intention of going forward to seek information. A grey clinging mist
had enveloped the countryside. "Something like March 21st," said the
major as he and I set out. "We said it helped the Boche then. I hope we
don't have to use it as an excuse for any failure to-day. Difficult for
observers," he added thoughtfully.
At the dressing station in the sunken road we learned that one battery
of our companion Field Artillery Brigade had suffered severely from
gas. All the officers had been sent down, and a large proportion of the
gunners. The sickly-sweet smell hung faintly over most of the ground in
the neighbourhood of our batteries as well. A and C were now firing
fifty rounds an hour. "The major's asleep in that dug-out," volunteered
Beale of A, pointing to a hole in a bank that allowed at least two feet
of air space above Major Bullivant's recumbent form. The major was
unshaven; his fair hair was tousled. He had turned up the collar of his
British warm. Beale also looked unkempt, but he said he had had three
hours' sleep before the barrage started and felt quite fresh. "Our
casualties came just after we got the guns in," he told me. "They
dropped two whizz-bangs between No. 1 gun and No. 2."
Major Simpson was up and eating hot sizzling bacon in a trench, with a
cable drum for a seat and an ammunition-box as table. Two of his
subalterns--Overbury, who won the M.C. on March 21st, and Bob
Pottinger, all smiles and appetite, at any rate this morning--had also
fallen to, and wanted Major Veasey and myself to drink tea. "We're
taking a short rest," remarked Major Simpson cheerfully. "I'm glad I
moved the battery away from the track over there. No shell has come
within three hundred yards of us.... We have had a difficulty about the
wires. Wilde said he laid wires from Brigade to all the new positions
before we came in last night, but my signallers haven't found their
wire yet; so we laid a line to A and got through that way."
Infantry Brigade Headquarters was in a ravine four hundred yards away.
A batch of prisoners had just arrived and were being questioned by an
Intelligence officer: youngish men most of them, sallow-skinned, with
any arrogance they may have possessed knocked out of them by now. They
were the first Huns I remember seeing with steel helmets daubed with
staring colours by way of camouflage. "They say we were not expected to
attack to-day," I heard the Intelligence officer mention to the G.S.O.
II. of the Division, who had just come up.
"Is that one of your batteries?" asked the Infantry Brigade signalling
officer, an old friend of mine, pointing to our D Battery, a hundred
yards from Brigade Headquarters. "What a noise they made. We haven't
had a wink of sleep. How many thousand rounds have they fired?"
"Oh, it'll be about 1500 by midday, I expect," I answered. "Any news?"
"It's going all right now, I believe. Bit sticky at the start--my
communications have gone perfectly, so far--touch wood."
More prisoners kept coming in; limping, bandaged men passed on their
way down; infantry runners in khaki shorts, and motor-cycle
despatch-riders hurried up and buzzed around the Brigade Headquarters;
inside when the telephone bell wasn't ringing the brigade-major could
be heard demanding reports from battalions, or issuing fresh
instructions. There was so little fuss that numbers of quiet
self-contained men seemed to be standing about doing nothing.
Occasional high-velocity shells whizzed over our heads.
Major Veasey suddenly emerged from the brigade-major's quarters,
looking at his map. "Some of the Tanks and two companies of the ----s
lost their way at the start," he told me, "but things have been pulled
straight now. The --rd Brigade have gone right ahead. A hundred and
twenty prisoners up to date. Down south the Australians are on their
final objective. Yoicks!--this is the stuff to give 'em! Now we'll go
and have a look at my battery."
Captain Drysdale, who was commanding during Major Veasey's absence from
the 4.5 battery, said that the programme had been carried through
without a hitch, although it had been difficult in the night to get the
hows. on to their aiming-posts without lights. "Kelly has gone forward,
and has got a message through. He says he saw some of our firing, and
the line was extraordinarily good."
"Good old Kelly!" said Major Veasey, puffing at his pipe. "I don't know
whether we shall be ordered to move forward to-day; we shan't until the
situation is thoroughly clear. But I shall go forward now with Simpson
and Bullivant to spy out the land. You'd better cut back to
Headquarters with what news we've got"--this was said to me--"Division
will be wanting something definite."
When about 3 P.M. Major Veasey returned, footsore and wearied, he
brought news that the Infantry Brigade that had reached its final
objective had had to come back, owing to the stoutness of the
machine-gun opposition. The attack would be renewed in the morning, and
the batteries would not move forward that evening.
The adjutant was opening the latest batch of official envelopes from
Divisional Artillery. With a laugh he flourished a yellow paper.
"Here's your leave to Paris," he called out.
"Certainly, I should take it," was Major Veasey's comment. "Why, I knew
one C.R.A. who never stopped officers' leave when they were in action.
It was only when the Division was at rest that he wouldn't let them go.
Said he wanted them for training then. You pop off."
And as this is a true tale, I hereby record that I did go to Paris, and
returned in full time to participate in the brave days that witnessed
Britain's greatest triumphs of the war.
VII. SHORT LEAVE TO PARIS
Short leave to Paris ought to bequeath a main impression of swift
transition from the dirt, danger, and comfortlessness of the trenches
to broad pavements, shop windows, well-dressed women, smooth
courtliness, and restaurant luxuries; to fresh incisive talks on
politics and the Arts, to meetings with old friends and visits to
well-remembered haunts of the Paris one knew before August 1914.
Instead, the wearing discomforts of the journey are likely to retain
chief hold upon the memory. Can I ever forget how we waited seven hours
for a train due at 9.25 P.M. at a station that possessed no forms to
sit upon, so that some of the men lay at full length and slept on the
asphalt platform? And is there not a corner of my memory for the
crawling fusty leave-train that had bare planks nailed across the door
spaces of some of the "officers'" compartments; a train so packed that
we three officers took turns on the one spare seat in an "other ranks"
carriage? And then about 8 A.M. we landed at a well-known "all-change"
siding, a spot of such vivid recollections that some one had pencilled
in the ablution-house, "If the Huns ever take ---- Camp and have to
hold it they'll give up the war in disgust."
But in the queue of officers waiting at the Y.M.C.A. hut for tea and
boiled eggs was the brigade-major of a celebrated Divisional Artillery.
He stood in front of me looking bored and dejected. I happened to pass
him a cup of tea. As he thanked me he asked, "Aren't you fed up with
this journey? Let's see the R.T.O. and inquire about a civilian train!"
"If you'll take me under your wing, sir," I responded quickly. So we
entered Paris by a fast train,--as did my two companions of the night
before, who had followed my tip of doing what I did without letting
outsiders see that there was collusion.
The brigade-major's wife was awaiting him in Paris, and I dined with
them at the Ritz and took them to lunch next day at Henry's, where the
frogs' legs were delicious and the chicken a recompense for that
night-mare of a train journey. Viel's was another restaurant which
retained a proper touch of the Paris before the war--perfect cooking,
courtly waiting, and prices not too high. I have pleasant recollections
also of Fouquet's in the Champs Elysees, and of an almost divine meal
at the Tour d'Argent, on the other side of the river, where Frederic of
the Ibsen whiskers used once to reign: the delicacy of the _soufflee_
of turbot! the succulent tenderness of the _caneton a la presse_! the
seductive flavour of the raspberries and whipped cream!
The French Government apparently realise that the famous restaurants of
Paris are a national asset. There was no shortage of waiters; and,
though the choice of dishes was much more limited than it used to be,
the real curtailment extended only to cheese, sugar, and butter. Our
bread-tickets brought us as much bread as we could reasonably expect.
One day, in the Rue de la Paix, I met a well-known English producer of
plays, and he piloted me to the Cafe de Paris, which seemed to have
lost nothing of its special atmosphere of smartness and costliness.
Louis the Rotund, who in the early days of the war went off to guard
bridges and gasometers, was playing his more accustomed role of _maitre
d'hotel_, explaining with suave gravity the unpreventable altitude of
prices. And for at least the tenth time he told me how in his young-man
soldiering days he came upon the spring whose waters have since become
world-famous.
Another night I ascended Montmartre, and dined under the volatile
guidance of Paul, who used to be a pillar of the Abbaye Theleme. Paul
came once to London, in the halcyon days of the Four Hundred Club, when
nothing disturbed him more than open windows and doors. "Keep the
guests dancing and the windows tight-closed, and you sell your
champagne," was his business motto. However, he was pleased to see me
again, and insisted on showing me his own particular way of serving
Cantelupe melon. Before scooping out each mouthful you inserted the
prongs of your fork into a lemon, and this lent the slightest of lemon
flavouring to the luscious sweetness of the melon.
America seemed to be in full possession of the restaurant and boulevard
life of Paris during those August days. Young American officers, with
plenty of money to spend, were everywhere. "You see," a Parisienne
explained, "before the war the Americans we had seen had been mostly
rich, middle-aged, business men. But when the American officers came,
Paris found that they were many, that many of them were young as well
as well-off, and that many of them were well-off, young, and
good-looking. It is quite _chic_ to lunch or dine with an American
officer."
The Americans carried out their propaganda in their usual thorough,
enthusiastic fashion. I was taken to the Elysee Palace Hotel, where I
found experienced publicists and numbers of charming well-bred women
busy preparing information for the newspapers, and arranging public
entertainments and sight-seeing tours for American troops in Paris, all
with the idea of emphasising that Americans were now pouring into
France in thousands. One night a smiling grey-haired lady stopped
before a table where four of us, all British officers, were dining, and
said, "You're English, aren't you? Well, have you been with any of 'our
boys'?... Have you seen them in action?... They're fine, aren't they?"
We were surprised, a little taken aback at first, but we showed
sympathetic understanding of the American lady's enthusiasm, and
responded in a manner that left her pleased as ever.
Before returning to the Front I got in a day's golf at La Boulie, and
also made a train journey to a village the other side of Fontainebleau,
where an old friend, invalided from the French army, had settled on a
considerable estate, and thought of nothing but the fruits and
vegetables and dairy produce he was striving to improve and increase. I
did not visit many theatres; it struck me that the Paris stage, like
that of London, was undergoing a war phase--unsophisticated,
ready-to-be-pleased audiences bringing prosperity to very mediocre
plays.
* * * * *
My journey back to the line included a stay at a depot where officers
were speedily reminded that they had left the smooth luxuriousness of
Paris behind them. The mess regulations opened with "Try to treat the
mess as a mess and not as a public-house," and contained such
additional instructions as, "Do not place glasses on the floor," and
"Officers will always see that they are in possession of sufficient
cash to pay mess bills."
I found the brigade three and a half miles in advance of where I had
left them. There had been a lot of stiff fighting, and on our front the
British forces had not gone so far forward as the corps immediately
south of us had done. Big things were afoot, however, and that very
night batteries and Brigade Headquarters moved up another three
thousand yards. A snack of bully beef and bread and cheese at 7 P.M.,
and the colonel and a monocled Irish major, who was working under the
colonel as "learner" for command of a brigade, went off to see the
batteries. The adjutant and myself, bound for the new Headquarters,
followed ten minutes later.
"You know that poor old Lamswell has gone," he said, as we crossed a
grassy stretch, taking a ruined aerodrome as our guiding mark. "Poor
chap, he was wounded at the battery position the day after you left.
Only a slight wound in the leg from a gas-shell, and every one thought
he had got a comfortable 'Blighty.' But gangrene set in, and he was
dead in three days. Beastly things those gas-shells!... Kent, too, got
one through the shoulder from a sniper, and he's gone to England. The
colonel was with him at the O.P., and tried to get the sniper
afterwards with a rifle."
"How is the colonel?" I asked.
"Oh, he's going very strong; active as ever. Colonel ---- is back from
leave and doing C.R.A. now. We're under the --th Division at the
moment."
"You remember Colonel ---- who got the V.C. in the Retreat," he went
on; "he was killed on August 8th--went out to clear up a machine-gun
pocket.... Damned nice fellow, wasn't he?"
We reached a narrow road, crowded with battery ammunition waggons going
up to the new positions. Darkness had descended, and when you got off
the road to avoid returning vehicles it was necessary to walk warily
to escape tumbling into shell-holes. "The blighters have got a new way
of worrying us now," went on the adjutant. "They've planted land-mines
all over the place, particularly near tracks. Lead-horses are always
liable to put a foot against the wire that connects with the mine, and
when the thing goes off some one is nearly always hurt. D Battery had a
nasty experience this afternoon. Kelly tried to take a section forward,
and the Boche spotted them and shelled them to blazes. As they came
back to get away from observation one of the teams disturbed a
land-mine. The limber was blown up, and one driver and two horses were
killed.... Look here, if we move off in this direction we ought to save
time; the railway must be over there and the place for our Headquarters
is not far from it, in a trench where the O.P. used to be."
We found ourselves on some shell-torn ground that was cut up also by
short spans of trenches. One part of it looked exactly like another,
and after ten minutes or so we decided that we were wandering to no
purpose. "There are some old German gun-pits close by," panted the
adjutant in further explanation of the place we were seeking. All at
once I saw a thin shaft of light, and blundered my way towards it. It
proved to be a battery mess, made in a recess of a trench, with a stout
tarpaulin drawn tight over the entrance. I hailed the occupants through
the tarpaulin, and on their invitation scrambled a passage inside. A
young captain and two subalterns listened to what I had to say, and
gave me map co-ordinates of the spot on which we now were. When I
mentioned German gun-pits the captain responded with more helpful
suggestions. "It's difficult finding your way across country, because
the trenches wind about so, but follow this trench as it curves to the
right, and when you come to an old British dug-out blown right in, go
due north across country; then you'll come to the railway," he said.
We thanked him, plodded on, reached a point on the railway quite half a
mile beyond the spot we wanted, and then out of the darkness heard the
voice of Henry of C Battery. We drew near, and found him in the mood of
a man ready to fight the whole world. "Dam fools," he grumbled:
"there's a sergeant of A Battery who's taken a wrong turning and gone
into the blue, and half a dozen of my waggons have followed him.... And
B Battery have a waggon tipped over on the railway line, just where we
all cross, and that's holding everything else up."
As we could be of no assistance to the distressful Henry we continued
our own search, and, by hailing all within call, eventually reached our
trench, where we found the colonel, always in good mood when something
practical wanted doing, superintending Headquarters' occupation of the
place. "Major Mallaby-Kelby, the doctor, the adjutant, and myself can
fix up under here," he said, pointing to a large tarpaulin fastened
across the trench. "The signallers have got the mined dug-out round the
corner, and you," he went on, referring to me, "had better start fixing
Wilde and yourself up. We'll make that gun-pit with the camouflaged
roofing into a mess to-morrow."
With the aid of the servants I gathered six long two-inch planks, and
placed them across the part of the trench that seemed best protected
from enemy shells. A spare trench cover pulled full stretch on top of
these planks lent additional immunity from rain. A little shovelling to
level the bottom of the trench, and Wilde's servant and mine laid out
our valises. A heap of German wicker ammunition-carriers, sorted out on
the ground, served as a rough kind of mattress for the colonel. The
doctor had fastened upon a spare stretcher. In half an hour we were all
seeking sleep.
Zero hour was at 1 A.M., a most unusual time for the infantry to launch
an attack. But this would increase the element of surprise, and the
state of the moon favoured the enterprise. When hundreds of guns
started their thunder I got up to see, and found the doctor on the top
of the trench also. Bursts of flame leapt up all around, and for miles
to right and left of us. The noise was deafening. When one has viewed
scores of modern artillery barrages one's impressions become routine
impressions, so to speak; but the night, and the hundreds and hundreds
of vivid jumping flashes, made this 1 A.M. barrage seem the most
tremendous, most violently terrible of my experience. The doctor,
looking a bit chilled, gazed long and solemnly at the spectacle, and
for once his national gift of expressing his feelings failed him.
When news of the results of the operation came to us it was of a
surprising character. The infantry had moved forward under cover of the
barrage, had reached their first objective, and continued their advance
two miles without encountering opposition. The Boche had stolen away
before our guns loosed off their fury. I only saw three prisoners
brought in, and some one tried to calculate the thousands of pounds
worth of ammunition wasted on the "barrage." A message came that we
were to hold ourselves in readiness to rejoin our own Divisional
Artillery; our companion Field Artillery Brigade, the --rd, would march
also. At 6.30 P.M. the orders arrived. We were to trek northwards,
about four thousand yards as the crow flies, and be in touch with our
C.R.A. early next morning.
That night rain fell in torrents. When we had dined, and all the kit
had been packed up, we sheltered in the gun-pit, awaiting our horses
and the baggage-waggons. As the rain found fresh ways of coming through
the leaky roof, we shifted the boxes on which we sat; all of us except
the colonel, who, allowing his chin to sink upon his breast, slept
peacefully for three-quarters of an hour. It was pitch-dark outside,
and the trench had become a glissade of slimy mud. It was certain that
the drivers would miss their way, and two of the signallers who had
gone out to guide them along the greasy track from the railway crossing
had come back after an hour's wait. After a time we ceased trying to
stem the rivulets that poured into the gun-pit; we ceased talking also,
and gave ourselves up to settled gloom, all except the colonel, who had
picked upon the one dry spot and still slept.
But things mostly come right in the end. The rain stopped, a misty moon
appeared; the vehicles came along, and by 10.30 P.M. the colonel was on
his mare, picking a way for our little column around shell-holes,
across water-logged country, until we struck a track leading direct to
Meaulte, where the Brigade had been billeted during 1915. It was a
strangely silent march. There was a rumbling of guns a long way to
north of us, and that was all. The Boche had undoubtedly stolen away.
For a long time the only sound was the warning shout, passed from front
to rear, that told of shell-holes in the roadway.
On the outskirts of the village we saw signs of the Hun evacuation:
deserted huts and stables, a couple of abandoned motor-lorries. The
village itself was a wreck, a dust-heap, not a wall left whole after
our terrific bombardments. Not a soul in the streets, not a single
house habitable even for troops. Of the mill that had been Brigade
Headquarters three years before, one tiny fragment of a red-brick wall
was left. The bridge in front of it had been scattered to the winds;
and such deep shell-craters pitted the ground and received the running
water, that the very river-bed had dried up. On the other side of the
village batteries of our own and of our companion brigade moved slowly
along. It was 2 A.M. when we encamped in a wide meadow off the road.
When the horses had been tethered and fed and the men had erected their
bivouacs, the colonel, Major Mallaby-Kelby, and we five remaining
officers turned into one tent, pulled off boots and leggings, and slept
the heavy dreamless sleep of healthily tired men.
At 7 A.M. the colonel announced that he and myself would ride up to
Becourt Chateau to visit the C.R.A. We touched the southern edge of
Albert, familiar to thousands of British soldiers. The last time I had
been there was on my return from leave in January 1917, when I dined
and slept at the newly-opened officers' club. Since the Boche swoop
last March it had become a target for British gunners, and seemed in as
bad a plight as the village we had come through the night before. We
had no time to visit it that morning, and trotted on along a road lined
with unburied German dead, scattered ammunition, and broken German
vehicles. The road dipped into a wood, and the colonel showed me the
first battery position he occupied in France, when he commanded a 4.5
how. battery. Becourt Chateau was so much a chateau now that Divisional
Headquarters were living in tents outside. Four motor-cars stood in the
courtyard; some thirty chargers were tied to the long high railings;
motor despatch-riders kept coming and going. R.A. were on the far side
of the chateau, and when our grooms had taken our horses we leapt a
couple of trenches and made our way to the brigade-major's tent. The
brigade-major was frankly pleased with the situation. "We are going
right over the old ground, sir," he told the colonel, "and the Boche
has not yet made a proper stand. Our Divisional Infantry are in the
line again, and the latest report, timed 6 A.M., comes from Montauban,
and says that they are approaching Trones Wood. We shall be supporting
them to-morrow morning, and the C.R.A. is anxious for positions to be
reconnoitred in X 10 and X 11. The C.R.A. has gone up that way in the
car this morning."
I looked into an adjoining tent and found the liaison officer from the
heavies busy on the telephone. "A 5.9 battery shooting from the
direction of Ginchy. Right! You can't give me a more definite
map-spotting? Right-o! We'll attend to it! Give me counter-batteries,
will you?"
"Heavies doing good work to-day?" I asked.
"Rather," he returned happily. "Why, we've got a couple of 8-inch hows.
as far up as Fricourt. That's more forward than most of the
field-guns."