XXIX
Ray Luardwas sitting on a barrel in a little station in the north-west of France, watching his men unload railway trucks, when he received the news of Uncle Tony’s death.
An escort just returned from Head-Quarters had brought up the belated mail, and glancing quickly at the envelopes, he hurriedly opened the one in Lois’s handwriting, with a tightening of the lips at its narrow black edging.
He was not altogether unprepared. In spite of the Colonel’s desire that word of his illness should not add to his nephew’s already mighty anxieties, they had not judged it right to keep him entirely in the dark.
“Dear old chap!” murmured Ray to himself, as the news broke on him. “Well ... he did his duty and died for his country as surely as any of the rest of us.... (Steady there, boys, or some of you will be getting smashed!)... But they’ll miss him terribly.... I wish this cursed business was all over.... Lois is Lady Luard ... I wonder how she feels about it. I’ll bet she nearly had a fit when the first person called her that. And I bet that would be Auntie Mitt. She’s the one for giving folks their proper titles. (“Knock off for a quarter-of-an-hour, Mac!”—to his Sergeant. “That’s heavy work.”) Well, well!—Lady Luard!—and a sweeter one there never could be. Damn this business! Itwouldbe rough luck to be knocked out right on top of this. However, Lois is all right. That’s one comfort.”
He looked lean and fit. Since Lois watched them swing away to the skirling of the pipes at Watford, they had travelled far, though at the present moment they werenearer home than they had been any time this month or more.
They had had a triumphal passage down the Solent, greeted by cheers and whistles from all the neighbouring boats, which at once blunted the edge of the parting from England and put a still finer point to their patriotic zeal. Some of them, they knew,—perhaps many of them—would never see the green cliffs of Wight again. But they were there on highest service, and their hearts were strong and their spirits above normal. They had gone first to Le Mans, then to Villeneuve St Georges, and finally to Paris—such a different Paris from all Ray’s recollections of it!—and yet in some ways a greater Paris than he had ever known it. It was no longer the city of gaiety and light, but the heart of a nation travailing in the birth of a new soul.
France and Britain had had to fall back before the tumultuous rush of the better-prepared German hosts,—from Mons to Le Cateau,—to St Quentin,—to La Fère,—to Compiégne,—to Chantilly,—very near Paris now. But there the quarry turned and hurled itself at its pursuers. The hunters became the hunted and were forced back to the Marne, across the Ourcq, to the Aisne. And it was while this was going on that the Scottish came to Paris for the cheer and satisfaction of its citizens.
Bit by bit, each to prevent the other overlapping and outflanking, the hostile lines had spread further and further towards the coast. From the banks of the Aisne, by way of Soissons and Compiégne and Amiens to St Omer, General French’s eagle-eyed prevision had swept the British forces round behind the French lines to that north-west corner of France where Calais lay all open to the invader. From the north came Sir Henry Rawlinson, with the 7th Division and the 3rd Cavalry Division, covering the retreat of the gallant but exhausted Belgian Army from the neighbourhood of Antwerp, and held the wolves at bay till the gap by the coast at Nieuport was closed and the long line locked tight from the sea right round to Belfort in the east.
But, so far, the duties of the London Scottish, onerous and important as they had been, had not taken them into the actual fighting line. They were drawing nearer and nearer to it, however, and were all looking forward with keen anticipation and the very natural desire to be the first Territorials actually in the mêlée alongside their comrades of the regular army.
They had acted as body-guard to Sir John French; they had served as military police and as railway-porters. And they had done everything required of them, no matter how unpleasant or how different from their usual avocations, with the zest of men whose souls had risen to the great occasion.
They had handled mountains of stores, and guns and ammunition, and convoys of wounded and prisoners, and had buried many dead.
They had travelled in cattle-trucks and on loaded coal-waggons. They had slept in stations and barns and caves of the earth. They had left all their kits behind them at Southampton and possessed only what they carried on their backs. They had washed when they could, and shaved whenever opportunity offered.
They had stood-by ready to go anywhere and do anything for anybody at any moment. All of which had always so far petered out many miles to the rear of the fighting, though they had more than once come within sound of the guns. But it had all been to the good. They gained new experiences every day; they grew hard and fit under the taxing work, and each day now was bringing them nearer to that for which they had left home and friends and all that had hitherto made life worth living. And not a man of them but was glad to be there.
Ray had wondered much what it would actually feel like to be in a red-hot fight. It had seemed at first as though modern fighting must always be at long range, with no slightest chance of seeing what killed you, or of hitting back except at a venture, the results of whichyou could not see, and they were all agreed that this was a most unsatisfactory and unsportsmanlike style of business. But, from all they could hear, things were changing in most amazing fashion and there had even been bayonet-work and actual hand-to-hand fighting.
The huge German shells, which dug holes big enough to bury an omnibus in, were diabolical, but apparently they did less mischief than might have been expected, and one even got used to them to the point of giving them sporty nick-names and treating them with contempt.
He wondered how he and the rest would comport themselves when the time came. They were fine fellows all, but new at the actual red game of killing and being killed, and it was bound to be terribly trying—the first time at all events. He hoped they would bear themselves well and come through it with credit.
Any moment they might be ordered to the front. Rumour had it that there was terrific pressure against our long-drawn-out line in places. The Germans wanted to get to Calais and seemed determined to hack their way through at any cost. Well, if it lay with the Old Scottish they would make that cost heavy or they would know the reason why.
He thought constantly, in sub-conscious fashion, while his mind was actually dealing promptly and clearly with the inevitable kinks in the day’s work, of them all at home, especially of Lois. “Lady Luard!”—he murmured to himself again, as he sat on his barrel in the station. Yes, it would be a little harder still to leave it all before he had even greeted her in her new estate. But her future was at all events secured. He had made his will before leaving, and old Benfleet had it safely stowed away in his big safe. And, after all, every man in a regiment was not wiped out as a rule, however hot the fighting.
When at last the job on which he was engaged was finished, he knocked his men off, got them bucketsful of hot coffee and dashed it with rum, since it had come on to rain and they were all very damp. Then he saw themsafely into the old barracks allotted to them as sleeping quarters, made his way back to the station, and took possession of an empty first-class carriage, scribbled a brief note to Lois,—scrappy little letters they were, in pencil, and the paper at times got soiled, but she valued them more than jewels of price,—and then he lay down and was sound asleep in two minutes.
Their time seemed to have come the next afternoon. Orders came to move forward at three o’clock. Rumour, with a score of tongues, was on the ramp. Kitchener had sent word that they were not to go into the firing-line. Hard-pressed Generals all round were clamouring for them. Half-a-dozen other Territorial Regiments were coming up and they were all to go on together. They were not wanted. They were badly wanted. The So-and-Sos had been practically wiped out. And the Etceteras had had to fall back before three whole army-corps.
At half-past four, motor-buses by the score came rolling up—from Barnes and Putney, from Cricklewood and Highgate,—and the old familiar look of them made them all feel almost at home. There were no conductors, no tickets, no tinkling bell-punches. Everything was free on the road to death. They climbed on board and whirled away between the poplar trees, over roads that were cobbled in the centre only and all the rest mud. Now and again a bus would swerve from dead-centre and skid down into the mud and have to be shoved bodily back into safety. Now and again one would succumb to such unusual experiences, and its occupants would storm the next that came along and crush merrily in on top of its already full load.
But whatever their actual feelings—and when did a Scot ever show his actual feelings?—they treated it all as the best of jokes, and sang and laughed and chaffed as though it were a wedding they were going to. And so indeed it was, the greatest wedding of all—the wedding of Life and Death on the Field of Duty, whose legitimate offspring is Glory and Honour—of this world or the next.
Not one of them there, I suppose, though they bore themselves so cheerfully, had any desire for fighting for fighting’s sake. They were men of peace,—lawyers, barristers, students, merchants, clerks. They had come away from comfortable homes and good prospects. They had left parents and wives, lovers and friends, at the highest Call Life’s bugles sound for any man. They did well to be merry while they might. It is better to be merry than to mope, though your name be cast for death while the laugh is on your lips. They laughed and joked, but the White Fire burned within them. They were answering The Call.
It was the longest ride any of them had ever had in a Putney bus, and those on top got very wet, as it rained hard all night. They were dumped down, in the raw of the morning just before daybreak, at the pretty little town of Ypres, in Belgium, and rejoiced greatly at the feel of solid earth under their feet once more. They crowded for shelter into the Cathedral, into the station, into cover wherever they could find it, and in time they got something to eat.
In the morning they marched out to a wood, where a British battery was hard at work and German shells came whistling back in reply. And all the way along the road wounded men were passing in an endless stream to the rear, while the shot and shell from other British batteries hurtled over their heads, and not far away was the rattle of heavy musketry firing.
There was less light-hearted laughter now and little joking,—just one jerked out now and again as outlet for over-strain. But most of the clean-shaven faces were tense and hard-set, for this looked like the real thing and Death was in the air.
Then it was found that they were not needed there, and as the German shells seemed to have a quite uncanny tendency in their direction, they were ordered back into the town.
And presently, about nightfall, their motor-buses camerolling up again and carried them off to the little village of St Eloi, and the sounds of heavy fighting drew nearer.
The village seemed deserted, so they took possession and made themselves as comfortable as the big guns and their big thoughts would permit. To-morrow, they knew, must surely see them into it and the thought was sobering.
Rations were issued and tongues were loosed again, but conversation was spasmodic and joking somewhat at a discount. They were all very tired; to-morrow would be a heavy day, and one by one they fell asleep—for some of them the last sleep they were to know. And Ray, finishing a hasty scribble to Lois, lay down also and slept as soundly as any.
They were up with the dawn, and rations and more ammunition were served out. Ray managed to get a rifle and bayonet and found the feel of them comforting. Nothing but a revolver—and a dirk in his stocking—had made him feel very naked and unprotected when bullets would be flying. Now he felt very much more his own man, and ready to repay in kind anything that came his way, except “coal-boxes” and shrapnel which were beyond arguing with.
They moved on to another small village—Messines,—where there was a large convent, and not far away, a pumping-mill. The pumping-mill began to turn as soon as they showed face, and instantly German shells began falling thickly about them.
Then came the final order to fling themselves into a gap between a regiment of Hussars on the right and of Dragoons on the left, to dig themselves in as close to the enemy as possible, and hold them at all costs. There was an unprotected spot there, and the keen-eyed Germans had spied it and were heading for it in a torrential rush.
“Forward, boys! And Steady! Scottish!—Strike sure!”—and they were into it up to the neck.
It was a magnificent demonstration of mind over matter. These boys, who had never faced red hell before, went in, keen-faced, tight-lipped, tensely-tuned to Death and Duty.All their long training, all their hardening and hardships, all that mattered in this world and the next centred for every man of them into this mighty moment, this final fiery trying of their faith and courage.
And neither failed them. It might have been Wimbledon Common with the canteen and lunch awaiting them in the hollow behind the old Windmill, so calm and steady was their advance, so admirably calculated their extended order.
For a quarter of a mile or so the shells which were pulverising the village behind passed over their heads. Then came an open field swept by heavy rifle-fire and machine-guns. One of the machine-guns was in a farmhouse on the left. Ray ordered bayonets and they tore across the field to stop it, yelling like wild Highland rievers.
It was hot work and men were falling thick. They got to a hedge and along it to the house, but the Germans had bolted, and shells were raining in.
Back to the cover of the hedge, where a ditch gave them time to breathe. And as they lay there panting, with their hearts going like pumps, they found the bushes thick with blackberries and they were mighty cooling to parched throats.
But, presently, shells and the devilish machine-guns discovered them again, so they crawled along till they saw a haystack and made a rush for it, and lay down flat behind it as tight as sardines in a tin. Then, a short distance ahead, they saw a trench, and took their lives in their hands and dived into it and for the time being were safe.
The trench was being held by regulars—Carabineers—and they gave the kilts most hearty welcome.
“Hot hole, sir,” said a Sergeant cheerfully—though he put it very much more picturesquely.
“Bit warmish,” Ray agreed. “What’s next on the menu?”
“Just sit tight till it’s dark, and if they come on biff ’em back and tell ’em to keep to their own side. —— —— —— ’em!They don’t seem to care a —— how they get wiped.”
“Germans are cheap to-day,” grinned another.
“I —— well wish some o’ their —— officers would come on. I’m ’bout fed up plugging privates.”
So they made themselves comfortable there, while the shells screamed overhead and shrapnel and bullets plugged into their modest earthwork. And surreptitiously they took stock of one another to see who was left. Many well-known faces were missing. Some they had seen go down in the rush. But there was always the hope that wounds might not be fatal.
They scanned the ground they had covered. It was dotted with little heaps of hodden gray and their hearts went out to them. Some lay quite still. One raised his head slightly.
“That’s Gillieson!” jerked Ray, and in a moment had crawled out of the trench and was worming his way to the fallen one.
The others watched breathlessly, for a moment, then began to follow here and there, wherever a pitiful gray heap lay within possible reach.
They dragged in a round dozen in this way, bound up their damages as well as they could with the little rolls of first-aid bandages stitched inside their tunics, gave them rum and water from their bottles, and rejoiced exceedingly over them without showing any slightest sign of it.
All afternoon—and never surely was so long a day since Joshua stayed the sun while he smote the Amorites at Beth-horon—they lay in their trench with Death whistling shrilly overhead. They chatted with their new chums and got points from them, heard what had been doing, and learned what was to be done.
And as soon as it was dark they all crept out over the front and forward, till word came to dig in and hold tight; and they dug for their lives as they had never dug in their lives before, with bullets singing over them in clouds, and the much-shelled village burning furiously on their right.
It was hot work in every sense of the word and their bottles were empty. Someone collected an armful and crept along to a farmhouse in the rear to try for water. He came sprinting back in a moment with word that the place was full of Germans.
A guffaw greeted his news as a number of their own kilties came running out towards them, waving their arms triumphantly. But there was something about them Ray did not like. They did not somehow look London Scottish to him. Perhaps it was their unweathered knees.
“Who are you?” he shouted.
“Scottish Rifles!”—with an accent that any Scot would have died rather than use.
“Down them!” he yelled, and let fly himself, and the ‘Scottish Rifles’ withered away, some to earth and some into the smoke.
It was when they were well under cover and were congratulating themselves on being fairly safe—as things went!—that a burly figure nearly fell in on top of Ray as he crawled about behind his men.
“Hello there?” he shouted.
“London Scottish? You’re to clear out of here and fall back.”
“What the deuce——” and then a star-shell blazed out in front, and Ray, raking him with one swift glance from his white knees upwards, plucked his feet from under him and brought him down into the trench in a guttural swearing heap.
“Treacherous devils! There’s no end to their tricks.”
He fingered the revolver at his belt, but he could not do it so. The fellow deserved it, but it felt too like murder.
He kicked the recumbent one up on to his feet. They prodded him over the parapet in front, and as he started to run a dozen rifles cracked and he went down.
These things, and the incessant rain of heavy shells which blew craters in the earth all about them, began to get on their nerves somewhat, but especially this masquerading ofthe enemy in their own uniform. It produced a feeling of insecurity all round and a diabolical exasperation.
If for a second the storm, of which they seemed the centre, lulled, they heard the terrific din of battle on either side. Heavy fighting seemed going on all along the line.
And soon after midnight came their hottest time of all. It looked as though the enemy had got word where the new raw troops were, and had decided that that would be the weakest spot, and so hurled his heaviest weight against them.
“Here they come! Thousands of ’em!” shouted someone.
The moon had come out and they could see that it was so. Ray had no time to think of Lois or anyone else. His whole being was concentrated on the dark masses rolling up against them. They had got to be stopped. He had no slightest idea of what depended on it. All he knew was that they had got to be stopped, though every man of themselves died for it.
“Steady, boys, and give it them hot,” and they blazed away point blank into the serried ranks.
They fell in heaps. The rest wavered and then came on. Ray saw a furious officer thrashing at them with his sword to urge them forward. He sighted him as though he had been a pheasant and the furious one fell. The rest came on—some of them. But the Scottish fire was excellent. The boys were strung to concert pitch. Flesh and blood could not stand their record rapid. The dark masses melted away.
While they were still congratulating themselves a furious fusillade opened on them from one side,—Maxims, Ray judged,—and almost at the same moment came a volley from the rear. There seemed to be Germans all round them.
“Bayonets! This way, boys!” and he tumbled up out of the trench and led the way against the assault from the rear. Obviously if they were surrounded that must be the way out.
He stumbled on the rough ground and his rifle jerked out of his hand. The others thought he was done. But it was only a trip and he was up and off in a moment, leaving his rifle on the ground behind.
He dashed on unarmed, the others yelling at his heels. In front a row of Germans was blazing away at them, the moonlight and the flash of the discharges playing odd tricks with the bristling line of bayonets.
Ray felt himself horribly naked to assault again. But there was a wild, insensate rage in his heart against these men who were dropping his boys as they leaped and yelled behind him. He wanted to tear and rend, to smash them into the earth, to end them one and all.
The wavering gleam of the bayonets was deadly close. He had tried to haul out his revolver as he ran. It was gone—his stumble had jerked it out of its case and broken the lanyard. But he had not played Rugger for nothing.
At the very edge of the bristling line he hurled himself down and under it along the ground, plucked at the first stolid legs he could grab, and brought two heavy bodies down on top of him in a surprised and cursing heap. It helped to break the line too, and the boys were in on them in a moment, jabbing and stabbing and yelling like fiends out of the pit. They were all mad just then. It was their first actual taste of blood at close quarters, and it was very horrible. None of them cared very much to recall the actual details later on. But it had the desired effect. Such of the enemy as had any powers of locomotion left used them, and the panting Scots were for the moment masters of the field,—but the cost had been heavy. How heavy they did not yet fully know.
The machine-gun on their flank had been rushed and was silent. Their rear seemed clear of the enemy. The Scottish picked up all they could find in the dark of their wounded and returned to their trench, and pounded away again at anything that showed in front. This, after the hot mêlée behind, was child’s play and it gave them time to recover themselves.
In the dim light of the dawn they took stock again, grieved silently over their losses, and set their faces harder than ever to avenge them if the chance offered.
And the chance came quickly. All along the front as far as they could see, the Germans came on again in dense gray masses,—hundreds to one, they seemed, and the prospect hopeless. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to make the enemy foot the bill beforehand and to make it as big a bill as possible. And the clips of cartridges snapped in merrily, and the gray ones in front went down in swathes, and Ray’s rifle barrel grew so hot that he flung it aside and looked about for another. And as he did so, he discovered with a shock that he and his handful were alone in the trench. The order had come to retire but had never got their length.
“Give them blazes, boys!—then follow me!” he shouted, and they gave them a full minute of extra rapid, and then stooped and scurried along the trench as fast as they could go.
Glancing about for cover in the rear, he saw a haystack a hundred yards away across the open.
“There you are!” he panted, and started them off one after the other across the field, and followed himself last of all.
“Miracles still happen,” he panted again, as they lay flat for breath behind the stack. “Never thought we’d manage it.”
Further to the rear were farm buildings and a glimpse of hodden gray kilts hovering about. So, with a fresh stock of breath, and an amazing new hope of life, they dashed across one by one, with the bullets hailing past in sheets and ripping white splinters off a gate they had to go through.
How any man got through alive, they never knew. But they did somehow. Only two men got hit. Ray, last man as a matter of duty, saw young MacGillivray just in front stagger suddenly and nearly fall. He slipped his arm through the boy’s with a cheery “Keep up!”and raced him into safety, and they bound him up so that he could go on.
The other man got it in the shoulder just as he whirled through the gate. He made light of it, but they tied him up also and prepared for the next move.
For the farm was after all only one stage on the road. There were Germans all round them, they were told, except for one possible opening in the rear. And that they instantly took. First, another minute of rapid-firing by every available man to give the enemy pause, then off through a wood, across a beet-field on which machine-guns were playing for all they were worth, across another field of mixed rifle and machine-gun fire, and so at last to a road up which British troops and guns and Maxims were racing to thrust a stopper into the gap.
The Hodden-Grays just tumbled into the ditch behind the guns and thankfully panted their souls back. They were still alive—some of them! They could hardly realise it.
Ray dropped his humming head into his folded arms as he lay full length on his face. The homely smell of earth and grass was like new life. He chewed some grass with relish. After the smoke and taste of blood it was delicious. To be alive after all that! It was amazing—incredible almost. He thought of Lois and thanked God fervently for them both.
He did not know what they had done. He only knew that it had been a hot time and that somehow, by God’s grace, he was still alive. He hoped they had given a good account of themselves. They had certainly had to fall back—but in face of such tremendous odds it had been inevitable and he thought no one could blame them. Anyway they had done their best. But he felt just a trifle despondent about it all. Falling back was not a Scottish custom.
He was sitting by the roadside smoking a cigarette to settle the jumpy feeling inside him and soothe his ruffled feelings, when the Adjutant came along.
“You had a hot time, Luard.”
“It was a trifle warm. They were too many for us, but we did the best we could under the circumstances.”
“You did magnificently. The General said the Scottish had done what two out of three Regular Battalions would have failed to do. The Staff are saying they saved the situation last night.”
“You don’t say so!” said Ray, cocking his bonnet, and feeling five times the man he was a minute before. “Well, I’m glad they appreciate us. You can always count on the Scottish doing its level best.”
And later on came a telegram from Sir John French himself, conveying his “warmest congratulations and thanks for the fine work you did yesterday at Messines,”—and saying, “You have given a glorious lead and example to all Territorial troops who are going to fight in France.”
So from that point of view all was as well as it possibly could be, and proud men were they who answered the roll-call at the edge of the wood. Dishevelled and torn and shaken,—and very sober-faced at the heavy tale of missing,—but uplifted all the same, with the knowledge that the record of the old corps had not suffered at their hands.
They had a few days out of the firing line to let their nerves settle down and within a week were back in the trenches.