stream ran conveniently by. The horses were watered and fed; our
Headquarter notice-board was duly affixed to a roadside tree; and the
doctor added to his previous achievement by tying a tarpaulin to the
side of the mess cart, so that "Swiffy," the doctor himself, and myself
had shelter when we lay down.
The moon rose glorious, serene; there was no need for candles to light
us to bed. We slept heavily, too tired to worry about the morrow, or
the menacing drone of Hun 'planes overhead.
VI. BEHIND VILLEQUIER AUMONT
I have tried to explain how "this flood-burst of moving war, such as
the world had never before seen," affected one unit of the R.F.A., and
one unimportant civilian soldier who was doing adjutant; how the
immensity and swift thoroughness of the German effort must have been
realised by the casual newspaper reader in England more quickly than by
the average officer or man who had to fight against it.
5.30 A.M.: That six hours' sleep under a tarpaulin did me all the good
in the world, and by 5 A.M. I was out seeing that our Headquarter
horses were being groomed and fed and got ready for immediate action.
The guns were particularly quiet, and I remember thinking: we have
retreated eight miles in forty-eight hours--it's about time we stopped.
Something is sure to be doing farther north, where we are so much
stronger.
Breakfast and a shave; then a move forward to find the colonel, and to
learn whether he wanted the waggon lines brought up again. It was a
lovely morning. A beautiful stretch of meadowland skirted the road
leading back to Villequier Aumont, and my horse cantered as if the
buoyancy of spring possessed him also. I caught up Fentiman of D
Battery, who said he was shifting his waggon lines back to Villequier
Aumont. "The water and the standings are so much better there," he
said.
I found the colonel standing in the square at Villequier Aumont,
watching the departure by car of the three American ladies who for a
month past had dispensed tea and cakes in the gaily-painted maisonette
at the top of the village. They had been the first harbingers of the
approaching brotherhood between the British and American Armies in this
part of the Front: brave hospitable women, they had made many friends.
The colonel was not in such good mood this morning. He had remained
through the night with the infantry brigadier in the wood from which
our horse lines had withdrawn the previous evening. The dug-out was
none too large, and his only rest had been a cramped four hours trying
to sleep on the floor. With no rest at all the night before, no wonder
he looked fagged. But immediately there were orders to give, he became
his usual alert, clear-headed self. "It is most important this morning
that we should keep communication with our Divisional Artillery
Headquarters," he began. "Bring the telephone cart back to the wood at
once, and put a couple of telephonists into the dug-out. They'll be
safe there until the last possible moment. It's uncertain yet whether
we're going to hold the enemy up there or not."
I galloped back and brought the telephone cart along at a trot. The two
wheelers, particularly "the doctor's mare," stepped out in most
refreshing style. "The old cart's never had such a day since it's been
to France," grinned the signalling-sergeant when we pulled up. Odd
5.9's were falling in the wood; our batteries had shifted in the early
morning from the eastern side of the wood to positions more north-west,
and two Horse Artillery batteries were moving up behind the rise that
protected our right flank. But what was this? Coming up at a steady
march, bayonets glinting, a long column of blue-grey wound into view.
French infantry! The thin line of khaki was at last to receive support!
7 A.M.: The Infantry battle was now developing sharply two thousand
yards in front of us. Shells crashed persistently into the wood; the
"putt-puttr-putt" of machine-guns rattled out ceaselessly....
Whimsically I recalled quieter days on the Somme, when our
machine-gunners used to loose off seven rounds in such a way as to give
a very passable imitation of that popular comic-song tag,
"Umtiddy-om-pom--Pom-pom!" After three attempts we had given up trying
to keep telephone touch with the batteries, and I had detailed mounted
orderlies to be in readiness. One line I kept going, though, between
the hut where the infantry brigadier and his brigade-major and the
colonel received messages describing the progress of the fighting, and
the telephone dug-out, whence the colonel could be switched on to the
artillery brigadier. There was bad news of the battery just out from
England that had come under the colonel's command the evening before.
Three of their guns had been smashed by direct hits, and they had lost
horses as well. The Boche were swarming over the canal now, and our A
and C and B Batteries were firing over open sights and cutting up
Germans as they surged towards our trenches.
11 A.M.: Orders from our own brigadier to pull out the guns and retire
to a crest behind Villequier Aumont. I heard the news come along the
telephone wire, and went through the wood to seek further directions
from the colonel. It was evident now that the wood could only be held
at great sacrifice, and by determined hand-to-hand fighting. The Boche
outnumbered us by at least four to one, and French help had not yet
arrived in sufficient strength. I walked behind two rows of French and
British infantry, lying ready in shallow newly-dug trenches. They
looked grave and thoughtful; some of them had removed their tunics. I
remember noting that of four hundred men I passed not one was talking
to his neighbour. I remember noticing a few horses waiting behind, and
motor-cyclist messengers hurriedly arriving and hurriedly departing. I
remember most of all the mournful, desolate howling of a dog, tied up
to one of the now deserted huts--the poor friendly French pointer who
the day before had snuggled his nose into my hand. Near the hedge
leading to the hut where I should find the colonel stood a group of
infantry officers. One of them, a tall lieutenant-colonel, I recognised
as Colonel ---- who had dined with us in our mess in the quarry a few
nights before the offensive started. His head was heavily bandaged. I
learned some days afterwards that he had been wounded while leading a
company of his battalion in a counter-attack; and that not long after I
passed him that morning in the wood he reorganised and exhorted his
men, facing terrific rifle and machine-gun fire--and indeed showed such
glorious and inspiring courage that he gained the Victoria Cross.
1 P.M.: The mounted orderlies had delivered orders to the batteries to
retire, and D Battery was already trekking along the road the other
side of Villequier Aumont. Machine-gun fire in the wood we had left was
hotter than ever. And the German guns were moving up, as could be told
when long-range efforts began to be made on the villages behind
Villequier Aumont. Half a dozen high-velocity shells struck the road we
had traversed, one of them knocking out a Horse Artillery waggon and
three horses. Two other horses had to be shot, and the sixth bolted.
From the markings on a good horse that I found tied to our own lines
later in the day, I concluded that the runaway had strayed in our
direction; and in the matter of strayed horses--good horses, that
is--the sergeant-major always worked on the principle, "It's all in the
same firm." At any rate, we had a valuable spare horse for the trying
march that followed.
2.30 P.M.: The colonel had selected the new positions for the
batteries, and two of them were already in. While we waited the arrival
of the others, we flung ourselves down in a hay-field and watched the
now continuous stream of men, batteries, transport lorries, and
ambulance cars coming up the hill leading from Villequier Aumont, and
toiling past us towards Ugny. There was no doubting it now: it was a
retreat on a big scale.
All round us were rolling fields, rich of soil, and tilled and tended
with that French care and thoroughness that the war has intensified.
Even small irregular patches at road-crossings have been cultivated for
the precious grain these last two years. "The Boche will get all this,
curse him!" muttered the colonel.
Major Bullivant of B Battery came over the hill on the pet grey mare
that, in spite of three changes from one Division to another, he had
managed to keep with him all the time he had been in France. He didn't
dismount in drill-book fashion; he just fell off. It was spirit, not
physique, that was keeping him going. Unshaven, wild-eyed, dirty, he
probably didn't know it. His mind centred on nothing but the business
in hand. "My battery is coming through Villequier Aumont now, sir," he
informed the colonel. "For a few minutes I was afraid we weren't going
to get out. My damn fool of a sergeant-major, for some reason or other,
took the gun-teams back to the waggon lines this morning. Said he was
going to change them and bring fresh teams up after breakfast or
something. When Beadle came up with the teams we were under machine-gun
fire. Got one man killed and three wounded, and we have a few scratches
on the shields.... If I don't get up, sir, I shall fall fast asleep,"
he exclaimed suddenly. "Where are our new positions, sir?"
The colonel handed him his flask, and he smiled. "As a matter of fact,
sir, I've kept going on ration rum."
When the colonel and Major Bullivant went off, up rode Beadle in an
extraordinary get-up: British warm, gum-boots, and pyjamas. He had been
able to get no change since the Boche 8-inch had wiped out B Battery's
mess at the opening of the Hun bombardment on the 21st. It was an
amazing thing, but neither of us had remembered to eat anything since
breakfast until that moment. The day's excitements had caused us to
ignore time altogether, and to forget hunger. But Beadle's tired grin
brought me back to such worldly matters, and we fell to on a tin of
bully and a hunk of cheese that the signalling-sergeant discovered for
us.
"They say we've done jolly well up north," said Beadle, his mouth full.
"Got as far as Cambrai, and 25,000 prisoners taken at Ypres."
"Who told you that?" I asked, at the same time ready to believe. Did
not this entirely support my belief of the early morning? Certainly we
must be doing something up north!
"I heard it at the waggon lines," went on Beadle. "They say it's in
Corps orders."
The line of retreating traffic and of loaded ambulance cars in front of
us maintained its monotonous length. But the retirement continued to be
orderly and under full control, although now and again a block in the
next village kept the main road lined with immobile horses and men,
while high-velocity shells, directed at the road, whizzed viciously to
right and left of them. One kilted Scot passed us leading a young cow.
He paid no heed to the jests and the noisy whistling of "To be a
Farmer's Boy" that greeted him. "The milk 'ull be a' richt the morn's
morn, ye ken," was his comfortable retort. And once a red-headed
Yorkshireman broke the strain of the wait under shell-fire by calling
out, "It's a good job we're winnin'!"
The colonel came back after showing Major Bullivant his new battery
position, and told me to ride off at once to Ugny, where Divisional
Artillery Headquarters had stationed themselves, and inform the staff
captain that the ammunition dump on the roadside contained no
ammunition. "Find out something definite," he ordered.
D.A. had settled themselves in two rooms in a deserted house, and the
staff captain quickly sketched out the arrangements he had made for
ammunition supply. "A Divisional ammunition column is too cumbersome
for this moving warfare," he said, "and your Brigade will be supplied
by No. 1 section acting as B.A.C. There's an ammunition park at ----,
and if you will supply guides here (pointing to the map) at 6.30
to-night, your B.A.C. will supply direct to your waggon lines. And that
arrangement will continue so long as we are conducting this sort of
warfare. Is that clear?... Right!"
As I was about to depart, in came the brigade-major, who had been in
consultation with the brigadier-general. "Ah, ----," he said, calling
me by name, "you can give me some information. Is the colonel far
away?"
"He's with the batteries, sir, giving them targets from their new
positions."
"Right! Can you tell me how many guns you have in action now?"
I was able to do this, and also told him where our batteries were going
to establish waggon lines for the night.
"That won't do," he interrupted; "you'll be too far north. The Boche is
coming down that main road. You'd better tell the colonel that any
further retirement must be south-west, because the Boche is pinching us
on our left. I'll show you the line as it runs at present. I've just
got it."
We bent over his large-scale map, and I copied the curved line on to my
own map. "The French are properly in now," added the brigade-major,
"and we are going to fight for that line. There's to be no more
retiring."
"Is it true, sir, that we've done well up north? Most encouraging
rumours flying round."
"I don't know," he replied with a tired smile. "I hope so."
A smile and a cheering word from the General, who said, "I've just seen
the colonel, and I've put two of your batteries farther forward.
They'll help to hold Villequier Aumont a bit longer." Then outside I
met Beadle, and gave him the time and place where battery guides had to
meet the B.A.C. ammunition waggons, and sent off my groom to convey
this information officially to all the battery waggon lines. After
which I cantered back, and discovered the colonel inspecting the two
batteries that the General had moved to more forward positions.
It was 6 P.M., and the enemy advance machine-gun parties were now
certainly closing in on Villequier Aumont, which lay in the hollow
beneath us. But I shall always remember the handling of our composite A
and C batteries on that occasion. It so exactly fulfilled drill-book
requirements, it might all have been done on parade. The noses of the
four 18-pdrs. peeped out from under a clump of beeches, close to a pond
under the brow of a hill. Dumble had climbed to the top of a tower
three-quarters of a mile from the battery, and directed the shooting
from the end of a roughly laid telephone wire. He reported only
fleeting glimpses of Huns, but could guess pretty well the spots at
which they were congregating, and issued his orders accordingly. Young
Eames, the officer passing the orders to the gunners, stood very
upright, close to the battery telephonist, and let his voice ring out
in crisp staccato tones that would have won him full marks at Larkhill
or Shoeburyness: "Aiming point top of tower. All guns ... Four 0
degrees Right.... Concentrate Two 0 minutes on Number One.... Corrector
152.... Why didn't you shout out your Fuze Number 3?... Three
Two-fifty--Two Nine-fifty.... Will you acknowledge orders, Sergeant
Kyle?..."
The colonel, who was standing well behind Eames, smiled and said to me,
"Good young officer that. If he keeps as cool all the time, the battery
ought to shoot well."
Hun aeroplanes were beginning to come over. Trench war customs had made
it almost axiomatic that firing should cease when enemy aircraft
appeared. Three times the battery stopped firing at the cry,
"Aeroplane up!"
The colonel intervened. "Don't stop because of aeroplanes now," he said
sharply. "We're fighting moving warfare, and the enemy haven't time to
concentrate all their attention on this battery."
7 P.M.: The colonel and I walked slowly back to the roadway. "I've sent
back to Bushman, and told him to bring Headquarters waggon lines up
here," he said. "They are too far back the other side of Ugny, and
we're only a small unit: we can move more quickly than a battery. We'll
unhook on the side of that hill there, away from the road. It will be
quite warm to-night, and we can lie down under those trees." ... A
dozen or so 5.9's rushed through the air, and burst with terrifying
ear-racking crashes along the road in front of us. A charred, jagged
rent showed in the wall of a farm building. Three hundred yards farther
along we saw the Headquarter vehicles drawn up on the roadside. The
drivers and the signallers were drinking tea, and seemed to be
preparing to settle for the night in a barn whose lofty doors opened on
to the road. "Look at those fellows," ejaculated the colonel testily.
"They're never happy unless they can stuff themselves under a roof.
Fetch 'em out, and tell 'em to pull up to the top of that hill there.
As long as you keep away from villages and marked roads you can escape
most of the shelling."
7.30 P.M.: We had tied up the horses, and parked the G.S. waggon and
the telephone and mess carts. Twilight had almost merged into night
now, but the moon was rising, and it was to be another amazingly
lustrous moon. The cook had started a small log-fire to make tea for
the colonel, Bushman, and myself, and after that we intended to lie
down and get some sleep. "Swiffy" and the doctor seemed to have
disappeared. Must be at one of the battery waggon lines, we concluded.
"While tea is getting ready, I'll walk down to D Battery again. They're
pretty close up to the infantry, and I want to make sure they can get
out easily if they have to make a rapid move," remarked the colonel,
and he disappeared over the hill, taking his servant with him.
The kettle had not had time to boil. The colonel had only been away ten
minutes. The tired drivers were unrolling their blankets and preparing
for slumber. Suddenly my ear caught a voice calling up the
hillside--the colonel's--followed twice by the stentorian tones of his
servant.
The cry was, "Saddle-up!"
VII. STILL IN RETREAT
8.15 P.M.: "I found that D Battery had moved off--gone towards the
other side of Ugny, and A and C were also on the march," explained the
colonel, when Headquarter carts and waggons--parked out for the night
only half an hour before--had again got under way (taking the road
between Villequier Aumont and Ugny) for the third time during
twenty-two hours. "Division got news that the Boche was putting in two
fresh divisions, and intended to attack by moonlight," he added, "and
they thought our guns were too close up to be safe; so the
brigade-major hurried down and told the batteries to move back at once.
We turn south-west from Ugny and make for Commenchon, and come into
action there as soon as we get further news from Division. I have sent
out orders to all the batteries, and they are marching to Commenchon
independently."
It was a radiant night. The moon rode high in a star-spangled sky;
there was a glow and a sense of beauty in the air--a beauty that
exalted soul and mind, and turned one's thoughts to music and
loveliness and home. The dry hard roads glistened white and clean; and
in the silvery light the silhouettes of men marching steadily,
purposefully, took on a certain dignity that the garish sun had not
allowed to be revealed.
Whether we spoke of it or not, each one of us listened expectantly for
the swift-rushing scream of a high-velocity shell, or the long-drawn
sough of an approaching 5.9. This main road, along which our retreating
columns were winding their slow even way, was bound to be strafed.
We rode through Ugny, two days ago a Corps H.Q., deserted now save for
the military police, and for odd parties of engineers, signallers, and
stretcher-bearers. Then our way took us down a wide sunken road,
through an undulating countryside that stretched up to remote
pine-tipped hills to right and left of us. A battalion of French
infantry had halted by the roadside; their voices, softer, more tuneful
than those of our men, seemed in keeping with the moonlit scene; and in
their long field-blue coats they somehow seemed bigger, more matured,
than our foot-soldiers.
We had marched five miles when a horseman on a broad-backed black came
towards us. He looked intently at every one he passed as he rode the
length of our column. "Is that the adjutant, sir?" he asked when he
came level with me; and then, sure of my identity, went on, "I've got
our supply waggon with me, sir--halted it at the next cross-roads. I
heard the Brigade was moving, sir, and came to find the best spot to
pick you up. The battery supply waggons will be passing this way in
about half an hour, sir."
Keeping daily touch with your supply column is one of the fine arts of
moving warfare, and the resourceful M'Donald had again proved his
worth. "Refilling point, to-morrow, will be at Baboeuf, sir," he added,
"and after to-morrow it will be only iron rations. Good forage to-day,
sir."
11 P.M.: Brigade Headquarters had pulled into the right of the road
behind B Battery, just outside a village that up to the 21st had been
a sort of rest-village, well behind the lines. Army Ordnance, Army
Service Corps, and battalions out of the line were the only units
represented there, and a fair proportion of the civil population had
re-established itself after the German retreat in the spring of 1917.
Now all was abandoned again, furniture and cattle bundled out, and
houses locked up in the hope that shortly the Boche would be thrust
back and the village re-occupied by its rightful owners.
The colonel had ridden forward with young Bushman to meet the
brigade-major and to settle where the Brigade would camp. More French
infantry passed, going up to the Front by the way we had come back.
Twice, big lasting flares illuminated the sky over there where the
fighting was--stores being burnt to prevent them falling into German
hands, we concluded. Presently, Bushman returned and pointed out a
particular area where Brigade Headquarters could settle down.
The small village green would do for horse lines and for parking our
vehicles. I sent off the sergeant-major to scout for water supply, and
took possession of a newly-roofed barn in which the men might sleep.
There was a roomy shed for the officers' horses and a stone outhouse
for the men's kitchen. Now about a billet for the colonel!
"There's a big house at the back, sir, with an artillery mess in it,"
said the sergeant-major, who had finished watering and feeding the
horses. "Perhaps there's a spare room there for the colonel."
I went round and came upon the officers of a 6-inch how. battery, who
had reached the village two hours before, and were finishing their
evening meal. They offered me dinner, which I refused, and then a
whisky, which I accepted; but there were no spare rooms. They had got
away from the neighbourhood of the canal with the loss of two hows.,
but told me of a 9.2 battery at ----, that it had been absolutely
impossible to get out. "I believe it is true that we've done very well
up north," replied their Irish captain cheerfully. "Lots of prisoners
at Ypres, they say.... Have another whisky!"
"We have one tent, haven't we?" I asked the sergeant-major when I got
outside.
"Yes, sir, but there's a cottage where Meddings has put the officers'
cook-house. It looks all right, and there might be something there for
the colonel."
The cottage certainly looked clean and neat from the outside, but the
door was locked, and it is the rule that British troops only enter
French houses with the consent of the owners. However, I climbed
through the window and found two empty rooms each with bed and
mattress. Times were not for picking and choosing. "We'll put the tent
up," I decided, "and ask the colonel if he cares to take one of these
beds or have the tent. You and I, Bushman, will take what he doesn't
want."
When I took a turn round to see if the men were comfortably settled for
the night, I learnt that the skurried departure of the A.S.C. had
provided them with unexampled opportunity of legitimate loot. There was
one outbuilding crammed with blankets, shirts, socks, and
underwear--and our men certainly rose to the occasion. Even the old
wheeler chuckled when he discovered a brand-new saw and a drill. The
sergeant-major fastened on to a gramophone; and that caused me for the
first time to remember my Columbia graphophone that I had loaned to C
Battery before I went home wounded from Zillebeke. Hang it, it must
have been left behind at Villequier Aumont. The Germans had probably
got it by now.