THE adventure has begun in earnest. All the monotony of being foot-sore and tired is forgotten in this new excitement. They can push us as hard as they like; we shall not fail until our strength gives out. It’s the game, the largeness and the splendour of it, that uplifts us. In the history of the world no fighting-men ever fought for such high stakes as those for which we are about to fight. Just as this war is out of all proportion titanic as compared with other wars which have been waged by men, so is this offensive, which we intend shall be the last and the decisive climax, out of all proportion titanic as compared with previous offensives. It doesn’t matter that we are physically inefficient for the task; we have been physically inefficient for other tasks, which we have nevertheless accomplished. We were sick, both men and horses, when we splashed our way furiously through the icy mud to those last attacks which won the battle of the Somme; none of us lay down on the job till we had been relieved in the line. The very day that we pulled out horses died in their tracks and men collapsed. We were like runners who had saved their last ounce for the final lap and had no strength left when they had broken the tape.
It will be like that again; stoutness of heart will carry us to success long after our bodies have backed down on us. From the first crack out of the box this is going to be a V. C. stunt for every man who takes part in it; that there won’t be enough V. C’s to go round doesn’t trouble us. To have been privileged to share in such an undertaking will be reward enough and a sufficient decoration. We’re going to bust the Hun Front so completely that it will never stand up again. We’re going to make a hole in his defences through which all the troops which are behind us can rush like a deluge. We’re going to achieve this end by the element of surprise and the devil-may-care ferocity of our attack. The effect will be like the breaking of a dam: we shall spread and spread till the military arrogance of Germany is flooded out of sight and only the steeples and roofs of the highest houses show up above the ruin’s surface to mark the spots where the ancient menace was trapped and drowned.
Last night we found our lorries waiting for us at a cross-roads; they were headed in the direction of the road which was marked ToAmiens. The sun was sinking behind the uplands as we set out; the last sight we had as we looked back through the golden solitude was our brigade of artillery slowly winding like a black snake out of the wood and losing itself in a fold of the hills. The Colonel was silent; he gave us no information, save that we were going forward to choose battery positions and alternative routes for bringing in our guns and ammunition in case some of the routes were shelled. For the rest, we conjectured that the lorries were taking us past points where it would not be wise for the brigade to travel.
We had not been going long, when we began to pass Australian Infantry, first of all we met them in isolated groups, strolling down the lanes and through the wheat, two and two, with their arms about the waists of peasant-girls. Very often the girls had plucked wild-flowers for their lovers, and had stuck them in the button-holes of their tunics or had pinned them against the brims of their broad slouch-hats. One wondered with how many soldier-men these girls had walked since the war had started, and how many of their soldier-men still remained above ground to kiss the lips of a living girl. Without being told, there was something of false flippancy and yearning in their attitude which made us understand that these lovers for a moment were taking their last stroll together. Like the Canadians, they are storm-troops, and will be lost in the smoke of battle before many days are out.
At a turn in the road we came across a girl who had flung herself down beside the hedge and was sobbing with her face buried in her hands. Farther on, by a few hundred yards, we passed a boy-private, who kept halting and glancing back with trouble in his eyes, and then again making up his mind to go forward. Many a deserter has been shot not because he was a coward, but because he had grown too fond of a girl.
We entered a village where all was in commotion.
The dusk had fallen. In the windows lights glimmered. Trumpets were sounding. Across farmyards, and in and out of barns men hurried with lanterns. Infantry, in their full marching order, were tumbling out from houses and forming up, two deep, along the street. Rolls were being called and absentees searched for. Officers on horse-back fidgeted impatiently or went at the sharp trot, carrying messages. Bursts of laughter and song from the gardens behind the cottages, seemed to mock the atmosphere of military sternness. Behind the darkness there was the knowledge of stolen kisses. The storm-troops were saying “Good-bye” to life and moving one stage nearer to the slaughter. We won free from the village and were soon on a high road, doing our forty miles an hour.
In the dusk the sharp details of the country were blurred, but we saw enough to know that its aspect was changing. There were no more peasant-girls with their soldier-lovers: the fields were uncared for—all the civilian population had been pushed back. We came to villages full of deserted houses, with roofs smashed and walls gaping where bombs had been dropped. Under the protection of trees, in lanes and side-roads, motor and horse-transport was waiting for the sky to become sufficiently dark for it to be safe for them to advance. At every cross-road we were halted by military-police till our special order had been presented and examined. Ahead of us the cathedral spires and towers of Amiens grew up; like fire-flies flickering above them, though actually at a distance of miles behind them, the flares and rockets of the Hun Front commenced their maniac dance.
We crept into the city, slowing down to avoid gaping holes in the pavi. It was a city of the dead. No movement was allowed till night had grown completely dark.. Shutters sagged on their hinges. Doors stood wide, just as they had been left in the hurry of the exit. Windows stared blindly, with broken panes and curtains faded and flapping. On the pavement the dibris lay strewn of household furniture which had been carefully carried out, and then left in the mad stampede of the panic. One could picture it all as the terror had spread and the horror had been whispered from mouth to mouth, “He’s broken through—the Boche is coming.”
Amiens, as I last saw it, was the Front-line’s dream of Paradise—a place where one could keep warm, where one could wash to his heart’s content, where one could laugh and live without being hungry, where one could hear the voices of children and watch the faces of pretty girls. It was a city of clubs, tea-rooms, cinemas, canteens, tramways, hotels, hospitable fires. In Amiens one could still believe in the glory of war, for the Indian cavalry with their brilliant turbans and the hunting-men from the Home Counties were there, all waiting for the break in the line to occur when the swordsmen of the Empire would get their chance. It was more honestly gay than Paris, more gallantly mad than London, more wistful and unwise than either. From in front of Courcelette, where one drowned in the mud, it was possible to reach Amiens by lorry in a handful of hours. Amiens was to us, when I last saw it, a glimpse of Blighty set down at the backdoor of hell.
But since then the Hun drive of the spring had occurred and, with the approach of tragedy, every vestige of gallantry had vanished. War, with its inevitable squalor, had laid hands on everything, revealing itself in its true colours. Like mutilated human faces, the fronts of houses hung in tatters, indecently displaying all those intimate secrets of family life that the kindly walls had hidden. Shells had fallen; bombs had been dropped. Even as we entered, we could hear the angry roar of detonations. Dead men sprawled about the streets, twisted by the anguish of their final struggle. Dogs and cats, of appalling leanness, slunk in and out the ruins. As we passed the station, with its great span of girders, a shell crashed through with a splash of glass. It was a city through which demented solitude wandered. We hurried on. An ambulance lurched by us, returning from the Front, and halted by an emergency hospital. We had a glimpse of the stretchers being carried underground into the temporary security of the cellars. Overhead the fierce rat-a-tat of machine-guns commenced, where two fighting-planes circled in mid-air. Someone shouted to us to put out our cigarettes; after that there was no smoking.
Hunger is like strong wine; it drives out weariness. While our lives were secure, those long night-marches had seemed an intolerable hardship. Now that death was present, the entire manhood in us stiffened to fight off the peril. Mere weariness was forgotten—a good night’s rest could cure that; but if once death should get the upper-hand, there was no kindliness of human skill that could restore us. Our spirits rose as we drew nearer to the horror of the carnage. There is something wonderfully stimulating about terror; the challenge of it makes one forget his body. That night as we sped through Amiens and during all the days and nights that followed, it seemed more as if we were hunting death than as if death were hounding us.
We had left the Cathedral far behind. Whenever we looked back, so long as any light was in the sky, we could see it standing dark and brooding against the horizon. We had by now travelled off the maps in our possession, by means of which we had been following our journey. The Colonel, seated beside the driver of the leading lorry, gave him his directions. He alone was aware of where we were going. But we knew by the wholesale demolition that this was one of the main national roads which had been most fiercely contested in the spring fighting, before the headlong rush of the Hun had been stopped. The tracks of the railroad, which paralleled it, had been torn from their bed. Bridges had been blown up. Improvised forts had been constructed in hollows where an advance could be checked by machine-gun fire.
In my memory vivid descriptions recurred of the stubborn resistance which our men had put up. They had retreated and retreated, overpowered by weight of numbers. They had been deprived of water and food and sleep, and still they had fought on. Their officers had been killed: their N. C. O.s were gone; they had lost touch with their units, and yet they had never lost their sense of conquest—they dug their toes in and fought on. Along this very road they had crawled on hands and knees when they could no longer walk; but they had crawled backwards, with their faces always towards the enemy, who followed them staggering drunkenly in his steps from exhaustion. There were German battalions which had marched forty miles at a stretch, only to be shot down by these broken Tommies who never knew when they were beaten. As the agony of the spring became more and more obvious a cold anger grew in our hearts. We were going to revenge that mud-stained mob who ought to have been beaten, but had won by their own invincible doggedness. From graves in the darkness the anonymous dead watched us pass.
We were travelling more slowly now; the road was becoming congested with transport and with batteries pulling into action. From lanes and cross-country routes which avoided Amiens, they began to pour into this main artery of traffic. Fully two-thirds of the transport consisted of motor-lorries, bringing up ammunition to the various dumps which were being established in rear of the point where the blow was to be struck. We crept along without lights of any kind, speaking to each other in whispers lest the Hun should become aware of the commotion of our progress. By day all this country had appeared to be naked and nothing had been seen to stir. The moment night had gathered every road and land had become as dense with traffic as Piccadilly Circus at the theatre hour. One wondered where so much energy had concealed itself, and marvelled at the army organization which knew to within a hundred yards where each separate group of energy could be found. Behind these speculations and imaginings lay a graver thought—the thought of all the men, horses and engines of war which had been pouring eastward for four years, only to dash themselves to pulp and blood, and to sink from sight in the debatable quagmire which separates the hostile armies. Where had so many come from? How much longer could the stream be kept flowing? Above our heads, like invisible trains slowing down as they neared their destination, the long range shells of the Huns roared and lumbered, and almost halted before they plunged screaming among the sullen roofs of Amiens.
During the last part of the journey I nodded. It was midnight when I was awakened by the stir of my companions climbing out. “We’re here,” someone said. Whereherewas none of us knew, for the time being we were too sleepy to care. Everything was in total darkness; it was impossible to see more than a yard ahead. The air was stealthy with the muffled breathing of an immense crowd. You held out your hand to guide yourself and found it touching the leg of a mounted man. Then, as our eyes became accustomed to the blackness, we found that we were in a village street, packed with two streams of traffic, the one going up to the Front loaded, the other returning empty. We listened to the whispered orders—some were in English, but many were in French. So the Frenchweregoing to be behind us!
Not a light was to be seen anywhere. Someone struck a match to start a cigarette; immediately, almost before the flame had burst, came the angry order, “Put that light out.” The windows of the houses were all dead; but if one pressed against them, he could hear voices and knew that behind the heavy curtains drawn across them men bent over tables and worked beneath shaded lamps. Carrying our blankets and rations, we wormed our way in single file through the traffic, entered a courtyard and found ourselves in a partially destroyed house. There were two rooms, mildewed with damp, bare of furniture and littered with the dibris of the last soldiers who had been billeted there. By the broken equipment that they had left, we knew that they had been French.
After waiting for about a quarter of an hour we were joined by the Colonel, who brought with him an armful of maps. We wedged up the windows with sacking and then lit a candle.
“Everyone will know by tomorrow,” he said, “so I may as well tell you now. We’re going to pull off the stunt for which we’ve been training all summer. We believe that we’ve got the Hun guessing; he doesn’t know where we are. By marching only at night and camping in woods by day, we’ve thrown him off our track. He knows that something is going to be pulled off and he’s restless; but he doesn’t suspect us in this part of the line—he’s looking for us further north. That he is still kept in ignorance must be the aim of every man and officer. Success depends on it. Our job is just this. On August 8th at dawn we attack. That gives us three days to make all our preparations. The work of building the gun-platforms and stocking the positions with ammunition must be carried on only by night. By day everything must be quiet—any unusual movement would give away all our plans. The enemy has the high ground: he can look directly down on’ us. We’re taking over from the French, so if the enemy sees khaki uniforms in this part of the line instead of blue-gray, he’ll know at once what to expect. We shan’t drag our guns into position until the night before the show commences. We shan’t register them—we shall get them on for line with instruments; so the first shot we fire will be in the attack and the first knowledge he has that there’s a concentration of artillery in this area will be at the identical moment when our infantry are advancing behind the tanks. By that time he’ll know too late; we shall have captured his defences. There’s only one other thing I want to say before we get to work on details: the positions which have been allotted to us are so exposed that he can look almost down the muzzles of our guns. Any tracks made on the turf will give us away: even if they’ve escaped his observers, they’ll show up on his aeroplane photographs. You must camouflage your ammunition with the greatest care, making use of natural camouflage to the greatest extent, such as ditches, wheat-fields and the shadows of trees. If once your positions are discovered, they’ll become murder holes for everyone concerned. And now for the positions themselves; in less than three hours we go forward to inspect them. I want each of you to choose one main position and an alternative one which you can take up in case you’re shelled out of the first. When you’ve settled upon your positions I want you to reconnoitre every possible route in... It’s nearly one now; we shall have to leave here in two hours. We’ve got to do all our work between dawn and when the morning mist rises. Meanwhile here’s a map apiece, which I should advise you to study, so that you may have some idea of the country. You’ll have to carry the idea in your heads: no flash-lamps will be allowed. Our brigade is going to sit astride the road which runs along the ridge from the Gentelles Wood to Domart. The general plan of strategy is to take the Hun by surprise and tumble him back—and so save Amiens. After that our game is to sail out into the blue and penetrate as far as we can.”
“To sail out into the blue and penetrate as far as we can. As long as the war has been going we have dreamt of that. Out in the blue one takes a sporting chance and, if the worst happens, goes west in clean fields and beneath an open sky. In the trenches one dies like a trapped rat, amid filth and corruption, nailed beneath a barrage. In the trenches men are so crowded that they lose their personalities; they kill and are killed in the mass. Out in the blue it’s a man to man fight, in which individual cunning and valour count. Long after the Colonel had left us and the candle had been blown out, we lay in our blankets and whispered of what “into the blue” might bring to us in the way of adventures.”
By three o’clock we were on the road, shivering in the raw night air. The traffic was all going in one direction now and consisted for the most part of ammunition-limbers returning empty to their wagonlines. About a mile out of the village we swung off to the left, travelling across country to where the eastern point of the Gentelles Woods showed shadowy against the sky. The going was rough and the night so black that it was difficult to see where one’s feet were treading. Several times we blundered into wire and stumbled into partly filled trenches. We had no one who had been over the ground to guide us, so had to rely for our direction on our memories of the maps. At the Gentelles Woods we struck the high road, which runs along the ridge between pollarded trees straight down to Domart and the Hun Front-line.
The sheer audacity of the offensive, as planned, took away our breath when we saw the nature of the landscape. It was a great plateau, lacking in any cover and scored by deep rapines to right and left; every inch of it was commanded by the enemy’s higher ground. The road along the ridge was a direct enfilade for the enemy; the air was heavy with decaying flesh and the sickening smell of explosives. It ran level for fifteen hundred yards, then it began to dip down to Demart, which lay in a valley which crossed the road at right angles. The near side of the valley was in our hands; the far side, which rose to a much greater height, was in the enemy’s. To attempt to bring artillery into that area, especially when all the work had to be carried on by night, and to expect to be able to do it unobserved, seemed madness.
Shells were coming over far too frequently for comfort; the enemy was searching and sweeping the Gentelles Woods, so we set out at a smart walk along the ridge in a south-easterly direction.
ONE by one our party left us, turning off along side-roads to search for the particular map-locations which had been suggested as positions for their batteries. At last only I and one other officer, named Strong, remained together. The spot for which we were looking was an orchard to the right of the road along the ridge which we were travelling.
We walked on and on. It seemed an interminable distance. A fine rain began to descend, which had the effect of mist, blurring the few landmarks which one could still identify as though a muslin curtain had been drawn across them. Every now and then the humpy figure of a man with a ground-sheet flung over his rifle and shoulders, would loom up out of the dark and pass us. It seemed as though he was always the same man, working like a beast of prey round and round us in circles, waiting for us to drop. We spoke to him several times, but he never deigned to answer. Men rarely answer when they are spoken to on the road up front at night. Whether it is that they enjoy the luxury which darkness affords them of not recognising authority, or that the sullenness of night has entered into their souls, or that they are afraid of being delayed one extra minute from the much needed sleep which awaits them in some wretched kennel, I do not know. But the effect of this silence on anyone who is travelling a country with which he is unfamiliar, is to arouse the suspicion that he may, unwittingly, have gone too far and have wandered behind the enemy’s line. This has happened quite often. Many an officer has started out on a night reconnaissance and disappeared as completely as if the ground had swallowed him up. In some cases the next news has been from a prisoners’ camp in Germany. In others a spy has been captured wearing his uniform; the presumption has been that he was murdered by a Hun agent on our side of the line and that his body has been tossed into some lonely shell-hole. On account of this danger no man or officer is allowed to go unaccompanied within two miles of the Front—a rule which is invariably broken.
We had walked so far that we had begun to think that we had passed our orchard, when quite suddenly we stumbled across it. It consisted of about a hundred trees. The first position lay behind the orchard in a wheat-field; the second in front, strung out along a dyke, with the whole of the Hun country staring at it. From every theoretical point of view the first position was the better, as the trees afforded it a certain amount of cover; on the other hand it had the disadvantage of being too obviously a good gun-position. If the Hun were to study his map for a likely place to shell a battery, he would be sure to pick on the rear of the orchard. The position was too ideal to be safe. Experience has proved that a bad position is often more healthy in the long run. It can be so damned bad that it’s almost good. The enemy would scarcely believe that any battery-commander would be fool enough to select it. Another disadvantage of the first position was that the wheat, while it would hide the guns, might easily be set on fire and be converted from a protection into a trap.
Strong and I tossed for the choice; when I won, rather to his amazement I chose the bad position in front of the orchard. How bad it was I had not realized till the dawn began to rise. Then I discovered that the muzzles of our guns would poke out straight across the valley. The road, from the Gentelles Woods to Domart, skirted the left of the position, dipped down into the valley across No Man’s Land and climbed the further slope by a mass of trees, marked on the map as Dodo Wood. From Dodo Wood the enemy could have watched a cat washing itself on the ground where our guns were to come into action. One false step and the entire position could be wiped out. On the other hand, if we could contrive to lie doggo until the show commenced, the smoke of battle would confuse an enemy observer, so that he would be likely to mistake our flash for the flash of the battery in the wheatfield behind the orchard—in which case it would be they and not we who would be knocked out. That was the gamble one had to take. If one guessed wrong, he brought down death on most of his chaps.
As day commenced to whiten, it became unwise to hang about in so exposed a place. All the transport that had creaked and thundered through the night, had vanished from sight and sound for over an hour. Under the sickly pallor which was spreading through the sky, the landscape looked afraid and haggard. One saw now for the first time how horribly it had been battered. Not a tree on the road along the ridge had escaped; they tottered like old prizefighters too proud to run away, with their arms drooping by their sides, waiting for the knock-out blow to fell them.
The rain had ceased, the smell of death was in the air. The ground seemed soaked with men who had died. Mingled with this smell was the sickly sweetness of gas and the suffocating fumes of explosives. The blanket of mist which had made us safe, was breaking up and drifting away in little ghostly clouds. It was the hour when the gunners on either side of No-Man’s-Land stand down on their harassing fire and wait breathlessly for the S. O. S. which betokens an attack. When that comes, they open up at an intense rate of fire, four rounds per gun per minute. To be caught in such a hail-storm of destruction is not pleasant, and especially unpleasant when you know that you are serving no good purpose by your presence. We gazed behind us at the Gentelles Woods; the shells had ceased to burst and all was quiet. “Let’s make our get-away while the going is good,” Strong said.
Crouching and running low along the ground, we scrambled through the orchard and plunged into the wheat-field. In order that we might reconnoitre a new route of approach to the positions, we struck off to the left, entering a ravine which led down to a lower road which paralleled the shell-torn highway along the ridge. From a distance the ravine looked wild and forsaken; not a plume of smoke rose; nothing stirred. As we walked down it, we discovered that what we had mistaken for rocks and patches of brush, were actually carefully camouflaged ammunition-dumps and battery positions. Not only this ravine, but every hill and slope was stiff with guns of every calibre, lying masked and silent, waiting for the great hour to strike when they would blow the Hun out of his strongholds. In rabbit-warrens dug far down beneath the surface, the French artillery-men bided their time. Some of them peeped out to watch us pass, with eyes uninterested and fatalistic.
Our idea of the scope of the attack which was planned grew as we investigated further. We also began to get a picture of what these preparations had already cost in lives. Horses and men lay strewn about in every stage of decomposition. Some had only been dead for hours; others were the skeletons of those who had fallen in the fierce counter-drive, which had halted the Huns’ rush towards Amiens. One wondered how that rush had ever been halted and, when it had been halted, how the line had been held. Every bit of high ground in our hands was over-topped by a higher point in the hands of the enemy. From all directions on the eastern horizon, from woods and coppices in a great semi-circle, the Hun gazed down; it was impossible to avoid his eyes. Every now and then a scurry of bullets or a whizz-bang bursting near us would remind us of this fact, and we would flatten ourselves.
It took us two hours to regain the town from which we had started where, by pre-arrangement, we were to make our reports to the Colonel. From him we learnt that our batteries had marched in during the night and had set up their horse-lines in the Boves Woods. That these woods should have been chosen for our camp was the crowning stroke of audacity; how audacious we did not realise until we saw the camp itself.
All the woods of this district are on hill-tops, the slopes of the valleys and the valleys themselves being cleared for agriculture; it is therefore a very difficult country in which to hide from the planes of the enemy. Infantry can keep out of sight in the villages and towns, taking their chances of shell-fire and digging themselves in beneath the houses. But the horse-lines of mounted troops are unmistakable when seen from the air, and almost impossible to disguise. To take to the woods was our only choice. The enemy was aware of this: he bombed every cluster of trees as soon as night had fallen, and raked them both day and night with shell-fire.
The Boves Woods lay behind the town. To reach them it was necessary to climb a bald ascent of chalk, almost incandescently white, and to cross a plateau which was as open and conspicuous as a parade-ground. In the old days of hand-to-hand fighting and cavalry charges the height must have been well-nigh impregnable. In general formation it was not unlike the Heights of Abraham, even to having a river for its defence, which wound about its foot. The ascent, the plateau and the woods were full in sight of the enemy on their eastward side. To select such a landmark for one’s horselines was the last word in foolhardiness. A water-cart wandering out on to the plateau in full daylight would have given the secret away. Had the enemy once started shelling, he would have discovered all that was necessary to make public the attack. The night-marches, the decoys sent up to Yprhs, the whole web of strategy, the object of which was to make him muster his reserves opposite to the most remote part of the line, would all have proved useless. In choosing the Boves Woods as our place of hiding we were staking our own foolishness against the enemy’s common-sense; he would never credit us with being so reckless. We were attempting to defeat his cleverness by our own seeming stupidity. Our chance of getting away with such a trick was one in a thousand. In the choice of our gun-positions and in all that we were attempting, it was on the thousandth chance that we were gambling.
On leaving the Colonel, since it was daylight, we had to work our way round the hill and approach our camp from the westward slope. We found that the town had been badly hammered, and except for the troops who hid like rats beneath the fallen roofs, was entirely deserted. We found also that a river which wandered through it, cut it in two, and was crossed by a single bridge, which was quite incapable of taking all the traffic. This bridge had to be shared by both ourselves and the French, and had evidently been responsible for the delays and congestions which we had noticed on the night of our arrival. One wondered what would happen if the attack failed, and a retreat became necessary. How could we get the guns away across a single bridge which the enemy would certainly keep under fire? It was plain that failure and retreat had not entered into the vision of our present strategy. It was neck or nothing. We were staking our all on success.
At the entrance to the woods Strong and I parted company and went in search of our respective batteries. The undergrowth was drenched and had been trampled into boggy lanes where the horses had been led down to water. Everything was dark and dank. The overhead foliage was so dense that heat and light never permeated. A cathedral dusk and chill mounted from the roots of the trees to the topmost branches. Distantly, at the end of the long aisles of trunks, the day shone like stained-glass windows.
I had to hunt for some time before I found my unit. The place was packed with weary horses and sleeping men. At last I came across them, the horses tethered to ropes stretched between the wheels of the limbers, and the men rolled in blankets, mud-splashed and motionless. Everything was so still that I might have stumbled across a refuge of the dead. There were no fires burning; without being told, I knew that fires were not allowed. We might be storm-troops, but we looked neither triumphant nor terrible.... beneath a stretch of canvas I espied my sleeping-sack. Without more ado, removing my boots and tunic, I tumbled into bed. My last conscious thought was of the gun-position, with Dodo Wood glaring down at it. Would it have been better to have chosen the other position behind the orchard?
THIS is the last day; to-morrow at dawn we attack. We are still lying hidden in the Boves Woods; though other woods to the rear of us have been bombed and harassed, no shell has fallen here as yet. The enemy doubtless watches this wood for the flash of the guns and, having seen none, has not thought it worth his while to waste ammunition upon it. Our foolhardiness in camping directly under his eyes has certainly paid us, for there is scarcely any other place where we would not have suffered casualties.
It’s afternoon; beyond the dim cavernous shadow of these trees the hot August sun is shining. The white chalky hills gleam molten and dazzle one’s eyes with their glare. The valleys, which spread away for miles below us, float tethered in the hazy air. Everything looks tranquil and dreamlike; it is difficult to believe in our own reality and in the reality of our monstrous purpose. Surely we shall wake up to find ourselves safe at home and to laugh at our fantastic imagining that we are soldiers. Yet within a handful of hours all this peacefulness will vanish; the mask of summer quiet will be torn aside and every ridge and rock will belch fire and destruction. The French have dragged their guns into the most daringly inaccessible places; there they lie basking in the fragrance of wild thyme with all the world below them, their muzzles pointed towards the stolen country, waiting for the hour of reckoning to strike.
Our men were advised to rest this afternoon and to get as much sleep as possible; but already the fever of excitement is in their blood. Many of them have gone down behind the hill to bathe and are washing their clothes in the river. One of the amazing spectacles of our place of hiding is the impassive aspect of the eastern slope as compared with the stirring life which goes on on its western side.
All our preparations are completed; there is nothing more that can be done until darkness has gathered. It was on the morning of August 5th that the battery marched into those woods. The following night was spent in carrying up ammunition and sand-bags to the gun-position. We hid them in ditches on either side of the Gentelles-Domart Road and beneath the trees of the orchard. Last night we completed the stocking of the position with ammunition and dragged in the guns. The guns we also hid in the orchard, covering them with branches to break up their outline, so that they might not arouse suspicion in the mind of the enemy. The work was very exhausting and slow on account of the congestion of the traffic. The return from the Derby was nothing to it. It was like being caught in the procession of the Lord Mayor’s Show. In the case of a break-down in front, it was impossible to swing out and get forward. Men stood elbow to elbow and vehicles hub to hub. Limbers and led animals were packed solid, the one stream moving up and the other returning. In order to get the work done every horse and man had to make at least two journeys. The main ammunition-dumps, at which the limbers were loaded, were from two to three miles away; when one had been emptied another had to be located in the darkness. To forward-positions, such as ours, there are only two highways of approach—the road along the ridge and the road along the valley; the Hun keeps the ridge-road continually under harassing fire. If a team was ditched or struck, it meant that every battery for a mile back was held up.
The worst cause of delay was the single bridge across the river. Most of our confusion arose from the fact that the roads were used by both French and British troops, and were controlled by military-police of both nations. If a British Tommy wished to disobey a French traffic-control, he had ample excuse in pretending not to understand his language. The result was that the two streams, coming and going, often got wedged and double-banked. Everyone was working under a nervous tension. His own job was all important to him. It had to be accomplished between dusk and sunrise. If he failed, no matter what the delays, no excuse would be taken by superior officers. The consequence was a wild hustle and scramble, all of which took place under the cover of darkness There were only two nights in which everything had to be done. Our orders were that on the night previous to the attack, which is to-night, the roads were to be left free from wheel-traffic for the infantry and the tanks. The tanks are being brought in at the last moment to go over the top ahead of the attacking troops and to trample down the enemy’s defensive wire. The cutting of the wire is usually done by special artillery-shoots, which of course announce to the enemy’ something boisterous in the near future. But on this occasion we are doing no announcing, so the tanks have to perform the task which formerly fell to the artillery. Their job is to plunge their noses into our barrage and stamp a path through all obstacles that would impede our infantry.
If one survives this war, will it seem more real in retrospect than it does now? Now it seems a wild distorted dream from which we shall awake presently. The memory of these last two nights seem the ramblings of a disordered mind. The very air was acrid with the sweat of men and horses driven beyond their strength. You heard and smelt them floundering in the darkness, but you rarely saw or felt them. They went by you breathing hard and indistinct as shadows. You heard men swearing in English and in French—swearing as passionlessly and mechanically as one who repeats a remembered prayer, and through all the agony without intentional blasphemy recurred the name of Christ. Above our heads we could hear the purring of hostile planes. Every now and then a bomb dropped and the earth rose up to meet it flaming red. For a moment the country for miles round was ensanguined and we saw one another distinctly, frightened horses rearing, riders in steel helmets crouching low in their saddles and men hanging on to the bridles to hold the horses down. Then the flame failed, like a torch stamped out, and we heard nothing but sobbing breath. While on the road the fear was always with us that at any minute our doings might be discovered and the enemy might open fire. If he had, few would have escaped. Quite remarkably he still seems totally ignorant of what is planned. One would have supposed that the roar of so much travel, always springing up at night and dying down with the dawn, would have warned him. We can hear it ourselves, even though we are part of it. It sounds like the muffled beat of many drums, accompanied by the shuffling of an immense crowd. It commences very distantly from miles back as the dusk begins to settle, and swells and swells in volume throughout the night, receding and finally dying into silence as the dawn spreads anal the sun begins to rise. If the enemy knows or suspects, he is waiting to catch us the night before the attack—tonight—when with so many men crowded into one area he can deluge us with death. That may be his game, but according to our information he is still puzzled as to our whereabouts.
Our job to-night will be the heaviest we have tackled. We set out on foot as soon as the day begins to fail, taking with us the gun-crews, the signallers and a fatigue-party with sand-bags, picks and shovels. The work before us consists of digging gun-platforms and throwing up some kind of protection for the gunners, of man-handling the guns into position and getting them on for line, and of sorting out the shells and carrying them to immediately in the rear of the gun-platforms. We have not yet been told the exact hour at which the show opens, but we know that all our preparations for opening fire must be completed by 4 a. m.
The consideration which we have to show for our men fills me with shame. We have to work them as if they were in bondage. If we have to treat them remorselessly, we get no better treatment ourselves. In the army every man in authority is a slave-driver and himself, in turn, a slave. The more one does, the more he may do; in the ranks, where the greatest sacrifices are made, there are few rewards and precious little thanks. One smiles out here when he reads of strikes at home for shorter hours and higher rates of pay. Our pay is a mere pittance, which dees not pretend to be approximately equivalent to the service rendered. Our hours are as long as the authorities who control our destinies like. For the last five nights our men have marched and worked incessantly; during the day they have been able to get no proper rest, what with the constant interruptions caused by stable-parades, guard-mountings, fatigues and pickets. To-night will be the sixth night that they have gone without sleep; at dawn they have to face up to the strain of battle, showing coolness, courage and steadiness of nerve. The standard we demand of ordinary men is too heroic, especially when we treat their sufferings as of no consequence. And yet these perfectly ordinary men, bully-ragged by discipline, disrespected in their persons, handicapped by hardship and abused in their strength, rise unfailingly to heights of nobility whenever the occasion presents itself. What is more, they do it utterly unconsciously, with the careless untheatric grandeur of original men. The army and its steam-roller methods have done much to degrade their external appearance, but they have not been able to destroy the secret glory which made them willing to submit to the rigors and indignities of the scarlet test. They are out here to prove their manhood. They came here to die that the world might be better. The army chooses to regard such courage as natural—so natural that it is almost to be despised; but it cannot make them lose their elation and quiet gladness in their sacrifice.
Suzette———! My thoughts are forever turning to her—she impersonates the fineness for which we die. She moves among us with her patient serving hands and her quiet self-forgetting kindness. After all, our test—the test which we are called upon to face to-morrow—is the test which women have been facing without complaining throughout the ages, giving up their bodies to be smashed, that by the birth of a new life the world may start afresh The battle-fields on which her sisters have fallen lie far and wide, wherever men have trodden and still tread. For her and her sisters the test of scarlet is never ended. Perhaps it is because of this that she follows us and understands.
It’s time for evening-stables; the men are waking up and crawling out from the underbrush with blinking eyes. The chaps who are to go forward with us to fight the guns are already at the cookhouse, getting their supper. They’re laughing and joking as if they hadn’t a care. In about an hour we ought to make a start. The tanks have already commenced to move up; from miles back one can hear the rumble of their progress.
Where shall we be tomorrow? What new march shall we have undertaken? Shall we have broken the line and have sailed off into the blue, pursuing the Hun? Or shall we have finished our last march and be lying very quietly? So long as we break the enemy’s line, what happens to anyone of us does not matter. To lie very quietly would be pleasant; we shall have earned a long, unbroken rest.