of five minutes the heat splashed in great drops of moisture from the roof and the smell was impossible. Eventually I broke thebale of hay and threw some of that down to give them a footing.
There was a lamp in the corner of the truck. I told the other fellow to light it. He said he had no matches. So I produced mine and discovered that I had only six left. We used five to find out that the lamp had neither oil nor wick. We had just exhausted our vocabularies over this when the train entered a tunnel. At no time did the train move at more than eight miles an hour and the tunnel seemed endless. A times I still dream of that tunnel and wake up in a cold sweat.
As our truck entered great billows of smoke rushed into it. The eight horses tried as one to rear up and crashed their heads against the roof. The noise was deafening and it was pitch dark. I felt for the door and slid it shut while the horses blew and tugged at their ropes in a blind panic. Then there was a heavy thud, followed by a yell from the other man and a furious squealing.
“Are you all right?” I shouted, holding on to the head collar of the nearest beast.
“Christ!” came the answer. “There’s a ’orse down and I’m jammed up against the door ’ere. Come and get me out, for Christ’s sake.”
My heart was pumping wildly.
The smoke made one gasp and there was a furious stamping and squealing and a weird sort of blowing gurgle which I could not define.
Feeling around I reached the next horse’s head collar and staggered over the pile of saddlery. As I leaned forward to get to the third something whistled past my face and I heard the sickening noise of a horse’s hoof against another horse, followed by a squeal. I felt blindly and touched a flank where a head should have been. One of them had swung round and was standing with his fore feet on the fallen horse and was lashing outwith both hind feet, while my companion was jammed against the wall of the truck by the fallen animal presumably.
And still that cursed tunnel did not come to an end. I yelled again to see if he were all right and his fruity reply convinced me that at least there was no damage done. So I patted the kicker and squeezed in to his head and tried to get him round. It was impossible to get past, over or under, and the brute wouldn’t move. There was nothing for it but to remain as we were until out of the tunnel. And then I located the gurgle. It was the fallen horse, tied up short by the head collar to the roof, being steadily strangled. It was impossible to cut the rope. A loose horse in that infernalmêléewas worse than one dead—or at least choking. But I cursed and pulled and heaved in my efforts to get him up.
By this time there was no air and one’s lungs seemed on the point of bursting. The roof rained sweat upon our faces and every moment I expected to get a horse’s hoof in my face.
How I envied that fellow jammed against the truck. At last we came out into the open again, and I slid back the door, and shoved my head outside and gulped in the fresh air. Then I untied the kicker and somehow, I don’t know how, got him round into his proper position and tied him up, with a handful of hay all round to steady their nerves.
The other man was cursing blue blazes all this time, but eventually I cut the rope of the fallen horse, and after about three false starts he got on his feet again and was retied. The man was not hurt. He had been merely wedged. So we gave some more hay all round, cursed a bit more to ease ourselves and then went to the open door for air. A confused shouting from the next truck reached us. After many yells we made out thefollowing, “Pass the word forward that the train’s on fire.”
All the stories I’d ever heard of horses being burnt alive raced through my brain in a fraction of a second.
We leaned to the truck in front and yelled. No answer. The truck was shut.
“Climb on the roof,” said I, “and go forward.” The other man obeyed and disappeared into the dark.
Minutes passed, during which I looked back and saw a cloud of smoke coming out of a truck far along the train.
Then a foot dropped over from the roof and my companion climbed back.
“Better go yourself,” he said. “I carnt mike ’im understand. He threw lumps of coal at me from the perishin’ engine.”
So I climbed on to the roof of the swaying coach, got my balance and walked forward till a yard-wide jump to the next roof faced me in the darkness.
“Lord!” thought I, “if I didn’t know that other lad had been here, I shouldn’t care about it. However——” I took a strong leap and landed, slipping to my hands and knees.
There were six trucks between me and the engine and the jumps varied in width. I got there all right and screamed to the engine driver, “Incendie!—Incendie!”
He paused in the act of throwing coal at me and I screamed again. Apparently he caught it, for first peering back along all the train, he dived at a lever and the train screamed to a halt. I was mighty thankful. I hadn’t looked forward to going back the way I came and I climbed quickly down to the rails. A sort of guard with a lantern and an official appearance climbed out of a box of sorts and demanded to know what wasthe matter, and when I told him, called to me to follow and began doubling back along the track.
I followed. The train seemed about a mile long but eventually we reached a truck, full of men and a rosy glare, from which a column of smoke bellied out. The guard flashed his lantern in.
The cursed thing wasn’t on fire at all. The men were burning hay in a biscuit tin, singing merrily, just keeping themselves warm.
I thought of the agony of those jumps in the dark from roof to roof and laughed. But I got my own back. They couldn’t see us in the dark, so in short snappy sentences I ordered them to put the fire out immediately. And they thought I was an officer and did so.
The rest of the night passed in an endeavour to get to sleep in a sitting position on the bale of hay. From time to time one dozed off, but it was too cold, and the infernal horses would keep on pawing.
Never was a night so long and it wasn’t till eight o’clock in the morning that we ran into Hazebrouck and stopped. By this time we were so hungry that food was imperative. On the station was a great pile of rifles and bandoliers and equipment generally, all dirty and rusty, and in a corner some infantry were doing something round a fire.
“Got any tea, chum?” said I.
He nodded a Balaklava helmet.
We were on him in two leaps with extended dixies. It saved our lives, that tea. We were chilled to the bone and had only bully beef and biscuits, of course, butI felt renewed courage surge through me with every mouthful.
“What’s all that stuff?” I asked, pointing to the heap of equipments.
“Dead men’s weapons,” said he, lighting a “gasper.” Somehow it didn’t sound real. One couldn’t picture all the men to whom that had belonged dead. Nor did it give one anything of a shock. One just accepted it as a fact without thinking, “I wonder whethermyrifle and sword will ever join that heap?” The idea of my beingkilledwas absurd, fantastic. Any of these others, yes, but somehow not myself. Never at any time have I felt anything but extreme confidence in the fact—yes, fact—that I should come through, in all probability, unwounded. I thought about it often but always with the certainty that nothing would happen to me.
I decided thatifI were killed I should be most frightfully angry! There were so many things to be done with life, so much beauty to be found, so many ambitions to be realized, that it was impossible that I should be killed. All this dirt and discomfort was just a necessary phase to the greater appreciation of everything.
I can’t explain it. Perhaps there isn’t any explanation. But never at any time have I seen the shell or bullet with my name on it,—as the saying goes. And yet somehow that pile of broken gear filled one with a sense of the pity of it all, the utter folly of civilization which had got itself into such an unutterable mess that blood-letting was the only way out.—I proceeded to strip to the waist and shave out of a horse-bucket of cold water.
There was a cold drizzle falling when at last we had watered the horses, fed and saddled them up, and were ready to mount. It increased to a steady downpouras we rode away in half sections and turned into a muddy road lined with the eternal poplar. In the middle of the day we halted, numbed through, on the side of a road, and watered the horses again, and snatched a mouthful of biscuit and bully and struggled to fill a pipe with icy fingers. Then on again into the increasing murk of a raw afternoon.
Thousands of motor lorries passed like an endless chain. Men muffled in greatcoats emerged from farm-houses and faintly far came the sound of guns.
The word went round that we were going up into the trenches that night. Heaven knows who started it but I found it a source of spiritual exaltation that helped to conquer the discomfort of that ride. Every time a trickle ran down one’s neck one thought, “It doesn’t matter. This is the real thing. We are going up to-night,” and visualised a Hun over the sights of one’s rifle.
Presently the flames of fires lit up the murk and shadowy forms moved round them which took no notice of us as we rode by.
At last in pitch darkness we halted at a road crossing and splashed into a farmyard that was nearly belly-deep in mud. Voices came through the gloom, and after some indecision and cursing we off-saddled in a stable lit by a hurricane lamp, hand-rubbed the horses, blanketed them and left them comfortable for the night.
We were given hot tea and bread and cheese and shepherded into an enormous barn piled high with hay. Here and there twinkled candles in biscuit tins and everywhere were men sitting and lying on the hay, the vague whiteness of their faces just showing. It looked extremely comfortable.
But when we joined them—the trench rumour was untrue—we found that the hay was so wet that a lightedmatch thrown on it fizzled and went out. The rain came through innumerable holes in the roof and the wind made the candles burn all one-sided. However, it was soft to lie on, and when my “chum” and I had got on two pairs of dry socks each and had snuggled down together with two blankets over our tunics and greatcoats, and mufflers round our necks, and Balaklava helmets over our heads we found we could sleep warm till reveille.
The sock question was difficult. One took off soaking boots and puttees at night and had to put them on again still soaking in the morning. The result was that by day our feet were always ice-cold and never dry. We never took anything else off except to wash, or to groom horses.
The next morning I had my first lesson in real soldiering. The results were curious.
The squadron was to parade in drill order at 9 a.m. We had groomed diligently in the chilly dawn. None of the horses had been clipped, so it consisted in getting the mud off rather than really grooming, and I was glad to see that my horse had stood the train journey and the previous day’s ride without any damage save a slight rubbing of his tail. At about twenty minutes to nine, shaved and washed, I went to the stables to saddle up for the parade. Most of the others in that stable were nearly ready by the time I got there and to my dismay I found that they had used all my gear. There was nothing but the horse and the blanket left,—no saddle, no head collar and bit, no rifle, no sword, no lance. Everything had disappeared. I dashed round and tried to lay hands on some one else’s property. They were too smart and eventually they all turned out leaving me. The only saddle in the place hadn’t been cleaned for months and I should have been ashamed to ride it.Then the sergeant appeared, a great, red-faced, bad-tempered-looking man.
I decided on getting the first blow in. So I went up and told him that all my things had been “pinched.” Could he tell me where I could find some more?
His reply would have blistered the paint off a door. His adjectives concerning me made me want to hit him. But one cannot hit one’s superior officer in the army—more’s the pity—on occasions like that. So we had a verbal battle. I told him that if he didn’t find me everything down to lance buckets I shouldn’t appear on parade and that if he chose to put me under arrest, so much the better, as the Major would then find out how damned badly the sergeant ran his troop.
It was a good bluff. Bit by bit he hunted up a head collar, a saddle, sword, lance, etc. Needless to say they were all filthy and I wished all the bullets in Germany on the dirty dog who had pinched my clean stuff. However, I was on parade just half a minute before the Major came round to inspect us. He stopped at me, his eye taking in the rusty bit and stirrup irons, the coagulations on the bridle, the general damnableness of it all. It wasn’t nice.
“Did you come in last night?” The voice was hard.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you come up from the base with your appointments in that state?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
The sergeant was looking apoplectic behind him.
“These aren’t my things, sir,” said I.
“Whose are they?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Where are your things?”
“They were in the stables at reveille, sir, but they’d all gone when I went to saddle up. The horse is the only thing I brought with me, sir.”
The whole troop was sitting at attention, listening, and I hoped that the man who had stolen everything heard this dialogue and was quaking in his wet boots.
The Major turned. “What does this mean, Sergeant?”
There was a vindictive look in the sergeant’s eye as he spluttered out an unconvincing reply that “these new fellows wanted nursemaids and weren’t ’alf nippy enough in lookin’ arter ’emselves.”
The Major considered it for a moment, told me that I must get everything clean for the next parade and passed on.
At least I was not under arrest, but it wasn’t good enough on the first morning to earn the Major’s scorn through no fault of my own. I wanted some one’s blood.
Each troop leader, a subaltern, was given written orders by the Major and left to carry them out. Our own troop leader didn’t seem to understand his orders and by the time the other three troops had ridden away he was still reading his paper. The Major returned and explained, asked him if all was clear, and getting yes for an answer, rode off.
The subaltern then asked the sergeant if he had a map!
What was even more curious, the sergeant said yes. The subaltern said we had to get to a place called Flêtre within three quarters of an hour and they proceeded to try and find it on the sergeant’s map without any success for perhaps five minutes.
During that time the troopers around me made remarks in undertones, most ribald remarks. We had come through Flêtre the previous day and I remembered theroad. So I turned to a lance-corporal on my right and said, “Look here, I know the way. Shall I tell him?”
“Yes, tell him for Christ’s sake!” said the lance-corporal. “It’s too perishin’ cold to go on sitting ’ere.”
So I took a deep breath and all my courage in both hands and spoke. “I beg your pardon, sir,” said I. “I know Flêtre.”
The subaltern turned round on his horse. “Who knows the place?” he said.
“I do, sir,” and I told him how to get there.
Without further comment he gave the word to advance in half sections and we left the parade ground, but instead of turning to the left as I had said, he led us straight on at a good sharp trot.
More than half an hour later, when we should have been at the pin point in Flêtre, the subaltern halted us at a crossroads in open country and again had a map consultation with the sergeant. Again it was apparently impossible to locate either the crossroads or the rendezvous.
But in the road were two peasants coming towards us. He waited till they came up and then asked them the way in bad German. They looked at him blankly, so he repeated his question in worse French. His pronunciation of Flêtre puzzled them but at last one of them guessed it and began a stream of explanations and pointings.
“What the hell are they talking about?” said the subaltern to the sergeant.
The lance-corporal nudged me. “Didyouunderstand?”
“Yes,” said I.
“Tell him again,” he said. “Go on.”
So again I begged his pardon and explained what the peasants had told him. He looked at me for amoment oddly. I admit that it wasn’t usual for a private to address his officer on parade without being first spoken to. But this was war, the world war, and the old order changeth. Anyhow I was told to ride in front of the troop as guide and did and brought the troop to the rendezvous about twenty minutes late.
The Major was not pleased.
Later in the day the subaltern came around the stables and, seeing me, stopped and said, “Oh—er—you!”
I came to attention behind the horse.
“What’s your name?” said he.
I told him.
“Do you talk French?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where were you educated?”
“France and Oxford University, sir.”
“Oh!” slightly surprised. “Er—all right, get on with your work”—and whether it was he or the sergeant I don’t know, but I had four horses to groom that morning instead of two.
From that moment I decided to cut out being intelligent and remain what the French call a “simple” soldier.
By a strange coincidence there was a nephew of that subaltern in the Brigade of Gunners to which I was posted when I received a commission. It is curious how accurately nephews sum up uncles.
When we did not go out on drill orders like that we began the day with what is called rough exercise. It was. In the foggy dawn, swathed in scarfs and Balaklava helmets, one folded one’s blanket on the horse, bitted him, mounted, took another horse on either side,and in a long column followed an invisible lance-corporal across ploughed fields, over ditches, and along roads at a good stiff trot that jarred one’s spine. It was generally raining and always so cold that one never had the use of either hands or feet. The result was that if one of the unbitted led horses became frolicsome it was even money that he would pull the rope out of one’s hands and canter off blithely down the road,—for which one was cursed bitterly by the sergeant on one’s return. The rest of the day was divided between stables and fatigues in that eternal heart-breaking mud. One laid brick paths and brushwood paths and within twenty-four hours they had disappeared under mud. It was shovelled away in sacks and wheelbarrows, and it oozed up again as if by magic. One made herring-bone drains and they merged in the mud. There seemed to be no method of competing with it. In the stables the horses stood in it knee-deep. As soon as one had finished grooming, the brute seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in lying down in it. It became a nightmare.
The sergeant didn’t go out of his way to make things easier for any of us and confided most of the dirtier, muddier jobs to me. There seemed to be always something unpleasant that required “intelligence,” so he said, and in the words of the army I “clicked.” The result was that I was happiest when I was on guard, a twenty-four-hour duty which kept me more or less out of the mud and entirely out of his way.
The first time I went on I was told by the N.C.O. in charge that no one was to come through the hedge that bounded the farm and the road after lights out, and if any one attempted to do so I was to shoot on sight. So I marched up and down my short beat in the small hours between two and four, listening to the far-off muttering of guns and watching the Verey lights likea miniature firework display, praying that some spy would try and enter the gap in the hedge. My finger was never very far from the trigger, and my beat was never more than two yards from the hedge. I didn’t realize then that we were so far from the line that the chances of a strolling Hun were absurd. Looking back on it I am inclined to wonder whether the N.C.O. didn’t tell me to shoot on sight because he knew that the sergeant’s billet was down that road and the hedge was a short cut. The sergeant wasn’t very popular.
There was anestaminetacross the road from the farm, and the officers had arranged for us to have the use of the big room. It was a godsend, thatestaminet, with its huge stove nearly red-hot, its bowls of coffee and the single glass of raw cognac which they were allowed to sell us. The evenings were the only time one was ever warm, and although there was nothing to read except some old and torn magazines we sat there in the fetid atmosphere just to keep warm.
The patron talked vile French but was a kindly soul, and his small boy, Gaston, aged about seven, became a great friend of mine. He used to bring me my coffee, his tiny, dirty hands only just big enough to hold the bowl, and then stand and talk while I drank it, calling me “thou.”
“T’es pas anglais, dis?”
And I laughed and said I was French.
“Alors comment qu’ t’es avec eux, dis?”
And when one evening he came across and looked over my shoulder as I was writing a letter, he said, “Qué que t’écris, dis?”
I told him I was writing in English.
He stared at me and then called out shrilly, “Papa. V’là l’Français qu’écrit en anglais!”
He had seen the Boche, had little Gaston, and toldme how one day the Uhlans had cleaned theestaminetout of everything,—wine, cognac, bread, blankets, sheets—les sales Boches!
As the days dragged muddily through it was borne in on me that this wasn’t fighting for King and Country. It was just Tidworth over again with none of its advantages and with all its discomforts increased a thousand-fold. Furthermore the post-office seemed to have lost me utterly, and weeks went by before I had any letters at all. It was heart-breaking to see the mail distributed daily and go away empty-handed. It was as though no one cared, as though one were completely forgotten, as though in stepping into this new life one had renounced one’s identity. Indeed, every day it became more evident that it was not I who was in that mud patch. It was some one else on whom the real me looked down in infinite amazement. I heard myself laugh in the farm at night and join in choruses; saw myself dirty and unbathed, with a scarf around my stomach and another round my feet, and a woollen helmet over my head; standing in the mud stripped to the waist shaving without a looking-glass; drinking coffee and cognac in thatestaminet.—Was it I who sometimes prayed for sleep that I might shut it all out and slip into the land of dreams, where there is no war and no mud? Was it I who when the first letters arrived from home went out into the rainy night with a candle-end to be alone with those I loved? And was it only the rain which made it so difficult to read them?
The culminating point was reached when I became ill.
Feeling sick, I couldn’t eat any breakfast and dragged myself on parade like a mangy cat. I stuck it till about three in the afternoon, when the horse which I was grooming receded from me and the whole world rocked. I remember hanging on to the horse till things got a bit steadier, and then asked the sergeant if I might go off parade. I suppose I must have looked pretty ill because he said yes at once.
For three days I lay wrapped up on the straw in the barn, eating nothing; and only crawling out to see the doctor each morning at nine o’clock. Of other symptoms I will say nothing. The whole affair was appalling, but I recovered sufficient interest in life on the fourth morning to parade sick, although I felt vastly more fit. Indeed, the argument formed itself, “since I am a soldier I’ll play the ‘old soldier’ and see how long I can be excused duty.” And I did it so well that for three more days I was to all intents and purposes a free man. On one of the days I fell in with a corporal of another squadron, and he and I got a couple of horses and rode into Bailleul, which was only about three miles south of us, and we bought chocolates, and candles and books, and exchanged salutes with the Prince of Wales, who was walking in the town. Then we came back with our supplies after an excellent lunch at the hotel in the square, the “Faucon,” and had tea with the officers’ servants in a cosy little billet with a fire and beds. The remarks they made about their officers were most instructive, and they referred to them either as “my bloke” or “’is lordship.”
And there it was I met again a man I had spoken to once at Tidworth, who knew French and was now squadron interpreter. He was a charming man of considerable means, with a large business, who had joined up immediately on the outbreak of war. But being squadron interpreter he messed with the officers, had a billet in a cottage, slept on a bed, had a private hip bath and hot water, and was in heaven, comparatively. He suggested to me that as my squadron lacked an interpreter (he was doing the extra work) and I knew French it was up to me.
“But how the devil’s it to be done?” said I, alight with the idea.
“Why don’t you go and see the Colonel?” he suggested.
I gasped. The Colonel was nearly God.
He laughed. “This is ‘Kitchener’s Army,’” he said, “not the regular Army. Things are a bit different.” They were indeed!
So I slept on the idea and every moment it seemed to me better and better, until the following evening after tea, instead of going to theestaminet, I went down to squadron headquarters. For about five minutes I walked up and down in the mud, plucking up courage. I would rather have faced a Hun any day.
At last I went into the farmyard and knocked at the door. There were lights in the crack of the window shutters.
A servant answered the door.
“Is the Colonel in?” said I boldly.
He peered at me. “What the perishin’ ’ell doyouwant to know for?”
“I want to see him,” said I.
“And what the ’ell doyouwant to see him for?”
I was annoyed. It seemed quite likely that this confounded servant would do the St. Peter act and refuse me entrance into the gates.
“Look here,” I said, “it doesn’t matter to you what for or why. You’re here to answer questions. Is the Colonelin?”
The man snorted. “Oh! I’m ’ere to answer questions, am I? Well, if you want to know, the Colonel ain’t in.—Anything else?”
I was stumped. It seemed as if my hopes were shattered. But luck was mine—as ever. A voice came from the inner room. “Thomson! Who is that man?”
The servant made a face at me and went to the room door.
“A trooper, sir, from one of the squadrons, askin’ to see the Colonel.”
“Bring him in,” said the voice.
My heart leapt.
The servant returned to me and showed me into the room.
I saw three officers, one in shirt sleeves, all sitting around a fire. Empty tea things were still on a table. There were a sofa, and armchairs and bright pictures, a pile of books and magazines on a table, and a smell of Egyptian cigarettes. They all looked at me as I saluted.
“Thomson tells me you want to see the Colonel,” said the one whose voice I had heard, the one in shirt sleeves. “Anything I can do?”
It was good to hear one’s own language again, and I decided to make a clean breast of it.
“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said I. “Perhaps you can. I came to ask for the interpretership of my squadron. We haven’t got one and I can talk French.If you could put in a word for me I should be lastingly grateful.”
His next words made him my brother for life. “Sit down, won’t you,” he said, “and have a cigarette.”
Can you realize what it meant after those weeks of misery, with no letters and the eternal adjective of the ranks which gets on one’s nerves till one could scream, to be asked to sit down and have a cigarette in that officers’ mess?
Speechless, I took one, although I dislike cigarettes and always stick to a pipe. But that one was a link with all that I’d left behind, and was the best I’ve ever smoked in my life. He proceeded to ask me my name and where I was educated, and said he would see what he could do for me, and after about ten minutes I went out again into the mud a better soldier than I went in. That touch of fellow feeling helped enormously. And he was as good as his word. For the following morning the Major sent for me.
The rain had stopped and there had been a hard frost in the night which turned the roads to ice. The horses were being walked round and round in a circle, and the Major was standing watching them when I came up and saluted.
“Yes, what is it?” he said.
“You sent for me, sir.”
“Oh—you’re Gibbs, are you?—Yes, let’s go in out of this wind.” He led the way into the mess and stood with his back to the fire.
Every detail of that room lives with me yet. One went up two steps into the room. The fireplace facedthe door with a window to the right of the fireplace. There was a table between us with newspapers on it, and tobacco and pipes. And two armchairs faced the fire.
He asked me what I wanted the interpretership for. I told him I was sick of the ranks, that I had chucked a fascinating job to be of use to my King and country, and that any fool trooper could shovel mud as I did day after day.
He nodded. “But interpreting is no damned good, you know,” he said. “It only consists in looking after the forage and going shopping with those officers who can’t talk French.—That isn’t what you want, is it?”
“No, sir,” said I.
“Well, what other job would you like?”
That floored me completely. I didn’t know what jobs there were in the squadron and told him so.
“Well, come and have dinner to-night and we’ll talk about it,” said he.
Have dinner! My clothes reeked of stables, and I had slept in them ever since I arrived.
“That doesn’t matter,” said the Major. “You come along to-night at half-past seven. You’ve been sick all this week. How are you? Pretty fit again?”
He’s Brigadier-General now and has forgotten all about it years ago. I don’t think I ever shall.
There were the Major, the Captain and one subaltern at dinner that night—an extraordinary dinner—the servant who a moment previously had called me “chum” in the kitchen gradually getting used to waiting on me at the meal, and I, in the same dress as the servant, gradually feeling less like a fish out of water as the officers treated me as one of themselves. It was the first time I’d eaten at a table covered with a white tablecloth for over two months, the first time I had used aplate or drunk out of a glass, the first time I had been with my own kind.—It was very good.
The outcome of the dinner was that I was to become squadron scout, have two horses, keep them at the cottage of the interpreter, where I was to live, and ride over the country gathering information, which I was to bring as a written report every night at six o’clock. While the squadron was behind the lines it was, of course, only a matter of training myself before other men were given me to train. But when we went into action,—vistas opened out before me of dodging Uhlan patrols and galloping back with information through a rain of bullets. It was a job worth while and I was speechless with gratitude.
It was not later than seven o’clock the following morning, Christmas Eve, 1914, that I began operations. I breakfasted at the cottage to which I had removed my belongings overnight, and went along towards the stables to get a horse.
The man with whom I had been mucking in met me outside the farm. He was in the know and grinned, cheerily.
“The sergeant’s lookin’ for you,” he said. “He’s over in the stables.”
I went across. He was prowling about near the forage.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” said I.
He looked at me and stopped prowling. “Where the——” and he asked me in trooperese where I had been and why I wasn’t at early morning stables. I told him I was on a special job for the Major.
He gasped and requested an explanation.
“I’m knocked off all rolls, and parades and fatigues,” I said. “You’ve got to find me a second horse. They are both going to be kept down the road, and I shallcome and see you from time to time when I require forage.”
He was speechless for the first and only time. It passed his comprehension.
At that moment the sergeant-major came in and proceeded to tell him almost word for word what I had told him. It was a great morning, a poetic revenge, and eventually I rode away leading the other horse, the sergeant’s pop eyes following me as I gave him final instructions as to where to send the forage.
Later, as I started out on my first expedition as squadron scout, he waved an arm at me and came running. His whole manner had changed, and he said in a voice of honey, “If youshould’appen to pass through Ballool would you mind gettin’ me a new pipe?—’Ere’s five francs.”
I got him a pipe, and in Bailleul sought out every likely looking English signaller or French officer, and dropped questions, and eventually at 6 p.m., having been the round of Dramoutre, Westoutre, and Locre, took in a rather meagre first report to the Major. How I regretted that I had never been a newspaper reporter! However, it was a beginning.
The following morning was Christmas Day, cold and foggy, and before starting out I went about a mile down the road to another farm and heard Mass in a barn. An odd little service for Christmas morning. The altar was made of a couple of biscuit boxes in an open barn. The priest wore his vestments, and his boots and spurs showed underneath. About half a dozen troopers with rifles were all the congregation, and we kneeled on the damp ground.
The first Christmas at Bethlehem came to mind most forcibly. The setting was the same. An icy wind blew the wisps of straw and the lowing of a cow couldbe heard in the byre. Where the Magi brought frankincense and myrrh we brought our hopes and ambitions and laid them at the Child’s feet, asking Him to take care of them for us while we went out to meet the great adventure. What a contrast to the previous Christmas, in the gold and sunshine of Miami, Florida, splashed with the scarlet flowers of the bougainvillea, and at night the soft, feathery palms leaning at a curious angle in the hard moonlight as though a tornado had once swept over the land.
The farm people sold me a bowl of coffee and a slice of bread, and I mounted and rode away into the fog with an apple and a piece of chocolate in my pocket, the horse slipping and sliding on the icy road. Not a sound broke the dead silence except the blowing of my horse and his hoofs on the road. Every gun was silent during the whole day, as though the Child had really brought peace and good will.
I got to within a couple of miles of Ypres by the map, and saw nothing save a few peasants who emerged out of the blanket of fog on their way to Mass. A magpie or two flashed across my way, and there was only an occasional infantryman muffled to the eyes when I passed through the scattered villages.
About midday I nibbled some chocolate, and watered my horse and gave him a feed, feeling more and more miserable because there was no means of getting any information. My imagination drew pictures of the Major, on my return with a blank confession of failure, telling me that I was no good and had better return to duty. As the short afternoon drew in, my spirits sank lower and lower. They were below zero when at last I knocked reluctantly at the door of the mess and stood to attention inside. To make things worse all the officers were there.
“Well, Gibbs?” said the Major.
“It isn’t well, sir,” said I. “I’m afraid I’m no damn good. I haven’t got a thing to report,” and I told him of my ride.
There was silence for a moment. The Major flicked off the ash of his cigarette. “My dear fellow,” he said quietly, “you can’t expect to get the hang of the job in five minutes. Don’t be impatient with it. Give it a chance.”
It was like a reprieve to a man awaiting the hangman.
The squadron, having been on duty that day, had not celebrated Christmas, but theestaminetwas a mass of holly and mistletoe in preparation for to-morrow, and talk ran high on the question of the dinner and concert that were to take place. There were no letters for me, but in spite of it I felt most unaccountably and absurdly happy as I left theestaminetand went back to my billet and got to bed.
The interpreter came in presently. He had been dining well and Christmas exuded from him as he smoked a cigar on the side of his bed.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “your commission has come through. They were talking about it in mess to-night. Congratulations.”
Commission! My heart jumped back to the Marlborough Hotel.
“I expect you’ll be going home to-morrow,” he went on; “lucky devil.”
Home! Could it be? Was it possible that I was going to escape from all this mud and filth? Home. What a Christmas present! No more waiting for lettersthat never came. No more of the utter loneliness and indifference that seemed to fill one’s days and nights.
The dingy farm room and the rough army blanket faded and in their place came a woman’s face in a setting of tall red pines and gleaming patches of moss and high bracken and a green lawn running up to a little house of gables, with chintz-curtained windows, warm tiles and red chimneys, and a shining river twisting in stately loops. And instead of the guns which were thundering the more fiercely after their lull, there came the mewing of sandpipers, and the gurgle of children’s laughter, and the voice of that one woman who had given me the vision.—
The journey home was a foretaste of the return to civilisation, of stepping not only out of one’s trooper’s khaki but of resuming one’s identity, of counting in the scheme of things. In the ranks one was a number, like a convict,—a cipher indeed, and as such it was a struggle to keep one’s soul alive. One had given one’s body. They wanted one’s soul as well. By “they” I mean the system, that extraordinary self-contained world which is the Army, where the private is marched to church whether he have a religion or not, where he is forced to think as the sergeant thinks and so on, right up to the General commanding. How few officers realise that it is in their power to make the lives of their juniors and men a hell or a heaven.
It was a merciful thing for me that I was able to escape so soon, to climb out of that mental and physical morass and get back to myself.
From the squadron I went by motor lorry to Hazebrouck and thence in a first-class carriage to Boulogne,and although the carriage was crowded I thought of the horse truck in which I’d come up from Rouen, and chuckled. At Boulogne I was able to help the Major, who was going on leave. He had left a shirt case in the French luggage office weeks before and by tackling the porter in his own tongue, I succeeded in digging it out in five minutes. It was the only thing I’ve ever been able to do to express the least gratitude,—and how ridiculously inadequate.
We spent the night in a hotel and caught the early boat, horribly early. But it was worth it. We reached London about two in the afternoon, a rainy, foggy, depressing afternoon, but if it had snowed ink I shouldn’t have minded. I was above mere weather, sailing in the blue ether of radiant happiness. In this case the realisation came up to and even exceeded the expectation. Miserable-looking policemen in black waterproof capes were things of beauty. The noise of the traffic was sweetest music. The sight of dreary streets with soaked pedestrians made one’s eyes brim with joy. The swish of the taxi round abrupt corners made me burst with song. I was glad of the rain and the sort of half-fog. It was so typically London and when the taxi driver stopped at my brother’s house and said to me as I got out, “Just back from the front, chum?” I laughed madly and scandalously overtipped him. No one else would ever call me chum. That was done with. I was no longer 7205 Trooper A. H. Gibbs, 9th Lancers. I was Second Lieutenant A. Hamilton Gibbs, R.F.A. and could feel the stars sprouting.
My brother wasn’t at home. He was looking like an admiral still and working like the devil. But his wife was and she most wisely lent me distant finger tips and hurried me to a bath, what time she telephoned to my brother.
That bath! I hadn’t had all my clothes off more than once in six weeks and had slept in them every night. Ever tried it? Well, if you really want to know just how I felt about that first bath, you try it.
I stayed in it so long that my sister-in-law became anxious and tapped at the door to know if I were all right. All right! Before I was properly dressed—but running about the house most shamelessly for all that—my brother arrived.
It was good to see him again,—very good. We “foregathered,”—what?
And the next morning scandalously early, the breakfast things still on the table, found me face to face once more with the woman who had brought me back to life. All that nightmare was immediately washed away for ever. It was past. The future was too vague for imaginings but the present was the most golden thing I had ever known.