THE DEFENCE OF THE BRANDY
The next morning two companies were detached from the Battalion as
escort to a brigade of artillery. The other two companies, who had
returned during the night, did not seem to be greatly upset by their
gruesome task of burying the dead.
They did not come in contact with the enemy, and no outstanding incident
impressed itself upon the Subaltern's mind. The heat had abated with
dramatic swiftness. A wind that was almost chilly swept the plains,
driving grey clouds continually across the sun. The summer was over.
That day they joined battle with the outposts of a foe that was to prove
more hateful and persistent than the German winter.
The name of a village known as Suchy-le-Château figured on many of the
signposts that they passed, but they never arrived there, and, branching
off east of Braisne, they came upon the remainder of the Battalion,
drawn up in a stubble field.
A driving rain had begun to fall early in the afternoon, and when at
length the march was finished their condition was deplorable. Though
tired out with a long day's march, they dared not rest, because to lie
down in the sodden straw was to court sickness. Their boots, worn and
unsoled, offered no resistance whatever to the damp. Very soon they
could hear their sodden socks squelching with water as they walked. A
night of veritable horror lay in front of them; they were appalled with
the prospect of it. The rain seemed to mock at the completeness of their
misery.
However, the Fates were kind, for the General, happening to pass, took
pity on them and allowed them to be billeted in the outhouses of a farm
near by. The sense of relief which this move gave to the Subaltern was
too huge to describe. Contentment took possession of him utterly. The
tension of his nerves and muscles relaxed: he thought that the worries
and hardships of that day, at least, were over.
But he was wrong.
No sooner had his Platoon wearily thrown their rifles and equipment into
the musty barn that was allotted to them, than the Colonel told him that
he would have to sleep with his men, the reason being that the owner of
the farm, on the approach of the Germans, had hidden a large stock of
brandy beneath the straw in the very barn that his men had entered. The
farmer had asked the Colonel to save his liquor from the troops, and the
Colonel, with horrible visions of a regiment unmanageable and madly
intoxicated before his eyes, replied that most assuredly he would see
that the men did not get hold of the brandy. The Subaltern told his
sergeant, but otherwise the proximity of bliss was kept a strict secret
from the men.
Throughout the whole of that long day the Subaltern had been looking
forward to, longing for, and idealising the rest which was to follow
after the labours of the day. And now that it had at last been achieved,
it proved to be a very poor imitation of the ideal rest and slumber that
he had been yearning for. To begin with, the delays before quarters were
settled upon were interminable. And then this news about the brandy. The
evening meal was delayed almost a couple of hours, and every minute of
the delay annoyed him, because it was so much precious time for sleep
lost. Even when the meal arrived, it proved to be insufficient, and he
was still hungry, cold and damp, when at last he hobbled across the yard
to the barn.
The place had no ventilation. The air was foul with the smell of damp
grain, and men, and wet boots. He hesitated at the door; he would rather
have slept in the open air, but the yard was inches deep in mud and
manure. He groped forward, and at every inch that he penetrated further
into the place, the air seemed to become thicker, more humid, more foul.
In the thick darkness his foot stumbled on the sleeping form of a man,
who rolled over and swore drowsily. At last, after interminable feeling
in the darkness, and balancing himself on sacks of grain, he attained
the corner where the bottles lay buried, and threw himself down to
sleep.
But sleep was impossible. In spite of the insupportable atmosphere he
remained cold. Every second some one was moving! One instant a man would
shuffle and cough in one corner, then some one would grunt and groan as
he turned restlessly in his sleep, and the happier few who had achieved
slumber would snore laboriously. Now and then a man would rise shakily
to his feet and thread his way unsteadily to the door, kicking up
against recumbent forms as he went, and evoking language as murky as the
atmosphere. The Subaltern felt a savage joy in the recriminations and
expletives that filled the air. Like lightning, they relieved the
thunder-pressure of the air.