ravages of war, for the shops were open and the inhabitants stood
talking and gossiping at the doors of their houses. Here and there
rubble lay across the pavement, and what had once been a home was now an
amorphous pile of bricks and beams. Just by the church was a ruined
restaurant, and a host of little children played hide and seek behind
the remnants of its walls.
On our way down the street we came across Reynolds, who had only joined
the regiment the night before, while we, who had been nearly three weeks
at the front, felt ourselves war-beaten veterans compared to him. He was
standing on the pavement, gazing excitedly up at an aeroplane, around
which were bursting little white puffs of smoke.
"Come along with us," said Lytton. "You'll get sick to death of seeing
aeroplanes shelled when you've been out here as long as we have. Come
and discover the scene of to-night's orgy."
In the Grande Place, at the side of the Cloth Hall, we discovered the
Hotel de l'Epee Royale. A "Jack Johnson" had made an enormous hole in
the pavement just in front of it, and a large corner of the building had
gone.
"By Jove," said Reynolds in an awed voice. "What a hole! It must have
taken some shell to do that."
Lytton smiled patronisingly. "My dear fellow," he said, "that's nothing
at all. It's hardly any bigger than the hole that a spent bullet makes.
Let's go inside and get some lunch to see what sort of a place it is."
But Reynolds and I were firm. "Rot!" we said. "Let's go home and fast.
Otherwise we shall be no good for this evening; we've got our duty to do
to the dinner."
So we went back to the Company Mess in the infantry barracks, past a
house that had been destroyed that morning. Hunting in and out of the
ruins were a man and a woman, and another woman, very old, with eyes
swollen by weeping, sat on what was left of the wall of her house, a
broken photograph frame in her hands.
There are many fellows who have laid down their lives since that little
dinner in the Hotel de l'Epee Royale; he who gave it died of wounds six
weeks later, as gallant a commanding officer as one could wish to have.
If the dinner were to take place again, there would be many gaps round
the table, and even the building must long since have been pounded to
dust.
If this should meet the eyes of any of you that were there, let your
minds run back for a moment, and smile at your recollections. Do you
remember how we dosed Wilson's glass so that he left us before the
sweets were on the table? Do you remember how we found him later sitting
on the stairs, poor fellow, clasping his head in a vain effort to stop
the world from whirling round? Do you remember the toasts that we drank,
and the plans we made for that dim period, "after the war"? I confess
that I have completely forgotten everything that we ate--beyond the
whisky, I forget even what we drank; but I know that the daintiest
little dinner in London could not have pleased us nearly so much. And
then, when it was all over and we broke up to go home to bed, do you
remember how young Carter stood in the middle of the Grande Place and
made rhapsodies to the moon--though, to the rest of us, it seemed much
like any other moon--until we took him up and carried him home by force?
It does you good to look back sometimes. You may find it sad because so
many are gone that were our companions then. But this is the way of war;
they must die sooner or later, and they could not have chosen better
graves. If one must die, why not die fighting for England and Ypres?
* * * * *
There is one street in Ypres that I knew in peace time. It wound in and
out between the stiff, white houses, and the little Flemish children
would make it echo to their shouts and laughter, until you could
scarcely hear the rumble and the rattle of the carts on the cobbles of
the main street, near by. And I passed along the same winding way during
the second battle of Ypres. The shattered houses stretched jagged edges
of brickwork towards the sky, the road was torn up, and the paving
stones were piled up grotesquely against each other. Outside the
convent, where I seemed to catch the dim echo of children's laughter,
lay a smashed limber--the horse was on its back, with its legs stuck up
stiffly; and, just touching the broken stone cross that had fallen from
above the convent door, lay the figure of the dead driver.
And, of all that I remember of Ypres, it is of this that I think most
often, for it is a symbol of the place itself--the dead man lying by the
cross, sign of suffering that leads to another life. The agony of Ypres
will render it immortal; for if ever a town deserved immortality, it is
surely this old, ruined city on the plains of Flanders.
XII
"PONGO" SIMPSON ON GRUMBLERS
I was in my dug-out, trying to write a letter by the intermittent light
of a candle which was extinguished from time to time by the rain drops
that came through the roof, when I suddenly heard the squelching of mud,
the sound of slipping, and an appalling splash. Someone had fallen into
the shell hole just outside.
I waited a moment, and I heard the well-known voice of "Pongo" Simpson.
"Strike me pink!" he spluttered, as he scrambled up the steep bank out
of the water. "An' I gone an' forgot me soap. The first bath as I've 'ad
for six weeks, too." And he blundered into my dug-out, a terrible object
covered in slimy mud from head to foot, and when he breathed little
showers of mud flew off his moustache.
"Hullo," I said, "you seem to be wet."
"Sorry, sir," said "Pongo," "I thought as 'ow this was my dug-out. Wet,
sir? Gawd! Yes, I should think I was wet," and he doubled up to show
me, while a thin stream of muddy water trickled from his hair on to my
letter. "'Owever, it ain't no good to grumble, an' it's better to fall
in a shell hole than to 'ave a shell fall on me. I've got some 'ot tea
in me own dug-out, too."
When he had gone, I crumpled up my muddy letter, and I confess that I
purposely listened to his conversation, for his dug-out was only
separated from mine by a few horizontal logs piled up on each other.
"Well, you see, it ain't no good to grouse," he was saying to someone.
"I've got mud up me nose an' in me eyes, and all down me neck, but it
won't go away 'owever much I grumbles. Now, there's some blokes as
grouses all the time--'ere, Bert, you might 'and over your knife a
moment to scrape the mud off me face, it all cracks, like, when I
talk--if they've got a Maconochie ration they wants bully beef, an' if
they've got bully beef they carn't abear nothink but Maconochie. If you
told 'em as 'ow the war was goin' to end to-morrow they'd either call
you a bloomin' liar, or grouse like 'ell becos they 'adn't 'ad the time
to win the V.C.
"There was young Alf Cobb. 'E wasn't arf a grouser, an' 'e 'ad good luck
all the bloomin' time. When 'e came to the front they put 'im along o'
the transport becos 'e'd been a jockey before the war, an' 'e groused
all the time that 'e didn't 'ave none of the fun of the fightin'. Fun of
the fightin', indeed, when 'e'd got that little gal what we used to
call Gertie less than ten minutes from the stables! She was a nice
little bit of stuff, was Gertie, an', if only she'd spoke English
instead of this bloomin' lingo what sounds like swearin' ..." and here
"Pongo" wandered off into a series of reminiscences of Gertie that have
little to do with war and nothing to do with grumbling.
"'Owever, as I was sayin'," he continued at last, "that there Alf Cobb
used to fair aggryvate me with 'is grousin'. When 'e got sent up for a
spell in the trenches, and 'ad all 'the fun of the fightin',' 'e groused
because 'e couldn't go off to some ole estaminet an' order 'is glass o'
bitters like a dook. 'E groused becos 'e 'adn't got a feather bed, 'e
groused becos 'e 'ad to cook 'is own food, an' 'e groused becos 'e
didn't like the 'Uns. An' then when a whizz-bang landed on the parapet
an' gave 'im a nice Blighty one in the arm, 'e groused becos 'e was
afraid the sea'd be rough when 'e crossed over, an' 'e groused becos 'e
couldn't light 'is own pipe. 'E's the sort of bloke what I don't like.
"What I like is a bloke like ole Lewis, who was always chirpy. 'E 'ad
the rheumatics something fearful, but 'e never grumbled. Then 'e'd jest
gone an' got spliced afore the war, an' 'is missis got 'im into debt an'
then ran off with a fellow what works in the munitions. 'No good
grousin',' says ole Joe Lewis, an' 'e still stayed cheerful, an' the
night 'e 'eard as 'ow 'is young woman 'ad gone off 'e played away on 'is
ole mouth-organ as 'appily as a fellow what's on 'is way to the Green
Dragon with five bob in 'is pocket. The other blokes what knew about it
thought as 'ow Joe didn't care at all, but I was 'is mate an' I knew as
'ow it 'urt a lot. When 'e got knocked over in that attack down Lee
Bassey way, I jest stopped by 'im for a minute. 'Don't you worry about
me, Pongo,' says 'e, 'I couldn't stand 'ome without 'er'--meanin' 'is
missis, you see--'an' I'd rather 'op it like this. If I 'ad me ole
mouth-organ 'ere, I'd give you chaps a tune to 'elp you on like.' That's
the sort of bloke 'e was, chirpy up to the end. I 'ad to go on to the
'Un trenches, an' I never saw 'im again, for a big shell came along an'
buried 'im.
"After all," continued "Pongo" after a pause, "it's a life what 'as its
advantages. I ain't got to put on a 'ard collar o' Sundays out 'ere like
me ole woman makes me do at 'ome. Then, I might 'ave stuck in that shell
'ole and 'ave been drowned; I might not 'ave 'ad a clean shirt to dry
meself with; I might 'ave been 'it by a 'crump' yesterday. Yes, it might
be worse, an' I ain't never a one to grouse."
Then someone who knew "Pongo" well made an apparently irrelevant remark.
"There's plum and apple jam for rations again," he said.
"Pongo" rose to the fly at once. "Gawd!" he said, "if that ain't the
bloomin' limit. I'd like to get me 'and round the neck of the bloke what
gets all the raspberry an' apricot an' marmalade. 'Ere 'ave I been two
years in the trenches, an' what 'ave I seen but plum an' apple? If it
ain't plum an' apple, it's damson an' apple, which is jest the same only
there's more stones in it. It do make me fair wild...."
"Pongo," insinuated someone at this moment, "I thought as 'ow you never
grumbled."
"Pongo's" voice sank to its ordinary level. "That ain't grumblin'," he
said. "I ain't a one to grumble."
But for the better part of an hour I heard him growling away to himself,
and "plum and apple" was the burden of his growl. For even "Pongo"
Simpson cannot always practise what he preaches.
XIII
THE CONVERT
John North, of the Non-Combatant Corps, leaned over the counter and
smiled lovingly up into the shop girl's face. By an apparent accident,
his hand slid across between the apple basket and the tins of biscuits,
and came into gentle contact with hers. Knowing no French, his
conversation was strictly limited, and he had to make amends for this by
talking with his hand--by gently stroking her palm with his
earth-stained thumb.
Mademoiselle Therese smiled shyly at him and her hand remained on the
counter.
Private John North, thus encouraged, grew still bolder. He clasped her
fingers in his fist, and was just wondering if he dared kiss them, when
a gruff voice behind him caused him to stiffen, and to pretend he wanted
nothing but a penny bar of chocolate.
"Now then, come orf it," said the newcomer, a private with the trench
mud still caked on his clothes. "She's my young laidy, ain't yer,
Therese?"
Therese smiled rather vaguely, for she knew no more Cockney than John
North knew French.
"You clear out of 'ere," continued the linesman. "I don't want none o'
you objector blokes 'anging around this shop, and if you come 'ere again
I won't arf biff you one."
Unfortunately, it is the nature of woman to enjoy the sight of two men
quarrelling for her favours, and Therese, guessing what was happening,
was so unwise as to smile sweet encouragement at John North.
Even a Conscientious Objector loses his conscience when there is a woman
in the case. John North turned up his sleeves as though he had been a
boxer all his life, and proceeded to trounce his opponent with such
vigour that the biscuit tins were hurled to the ground and the contents
of a box of chocolates were scattered all over the floor.
As far as we are concerned, Mademoiselle Therese passes out of existence
from this moment, but the little incident in her shop was not without
consequences. In the first place, the Military Police cast the two
miscreants into the same guard room, where, from bitter rivals, they
became the best of friends. In the second place, John North, having once
drawn blood, was no longer content with his former life, and wanted to
draw more.
In the end he joined the Westfords, and fired his first shot over the
parapet under direct tuition from his new friend. It matters little
that his first shot flew several yards above the German parapet; the
intention was good, and it is always possible that the bullet may have
stung into activity some corpulent Hun whose duty called on him to lead
pack horses about behind the firing line.
* * * * *
For weeks Holy John, as his company called him, passed out of my life.
There were many other things to think of--bombs and grenades, attacks
and counter-attacks, "barrages" and trench mortars, and all the other
things about which we love to discourse learnedly when we come home on
leave. John North was, for the time, completely forgotten.
But one day when the Great Push was in full swing, I met him again. From
his former point of view he had sadly degenerated; from ours he had
become a useful fellow with a useful conscience that told him England
wanted him to "do in" as many Huns as he could.
I was supervising some work on a trench that had been German, but was
now ours--the red stains on the white chalk told of the fight for
it--when a voice I knew sounded from farther up the trench.
"If you don't bloomin' well march better, I won't arf biff you one, I
won't," I heard, as the head of a strange little procession came round
the traverse. At the rear of six burly but downcast Germans, came
Private John North, late Conscientious Objector, driving his prisoners
along with resounding oaths and the blood-chilling manoeuvres of a
bayonet that he brandished in his left hand.
"They'll all mine, sir, the beauties," he said as he passed me. "Got 'em
all meself, and paid me little finger for 'em, too," and he held up a
bandaged right arm for my inspection.
And, far down the trench, I heard him encouraging his prisoners with
threats that would delight a pirate or a Chinaman.
How he, single-handed, captured six of the enemy I do not know, but he
was the first man to reach the German wire, they tell me, and he brought
in two wounded men from No Man's Land.
Personally, then, it hardly seems to me that six Germans are enough to
pay for the little finger of Holy John, erstwhile Conscientious
Objector.
XIV
DAVID AND JONATHAN
I
Strangely different though they were, they had been friends ever since
they first met at school, eleven years before. Jonathan--for what other
names are necessary than the obvious David and Jonathan?--was then a
fat, sandy-haired boy, with a deep love of the country, and hands that,
however often he washed them, always seemed to be stained with ink. He
had a deep admiration, an adoration almost, for his dark-haired,
dark-eyed David, wild and musical.
The love of the country it was that first made them friends, and David
became, so to speak, Jonathan's means of expression, for David could put
into words, and, later on, into music, what Jonathan could only feel
dimly and vaguely. Jonathan was the typical British public-schoolboy
with a twist of artistic sense hidden away in him, while David was
possessed of a soul, and knew it. A soul is an awkward thing to possess
at school in England, for it brings much "ragging" and no little
contempt on its owner, and Jonathan fought many battles in defence of
his less-understood friend.
Eleven years had wrought but little material change in them. Jonathan,
after a few minor rebellions, had settled down in his father's office
and was learning to forget the call of the open road and the half-formed
dreams of his youth. David, on the other hand, was wandering over the
Continent nominally studying languages for the Consular Service, really
picking up a smattering of poetry, a number of friends, and a deep
knowledge of music. From Jonathan, he had learned to hide his sentiments
in the presence of those who would not understand, and to make his
reason conquer the wilder of the whims that ran through his brain.
Jonathan, in turn, had gained a power, which he scarcely realised, of
appreciating music and scenery, and which no amount of office life would
ever diminish.
Then the war broke out, and brought them together again.
At the beginning of it, David, who had been amusing himself in Madrid by
teaching the elements of grammar and a large vocabulary of English slang
to any Spaniard who would pay for it, came home and enlisted with
Jonathan in a line regiment. For two months they drilled and exercised
themselves in the so-called "arts of war." Then, chiefly on account of
a soulless section commander, they applied for, and obtained,
commissions in the same regiment.
In the same billet, they re-lived their schooldays, and over the fire in
the evenings would call up old memories, or David would tell of his
adventures abroad, until late in the night.
When the time came for them to go to the front, the Fates still favoured
them; they went out together to the same regiment in France, and were
drafted to the same company. Together they went up to the trenches for
the first time, together they worked, together they crouched under the
parapet when the German shells came unpleasantly close, and, all the
time, Jonathan, calm and stolid, unconsciously helped the other, who,
being cursed with a vivid imagination, secretly envied his friend's
calm.
Now, nothing has more power to cement or break friendships than war. The
enforced company, the sharing of danger, the common bearing of all
imaginable discomforts combine to make comrades or enemies. There are so
many things to tax one's patience, that a real friend in whom one may
confide becomes doubly dear, while you end by hating a man who has the
misfortune to irritate you day after day. War made David and Jonathan
realise how much their friendship meant, and how necessary each was to
the other, the one because of his continued calm, the other because of
the relief his love of music and of Nature brought with it.
II
Near the end of April 1915 they came back to billets near Ypres. To the
north a terrific battle was in progress, the last inhabitants were
fleeing from the town, and huge shells screamed on their way, and burst
with appalling clouds of smoke among the already shattered houses.
Occasionally a motor cyclist would come racing down the road, and, once
or twice, an ambulance came by with its load of gassed and wounded from
the fighting to the north.
One morning, when the Germans seemed fairly quiet, David and Jonathan
set out arm in arm towards Ypres, to explore. An occasional shell--a
hum, increasing until it became a roar, followed, a moment after, by a
fearful explosion--warned them not to proceed beyond the outskirts of
the town, and here it was that they came upon a large villa, with lilac
budding in the garden. By mutual consent, they turned in at the tall
iron gate, and entered the half-ruined house.
The part of the house giving on the road had been destroyed by a large
shell. Over a gaping hole in the ceiling was a bed, its iron legs
weirdly twisted, which threatened to overbalance at any minute and to
come hurtling down into the hall beneath. Shattered picture frames
still hung on the walls, and on the floor near at hand lay a rosary, the
Crucifix crushed by some heedless boot. The furniture lay in heaps, and
the front door was lying grotesquely across a broken mirror. Everywhere
was wreckage.
The other half of the house was still almost intact. In what had once
been the salon they found comfortable chairs and an excellent Pleyel
piano, while a copy of the _Daily Mirror_ gave the clue that the room
had until recently been occupied by British troops.
David seated himself at the piano and began to play, and Jonathan threw
himself in an arm-chair near the window to listen, and to watch the
alternate cloud and sunshine outside. It was one of those perfect
mornings of April, bright-coloured and windy, and the breeze in the
lilacs combined with the notes of the piano until they could hardly be
told apart. The rare whirr and explosion of a shell only had the effect
of accentuating the intervening peace. Jonathan had never felt so at one
with Nature and with his friend, and more than once, stolid and calm
though he generally was, he felt a tear in his eye at an extra beautiful
little bit of music or the glory of the world outside.
III
"Coming up to the villa this morning?" asked David of his friend a day
or two later.
"I've got a confounded rifle inspection at half-past ten. You go on and
I'll get up there as soon as I can," answered Jonathan, and he went off
to talk to his platoon sergeant while his friend strolled off to the
villa.
When he was going up the road to Ypres an hour later, he met an orderly
on horseback. "Excuse me, sir, I don't think the road's extry nice now,"
he said. "They're dropping some heavy stuff into Yips again."
Jonathan smiled. "Oh, that's all right," he said. "Thanks, all the same,
for warning me. I'll take care." And he hurried on up the road.
It was not until he was inside the villa that he noticed anything out of
the ordinary. Suddenly, however, he stopped aghast. The door by which
they entered the salon was gone, and in its place was a huge gap in the
wall. The furniture was buried under a mass of debris, and instead of
the gilded ceiling above him was only the blue sky. The piano was still
untouched, but on the keys, and on the wall behind, were splashes of
blood. Lying on the ground near it, half covered in plaster, was David.
He forced himself to approach, and looked again. His friend's head was
completely smashed, and one arm was missing.
For some minutes he stood still, staring. Then, with a sudden quiver, he
turned and ran. In the garden he tripped over something, and fell, but
he felt no hurt, for mad terror was upon him, and all sense had gone.
He must get away from the dreadful thing in there; he must put miles
between himself and the vision; he must run ... run ... run....
IV
Two privates found him, wild-eyed and trembling, and brought him to a
medical officer. "Nerves, poor devil, and badly too!" was the diagnosis;
and before Jonathan really knew what had happened, he was in hospital in
Rouen.
Everyone gets "nervy" after a certain amount of modern warfare; even the
nerves of the least imaginative may snap before a sudden shock.
So with stolid Jonathan. After a year, he is still in England. "Why
doesn't he go out again?" people ask. "He looks well enough. He must be
slacking." But they realise nothing of the waiting at night for the
dreaded, oft-repeated dreams; they cannot tell of the horrible visions
that war can bring, they do not know what it means, that neurasthenia,
that hell on earth.
It is difficult to forget what must be forgotten. If you have "nerves"
you must do all you can to forget the things that caused them, but when
everything you do or say, think or hear, reminds you in some remote way
of all you must forget, then recovery is hard indeed.
That is why Jonathan is still in England. If he hears or reads of the
war he thinks of his dead friend: if he hears music--even a street
organ--the result is worse; if he tries to escape from it all, and hides
himself away in the country, the birds and the lilac blossom take him
back to that morning near Ypres, when he first realised how much his
friendship meant to him. And whenever he thinks of his friend, that
horrible corpse near the piano comes back before his tight-closed eyes,
and his hands tremble again in fear.
XV
THE RUM JAR
AND OTHER SOLDIER SUPERSTITIONS
The most notable feature in the famous history of the "Angels of Mons"
was the fact that hundreds of practical, unpoetical, and stolid English
soldiers came forward and testified to having seen the vision. Whether
the story were fact or fancy, it is an excellent example of a change in
our national character.