position. With pick and shovel, and a fresh supply of corrugated iron,
the batteries were fortifying their habitations; Brigade Headquarters
occupied the only dwelling for miles round, a tiny cafe that no shell
had touched. The colonel had a ground-floor room and a bedstead to
himself; the adjutant and myself put down our camp-beds in an attic,
with the signalling officer and the American doctor next door, and H.Q.
signallers and servants in the adjoining loft that completed the upper
storey. It was a rain-proof comfortable shelter, but the C.R.A. didn't
altogether approve of it. "You're at a cross-roads, with an ammunition
dump alongside of you, and the road outside the front door is mined
ready for blowing up should the Boche advance this way," he said
grimly, when he visited us. "In any case, he'll shoot by the map on
this spot immediately he starts a battle.... I think you ought to have
a retiring headquarters in readiness." So I put in two days
superintending the erection of a little colony of houses, built of
ammunition boxes and corrugated iron, half a mile from the main road. I
camouflaged the sloping roofs with loose hay, and, at a distance, our
"Garden City" looked like a bunch of small hay-stacks. We got quite
proud of our handiwork; and there was a strained moment one midday when
the regimental sergeant-major rode hurriedly to the cafe with a most
disturbing report. Riding along the main road he had observed a party
of men pulling down our huts, and piling the sheets of corrugated iron
into a G.S. waggon. When he cantered across, the driver whipped up his
horses, and the G.S. waggon bounded over the open fields for half a
mile before the sergeant-major got sufficiently near to order it to
halt. "They belong to the --st Brigade, sir," the sergeant-major
informed the adjutant, "and I've told the sergeant in charge of the
party to consider himself under arrest until you have seen him."
The adjutant, eye flashing, nostrils dilated, was already out of the
cafe walking hard, and breathing dire threats against the servant who
had been posted to guard our new home. Apparently he had gone away to
complain that the cook was late in sending his dinner.
The sergeant and his assistant "pirates" were restoring the dismantled
huts by the time the adjutant and myself drew near. The sergeant was
plainly a disciple of the "It's all in the same firm" school. He
submitted, with great respect, that he was innocent of criminal intent.
There was nothing to show that the huts were in use ... and his battery
wanted iron for their gun-pits.
"None of your old soldier talk with me," blustered the adjutant,
shaking a ponderous forefinger. "You knew you were doing wrong.... Why
did you send the waggon off when you saw the sergeant-major?"
"I went after it and stopped it when he told me to, sir," returned the
sergeant.
The sergeant-major admitted that, strictly speaking, this was a correct
statement. There was a ten seconds' pause, and I wondered what the
adjutant's next thrust would be.
"The waggon was trotting away, was it?" he demanded slowly.
"Yes, sir," replied the sergeant.
"And you made no attempt to prevent it trotting until the
sergeant-major told you to stop it?"
"No, sir."
"And you know it's forbidden for waggons to be trotted except in very
exceptional circumstances?"
"Ye-s, sir."
"Very well, I put you under arrest for contravening G.R.O. by trotting
draught-horses."
"Artful beggar--I know him of old," chuckled the adjutant, as he and I
returned to the cafe. "He was a gunner in my battery when I was
sergeant-major of ---- Battery, R.H.A."
The Boche was expected to attack on St George's Day. Our Brigade was
defending a reserve line, and would not fire unless the enemy swept
over our first-line system. Fresh trenches were being dug, and new and
stout rows of wire entanglement put down. Corps orders were distinct
and unmistakable. The fight here would be a fight _a outrance_. On
March 21 our retirement had been a strategic one. But this Front had to
be held at all costs, and we should throw in every reserve we had. Only
once during our stay in the cafe did the adjutant and myself sleep in
pyjamas. "These walls are so thin one 5.9 would knock the whole place
out; if we have to clear we may as well be ready," he said meaningly.
The ridge, three-quarters of a mile in front of us, was shelled
regularly, and every night enemy bombing planes came over, but,
strangely enough, the Boche gunners neglected our cross-roads; we even
kicked a football about until one afternoon a trench-mortar officer
misdirected it on to the main road, and an expressive "pop!" told of
its finish under the wheel of a motor-lorry. St George's Day, and still
no Boche attack! We began to talk of the peaceful backwater in which we
were moored. Manning, our mess waiter, decorated the stained, peeling
walls of the mess with some New Art picture post-cards. I found a quiet
corner, and wrote out a 'Punch' idea that a demand for our
water-troughs to be camouflaged had put into my head. Major Bullivant,
who had succeeded poor Harville in the command of A Battery, and Major
Bartlett of C Battery, dined with us that night, and the best story
told concerned an extremely non-military subaltern, newly attached to
the D.A.C. When instructed to deliver an important message to "Div.
Arty."--the Army condensation for "Divisional Artillery"--he pored long
and hopelessly over a map. Finally he appealed to a brother officer. "I
can't find the village of 'DIVARTY' on the map," he said, and, of
course, sprang into immediate fame throughout the Division.
April 24: About 4 A.M. a shell burst that shook the cafe. Then the
steady whistling scream of high-velocity shells going overhead. I
lighted a candle and looked at the adjutant as he poked his red face
and tousled grey hair from under his blankets. "They've started," he
muttered solemnly. "The old Hun always shells the back areas when he
attacks."
We got up slowly, and fastened boots and leggings. "I suppose we ought
to put on revolvers," he went on dubiously, and then added with sudden
warmth, "I hope he gets it in the neck to-day."
Our telephone pit in the cellar below the cafe was alive with industry.
Our batteries were not firing, but the colonel had already asked the
battery commanders whether any shells, particularly gas shells, had
come their way. A couple of 4.2's had landed close to C Battery, but
they seemed to be stray shots; it did not seem likely that the enemy
knew where the batteries were sited. The Boche bombardment continued.
After breakfast, a 5.9 exploding 200 yards from our cafe, blew out the
largest pane in the unshuttered window. Shells had dropped by now in
most spots around us; but the cross-roads remained untouched. A cyclist
orderly from our waggon line, two miles back, brought news that a direct
hit had blown the telephone cart to bits; fortunately, neither man nor
horse had been touched. The adjutant was outside exhorting four
infantry stragglers to try and find their units by returning to the
battle line. A Royal Fusilier, wounded in the head, had fainted while
waiting at the cross-roads for an ambulance; our cook had lifted him on
to a bench inside the cafe and was giving him tea. The colonel, who
remained in the mess, in telephone touch with the brigadier-general,
C.R.A., and the brigade-major, had never seemed so preoccupied. Days
afterwards, he confided to me that when the Hun bombardment started he
feared a repetition of the overpowering assault of March 21.
"They had tanks out to-day," a boy captain of infantry, his arm in a
sling, told me, as he climbed into a motor ambulance. "By Gad, I saw a
topping sight near Villers Bretonneux. The Boche attacked in force
there and pushed us back, and one of his old tanks came sailing merrily
on. But just over the crest, near a sunken road, was a single 18-pdr.;
it didn't fire until the Boche tank climbed into view on top of the
crest. Then they let him have it at about 100 yards' range. Best series
of upper-cuts I've ever seen. The old tank sheered off and must have
got it hot." I learnt afterwards that this was a single gun detachment
belonging to our companion brigade, who had been pushed forward as soon
as news came that the enemy was being held.
By tea-time we ourselves had been ordered forward to relieve a brigade
that had suffered considerably in the opening stages of the assault.
And, after all, we didn't occupy the "Garden City" headquarters I had
been at such pains to build. We handed it over to the brigade we were
relieving, and their colonel congratulated our colonel on his
forethought.
The colonel decided that only the doctor, the signalling officer, and
myself should go forward. The adjutant could settle at the waggon lines
and occupy himself with reinforcements, clothing, and salvage returns,
Army Form B 213, watering and forage arrangements, and suchlike
administrative duties. My task would be the "Forward" or "G"
branch--_i.e._, assisting the colonel with the details of his fighting
programmes.
The colonel and I lay down that night in a hole scooped out of a chalk
bank. The corrugated iron above our heads admitted a draught at only
one corner; as our sleeping-bags were spread out on a couple of spring
mattresses, moved by some one at some time from some neighbouring
homestead, we could not complain of lack of comfort.
April 24 was the last day on which our Brigade awaited and prepared to
meet a Boche attack of the first magnitude. But it was not until the
month of July that any of us conceived, or dared to believe in, the
possibility of his mighty armies being forced upon the defensive again.
During May and June we accepted it that our role would be to stick it
out until the Americans came along _en masse_ in 1919. The swift and
glorious reversal of things from August onwards surprised no one more
than the actual fighting units of the British armies.
II. THE RED-ROOFED HOUSE
"We're doing an attack to-morrow morning," said the colonel, returning
about tea-time from a visit to the C.R.A. "We are under the --th
Divisional Artillery while we're up here, and we shall get the orders
from them. You'd better let the batteries know. Don't say anything over
the wire, of course.... Any papers for me to see?" he added, pulling
out his leather cigarette case.
I handed him the gun and personnel returns, showing how many men and
guns the Brigade had in action; and the daily ammunition reports that
in collated form find their way from Divisional Artillery to Corps, and
from Corps to Army, and play their part in informing the strategic
minds at the back of the Front of the ebb and flow of fighting activity
all along the vast battle line, enabling them to shape their plans
accordingly. "D Battery are a bit low in smoke shells," remarked the
colonel. "You'd better warn Major Veasey that he'll want some for
to-morrow morning."
"B Battery ... two casualties ... how was that?" he continued, before
signing another paper.
"About an hour ago, sir. Their mess cart was coming up, and got shelled
half a mile from the battery position. Two of the servants were
wounded."
"I've never seen an order worded quite like that," he smiled, when I
showed him a typed communication just arrived from the Divisional
Artillery, under whose orders we were now acting. It gave the map
co-ordinates of the stretch of front our guns were to fire upon in
response to S.O.S. calls. The passage the colonel referred to began--
"By kind consent of the colonel of the --th French Artillery,
the S.O.S. barrage on our front will be strengthened as
follows:..."
"Sounds as if the French colonel were lending his batteries like a
regimental band at a Bank Holiday sports meeting, sir," I ventured.
"Yes, we are learning to conduct war in the grand manner," smiled the
colonel, opening his copy of 'The Times.'
Our mess, under a couple of curved iron "elephants" stuck against the
bank, had looked a miserable affair when we came to it; but judicious
planting of sandbags and bits of "scrounged" boarding and a vigorous
clean-up had made it more habitable. Manning, the mess servant, had
unearthed from a disused dug-out a heavy handsome table with a
lacquered top, and a truly regal chair for the colonel--green plush
seating and a back of plush and scrolled oak--the kind of chair that
provincial photographers bring out for their most dignified sitters. By
the light of our acetylene lamp we had dined, and there had been two
rubbers of bridge, the colonel and the little American doctor bringing
about the downfall of Wilde, the signalling officer, and myself, in
spite of the doctor's tendency to finesse against his own partner. The
doctor had never played bridge before joining us, and his mind still
ran to poker. The Reconnaissance Officer of the --th Divisional
Artillery had rung up at 10 o'clock to tell us that an officer was on
his way with a watch synchronised to Corps time, and that we should
receive orders for the next morning's operation _via_ a certain Field
Artillery Brigade who were somewhere in our vicinity. I had told the
brigade clerk that he could go to bed in his 3 feet by 6 feet
cubby-hole, and that the orderlies waiting to convey the battle orders
to the batteries ought to snatch some rest also. It was 11 P.M. now.
Wilde and the doctor had gone off to their own dug-out. It was very
dark when I looked outside the mess. We were in a lonely stretch of
moorland; the nearest habitation was the shell-mauled cottage at the
railway crossing, two miles away. Every ten minutes or so enemy shells
screamed and flopped into the valley between us and the road alongside
which D Battery lay.
"We'll try and hurry these people up," said the colonel, picking up the
telephone. Even as he told the signaller on duty to get him Divisional
Artillery, a call came through. It was the Artillery Brigade from whom
we expected a messenger with the orders.
"No!" I heard the colonel say sharply. "We've had nothing.... No! no
one has been here with a watch.... You want an officer to come over to
you?... But I haven't any one who knows where you are."
A pause. Then the colonel continued. "Yes, but you know where we are,
don't you?... Umph.... Well, where are you to be found?... You can't
give a co-ordinate over the telephone?... That's not very helpful."
He rang off, but I knew by his expression that the matter was not yet
settled. He got through to the --th Divisional Artillery and told the
brigade-major that it was now 11.20 P.M., that no officer with a
synchronised watch had arrived, and that the other brigade were now
asking us to send an officer to them for orders for the coming battle.
"I have no one who knows where they are," he went on. "They must know
our location--we relieved one of their brigades. Why can't they send to
us as arranged? I may have some one wandering about half the night
trying to find them."
In a little while the telephone bell tinkled again. "I'll answer them,"
said the colonel abruptly.
"All right, I'll send to them," he replied stonily. "Where are we to
find them, since they won't give us co-ordinates over the telephone?...
A house with a red roof!... You can't tell us anything more
definite?... Very well.... Good-bye."
He put down the telephone with a little "Tchat!" that meant all forms
of protest, annoyance, and sense of grievance. But now that no possible
concession was to be gained, and certain precise work had to be done by
us, he became the inexorable matter-of-fact executive leader again.
"There's nothing for it," he said, looking at me. "You will have to
go."
Buildings with red roofs are not marked as such on military maps, and I
bent glumly over the map board. However, houses were exceedingly few in
this neighbourhood, and the chateau on the other side of the railway
could be ruled out immediately. It was known as "The White Chateau,"
and I had noticed it in daytime. Besides, it had been so heavily
shelled that our companion brigade had evacuated it two days before.
"It's pretty certain to be somewhere in this area," observed the
colonel, bending over me, and indicating a particular three thousand
square yards on the map. "I expect that's the place--on the other side
of the railway," and he pointed to a tiny oblong patch. I estimated
that the house was three miles from where we were. It wanted but five
minutes to midnight.
I went outside, and flickering my electric torch stumbled across ruts
and past occasional shell-holes to the copse, three hundred yards away,
that sheltered the officers' chargers. I crackled a way among twigs and
undergrowth until the piquet called out, "Who goes there?"
"I think your groom's here, sir," he said, and the trees were so close
set that my shoulder brushed the hindquarters of a row of mules as he
piloted me along. "Are you there, Morgan?" he shouted, pulling open a
waterproof ground-sheet that was fastened over a hole in the ground.
"No--go away," called a voice angrily. "Where's Morgan sleep? Mr ----
wants him," persevered the piquet.
We found my groom in another hole in the ground about thirty yards
away. He listened sleepily while I told him to get my horses ready
immediately. "Do you want feeds on, sir?" he asked, with visions
apparently of an all-night ride.
There was no moon, and I gazed gratefully at the only constellation
that showed in a damp unfriendly sky--the Great Bear. I let my horse
find his own way the first few hundred yards, until we struck a track,
then we broke into a trot. The swish and plop of gas shells in the
valley towards which we were descending made me pause. I calculated
that they were falling short of the railway crossing I wanted to reach,
and decided that a wide sweep to the right would be the safest course.
We cantered alongside some ploughed land, and the motion of the horse,
and the thought that with luck I might finish my task quickly, and earn
a word of commendation from the colonel, brought a certain sense of
exhilaration. The shelling of the valley increased; my horse stumbled
going down a bank, and for the next five minutes we walked over broken
ground. "Getting a bit too much to the right," I said to myself, and
turned my horse's head. Further thoughts were cut short by the
discovery that his forelegs were up against a belt of barbed wire.
For ten minutes I walked in front of the wire, searching for an
opening, and getting nearer to where the shells were falling. All the
time I looked earnestly for the railway line. I began to feel bitter
and resentful. "If our own Divisional Artillery had been doing
to-morrow's show I shouldn't have had to turn out on a job of this
kind," I reflected. "Damn the --th Division. Why can't they do their
work properly?"
But little gusts of anger sometimes bring with them the extra bit of
energy that carries a job through. We had reached a ruined wall now,
and there was still no opening in the wire. I could see telegraph
posts, and knew that the railway was just ahead. I got off my horse,
told the groom to wait behind the broken wall, and, climbing through
the barbed wire, picked my way along smashed sleepers and twisted rails
until I came to the crossing.
I followed the deserted shell-torn road that led from the
level-crossing, searching for a track on the left that would lead to
the house I sought. A motor-cyclist, with the blue-and-white band of
the Signal Service round his arm, came through the hedge.
"Is there a house on top of that hill?" I asked him, after a
preliminary flicker of my torch.
"Yes, sir."
"Is it a red-roofed house?"
"Well, ... I don't know, sir."
"Who's up there?"
"Smith's group, sir."
"Oh, hang! that tells me nothing. What are they--artillery?"
"Yes, sir--heavies, I think, sir."
I felt myself at a standstill. Orders for us were not likely to be with
a group of heavy artillery. "Whom are you from?" I asked finally,
preparing to move on.
"From the --th Div. Artillery, sir."
"Oh!"--with a rush of hopefulness--"you have no orders, I suppose, for
the --nd Brigade?"--mentioning our Brigade.
"No, sir."
I broke off and strode up the hillside, determined at any rate to
gather some sort of information from the house the motor-cyclist had
just left. I came upon a bare-looking, two-storied brick building with
plain doors and windows. Through the keyhole of the front door I could
see a light coming from an inside room. I opened the door and walked
down the passage, calling, "Is this the --rd Field Artillery Brigade?"
"No! This is the --nd Field Company," replied a fair-moustached sapper
captain, who was lying on a mattress in the room from which the light
came, reading a book of O. Henry stories.
"Sorry to trouble you," I said, "but I'm trying to find the --rd
Brigade. Do you know if they are round here?"
"I don't, I'm afraid. We only came in this afternoon."
"It's a house with a red roof," I went on, rather hopelessly.
"I think I know the place," chimed in a voice from an inner room. "It's
a shooting-box, isn't it? Your best way is to get on the road again
and take the next track on the left. I noticed a red-roofed house up
there when we came by."
I trudged back and got on to the new track, feeling very martyred but
very resigned. I suppose I ought to have kept my eyes open more, I
thought. Next time I go to a new part of the country I won't miss a
single distinguishing feature.
It was now 1.15 A.M. I came to a lonely house fronted by a neatly
railed garden. I hammered noisily on the door and found that it opened
into a darkened passage. A torch flashed into my face. "Is this the
--rd Brigade?" I began.
"Yes," a voice shouted, and suddenly a door opened and a spurt of light
revealed a youthful pink-cheeked staff lieutenant. "Are you from the
--nd Brigade?" he asked. "Oh, bon! bon!--I've been waiting for you."
"Waiting for me!" I retorted, nettled by his airy manner. "Hard luck on
me having to traipse at this time of night to a place I don't know to
get orders you ought to have sent out."
"Yes, I know," he replied cheerfully. "We're awfully sorry, but it's
the French Division, you know. We've only just got the orders out of
them. It's really their show.... And I'm afraid the first part of your
orders have been sent off to the wrong place." Saying which, he led me
into a large sombre room in which four or five officers sat immersed in
papers and message forms. An elderly colonel looked up and nodded over
his glasses. The young staff officer handed me some barrage maps and a
quantity of type-written operation orders.
"Zero hour is 5.10 A.M.," he began, "and here is the part of your
orders that has gone astray. I can't give you this copy. Will you take
the orders down from this?"
I commenced writing out the operation order, and was struck to find
that the barrage "lifts" were in hundreds of metres instead of hundreds
of yards. "Yes, the French insisted on that," explained the staff
lieutenant briskly.
"But we haven't metres on our range-drums," I said with an air of
abandonment.
"Yes, I know, but the French insisted on it, because of their
infantry.... Oh! there's a para. there about smoke-shells--that's
important."
"The para. about smoke-shells is deleted ... there will be no
smoke-shells," put in the elderly colonel, looking up.
"Oh, is it, sir?" said the staff lieutenant, turning round.
"Yes; the correction has just come through."
"Right, sir."
I synchronised my watch, thrust the bundle of papers into my
hip-pocket, and hurried away to find my horses. It was half-past one,
and the attack was timed to start at 5.10. The colonel would require to
deal with the orders, and the battery commanders would have but the
barest time to work out their individual "lifts." I started back at the
gallop, skirting the side of the valley. I remember wishing to heaven
that the clumps and hillocks of this part of France did not look so
consistently alike. If only it were light enough for me to pick out the
mustard field that lay, a bright yellow landmark, behind our chalk
bank!
The colonel was in bed when I got back, but I held a candle while he
read through the orders, and got out his ivory ruler, and apportioned
a barrage lane to each battery. "Metres will have to become yards," was
one of his remarks.
By twenty-to-three the orderlies had set out with the battle orders to
the batteries, while I spoke on the telephone to an officer of each
battery, and synchronised watches.
When I turned in, after a whisky-and-soda and a couple of biscuits, the
colonel was fast asleep. I felt satisfied, however, that I had done my
share that night towards beating the Hun.