“Why, soldiers, whyShould we be melancholy,Whose duty ’tis to die!”
“Why, soldiers, whyShould we be melancholy,Whose duty ’tis to die!”
“Why, soldiers, why
Should we be melancholy,
Whose duty ’tis to die!”
He could not resist saying:
“If you must make that d——d noise, I wish you’d put some sense into it.”
“Sense. I was trying to cheer you up!”
“‘Duty ’tis to die’ is jolly cheering, and quite untrue.”
“Oh, is it? What is our duty then?”
“Our duty is to live if we possibly can. And I mean to do it. It’s the people who keep alive who will win the War.”
“According to that, all one has got to do is to get to Blighty, or preferably the United States, and stay there?”
“Not a bit. You exaggerate so. All I said was, that it is foolish to make it a duty to become a casualty.”
“Dormer, I shall never get you to see things in the proper light. You’re like a lamb trying to leap with joy, and never able to get its hind legs off the ground.”
“This is all rot. What connection is there between lambs and leaping, and our jobs? Mine is to see that various people and things are in the position where they will be wanted, at the momentat which they will have most effect in winning the War. Yours is to see that they can speak and be spoken to when required.”
“Lovely, lovely! What a teacher you would have made.”
“I had a better job.”
“There is no better job, except perhaps the one we are doing. I do admire your descriptions of them. All you want is to put in a personal allegorical note. You might condense the whole thing by saying that you will be Minerva if I will be Mercury. Yep?”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“Yours to see that all is in order. That is a matter of reason. You are the Goddess. I am merely a lesser God. Mercury was God of Communications. I wonder whether they’d let me design a cap badge for signallers. Mercury playing on a buzzer. You may have your Owl!”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I fear I must, the bugle calls, and I must follow, or my watch shows it is time I was looking after my chaps. But you’ve had a brilliant idea, Dormer.”
“I?”
“You’ve had the idea of fighting the War allegorically. Wisdom and Light we are. That would do away with half the horror. So long!”
Then queerly, instead of feeling relieved from an annoyance, Dormer felt more despondent than ever. What could it be? Was the fellow right?Surely not! All that nonsense! And yet—and yet what would not he, Dormer, conscious of his own probity, have given to be conscious instead, of Kavanagh’s lightness of heart? That very probity drove him out in the all-too-late summer dusk to see that everything was going right. Yes, here they were; details of transport, parties to dig, parties to carry, details of services, engineers of all their various grades. Punctual, incredibly docile, honest English in their gestureless manner of getting on with the job. They took care of their mules, look at these beasts pulling as though they were English too (instead of the Argentine crossbreds he knew them to be), not because it was a duty, although it was, and not because the mule was a miracle, like a tank or an aeroplane, but just because it was a mule, that meant, to English soldiers, and to English soldiers only, a fellow-creature, a human being. On they went, reporting to him, and pushing on, sometimes with a hurried question as to map square, or other crucial uncertain detail, sometimes with only a grunt. That endless procession had not been in progress many minutes before, amid the considerable and gently growing shell-fire, there came a bang that seemed to go right through his head. He knew from old trench experience what it was. Nothing but a gun pointing straight at you could make that particular hrrmph.
He set his feet, not a moment too soon. It was a five-nine, the sort the French called “GrandeVitesse.” A whirlwind, a small special whirlwind pointed like an arrow, hit the causeway so that it shook and then went up with a wheel of splintered bits. He was glad he had devised his patent card system. The units were not too close together. He had time to shout to the next, “Come on, you’ve two minutes to get over!” and over they went, as if the Devil were after them, instead of a lump of Krupp steel fitted with lethal chemicals. They were hardly over before the second came, whump! To say that Dormer was frightened, was to fail to describe the matter. He was stiffened all over, his hair stood up, his heart thumped so that it hurt him, his feet were stone cold, but he knew his job and did it.
The next lot to come was a whole field company to do some special duty, and although he hurried them, the tail of the brown column was still high and exposed when the shell came. They ducked and darted into any cover that was available, and he heard his voice, as the voice of some one far away speaking to a public meeting, like a voice on the wireless, saying:
“Come on. Get out of that and come on. If I can stand here, surely you can get out of it.”
They did so. Behind them came a special party to dig in the Meteorological Officer. What a menagerie it was! Every trade, every nation too, Chinese, Zulu, West Indian, Egyptian. He did not blame the Germans who had chalked in blue on the bare back of a Portuguese, whomthey captured and stripped, “The Monkey House is full,” before they drove him back into English lines.
Even truer did Dormer find it when he had to go back for any reason, to Corps H.Q. or beyond. French and Belgians he knew, he had found them in the trenches beside him years before. Portuguese he had become accustomed to, Americans he looked forward to with anticipation. But farther back, he found Chinese, Africans of all descriptions, Indians, East and West, while the French, in addition to their black troops, had Spanish and Italian labour.
It did not please his parochial mind. He felt increasingly that there was something wrong when you had to drag in all these coloured people from every remote quarter of the globe, without even the excuse the French had, that they were “Colonials.” But no one could tell, least of all Dormer himself, whether his feelings were the result of a strong belief in the Colour Bar, or whether it were merely the futility of it all. For in spite of the omnium gatherum of race, tongue and religion, the offensive failed. As a matter of routine, the weather broke on Z day. Within forty-eight hours it was obvious that the affair had stuck. Apart from a feeling of the hand of Fate in it, a sinister feeling of great incomprehensible forces working out his destiny for him, without his having the least power to influence the matter for better, for worse, which was so desolatingto his pre-War habit of mind, where a certain line of unostentatious virtue had always carried a reward that could be reckoned on with the greatest exactitude, there were other disturbing elements in the situation.
Of course the Bosche was ready. He was bound to be ready, couldn’t avoid it. He had immensely thickened his depth of defence, which was now composed not of the old obvious trenches full of men, all of which could be blown to pieces, but of small isolated turrets of ferro-concrete, where two or three machine gunners (and who made better machine gunners than the careful Germans) could hold an army at bay, until dislodged by a direct hit by a shell of six-inch calibre or over, or laboriously smoke-screened and bombed out, at the rate of perhaps a mile a day, on good days. He saw his computation of one hundred and eighty years altogether insufficient for getting to the Rhine. Moreover, for such work this medley of nations was of no good at all. It reminded him of a book by Anatole France he had been compelled by a friend to read, wherein a great conqueror enlisted in his army all the men of his nation, then all the men of the neighbouring nations, then all the savages at the end of the earth, and finally the baboons and other combatant animals. That was all very well. That was just story telling. But it horrified Dormer all the more to see such story telling coming true before his eyes. As coloured-labour companyafter coloured-labour company filed past his tent, guttural and straggling, he was able to pull himself together, and see that it was not true after all.
These people, little better than beasts, uglier in some cases and far more troublesome, were no good. They couldn’t fight. You couldn’t trust them to stand the shelling or to obey an order. Then just as he was feeling rather relieved, he saw the logical result of his conclusion. All the fighting would have to be done by those very men who had volunteered or been conscripted and who had been so generously wasted ever since. They were sticking it, and sticking it well, but this new offensive that had just opened promised to try them pretty high. Would they stick that? Would the day ever come when he would see them a mere mob, like those French black troops he had seen in May? Perhaps peace would be made. Such is the eternal hopefulness of men, that he even hoped, against all previous experience. That quenchless gleam common to all human souls, one of the basic things that makes war so long, and peace, where it is so much less necessary, just that much less attractive, added to work for fifteen hours a day, kept Dormer sane and healthy for weeks, in spite of worsening conditions, and the steady increase in enemy shelling. It was with a return of that uncanny feeling of being haunted that he found himself called up to Divisional Head-quarters. He knew quite well what it was, but he had relied on the difficultyof finding Andrews, on the tremendous strain of this most costly and urgent of all offensives, to keep the matter out of his path, or rather to keep him out of its path, for he had long dropped into the habit of feeling himself as in a nightmare, pursued by something he could not see or even imagine, but which was certainly sinister and personally fatal to him.
When he got to the office his feeling of nightmarishness was rather aggravated than allayed. Colonel Birchin was talking to the A.D.M.S. The fact was that the A.D.M.S. was a new one, patently a Doctor who had been fetched out from Doctoring, had been found capable of organization and had been shoved into the job vice some one else gone higher up. Beside him Colonel Birchin shone, as it were, with the glamour of another world. Dormer had seen him in camp and hut, and château and Mairie for a year and a half, just like that, handsome and sleek, filling his plain but choice khaki with a distinction that no foreign officer could gain from all the blues and reds and yellows and greens and blacks, varnished belts and metal ornaments of other armies. And in that moment of sharpened nerves and unusual power of vision Dormer seemed to see why. Colonel Birchin was not an officer of a national army in the sense that any French, German, Italian or Russian Colonel was. There was nothing of the brute and nothing of the strategian about those nice manners, that soeasily and completely excluded everything that was—what? Unmilitary? Hardly. There was nothing consciously, offensively military about the Colonel, “regular” or professional soldier that he was. He would never have swaggered in Alsace, massacred in Tripoli, Dreyfused in France. He would never have found it necessary. For Colonel Birchin was not a state official. He was an officer of the Watch, the small band of paid soldiers that Stuart and subsequent kings kept to defend themselves from mobs, national armies and other inconvenients. Colonel Birchin might write himself as of “The Herefordshire Regiment,” but it made no difference. His chief, inherited, and most pronounced quality was that he was a courtier. He represented the King. Preferably, at home, of course, where one could live in all that thick middle-class comfort that had ousted the old land-owning seignorial dignity and semi-starvation. But upon occasion, Colonel Birchin could betake himself to Africa, India, and now even to this France, sure that even in this most tedious and unpleasant of wars, he would be properly fed and housed.
So here he was, representing the King even more exactly than before he was seconded from the King’s Own Herefordshire Regiment. He spoke and looked, in fact, rather as if he were the King. Ignorant and unused to the immense transport, the complicated lists of highly scientificequipment, he judged rightly enough that his one safe line was to represent authority, and see that these semi-civilians who did understand such things got on with the War. So he listened in a gentlemanly way to the A.D.M.S. (who wore beard and pince-nez) explaining at great length a difficult alternative as to the siting of Forward Dressing Stations, and contributed:
“You do what is best, Doctor, and we shall back you up!”
Then he turned to Dormer, hunted a moment among the papers on the table, and spoke:
“Look here, Dormer, about this affair of yours?”
It took all Dormer’s training to keep his mouth shut. He saw more clearly than ever how Colonel Birchin and all like him and all he represented, were divesting themselves of any connection with what looked like a nasty, awkward, tedious and probably discreditable business. But he had not grasped it.
“They’ve found Andrews—this—er—gunner, who will be able to give you information. And—look here, Dormer—this affair must be cleared up, do you understand? Andrews is in hospital. You can go by car to Boulogne, but we expect you to get it done this time. Corps are most annoyed. There’s been a nice how-d-y-do with the French.”
Dormer swallowed twice and only said:
“Really, sir.”
“Yes. Car starts at seven.”
Accordingly at seven, the big Vauxhall moved off from that little group of huts, in the meadow that was so regularly bombed every night. Dormer, sitting next to Major Stevenage, did not mind. As well Boulogne as anywhere, while this was going on. All the roads were full of transport, all the railways one long procession of troop and supply trains. It was about as possible to hide it all from the Germans, as to conceal London on a Bank Holiday. In fact it was rather like that. The population was about the same, if the area were rather larger, the effect of the crowd, the surly good humour, the air of eating one’s dinner out of one’s hand was the same.
There was very little sign of any consciousness of the shadow that hung over it all. Hospital trains and ambulances abounded, going in the opposite direction, but no one noticed them, so far as Dormer could see. The type of man who now came up to fight his country’s battles was little changed. The old regular was hardly to be found. The brisk volunteer was almost gone. Instead there had arisen a generation that had grown used to the War, had had it on their minds so long, had been threatened with it so often that it had lost all sharpness of appeal to their intellects.
Right back to St. Omer the crowd stretched. Beyond that it became more specialized. Air Force. Hospitals. Training grounds. Then,across high windy downs, nothing, twenty miles of nothing, until a long hill and the sea.
Up there on those downs where there was no one, never had been anybody ever since they were pushed up from the bed of some antediluvian ocean, and covered with short turf, Dormer had one of his rare respites from the War. Briefer perhaps, but more complete than that which he experienced on his rare leaves, he felt for a while the emancipation from his unwilling thraldom. It was the speed of the car that probably induced the feeling. Anyhow, on the level road that runs from Boulogne to Étaples—the ETAPPS of the Army in France—he lost it. Here there was no escaping the everlasting khaki and transport, that State of War into which he had been induced, and out of which he could see no very great possibility of ever emerging. He had no warning of what was to come, and was already well among the hospitals and dumps that extended for miles beside the railway, when a military policeman held up a warning hand.
“What’s the matter, Corporal?”
“I should not go into Etapps this morning, if I were you, sir.”
“Why not?”
The man shifted his glance. He did not like the job evidently.
“Funny goings-on, there, sir.”
“Goings-on, what does that mean?”
Dormer was capable of quite a good rasp ofthe throat, when required. He had learned it as a Corporal.
“The men are out of ’and, sir!”
“Are they? The A.P.M. will see to that, I suppose.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Drive on!”
Dormer didn’t like it, to tell the truth. But he was so used to bluffing things he didn’t like, and his own feelings, and other people’s awkwardness, that he could not do otherwise than go on. Also he didn’t realize what was on foot. A certain amount of daily work was being done in among the dumps and sidings where the population was of all sorts of non-combatant, Labour Corps units, medical formations, railway people, and others. But from the rise by the Reinforcement Officers’ hut, he began to see. The whole of the great infantry camp on the sandhill—and it was very full, he had heard people say that there were a hundred thousand men there—seemed to have emptied itself into the little town. Here they sauntered and talked, eddying a little round the station and some of the larger estaminets, in motion like an ant-hill, in sound like a hive of bees. The car was soon reduced to a walking pace, there were no police to be seen, and once entered there was no hope of backing out of that crowd, and no use in appearing to stop in it.
“Go slow,” Dormer ordered, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the wooden face of thechauffeur. Nothing to be seen. Either the man didn’t like it, or didn’t feel the necessary initiative to join in it, or perhaps considered himself too superior to these foot-sloggers to wish to be associated with them. Most probably he hadn’t digested the fact that this mob, through which he drove his officer, was Mutiny, the break-up of ordered force, and military cohesion. It might even be the end of the War and victory for the Germans. All this was apparent enough in a moment to Dormer, who was careful to look straight again to his front, unwinking and mute, until, with a beating heart, he saw that they were clear of the jam in the Market Place, and well down the little street that led to the bridge across which were the farther hospitals, and various sundry Base Offices, in the former of which he was to find Andrews. Now, therefore, he did permit himself to light a cigarette. But not a word did he say to his chauffeur. Now that it was behind him he had the detachment to reflect that it was a good-humoured crowd. He had heard a gibe or so that might have been meant for him or no, but in the main, not being hustled, all those tens of thousands that had broken camp, chased the police off the streets, and committed what depredations he did not know, were peaceful enough, much too numerous and leaderless to make any cohesive threat to an isolated officer, not of their own unit, and therefore not an object of any special hatred, any more than of any specialdevotion, just a member of another class in the hierarchy, uninteresting to simple minds, in which he caused no immediate commotion.
Here, on the road that ran through the woods to Paris Plage, there were little knots of men, strolling or lying on the grass. They became fewer and fewer. By the time he arrived at the palace, mobilized as a hospital, for which he was bound, there remained no sign of the tumult. Here, as on the other flank, by the Boulogne road, Medical and Base Units functioned unmoved. But the news had been brought by Supply and Signal services and the effect of it was most curious.
Dormer had to pass through the official routine, had to be announced, had to have search made for young Andrews, and finally was conducted to a bed in Ward C., on which was indicated Captain Andrews, R.G.A. Dormer of course wanted to begin at once upon his mission, but the other, a curly-haired boy, whose tan had given place to a patchy white under loss of blood from a nasty shrapnel wound in the leg, that kept on turning septic, had to be “scraped” or “looked at,” each of these meaning the operation table, and was only now gradually healing, would not let him.
Once away from the theatre and the knife, Andrews, like any other healthy youngster, soon accumulated any amount of animal spirit, lying there in bed, adored by the nursing sisters, admired by the men orderlies. He was not goingto listen to Dormer’s serious questions. He began:
“Cheerio! Sit on the next bed, there’s no corpse in it, they’ve just taken it away. Anyhow, it isn’t catching. Have a cigarette, do for God’s sake. They keep on giving me the darned things, and they all end in smoke!”
“Sorry you got knocked out.”
“Only fair. Knocked out heaps of Fritzes. I gave ’em what for, and they gave me some back. I say, have you just come from the town?”
“I have just motored through.”
“Is it true that our chaps have broke loose?”
“There’s a certain amount of disorder, but no violence that I could see.”
Dormer was conscious of heads being popped up in all the surrounding beds. So that was how it took them! Of course, they were bored stiff.
“How topping. Is it true that they’ve killed all the red-caps?”
“I didn’t see any signs of it.”
“Cleared up the remains had they? Picked the bones, or fallen in proper burying parties.”
“I don’t think there was anything of that sort.”
“Oh, come now, first we heard they had set on a police-corporal that had shot a Jock.”
“What did he do that for?”
“Dunno. It isn’t the close season for Jocks, anyhow. Then it was ten police-corporals. The last rumour was that they’d stoned the A.P.M. to death——”
And so it went on. Lunch-time came. A Doctor Major, impressed by Dormer’s credentials, invited him into the Mess, and asked a lot of questions about the front, the offensive, and the state of Étaples. Dormer always liked those medical messes. It seemed so much more worth while to mend up people’s limbs, rather than to smash them to bits. The Doctors had their professional “side” no doubt, but they had a right to it.
After lunch Dormer made his way back to Ward C. He was met by a hush, and by a little procession. The Sergeant-major came first and after him bearers with a stretcher covered by the Union Jack. The hush in the ward was ominous. They were all so close to what had happened. It was not like the open field where the casualty is a casualty and the living man a different thing. Here the dead were only different in degree, not in kind. They were worse “cases”—the worst, that was all. So there were no high spirits after lunch. They had gibed about Death in the morning, but Death had come and they had ceased to gibe. In the silence, Dormer felt awkward, did not know how to begin. When he had made up his mind that he must, he looked up and found Andrews was asleep. So the day wore on to tea-time, and after tea he was not wanted in the ward, and was wanted in the Mess. He himself was not hurrying to return to any regularly bombed hut near Poperinghe. The CommandingOfficer was even more emphatic. Étaples was not safe. Dormer let it go at that, and got a good game of bridge.
In the morning he found young Andrews as young as ever and got down to his job at once:
“Do you remember joining 469 T.M.B.?”
“Yes, sh’d think I do.”
“Do you remember the man you had as servant while you were with them?”
“I do. Topping feller. Gad, I was sorry when I had to leave him behind. Of course, I dropped him when I went to hospital. Never was so done!”
At last!
“You couldn’t give me his name and number, I suppose?”
“I must have got a note of it somewhere. I say, what’s all this about? Do you want to get hold of him?”
“I do. He’s wanted, over a question of damage in billets. They’ve sent me to find him out.”
“Then I’m damned if I’ll tell you. Because he was a topping chap!” rejoined Andrews, laughing.
“You’d better tell me, I think. The matter has gone rather high up, and it might be awkward if I had to report that the information was refused.”
“Lord, you aren’t going to make a Court of Inquiry affair of it, are you?”
“It may come to that, and they’ve got hold of your name.”
“Gee whizz! I don’t like landing the chap. I may not have got any particulars of him, now, my things have been so messed about.”
“Well, look and see!”
“All right.”
Andrews fumbled out from the night-table beside his bed, the usual bedside collection. Letters in female handwriting, some young, some old—from one or more sweethearts and a mother, thought Dormer. Paper-covered novels. The sort (English) that didn’t make you think. The sort (French) that make you feel, if you were clever at the language. Cigarettes, bills. One or two letters from brother officers.
“Blast. It’s in my Field Note Book, in my valise, in store here. I shall have to send to have it got out. Wait half a mo’ and I’ll get an orderly.”
As they waited, he went on:
“What’s he wanted for? Some dam’ Frenchman going to crime him for stealing hop-poles?”
“Something of that sort. You wouldn’t remember it, it happened before you joined the Battery.”
“Then it jolly well wasn’t my man Watson. He’d only just come up from Base!”
“Come, the man was of middle size and ordinary to look at, and had been servant to an officer of the name of Fairfield, who was killed!”
“Oh, that chap. I know who you mean now. I don’t call him my servant. I only had him for a day or two. His name was Smith, as far as I can recollect. We were in the line, and I never got his number. He disappeared, may have been wounded, or gone sick of course, we were strafed to Hell, as usual. I should have got rid of him in any case. He was a grouser!”
“Didn’t like the War?”
“I should say not.”
Hopeless, of course. When Andrews saw Dormer rise and close his notebook, he apologized:
“Beastly sorry. Afraid I’m no good.”
“That’s all right. I don’t want to find the fellow, personally. It’s simply my job.”
“Fair wear and tear, so to speak?”
“Yes. Good morning.”
“Don’t go—I say, don’t. You’re just getting interesting!” Heads popped up in the surrounding beds. “Do tell us what it’s all about.”
“Merely a matter of damage in billets as I said.”
“Go on. There’s always damage in billets. You must ha’ done heaps, haven’t you? I have. There’s something more in it than that.”
“Well, there is. Perhaps it will be a lesson to you not to go too far with other people’s property.”
“I say, don’t get stuffy. What did the feller do?”
“He broke into a shrine.”
“I say, that’s a bit thick.”
“It was!”
“What did he do it for? Firewood?”
“No. He wanted to shelter a couple of mules!”
“Good man. Don’t blame him!”
“No!”
“But they can’t crime him for a thing like that?”
“They will if they can catch him.”
“Go on!”
“It didn’t stop at that.” Once more it seemed to Dormer that a good lesson might do no harm to the light-headed youth that Andrews represented, and several of whom were listening, anxiously from that corner of the ward.
“Did G.H.Q. take it up?”
“Yes. They had to. The Mayor of the village came to make an official inquiry and the Battery made fun of him.”
“Lumme! I bet they did!”
“They should not have done so. That made the French authorities take it up. Goodness knows where it will end!”
“End in our fighting the French,” said some one.
Dormer felt that it was high time to put his foot down. “You may be privileged to talk like that while you’re in hospital. But I don’t recommend you to do so outside. You ought to have thesense to know that we don’t want to fight anyone, we most certainly don’t want to fight some one else after Germans. In any case, we don’t want to do the fighting in England!”
There was a dead silence after he had spoken, and he rose, feeling that he had impressed them. He stumped out of the ward without another word, went to the Mess, rang and demanded his car. The Orderly Officer would have liked to detain him, insisted on the possible state of Étaples, but he would not hear of it. In those few hours he had had enough and more than enough of the Base—the place where people talked while others Did—the place where the pulse of the War beat so feebly. He felt he would go mad if he stayed there, without sufficient occupation for his mind. His car appeared and he soon left the palace and the birchwoods and was rattling over the bridge into Étaples. “Now for it!” he thought. But no policeman warned him off this time. He soon saw why. The streets had resumed their normal appearance. He might have known. That fancy of his, about the Headless Man, came back to him with its true meaning. What could they do, all those “Other Ranks,” as they were designated? Just meander about, fight the police, perhaps. But they had no organization, no means of rationing or transport. Of course, they had had to go back to their respective camps with their tails between their legs in order to get fed.
There was nothing to show for the whole business but a few panes of broken glass and some splintered palings. By the time he got to St. Omer and stopped for lunch, no one seemed to have heard of it. By tea-time, he was back at Divisional H.Q. And none too soon. A fresh attack was to be made the following day. He went straight up to the canal bank, where Kavanagh was as busy as ever, and dropped into his work where he had left it. There was just the same thing to do, only more of it. A desperate race against time was going on. It was evident enough that this most enormously costly of all offensives must get through before November finally rendered fighting impossible. There was still some faint chance of a week or two of fair weather in October. Fresh Corps were massed and flung into the struggle. Engineers, Labour Corps, anyone who could throw a bomb or fire a rifle must do so. What had been roads of stonepavé, had been so blown about with shell-fire that they were a honeycomb of gaping holes, repaired with planks. More and more searching were the barrages, denser the air fighting. Progress there undoubtedly was, but progress enough?
Through the sleepless nights and desperate days that followed, Dormer’s feelings toward Kavanagh were considerably modified. The fellow still talked, but Dormer was less sorry to hear him. He even recited, and Dormer got intothe way of listening. They were now in an “Elephant” hut. No dug-out was possible in that sector, where eighteen inches below the surface you came to water. No tent could be set, even had they wished for one. Their frail house was covered with sandbags, of a sufficient thickness to keep off shrapnel, and presumably they were too insignificant to be the object of a direct hit, but in order to leave nothing to chance they had had the place covered with camouflage netting. Outside lay mile after mile of water-logged runnels that had been trenches, on the smashed and slippery parapets of which one staggered to some bit of roadway that was kept in repair at gigantic cost in lives and materials, guided by the lines of wire that either side had put up with such difficulty, and which were all now entirely useless, a mere hindrance to free movement. But they were “in” for a long spell, and could not get away—did not want to, they were less bombed here than farther back. Rations reached them, that was as much as they had time to care about. Otherwise, the night was well filled for the one with counting off the parties that filed past into this or that attack, for the other in picking up those signal lines that had been smashed by shell-fire during the day, and replacing them.
As that endless procession went past him once more, Dormer felt that he now knew of what its component parts were thinking. Australians, Canadians, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, English, theywere thinking of nothing in particular. Like the mules that went with them, they went on because they couldn’t stop. Food and sleep each day was the goal. To stop would mean less food and sleep, mules and men knew that much, without use of the reasoning faculty. It had become an instinct. All the brilliant casuistry that had induced men to enlist was forgotten, useless, superseded. Even English soldiers were conscripts now, the War had won, had overcome any and every rival consideration, had made itself paramount, had become the end and the means as well.
A man like Dormer, accustomed to an ordered and reasoned existence, who could have explained his every act up to August, 1914, by some good and solid reason, was as helpless as any. Stop the War? You wanted to go back half a century and alter all the political and business cliques in which it had been hatching. To alter those you wanted to be able to alter the whole structure of society in European countries, which kept those cliques in power, was obliged to have recourse to them, to get itself governed and financed. To do that you wanted to change Human Nature. Here Dormer’s imagination stopped dead. He was no revolutionary. No one was farther than he from being one. He only hated Waste. He had been brought up and trained to business, in an atmosphere of methodical neatness, of carefully foreseen and forestalled risks. Rather than haverecourse to revolution he would go on fighting the Bosche. It was so much more real.
Somewhere about the point at which he reached this conclusion, he heard, among the noise of the sporadic bombardment, Kavanagh’s voice:
“‘Now that we’ve pledged each eye of blueAnd every maiden fair and true,And our green Island Home, to youThe Ocean’s wave adorning,Let’s give one hip, hip, hip hurrah!And drink e’en to the coming day,When squadron, square,We’ll all be there,To meet the French in the morning!’
“‘Now that we’ve pledged each eye of blueAnd every maiden fair and true,And our green Island Home, to youThe Ocean’s wave adorning,Let’s give one hip, hip, hip hurrah!And drink e’en to the coming day,When squadron, square,We’ll all be there,To meet the French in the morning!’
“‘Now that we’ve pledged each eye of blue
And every maiden fair and true,
And our green Island Home, to you
The Ocean’s wave adorning,
Let’s give one hip, hip, hip hurrah!
And drink e’en to the coming day,
When squadron, square,
We’ll all be there,
To meet the French in the morning!’
That’s the stuff to give the troops, Dormer!”
But Dormer, although cheered, was not going to admit it. “You’d better go and sing it to the Seventy-Worst. They go in at dawn!”
“Good luck to them. Listen to this:
“‘May his bright laurels never fadeWho leads our fighting Fifth Brigade,These lads so true in heart and blade,And famed for danger scorning;So join me in one hip hurrah!And drink e’en to the coming day,When squadron, square,We’ll all be there,To meet the French in the morning!’
“‘May his bright laurels never fadeWho leads our fighting Fifth Brigade,These lads so true in heart and blade,And famed for danger scorning;So join me in one hip hurrah!And drink e’en to the coming day,When squadron, square,We’ll all be there,To meet the French in the morning!’
“‘May his bright laurels never fade
Who leads our fighting Fifth Brigade,
These lads so true in heart and blade,
And famed for danger scorning;
So join me in one hip hurrah!
And drink e’en to the coming day,
When squadron, square,
We’ll all be there,
To meet the French in the morning!’
How’s that for local colour. Is there a Fifth Brigade in to-morrow’s show? They’d like that.”
“I bet they wouldn’t. Anyhow, it’s silly to repeat things against the French.”
“Man, it’s a hundred years old.”
“Like my uncle’s brandy.”
“You and your uncle!”
“I had an uncle once who had some brandy. It was called ‘Napoleon,’ and was supposed to date from 1815. When he opened it, it was gone!”
“There you are. That’s your materialism. But you can sing a song a hundred years old and find it’s not gone!”
“It’s not a bad song. Only silly!”
“Well, try something older:
“‘We beSoldiers three,Lately come from the Low-Countree,Pardonnez moi, je vous en prie;We beSoldiers three.’
“‘We beSoldiers three,Lately come from the Low-Countree,Pardonnez moi, je vous en prie;We beSoldiers three.’
“‘We be
Soldiers three,
Lately come from the Low-Countree,
Pardonnez moi, je vous en prie;
We be
Soldiers three.’
That’s nearer three hundred years old. That’s what fellows used to sing coming back from Ypres in those days!”
“You talk as if we’d always been in and out of that mangey hole.”
They both leaned on their elbows and gazed out of the tiny aperture, under the sacking, away over the sea-like ridges of pulverized mud, into the autumn evening. Between the rain-clouds, torn and shredded as if by the shell-fire, watery gleamswere pouring, as though the heavens were wounded and bled. They spilled all over the jagged stonework of that little old medieval walled town, compact within its ramparts, for the third time in its history garrisoned by an English army. Kavanagh told him of it, but Dormer remained unimpressed. The history of the world that mattered began after the battle of Waterloo, with Commerce and Banking, Railway and Telegraph, the Education and Ballot Acts. Previous events were all very well, as scenery for Shakespeare’s plays or Wagner’s Operas. But otherwise, negligible. Yet the interlude did him good. He felt he had brought Kavanagh up short, in an argument, and he went to his night’s work with a lighter heart, and a strengthened confidence in himself.
Of course, a few weeks later, the offensive was over, with the results he had foreseen, and with another result he was also not alone in foreseeing. Once back in rest, near Watten, he heard people talking in this strain, in G. office:
“I suppose, sir, we shall go on fighting next year?”
“Um—I suppose we shall. But perhaps some arrangement may be come to, first. There’s been a good deal of talk about Peace!”
That was the mood of Divisional Head-quarters. A growing scepticism as to the continuance of the War. At the moment, Dormer missed the motive at the back of it. Away fromH.Q. while the Division was in action, he had lost a good deal of ominous news. The talk about the transference of German Divisions from one front to another was old talk. He had heard it for years. He did not at the moment grasp that it had now a new significance. Then something happened that put everything else out of his head. He was not feeling too well, though he had nothing to complain of worse than the usual effects of damp and loss of sleep. Colonel Birchin had got himself transferred to a better appointment, and his place was taken by a much younger officer, glad to take it as a “step” up from a dangerous and difficult staff-captaincy. They had been out at rest less than a week and Dormer had assumed as a matter of course that he would be put in charge of organized sports for the winter, as usual. But he was only just becoming sensible of the change that had come over H.Q. Colonel Birchin used to have a certain pre-War regular soldier’s stiffness and want of imagination (which Dormer had privately deplored), but he had kept the Q. office well in hand. This new man, Vinyolles, very amicable and pleasant, and much nearer to Dormer’s new army view of the War (he was in fact younger than Dormer, and than most of the clerical N.C.O.’s in the office), had nothing like the standoff power of his predecessor. Also, the office, like everything else, had grown, half a dozen odd-job officers were now attached, and without wearingred, sat and worked with Dormer. So that when Dormer went to show his Football Competition Time Table and his schedule for use of the Boxing Stadium, he found that he had to explain how these things were usually done. Colonel Vinyolles had no idea. Dormer ought to have been warned. But his head was not working at its very best. He had a temperature, he thought, and wanted to go and lie down at his billet for a bit and take some aconite, a remedy he had carried with him throughout the War. Colonel Vinyolles was quite nice about the Sports, and just as Dormer was turning to go, said to him:
“Perhaps you can help me in this matter. I see your name occurs in the correspondence!”
Of course, he might have known. It was the familiardossier, as the French called it, the sheaf of papers, clipped together, at the bottom the original blue Questionnaire form that old Jerome Vanderlynden had signed. At the top a fresh layer of official correspondence, “Passed to you please, for necessary action.” “This does not appear to concern this office.” “Kindly refer to A.Q.M.G.’s minute dated July 1916.” And so on. Dormer knew quite a lot of it by heart and the remainder he could have “reconstructed” with no difficulty. The only fresh thing that had happened was a minute from the new chief of the French Mission enclosing a cutting from a newspaper—a French newspaper of all conceivable rags—from which it appeared that somedeputy or other had “interpellated” a minister about the matter, asked a question in the “House” would be the English of it, Dormer supposed.
“What am I to tell the Mission?” Colonel Vinyolles was asking.
Dormer was not a violent man by habit, but he felt that he was getting to his limit with this affair. He thought a moment, wanting to say: “Tell them to go to the Devil!” but held it in reserve, and substituted: “Tell them the matter has attention!”
“Thanks very much!”
Dormer went and rested.
The following day he felt no better and did not do much. He had the Sports well in hand, and there was no movement of troops. The day following that he felt queerer than ever, and jibbed at his breakfast. He went along to see the D.A.D.M.S., always a friend of his, who put a thermometer under his tongue, looked at it, shook it, looked at Dormer, gave him an aspirin, and advised him to go and lie down for a bit. On his way to his billet Dormer put his head into Q. office to tell the Sergeant-major where he was to be found if wanted. He was called by Colonel Vinyolles from the farther room. It was again full of people he considered (as rank counted for less than experience) to be his juniors. He could see something was “up.” They were all highly amused except Vinyolles.
“I say, Dormer, I consider you let me down on this.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Trouble! I’ve got a nice chit back, in reply to my saying ‘the matter has attention.’ They say that any further delay is ‘inadmissible’ and that they will be obliged to carry the matter higher.”
“Let ’em!”
“Oh, that won’t do at all. The General has seen this, and he wants to know what you mean by it.”
“He ought to know by this time!”
“Captain Dormer!”
Of course he was wrong, but he felt rotten. It wasn’t Vinyolles’ fault. He pulled himself together.
“Sorry, sir. I mean that the case has been going on for nearly two years, and has certainly not been neglected. I think every one who counts is familiar with it.”
He meant it for a snub for some of those chaps who were sitting there grinning. He saw his mistake in a moment. Vinyolles was as new as any of them, and naturally replied: “I’m afraid I have no knowledge of it. Perhaps you will enlighten me?”
“It must have been June, 1916, when we first received the claim. The late A.P.M., Major Stevenage, took it up as a matter of discipline, but on investigation considered that it was rathera case for compensation, as damage in billets. The French Mission insisted that an arrest must be made, and I have made every possible effort to trace the soldier responsible. But formations change so quickly, during offensives especially, that it is impossible.”
“I see. What exactly did he do, to cause such a rumpus?”
At the prospect of having to retell the whole story, Dormer got an impression that something was after him, exactly like the feeling of trying to get cover in a barrage, and wondering which moment would be the last. He put his hand to his head and found some one had pushed a chair against his knees. He sat down vaguely conscious of the D.A.D.M.S. standing near by.
“An officer of 469 T.M.B. was wounded and his servant was given two mules, sick or wounded, to lead. He got to the billet mentioned and seems to have taken a dislike to the horse-lines. He found one of those little memorial chapels that you often see, in the corner of the pasture, and knocked in the front of it to shelter the beasts. The farmer didn’t like it and sent for the Mayor to make aprocès-verbal. By the time the Mayor got there, the Battery was on the move again. It was about the time of one of those awkward little shows the Bosche put up to contain us during Verdun. The Battery had been badly knocked about, and the men were excited and made some sort of a scene! The Mayor told his Deputy andhis Deputy told some one at French G.H.Q. It all keeps going round in my head. I don’t want to find the chap who did it. He’s no worse than you or I. He was just making the best of the War, and I don’t blame him. I blame it. You might as well crime the whole British Army.”
What had he said? He fancied he had given the facts concisely, but was not sure of himself, his head felt so funny, and he was aware that people—he could no longer be sure who they were—Q. office seemed crowded—were tittering!—Some one else was talking now, but he was not interested. He rested his head on his hand and heard Vinyolles: “Well, Dormer, you go along to your billet, and we’ll see what can be done!”
He got up and walked out. The D.A.D.M.S. was at his elbow, saying to him:
“Get into this ambulance, I’ll run you across!” but he never got to his billet. He got into a train. He did not take much notice, but refused the stuff they wanted him to eat. After that he must have gone to sleep, but woke up, under a starlit sky, with an unmistakable smell of the sea. They were lifting him under a canvas roof. Now, from the motion, he perceived he was at sea, but it did not seem greatly to matter. He was out of it, he had cut the whole disgusting show. He had done his bit, now let some one else take a turn.
Dormer had not been home on leave since earlyspring, and the leave that he got for convalescence gave him not only some idea of the vast changes going on in England, while he, in France, had been engaged in the same old War, but a notion of changes that had gone on in that old War without his having perceived them. He was let loose from Hospital just before Christmas, at that unfortunate period when the public at home were still feeling the reaction from the Bell-ringing of Cambrai, were just learning the lengths to which the collapse of Russia had gone and were to be confronted with the probable repercussion of that collapse upon the prospects of the campaign in the West. There was no escaping these conclusions because his own home circumstances had so changed as to throw him back completely on himself. His father having died while he was in France, his mother had taken a post under one of the semi-official War organizations that abounded. The old home in which he had grown up had been dispersed, and he found his only near relative in his native town was his sister, a teacher by profession, who had moved the remnants of the old furniture and his and her own small belongings to a new house in one of the high, healthy suburbs that surrounded the old town. She was, however, busy all day, and he fell into the habit, so natural to anyone who has lived in a Mess for years, of dropping in at one of the better-class bars, before lunch, for anapéritif, and a glance at the papers. Here hewould also pickup some one for a round of golf, which would keep him employed until tea-time, for he could not rid himself of the War-time habit of looking upon each day as something to be got through somehow, in the hopes that the morrow might be better.
These ante-prandial excursions were by far the closest contact he had had with anything like a normal, representative selection of his fellow-countrymen, since they and he had become so vitally altered from the easy-going, sport-loving England of pre-War, and he had to readjust his conception considerably. He soon grasped that there was a lot of money being made, and a lot of khaki being worn as a cover for that process. There was plenty of energy, a good deal of fairly stubborn intention to go on and win, but a clear enough understanding that the War was not going to be won in the trenches. And when he had got over some little spite at this, his level habit of mind obliged him to confess that there was a good deal in it. There were many signs that those who held that view were right.
Sipping his drink, smoking and keeping his nose carefully in his newspaper, in those bars lighted by electric light, in the middle of the dark Christmas days, he listened and reflected. The offensives he had seen? How had they all ended? How did he say himself they always must end? Exactly as these chaps had made up their minds! Would he not see if there did notremain some relative who could get him one of these jobs at home, connected with supplying some one else with munitions? No, he would not. He understood and agreed with the point of view, but some very old loyalty in him would keep him in France, close up to the guns, that was the place for him. He had no illusions as to that to which he was returning. He knew that he had never been appointed to Divisional Staff, had merely been attached. There was no “establishment” for him, and directly he had been sent down as sick, his place had been filled, some one else was doing “head housemaid” as he had been called, to young Vinyolles, and he, Dormer, would go shortly to the depôt of his regiment, from thence to reinforcement camp, and thus would be posted to any odd battalion that happened to want him. The prospect did not worry him so much as might have been supposed. He felt himself pretty adept at wangling his way along, and scrounging what he wanted, having had a fine first-hand experience of how the machinery worked. He did not want to go into the next offensive, it was true, but neither did he want the sort of job he had had, and even less did he want to be at Base, or in England. Boredom he feared almost as much as physical danger. Accustomed to having his day well filled, if he must go to War he wanted to be doing something, not nothing, which was apparently a soldier’s usual occupation. But he did not feel his participation in the nextoffensive very imminent. He had heard them all talking about “Not fighting any more,” and now here was Russia out of it and America not yet in, and Peace might be patched up.
The most striking thing therefore that he learned was this new idea of the Bosche taking the initiative, and attacking again. A new army officer, his knowledge of the Western Front dated from Loos, and was of allied offensives only. He had never seen the earlier battles of Ypres, the retreat from Mons was just so much history to him. When he heard heated arguments as to which particular point the Bosche would select for their offensive, in France, or (so nervous were these people at home) in England even, he was astonished, and then incredulous. The level balance of his mind saved him. He had no superfluous imagination. He had never seen a German offensive, didn’t want to, and therefore didn’t think he would. As usual, the bar-parlour oracles knew all about it, gave chapter and verse, could tick off on their fingers how many German Divisions could be spared from the Eastern Front. He had heard it all before. He remembered how nearly the cavalry got through after Vimy, how Moorslede Ridge was to give us command of the country up to Courtrai, how Palestine or Mespot were to open an offensive right in the Bosche rear, not to mention all the things these Russians had always been said to be going to do. This might be another of what theFrench so well called “Canards”—Wild Ducks. He would wait and see.
He was impressed in a different way by the accounts that now began to filter through, of what had been happening in Russia. Officers shot, and regiments giving their own views on the campaign. That was what happened when the Headless Man got loose! No doubt the Russians, from all he had heard, had suffered most, so far as individual human suffering went. And then, Russians were, to him, one of these over-brainy people. Had anyone acquainted with his ruminations taxed him to say if English people were under-brainy, he would have said no, not necessarily, but brainy in a different way. Left to himself he felt that all the opinions he had ever formed of the Russians were justified. Look at their Music. Some of it was pretty good, he admitted, but it was—awkward—beyond the reach of amateurs, in the main. This appeared to him, quite sincerely, to be a grave defect. He was conscious—more, he was proud—of being an amateur soldier, and knowing himself to be modest, he did not fear any comparison between the actual results obtained by English amateurs like himself, and the far more largely professional armies of other countries. And now these over-brainy ones had gone and done it. He knew as well as anyone the hardships and dangers of soldiering, had experienced them, shared them with the ranks, in the trenches.Why even in this beastly Vanderlynden affair, it would have puzzled him to say if he were more sorry than glad that the private soldier had never been brought to Justice. But English—and even Frenchmen—as he had seen with his own eyes, if they mutinied, got over it, and went on. It was only people like the Russians that went and pushed things to their logical conclusion.
He had a hatred of that, being subconsciously aware that the logical conclusion of Life is Death. Naturally, from his upbringing and mental outlook, he had no sympathy with the alleged objects and achievements of the Russian Revolution. He could not see what anyone wanted with a new social order, and as for the domination of Europe by the Proletariat, if he understood it, he was all against it in principle. He was against it because it was Domination. That was precisely the thing that had made him feel increasingly antagonistic to Germany and German ideas. It had begun long ago, during brief continental holidays. He had met Germans on trains and steamers, in hotels and on excursions. He had grudged them their efficient way of sight-seeing, feeding and everything else. But he had grudged them most their size and their way of getting there first. If it had not been for that, he had a good deal more sympathy with them, in most ways, than with the French. Subsequently he had found Germans infringing on the business of his native town, selling cheaper, better-tanned hides thanits tanners, more scientifically compounded manures than its merchants. Then they invaded politics and became a scare at election times. And after the false start of 1911, in 1914 they had finally kicked over the tea-table of the old quiet comfortable life. He did not argue about this. He had felt it simply, truly, directly. Under all the hot-air patriotism and real self-sacrifice of August, 1914, it had been this basic instinct which had made him and all his sort enlist. The Germans had asked for it, and they should darn-well have it. If they didn’t they would go on asking. They were after Domination.
That craze had started something that would be difficult now to stop. Dormer saw very well that other people besides Russians might find grievances and the same wrong-headed way of venting them. The Russians would probably go on with their propaganda, all over the world. The Germans, on the other hand, had probably set the Japanese off. And so we should go on, all the aristocratic classes calling for Domination by their sort, all the ultra-brainy democracies calling for their particular brand.
So when he was passed as fit and told to rejoin the depôt of his regiment, at a seaport town, he went without any panic fear of the future, German or otherwise. He went with a deep conviction that whatever happened, life had been cheapened and vulgarized. It was not by any means meretheory. He had seen what sort of a home he might hope to make after the Peace, with his mother or sisters, or if, conceivably, he married. Not a bad home, his job would always be there, and certain remnants of that bourgeois comfort that had grown up in all the old quiet streets of the provincial towns of England during the nineteenth century, privileged, aloof from the troubles of the “continent,” self-contained. But remnants only, not nearly enough. He and all his sort had been let down several pegs in the social scale. Without any narrow spite, or personal grievance, he felt that the Germans had caused this upset and the Russians had put the finishing stroke to it, made it permanent, as it were. He happened to be opposite the Germans in the particular encounter that was not yet ended, and he was able to draw upon an almost inexhaustible supply of obstinate ill-will.
He went to the depôt in its huts on a sandy estuary. It was commanded by a Major of the usual type, and no one knew better than Dormer how to keep on the right side of such a one. He was, of course, a Godsend to the Major. He had all the practical experience and none of the fussiness. He merely wanted the job finished. That suited the Major exactly, who didn’t want it to finish in a hurry, but wanted even less to have to find ideas for training troops. Dormer, with his two and a half years in France, was the very man. He looked trustworthy. He was setto instructing the raw material, of which the camp was full. He disliked it intensely, but, as always, took what was given him in his sober fashion and did his limited best with it. He was amazed to find such reserves of men still untouched. His own recollections of early 1915 were of camps filled with an eager volunteer crowd of all ages and conditions, who were astounded when it was suggested to them that certain of them ought to take a commission. Now he found that his sort went a different way, direct to O.T.C. or Cadet Corps. There was a permanence about the camp staff that he had never seen in the old days. But most of all he was impressed with the worn appearance of the camp. Thousand after thousand had passed through it, been drafted overseas, and disappeared. Thousand after thousand had followed. In the town and at the railway, there were no longer smiles and encouragement. People had got painfully used to soldiers, and from treating them as heroes, and then as an unavoidable, and profitable incident, had come to regard them chiefly as a nuisance. He forgot how he had wondered if the men would stand it, he forgot how often he had heard the possibility of an early Peace discussed. He began to wonder now if people at home would stand it—the lightless winter nights, the summer full of bombing, the growing scarcity of comforts, the queues for this, that, and the other, the pinch that every gradually depletedfamily was beginning to feel, as one after another of its members had to go. He had been so long out of all this, up against the actual warfare, glad enough of small privileges and of the experience that enabled him to avoid the more onerous duties, the worst sorts of want, that he only now began to realize what he had never grasped, in his few short leaves, that there was still quite a considerable, probably the greater portion of the nation, who did not share his view of the necessity of going on. Another avenue of speculation was opened to him. What if all the people at home made Peace behind the backs of the Armies. Yet, being Dormer, he did not submit to this home-grown philosophy. He just went on and did the next thing that his hand found to do.
Of one thing he became pretty certain. All these people at home had “got the wind up.” He didn’t know which were the worst, the lower middle class, who were beginning to fear invasion, as a form of damage to their shops and houses. He thought of those ten departments of France that were either occupied by, or shot over, by the Germans. Or again the newspapers, with their scare-lines, their everlasting attempt to bring off this or that political coup. Or again the people in power, who were keeping this enormous number of troops in England, presumably to defend the beaches of the island from an armed landing. He had become during thethree years that had contained for him an education that he could not otherwise have got in thirty, a more instructed person.
An offensive was an offensive, could be nothing more or less. Every offensive had been a failure except for some local or temporary object, and in his opinion, always must be a failure. The idea of an offensive conducted across a hundred leagues of sea made him smile. It was hard enough to get a mile forward on dry land, but fancy the job of maintaining communications across the water! He attended enough drills to fill in the time, organized the football of the Brigade to his liking and let it go at that. At moments he was tempted to apply to be sent to France, at others to try and join one of these Eastern expeditions, Salonika, Palestine or Mespot. But the certainty of being more bored and of being farther than ever from the only life he cared for, made him hesitate. He hesitated for two long months.
Then on the 21st March he was ordered by telegram to proceed to France. He felt, if anything, a not unpleasant thrill. With all his care, he had not been able to dodge boredom altogether. The depôt camp had also been much too near the scenes of his pre-War life. He had gone home, as a matter of duty, for several week-ends and had always returned finely exasperated, it was so near to and yet so far from home as he had pictured it, in his dreams. Now, here was an end to this Peace-time soldiering. The news, accordingto the papers, seemed pretty bad, but he remembered so well the awful scurry there was for reinforcements on the morning that the nature of the Second Battle of Ypres became known. This could not be so desperate as that was. Practically the whole of the rank and file in the depôt were under orders. He took jolly good care not to get saddled with a draft, and spent the night in London. People were in a rare stew there. He had a bath and a good dinner and left it all behind. He took a little more note of the traffic at the port of embarkation. On the other side, he found lorries waiting and went jolting and jamming away up to Frecourt, forty miles. He rather approved. It looked as though our people were waking up.
At Corps reinforcement camp—a new dodge evidently—he got posted to a North Country battalion; and proceeded to try and find their whereabouts. He was told that they were going to Bray, but it took him some time to understand that they were falling back on that place. When, by chance, he hit upon the Division to which they belonged, they were on the road, looking very small, but intact and singing. He soon found plenty to do, for he grasped that practically the whole battalion was composed of reinforcements, and had only been together two or three days. They set to work at once to strengthen some half-completed entrenchments, but after two days were moved back again.
It was during those two days that he saw what he had never to that moment beheld, an army in retreat. The stream of infantry, artillery and transport was continuous—here in good formation, there a mere mass of walking wounded mixed up with civilians, as the big hospitals and the small villages of the district turned out before the oncoming enemy. He thought it rotten luck on those people, many of whom had been in German hands until February, 1917, and had only had a twelvemonth in their small farms, living in huts, and had now to turn out before a further invasion. The bombardment was distinctly nasty, he never remembered a nastier, but as usual, the pace of the advance soon outdistanced the slow-moving heavy artillery, whose fire was already lessening. He had no feelings of sharp despair, for as he had foreseen, a modern army could not be crumpled up and disposed of. What he did now anticipate, was any amount of inconvenience.
Amiens, he gathered, was uninhabitable, that meant many good restaurants out of reach. New lines of rail, new lateral communications would be necessary, that meant marching. Just when they had begun to get the trenches fairly reliable, they were entrained and sent wandering all round the coast. The wonderful spring weather broke with the end of March, as the weather always did, when it had ceased to be of any use to the Bosche, and had he been superstitious, he might havethought a good deal of that. It was in a cold and rainy April that he found himself landed on the edge of the coal-fields, behind a canal, with a slag heap on one side of him, and a little wood on the other, amid an ominous quiet.
The company of which he had been given command was now about a hundred and fifty strong and he had done what little he could to equalize the four platoons. He had one officer with him, a middle-aged Lieutenant called Merfin, of no distinguishable social status, or local characteristics. The day when a battalion came from one town or corner of a county, under officers that were local personages in the civil life of its district, was long past. Dormer placed his second-in-command socially as music-hall, or pawnbroking, but the chap had been out before and had been wounded, and probably knew something of the job. The men were satisfactory enough, short, stumpy fellows with poor teeth, but exactly that sort of plainness of mind that Dormer appreciated. They would do all right. Perhaps a quarter of them had been out before, and the remainder seemed fairly efficient in their musketry and bombing, and talked pigeons and dogs in their spare time, when not gambling.
The bit of line they held was Reserve, a bridge-head over the canal, a strong point round a half-demolished château in the wood, and some wet trenches to the right, where the next battalionjoined on. Battalion Head-quarters was in a farm half a mile back. Dormer and Merfin improvised a Mess in the cellar of the Château, saw that the cooker in the stables was distributing tea, and let all except the necessary guards turn in. He had some machine gunners at the strong point, and across the canal were two guns, whose wagons had just been up with rations and ammunition. His own lot of rations came soon after and he told Merfin to take the first half of the night, and rolled himself in his coat to sleep.
As he lay there, listening to the scatter of machine-gun fire, and the mutter of officers’ servants in the adjoining coal-hole, watching the candle shadows flicker on the walls that had been whitewashed, as the draught stirred the sacking over the doorway, his main thought was how little anything changed. Two and a half years ago he had been doing exactly the same thing, a few miles away, in the same sort of cellar, in front of an enemy with the same sort of advantage in ground and initiative, machine guns and heavy artillery. He was as far from beating the Germans as ever he had been. He supposed that practically all the gains of 1916 and 1917 south of Arras had been lost. On the other hand, the Germans, so far as he could see, were equally far from winning. What he now feared was, either by prolonged War or premature Peace, a continuance of this sort of thing. And slowly, for he was as mild and quiet-mannered a man asone could find, his gorge began to rise. He began to want to get at these Germans. It was no longer a matter of principle, a feeling that it was his duty as it had been in the days when he enlisted, took a commission, and had come to France. He was no longer worrying about the injustice of the attack on Belgium or the danger of a Germany paramount in Europe. He had now a perfectly plain and personal feeling. But being Dormer, this did not make him cry out for asortie en masselike a Frenchman, nor evolve a complicated and highly scientific theory as to how his desire was to be realized. The French and Portuguese who fought beside him would have found him quite incomprehensible. The Germans actually invented a logical Dormer whom they had to beat, who was completely unlike him. If he had any ideas as to what he was going to do, they amounted to a quiet certainty that once the enemy came away from his heavy and machine guns, he, Dormer, could do him in.
So he went on with the next thing, which was to turn over and sleep. He woke, sitting bolt upright, to the sound of two terrific crashes. One was right over his head. The candle had been blown out, and as he struggled out of the cellar, barking his shins and elbows, he was aware that the faint light of the sky was obscured by a dense cloud all round him. Instinctively he pulled up his gas mask, but the sound of falling masonry and the grit he could taste between hislips, reassured him. It was a cloud of brick dust. Across the canal, the barrage was falling on the front lines with the thunder of a waterfall. The Bosche had hit the Château, and if he were not mistaken, had put in another salvo, somewhere near by. At the gate of the little park-like garden he ran into a figure he recognized for Merfin, by the red light of the battle, just across the canal.