For a week after that hot night at Messines the Hodden-Grays had a
fairly easy time, and they deserved and needed it.
They marched back to Bailleul and found billets in the farmhouses round
about, and there they had the chance to clean up and refit, to recover
themselves generally, and to grieve over their heavy losses,--though
you would not have thought it, perhaps, by the look of them.
Simply to be sleeping once more beyond the reach of sudden death was a
mental tonic, and its effects showed quickly in a universal bracing up
to concert-pitch and anything more that might be required of them.
The pressure on their special front was still heavy and continuous,
however, and the end of the week’s holiday saw them back in the
fighting-line, with their hearts set dourly on paying back some of the
heavy score if opportunity offered.
They were moved from point to point, but finally settled down in a
wood, the trees of which, so much as was left of them, told their own
grim story of fiery flagellations. The German trenches were in the same
wood about three hundred yards away but were invisible on account of
fallen tree-tops and branches.
There Ray’s company remained for five whole days, shelled incessantly
and so harassed with attacks between times that rest was impossible,
and through sheer strain and weariness their nerves came nigh to
snapping. But they held tight and slogged on, and longed for relief and
a heavenly night’s rest out of the sound and feel of bursting shells.
Even well-seasoned regulars--and they had a very crack battalion on
their left--found it overmuch of a bad thing, and some got ‘batty
in the brain-pan,’ as Ray put it in his letters to Lois, and had
to be sent back to hospital. It was amazing that men accustomed to
experiences so different could stand it. But they did, and held their
own with the best, and suffered much.
The weather was horrible. Some days it poured without ceasing. At night
the rain turned to hail, and they had fierce gales which brought the
remnants of the wood down on their heads, so that between whirling hail
and falling branches they could not see five yards ahead. They were
soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone all day and all night, and
the only thing that kept them alive was the incessant attacks of the
German hordes which had to be beaten back at any price,--and were.
But it was bitter hard work and only possible by reason of urgent and
final necessity. Never were more grateful men on this earth when at
last the reliefs came up, and they trudged off through nine inches of
mud to a village in the rear where they got hot tea,--the first hot
thing they had had for a week.
Then followed a short spell in the reserve trenches, which were full of
water and still subject to shell-fire, but just a degree less racking
than the actual fighting-line in as much as the enemy could not get at
them without ample warning.
Still, they were ‘standing-by’ all the time, ready to supplement the
front at any moment, so there was little rest and constant strain. They
dozed at times, sitting in the mud and more than half frozen with the
bitter cold. Their sopping clothing stuck clammily to their chilled
skins. They dreamed of beds and hot baths, and now and again they fed
on bully beef and bread and jam, washed down with hot tea laced with
rum, and blessed the commissariat which did its level best for them
under very trying circumstances.
Then at last,--since human nature can stand only a certain considerable
amount of affliction without being the worse for it, and they had done
their utmost duty and had about reached the limit--they were ordered
to the rear for a proper rest, and right gladly they took the muddy
road and left the sound of the guns behind them.
There followed a few days of recuperative rest, interrupted only, but
more than once, by orders to ‘stand-by’ to reinforce the front, which
was enduring much tribulation from overwhelming odds. The front held
firm, however, and their tension relaxed again.
They cleaned themselves up and did some parades and route marches to
keep their muscles from cramping, and then, one heavenly day, Ray,
hearing that the officers of other battalions were getting short leave
for home, put in for the same, and got it, and twelve hours later
walked up the drive at Oakdene and Lois rushed out and flung herself
into his arms.