(_February, 1918_)
Somewhere in Flanders there was a ruined _estaminet_, with an early
trench running round it, that I longed to see for the sake of a grave in
a farm-yard not far behind. The grave itself was known to be
obliterated. Though dug very deep by men who loved the boy they laid
there at dead of night, and though the Sergeant (who loved him most)
could say what a strong cross they had placed over it, the grave was so
situated, and the whole position so continuously under fire, that
official registration was never possible, nor any further reassurance to
be had. The boy's Division went out of the Line, and at length went back
into another sector; but more than one officer who knew his people, and
one brave friend who had only heard of them, searched the spot without
avail. For two years it was so near the enemy and so heavily shelled
that the fear became a moral certainty that everything had been swept
away; then the boy's father chanced to meet his Army Commander; and
that great human soldier ordered the investigation that bore out every
dread. Nothing remained to mark the grave. And yet I longed to see the
place; the tide of battle had at last receded; at least I might see what
was left of the trench where the boy had fallen, and have something to
tell his mother on my return. So I had set my heart, originally, on
working for the Y.M.C.A. in Flanders. Had I been given my way about
that, very little that I have now to tell could possibly have happened.
It was ordained, however, that I should go to France, and a long way
down the Line, an impossible journey from my secret goal. To be honest,
I had a voice in this myself, and even readily acquiesced in the
arrangement; for there were sound reasons for taking the first opening
that offered; and on reflection I saw myself the unsoundness of my first
position. After all, I was not going out for secret or for private ends;
and even in Flanders, what means or what authority should I have had for
hunting among graves, marked or unmarked? What guide could I have hoped
to get to show me all I wished to see, and what could I have seen or
done without a guide? Already the new plan spelt a providential
exclusion from a sphere of futile mortification and divided desires: to
France I went, and with an easy mind. And in France the first people I
saw, in my first hut, as customers across the counter, were the boy's
old Division!
I suppose the odds against that must have been fairly long. Of all the
Divisions in the B.E.F. only three were plying between our town and the
Line; and of those three that Division was one. It was, moreover, the
one that we saw most of in the Ark. Theirs were the pink barracks just
outside our gates; it was their cinema that lay across our bows in the
mud; their motley Battalions that could make the hut a Babel of all the
dialects in Great Britain. The boy's Brigade was up the Line when I
arrived; in a few days it came down, and under the familiar regimental
cap-badge how eagerly I sought the faces that looked old enough to have
three years' service! They are the veterans of this war; but few, it
seemed, were left. Did I discover one, he had not been in B Company. I
grew ashamed of questioning. It was not before the Brigade had been up
the Line for another sixteen days, and come back again, that a little
hard-bitten man aroused fresh hopes and passed all tests. He had not
only been in the Regiment at the time, but in B Company; not only in B
Company, but in the boy's Platoon; there when he fell; one of the burial
party!
We had a long talk in the inner room. It appeared there were two other
survivors of the old Platoon; the Sergeant, as I knew to my sorrow, had
died Company Sergeant-Major at Passchendaele. Of the other two, one in
particular, now a bandsman but in 1915 a stretcher-bearer, could tell me
everything: he should come and see me himself. He never did come, and I
saw no more of the little man who promised to send him. Once again they
all went up the Line, and by the time that tour was over I had deserted
the hut near their barracks. The little man called there and left a
message; it was to say he was going on leave for three weeks, and the
Battalion were going away to rest. When they all got back, he would
bring the bandsman to see me without fail.
It is a long story; but then Coincidence (or what we will) was
stretching a very long arm. Coincidence (at least in the literal sense)
was indeed stretching out both arms: one of them was busy all this time
at distant Ypres. An unknown friend there, remotely connected with the
boy's people, thought he had discovered the boy's grave. He had written
home to say so; the news was sent out to me, and we got into
correspondence. He had searched the shell-blasted farm-yard where the
burial was known to have taken place, and he had discovered--evidence.
Some of this evidence he eventually sent me: a cheap French or Flemish
watch, red with the rust and mould of a soldier's grave: just the watch
that a boy would buy at the nearest town for his immediate needs. Now,
at the time of his death, this boy's watch was being mended in London;
therefore, the one now in my hands was good evidence as far as it went.
A boot-strap had been found as well, and something else that tallied
terribly; on the strength of all this testimony, and of an instinctive
certainty in the mind of our unknown friend, a new cross already marked
the site of these discoveries. He wanted me to see the place for myself,
and as soon as possible, in case the enemy should make his expected
thrust in that quarter. Nor could I have gone too soon for my own
satisfaction. Grave or no grave (for I could not quite share his
sanguine conviction), I longed to grasp the hand of a man who had done
so much for people he had never met: and to see all there was to see
with my own eyes.
But it is not so easy to travel sixty miles up or down the Line. It is a
question of permits, which take some getting, and of facilities which
very properly do not exist. Military railways are not for the transport
of civilian camp-followers on private business; moreover, they do go
slow when there is no military occasion for much speed; and I had my
work, when all was said. But my luck (if you like) was in again. The
first old friend that I had met in France was a friend in a higher place
than I may say. Already he had shown himself my friend indeed; now, in
my need---- But here the coincidences multiply, and must be kept
distinct.
On the very morning I heard from Ypres--with the watch and the
invitation--I was due to visit this old friend in another part
altogether. He sent his car for me, the splendid man. I showed him my
letter from Ypres.
'You will have to go,' he said.
'But how?'
'In my car.'
'Sixty miles!'
(It was much more from where he was.)
'You can have it for two days.'
I could not thank him; nor can I here. How can a man speak for the
mother of an only child, whose grave he was to see with her eyes as well
as with his own, so that one day he might tell her all? Without a car,
in fine, the thing was impossible. There are no thanks for actions such
as this: none that words do not belittle. A day was fixed, ten days
ahead; this gave me time to write to the boy's mother, and gave her time
to send direct to Ypres all the bulbs and plants that she could get, to
make her child's bed as gay that spring as he himself had been all the
days they were together.
And yet--and yet--_was_ it his grave that had been found? _Was_ the
evidence as good as it seemed? I was going all the way to Ypres on the
strength of that local evidence only. If I could but have taken one or
other of those two men who were there when it happened in 1915! But one
of them was away on leave, his three weeks not nearly up; the other, the
bandsman who knew most of all, might or might not be with the Battalion;
but the Battalion itself was still away. I found that out for certain on
the morning of the day before I was to start. They were still resting
many kilometres back. I had no means of getting to them, even if I had
had the right sort of desire; but the fact was that everything had come
about so beautifully without one move of mine, that I was quite
consciously content to drift in the current of an unfathomable
influence.
That afternoon there came to my hut, for no particular reason that he
ever told me, a man I had not met before. He was the Senior Chaplain of
the boy's Division. We made friends, by what steps I cannot remember,
but I must have told him where I was going next day. He was interested.
I told him the whole thing. He said: 'But surely there must be somebody
in the Battalion that you could take with you, to identify the place?' I
told him there was such a man, a bandsman, but the Battalion was away
resting and I was not sure but that the man himself was on leave. Said
the Chaplain: 'I can find out. I know where they are. I can get them on
the telephone. If you don't hear from me again, go round their way in
the morning when you get the car. It's ten kilometres in the wrong
direction, but it may be worth your while.'
Worth my while! I did not hear from him again; not a word all that
anxious evening to spoil the prospect he had opened up; and in the
morning came the car, a powerful limousine, mine for the next two days!
My pass from the A.P.M. was for Ypres only, but I did not think of that.
In less than an hour we had found those rest-billets among ploughed
fields at peace in the spring sunshine; and at the right regimental
headquarters, a young Corporal ready waiting in his field overcoat. It
_was_ the bandsman: he who had been nearest to the boy at the very last,
to whose special care his dear body had been committed. The living man
who had most to tell me!
And the first thing he told me showed what a mercy it was to have him
with me; but at the moment it came as a shock. I had shown him the
watch; he had shaken his head. No watch had been buried with the boy; of
that the Corporal was unshakably certain; and he was the man to know,
the man whose duty it had been to make sure at the time. Away went our
strongest piece of evidence! Then I told him about the boot-strap,
always a doubtful item in my own mind; and the Corporal swept it aside
at once. The boy had not worn boots with straps; he had worn ordinary
laced boots and puttees; exactly as I had been thinking at the back of
my mind. He had not been out many weeks, and I knew every noble inch of
him that went away. So, after all, it was not his grave that had been
found! That would have been a grievous blow but for the transcending
thought--it was not his grave that had been disturbed! And we might
never have known but for this young soldier at my side who was saying
quite confidently that he could show me where the grave really was! One
of--at most--three living men who could!
Who had brought him to my side--at the last moment--the very man I
wanted--the one man needful?
To be sure, the Senior Chaplain of their Division; but why should the
Senior Chaplain, a man I never saw before, have come to my hut in the
nick of time to do me this service, so definitely desired? Why should I
myself have come to the very place in France where the Division was
waiting for me--the one place where I had also an old friend with a car
to lend me when the time came? Why had I not gone to Belgium (to be near
the boy) as I at first intended? And why, at that very time, should a
complete stranger have been making entirely independent efforts to find
the grave in Belgium that I yearned to see?
'Chance' is no answer, unless the word be held to cover an organic
tissue of chances, each in turn closely related to some other chance,
all component parts of a chance whole! And what sensation novelist would
build a plot on such foundations and hope to make his tale convincing?
Not I, at my worst; and there were more of these chances still to come,
albeit none that mattered as did those already recounted.
Nor is there very much left to tell that bears telling here. In Ypres I
did not find my great unknown friend; he had warned me, when it was too
late to alter plans, that he might be called home on a private matter;
and this had happened. But he had told me I should find his 'trusty
Sergeant,' who had taken part in the investigations, ready to help me in
every way; and so, indeed, I did. The man was, among other things, an
enthusiastic amateur gardener; he had known exactly what to do with the
bulbs and plants, which he had unpacked on their arrival and was keeping
nice and moist for next morning. But this was not the first thing we
had to talk about. The first thing was to impress upon the Sergeant the
importance of not letting my witness know that a new cross had been put
up, and so to ensure absolutely independent identification of the spot.
He gave me his promise, and I know he kept it.
Next morning, under a leaden February sky, the three of us drove north
in the car, accompanied by a second Sergeant with digging tools, in case
the bandsman located the grave elsewhere and I was bent upon some proof.
At the time I did not know why he was with us; later, the quiet little
fact above spoke volumes for the good faith of the party. It was
completed by a young Catholic Padre from Ypres, so that the only office
which the boy had lacked at the hands of his dear men might now be
fulfilled.
I am following the course we took upon a military map given to the boy's
father by one of the many officers who had befriended him in his
trouble; and I had been prepared for the thickening cluster of
shell-holes further on by more than one aeroplane photograph sent from
Army Headquarters. O that all whom this war has robbed of their hearts'
delight could know, as this father knows, how the huge heart of the Army
is with them in their sorrow! There was the Army Commander, who had
done what he could for a man he met but once by chance; it was not much
that even he could do, but how more than readily it had been done! And
now here in the car, itself a tangible sign of infinite compassion, were
these N.C.O.'s and this young priest, with their grave faces and their
kind eyes! One's heart went out to them. It seemed all wrong to be
taking men, who any day might be in theirs, to see a soldier's grave in
cold blood. So we fell to discussing the sky, the mud, and such
landmarks as remained, quite simply and naturally, as the boy himself
would have wished.
'Plains that the moonlight turns to sea,' the boy had quoted in
describing the plain we were crossing now; but it had become a broken
plain since his time; covered with elephant huts and pill-boxes, scored
by light railways; the roads on which no man might live in those days,
themselves alive with traffic in these, with lorries and men and all the
abundant activities of a host behind a host. The car stopped one or two
hundred yards from our destination, towards which we threaded our way
over duck-boards, through and past these mushroom habitations, till we
came to the green open space which was all that remained of the farm.
Not a stone or a brick to be seen; not even a heap of bricks, or a
charred beam, or the empty socket of pillar or post; only the two
gate-posts themselves, looking like the stumps of trees. But what better
than a gateway to give a man his bearings? It led the bandsman straight
to a regular file of such stumps, which really had been trees: and in
his path stood a white cross, new and sturdy, at which I had been
looking all the time: at which he stopped without looking twice, still
studying the ground and the bits of landmarks that survived. It was the
place.
It was the boy's grave; and the discoverer's--nay, the
diviner's--instinct stood vindicated as wonderfully as his evidence had
been discredited. Almost adjoining it was a great shell-hole full of
water; but it was not our grave that the shell had rifled. Our grave had
been dug too deep. It was as though the boy himself had said: 'It's my
grave all right--but I don't want you to go thinking those were my
things! All that was me or mine is just as they left it.'
So we took off our helmets and stood listening to the young priest
reading the last office, in Latin first and then in English. And many of
the beautiful sentences were punctuated by loud reports, which I took
for our guns if I thought of them at all; for as yet I had heard hardly
anything else down south; but after the service I saw little black
balloons appearing by magic in mid-air, expanding into dingy cloudlets,
and presently dissolving shred by shred. It was enemy shrapnel all the
time.
Then the two Sergeants prepared the ground with gentle skill; and we
knelt and put in the narcissus bulbs, the primroses and pinks, the phlox
and the saxifrage, that the boy's mother had sent him; and a baby
rose-tree from an old friend who loved him, in the corner of England
that he loved best; it must be climbing up his cross, if it has lived to
climb at all.
The clouds had broken before the service ended with the sprinkling of
Holy Water; and now between the shell-bursts, while we were yet busy
planting, came strains of distant music, as thin and faint and valiant
as the February sunshine. It was one of our British bands, perhaps at
practice in some safe fold of the famous battle-field, more likely
assisting at some ceremonial further away than I imagined; for they
seemed to be playing very beautifully; and when they finished with 'Auld
Lang Syne' they could not have hung more pathetically upon the closing
bars if they had been playing at our graveside, for the boy who always
loved a band.
Then there was his trench to see; but it was full of water where it had
not fallen in, and was not like a trench any more. And the _estaminet_
at the cross-roads, that cruelly warm corner whence he passed into
peace, it too had vanished from the earth. But the gentle slope that had
been No-Man's Land was much as he must have seen it in anxious summer
dawns, and under the stars that twinkled on so many of his breathless
adventures in the early bombing days, when he pelted Germans in their
own trench with his own hand, and thought it all 'a jaunt'; thought it
'just like throwing in from cover'; declared it 'as safe as going up to
a man's front door-bell--pulling it--and running off again!'
Well, this was where he had played those safe games; and true enough, it
was not by them he met his death, but standing-to down there under
shell-fire, on a summer's morning after his own heart, with eyes like
the summer sky turned towards the same line of trees my eyes were
beholding now, his last thought for his men. I could almost hear his
eager question:
'Is everybody all right?'
They were the boy's last words.
Did I enter into the spirit of all that last chapter of his dear life
the better for being on the scene, and watching shrapnel burst over it
even as he had watched it a thousand times? I cannot say I did. I doubt
if I could have entered into it more than I always had ... we were such
friends. But how _he_ must be entering into the whole spirit of my whole
pilgrimage! It was like so much of his old life and mine. Always he knew
that he had only to call and I would come to him, at school or wherever
he was; many a time I had jumped into a car and gone, though he never
did call me in his life. _Had he now?_ ... There was my friend's car
waiting, as it might have been once more in the lane opposite 'the old
grey Chapel behind the trees.' ... And here were we passengers, a party
from the four winds, all brought together by different agencies for the
same simple end. Who had brought us? Who had prompted or inspired those
directly responsible for our being there? It was not, you perceive, a
case of one god from a machine, but of three at the very least. Who had
so beautifully arranged the whole difficult thing?
Even to that band! But for 'Auld Lang Syne' one might not take it
seriously for a moment; but remembering those searching strains, and the
pathos put into them, the early hour, the wild place, the bursting
shrapnel, who can help the flash of fancy? Not one who will never forget
the boy's gay, winning knack of getting bands to play what he wanted;
this was just the tune he would have called, that we might all join
hands and not forget him, yet remember cheerily for his sake!
But it all _had_ been as he would have had it if he could: not one
little thing like that, but the whole big thing he _must_ have wanted:
all granted to him or his without their mortal volition at any stage.
Chances or accidents, by the chapter, if you will! No man on earth can
prove the contrary; and yet there are few, perhaps, who have lost their
all in this war, and who would not thank God for such a string of
happenings. But one does not thank God for a chain of chances. And if
any link was of His forging, why not the whole chain, as two thankful
people dare to think?