England had changed in the eighteen months since we put out so joyously from Avonmouth. Munition factories were in full blast, food restrictions in force, women in all kinds of uniforms, London in utter darkness at night, the country dotted with hutted training camps. Everything was quiet. We had taken a nasty knock or two and washed some of our dirty linen in public, not too clean at that. My own lucky star was in the ascendant. The voyage completely cured me, and within a week I was given a month’s sick leave by the Medical Board,—a month of heaven more nearly describes it, for I passed my days in a state of bliss which nothing could mar, except perhaps the realisation,towards the end, of the fact that I had to go back and settle into the collar again.
My mental attitude towards the war had changed. Whatever romance and glamour there may have been had worn off. It was just one long bitter waste of time,—our youth killed like flies by “dug-outs,” at the front, so that old men and sick might carry on the race, while profiteers drew bloated profits and politicians exuded noxious gas in the House. Not a comforting point of view to take back into harness. I was told on good authority that to go out to France in a field battery was a certain way of finding death. They were being flung away in the open to take another thousand yards of trench, so as to make a headline in the daily papers which would stir the drooping spirits of the old, the sick, and the profiteer over their breakfast egg. Theembusquéwas enjoying those headlines too. The combing-out process had not yet begun. The young men who had never been out of England were Majors and Colonels in training camps. It was the officers who returned to duty from hospital, more or less cured of wounds or sickness, who were the first to be sent out again. The others knew a thing or two.
That was how it struck me when I was posted to a reserve brigade just outside London.
Not having the least desire to be “flung away in the open,” I did my best to get transferred to a 6-inch battery. The Colonel of the reserve brigade did his best, but it was queered at once, without argument or appeal, by the nearest Brass Hat, in the following manner. The Colonel having signed and recommended the formal application, spoke to the General personally on my behalf.
“What sort of a fellow is he?” asked the General.
“Seems a pretty useful man,” said the Colonel.
“Then we’ll keep him,” said the General.
“The pity of it is,” said the Colonel to me later, “that if I’d said you were a hopeless damned fool, he would have signed it.”
On many subsequent occasions the Colonel flung precisely that expression at me so he might just as well have said it then.
However, as it seemed that I was destined for a short life, I determined to make it as merry as possible, and in the company of a kindred spirit, who was posted from hospital a couple of days after I was, and who is now a Bimbashi in the Soudan, I went up to town about three nights a week, danced and did a course of theatres. By day there was no work to do as the brigade already had far too many officers, none of whom had been out. The battery to which we were both posted was composed ofcategory C1 men,—flat-footed unfortunates, unfit to fight on medical grounds, not even strong enough to groom horses properly.
A futile existence in paths of unintelligence and unendeavour worshipping perforce at the altar of destruction, creating nothing, a slave to dishonesty and jobbery,—a waste of life that made one mad with rage in that everything beautiful in the world was snapped in half and flung away because the social fabric which we ourselves had made through the centuries, had at last become rotten to the core and broken into flaming slaughter, and was being fanned by yellow press hypocrisy. Every ideal cried out against it. The sins of the fathers upon the wilfully blind children. The Kaiser was only the most pitch-covered torch chosen by Nemesis to set the bonfire of civilisation ablaze. But for one branch in the family tree he would have been England’s monarch, and then——?
There have been moments when I have regretted not having sailed to New York in August, 1914,—bitter moments when all the dishonesty has beaten upon one’s brain, and one has envied the pluck of the honest conscientious objector who has stood out against the ridicule of the civilised world.
The only thought that kept me going was “suppose the Huns had landed in England and I had not been fighting?” It was unanswerable,—as I thought then.
Now I wish that the Hun had landed in England in force and laid waste the East coast, as he has devastated Belgium and the north of France. There would have been English refugees with perambulators and babies, profiteers crying “Kamerad!” politicians fleeing the House. There would have been some hope of England’s understanding. But she doesn’t even now. There were in 1918, before the armistice, men—MEN!—who, becausetheir valets failed to put their cuff links in their shirts one morning, were sarcastic to their war-working wives, and talked of the sacrifices they had made for their country.
Howdaredthey have valets, while we were lousy and unshaved, with rotting corpses round our gun wheels? Howdaredthey have wives, while we “unmarried and without ties” were either driven in our weakness to licensed women, or clung to our chastity because of the one woman with us every hour in our hearts, whom we meant to marry if ever we came whole out of that hell?
Christmas came. They would not let me go down to that little house among the pines and beeches, which has ever been “home” to me. But the day was spent quietly in London with my best pal. Seven days later I was on my way to Ireland as one of the advance representatives of the Division. The destination of my brigade was Limerick, that place of pigs, and smells, and pretty girls and schoolboy rebels, who chalked on every barrack wall, “Long live the Kaiser! Down with the King!” Have you ever been driven to the depths of despair, seen your work go to pieces before your eyes, and spent the dreadful days in dishonest idleness on the barrack square, hating it all the while, but unable to move hand or foot to get out of the mental morass? That is what grew up in Limerick. Even now my mind shivers in agony at the thought of it.
Reinforcements had poured into the battery of cripples, and the order came that from it a fighting battery should be formed. As senior subaltern, who had been promised a captaincy, I was given charge of them. The only other officer with me was the loyalest pal a man ever had. He had been promoted on the field for gallantry, havingserved ten years in the ranks as trumpeter, gunner, corporal and sergeant. Needless to say, he knew the game backwards, and was the possessor of amazing energy and efficiency. He really ought to have had the command, for my gunnery was almost nil, but I had one pip more than he, and so the system put him under my orders. So we paraded the first men, and told them off into sections and were given a horse or two, gradually building up a battery as more reinforcements arrived.
How we worked! The enthusiasm of a first command! For a fortnight we never left the barracks,—drilling, marching, clothing and feeding the fighting unit of which we hoped such great things. All our hearts and souls were in it, and the men themselves were keen and worked cheerily and well. One shook off depressing philosophies and got down to the solid reality of two hundred men. The early enthusiasm returned, and Pip Don—as my pal was called—and I were out for glory and killing Huns.
The Colonel looked us over and was pleased. Life wasn’t too bad, after all.
And then the blight set in. An officer was posted to the command of the little fighting unit.
In a week all the fight had gone out of it. In another week Pip Don and I declared ourselves beaten. All our interest was killed. The sergeant-major, for whom I have a lasting respect, was like Bruce’s spider. Every time he fell, he at once started reclimbing. He alone was responsible for whatever discipline remained. The captaincy which I had been promised on certain conditions was filled by some one else the very day I carried out the conditions. It didn’t matter. Everything was so hopeless that the only thing left was to get out,—and that was the one thing we couldn’t do, because we were more or less under orders for France. It reached such a pitch that even the thought of being flung away in theopen was welcome. At least it would end it all. There was no secret about it. The Colonel knew. Didn’t he come to my room one night, and say, “Look here, Gibbs, what is the matter with your battery?” And didn’t we have another try, and another?
So for a time Pip Don and I smoked cigarettes on the barrack square, strolling listlessly from parade to parade, cursing the fate that should have brought us to such dishonour. We went to every dance in Limerick, organised concerts, patronised the theatre and filled our lives as much as we could with outside interests until such time as we should go to France. And then.—It would be different when shells began to burst!
In the ranks I first discovered that it was a struggle to keep one’s soul alive. That struggle had proved far more difficult as an officer in the later days of Salonica. The bitterness of Limerick, together with the reason, as I saw it, of the wholesale slaughter, made one’s whole firmament tremble. Rough hands seemed to tear down one’s ideals and fling then in the mud. One’s picture of God and religion faded under the red light of war. One’s brain flickered in the turmoil, seeking something to cling to. What was there? Truth? There was none. Duty? It was a farce. Honour? It was dead. There was only one thing left, one thing which might give them all back again,—Love.
If there was not that in one’s heart to keep fragrant, to cherish, to run to for help, to look forward to as the sunshine at the end of a long and awful tunnel, then one’s soul would have perished and a bullet been a merciful thing.
I was all unconscious that it had been my salvation in the ranks, in Salonica. Now, on the eve of going out to the Western Front I recognized it for the first time to the full. The effect of it was odd,—a passionate longing to tear off one’s khaki and leave all this uncleanness, and at the same time the certain knowledge that one must go on to the very end, otherwise one would lose it. If I had been offered a war job in New York, how could I have taken it, unwounded, the game unfinished, much as New York called me? So its third effect was a fierce impatience to get to France, making at least one more battery to help to end the war.
The days dragged by, the longer from the new knowledge within me. From time to time the Sinn Fein gave signs of renewed activity, and either we were all confined to barracks in consequence, presumably to avoid street fighting, or else we hooked into the guns and did route marches through and round about the town. From time to time arrests were made, but no open conflict recurred. Apart from our own presence there was no sign of war in Ireland. Food of all kinds was plentiful and cheap, restrictions nil. The streets were well lit at night. Gaiety was the keynote. No aeroplanes dropped bombs on that brilliant target. The Hun and pro-Hun had spent too much money there.
Finally our training was considered complete. The Colonel had laboured personally with all the subalterns, and we had benefited by his caustic method of imparting knowledge. And so once more we sat stiffly to attention while Generals rode round us, metaphorically poking our ribs to see if we were fat enough for the slaughter. Apparently we were, for the fighting units said good-bye to their parent batteries—how gladly!—and shipped across to England to do our firing practice.
The camp was at Heytesbury, on the other side of the vast plain which I had learnt so well as a trooper. We were a curious medley, several brigades being represented, each battery a little distrustful of the next, a little inclined to turn up its nose. Instead of being “AC,” “Beer,” “C” and “Don,” as before, we were given consecutive numbers, well into the hundreds, and after a week or so of dislocation were formed into brigades, and each put under the command of a Colonel. Then the stiffness wore off in friendly competition of trying to pick the best horses from the remounts. Our men challenged each other to football, sergeant-majors exchanged notes. Subalterns swapped lies about the war and Battery Commanders stood each other drinks in the mess. Within a fortnight we were all certain we’d got the best Colonel in England, and congratulated ourselves accordingly.
Meanwhile Pip Don and I were still outcasts in our own battery, up against a policy of continual distrust, suspicion, and scarcely veiled antagonism. It was at the beginning of April, 1917, that we first got to Heytesbury, and snow was thick upon the ground. Every day we had the guns out behind the stables and jumped the men about at quick, short series, getting them smart and handy, keeping their interest and keeping them warm. When the snow disappeared we took the battery out mounted, taking turns in bringing it into action, shooting over the sights on moving targets—other batteries at work in the distance—or laying out lines for indirect targets. We took the staff out on cross-country rides, scouring the country for miles, and chasing hares—it shook them down into the saddle—carrying out little signalling schemes. In short, we had a final polish up of all the knowledge we had so eagerly begun to teach them when he and I had been in sole command. I don’tthink either of us can remember any single occasion on which the commanding officer took a parade.
Embarkation leave was in full swing, four days for all ranks, and the brigade next to us was ordered to shoot. Two range officers were appointed from our brigade. I was one. It was good fun and extremely useful. We took a party of signallers and all the rations we could lay hands on, and occupied an old red farmhouse tucked away in a fold of the plain, in the middle of all the targets. An old man and his wife lived there, a quaint old couple, toothless and irritable, well versed in the ways of the army and expert in putting in claims for fictitious damages. Our job was to observe and register each round from splinter proofs, send in a signed report of each series, stop the firing by signalling if any stray shepherd or wanderer were seen on the range, and to see that the targets for the following day’s shoot had not been blown down or in any other way rendered useless. It was a four-day affair, firing ending daily between three and four p.m. This left us ample time to canter to all the battery positions and work out ranges, angle of sight and compass bearings for every target,—information which would have been invaluable when our turn to fire arrived. Unfortunately, however, several slight alterations were intentionally made, and all our labour was wasted. Still, it was a good four days of bracing weather, with little clouds scudding across a blue sky, never quite certain whether in ten minutes’ time the whole world would be blotted out in a blizzard. The turf was springy, miles upon endless miles, and we had some most wonderful gallops and practised revolver shooting on hares and rooks, going back to a huge tea and a blazing wood fire in the old, draughty farmhouse.
The practice over, we packed up and marched backto our respective batteries. Events of a most cataclysmic nature piled themselves one upon the other,—friction between the commanding officer and myself, orders to fire on a certain day, orders to proceed overseas on a certain later day, and my dismissal from the battery, owing to the aforesaid friction, on the opening day of the firing. Pip Don was furious, the commanding officer wasn’t, and I “pursued a policy of masterly inactivity.” The outcome of the firing was not without humour, and certainly altered the whole future career of at least two of us. The Captain and the third subaltern left the battery and became “details.” The commanding officer became second in command under a new Major, who dropped out of the blue, and I was posted back to the battery, together with a new third subaltern, who had just recovered from wounds.
The business of getting ready was speeded up. The Ordnance Department, hitherto of miserly reluctance, gave us lavishly of their best. Gas masks were dished out, and every man marched into a gas chamber,—there either to get gassed or come out with the assurance that the mask had no defects! Final issues of clothing and equipment kept the Q.M.S. sweating from dawn to dusk, and the Major signed countless pay books, indents and documents generally.
Thus we were ready and eager to go and strafe the Hun in the merry month of May, 1917.
The personnel of the battery was odd but extremely interesting. Pip Don and myself knew every man, bombardier, corporal and sergeant, what he had done,tried to do, or could do. In a word we knew the battery inside out and exactly what it was worth. Not a man of them had ever been on active service, but we felt quite confident that the test of shell fire would not find them wanting. The great majority of them were Scots, and they were all as hard as nails.
The third subaltern was an unknown quantity, but all of us had been out. The Captain hadn’t.
The Major had been in every battle in France since 1914, but he didn’t know us or the battery, and if we felt supremely confident in him, it was, to say the least of it, impossible for him to return the compliment. He himself will tell you that he didn’t win the confidence of the battery until after a bold and rapidly-decided move in full light of day, which put us on the flank of a perfectly hellish bombardment. That may be true of some of the men, but as far as Pip Don and myself went, we had adopted him after the first five minutes, and never swerved,—having, incidentally, some wonderful arguments about him in the sleeping quarters at Heytesbury with the subalterns of other batteries.
It is extraordinary how the man at the head of a little show like that remains steadily in the lime-light. Everything he does, says or looks is noted, commented on and placed to either his credit or debit until the men have finally decided that he’s all right or—not. If they come to the first decision, then the Major’s life is not more of a burden to him than Divisional and Corps Staffs and the Hun can make it. The battery will do anything he asks of it, at any hour of day or night, and will go on shooting till the last man is knocked out. If, on the other hand, they decide that he is not all right, God help him. He gives orders. They are not carried out. Why? An infinite variety of super-excellent excuses. It is a sort of passive resistance, and he has got to be amighty clever man to unearth the root of it and kill it before it kills him.
We went from Southampton to Havre—it looked exactly the same as when I’d landed there three years previously—and from Havre by train to Merville. There a guide met us in the chilly dawn and we marched up to Estaires, the guide halting us at a mud patch looking like the abomination of desolation, which he said was our wagon line. It was only about seven miles from the place where I’d been in the cavalry, and just as muddy, but somehow I was glad to be back. None of those side shows at the other end of the map had meant anything. France was obviously where the issue would ultimately be decided, and, apart from the Dardanelles, where the only real fighting was, or ever had been. Let us, therefore, get on with the war with all speed. Every year had brought talk of peace before Christmas, soon dwindling into columns about preparations for another winter campaign. Even our own men just landed discussed the chances of being back in Scotland for the New Year!
We were an Army brigade,—one of a series of illegitimate children working under Corps orders and lent to Divisions who didn’t evince any friendliness when it came to leave allotments, or withdrawn from our Divisional area to be hurried to some other part of the line and flung in in heaps to stiffen the barrage in some big show. Nobody loved us. Divisions saved their own people at our expense,—it was always an Army brigade which hooked in at zero hour and advanced at zero + 15, until after the Cambrai show. Ordnance wanted to know who the hell we were and why our indents had a Divisional signature and not a Corps one, or why they hadn’t both, or neither; A.S.C. explained with a straight face how wealwaysgot the best freshmeat ration; Corps couldn’t be bothered with us, until there was a show brewing; Army were polite but incredulous.
The immortal Pyecroft recommends the purchase of a ham as a sure means of seeing life. As an alternative I suggest joining an Army brigade.
In the old days of trench warfare the Armentières front was known as the peace sector. The town itself, not more than three thousand yards from the Hun, was full of happy money-grubbing civilians who served you an excellent dinner and an equally excellent bottle of wine, or, if it was clothes you sought, directed you to Burberry’s, almost as well installed as in the Haymarket. Divisional infantry used it as a rest billet. Many cook’s carts ambled peacefully along the cobbled streets laden with eggs, vegetables and drinks for officers’ messes. Now and then a rifle was fired in the front line resulting, almost, in a Court of Enquiry. Three shells in three days was considered a good average, a trench mortar a gross impertinence.
Such was the delightful picture drawn for us by veterans who heard we were going there.
The first step was the attaching of so many officers and N.C.O.’s to a Divisional battery in the line for “instruction.” The Captain and Pip Don went up first and had a merry week. The Major and I went up next and heard the tale of their exploits. The battery to which we were attached, in command of a shell-shocked Major, was in a row of houses, in front of a smashed church on the fringe of the town, and I learntto take cover or stand still at the blast of a whistle which meant aeroplanes; saw a fighting map for the first time; an S.O.S. board in a gun pit and the explanation of retaliation targets; read the Divisional Defence Scheme through all its countless pages and remained instatu quo; went round the front-line trench and learned that a liaison officer didn’t take his pyjamas on raid nights; learned also that a trench mortar bombardment was a messy, unpleasant business; climbed rung by rung up a dark and sooty chimney, or was hauled up in a coffin-like box, to a wooden deck fitted with seats and director heads and telescopes and gazed down for the first time on No Man’s Land and the Hun trench system and as far as the eye could reach in his back areas, learning somewhat of the difficulties of flank observation. Every day of that week added depths to the conviction of my exceeding ignorance. Serbia had been nothing like this. It was elementary, child’s play. The Major too uttered strange words like calibration, meteor corrections, charge corrections. A memory of Salonica came back to me of a huge marquee in which we had all sat and listened to a gilded staff officer who had drawn diagrams on a blackboard and juggled with just such expressions while we tried hard not to go to sleep in the heat; and afterwards the Battery Commanders had argued it and decided almost unanimously that it was “all right for schools of gunnery but not a damn bit o’ use in the field.” To the Major, however, these things seemed as ordinary as whisky and pickles.
I came to the conclusion that the sooner I began to learn something the better. It wasn’t easy because young Pip Don had the hang of it all, so he and the Major checked each other’s figures while I looked on, vainly endeavouring to follow. There was never any question as to which of us ought to have had the second pip. However it worked itself out all right because, owing to the Major, he got his captaincy before I did, which was the best possible thing that could have happened, for I then became the Major’s right-hand man and felt the responsibility of it.
At the end of our week of instruction the brigade went into action, two batteries going to the right group, two to the left. The group consisted of the Divisional batteries, trench mortar batteries, the 60-pounders and heavy guns attached like ourselves. We were on the left, the position being just in front of a 4.5 howitzer battery and near the Lunatic Asylum.
It was an old one, four gun pits built up under a row of huge elms, two being in a row of houses. The men slept in bunks in the pits and houses; for a mess we cleaned out a room in the château at the corner which had been sadly knocked about, and slept in the houses near the guns. The château garden was full of lilac and roses, the beds all overgrown with weeds and the grass a jungle, but still very beautiful. Our zone had been allotted and our own private chimney O.P.—the name of which I have forgotten—and we had a copy of that marvellous defence scheme.
Then for a little we found ourselves in the routine of trench warfare,—tours of duty at the O.P. on alternate days and keeping a detailed log book in its swaying deck, taking our turn weekly to supply a liaison officer with the infantry who went up at dark, dined in their excellent mess, slept all night in the signalling officer’s bunk, and returned for a shave and a wash after breakfast next morning; firing retaliation salvos at the call of either the O.P. or the infantry; getting up rations and ammunition and letters at a regular hour every night; sending off the countless “returns” which are the curse of soldiering; and quietly feeling our feet.
The O.P. was in an eastern suburb called Houplines, some twenty minutes’ walk along the tram lines. At dawn one had reached it with two signallers and was looking out from the upper deck upon an apparently peaceful countryside of green fields splashed yellow with mustard patches, dotted with sleepy cottages, from whose chimneys smoke never issued, woods and spinneys in all the glory of their spring budding running up on to the ridge, the Aubers ridge. The trenches were an intricate series of gashes hidden by Nature with poppies and weeds. Then came a grim brown space unmarked by any trench, tangled with barbed wire, and then began the repetition of it all except for the ridge at our own trenches. The early hours were chilly and misty and one entered in the log book, “6 a.m. Visibility nil.”
But with the sun the mist rolled up like a blind at one’s window and the larks rocketed into the clear blue as though those trenches were indeed deserted. Away on the left was a town, rising from the curling river in terraces of battered ruins, an inexpressible desolation, silent, empty, dead. Terrible to see that gaping skeleton of a town in the flowering countryside. Far in the distance, peeping above the ridge and visible only through glasses, was a faint pencil against the sky—the great factory chimney outside Lille.
Peace seemed the keynote of it all in the soft perfumed heat of that early summer. Yet eyes looked steadily out from every chimney and other eyes from the opposite ridge; and with just a word down the wire trenches went in smoking heaps, houses fell like packs of cards touched by a child’s finger, noise beat upon the brain and Death was the master whom we worshipped, upon whose altar we made bloody sacrifice.
We hadn’t been there much more than a week when we had our first hint of the hourly reality of it. Thethird subaltern, who hadn’t properly recovered from the effect of his wound, was on his way up to the O.P. one morning and had a misadventure with a shell. He heard it coming, a big one, and sought refuge in the nearest house. The shell unfortunately selected the same house.
When the dust had subsided and the ruins had assumed their final shape the subaltern emerged, unwounded, but unlike his former self.—The doctor diagnosed shell shock and the work went on without him.
It seemed as though that were the turning point in the career of the peace sector.
The Hun began a leisurely but persistent destruction of chimneys with five-nines. One heard the gun in the distance, not much more than the popping of a champagne cork at the other end of the Carlton Grill. Some seconds later you thought you heard the inner circle train come in at Baker Street. Dust choked you, the chimney rocked in the frightful rush of wind, followed by a soul-shaking explosion,—and you looked through the black aperture of the chimney to see a pillar of smoke and falling earth spattering down in the sunshine. And from the lower deck immediately beneath you came the voice of the signaller, “They ought to give us sailor suits up ’ere, sir!”
And passing a finger round the inside of your sticky collar which seemed suddenly a little tight, you sat down firmly again and said, “Yes.—Is the steward about?”
Within sixty seconds another champagne cork popped. Curse the Carlton Grill!
In addition to the delights of the O.P. the Hun “found” the battery. It happened during the week that the Captain came up to have a look round and in the middle of the night. I was sleeping blissfully at liaison and returned next morning to find a most unpleasant smell of cordite hanging about, several houses lying on thepavement, including the one Pip Don and I shared, great branches all over the road and one gun pit looking somewhat bent. It appeared that Pip Don had spent the remainder of the night rounding up gunners in his pyjamas. No one was hurt. The Captain returned to the wagon line during the course of the morning.
Having found us, the Hun put in a few hundred rounds whenever he felt bored,—during the 9 a.m. parade, at lunch time, before tea and at the crack of dawn. The old red garden wall began to look like a Gruyère cheese, the road was all pockmarked, the gun pits caught fire and had to be put out, the houses began to fall even when there was no shelling and it became a very unhealthy corner. Through it all the Major was a tower of strength. So long as he was there the shelling didn’t seem to matter, but if he were absent one didn’tquiteknow whether to give the order to clear for the time being or stick it out. The Hun’s attentions were not by any means confined to our position. The systematic bombardment of the town had begun and it became the usual thing to hear a horrible crackling at night and see the whole sky red. The Major of one of our batteries was killed, the senior subaltern badly wounded and several of their guns knocked out by direct hits. We were lucky.
Meanwhile the Right Group, who had been watching this without envy from the undisturbed calm of the countryside, decided to make a daylight raid by way of counter-attraction and borrowed us for the occasion. The Major and I went down to reconnoitre a battery position and found a delightful spot behind a hedge under arow of spreading elms. Between the two, camouflage was unnecessary and, as a cobbled road ran immediately in front of the hedge, there was no danger of making any tracks. It was a delightful position with a farmhouse two hundred yards along the road. The relief of getting out of the burning city, of not having to dodge shells at unexpected moments, of knowing that the rations and ammunition could come up without taking a twenty to one chance of being scuppered!
The raid was just like any other raid, except that it happened to be the first barrage we fired, the first barrage table we worked out, the first time we used the 106 fuse, and the first time that at the eleventh hour we were given the task, in which someone else had failed, of cutting the wire. I had been down with the Major when he shot the battery in,—and hadn’t liked it. In places there was no communication trench at all and we had to crawl on our bellies over a chaos of tumbled earth and revetments in full view of any sniper, and having to make frequent stops because the infernal signaller would lag behind and turn off. And a few hours before the show the Major was called upon to go down there and cut the wire at all costs. Pip Don was signalling officer. He and every available signaller, stacks of wire and lamps, spread themselves in a living chain between the Major and the front-line trench and me at the battery. Before going the Major asked me if I had the barrage at my finger tips. I had. Then if he didn’t get back in time, he said, I could carry out the show all right? I could,—and watched him go with a mouth full of bitter curses against the Battery Commander who had failed to cut that wire. My brain drew lurid pictures of stick-bombs, minnies, pineapples, pip-squeaks and five-nines being the reason why the Major wouldn’t get back “in time.” And I sat down by the telephonist,praying for the call that would indicate at least his safe arrival in the front-line trench.
Beside every gun lay a pile of 106 fuses ready. Orders were to go on firing if every German plane in the entire Vaterland came over.—Still they weren’t through on the ’phone!
I went along from gun to gun, making sure that everything was all right and insisting on the necessity of the most careful laying, stopping from time to time to yell to the telephonist “Through yet?” and getting a “No, sir” every time that almost made me hear those cursed minnies dropping on the Major. At last he called up. The tension was over. We had to add a little forthe 106 fusebut each gun was registered on the wire within four rounds. The Major was a marvel at that. Then the shoot began.
Aeroplanes came winging over, regardless of our Archies. But we, regardless of the aeroplanes, were doing “battery fire 3 secs.” as steadily as if we were on Salisbury Plain, getting from time to time the order, “Five minutes more right.” We had three hundred rounds to do the job with and only about three per gun were left when the order “Stop” arrived. I stopped and hung on to the ’phone. The Major’s voice, coming as though from a million miles away, said, “Napoo wire. How many more rounds?”
“Three per gun, sir.”
“Right.—All guns five degrees more right for the onlooker, add two hundred, three rounds gun fire.”
I made it so, received the order to stand down, put the fitter and the limber gunners on to sponging out,—and tried to convince myself that all the noise down in front was miles away from the Major and Pip Don.—It seemed years before they strolled in, a little muddy but as happy as lambs.
It occurred to me then that I knew something at least of what our women endured at home every day and all day,—just one long suspense, without even the compensation ofdoinganything.
The raid came off an hour or so later like clockwork, without incident. Not a round came back at us and we stood down eventually with the feeling of having put in a good day’s work.
We were a very happy family in those days. The awful discouragement of Limerick had lifted. Bombardments and discomforts were subjects for humour, work became a joy, “crime” in the gun line disappeared and when the time arrived for sending the gunners down to the wagon line for a spell there wasn’t one who didn’t ask if he might be allowed to stay on. It was due entirely to the Major. For myself I can never be thankful enough for having served under him. He came at a time when one didn’t care a damn whether one were court-martialled and publicly disgraced. One was “through” with the Army and cared not a curse for discipline or appearances. With his arrival all that was swept away without a word being said. Unconsciously he set a standard to which one did one’s utmost to live, and that from the very moment of his arrival. One found that there was honour in the world and loyalty, that duty was not a farce. In some extraordinary way he embodied them all, forcing upon one the desire for greater self-respect; and the only method of acquiring it was effort, physical and mental, in order to get somewhere near his high standard. I gave him the best that was in me. When he left the brigade, broken in health by the ceaseless call upon his own effort, he wrote me a letter. Of all that I shall take back with me to civil life from the Army that letter is what I value most.
We had all cherished the hope that we had seen the last of the town; that Right Group, commanded by our own colonel, would keep us in our present position.
There was a distinct drop in the mental temperature when, the raid over, we received the order to report back to Left Group. But we still clung to the hope that we might be allowed to choose a different gun position. That avenue of trees was far too accurately pin-pointed by the Hun. Given, indeed, that there were many other places from which one could bring just as accurate and concentrated fire to bear on our part of the zone, it was criminal folly to order us back to the avenue. That, however, was the order. It needed a big effort to find any humour in it.
We hooked in and pulled out of that peaceful raid position with a sigh of regret and bumped our way back over the cobbles through the burning town, keeping a discreet distance between vehicles. The two houses which had been the emplacements of the left section were unrecognizable as gun pits, so we used the other four pits and put the left section forward in front of the Asylum under camouflage. Not less than ten balloons looked straight down on the gun muzzles. The detachment lived in a cellar under the Asylum baths.
Then Pip Don got his captaincy and went to another battery, to the safety and delights of the wagon line. One missed him horribly. We got a new subaltern who had never been out before but who was as stout as a lion. Within a few days our Captain was sent back ill and I followed Pip Don to the wagon lines as Captain in my own battery, a most amazing stroke of luck. We foregathered in a restaurant at Estaires and held a celebration dinner together, swearing that between us we would show the finest teams and the best harness in France, discussing the roads we meant to build through the mud, the improvements we were instantly going to start in the horse standings.
Great dreams that lasted just three days! Then his Major went on leave and he returned to command the battery, within five hundred yards of ours. The following day I was hurriedly sent for to find the whole world reeking with gas, mustard gas. Everybody had streaming eyes and noses. Within three minutes I was as bad as the rest.
How anybody got through the next days I don’t know. Four days and nights it lasted, one curious hissing rain of shells which didn’t burst with a crash but just uttered a little pop, upon which the ground became spattered with yellow liquid and a greyish fog spread round about. Five-nines, seventeen-inch, high explosive and incendiary shells were mixed in with the gas. Communications went wholesale. Fires roared in every quarter of the town. Hell was let loose and always the gas choked and blinded. Hundreds of civilians died of it although they had previously been warned repeatedly to clear out. The conviction was so strong that Armentières was the peace sector that the warnings were disregarded.
The howitzer battery behind us had been reinforced with ninety men and two officers the day before the show started. After that first night one officer was left. He had been up a chimney O.P. all night. The rest went away again in ambulance wagons. It was a holocaust, a shambles. A colossal attack was anticipated, and as all communications had gone the signallers were out in gas masks all over the town, endeavouring to repair linesbroken in a hundred places, and a constant look-out was kept for S.O.S. signals from the infantry.
Except when shooting all our men were kept underground in gas masks, beating the gas away with “flappers.” The shelling was so ceaseless and violent round about the position that when men were sent from one section to another with messages they went in couples, their departure being telephoned to the section. If their arrival was not reported within ten minutes a search party was sent to find them. To put one’s head above ground at any moment of day or night was to take one’s life in one’s hands. Ammunition went up, and gun pits caught fire and the rain of shells never ceased. To get to the O.P. one had to fling oneself flat in a ditch countless times, always with an ear stretched for the next shell. From minute to minute it was a toss-up, and blackened corpses and screaming, mangled wounded left a bloody trail in the stinking, cobbled streets. The peace sector!
Was it just a Boche measure to prevent us from using the town as billets any more? Or was it a retaliation for the taking of the Messines Ridge which we had watched from our chimney not many weeks before, watched in awe and wonder, thanking God we were not taking part in that carnage? The unhealthy life and the unceasing strain told even on the Major. We were forced to live by the light of candles in a filthy cellar beneath the château, snatching uneasy periods of rest when one lay on a bunk with goggles on one’s smarting eyes, breathing with labour, listening to the heavy thud of shells up above and the wheezing and sneezing of the unfortunate signallers, getting up and going about one’s work in a sort of stupor, dodging shells rather by instinct than reason and tying up wounded with a dull sickness at the pit of one’s stomach.
But through it all one’s thoughts of home intertwined with the reek of death like honeysuckle with deadly nightshade, as though one’s body were imprisoned in that foul underground hole while one’s mind soared away and refused to come back. It was all a strange dream, a clammy nightmare. Letters came, filled with all the delicious everyday doings of another world, filling one’s brain with a scent of verbena and briar rose, like the cool touch of a woman’s hands on the forehead of a man in delirium.
On the morning of the fifth day the gas shelling ceased and the big stuff became spasmodic,—concentrations of twenty minutes’ duration.
One emerged into the sun, sniffing carefully. The place was even more unrecognizable than one had imagined possible. The château still stood but many direct hits had filled the garden with blocks of stone. The Asylum was a mass of ruins, the grounds pitted with shell holes. The town itself was no longer a place to dine and shop. A few draggled inhabitants slunk timidly about like rats, probing the debris of what had once been their homes. The cobbled streets were great pits where seventeen-inch shells had landed, half filled again with the houses which had toppled over on either side. The hotels, church and shops in the big square were gutted by fire, great beams and house fronts blocking the roadway. Cellars were blown in and every house yawned open to the sky. In place of the infantry units and transports clattering about the streets was a desolate silent emptiness punctuated by further bombardments and the echoing crash of falling walls. And, over all, that sickly smell of mustard.
It was then that the Left Group Commander had a brain wave and ordered a trial barrage on the river Lys in front of Frelinghein. It was about as mad a thing as making rude noises at a wounded rhinoceros, given that every time a battery fired the Boche opened a concentration.
Pip Don had had three seventeen-inch in the middle of his position. Nothing much was found of one gun and its detachment except a head and a boot containing a human foot.
The Group Commander had given the order, however, and there was nothing to do but to get on with it.—
The barrage was duly worked out. It was to last eighteen minutes with a certain number of lifts and switches. The Group Commander was going to observe it from one of the chimneys.
My job was to look after the left section in the open in front of the Asylum. Ten minutes before zero I dived into the cellar under the baths breathless, having dodged three five-nines. There I collected the men and gathered them under cover of the doorway. There we waited for a minute to see where the next would burst. It hit a building twenty-five yards away.
“Now!” said I, “double!” and we ran, jumping shell holes and flinging ourselves flat for one more five-nine. The guns were reached all right, the camouflage pulled back and everything made ready for action. Five Hun balloons gazed down at us straight in front, and three of his aeroplanes came and circled low over our heads, and about every minute the deafening crash of that most demoralizing five-nine burst just behind us. I lay down on the grass between the two guns and gazed steadfastly at my wrist watch.
“Stand by!”
The hands of the Numbers 3 stole out to the handles of the firing lever.
“Fire!”
The whole of Armentières seemed to fire at once. The Group Commander up in his chimney ought to have been rather pleased. Four rounds per gun per minute was the rate. Then at zero plus one I heard that distant pop of Hun artillery and with the usual noise the ground heaved skyward between the two guns just in front. It wasn’t more than twelve and a half yards away. The temptation to run made me itch all over.
Pop! it went again. My forehead sank on to my wrist watch.
A good bracket, twelve and a half yards behind, and again lumps of earth spattered on to my back. The itch became a disease. The next round, according to all the laws of gunnery, ought to fall between my collar and my waist.—
I gave the order to lift, straining my ears.
There came no pop. I held my breath so that I might hear better,—and only heard the thumping of my heart. We lifted again and again.—
I kept them firing for three full seconds after the allotted time before I gave the order to cease fire. The eighteen minutes—lifetimes—were over and that third pop didn’t come till we had stopped. Then having covered the guns we ran helter-skelter, each man finding his own way to the cellar through the most juicy bombardment we’d heard for quite twenty-four hours.
Every man answered to his name in the cellar darkness and there was much laughter and tobacco smoke while we got back our breath.
Half an hour later their bombardment ceased. The sergeant and I went back to have a look at the guns.Number 5 was all right. Number 6, however, had had a direct hit, one wheel had burnt away and she lay on her side, looking very tired.
I don’t know how many other guns had been knocked out in the batteries taking part, but, over and above the value of the ammunition, that trial barrage cost at least one eighteen-pounder! And but for a bit of luck would have cost the lives of the detachment.
The Major decided to move the battery and gained the reluctant consent of the Group Commander who refused to believe that there had been any shelling there till he saw the gun lying burnt and smashed and the pits burnt and battered. The Hun seemed to take a permanent dislike to the Asylum and its neighbourhood. It may have been coincidence but any time a man showed there a rain of shells chivvied him away. It took the fitter and the detachment about seven trips before they got a new wheel on, and at any hour of day or night you could bet on at least a handful of four-twos. The gas was intermittent.
At four o’clock in the morning after a worrying night when I had gone out twice to extinguish gun pits reported on fire, the Major announced that he was going to get the gun out and disappeared out of the cellar into the shell-lit darkness.
Two hours later he called up from Group Headquarters and told me to get the other out and take her to Archie Square, a square near the station, so-called because a couple of anti-aircraft guns had used it as an emplacement in the peace days. With one detachment on eachdrag rope we ran the gauntlet in full daylight of a four-two bombardment, rushing shell holes and what had once been flower beds, keeping at a steady trot, the sweat pouring off us.
The Major met us in Archie Square and we went back to our cellar for breakfast together.
Of the alternative positions one section was in Chapelle d’Armentières. We hoped great things of it. It looked all right, pits being built in the back yards of a row of small houses, with plenty of trees for cover and lots of fruit for the men,—raspberries, plums, and red currants. Furthermore the shell holes were all old. The only crab about it was getting there. Between us and it were two much-shelled spots called Sandbag Corner and Snow Corner. Transports used to canter past them at night and the Hun had an offensive habit of dropping barrages on both of them any time after dark. But there was a place called Crown Prince House at Sandbag Corner and I fancy he used this as a datum point. While the left section went straight on to the Chapelle the other two turned to the right at Snow Corner and were to occupy some houses just along the road and a garden next to them under camouflage.
I shall not forget the night of that move in a hurry. In the afternoon the Major returned to the battery at tea time. There was no shelling save our own anti-aircraft, and perfect sunshine.
“The teams are due at ten o’clock,” said he. “The Hun will start shelling precisely at that time. We will therefore movenow. Let us function.” We functioned!
The battery was called together and the nature of the business explained. Each detachment pulled down the parados in the rear of the gun pits and such part of the pit itself as was necessary to allow the gun to come out,—nolight task because the pits had been built to admit the gun from the front. As soon as each reported ready double detachments were told off to the drag ropes and the gun, camouflaged with branches, was run out and along the lane and round the corner of the château. There they were all parked, one by one. Then the ammunition was brought, piles of it. Then all the gun stores and kits.
At ten o’clock the teams were heard at the other end of the cobbled street. A moment later shells began to burst on the position, gun fire. From the cover afforded by the château and the wall we loaded up without casualty and hooked in, bits of shell and wall flying over our heads viciously.
I took charge of the left section in Archie Square. The vehicles were packed, dixies tied on underneath. The Major was to follow with the four guns and the other subaltern at ten minutes’ interval.
Keeping fifty yards between vehicles I set off, walking in front of the leading gun team. We clattered along the cobbled streets, rattling and banging. The station was being bombarded. We had to go over the level crossing a hundred yards or so in rear of it. I gave the order to trot. A piece of shell sent up a shower of sparks in front of the rear gun team. The horses bucked violently and various dixies fell off, but I kept on until some distance to a flank under the houses. The dixies were rescued and re-tied. There was Sandbag Corner to navigate yet,andSnow Corner. It was horribly dark, impossible to see shell holes until you were into them, and all the time shells were bursting in every direction. The road up to the two Corners ran straight towards the Hun, directly enfiladed by him. We turned into it at a walk and were half-way along when a salvo fell round Crown Prince House just ahead. I halted immediately, wondering where in heaven’s name the next would fall, the horses snorting and prancing at my back. For a couple of minutes there was a ragged burst of gun fire while we stood with the bits missing us. Then I gave the order to trot. The horses needed no encouragement. I could only just keep in front, carrying maps and a torch and with most of my equipment on. We carried on past Crown Prince House, past Sandbag Corner and walked again, blown and tottering, towards Snow Corner, and only just got past it when a barrage dropped right on the cross-roads. It was there that the Major would have to turn to the right with his four guns presently. Please God it would stop before he came along.
We weren’t very far behind the support lines now and the pop-pop-pop, pop-pop-pop of machine guns was followed by the whistling patter of bullets. I kept the teams as close under the houses as I dared. There was every kind of devilment to bring a horse down, open drains, coils of tangled wire, loose debris. Eventually we reached the Chapelle and the teams went off at the trot as soon as the ammunition was dumped and the kits were off.
Then in the black night we heaved and hauled the guns into their respective pits and got them on to their aiming posts and S.O.S. lines.
It was 3 a.m. before I got back to the new headquarters, a house in an orchard, and found the Major safe and sound.
A couple of days later the Major was ordered to a rest camp and at a moment’s notice I found myself in command of the battery. It was one of the biggest moments of my life. Although I had gone down to take the Captain’s place my promotion hadn’t actually gone through and I was still a subaltern, faced with the handling of six guns at an extremely difficult moment and with the livesof some fifty men in my hands, to say nothing of the perpetual responsibility to the infantry in the front line.
It was only when the Major had said good-bye and I was left that I began to realize just how greatly one had depended on him. All the internal arrangements which he had handled so easily that they seemed no trouble loomed up as insurmountable difficulties—returns, ammunition, rations, relieving the personnel—all over and above the constant worry of gun detachments being shelled out, lines being cut, casualties being got away. It was only then that I realized what a frightful strain he must have endured during those days of continual gas and bombardment, the feeling of personal responsibility towards every single man, the vital necessity through it all of absolute accuracy of every angle and range, lest by being flustered or careless one should shoot one’s own infantry, the nights spent with one ear eternally on the telephone and the added strain of sleeplessness.—A lonely job, Battery Commander.
I realized, too, what little use I had been to him. Carrying out orders, yes, but not really taking any of the weight off his shoulders.
The insignificance of self was never so evident as that first night with my ear to the ’phone, all the night noises accentuated in the darkness, the increasing machine-gun fire which might mean an attack, the crashing of shells which might get my supply wagons on their way back, the jump when the ’phone buzzed suddenly, making my heart leap against my ribs, only to put me through to Group for an order to send over thirty rounds on a minnie firing in C 16 d o 4.—It was good to see the blackness turn to grey and recognize objects once more in the room, to know that at last the infantry were standing down and to sink at last into deep sleep as the grey became rose and the sun awoke.
Do the men ever realize, I wonder, that the Major who snaps out orders, who curses so freely, who gives them extra guards and docks their pay, can be a human being like themselves whose one idea istheircomfort and safety, that they may strafe the Hun and not get strafed?
It was my first experience in handling subalterns, too, and I came to see them from a new point of view. Hitherto one’s estimation of them had been limited by their being good fellows or not. The question of their knowledge or ignorance hadn’t mattered. One could always give them a hand or do the thing oneself. Now it was reversed. Their knowledge, working capabilities and stout-heartedness came first. Their being good fellows was secondary, but helpful. The most ignorant will learn more in a week in the line than in ten weeks in a gunnery school.
The first few days in the new position were calm. It gave one time to settle down. We did a lot of shooting and apart from a spare round or two in our direction nothing came back in return. The Hun was still plastering the Asylum and the avenue at all times of day, to our intense joy. The more he shelled it the more we chuckled. One felt that the Major had done Fritz in the eye. So we gathered plums and raspberries in the warm sun, rejoicing that the horrible smell of mustard gas was no more. There was a fly in the ointment, of course. It consisted of several thousand rounds of ammunition in the Asylum which we were ordered to salvage. The battery clerk, a corporal of astounding stout-heartedness who had had countless escapes by an inch already in the handling of it, and who subsequently became one of the best sergeants in the battery, undertook to go and see what could be done. He took with him the fitter, a lean Scot, who was broken-hearted because he had left a file there and who wanted to go and scratch about the ruins to try and recover it. These two disappeared into the Asylum during a momentary lull. Before they returned the Hun must have sent in about another fifteen hundred rounds, all big stuff. They came in hot and covered with brick dust. The fitter had got his file and showed it with joy and affection. The corporal had made a rough count of the rounds and estimated that at least a couple of hundred had “gone up” or were otherwise rendered useless.
To my way of thinking it would have been manslaughter to have sent teams to get the stuff away, so I decided to let time solve the problem and leave well alone. Eventually it did solve itself. Many weeks later another battery occupied the position (Poor devils. It still reeked of gas) and I had the pleasure of showing the Battery Commander where the ammunition was and handing it over.
Meanwhile the Boche had “found” the left and centre sections. In addition to that the Group Commander conceived a passion to experiment with guns in the front-line trenches, to enfilade the enemy over open sights at night and generally to put the fear of God into him. Who more suitable than the Army brigade battery commanded by that subaltern?
I was sent for and told all about it, and sent to reconnoitre suitable positions. Seeing that the enemy had all the observation and a vast preponderance of artillery I did all in my power to dissuade the Commander. He had been on active service, however, beforeI was born—he told me so—and had forgotten more things than I should ever know. He had, indeed, forgotten them.
The long and short of it was that I took a subaltern with me, and armed with compasses and trench maps, we studied the whole zone at distances varying from three to five hundred yards from the enemy front-line trench. The best place of all happened to be near Battalion Headquarters. Needless to say, the Colonel ordered me off.
“You keep your damn things away. There’s quite enough shelling here without your planting a gun. Come and have a drink.”
Eventually, however, we got two guns “planted” with cover for the detachments. It was an absolute waste of guns. The orders were only to fire if the enemy came over the top by day and on special targets by night. The difficulty of rationing them was extreme, it made control impossible from battery headquarters, because the lines went half a dozen times a day and left me only two sections to do all the work with.
The only thing they ever fired at was a very near balloon one afternoon. Who gave the order to fire remains a mystery. The sergeant swore the infantry Colonel gave it.
My own belief is that it was a joy shoot on the sergeant’s part. He was heartily cursed for his pains, didn’t hit the balloon, and within twenty-four hours the gun was knocked out. The area was liberally shelled, to the discomfort of the infantry, so if the Colonel did give the order, he had only himself to thank for the result.
The headquarters during this time was an odd round brick building, like a pagoda in the middle of a narrow orchard. A high red brick wall surrounded the orchard which ran down to the road. At the road edge weretwo houses completely annihilated. Plums, greengages, raspberries and red currants were in abundance. The signallers and servants were in dug-outs outside the wall. Curiously enough, this place was not marked on the map. Nor did the Hun seem to have it on his aeroplane photographs. In any case, although he shelled round about, I can only remember one which actually burst inside the walls.
Up at Chapelle d’Armentières the left section was almost unrecognizable. Five-nines had thumped it out of all shape, smashed down the trees, ploughed up the garden and scattered the houses into the street. The detachment spent its time day and night in clearing out into neighbouring ditches and dug-outs, and coming back again. They shot between whiles, neither of the guns having been touched, and I don’t think they slept at all. None of them had shaved for days.
As regards casualties we were extraordinarily lucky. Since leaving the town not a man had been hit or gassed. For the transport at night I had reconnoitred a road which avoided the town entirely and those dangerous cross-roads, and took them right through the support line, within a quarter of a mile of the Boche. The road was unshelled, and only a few machine-gun bullets spat on it from time to time. So they used it nightly, and not a horse or driver was touched.
Then the Right Group had another raid and borrowed us again. The white house and the orchard which we had used before were unoccupied. I decided to squeeze up a bit and get all six guns in. The night of the move was a colossal undertaking. The teams were late, and the Hun chose to drop a gas barrage round us. More than that, in the afternoon I had judged my time and dodged in between two bombardments to visit the left section. They were absolutely done in, so tired thatthey could hardly keep their eyes open. The others were little better, having been doing all the shooting for days. However, I ordered them to vacate the left section and come along to me at Battery Headquarters for a rest before the night’s work. They dragged themselves there, and fell asleep in heaps in the orchard in the wet. The subaltern and the sergeant came into the building, drank a cup of tea each and filled the place with their snores. So I sent for another sergeant and suggested that he and his men, who had had a brief rest that day, should go and get the left section guns out while these people handled his as best they could. He jumped at it and swore he’d get the guns out, begging me to keep my teams well to the side of the road. If he had to canter they were coming out, and he was going to ride the lead horse himself,—splendid fellow.
Then I collected the subalterns and detailed them for the plan of campaign. The left section man said he was going with his guns. So I detailed the junior to see the guns into the new positions, and send me back the ammunition wagons as he emptied them. The third I kept with the centre section. The corporal clerk was to look after the headquarters. I was to function between the lot.
The teams should have been up at 9 p.m. They didn’t arrive till ten, by which time the gas hung about thick, and people were sneezing right and left. Then they hung up again because of a heavy shelling at the corner on the way to the left section. However, they got through at last, and after an endless wait, that excellent sergeant came trotting back with both guns intact. We had, meanwhile yanked out the centre section and sent them back. The forward guns came back all right from the trenches, but no ammunition wagons or G.S. returned from the position, although filled by us ages before and sent off.
So I got on a bicycle and rode along to see what the trouble was. It was a poisonous road, pitch dark, very wet and full of shell holes. I got there to find a column of vehicles standing waiting all mixed up, jerked the bicycle into a hedge and went downstairs to find the subaltern.
There was the Major! Was I pleased?—I felt years younger. However, this was his night off. I was running the show. “Carry on, Old Thing,” said he.
So I went out into the chaotic darkness and began sorting things out. Putting the subaltern in charge of the ammunition I took the guns. It was a herculean task to get those six bundooks through the wet and spongy orchard with men who were fresh. With these men it was asking the impossible. But they did it, at the trot.
You know the sort of thing—“Take the strain—together—heave! Together—heave! Now keep her going! Once more—heave! Together—heave! and again—heave! Easy all! Have a blow—Now look here, you fellows, youmustwait for the word and put your weight ontogether. Heels into the mud and lean on it, but lean together, all at the same moment, and she’ll go like a baby’s pram. Now then, come on and I’ll bet you a bottle of Bass all round that you get her going at a canter if only you’ll heave together—Take the strain—together—heave! Ter-rot! Canter! Come on now, like that—splendid,—and you owe me a bottle of Bass all round.”
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? but oh, my God, to see those poor devils, dropping with fatigue, putting their last grunting ounce on to it, with always just one more heave left! Magnificent fellows, who worked till they dropped, and then staggered up again, in the face of gas and five-nines, and went on shooting till they were dead,—they’vewon this war for us if anybody has, these Tommies who don’t know when they’re beaten, these “simple soldiers,” as the French call them, who grouse like hell but go on working whether the rations come up or whether they don’t, until they’re senseless from gas or stop a shell and get dropped into a hole in an army blanket. These are the men who have saved England and the world, these,—and not the gentlemen at home who make fortunes out of munitions and “war work,” and strike for more pay, not theembusquéwho cannot leave England because he’s “indispensable” to his job, not the politicians and vote-seekers, who bolster up their parties with comfortable lies more dangerous than mustard gas, not the M.L.O.’s and R.T.O.’s and the rest of the alphabetic fraternity and Brass Hats, who live in comfort in back areas, doing a lot of brain work and filling the Staff leave boat,—not any of these, but the cursing, spitting, lousy Tommy, God save him!