“I like that.”
“Well, it is,” said Lollie stoutly. “Anyway, it feels like it to me.”
That feeling apparently was driven home in the course of the next hour
or two. His servant showed him to his dug-out, which he was to share
with the second in command, had a portable bath and a dixie full of
boiling water for him, his valise spread on a comfortable stretcher-bed
of wire netting on a wooden frame, clean shirt and things laid out,
everything down to soap and towel and a packet of his own pet brand of
cigarettes ready to his hand. Lollie pounced on the cigarettes. “Like a
fool I didn’t take enough to last me,” he said, lighting up and drawing
a long and deep breath and exhaling slowly and luxuriously. “And I
couldn’t get ’em over the other side for love or money.”
While he stripped and got ready for his bath, his servant hovered round
shaking out the things he took off and giving him snatches of gossip
about the battalion. Lollie saw him eyeing the exceedingly dull buttons
on his tunic and laughed. “Rather dirty, aren’t they?” he said. “I’m
afraid I forgot ’em most of the time I was over there. And I hate
cleaning buttons anyhow; always get more of the polish paste on the
tunic than on the buttons.”
After his bath and change, Lollie wandered round and had a talk to
different officers, to his orderly-room sergeant, and the officers’
mess cook, inspected the kitchen arrangements with interest, and
discussed current issue of rations and meals. “Glad you’re back, sir,”
said the mess cook. “I did the best I could, but the messing never
seems to run just right when you’re away. I never can properly remember
the different things some of them don’t like.”
The same compliment to his mess-catering abilities was paid him at
dinner that night. “Ha, dinner,” said the Padre; “we can look for a
return to our good living again now that you’re ho—back again, Lollie.”
Lollie laughed. “Nearly caught you that time, Padre,” he said. “You
almost said ‘home again,’ didn’t you?” And the Padre had to confess he
nearly did.
They had a very pleasant little dinner, and, even if the curry was
mostly bully beef and the wine was the thin, sharp claret of local
purchase, Lollie enjoyed every mouthful and every minute of the meal.
Several of the other officers of the battalion dropped in after dinner
on one excuse or another, but, as Lollie suspected, mainly to shake
hands with him and hear any of the latest from the other side.
“There’s a rum ration to-night,” said the Second, about ten. “What
about a rum punch, Lollie?”
“I tell you this is good,” said Lollie contentedly a quarter of an hour
later, as they sat sipping the hot rum. “’Pon my word, it’s worth going
away, if it’s only for the pleasure of coming back.”
The others laughed at him. “Coming back home, eh?” scoffed the Second.
“Yes, but look here, ’pon my word, it is home,” said Lollie earnestly.
“I tell you it’s like going to a foreign country, going to the other
side now. There’s so many rules and regulations you can’t keep up with
them. You always seem to want a drink, or meet a pal you’d like a
drink with, just in the no-drink hours. In uniform you can’t even get
food after some silly hour like nine or ten o’clock. Why, after the
theatre one night, when I was with three people in civvies, we went to
a restaurant, and I had to sit hungry and watch them eat. They could
get food, and I couldn’t. And one day a pal didn’t turn up that I was
lunching at the Emperor’s, and I found I couldn’t have any of the
things I wanted most, because it cost more than 3_s._ 6_d._ I’d set my
heart on a dozen natives and a bit of grilled chicken—you know how you
do get hankering for certain things after a spell out here—but I had
to feed off poached eggs or some idiotic thing like that.”
“But isn’t there some sense in that rule?” said the Padre. “Isn’t the
idea to prevent young officers being made to pay more than they can
afford?”
Lollie snorted. “Does it prevent it?” he said. “My lunch cost me
over fifteen bob rather than under it, what with a bottle of decent
Burgundy, and coffee and liqueur, and tip to the waiter, and so on.
And, anyhow, who but an utter ass would go to the Emperor’s if he
couldn’t afford a stiff price for a meal? But it isn’t only these rules
and things over there that makes it ‘coming home’ to come back here. In
England you’re made to feel an outsider. D’you know I had a military
police fellow pull me up for not carrying gloves in the first hour of
my leave?”
The others murmured sympathy. “What did you say, Lollie?” asked the
Acting-Adjutant.
“I made him jump,” said Lollie, beaming. “I was standing looking for a
taxi, and this fellow came alongside and looked me up and down. ‘Your
gloves have——,’ he was beginning, when I whipped round on him. ‘Are
you speaking to me?’ I snapped. ‘Yessir,’ he said, stuttering a bit.
‘Then what do you mean by not saluting?’ I demanded, and sailed into
him, and made him stand to attention while I dressed him down and
told him I’d a good mind to report him for insolent and insubordinate
behaviour. ‘And, now,’ I finished up, ‘there’s a brigadier-general just
crossing the street, and he’s not carrying gloves. Go ’n speak to him
about it, and then come back, and I’ll give you my card to report me.’
He sneaked off—_and_ he didn’t go after the general.”
The others laughed and applauded. “Good stroke.” “Rather smart,
Lollie.” “It is rather sickening.”
“But as I was saying,” went on Lollie, after another sip at his
steaming punch, “it isn’t so much these things make a fellow glad to be
back here. It’s because this side really is getting to feel home-like.
You know your way about Boulogne, and all the railways, and where they
run to and from, better than you do lines in England. I do, anyhow. You
know what’s a fair price for things, and what you ought to pay, and you
haven’t the faintest idea of that in England. You just pay, and be sure
you’re usually swindled if they know you’re from this side. Here you
know just the things other people know, and very little more and very
little less, and you’re interested in much the same things. Over there
you have to sit mum while people talk by the hour about sugar cards and
Sinn Fein, and whether there’ll be a new Ministry of Coke and Coal,
and, if so, who’ll get the job; and you hear people grouse, and read
letters in the papers, about the unfair amusement tax, and they pray
hard for pouring rain so it’ll stop the Zepps coming over—not thinking
or caring, I suppose, that it will hang up our Push at the same time,
or thinking of us in the wet shell-holes—and they get agitated to
death because the Minister for Foreign Affairs——” Lollie stopped
abruptly and glanced round the table. “Can anybody here tell me who
IS the Minister for Foreign Affairs?” he demanded. There was a dead
silence for a moment and an uneasy shuffle. Then the Padre cleared his
throat and began, slowly, “Ha, I think it is——”
Lollie interrupted. “There you are!” he said triumphantly. “None of you
know, and you only think, Padre. Just what I’m saying. We don’t know
the things they know over there, and, what’s more, don’t care a rush
about ’em.”
“There’s a good deal in what you say, Lollie,” said the C.O. “But,
after all, Home’s Home to me.”
“I know, sir,” said the Second. “So it is to me.”
But Lollie fairly had the bit between his teeth, although, perhaps,
the rum punch was helping. “Well, I find this side gets more and more
home to me. Over there you keep reading and hearing about the pacifist
danger, and every other day there are strikes and rumours of strikes,
either for more money or because of food shortage—makes one wonder
what some of ’em would say to our fellows’ bob a day or twenty-four
hours living on a bully and biscuit iron ration. I tell you at the
end of ten days over there you begin to think we’ve lost the blessed
war and that it’d serve some of ’em right if we did. Here we’re only
interested in real things and real men. There’s hardly a man I know in
England now—and probably you’re the same if you stop to think. And
I come back here and drop into a smooth little routine, and people I
like, and a job I know, and talk and ways I’m perfectly familiar with
and at home in—that’s the only word, at home in.”
“Bully beef and bullets and Stand To at dawn,” murmured the
Acting-Adjutant. “There were two men reported killed in the trench
to-night.”
“And they might have been killed by a taxi in the Strand if they’d been
there,” retorted Lollie.
“Remember those billets near Pop?” asked the Acting-Adjutant. “Lovely
home that, wasn’t it?”
The others burst into laughter. “Had you there, Lollie,” chuckled the
C.O. “It was a hole, eh?” said the Second, and guffawed again. “D’you
remember Madame, and the row she made because my man borrowed her
wash-tub for me to bath in,” said the Padre. “And the struggle Lollie
had to get a cook-house for the mess, and fed us on cold bully mainly,”
said the C.O., still chuckling.
“Yes, now, but just hold on,” said Lollie. “Do any of you recollect
anything particular about Blankchester—in England?”
There was silence again. “Didn’t we halt there a night that time we
marched from Blank?” said the C.O. hesitatingly. “No, I remember,” said
the Padre. “We halted and lunched there. Ha, Red Lion Inn, roses over
the porch. Pretty place.” The Second evidently remembered nothing.
“You’re right, sir,” said Lollie. “We halted there a night. The Red
Lion village I forget the name of, Padre, though I remember the place.
Now, let’s see if a few other places stir your memories.” He went over,
slowly and with a pause after each, the names of a number of well-known
towns of England and Scotland. The C.O. yawned, and the others looked
bored. “What are you getting at, Lollie?” demanded the Acting-Adjutant
wearily. Lollie laughed. “Those are ‘home’ towns,” he said, “and they
don’t interest you a scrap. But I could go through the list of every
town in the North of France and Flanders—Ballieul and Poperinghe, and
Bethune and Wipers, and Amiens and Armentières and all the rest—and
there isn’t one that doesn’t bring a pleasant little homey thrill to
the sound; and not one that hasn’t associations of people or times
that you’ll remember to your dying day. Even that rotten billet at Pop
you remember and can make jokes and laugh over—as you will for the
rest of your lives. It’s all these things that make me say it’s good to
be back here—home,” and he stood up from the table.
They all chaffed him again, but a little less briskly and with a doubt
evidently dawning in their minds.
Lollie went off to his bed presently, and the others soon followed.
The Second and the Padre sat on to finish a final pipe. When the
Second went along to the dug-out which Lollie was sharing, he went in
very quietly, and found the candle burning by Lollie’s bed and Lollie
fast asleep. He was taking his coat off when Lollie stirred and said
something indistinctly. “What’s that?” said the Major. “Thought you
were asleep.”
“It’s good, O Lord, but it’s good to be home again,” said Lollie
sleepily, and muttered again. The Major looked closely at him. “Talking
in his sleep again,” he thought. “Poor lad. Funny notion that about
back home—here,” and he glanced round the rough earth walls, the
truckle bed, the earth floor, and the candle stuck in a bottle. “Home!
Good Lord!”
“... So good to be back home,” Lollie went on ... “good to find you
here——” The Major “tch-tch-ed” softly between his teeth and stooped
to pull his boots off, and the voice went on, evenly again: “That’s
the best bit of coming home, all that really makes it home—just being
with you again—dearest.” The Major stood erect abruptly. “... Some day
we’ll have our own little home ...” and this time at the end of the
sentence, clear and distinct, came a girl’s name ... “Maisie.”
With sudden haste the Major jerked off his remaining boot, blew out
the light, and tumbled into bed. He caught a last fragment, something
about “another kiss, dear,” before he could pull the blankets up and
muffle them tight about his ears to shut out what he had neither right
nor wish to hear. After that he lay thinking long and staring into the
darkness. “So—that’s it. Talked brave enough, too. I was actually
believing he meant it, and cursing the old war again, and thinking what
a sad pity a fine youngster like that should come to feel a foreign
country home. Sad pity, but”—his mind jumped ahead a fortnight to the
next Push-to-Be—“I don’t know that it’s not more of a pity as it is,
for her, and—him.”
XIII
BRING UP THE GUNS
WHEN Jack Duncan and Hugh Morrison suddenly had it brought home to them
that they ought to join the New Armies, they lost little time in doing
so. Since they were chums of long standing in a City office, it went
without saying that they decided to join and “go through it” together,
but it was much more open to argument what branch of the Service or
regiment they should join.
They discussed the question in all its bearings, but being as ignorant
of the Army and its ways as the average young Englishman was in the
early days of the war, they had little evidence except varied and
contradictory hearsay to act upon. Both being about twenty-five they
were old enough and business-like enough to consider the matter in a
business-like way, and yet both were young enough to be influenced
by the flavour of romance they found in a picture they came across
at the time. It was entitled “Bring up the Guns,” and it showed a
horsed battery in the wild whirl of advancing into action, the horses
straining and stretching in front of the bounding guns, the drivers
crouched forward or sitting up plying whip and spur, the officers
galloping and waving the men on, dust swirling from leaping hoofs and
wheels, whip-thongs streaming, heads tossing, reins flying loose,
altogether a blood-stirring picture of energy and action, speed and
power.
“I’ve always had a notion,” said Duncan reflectively, “that I’d like to
have a good whack at riding. One doesn’t get much chance of it in city
life, and this looks like a good chance.”
“And I’ve heard it said,” agreed Morrison, “that a fellow with any
education stands about the best chance in artillery work. We might as
well plump for something where we can use the bit of brains we’ve got.”
“That applies to the Engineers too, doesn’t it?” said Duncan. “And the
pottering about we did for a time with electricity might help there.”
“Um-m,” Morrison agreed doubtfully, still with an appreciative eye on
the picture of the flying guns. “Rather slow work though—digging and
telegraph and pontoon and that sort of thing.”
“Right-oh,” said Duncan with sudden decision. “Let’s try for the
Artillery.”
“Yes. We’ll call that settled,” said Morrison; and both stood a few
minutes looking with a new interest at the picture, already with a
dawning sense that they “belonged,” that these gallant gunners and
leaping teams were “Ours,” looking forward with a little quickening of
the pulse to the day when they, too, would go whirling into action in
like desperate and heart-stirring fashion.
“Come on,” said Morrison. “Let’s get it over. To the
recruiting-office—quick march.”
And so came two more gunners into the Royal Regiment.
* * * * *
When the long, the heart-breakingly long period of training and waiting
for their guns, and more training and slow collecting of their horses,
and more training was at last over, and the battery sailed for France,
Morrison and Duncan were both sergeants and “Numbers One” in charge of
their respective guns; and before the battery had been in France three
months Morrison had been promoted to Battery Sergeant-Major.
The battery went through the routine of trench warfare and dug its guns
into deep pits, and sent its horses miles away back, and sat in the
same position for months at a time, had slack spells and busy spells,
shelled and was shelled, and at last moved up to play its part in The
Push.
Of that part I don’t propose to tell more than the one incident—an
incident of machine-pattern sameness to the lot of many batteries.
The infantry had gone forward again and the ebb-tide of battle was
leaving the battery with many others almost beyond high-water mark of
effective range. Preparations were made for an advance. The Battery
Commander went forward and reconnoitred the new position the battery
was to move into, everything was packed up and made ready, while the
guns still continued to pump out long-range fire. The Battery Commander
came in again and explained everything to his officers and gave the
necessary detailed orders to the Sergeant-Major, and presently received
orders of date and hour to move.
This was in the stages of The Push when rain was the most prominent
and uncomfortable feature of the weather. The guns were in pits built
over with strong walls and roofing of sandbags and beams which were
weather-tight enough, but because the floors of the pits were lower
than the surface of the ground, it was only by a constant struggle that
the water was held back from draining in and forming a miniature lake
in each pit. Round and between the guns was a mere churned-up sea of
sticky mud. As soon as the new battery position was selected a party
went forward to it to dig and prepare places for the guns. The Battery
Commander went off to select a suitable point for observation of his
fire, and in the battery the remaining gunners busied themselves
in preparation for the move. The digging party were away all the
afternoon, all night, and on through the next day. Their troubles and
tribulations don’t come into this story, but from all they had to say
afterwards they were real and plentiful enough.
Towards dusk a scribbled note came back from the Battery Commander at
the new position to the officer left in charge with the guns, and the
officer sent the orderly straight on down with it to the Sergeant-Major
with a message to send word back for the teams to move up.
“All ready here,” said the Battery Commander’s note. “Bring up the guns
and firing battery waggons as soon as you can. I’ll meet you on the
way.”
The Sergeant-Major glanced through the note and shouted for the Numbers
One, the sergeants in charge of each gun. He had already arranged with
the officer exactly what was to be done when the order came, and now he
merely repeated his orders rapidly to the sergeants and told them to
“get on with it.” When the Lieutenant came along five minutes after,
muffled to the ears in a wet mackintosh, he found the gunners hard at
work.
“I started in to pull the sandbags clear, sir,” reported the
Sergeant-Major. “Right you are,” said the Lieutenant. “Then you’d
better put the double detachments on to pull one gun out and then the
other. We must man-handle ’em back clear of the trench ready for the
teams to hook in when they come along.”
For the next hour every man, from the Lieutenant and Sergeant-Major
down, sweated and hauled and slid and floundered in slippery mud and
water, dragging gun after gun out of its pit and back a half-dozen
yards clear. It was quite dark when they were ready, and the teams
splashed up and swung round their guns. A fairly heavy bombardment was
carrying steadily on along the line, the sky winked and blinked and
flamed in distant and near flashes of gun fire, and the air trembled
to the vibrating roar and sudden thunder-claps of their discharge, the
whine and moan and shriek of the flying shells. No shells had fallen
near the battery position for some little time, but, unfortunately,
just after the teams had arrived, a German battery chose to put over
a series of five-point-nines unpleasantly close. The drivers sat,
motionless blotches of shadow against the flickering sky, while the
gunners strained and heaved on wheels and drag-ropes to bring the
trails close enough to slip on the hooks. A shell dropped with a crash
about fifty yards short of the battery and the pieces flew whining and
whistling over the heads of the men and horses. Two more swooped down
out of the sky with a rising wail-rush-roar of sound that appeared to
be bringing the shells straight down on top of the workers’ heads. Some
ducked and crouched close to earth, and both shells passed just over
and fell in leaping gusts of flame and ground-shaking crashes beyond
the teams. Again the fragments hissed and whistled past and lumps of
earth and mud fell spattering and splashing and thumping over men and
guns and teams. A driver yelped suddenly, the horses in another team
snorted and plunged, and then out of the thick darkness that seemed to
shut down after the searing light of the shell-burst flames came sounds
of more plunging hoofs, a driver’s voice cursing angrily, thrashings
and splashings and stamping. “Horse down here ... bring a light ...
whoa, steady, boy ... where’s that light?”
Three minutes later: “Horse killed, driver wounded in the arm, sir,”
reported the Sergeant-Major. “Riding leader Number Two gun, and centre
driver of its waggon.”
“Those spare horses near?” said the Lieutenant quickly. “Right. Call up
a pair; put ’em in lead; put the odd driver waggon centre.”
Before the change was completed and the dead horse dragged clear, the
first gun was reported hooked on and ready to move, and was given the
order to “Walk march” and pull out on the wrecked remnant of a road
that ran behind the position. Another group of five-nines came over
before the others were ready, and still the drivers and teams waited
motionless for the clash that told of the trail-eye dropping on the
hook.
“Get to it, gunners,” urged the Sergeant-Major, as he saw some of the
men instinctively stop and crouch to the yell of the approaching shell.
“Time we were out of this.”
“Hear, bloomin’ hear,” drawled one of the shadowy drivers. “An’ if you
wants to go to bed, Lanky”—to one of the crouching gunners—“just
lemme get this gun away fust, an’ then you can curl up in that blanky
shell-’ole.”
There were no more casualties getting out, but one gun stuck in a
shell-hole and took the united efforts of the team and as many gunners
as could crowd on to the wheels and drag-ropes to get it moving and
out on to the road. Then slowly, one by one, with a gunner walking and
swinging a lighted lamp at the head of each team, the guns moved off
along the pitted road. It was no road really, merely a wheel-rutted
track that wound in and out the biggest shell-holes. The smaller ones
were ignored, simply because there were too many of them to steer clear
of, and into them the limber and gun wheels dropped bumping, and were
hauled out by sheer team and man power.
It took four solid hours to cover less than half a mile of sodden,
spongy, pulpy, wet ground, riddled with shell-holes, swimming in greasy
mud and water. The ground they covered was peopled thick with all
sorts of men who passed or crossed their way singly, in little groups,
in large parties—wounded, hobbling wearily or being carried back,
parties stumbling and fumbling a way up to some vague point ahead with
rations and ammunition on pack animals and pack-men, the remnants of a
battalion coming out crusted from head to foot in slimy wet mud, bowed
under the weight of their packs and kits and arms; empty ammunition
waggons and limbers lurching and bumping back from the gun-line, the
horses staggering and slipping, the drivers struggling to hold them
on their feet, to guide the wheels clear of the worst holes; a string
of pack-mules filing past, their drivers dismounted and leading, and
men and mules ploughing anything up to knee depth in the mud, flat
pannier-pouches swinging and jerking on the animals’ sides, the brass
tops of the 18-pounder shell-cases winking and gleaming faintly in the
flickering lights of the gun flashes.