There was a strange lull in the firing, and no meal-time to account for
it, as I carried the baggage over piecemeal to our headquarters off the
opposite end of the little square. The mate was doubtless busy relieving
me of my final responsibilities in the matter of stores or accounts; at
any rate I remember those two or three halting journeys with his light
and my heavy kit. The sun was setting in a slight haze, as though the
air were full of gold-dust. The shadows of the crippled houses lay at
full length in the square. The big guns were strangely still; their
field-guns were taking them a good long time to mount upon the captured
ridge. I made my final trip, turned in under the arch at headquarters,
where the little Ford 'bus was waiting for the last of us, and
incidentally for my last and lightest load. I had not put it in when
those infernal field-guns got going.
I do not know what happened in other parts of the town. It seems
unlikely that they opened fire on our part in particular, but as I stood
talking in a glass passage there came a whirlwind whizz over the low
roofs, a crack and a cloud in the adjoining courtyard, and, as I turned
back under the arch, another whizz and another bang in the street I had
just quitted. So I would have sworn in perfect faith; and for several
minutes the street was full of acrid smoke, to bear me out. But it seems
the second burst was _in_ the next house, or in the next but one. All I
can say is that both occurred within about fifteen paces of the spot
where I stood as safe as the house that covered me. And yet the soldiers
tell you they prefer shell-fire in the open! With great respect, I shall
stick up for the devil I know.
But what has interested me ever since is the hopelessness of expecting
two persons to give anything like the same account of a violent
experience which has taken them both equally by surprise. Nor is it
necessary to go gadding about the front in order to test this particular
proposition; try any couple who have been in the same motor accident. It
must be done at once, before they have time to compare notes; indeed,
they should be kept apart like suspect witnesses in a court. Suspicion
will be amply vindicated in nine cases out of ten; for the impression of
any accident upon any mind depends on the state of that mind at the
time, on the impressions already there, and on its imaginative quality
at any time. Hence the totally different versions of the same event
from three or four equally truthful persons. A boy I had known all his
life was killed just before I went out: three honest witnesses gave
three contradictory descriptions of the tragedy. Two of the three were
all but eye-witnesses, and C. of E. chaplains at that! No wonder we
argued about our beggarly brace of shells. The chief mate (last to leave
the ship, by the way) heard three, and a fourth as we drove away in the
Ford. My powers of registration were only equal to the two described.
It was good to be high and dry in the little 'bus, though it would have
been better with as much as the horn to blow to keep one's mind out of
mischief. Our driver was a fine man wearing the South African and 1914
ribbons. Invalided out, he had wormed his way back to France in the
Y.M.C.A.; but it was a soldier's job he did again that night, and for
days and nights to follow. Once a shell burst in his path and smashed
the radiator; he plugged it up with wood and kept her going. It is
provoking to be obliged to add that I was not in the car at the time.
Nor did I thoroughly enjoy every minute of the hours I spent in it that
Saturday night; there was far too much occasion both for pangs and
fears. Though we had kept open longer than any other hut, and everybody
else (who was going) had left the town before us, yet the rest had gone
on foot and it seemed a villainy to pass them plodding in the stream of
refugees outside the town. It is true they all boarded lorries at the
earliest opportunity, and actually reached our common haven before us;
but that did not make our performance less inglorious at the time. Nor
had we any extenuating adventures on the way. The road, we understood,
was being heavily shelled; unless the enemy slumbered and slept, it was
bound to be; but I for one saw nothing of it. The Ford hood reduced the
landscape to a few yards of moonlit track, and the Ford engine drowned
all other noises of the night. But there was the perpetual apprehension
of that which never once occurred. Wherever we stopped, it had been
occurring freely. One of our huts, some kilometres out, was ringed with
huge shell-holes; but none were added during the interminable time we
waited in the road, while business was being transacted with which three
of the four of us had nothing to do. I do not know which was greater,
the relief of getting under way again, or the shame of leaving the crew
of that hut to their fate.
Yet we had but to forget our own miserable skins and sensibilities, to
remember we were only on-lookers, and be thankful to be there that
night in any capacity whatsoever. For the straight French road whereon
we travelled--the wrong way, for our sins!--was choked with strings of
lorries and motor-'buses full of reinforcements for the battle-line;
silent men, miles and miles of them, mostly invisible, load after load;
all embussed, not a single company to be seen upon the march. It was
weird, but it was gorgeous: the tranquil moon above, the tossing dust
below, and these tall landships, packed with fighting-men, looming
through by the hundred. This one, we kept saying, must be the last; but
scarcely were we abreast, grazing her side, craning to make out the men
behind her darkened ports, than another ship-load broke dimly through
the dust, to tower above us in its turn.
Thousands and thousands of gallant hearts! Sometimes the men themselves
fretted the top of a familiar 'bus--of course in khaki like its
load--but for the most part they were out of sight inside. And--it may
have been the drowning thud of their great engines, the noisier racket
of our own--but not a human sound can I remember first or last. So they
passed, speeding to the rescue; so they passed, how many to their
reward! Louder than our throbbing engines, and louder than the guns they
deadened, the fighting blood of England sang that night through all
these arteries of France; and our own few drops danced with our tears,
hurt as it might to rush by upon the other side.
What with one stoppage and another, and always going against the stream
of heavy traffic, the thirty or forty kilometres must have taken us
three or four hours; and there, as I was saying, were our poor
pedestrians in port before us. It dispelled anxiety, if it did no more.
But there was no end to our mean advantages; for the good easy men were
making their beds upon the bare boards of the local Y.M.C.A., where we
found them with the refugees from yet another group of forsaken huts,
some eighty souls in all. They assured us there were no beds to be had
in the place, that the Town Major had commandeered every mattress. But a
cunning and influential veteran whispered another story in my private
ear; and on the understanding that his surreptitious arrangements should
include the mate of the Rest Hut, we adjourned with our friend in need
to the best hotel in the town, whence after supper we were conducted to
a still better billet. Here were not only separate beds, with sheets on
them, but separate rooms with muslin curtains, marbled wash-stands,
clocks and mirrors. It was true we had been forced to leave our heavy
baggage at headquarters in our own poor town; and there had not been
room in my despatch-case for any raiment for the night. But that was
because I had refused to escape without my library records, whatever
else was left behind. And the extensive contact with cool linen could
not lessen the glow of virtue, on that solitary head, with which I
stretched myself out in comfort inconceivable fifteen hours before.
The day, beginning with the shock received from the Scottish Padre at
the head of the dungeon stairs, had been packed with surprise,
disappointment, irritation, mortal apprehension and emotion more varied
than any day of mine had ever yet brought forth. But I was physically
tired out, and a great deal more stolid about it all that night than I
feel now, six months after the event. The silence, I remember, was the
only thing that troubled me, after those three days and nights of almost
incessant shell-fire. But it was a joyous trouble--while it lasted.
Hardly had I closed my eyes upon the moonlit muslin curtains, when I
woke with a start to that unaltered scene. The only difference was the
slightly irregular hum of an enemy aeroplane, and the noise of bombs
bursting all too near our perfect billet.