since, so many of our bravest had fallen that Britain might still be
Britain. Even yet, upon its torn and trampled surface I could read
something of the fight--here a broken shoulder belt, there a
cartridge pouch, yonder a stained and tattered coat, while everywhere
lay bombs, English and German.
"If you want to see La Boiselle properly we must hurry!" said F., and
off he went at the double with K.'s long legs striding beside him,
but, as for me, I must needs turn for one last look where those
deadly smoke puffs came and went with such awful regularity.
The rain had stopped, but it was three damp and mud-spattered
wretches who clambered back into the waiting car.
"K.," said I, as we removed our cumbrous headgear, "about how much do
you suppose these things weigh?"
"Fully a ton!" he answered, jerking his cap over his eyes and
scowlingly accepting a cigarette.
Very soon the shattered village was far behind and we were threading
a devious course between huge steam-tractors, guns, motor-lorries and
more guns. We passed soldiers a-horse and a-foot and long strings of
ambulance cars; to right and left of the road were artillery parks
and great camps, that stretched away into the distance. Here also
were vast numbers of the ubiquitous motor-lorry with many
three-wheeled tractors for the big guns. We sped past hundreds of
horses picketed in long lines; past countless tents smeared crazily
in various coloured paints; past huts little and huts big; past
swamps knee-deep in mud where muddy men were taking down or setting
up other tents. On we sped through all the confused order of a mighty
army, until, chancing to raise my eyes aloft, I beheld a huge
balloon, which, as I watched, mounted up and up into the air.
"One of our sausages!" said F., gloved hand waving. "Plenty of 'em
round here; see, there's another in that cloud, and beyond it
another."
So for a while I rode with my eyes turned upwards, and thus I
presently saw far ahead many aeroplanes that flew in strange, zigzag
fashion, now swooping low, now climbing high, now twisting and
turning giddily.
"Some of our 'planes under fire!" said F., "you can see the shrapnel
bursting all around 'em--there's the smoke--we call 'em woolly bears.
Won't see any Boche 'planes, though--rather not!"
Amidst all these wonders and marvels our fleet car sped on, jolting
and lurching violently over ruts, pot-holes and the like until we
came to a part of the road where many men were engaged with pick and
shovel; and here, on either side of the highway, I noticed many
grim-looking heaps and mounds--ugly, shapeless dumps, depressing in
their very hideousness. Beside one such unlovely dump our car pulled
up, and F., gloved finger pointing, announced:
"The Church of La Boiselle. That heap you see yonder was once the
Mairie, and beyond, the schoolhouse. The others were houses and
cottages. Oh, La Boiselle was quite a pretty place once. We get out
here to visit the guns--this way."
Obediently I followed whither he led, nothing speaking, for surely
here was matter beyond words. Leaving the road, we floundered over
what seemed like ash heaps, but which had once been German trenches
faced and reinforced by concrete and steel plates. Many of these last
lay here and there, awfully bent and twisted, but of trenches I saw
none save a few yards here and there half filled with indescribable
debris. It was, indeed, a place of horror--a frightful desolation
beyond all words. Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful
death--they came to one in the very air, in lowering heaven and
tortured earth. Far as the eye could reach the ground was pitted with
great shell holes, so close that they broke into one another and
formed horrid pools full of shapeless things within the slime.
Across this hellish waste I went cautiously by reason of torn and
twisted tangles of German barbed wire, of hand grenades and huge
shells, of broken and rusty iron and steel that once were deadly
machine guns. As I picked my way among all this flotsam, I turned to
take up a bayonet, slipped in the slime and sank to my waist in a
shell hole--even then I didn't touch bottom, but scrambled out, all
grey mud from waist down--but I had the bayonet.
It was in this woeful state that I shook hands with the Major of the
battery. And as we stood upon that awful waste, he chattered, I
remember, of books. Then, side by side, we came to the battery--four
mighty howitzers, that crashed and roared and shook the very earth
with each discharge, and whose shells roared through the air with the
rush of a dozen express trains.
Following the Major's directing finger, I fixed my gaze some distance
above the muzzle of the nearest gun and, marvel of marvels, beheld
that dire messenger of death and destruction rush forth, soaring,
upon its way, up and up, until it was lost in cloud. Time after time
I saw the huge shells leap skywards and vanish on their long journey,
and stood thus lost in wonder, and as I watched I could not but
remark on the speed and dexterity with which the crews handled these
monstrous engines.
"Yes," nodded the Major, "strange thing is that a year ago they
_weren't_, you know--guns weren't in existence and the men weren't
gunners--clerks an' all that sort of thing, you know--civilians,
what?"
"They're pretty good gunners now--judging by effect!" said I, nodding
towards the abomination of desolation that had once been a village.
"Rather!" nodded the Major, cheerily, "used to think it took three
long years to make a gunner once--do it in six short months now!
Pretty good going for old England, what? How about a cup of tea in my
dugout?"
But evening was approaching, and having far to go we had perforce to
refuse his hospitality and bid him a reluctant good-by.
"Don't forget to take a peep at the mine craters," said he, and
waving a cheery adieu, vanished into his dugout.
Ten minutes' walk, along the road, and before us rose a jagged mount,
and beyond it another, uncanny hills, seared and cracked and
sinister, up whose steep slopes I scrambled and into whose yawning
depths I gazed in awestruck wonder; so deep, so wide and huge of
circumference, it seemed rather the result of some titanic convulsion
of nature than the handiwork of man.
I could imagine the cataclysmic roar of the explosion, the smoke and
flame of the mighty upheaval and war found for me yet another horror
as I turned and descended the precipitous slope. Now, as I went, I
stumbled over a small mound, then halted all at once, for at one end
of this was a very small cross, rudely constructed and painted white,
and tacked to this a strip of lettered tin, bearing a name and
number, and beneath these the words, "One of the best." So I took off
my hat and stood awhile beside that lonely mound of muddy earth ere I
went my way.
Slowly our car lurched onward through the waste, and presently on
either side the way I saw other such mounds and crosses, by twos and
threes, by fifties, by hundreds, in long rows beyond count. And
looking around me on this dreary desolation I knew that one day
(since nothing dies) upon this place of horror grass would grow and
flowers bloom again; along this now desolate and deserted road people
would come by the thousand; these humble crosses and mounds of muddy
earth would become to all Britons a holy place where so many of our
best and bravest lie, who, undismayed, have passed through the
portals of Death into the fuller, greater, nobler living.
Full of such thoughts I turned for one last look, and then I saw that
the setting sun had turned each one of these humble little crosses
into things of shining glory.
IX
A TRAINING CAMP
The great training camp lay, a rain-lashed wilderness of windy levels
and bleak, sandy hills, range upon range, far as the eye could see,
with never a living thing to break the monotony. But presently, as
our car lurched and splashed upon its way, there rose a sound that
grew and grew, the awesome sound of countless marching feet.
On they came, these marching men, until we could see them by the
hundred, by the thousand, their serried ranks stretching away and
away until they were lost in distance. Scots were here, Lowland and
Highland; English and Irish were here, with bronzed New Zealanders,
adventurous Canadians and hardy Australians; men, these, who had come
joyfully across half the world to fight, and, if need be, die for
those ideals which have made the Empire assuredly the greatest and
mightiest this world has ever known. And as I listened to the
rhythmic tramp of these countless feet, it seemed like the voice of
this vast Empire proclaiming to the world that Wrong and Injustice
must cease among the nations; that man, after all, despite all the
"Frightfulness" that warped intelligence may conceive, is yet
faithful to the highest in him, faithful to that deathless,
purposeful determination that Right shall endure, the abiding belief
of which has brought him through the dark ages, through blood and
misery and shame, on his progress ever upward.
So, while these men of the Empire tramped past through blinding rain
and wind, our car stopped before a row of low-lying wooden buildings,
whence presently issued a tall man in rain-sodden trench cap and
burberry, who looked at me with a pair of very dark, bright eyes and
gripped my hand in hearty clasp.
He was apologetic because of the rain, since, as he informed us, he
had just ordered all men to their quarters, and thus I should see
nothing doing in the training line; nevertheless he cheerfully
offered to show us over the camp, despite mud and wind and rain, and
to explain things as fully as he could; whereupon we as cheerfully
accepted.
The wind whistled about us, the rain pelted us, but the Major heeded
it nothing--neither did I--while K. loudly congratulated himself on
having come in waders and waterproof hat, as, through mud and mire,
through puddles and clogging sand, we followed the Major's long
boots, crossing bare plateaux, climbing precipitous slopes, leaping
trenches, slipping and stumbling, while ever the Major talked,
wherefore I heeded not wind or rain, for the Major talked well.
He descanted on the new and horribly vicious methods of bayonet
fighting--the quick thrust and lightning recovery; struggling with me
upon a sandy, rain-swept height, he showed me how, in wrestling for
your opponent's rifle, the bayonet is the thing. He halted us before
devilish contrivances of barbed wire, each different from the other,
but each just as ugly. He made us peep through loopholes, each and
every different from the other, yet each and every skilfully hidden
from an enemy's observation. We stood beside trenches of every shape
and kind while he pointed out their good and bad points; he brought
us to a place where dummy figures had been set up, their rags
a-flutter, forlorn objects in the rain.
"Here," said he, "is where we teach 'em to throw live bombs--you can
see where they've been exploding; dummies look a bit off-colour,
don't they?" And he pointed to the ragged scarecrows with his whip.
"You know, I suppose," he continued, "that a Mills' bomb is quite
safe until you take out the pin, and then it is quite safe as long as
you hold it, but the moment it is loosed the lever flies off, which
releases the firing lever and in a few seconds it explodes. It is
surprising how men vary; some are born bombers, some soon learn, but
some couldn't be bombers if they tried--not that they're cowards,
it's just a case of mentality. I've seen men take hold of a bomb,
pull out the pin, and then stand with the thing clutched in their
fingers, absolutely unable to move! And there they'd stand till Lord
knows when if the Sergeant didn't take it from them. I remember a
queer case once. We were saving the pins to rig up dummy bombs, and
the order was: 'Take the bomb in your right hand, remove the pin, put
the pin in your pocket, and at the word of command, throw the bomb.'
Well, this particular fellow was so wrought up that he threw away the
pin and put the bomb in his pocket!"
"Was he killed?" I asked.
"No. The sergeant just had time to dig the thing out of the man's
pocket and throw it away. Bomb exploded in the air and knocked 'em
both flat."
"Did the sergeant get the V.C. or M.C. or anything?" I enquired.
The Major smiled and shook his head.
"I have a good many sergeants here and they can't all have 'em! Now
come and see my lecture theatres."
Presently, looming through the rain, I saw huge circular structures
that I could make nothing of, until, entering the larger of the two,
I stopped in surprise, for I looked down into a huge, circular
amphitheatre, with circular rows of seats descending tier below tier
to a circular floor of sand, very firm and hard.
"All made out of empty oil cans!" said the Major, tapping the nearest
can with his whip. "I have 'em filled with sand and stacked as you
see!--good many thousands of 'em here. Find it good for sound
too--shout and try! This place holds about five thousand men--"
"Whose wonderful idea was this?"
"Oh, just a little wheeze of my own. Now, how about the poison gas;
feel like going through it?"
I glanced at K., K. glanced at me. I nodded, so did K.
"Certainly!" said I. Wherefore the Major led us over sandy hills and
along sandy valleys and so to a dingy and weatherworn hut, in whose
dingy interior we found a bright-faced subaltern in dingy uniform and
surrounded by many dingy boxes and a heterogeneous collection of
things. The subaltern was busy at work on a bomb with a penknife,
while at his elbow stood a sergeant grasping a screwdriver, who,
perceiving the Major, came to attention, while the cheery sub. rose,
beaming.
"Can you give us some gas?" enquired the Major, after we had been
introduced, and had shaken hands.
"Certainly, sir!" nodded the cheerful sub. "Delighted!"
"You might explain something about it, if you will," suggested the
Major. "Bombs and gas is your line, you know."
The sub. beamed, and giving certain directions to his sergeant, spake
something on this wise.
"Well, 'Frightful Fritz'--I mean the Boches, y'know, started bein'
frightful some time ago, y'know--playin' their little tricks with
gas an' tear-shells an' liquid fire an' that, and we left 'em to it.
Y'see, it wasn't cricket--wasn't playin' the game--what! But Fritz
kept at it and was happy as a bird, till one day we woke up an'
started bein' frightful too, only when we did begin we were
frightfuller than ever Fritz thought of bein'--yes, rather! Our gas
is more deadly, our lachrymatory shells are more lachrymose an' our
liquid fire's quite tophole--won't go out till it burns out--rather
not! So Frightful Fritz is licked at his own dirty game. I've tried
his and I've tried ours, an' I know."
Here the sergeant murmured deferentially into the sub.'s ear,
whereupon he beamed again and nodded.
"Everything's quite ready!" he announced, "so if you're on?"
Here, after a momentary hesitation, I signified I was, whereupon our
sub. grew immensely busy testing sundry ugly, grey flannel gas
helmets, fitted with staring eye-pieces of talc and with a hideous
snout in front.
Having duly fitted on these clumsy things and buttoned them well
under our coat collars, having shown us how we must breathe out
through the mouthpiece which acts as a kind of exhaust, our sub.
donned his own headpiece, through which his cheery voice reached me
in muffled tones:
"You'll feel a kind of ticklin' feelin' in the throat at first, but
that's all O.K.--only the chemical the flannel's saturated with. Now
follow me, please, an' would you mind runnin', the rain's apt to
weaken the solution. This way!"
Dutifully we hasted after him, ploughing through the wet sand, until
we came to a heavily timbered doorway that seemingly opened into the
hillside, and, beyond this yawning doorway I saw a thick,
greenish-yellow mist, a fog exactly the colour of strong absinthe;
and then we were in it. K.'s tall figure grew blurred, indistinct,
faded utterly away, and I was alone amid that awful, swirling vapour
that held death in such agonising form.
I will confess I was not happy, my throat was tickling provokingly,
I began to cough and my windpipe felt too small. I hastened forward,
but, even as I went, the light grew dimmer and the swirling fog more
dense. I groped blindly, began to run, stumbled, and in that moment
my hand came in contact with an unseen rope. On I went into gloom,
into blackness, until I was presently aware of my companions in front
and mightily glad of it. In a while, still following this invisible
rope, we turned a corner, the fog grew less opaque, thinned away to a
green mist, and we were out in the daylight again, and thankful was I
to whip off my stifling helmet and feel the clean wind in my hair and
the beat of rain upon my face.
"Notice the ticklin' feelin'?" enquired our sub., as he took our
helmets and put them carefully by. "Bit tryin' at first, but you soon
get used to it--yes, rather. Some of the men funk tryin' at
first--and some hold their breath until they fairly well burst, an'
some won't go in at all, so we carry 'em in. That gas you've tried is
about twenty times stronger than we get it in the open, but these
helmets are a rippin' dodge till the chemical evaporates, then, of
course, they're no earthly. This is the latest device--quite a
tophole scheme!" And he showed us a box-like contrivance which, when
in use, is slung round the neck.
"Are you often in the gas?" I enquired.
"Every day--yes, rather!"
"For how long?"
"Well, I stayed in once for five hours on end--"
"Five hours!" I exclaimed, aghast.
"Y'see, I was experimentin'!"
"And didn't you feel any bad effects?"
"Yes, rather! I was simply dyin' for a smoke. Like to try a
lachrymatory?" he enquired, reaching up to a certain dingy box.
"Yes," said I, glancing at K. "Oh, yes, if--"
"Only smart for the time bein'," our sub. assured me. "Make you weep
a bit!" Here from the dingy box he fished a particularly
vicious-looking bomb and fell to poking at it with a screwdriver. I
immediately stepped back. So did K. The Major pulled his moustache
and flicked a chunk of mud from his boot with his whip.
"Er--I suppose that thing's all right?" he enquired.
"Oh, yes, quite all right, sir, quite all right," nodded the sub.,
using the screwdriver as a hammer. "Only wants a little fixin'."
As I watched that deadly thing, for the second time I felt distinctly
unhappy; however, the refractory pin, or whatever it was, being fixed
to his satisfaction, our sub. led the way out of the dingy hut and
going some few paces ahead, paused.
"I'm goin' to give you a liquid-fire bomb first!" said he. "Watch!"
He drew back his hand and hurled the bomb. Almost immediately there
was a shattering report and the air was full of thick, grey smoke and
yellow flame, smoke that rolled heavily along the ground towards us,
flame that burned ever fiercer, fiery yellow tongues that leapt from
the sand here and there, that writhed in the wind-gusts, but never
diminished.
"Stoop down!" cried the sub., suiting the action to word, "stoop down
and get a mouthful of that smoke--makes you jolly sick and
unconscious in no time if you get enough of it. Tophole bomb,
that--what!"
Then he brought us where those yellow flames leapt and hissed; some
of these he covered with wet sand, and lo! they had ceased to be; but
the moment the sand was kicked away up they leapt again fiercer than
ever.
"We use 'em for bombing Boche dugouts now!" said he; and remembering
the dugouts I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those
within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the
exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of their own vile
methods.
"This is a lachrymatory!" said the sub., whisking another bomb from
his pocket. "When it pops, run forward and get in the smoke. It'll
sting a bit, but don't rub the tears away--let 'em flow. Don't touch
your eyes, it'll only inflame 'em--just weep! Ready? One, two,
three!" A second explosion louder than the first, a puff of blue
smoke into which I presently ran and then uttered a cry. So sharp, so
excruciating was the pain, that instinctively I raised hand to eyes
but checked myself, and with tears gushing over my cheeks, blind and
agonised, I stumbled away from that hellish vapour. Very soon the
pain diminished, was gone, and looking up through streaming tears I
beheld the sub. nodding and beaming approval.
"Useful things, eh?" he remarked. "A man can't shed tears and shoot
straight, an' he can't weep and fight well, both at the same
time--what? Fritz can be very frightful, but we can be more so when
we want--yes, rather. The Boches have learned that there's no
monopoly in Frightfulness."
In due season we shook hands with our cheery sub., and left him
beaming after us from the threshold of the dingy hut.
Britain has been called slow, old-fashioned, and behind the times,
but to-day she is awake and at work to such mighty purpose that her
once small army is now numbered by the million, an army second to
none in equipment or hardy and dauntless manhood.
From her Home Counties, from her Empire beyond the Seas, her millions
have arisen, brothers in arms henceforth, bonded together by a spirit
of noble self-sacrifice--men grimly determined to suffer wounds and
hardship and death itself, that for those who come after them, the
world may be a better place and humanity may never again be called
upon to endure all the agony and heartbreak of this generation.
X
ARRAS
It was raining, and a chilly wind blew as we passed beneath a
battered arch into the tragic desolation of Arras.
I have seen villages pounded by gun-fire into hideous mounds of dust
and rubble, their very semblance blasted utterly away; but Arras,
shell-torn, scarred, disfigured for all time, is a city still--a City
of Desolation. Her streets lie empty and silent, her once pleasant
squares are a dreary desolation, her noble buildings, monuments of
her ancient splendour, are ruined beyond repair. Arras is a dead
city, whose mournful silence is broken only by the intermittent
thunder of the guns.
Thus, as I paced these deserted streets where none moved save myself
(for my companions had hastened on), as I gazed on ruined buildings
that echoed mournfully to my tread, what wonder that my thoughts were
gloomy as the day itself? I paused in a street of fair, tall houses,
from whose broken windows curtains of lace, of plush, and tapestry
flapped mournfully in the chill November wind like rags upon a
corpse, while from some dim interior came the hollow rattle of a
door, and, in every gust, a swinging shutter groaned despairingly on
rusty hinge.
And as I stood in this narrow street, littered with the brick and
masonry of desolate homes, and listened to these mournful sounds, I
wondered vaguely what had become of all those for whom this door had
been wont to open, where now were the eyes that had looked down from
these windows many and many a time--would they ever behold again this
quiet, narrow street, would these scarred walls echo again to those
same voices and ring with joy of life and familiar laughter?
And now this desolate city became as it were peopled with the souls
of these exiles; they flitted ghostlike in the dimness behind
flapping curtains, they peered down through closed jalousies--wraiths
of the men and women and children who had lived and loved and played
here before the curse of the barbarian had driven them away.
And, as if to help this illusion, I saw many things that were
eloquent of these vanished people--glimpses through shattered windows
and beyond demolished house-fronts; here a table set for dinner, with
plates and tarnished cutlery on a dingy cloth that stirred damp and
lazily in the wind, yonder a grand piano, open and with sodden music
drooping from its rest; here again chairs drawn cosily together.