cross the canal, their turn-out was smart and soldierly, and there was
satisfaction in the colonel's quick, comprehensive glance. Through
Pontoise, another village from which the inhabitants had fled the day
before, and past the outskirts of Noyon, with its grey cathedral and
quaint tower. The evacuation here had been frantic, and we heard
stories of pillage and looting and of drunken men--not, one is glad to
say it, British soldiers. In all that galling, muddling week I did not
see a single drunken soldier. As we were near a considerable town, I
gave my groom twenty francs, and told him to buy what food he could: we
might be very short by nightfall. He returned with some sardines, some
tinned tunny fish, and a few biscuits, the sardines costing five francs
a small tin. At one cross-road a dozen American Red Cross cars were
drawn up, and I recall the alacrity of a middle-aged American doctor,
wearing gold pince-nez, in hopping off his ambulance and snapshotting
the colonel at the head of the battery. I wondered bitterly whether
that photograph would subsequently be published under the heading,
"British Artillery in Retreat."
2.30 P.M.: The four batteries were now ranged alongside a railway
siding at a point where the road by which we had journeyed joined the
main road to Compiegne. For several hours this great traffic artery had
been packed with troops and transport moving to and from the
battle-front. It was hot and dusty, and our men and horses were glad of
the half-hour's halt, although the respite had only lasted so long
because the traffic on the main route had been too continuous for us to
turn on to it and reach the road fifty yards farther down along which
we had to continue. Remembering a lesson of the Mons retreat emphasised
by a Horse Artillery major lecturing at Larkhill--that his horses kept
their condition because every time there was a forced halt near a
village he despatched his gunners with the water-buckets--I had told my
groom to search around until he found water for my two horses. Then I
stood under the trees lining the main road and watched three battalions
of French infantry march past, moving north of the part of the front
our brigade had just left. They were older, smaller, more town-bred
French soldiers than those we had seen during the two previous days,
more spectacles among them, and a more abstracted expression. The
thought came to me that here must be last-line reserves. Up on the
steep hills that overlooked the railway siding bearded French troops
were deepening trenches and strengthening barbed wire.
3 P.M.: We were anxious to get on now, and longed for a couple of City
of London traffic policemen to stand in majestic and impartial control
of these road junctions. The colonel and Major Bullivant, after
expostulating five minutes with a French major, had got our leading
battery across. Then the long line of traffic on the main route
resumed its apparently endless flow. An R.A.M.C. captain came out and
stood by as I stationed myself opposite the road we wanted our three
remaining batteries to turn down, watching to take quick advantage of
the G in the first possible GAP. "Pretty lively here last night,"
volunteered the R.A.M.C. captain. "General scramble to get out, and
some unusual sights. There was a big ordnance store, and they hadn't
enough lorries to get the stuff away, so they handed out all manner of
goods to prevent them being wasted. The men got pretty well _carte
blanche_ in blankets, boots, and puttees, and you should have seen them
carting off officers' shirts and underclothing. There was a lot of
champagne going begging too, and hundreds of bottles were smashed to
make sure the men had no chance of getting blind. And there was an old
sapper colonel who made it his business to get hold of the stragglers.
He kept at it about six hours, and bunged scores of wanderers into a
prisoners-of-war cage; then he had 'em marched off to a collecting
station. He was hot stuff, I can tell you."
A gap came at last on the main route, but something also that would dam
the opening we had awaited for over an hour.
A tremendous line of French lorries was moving towards me on the road
opposite. The French officer in charge had come forward to reconnoitre
the crossing. Three British lorries, loading up, also stood on the road
along which we wanted to go. If the French lorries reached that spot
first, our batteries might be held up another hour. It was a moment for
unscrupulous action. I told my groom to dash off and tell Major
Bartlett to come along at the trot; then I slipped across and engaged
the French captain in conversation. If I could prevent him signalling
back for his lorries to quicken speed, all would be well. If Major
Bartlett failed, there would be a most unholy mix up near the three
stationary lorries. Major Bartlett responded nobly. His leading team
reached the three lorries while the first French motor-waggon was still
thirty yards away. The gap between the stationary lorry and the moving
one narrowed to eight yards; but the waggon and six horses were
through, and the battery now commanded the position with a line of
horsed waggons and baggage-carts stretching back along the fifty yards
of the main road, with A and B Batteries following in column of route
past the railway siding. The line of French lorries extended back far
as the eye could see. The French officer turned sharply, cursed
impatiently, and asserted volubly that his lorries must come through. I
explained soothingly what a long time we had waited, and asked his
forbearance. Meanwhile C Battery continued to trot through the gap, and
I called Heaven to witness that the whole of our Brigade would be
through and away before ten minutes passed. I ran back to urge A and B
Batteries to keep up the pace. When our very last water-cart,
mess-cart, and G.S. waggon had passed, I thanked the French officer
with great sincerity, and felt I had done a proper job of work.
4.30 P.M.: We sat by the roadside eating bread-and-cheese--the colonel,
young Bushman, and I. The batteries were well on the way to their
destination; and we three, jogging along in rear, had encountered
Bombardier M'Donald, triumphant at having filled his forage and rations
waggon for yet another day. So we and our grooms helped ourselves to
bread-and-cheese and satisfied hefty appetites, and drank the cider
with which Bushman had filled his flask at Caillouel the day before.
Another of the mournful side-spectacles of the retreat was being
enacted under our eyes. Opposite a small cottage a cart packed to a
great height, but marvellously balanced on its two huge wheels, stood
ready to move off. A wrinkled sad-eyed woman, perched on top, held
beside her her grandchild--a silent, wondering little girl. A darkly
handsome, strongly-built daughter had tied a cow to the back of the
cart. A bent old man began to lead the wide-backed Percheron mare that
was yoked to the shafts with the mixture of straps and bits of rope
that French farm folk find does well enough for harness. But the cow,
bellowing in an abandonment of grief, tugged backwards, and the cart
did not move. The daughter, proud-eyed, self-reliant, explained that
the cow was calling for her calf. The calf would never be able to make
the journey, and they had been compelled to sell it, and it would be
killed for food. It was hard, but it was war.
They tried again; but the cow refused to be comforted, and tugged until
the rope threatened to strangle her. They brought the calf out again
and tied him alongside his now pacified mother; but this time, when the
cart moved forward, he protested in fear and bewilderment, and tried to
drag himself free. The cart was still there when we rode off.
Our way ran through a noble stretch of hilly country, well wooded, with
sparkling streams plashing down the hillsides--a landscape of
uninhabited quiet. Two aeroplanes droned overhead--the first Allied
planes we had seen since the retreat began. "The old French line,"
observed the colonel, pointing out a wide system of well-planned
trenches, deep dug-outs, and broad belts of rusted barbed wire. "The
Boche ought not to get through here."
Up and over a hill, and down into a tiny hamlet which more stricken
civilians were preparing to leave. As our little cavalcade drew near, a
shrinking old woman, standing in a doorway, drew a frightened little
girl towards her, and held a hand over the child's eyes. "I believe
they took us to be Germans at first," said the colonel when we had
passed.
In another village a woman was trying to make a cow pull a
heavily-laden waggon up the hill. With streaming eyes and piteous
gestures she besought us to assist with our horses. She would pay us
money. Twice before she had lost everything through the Boche, she
pleaded. The colonel looked grieved, but shook his head. "We'll send
back a pair of draught-horses if we can," was all he said to me. And we
did.
6 P.M.: We had reached Thiescourt, a hillside village that had thought
never to be threatened by the Germans again. Dwellings damaged during
their last visit had been repaired. New houses made of fine white
stone, quarried in the district, had been built, and were building. The
bitterness of it, if the foul devastating Boche were to come again!
There were many evidences of the hurried flight of the last two
days,--torn letters and papers, unswept fire-grates, unconsumed food
and drinks, beds with sheets in them, drawers hurriedly searched for
articles that could be taken away, disconsolate wandering dogs. A few
days before it had been arranged that the major-general, his Divisional
Staff, Ordnance, the Divisional brass band, and all the usual
appurtenances of a Divisional Headquarters, should come and make this
village a Divisional rest area. Few even of the first preparations for
visitation were left now. D.A.D.O.S., blue-tabbed and business-like,
was in the main street, bewailing the scarcity of lorries for removing
his wares to an area still farther back. He had several rifles he
would be pleased to hand out to our batteries. There was a large
quantity of clothing which would have to be left in the store he had
established. Any we didn't want would we burn, or drop in the stream
before we left? No lorry to remove the Divisional canteen. Would we
distribute the supplies free to our men? Biscuits, chocolate, potted
meats, tooth-paste, and cigarettes went like wildfire.
Brigade H.Q. mess was installed in a new house that had chalked
messages scrawled on doors, walls, and mirrors, telling searching
relations and friends the address in a distant town to which the
occupants of the house had fled. In another dwelling that Boche
aeroplanes had already bombed, we discovered sleeping quarters. At 7
P.M. a lieutenant on a motor-cycle arrived with Corps orders for the
morrow. We were to leave for Elincourt immediately the tactical
situation demanded it.
We dined early, and sought our beds early too. I had been asleep two
minutes, as I thought--really about an hour and a half--when Dumble
woke me up. "Cavalry are coming through," he said, shining his electric
torch right in my eyes, "and they say the enemy is at Lagny. Hadn't you
better let the colonel know?"
"No," I retorted with some asperity.
"But listen; can you hear all that traffic? It's our infantry coming
back."
"Can you hear machine-gun fire?" I asked resentfully.
"No."
"Well, I'm damned if I disturb the colonel until you can tell me that,
at least," I said finally, turning on my right side.
XII. OUT OF THE WAY
The usual monotonous spectacle when we woke next morning: the narrow
streets of what a few days before had been a tranquil, out-of-the-war
village choked with worn-out troops marching to go into rest. Now that
we had become a brigade of artillery without guns, a British
non-fighting unit struggling to get out of the way of a manoeuvring
French army, our one great hope was that Corps would send us right back
to a depot where we could refit ourselves with fresh guns and
reinforcements, to some spot where we need not be wondering every five
minutes whether the enemy was at our heels. Men who have fought four
days and nights on end feel like that when the strain of actual battle
ceases.
The Boche guns sounded nearer, and the colonel had ordered a mounted
officer to go back and seek definite information upon the situation. By
10 A.M. a retiring French battalion marched through, and reported that
the line was again being withdrawn. By 11 A.M. two batteries of "75's"
came back. Which decided the colonel that the tactical situation
demanded our departure, and the Brigade began the march to Elincourt.
On past more evacuated villages. Abandoned farm carts--some of which
our batteries eagerly adopted for transporting stores and kit--and the
carcases of dogs, shot or poisoned, lying by the roadside, told their
own story of the rush from the Hun. By 1 P.M. we reached Elincourt, a
medieval town whose gable-ends and belfry towers, and straight rows of
hoary lime-trees, breathed the grace and charm of the real France. I
made immediately for the Mairie, bent upon securing billets for
officers and men; but standing at the gateway was a Corps
despatch-rider who handed over instructions for the Brigade to continue
the march to Estree St Denis, a town twenty kilometres distant.
5 P.M.: Estree St Denis, to which I rode in advance with a billeting
officer from each battery, proved to be a drab smoky town of
mean-looking, jerry-built houses. One thought instinctively of the
grimiest parts of Lancashire and the Five Towns. The wide and
interminably long main street was filled with dust-laden big guns and
heavy hows., four rows of them. Every retreating Division in France
seemed to be arriving and to be bringing more dust. Hundreds of
refugees from villages now in Boche possession had come, too. What a
place to be sent to! It was useless looking for billets, so I fixed
upon a vast field on the outskirts of the town where we could establish
our horse lines and pitch tents and bivouacs. This was satisfactory
enough, but the watering problem was bound to be difficult. Four small
pumps in the main street and one tiny brackish pond totalled the
facilities. It would take each battery an hour and a half to water its
horses. "Corps moves in most mysterious ways," crooned Stone. "Why did
they send us here?" We rode and walked until we were tired, but found
nothing that would improve matters. Then Fentiman, Stone, and I found
the Cafe de la Place, and entered the "Officers only" room, where we
sat down to a bottle of wine and devoured the Continental 'Daily Mail'
of March 23, the first paper we had seen since starting the retreat.
Madame informed us that some officers of Divisional Headquarters had
turned up the day before and were dining there. As we went out to go
and meet the batteries and lead them to the waggon lines, there was a
shout of recognition, and "Swiffy" and the little American doctor ran
up, grinning and rather shamefaced. "We thought of posting you as
deserters," I said with pretended seriousness, "not having seen you
since the afternoon of the 23rd." It was now the 26th. They narrated a
long and somewhat sheepish story that, boiled down, told of a barn that
promised a sound afternoon's nap, an awakening to find every one
vanished; then a worried and wearied tramp in search of us, with
nothing to eat except what they could beg or buy at ruinous prices; one
perturbing two hours when they found themselves walking into the arms
of the oncoming Hun; and finally, a confirmed resolve never to stray
far from the Brigade mess-cart again.
7 P.M.: When the batteries were settled in their waggon lines, I led
the colonel and "Swiffy" and the doctor through the crowded dusty
streets into the Cafe de la Place. The restaurant was filled with
French and British officers. "Swiffy" insisted on cracking a bottle of
champagne to celebrate the return of the doctor and himself to the
fold; then I spotted Ronny Hertford, the Divisional salvage officer,
who was full of talk and good cheer, and said he had got his news from
the new G.S.O. II., who had just come from England, travelling with a
certain politician. "It's all right, old boy," bubbled Ronny. "The War
Office is quite calm about it now; we've got 'em stone-cold. Foch is in
supreme command, and there are any number of Divisions in reserve which
haven't been called on. We're only waiting to know if this is the real
push, or only a feint, and then we strike. We've got 'em trapped, old
top, no doubt about that."
"Right-o, strategist!" I retorted in the same vein.
"Do you want to buy a calf, old boy?" he switched off. "Look
here--there's one under the table. About 110 lbs. of meat at 3 francs a
pound. Dirt cheap these times. A Frenchman has left it with Madame to
sell. We'd buy it for our mess, but we've got a goose for dinner
to-night. Stay and dine with us, old boy."
Through the glass door that showed into the cafe one saw a little group
of civilians, dressed in their Sunday black, waiting for carts to take
them from the town. A mother was suckling a wailing child. An old
cripple nodded his head helplessly over hands propped up by his stick.
A smart young French soldier came in at the door, and Madame's
fair-haired daughter rushed to his arms and held him while she wept.
They talked fast, and the civilians listened with strained faces. "Her
fiance," quietly explained an interpreter who came through the cafe to
join us in the "Officers only" room. "He's just come from Montdidier
with a motor-transport. He says he was fired at by machine-guns, which
shows that the Boche is still coming on."
The camp commandant of the Division, nervously business-like, the
baths' officer, D.A.D.O.S., and a couple of padres came in. The Camp
Commandant refused to hear of the colonel sleeping in a tent. "We've
got a big dormitory at the back here, sir--thirty wire-beds. We can put
all your Brigade Headquarter officers up." The colonel protested that
we should be quite happy in bivouacs, but he was overruled.
We dined in a tent in the waggon lines. As I made my way there I
noticed a blue-painted motor-van, a mobile French wireless station,
some distance away in the fields. What really caught my eye when I drew
near it was a couple of Camembert cheeses, unopened and unguarded, on
the driver's seat. I bethought myself that the operator inside the van
might be persuaded to sell one of the cheeses. He wasn't, but he was
extremely agreeable, and showed me the evening _communique_ that had
just been "ticked" through. We became friends, which explains why for
three days I was able to inform the camp commandant, Ronny Hertford,
and all their party, of the latest happenings at the Front, hours
before the French newspapers and the Continental 'Daily Mail' arrived.
And what do you think the men of two of our batteries were doing an
hour after the camps were pitched and the horses watered?--playing a
football match! Marvellous fellows!
We stayed at Estree until the evening of the 28th, days of gossip and
of fairly confident expectations, for we knew now that the Boche's
first offensive was held--but a time of waiting and of wondering where
we were to be sent next. Division was nearly thirty miles away,
incorporated with the French Army, and still fighting, while Corps
seemed to have forgotten that we needed supplies. Still there was no
need to worry about food and forage. Estree was an important railhead,
and the supply officer seemed anxious to get his stores distributed as
soon as they came in: he was prepared to treat most comers as
famine-stricken stragglers. Besides, near the station stood an enormous
granary, filled to the brim, simply waiting to be requisitioned.
About noon on the 28th we were very cast down by the news that, to meet
the demand for reinforcements, the Brigade might be disbanded, and the
gunners hurried off in driblets, to make up losses on various parts of
our particular Army's front.
The colonel had instructions to attend a Staff Conference in the
afternoon, and each battery was ordered to prepare a list of its
available gunners.
There were sore hearts that afternoon. Many of the men had been with
the Brigade since it was formed, and to be scattered broadcast after
doing well, and coming through a time of stress and danger together,
would knock the spirit out of every one. The colonel came back at
tea-time, impassive, walking briskly. I knew before he opened his lips
that the Brigade was saved. "We move to-night to Pont St Maxence. We
are going on to Poix to refit," was all he said.
* * * * *
Every one was anxious to be off, fearing that the Staff might change
its mind. It rained in torrents that night, and owing to the Corps'
failure to map out proper accommodation arrangements, we slept anyhow
and anywhere, but no one minded much. The Brigade was still in being,
and nothing else mattered. I could tell many stories of the next few
days--marching and billeting and getting ready for action again; of the
village that no English troops had visited before, and the inhabitants
that feared us, and afterwards did not want us to leave; of the
friendly bearded patron of an estaminet, who flourished an 'Echo de
Paris,' and pointed to the words _tenacite anglaise_ in an account of
the fighting; of the return of the signalling officer, who, while
attending a course at an Army School, had been roped in to lead one of
Sandeman Carey's infantry platoons; of the magnificently equipped
casualty clearing station that a week before the offensive had been
twenty-five miles behind the lines, and only got its last patients
away two hours before the Boches arrived!
* * * * *
April 2nd: A few more new guns had come in from the Refitting Depot. We
were almost complete to establishment. The horses were out grazing and
getting fat again. Most of the men were hard at it, playing their
eternal football. The colonel came out of the chateau, which was
Brigade Headquarters billet, and settled himself in a deck-chair. He
looked sun-tanned and fit.
"If all colonels were as competent and knowledgeable as our colonel, we
should have won the war by now," said Dumble as he and I walked away.
"What a beautiful day."
"Yes. Oh to be in England, now that April's here," I chimed in.
"Oh to be in England, any bally old time of the year," Dumble corrected
me.
THE RETURN PUSH
I. THE DEFENCE OF AMIENS
On a day towards the end of April the colonel and I, riding well ahead
of the Brigade, passed through deserted Amiens and stopped when we came
upon some fifty horses, nose-bags on, halted under the trees along a
boulevard in the eastern outskirts of the city. Officers in groups
stood beneath, or leaned against, the high wall of a large civil
hospital that flanked the roadway.
Reinforced in guns and personnel, and rested after the excitements and
hazards of the March thrust-back, our two brigades of Divisional Field
Artillery, and the D.A.C., were bound again for the Front. These
waiting officers formed the advance billeting parties.
"We've been obeying Sir Douglas Haig's Order of the Day--getting our
backs to the wall," growled the adjutant to me, after he had sprung up
and saluted the colonel. "The staff captain met us two hours ago at
----; but they were shelling the place, and he said it wouldn't be safe
for waggon lines; so we came on here. He's inside the building now
seeing if he can put the whole Divisional Artillery there....
"I'll bet we shan't be ready for the batteries when they come in," he
went on gloomily--and then added, like the good soldier that he is,
"My groom will show you where the horses can water."
A long-range shell, passing high overhead and exploding among the
houses some way behind us, showed that Amiens was no health resort. But
horse lines were allotted, and in due course the long corridors of the
evacuated building resounded with the clatter-clatter of gunners and
drivers marched in to deposit their kits. "You've got a big piece of
chalk this morning, haven't you?" grumbled the adjutant to the adjutant
of our companion Brigade, complaining that they were portioning off
more rooms than they were entitled to. Still he was pleased to find
that the room he and I shared contained a wardrobe, and that inside the
door was pinned a grotesque, jolly-looking placard of Harry
Tate--moustache and all--in "Box o' Tricks." The discovery that a
currant cake, about as large as London, sent a few days before from
England, had disappeared from our Headquarters' mess-cart during the
day's march, led to a tirade on the shortcomings of New Army servants.
But he became sympathetic when I explained that the caretakers, two
sad-eyed French women, the only civilians we ourselves met that day,
were anxious that our men should be warned against prising open locked
doors and cupboards. "Tell 'em any man doing that will be shot at
dawn," he said, leaving me to reassure the women.