PART III

_THE WESTERN FRONT_

1

England had changed in the eighteen months since we put out so

joyously from Avonmouth. Munition factories were in full blast,

food restrictions in force, women in all kinds of uniforms, London

in utter darkness at night, the country dotted with hutted training

camps. Everything was quiet. We had taken a nasty knock or two and

washed some of our dirty linen in public, not too clean at that. My

own lucky star was in the ascendant. The voyage completely cured me,

and within a week I was given a month’s sick leave by the Medical

Board,--a month of heaven more nearly describes it, for I passed my

days in a state of bliss which nothing could mar, except perhaps the

realisation, towards the end, of the fact that I had to go back and

settle into the collar again.

My mental attitude towards the war had changed. Whatever romance

and glamour there may have been had worn off. It was just one long

bitter waste of time,--our youth killed like flies by “dug-outs,”

at the front, so that old men and sick might carry on the race,

while profiteers drew bloated profits and politicians exuded noxious

gas in the House. Not a comforting point of view to take back into

harness. I was told on good authority that to go out to France in a

field battery was a certain way of finding death. They were being

flung away in the open to take another thousand yards of trench,

so as to make a headline in the daily papers which would stir the

drooping spirits of the old, the sick, and the profiteer over their

breakfast egg. The _embusqué_ was enjoying those headlines too. The

combing-out process had not yet begun. The young men who had never

been out of England were Majors and Colonels in training camps. It

was the officers who returned to duty from hospital, more or less

cured of wounds or sickness, who were the first to be sent out again.

The others knew a thing or two.

That was how it struck me when I was posted to a reserve brigade just

outside London.

Not having the least desire to be “flung away in the open,” I did

my best to get transferred to a 6-inch battery. The Colonel of the

reserve brigade did his best, but it was queered at once, without

argument or appeal, by the nearest Brass Hat, in the following

manner. The Colonel having signed and recommended the formal

application, spoke to the General personally on my behalf.

“What sort of a fellow is he?” asked the General.

“Seems a pretty useful man,” said the Colonel.

“Then we’ll keep him,” said the General.

“The pity of it is,” said the Colonel to me later, “that if I’d said

you were a hopeless damned fool, he would have signed it.”

On many subsequent occasions the Colonel flung precisely that

expression at me so he might just as well have said it then.

However, as it seemed that I was destined for a short life, I

determined to make it as merry as possible, and in the company of a

kindred spirit, who was posted from hospital a couple of days after

I was, and who is now a Bimbashi in the Soudan, I went up to town

about three nights a week, danced and did a course of theatres.

By day there was no work to do as the brigade already had far too

many officers, none of whom had been out. The battery to which we

were both posted was composed of category C1 men,--flat-footed

unfortunates, unfit to fight on medical grounds, not even strong

enough to groom horses properly.

A futile existence in paths of unintelligence and unendeavour

worshipping perforce at the altar of destruction, creating nothing,

a slave to dishonesty and jobbery,--a waste of life that made one

mad with rage in that everything beautiful in the world was snapped

in half and flung away because the social fabric which we ourselves

had made through the centuries, had at last become rotten to the core

and broken into flaming slaughter, and was being fanned by yellow

press hypocrisy. Every ideal cried out against it. The sins of the

fathers upon the wilfully blind children. The Kaiser was only the

most pitch-covered torch chosen by Nemesis to set the bonfire of

civilisation ablaze. But for one branch in the family tree he would

have been England’s monarch, and then----?

There have been moments when I have regretted not having sailed to

New York in August, 1914,--bitter moments when all the dishonesty has

beaten upon one’s brain, and one has envied the pluck of the honest

conscientious objector who has stood out against the ridicule of the

civilised world.

The only thought that kept me going was “suppose the Huns had landed

in England and I had not been fighting?” It was unanswerable,--as I

thought then.

Now I wish that the Hun had landed in England in force and laid waste

the East coast, as he has devastated Belgium and the north of France.

There would have been English refugees with perambulators and babies,

profiteers crying “Kamerad!” politicians fleeing the House. There

would have been some hope of England’s understanding. But she doesn’t

even now. There were in 1918, before the armistice, men--MEN!--who,

because their valets failed to put their cuff links in their shirts

one morning, were sarcastic to their war-working wives, and talked of

the sacrifices they had made for their country.

How _dared_ they have valets, while we were lousy and unshaved, with

rotting corpses round our gun wheels? How _dared_ they have wives,

while we “unmarried and without ties” were either driven in our

weakness to licensed women, or clung to our chastity because of the

one woman with us every hour in our hearts, whom we meant to marry if

ever we came whole out of that hell?

2

Christmas came. They would not let me go down to that little

house among the pines and beeches, which has ever been “home” to

me. But the day was spent quietly in London with my best pal.

Seven days later I was on my way to Ireland as one of the advance

representatives of the Division. The destination of my brigade was

Limerick, that place of pigs, and smells, and pretty girls and

schoolboy rebels, who chalked on every barrack wall, “Long live the

Kaiser! Down with the King!” Have you ever been driven to the depths

of despair, seen your work go to pieces before your eyes, and spent

the dreadful days in dishonest idleness on the barrack square, hating

it all the while, but unable to move hand or foot to get out of the

mental morass? That is what grew up in Limerick. Even now my mind

shivers in agony at the thought of it.

Reinforcements had poured into the battery of cripples, and the order

came that from it a fighting battery should be formed. As senior

subaltern, who had been promised a captaincy, I was given charge of

them. The only other officer with me was the loyalest pal a man ever

had. He had been promoted on the field for gallantry, having served

ten years in the ranks as trumpeter, gunner, corporal and sergeant.

Needless to say, he knew the game backwards, and was the possessor

of amazing energy and efficiency. He really ought to have had the

command, for my gunnery was almost nil, but I had one pip more than

he, and so the system put him under my orders. So we paraded the

first men, and told them off into sections and were given a horse or

two, gradually building up a battery as more reinforcements arrived.

How we worked! The enthusiasm of a first command! For a fortnight we

never left the barracks,--drilling, marching, clothing and feeding

the fighting unit of which we hoped such great things. All our hearts

and souls were in it, and the men themselves were keen and worked

cheerily and well. One shook off depressing philosophies and got

down to the solid reality of two hundred men. The early enthusiasm

returned, and Pip Don--as my pal was called--and I were out for glory

and killing Huns.

The Colonel looked us over and was pleased. Life wasn’t too bad,

after all.

And then the blight set in. An officer was posted to the command of

the little fighting unit.

In a week all the fight had gone out of it. In another week Pip Don

and I declared ourselves beaten. All our interest was killed. The

sergeant-major, for whom I have a lasting respect, was like Bruce’s

spider. Every time he fell, he at once started reclimbing. He alone

was responsible for whatever discipline remained. The captaincy which

I had been promised on certain conditions was filled by some one

else the very day I carried out the conditions. It didn’t matter.

Everything was so hopeless that the only thing left was to get

out,--and that was the one thing we couldn’t do, because we were more

or less under orders for France. It reached such a pitch that even

the thought of being flung away in the open was welcome. At least

it would end it all. There was no secret about it. The Colonel knew.

Didn’t he come to my room one night, and say, “Look here, Gibbs, what

is the matter with your battery?” And didn’t we have another try, and

another?

So for a time Pip Don and I smoked cigarettes on the barrack square,

strolling listlessly from parade to parade, cursing the fate that

should have brought us to such dishonour. We went to every dance in

Limerick, organised concerts, patronised the theatre and filled our

lives as much as we could with outside interests until such time as

we should go to France. And then.--It would be different when shells

began to burst!

3

In the ranks I first discovered that it was a struggle to keep one’s

soul alive. That struggle had proved far more difficult as an officer

in the later days of Salonica. The bitterness of Limerick, together

with the reason, as I saw it, of the wholesale slaughter, made one’s

whole firmament tremble. Rough hands seemed to tear down one’s ideals

and fling then in the mud. One’s picture of God and religion faded

under the red light of war. One’s brain flickered in the turmoil,

seeking something to cling to. What was there? Truth? There was none.

Duty? It was a farce. Honour? It was dead. There was only one thing

left, one thing which might give them all back again,--Love.

If there was not that in one’s heart to keep fragrant, to cherish,

to run to for help, to look forward to as the sunshine at the end of

a long and awful tunnel, then one’s soul would have perished and a

bullet been a merciful thing.

I was all unconscious that it had been my salvation in the ranks,

in Salonica. Now, on the eve of going out to the Western Front I

recognized it for the first time to the full. The effect of it was

odd,--a passionate longing to tear off one’s khaki and leave all this

uncleanness, and at the same time the certain knowledge that one must

go on to the very end, otherwise one would lose it. If I had been

offered a war job in New York, how could I have taken it, unwounded,

the game unfinished, much as New York called me? So its third effect

was a fierce impatience to get to France, making at least one more

battery to help to end the war.

The days dragged by, the longer from the new knowledge within me.

From time to time the Sinn Fein gave signs of renewed activity, and

either we were all confined to barracks in consequence, presumably to

avoid street fighting, or else we hooked into the guns and did route

marches through and round about the town. From time to time arrests

were made, but no open conflict recurred. Apart from our own presence

there was no sign of war in Ireland. Food of all kinds was plentiful

and cheap, restrictions nil. The streets were well lit at night.

Gaiety was the keynote. No aeroplanes dropped bombs on that brilliant

target. The Hun and pro-Hun had spent too much money there.

Finally our training was considered complete. The Colonel had

laboured personally with all the subalterns, and we had benefited by

his caustic method of imparting knowledge. And so once more we sat

stiffly to attention while Generals rode round us, metaphorically

poking our ribs to see if we were fat enough for the slaughter.

Apparently we were, for the fighting units said good-bye to their

parent batteries--how gladly!--and shipped across to England to do

our firing practice.

The camp was at Heytesbury, on the other side of the vast plain which

I had learnt so well as a trooper. We were a curious medley, several

brigades being represented, each battery a little distrustful of the

next, a little inclined to turn up its nose. Instead of being “AC,”

“Beer,” “C” and “Don,” as before, we were given consecutive numbers,

well into the hundreds, and after a week or so of dislocation were

formed into brigades, and each put under the command of a Colonel.

Then the stiffness wore off in friendly competition of trying to pick

the best horses from the remounts. Our men challenged each other to

football, sergeant-majors exchanged notes. Subalterns swapped lies

about the war and Battery Commanders stood each other drinks in

the mess. Within a fortnight we were all certain we’d got the best

Colonel in England, and congratulated ourselves accordingly.

Meanwhile Pip Don and I were still outcasts in our own battery, up

against a policy of continual distrust, suspicion, and scarcely

veiled antagonism. It was at the beginning of April, 1917, that we

first got to Heytesbury, and snow was thick upon the ground. Every

day we had the guns out behind the stables and jumped the men about

at quick, short series, getting them smart and handy, keeping their

interest and keeping them warm. When the snow disappeared we took

the battery out mounted, taking turns in bringing it into action,

shooting over the sights on moving targets--other batteries at work

in the distance--or laying out lines for indirect targets. We took

the staff out on cross-country rides, scouring the country for miles,

and chasing hares--it shook them down into the saddle--carrying out

little signalling schemes. In short, we had a final polish up of all

the knowledge we had so eagerly begun to teach them when he and I had

been in sole command. I don’t think either of us can remember any

single occasion on which the commanding officer took a parade.

Embarkation leave was in full swing, four days for all ranks, and

the brigade next to us was ordered to shoot. Two range officers were

appointed from our brigade. I was one. It was good fun and extremely

useful. We took a party of signallers and all the rations we could

lay hands on, and occupied an old red farmhouse tucked away in a fold

of the plain, in the middle of all the targets. An old man and his

wife lived there, a quaint old couple, toothless and irritable, well

versed in the ways of the army and expert in putting in claims for

fictitious damages. Our job was to observe and register each round

from splinter proofs, send in a signed report of each series, stop

the firing by signalling if any stray shepherd or wanderer were seen

on the range, and to see that the targets for the following day’s

shoot had not been blown down or in any other way rendered useless.

It was a four-day affair, firing ending daily between three and four

p.m. This left us ample time to canter to all the battery positions

and work out ranges, angle of sight and compass bearings for every

target,--information which would have been invaluable when our turn

to fire arrived. Unfortunately, however, several slight alterations

were intentionally made, and all our labour was wasted. Still, it

was a good four days of bracing weather, with little clouds scudding

across a blue sky, never quite certain whether in ten minutes’ time

the whole world would be blotted out in a blizzard. The turf was

springy, miles upon endless miles, and we had some most wonderful

gallops and practised revolver shooting on hares and rooks, going

back to a huge tea and a blazing wood fire in the old, draughty

farmhouse.

The practice over, we packed up and marched back to our respective

batteries. Events of a most cataclysmic nature piled themselves

one upon the other,--friction between the commanding officer and

myself, orders to fire on a certain day, orders to proceed overseas

on a certain later day, and my dismissal from the battery, owing to

the aforesaid friction, on the opening day of the firing. Pip Don

was furious, the commanding officer wasn’t, and I “pursued a policy

of masterly inactivity.” The outcome of the firing was not without

humour, and certainly altered the whole future career of at least

two of us. The Captain and the third subaltern left the battery and

became “details.” The commanding officer became second in command

under a new Major, who dropped out of the blue, and I was posted back

to the battery, together with a new third subaltern, who had just

recovered from wounds.

The business of getting ready was speeded up. The Ordnance

Department, hitherto of miserly reluctance, gave us lavishly of their

best. Gas masks were dished out, and every man marched into a gas

chamber,--there either to get gassed or come out with the assurance

that the mask had no defects! Final issues of clothing and equipment

kept the Q.M.S. sweating from dawn to dusk, and the Major signed

countless pay books, indents and documents generally.

Thus we were ready and eager to go and strafe the Hun in the merry

month of May, 1917.

4

The personnel of the battery was odd but extremely interesting. Pip

Don and myself knew every man, bombardier, corporal and sergeant,

what he had done, tried to do, or could do. In a word we knew the

battery inside out and exactly what it was worth. Not a man of them

had ever been on active service, but we felt quite confident that the

test of shell fire would not find them wanting. The great majority of

them were Scots, and they were all as hard as nails.

The third subaltern was an unknown quantity, but all of us had been

out. The Captain hadn’t.

The Major had been in every battle in France since 1914, but he

didn’t know us or the battery, and if we felt supremely confident in

him, it was, to say the least of it, impossible for him to return

the compliment. He himself will tell you that he didn’t win the

confidence of the battery until after a bold and rapidly-decided

move in full light of day, which put us on the flank of a perfectly

hellish bombardment. That may be true of some of the men, but as far

as Pip Don and myself went, we had adopted him after the first five

minutes, and never swerved,--having, incidentally, some wonderful

arguments about him in the sleeping quarters at Heytesbury with the

subalterns of other batteries.

It is extraordinary how the man at the head of a little show like

that remains steadily in the lime-light. Everything he does, says or

looks is noted, commented on and placed to either his credit or debit

until the men have finally decided that he’s all right or--not. If

they come to the first decision, then the Major’s life is not more

of a burden to him than Divisional and Corps Staffs and the Hun can

make it. The battery will do anything he asks of it, at any hour of

day or night, and will go on shooting till the last man is knocked

out. If, on the other hand, they decide that he is not all right,

God help him. He gives orders. They are not carried out. Why? An

infinite variety of super-excellent excuses. It is a sort of passive

resistance, and he has got to be a mighty clever man to unearth the

root of it and kill it before it kills him.

We went from Southampton to Havre--it looked exactly the same as when

I’d landed there three years previously--and from Havre by train to

Merville. There a guide met us in the chilly dawn and we marched up

to Estaires, the guide halting us at a mud patch looking like the

abomination of desolation, which he said was our wagon line. It was

only about seven miles from the place where I’d been in the cavalry,

and just as muddy, but somehow I was glad to be back. None of those

side shows at the other end of the map had meant anything. France was

obviously where the issue would ultimately be decided, and, apart

from the Dardanelles, where the only real fighting was, or ever had

been. Let us, therefore, get on with the war with all speed. Every

year had brought talk of peace before Christmas, soon dwindling into

columns about preparations for another winter campaign. Even our own

men just landed discussed the chances of being back in Scotland for

the New Year!

We were an Army brigade,--one of a series of illegitimate children

working under Corps orders and lent to Divisions who didn’t evince

any friendliness when it came to leave allotments, or withdrawn from

our Divisional area to be hurried to some other part of the line and

flung in in heaps to stiffen the barrage in some big show. Nobody

loved us. Divisions saved their own people at our expense,--it was

always an Army brigade which hooked in at zero hour and advanced at

zero + 15, until after the Cambrai show. Ordnance wanted to know

who the hell we were and why our indents had a Divisional signature

and not a Corps one, or why they hadn’t both, or neither; A.S.C.

explained with a straight face how we _always_ got the best fresh

meat ration; Corps couldn’t be bothered with us, until there was a

show brewing; Army were polite but incredulous.

The immortal Pyecroft recommends the purchase of a ham as a sure

means of seeing life. As an alternative I suggest joining an Army

brigade.

5

In the old days of trench warfare the Armentières front was known as

the peace sector. The town itself, not more than three thousand yards

from the Hun, was full of happy money-grubbing civilians who served

you an excellent dinner and an equally excellent bottle of wine, or,

if it was clothes you sought, directed you to Burberry’s, almost as

well installed as in the Haymarket. Divisional infantry used it as a

rest billet. Many cook’s carts ambled peacefully along the cobbled

streets laden with eggs, vegetables and drinks for officers’ messes.

Now and then a rifle was fired in the front line resulting, almost,

in a Court of Enquiry. Three shells in three days was considered a

good average, a trench mortar a gross impertinence.

Such was the delightful picture drawn for us by veterans who heard we

were going there.

The first step was the attaching of so many officers and N.C.O.’s to

a Divisional battery in the line for “instruction.” The Captain and

Pip Don went up first and had a merry week. The Major and I went up

next and heard the tale of their exploits. The battery to which we

were attached, in command of a shell-shocked Major, was in a row of

houses, in front of a smashed church on the fringe of the town, and I

learnt to take cover or stand still at the blast of a whistle which

meant aeroplanes; saw a fighting map for the first time; an S.O.S.

board in a gun pit and the explanation of retaliation targets; read

the Divisional Defence Scheme through all its countless pages and

remained in _statu quo_; went round the front-line trench and learned

that a liaison officer didn’t take his pyjamas on raid nights;

learned also that a trench mortar bombardment was a messy, unpleasant

business; climbed rung by rung up a dark and sooty chimney, or was

hauled up in a coffin-like box, to a wooden deck fitted with seats

and director heads and telescopes and gazed down for the first time

on No Man’s Land and the Hun trench system and as far as the eye

could reach in his back areas, learning somewhat of the difficulties

of flank observation. Every day of that week added depths to the

conviction of my exceeding ignorance. Serbia had been nothing like

this. It was elementary, child’s play. The Major too uttered strange

words like calibration, meteor corrections, charge corrections. A

memory of Salonica came back to me of a huge marquee in which we had

all sat and listened to a gilded staff officer who had drawn diagrams

on a blackboard and juggled with just such expressions while we tried

hard not to go to sleep in the heat; and afterwards the Battery

Commanders had argued it and decided almost unanimously that it was

“all right for schools of gunnery but not a damn bit o’ use in the

field.” To the Major, however, these things seemed as ordinary as

whisky and pickles.

I came to the conclusion that the sooner I began to learn something

the better. It wasn’t easy because young Pip Don had the hang of it

all, so he and the Major checked each other’s figures while I looked

on, vainly endeavouring to follow. There was never any question

as to which of us ought to have had the second pip. However it

worked itself out all right because, owing to the Major, he got his

captaincy before I did, which was the best possible thing that could

have happened, for I then became the Major’s right-hand man and felt

the responsibility of it.

At the end of our week of instruction the brigade went into action,

two batteries going to the right group, two to the left. The group

consisted of the Divisional batteries, trench mortar batteries, the

60-pounders and heavy guns attached like ourselves. We were on the

left, the position being just in front of a 4.5 howitzer battery and

near the Lunatic Asylum.

It was an old one, four gun pits built up under a row of huge elms,

two being in a row of houses. The men slept in bunks in the pits

and houses; for a mess we cleaned out a room in the château at the

corner which had been sadly knocked about, and slept in the houses

near the guns. The château garden was full of lilac and roses, the

beds all overgrown with weeds and the grass a jungle, but still very

beautiful. Our zone had been allotted and our own private chimney

O.P.--the name of which I have forgotten--and we had a copy of that

marvellous defence scheme.

Then for a little we found ourselves in the routine of trench

warfare,--tours of duty at the O.P. on alternate days and keeping

a detailed log book in its swaying deck, taking our turn weekly to

supply a liaison officer with the infantry who went up at dark, dined

in their excellent mess, slept all night in the signalling officer’s

bunk, and returned for a shave and a wash after breakfast next

morning; firing retaliation salvos at the call of either the O.P.

or the infantry; getting up rations and ammunition and letters at a

regular hour every night; sending off the countless “returns” which

are the curse of soldiering; and quietly feeling our feet.

The O.P. was in an eastern suburb called Houplines, some twenty

minutes’ walk along the tram lines. At dawn one had reached it with

two signallers and was looking out from the upper deck upon an

apparently peaceful countryside of green fields splashed yellow with

mustard patches, dotted with sleepy cottages, from whose chimneys

smoke never issued, woods and spinneys in all the glory of their

spring budding running up on to the ridge, the Aubers ridge. The

trenches were an intricate series of gashes hidden by Nature with

poppies and weeds. Then came a grim brown space unmarked by any

trench, tangled with barbed wire, and then began the repetition of it

all except for the ridge at our own trenches. The early hours were

chilly and misty and one entered in the log book, “6 a.m. Visibility

nil.”

But with the sun the mist rolled up like a blind at one’s window and

the larks rocketed into the clear blue as though those trenches were

indeed deserted. Away on the left was a town, rising from the curling

river in terraces of battered ruins, an inexpressible desolation,

silent, empty, dead. Terrible to see that gaping skeleton of a town

in the flowering countryside. Far in the distance, peeping above the

ridge and visible only through glasses, was a faint pencil against

the sky--the great factory chimney outside Lille.

Peace seemed the keynote of it all in the soft perfumed heat of that

early summer. Yet eyes looked steadily out from every chimney and

other eyes from the opposite ridge; and with just a word down the

wire trenches went in smoking heaps, houses fell like packs of cards

touched by a child’s finger, noise beat upon the brain and Death

was the master whom we worshipped, upon whose altar we made bloody

sacrifice.

We hadn’t been there much more than a week when we had our first

hint of the hourly reality of it. The third subaltern, who hadn’t

properly recovered from the effect of his wound, was on his way up to

the O.P. one morning and had a misadventure with a shell. He heard it

coming, a big one, and sought refuge in the nearest house. The shell

unfortunately selected the same house.

When the dust had subsided and the ruins had assumed their final

shape the subaltern emerged, unwounded, but unlike his former

self.--The doctor diagnosed shell shock and the work went on without

him.

It seemed as though that were the turning point in the career of the

peace sector.

The Hun began a leisurely but persistent destruction of chimneys with

five-nines. One heard the gun in the distance, not much more than the

popping of a champagne cork at the other end of the Carlton Grill.

Some seconds later you thought you heard the inner circle train

come in at Baker Street. Dust choked you, the chimney rocked in the

frightful rush of wind, followed by a soul-shaking explosion,--and

you looked through the black aperture of the chimney to see a pillar

of smoke and falling earth spattering down in the sunshine. And

from the lower deck immediately beneath you came the voice of the

signaller, “They ought to give us sailor suits up ’ere, sir!”

And passing a finger round the inside of your sticky collar which

seemed suddenly a little tight, you sat down firmly again and said,

“Yes.--Is the steward about?”

Within sixty seconds another champagne cork popped. Curse the Carlton

Grill!

In addition to the delights of the O.P. the Hun “found” the battery.

It happened during the week that the Captain came up to have a look

round and in the middle of the night. I was sleeping blissfully at

liaison and returned next morning to find a most unpleasant smell

of cordite hanging about, several houses lying on the pavement,

including the one Pip Don and I shared, great branches all over the

road and one gun pit looking somewhat bent. It appeared that Pip

Don had spent the remainder of the night rounding up gunners in his

pyjamas. No one was hurt. The Captain returned to the wagon line

during the course of the morning.

Having found us, the Hun put in a few hundred rounds whenever he

felt bored,--during the 9 a.m. parade, at lunch time, before tea and

at the crack of dawn. The old red garden wall began to look like a

Gruyère cheese, the road was all pockmarked, the gun pits caught fire

and had to be put out, the houses began to fall even when there was

no shelling and it became a very unhealthy corner. Through it all the

Major was a tower of strength. So long as he was there the shelling

didn’t seem to matter, but if he were absent one didn’t _quite_

know whether to give the order to clear for the time being or stick

it out. The Hun’s attentions were not by any means confined to our

position. The systematic bombardment of the town had begun and it

became the usual thing to hear a horrible crackling at night and see

the whole sky red. The Major of one of our batteries was killed, the

senior subaltern badly wounded and several of their guns knocked out

by direct hits. We were lucky.

6

Meanwhile the Right Group, who had been watching this without envy

from the undisturbed calm of the countryside, decided to make a

daylight raid by way of counter-attraction and borrowed us for the

occasion. The Major and I went down to reconnoitre a battery position

and found a delightful spot behind a hedge under a row of spreading

elms. Between the two, camouflage was unnecessary and, as a cobbled

road ran immediately in front of the hedge, there was no danger of

making any tracks. It was a delightful position with a farmhouse

two hundred yards along the road. The relief of getting out of the

burning city, of not having to dodge shells at unexpected moments, of

knowing that the rations and ammunition could come up without taking

a twenty to one chance of being scuppered!

The raid was just like any other raid, except that it happened to

be the first barrage we fired, the first barrage table we worked

out, the first time we used the 106 fuse, and the first time that at

the eleventh hour we were given the task, in which someone else had

failed, of cutting the wire. I had been down with the Major when he

shot the battery in,--and hadn’t liked it. In places there was no

communication trench at all and we had to crawl on our bellies over a

chaos of tumbled earth and revetments in full view of any sniper, and

having to make frequent stops because the infernal signaller would

lag behind and turn off. And a few hours before the show the Major

was called upon to go down there and cut the wire at all costs. Pip

Don was signalling officer. He and every available signaller, stacks

of wire and lamps, spread themselves in a living chain between the

Major and the front-line trench and me at the battery. Before going

the Major asked me if I had the barrage at my finger tips. I had.

Then if he didn’t get back in time, he said, I could carry out the

show all right? I could,--and watched him go with a mouth full of

bitter curses against the Battery Commander who had failed to cut

that wire. My brain drew lurid pictures of stick-bombs, minnies,

pineapples, pip-squeaks and five-nines being the reason why the Major

wouldn’t get back “in time.” And I sat down by the telephonist,

praying for the call that would indicate at least his safe arrival in

the front-line trench.

Beside every gun lay a pile of 106 fuses ready. Orders were to

go on firing if every German plane in the entire Vaterland came

over.--Still they weren’t through on the ’phone!

I went along from gun to gun, making sure that everything was all

right and insisting on the necessity of the most careful laying,

stopping from time to time to yell to the telephonist “Through yet?”

and getting a “No, sir” every time that almost made me hear those

cursed minnies dropping on the Major. At last he called up. The

tension was over. We had to add a little for the 106 fuse but each

gun was registered on the wire within four rounds. The Major was a

marvel at that. Then the shoot began.

Aeroplanes came winging over, regardless of our Archies. But we,

regardless of the aeroplanes, were doing “battery fire 3 secs.” as

steadily as if we were on Salisbury Plain, getting from time to time

the order, “Five minutes more right.” We had three hundred rounds to

do the job with and only about three per gun were left when the order

“Stop” arrived. I stopped and hung on to the ’phone. The Major’s

voice, coming as though from a million miles away, said, “Napoo wire.

How many more rounds?”

“Three per gun, sir.”

“Right.--All guns five degrees more right for the onlooker, add two

hundred, three rounds gun fire.”

I made it so, received the order to stand down, put the fitter and

the limber gunners on to sponging out,--and tried to convince myself

that all the noise down in front was miles away from the Major and

Pip Don.--It seemed years before they strolled in, a little muddy but

as happy as lambs.

It occurred to me then that I knew something at least of what our

women endured at home every day and all day,--just one long suspense,

without even the compensation of _doing_ anything.

The raid came off an hour or so later like clockwork, without

incident. Not a round came back at us and we stood down eventually

with the feeling of having put in a good day’s work.

We were a very happy family in those days. The awful discouragement

of Limerick had lifted. Bombardments and discomforts were subjects

for humour, work became a joy, “crime” in the gun line disappeared

and when the time arrived for sending the gunners down to the wagon

line for a spell there wasn’t one who didn’t ask if he might be

allowed to stay on. It was due entirely to the Major. For myself I

can never be thankful enough for having served under him. He came at

a time when one didn’t care a damn whether one were court-martialled

and publicly disgraced. One was “through” with the Army and cared

not a curse for discipline or appearances. With his arrival all

that was swept away without a word being said. Unconsciously he

set a standard to which one did one’s utmost to live, and that

from the very moment of his arrival. One found that there was

honour in the world and loyalty, that duty was not a farce. In some

extraordinary way he embodied them all, forcing upon one the desire

for greater self-respect; and the only method of acquiring it was

effort, physical and mental, in order to get somewhere near his

high standard. I gave him the best that was in me. When he left the

brigade, broken in health by the ceaseless call upon his own effort,

he wrote me a letter. Of all that I shall take back with me to civil

life from the Army that letter is what I value most.

7

We had all cherished the hope that we had seen the last of the town;

that Right Group, commanded by our own colonel, would keep us in our

present position.

There was a distinct drop in the mental temperature when, the raid

over, we received the order to report back to Left Group. But

we still clung to the hope that we might be allowed to choose a

different gun position. That avenue of trees was far too accurately

pin-pointed by the Hun. Given, indeed, that there were many other

places from which one could bring just as accurate and concentrated

fire to bear on our part of the zone, it was criminal folly to order

us back to the avenue. That, however, was the order. It needed a big

effort to find any humour in it.

We hooked in and pulled out of that peaceful raid position with a

sigh of regret and bumped our way back over the cobbles through the

burning town, keeping a discreet distance between vehicles. The two

houses which had been the emplacements of the left section were

unrecognizable as gun pits, so we used the other four pits and put

the left section forward in front of the Asylum under camouflage. Not

less than ten balloons looked straight down on the gun muzzles. The

detachment lived in a cellar under the Asylum baths.

Then Pip Don got his captaincy and went to another battery, to the

safety and delights of the wagon line. One missed him horribly. We

got a new subaltern who had never been out before but who was as

stout as a lion. Within a few days our Captain was sent back ill and

I followed Pip Don to the wagon lines as Captain in my own battery,

a most amazing stroke of luck. We foregathered in a restaurant

at Estaires and held a celebration dinner together, swearing that

between us we would show the finest teams and the best harness in

France, discussing the roads we meant to build through the mud, the

improvements we were instantly going to start in the horse standings.

Great dreams that lasted just three days! Then his Major went on

leave and he returned to command the battery, within five hundred

yards of ours. The following day I was hurriedly sent for to find the

whole world reeking with gas, mustard gas. Everybody had streaming

eyes and noses. Within three minutes I was as bad as the rest.

How anybody got through the next days I don’t know. Four days and

nights it lasted, one curious hissing rain of shells which didn’t

burst with a crash but just uttered a little pop, upon which the

ground became spattered with yellow liquid and a greyish fog

spread round about. Five-nines, seventeen-inch, high explosive and

incendiary shells were mixed in with the gas. Communications went

wholesale. Fires roared in every quarter of the town. Hell was let

loose and always the gas choked and blinded. Hundreds of civilians

died of it although they had previously been warned repeatedly to

clear out. The conviction was so strong that Armentières was the

peace sector that the warnings were disregarded.

The howitzer battery behind us had been reinforced with ninety

men and two officers the day before the show started. After that

first night one officer was left. He had been up a chimney O.P.

all night. The rest went away again in ambulance wagons. It was a

holocaust, a shambles. A colossal attack was anticipated, and as all

communications had gone the signallers were out in gas masks all over

the town, endeavouring to repair lines broken in a hundred places,

and a constant look-out was kept for S.O.S. signals from the infantry.

Except when shooting all our men were kept underground in gas masks,

beating the gas away with “flappers.” The shelling was so ceaseless

and violent round about the position that when men were sent from

one section to another with messages they went in couples, their

departure being telephoned to the section. If their arrival was not

reported within ten minutes a search party was sent to find them. To

put one’s head above ground at any moment of day or night was to take

one’s life in one’s hands. Ammunition went up, and gun pits caught

fire and the rain of shells never ceased. To get to the O.P. one had

to fling oneself flat in a ditch countless times, always with an ear

stretched for the next shell. From minute to minute it was a toss-up,

and blackened corpses and screaming, mangled wounded left a bloody

trail in the stinking, cobbled streets. The peace sector!

Was it just a Boche measure to prevent us from using the town as

billets any more? Or was it a retaliation for the taking of the

Messines Ridge which we had watched from our chimney not many weeks

before, watched in awe and wonder, thanking God we were not taking

part in that carnage? The unhealthy life and the unceasing strain

told even on the Major. We were forced to live by the light of

candles in a filthy cellar beneath the château, snatching uneasy

periods of rest when one lay on a bunk with goggles on one’s smarting

eyes, breathing with labour, listening to the heavy thud of shells up

above and the wheezing and sneezing of the unfortunate signallers,

getting up and going about one’s work in a sort of stupor, dodging

shells rather by instinct than reason and tying up wounded with a

dull sickness at the pit of one’s stomach.

But through it all one’s thoughts of home intertwined with the reek

of death like honeysuckle with deadly nightshade, as though one’s

body were imprisoned in that foul underground hole while one’s mind

soared away and refused to come back. It was all a strange dream,

a clammy nightmare. Letters came, filled with all the delicious

everyday doings of another world, filling one’s brain with a scent of

verbena and briar rose, like the cool touch of a woman’s hands on the

forehead of a man in delirium.

8

On the morning of the fifth day the gas shelling ceased and the big

stuff became spasmodic,--concentrations of twenty minutes’ duration.

One emerged into the sun, sniffing carefully. The place was even

more unrecognizable than one had imagined possible. The château

still stood but many direct hits had filled the garden with blocks

of stone. The Asylum was a mass of ruins, the grounds pitted with

shell holes. The town itself was no longer a place to dine and shop.

A few draggled inhabitants slunk timidly about like rats, probing the

debris of what had once been their homes. The cobbled streets were

great pits where seventeen-inch shells had landed, half filled again

with the houses which had toppled over on either side. The hotels,

church and shops in the big square were gutted by fire, great beams

and house fronts blocking the roadway. Cellars were blown in and

every house yawned open to the sky. In place of the infantry units

and transports clattering about the streets was a desolate silent

emptiness punctuated by further bombardments and the echoing crash of

falling walls. And, over all, that sickly smell of mustard.

It was then that the Left Group Commander had a brain wave and

ordered a trial barrage on the river Lys in front of Frelinghein.

It was about as mad a thing as making rude noises at a wounded

rhinoceros, given that every time a battery fired the Boche opened a

concentration.

Pip Don had had three seventeen-inch in the middle of his position.

Nothing much was found of one gun and its detachment except a head

and a boot containing a human foot.

The Group Commander had given the order, however, and there was

nothing to do but to get on with it.--

The barrage was duly worked out. It was to last eighteen minutes with

a certain number of lifts and switches. The Group Commander was going

to observe it from one of the chimneys.

My job was to look after the left section in the open in front of the

Asylum. Ten minutes before zero I dived into the cellar under the

baths breathless, having dodged three five-nines. There I collected

the men and gathered them under cover of the doorway. There we waited

for a minute to see where the next would burst. It hit a building

twenty-five yards away.

“Now!” said I, “double!” and we ran, jumping shell holes and flinging

ourselves flat for one more five-nine. The guns were reached all

right, the camouflage pulled back and everything made ready for

action. Five Hun balloons gazed down at us straight in front, and

three of his aeroplanes came and circled low over our heads, and

about every minute the deafening crash of that most demoralizing

five-nine burst just behind us. I lay down on the grass between the

two guns and gazed steadfastly at my wrist watch.

“Stand by!”

The hands of the Numbers 3 stole out to the handles of the firing

lever.

“Fire!”

The whole of Armentières seemed to fire at once. The Group Commander

up in his chimney ought to have been rather pleased. Four rounds

per gun per minute was the rate. Then at zero plus one I heard that

distant pop of Hun artillery and with the usual noise the ground

heaved skyward between the two guns just in front. It wasn’t more

than twelve and a half yards away. The temptation to run made me itch

all over.

Pop! it went again. My forehead sank on to my wrist watch.

A good bracket, twelve and a half yards behind, and again lumps of

earth spattered on to my back. The itch became a disease. The next

round, according to all the laws of gunnery, ought to fall between my

collar and my waist.--

I gave the order to lift, straining my ears.

There came no pop. I held my breath so that I might hear better,--and

only heard the thumping of my heart. We lifted again and again.--

I kept them firing for three full seconds after the allotted

time before I gave the order to cease fire. The eighteen

minutes--lifetimes--were over and that third pop didn’t come till

we had stopped. Then having covered the guns we ran helter-skelter,

each man finding his own way to the cellar through the most juicy

bombardment we’d heard for quite twenty-four hours.

Every man answered to his name in the cellar darkness and there was

much laughter and tobacco smoke while we got back our breath.

Half an hour later their bombardment ceased. The sergeant and I went

back to have a look at the guns. Number 5 was all right. Number 6,

however, had had a direct hit, one wheel had burnt away and she lay

on her side, looking very tired.

I don’t know how many other guns had been knocked out in the

batteries taking part, but, over and above the value of the

ammunition, that trial barrage cost at least one eighteen-pounder!

And but for a bit of luck would have cost the lives of the detachment.

9

The Major decided to move the battery and gained the reluctant

consent of the Group Commander who refused to believe that there

had been any shelling there till he saw the gun lying burnt and

smashed and the pits burnt and battered. The Hun seemed to take a

permanent dislike to the Asylum and its neighbourhood. It may have

been coincidence but any time a man showed there a rain of shells

chivvied him away. It took the fitter and the detachment about seven

trips before they got a new wheel on, and at any hour of day or

night you could bet on at least a handful of four-twos. The gas was

intermittent.

At four o’clock in the morning after a worrying night when I had

gone out twice to extinguish gun pits reported on fire, the Major

announced that he was going to get the gun out and disappeared out of

the cellar into the shell-lit darkness.

Two hours later he called up from Group Headquarters and told me

to get the other out and take her to Archie Square, a square near

the station, so-called because a couple of anti-aircraft guns had

used it as an emplacement in the peace days. With one detachment on

each drag rope we ran the gauntlet in full daylight of a four-two

bombardment, rushing shell holes and what had once been flower beds,

keeping at a steady trot, the sweat pouring off us.

The Major met us in Archie Square and we went back to our cellar for

breakfast together.

Of the alternative positions one section was in Chapelle

d’Armentières. We hoped great things of it. It looked all right, pits

being built in the back yards of a row of small houses, with plenty

of trees for cover and lots of fruit for the men,--raspberries,

plums, and red currants. Furthermore the shell holes were all old.

The only crab about it was getting there. Between us and it were two

much-shelled spots called Sandbag Corner and Snow Corner. Transports

used to canter past them at night and the Hun had an offensive habit

of dropping barrages on both of them any time after dark. But there

was a place called Crown Prince House at Sandbag Corner and I fancy

he used this as a datum point. While the left section went straight

on to the Chapelle the other two turned to the right at Snow Corner

and were to occupy some houses just along the road and a garden next

to them under camouflage.

I shall not forget the night of that move in a hurry. In the

afternoon the Major returned to the battery at tea time. There was no

shelling save our own anti-aircraft, and perfect sunshine.

“The teams are due at ten o’clock,” said he. “The Hun will start

shelling precisely at that time. We will therefore move _now_. Let us

function.” We functioned!

The battery was called together and the nature of the business

explained. Each detachment pulled down the parados in the rear of

the gun pits and such part of the pit itself as was necessary to

allow the gun to come out,--no light task because the pits had been

built to admit the gun from the front. As soon as each reported ready

double detachments were told off to the drag ropes and the gun,

camouflaged with branches, was run out and along the lane and round

the corner of the château. There they were all parked, one by one.

Then the ammunition was brought, piles of it. Then all the gun stores

and kits.

At ten o’clock the teams were heard at the other end of the cobbled

street. A moment later shells began to burst on the position, gun

fire. From the cover afforded by the château and the wall we loaded

up without casualty and hooked in, bits of shell and wall flying over

our heads viciously.

I took charge of the left section in Archie Square. The vehicles were

packed, dixies tied on underneath. The Major was to follow with the

four guns and the other subaltern at ten minutes’ interval.

Keeping fifty yards between vehicles I set off, walking in front

of the leading gun team. We clattered along the cobbled streets,

rattling and banging. The station was being bombarded. We had to go

over the level crossing a hundred yards or so in rear of it. I gave

the order to trot. A piece of shell sent up a shower of sparks in

front of the rear gun team. The horses bucked violently and various

dixies fell off, but I kept on until some distance to a flank under

the houses. The dixies were rescued and re-tied. There was Sandbag

Corner to navigate yet, _and_ Snow Corner. It was horribly dark,

impossible to see shell holes until you were into them, and all the

time shells were bursting in every direction. The road up to the two

Corners ran straight towards the Hun, directly enfiladed by him.

We turned into it at a walk and were half-way along when a salvo

fell round Crown Prince House just ahead. I halted immediately,

wondering where in heaven’s name the next would fall, the horses

snorting and prancing at my back. For a couple of minutes there was

a ragged burst of gun fire while we stood with the bits missing us.

Then I gave the order to trot. The horses needed no encouragement.

I could only just keep in front, carrying maps and a torch and with

most of my equipment on. We carried on past Crown Prince House, past

Sandbag Corner and walked again, blown and tottering, towards Snow

Corner, and only just got past it when a barrage dropped right on the

cross-roads. It was there that the Major would have to turn to the

right with his four guns presently. Please God it would stop before

he came along.

We weren’t very far behind the support lines now and the pop-pop-pop,

pop-pop-pop of machine guns was followed by the whistling patter of

bullets. I kept the teams as close under the houses as I dared. There

was every kind of devilment to bring a horse down, open drains, coils

of tangled wire, loose debris. Eventually we reached the Chapelle and

the teams went off at the trot as soon as the ammunition was dumped

and the kits were off.

Then in the black night we heaved and hauled the guns into their

respective pits and got them on to their aiming posts and S.O.S.

lines.

It was 3 a.m. before I got back to the new headquarters, a house in

an orchard, and found the Major safe and sound.

A couple of days later the Major was ordered to a rest camp and at

a moment’s notice I found myself in command of the battery. It was

one of the biggest moments of my life. Although I had gone down to

take the Captain’s place my promotion hadn’t actually gone through

and I was still a subaltern, faced with the handling of six guns at

an extremely difficult moment and with the lives of some fifty men

in my hands, to say nothing of the perpetual responsibility to the

infantry in the front line.

It was only when the Major had said good-bye and I was left that

I began to realize just how greatly one had depended on him. All

the internal arrangements which he had handled so easily that they

seemed no trouble loomed up as insurmountable difficulties--returns,

ammunition, rations, relieving the personnel--all over and above the

constant worry of gun detachments being shelled out, lines being

cut, casualties being got away. It was only then that I realized

what a frightful strain he must have endured during those days of

continual gas and bombardment, the feeling of personal responsibility

towards every single man, the vital necessity through it all of

absolute accuracy of every angle and range, lest by being flustered

or careless one should shoot one’s own infantry, the nights spent

with one ear eternally on the telephone and the added strain of

sleeplessness.--A lonely job, Battery Commander.

I realized, too, what little use I had been to him. Carrying out

orders, yes, but not really taking any of the weight off his

shoulders.

The insignificance of self was never so evident as that first night

with my ear to the ’phone, all the night noises accentuated in the

darkness, the increasing machine-gun fire which might mean an attack,

the crashing of shells which might get my supply wagons on their way

back, the jump when the ’phone buzzed suddenly, making my heart leap

against my ribs, only to put me through to Group for an order to send

over thirty rounds on a minnie firing in C 16 d o 4.--It was good to

see the blackness turn to grey and recognize objects once more in

the room, to know that at last the infantry were standing down and

to sink at last into deep sleep as the grey became rose and the sun

awoke.

Do the men ever realize, I wonder, that the Major who snaps out

orders, who curses so freely, who gives them extra guards and docks

their pay, can be a human being like themselves whose one idea is

_their_ comfort and safety, that they may strafe the Hun and not get

strafed?

It was my first experience in handling subalterns, too, and I came

to see them from a new point of view. Hitherto one’s estimation

of them had been limited by their being good fellows or not. The

question of their knowledge or ignorance hadn’t mattered. One could

always give them a hand or do the thing oneself. Now it was reversed.

Their knowledge, working capabilities and stout-heartedness came

first. Their being good fellows was secondary, but helpful. The most

ignorant will learn more in a week in the line than in ten weeks in a

gunnery school.

10

The first few days in the new position were calm. It gave one time to

settle down. We did a lot of shooting and apart from a spare round or

two in our direction nothing came back in return. The Hun was still

plastering the Asylum and the avenue at all times of day, to our

intense joy. The more he shelled it the more we chuckled. One felt

that the Major had done Fritz in the eye. So we gathered plums and

raspberries in the warm sun, rejoicing that the horrible smell of

mustard gas was no more. There was a fly in the ointment, of course.

It consisted of several thousand rounds of ammunition in the Asylum

which we were ordered to salvage. The battery clerk, a corporal of

astounding stout-heartedness who had had countless escapes by an

inch already in the handling of it, and who subsequently became

one of the best sergeants in the battery, undertook to go and see

what could be done. He took with him the fitter, a lean Scot, who

was broken-hearted because he had left a file there and who wanted

to go and scratch about the ruins to try and recover it. These two

disappeared into the Asylum during a momentary lull. Before they

returned the Hun must have sent in about another fifteen hundred

rounds, all big stuff. They came in hot and covered with brick dust.

The fitter had got his file and showed it with joy and affection. The

corporal had made a rough count of the rounds and estimated that at

least a couple of hundred had “gone up” or were otherwise rendered

useless.

To my way of thinking it would have been manslaughter to have sent

teams to get the stuff away, so I decided to let time solve the

problem and leave well alone. Eventually it did solve itself. Many

weeks later another battery occupied the position (Poor devils. It

still reeked of gas) and I had the pleasure of showing the Battery

Commander where the ammunition was and handing it over.

Meanwhile the Boche had “found” the left and centre sections.

In addition to that the Group Commander conceived a passion to

experiment with guns in the front-line trenches, to enfilade the

enemy over open sights at night and generally to put the fear of God

into him. Who more suitable than the Army brigade battery commanded

by that subaltern?

I was sent for and told all about it, and sent to reconnoitre

suitable positions. Seeing that the enemy had all the observation and

a vast preponderance of artillery I did all in my power to dissuade

the Commander. He had been on active service, however, before I was

born--he told me so--and had forgotten more things than I should ever

know. He had, indeed, forgotten them.

The long and short of it was that I took a subaltern with me, and

armed with compasses and trench maps, we studied the whole zone

at distances varying from three to five hundred yards from the

enemy front-line trench. The best place of all happened to be near

Battalion Headquarters. Needless to say, the Colonel ordered me off.

“You keep your damn things away. There’s quite enough shelling here

without your planting a gun. Come and have a drink.”

Eventually, however, we got two guns “planted” with cover for the

detachments. It was an absolute waste of guns. The orders were only

to fire if the enemy came over the top by day and on special targets

by night. The difficulty of rationing them was extreme, it made

control impossible from battery headquarters, because the lines went

half a dozen times a day and left me only two sections to do all the

work with.

The only thing they ever fired at was a very near balloon one

afternoon. Who gave the order to fire remains a mystery. The sergeant

swore the infantry Colonel gave it.

My own belief is that it was a joy shoot on the sergeant’s part. He

was heartily cursed for his pains, didn’t hit the balloon, and within

twenty-four hours the gun was knocked out. The area was liberally

shelled, to the discomfort of the infantry, so if the Colonel did

give the order, he had only himself to thank for the result.

The headquarters during this time was an odd round brick building,

like a pagoda in the middle of a narrow orchard. A high red brick

wall surrounded the orchard which ran down to the road. At the road

edge were two houses completely annihilated. Plums, greengages,

raspberries and red currants were in abundance. The signallers and

servants were in dug-outs outside the wall. Curiously enough, this

place was not marked on the map. Nor did the Hun seem to have it on

his aeroplane photographs. In any case, although he shelled round

about, I can only remember one which actually burst inside the walls.

Up at Chapelle d’Armentières the left section was almost

unrecognizable. Five-nines had thumped it out of all shape, smashed

down the trees, ploughed up the garden and scattered the houses into

the street. The detachment spent its time day and night in clearing

out into neighbouring ditches and dug-outs, and coming back again.

They shot between whiles, neither of the guns having been touched,

and I don’t think they slept at all. None of them had shaved for days.

As regards casualties we were extraordinarily lucky. Since leaving

the town not a man had been hit or gassed. For the transport at night

I had reconnoitred a road which avoided the town entirely and those

dangerous cross-roads, and took them right through the support line,

within a quarter of a mile of the Boche. The road was unshelled, and

only a few machine-gun bullets spat on it from time to time. So they

used it nightly, and not a horse or driver was touched.

Then the Right Group had another raid and borrowed us again. The

white house and the orchard which we had used before were unoccupied.

I decided to squeeze up a bit and get all six guns in. The night of

the move was a colossal undertaking. The teams were late, and the

Hun chose to drop a gas barrage round us. More than that, in the

afternoon I had judged my time and dodged in between two bombardments

to visit the left section. They were absolutely done in, so tired

that they could hardly keep their eyes open. The others were little

better, having been doing all the shooting for days. However, I

ordered them to vacate the left section and come along to me at

Battery Headquarters for a rest before the night’s work. They dragged

themselves there, and fell asleep in heaps in the orchard in the

wet. The subaltern and the sergeant came into the building, drank a

cup of tea each and filled the place with their snores. So I sent

for another sergeant and suggested that he and his men, who had had

a brief rest that day, should go and get the left section guns out

while these people handled his as best they could. He jumped at it

and swore he’d get the guns out, begging me to keep my teams well to

the side of the road. If he had to canter they were coming out, and

he was going to ride the lead horse himself,--splendid fellow.

Then I collected the subalterns and detailed them for the plan of

campaign. The left section man said he was going with his guns. So I

detailed the junior to see the guns into the new positions, and send

me back the ammunition wagons as he emptied them. The third I kept

with the centre section. The corporal clerk was to look after the

headquarters. I was to function between the lot.

The teams should have been up at 9 p.m. They didn’t arrive till ten,

by which time the gas hung about thick, and people were sneezing

right and left. Then they hung up again because of a heavy shelling

at the corner on the way to the left section. However, they got

through at last, and after an endless wait, that excellent sergeant

came trotting back with both guns intact. We had, meanwhile yanked

out the centre section and sent them back. The forward guns came

back all right from the trenches, but no ammunition wagons or G.S.

returned from the position, although filled by us ages before and

sent off.

So I got on a bicycle and rode along to see what the trouble was. It

was a poisonous road, pitch dark, very wet and full of shell holes.

I got there to find a column of vehicles standing waiting all mixed

up, jerked the bicycle into a hedge and went downstairs to find the

subaltern.

There was the Major! Was I pleased?--I felt years younger. However,

this was his night off. I was running the show. “Carry on, Old

Thing,” said he.

So I went out into the chaotic darkness and began sorting things out.

Putting the subaltern in charge of the ammunition I took the guns. It

was a herculean task to get those six bundooks through the wet and

spongy orchard with men who were fresh. With these men it was asking

the impossible. But they did it, at the trot.

You know the sort of thing--“Take the strain--together--heave!

Together--heave! Now keep her going! Once more--heave!

Together--heave! and again--heave! Easy all! Have a blow--Now

look here, you fellows, you _must_ wait for the word and put your

weight on _together_. Heels into the mud and lean on it, but lean

together, all at the same moment, and she’ll go like a baby’s pram.

Now then, come on and I’ll bet you a bottle of Bass all round that

you get her going at a canter if only you’ll heave together--Take

the strain--_together_--heave! Ter-rot! Canter! Come on now, like

that--splendid,--and you owe me a bottle of Bass all round.”

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? but oh, my God, to see those poor devils,

dropping with fatigue, putting their last grunting ounce on to it,

with always just one more heave left! Magnificent fellows, who worked

till they dropped, and then staggered up again, in the face of gas

and five-nines, and went on shooting till they were dead,--_they’ve_

won this war for us if anybody has, these Tommies who don’t know

when they’re beaten, these “simple soldiers,” as the French call

them, who grouse like hell but go on working whether the rations come

up or whether they don’t, until they’re senseless from gas or stop

a shell and get dropped into a hole in an army blanket. These are

the men who have saved England and the world, these,--and not the

gentlemen at home who make fortunes out of munitions and “war work,”

and strike for more pay, not the _embusqué_ who cannot leave England

because he’s “indispensable” to his job, not the politicians and

vote-seekers, who bolster up their parties with comfortable lies more

dangerous than mustard gas, not the M.L.O.’s and R.T.O.’s and the

rest of the alphabetic fraternity and Brass Hats, who live in comfort

in back areas, doing a lot of brain work and filling the Staff leave

boat,--not any of these, but the cursing, spitting, lousy Tommy, God

save him!

11

The last of the guns was in by three o’clock in the morning, but

there wasn’t a stitch of camouflage in the battery. However, I

sent every last man to bed, having my own ideas on the question

of camouflage. The subaltern and I went back to the house. The

ammunition was also unloaded and the last wagon just about to depart.

The servants had tea and sandwiches waiting, a perfect godsend.

“What about tracks?” The Major cocked an eye in my direction. He was

fully dressed, lying on his valise. I stifled a million yawns, and

spoke round a sandwich. “Old Thing and I are looking after that when

it gets light.”

“Old Thing” was the centre section commander, blinking like a tired

owl, a far-away expression on his face.

“And camouflage?” said the Major.

“Ditto,” said I.

The servants were told to call us in an hour’s time. I was asleep

before I’d put my empty tea-cup on the ground. A thin grey light was

creeping up when I was roughly shaken. I put out a boot and woke Old

Thing. Speechless, we got up shivering, and went out. The tracks

through the orchard were feet deep.

We planted irregular branches and broke up the wheel tracks. Over

the guns was a roof of wire netting which I’d had put up a day

previously. Into these we stuck trailing vine branches one by one,

wet and cold. The Major appeared in the middle of the operation

and silently joined forces. By half-past four the camouflage was

complete. Then the Major broke the silence.

“I’m going up to shoot ’em in,” he said.

Old Thing, dozing on a gun seat, woke with a start and stared. He

hadn’t been with the Major as long as I had.

“D’you mind if one detachment does the whole thing?” said I. “They’re

all just about dead, but C’s got a kick left.”

The Major nodded. Old Thing staggered away, collected two signallers

who looked like nothing human, and woke up C sub-section. They came

one by one, like silent ghosts through the orchard, tripping over

stumps and branches, sightless with sleep denied.

The Major took a signaller and went away. Old Thing and I checked

aiming posts over the compass.

Fifteen minutes later the O.P. rang through, and I reported ready.

The sun came out warm and bright, and at nine o’clock we “stood

down.” Old Thing and I supported each other into the house and fell

on our valises with a laugh. Some one pulled off our gum boots. It

must have been a servant but I don’t know. I was asleep before they

were off.

The raid came off at one o’clock that night in a pouring rain. The

gunners had been carrying ammunition all day after about four hours’

sleep. Old Thing and I had one. The Major didn’t have any. The

barrage lasted an hour and a half, during which one sub-section made

a ghastly mistake and shot for five full minutes on a wrong switch.

A raid of any size is not just a matter of saying, “Let’s go over the

top to-night, and nobble a few of ’em! Shall us?”

And the other fellow in the orthodox manner says, “Let’s”--and over

they go with a lot of doughty bombers, and do a lot of dirty work. I

wish it were.

What really happens is this. First, the Brigade Major, quite a

long way back, undergoes a brain-storm which sends showers of

typewritten sheets to all sorts of Adjutants, who immediately talk of

transferring to the Anti-Aircraft. Other sheets follow in due course,

contradicting the first and giving also a long list of code words of

a domestic nature usually, with their key. These are hotly pursued

by maps on tracing paper, looking as though drawn by an imaginative

child.

At this point Group Commanders, Battalion Commanders, and Battery

Commanders join in the game, taking sides. Battery Commanders walk

miles and miles daily along duck boards, and shoot wire in all sorts

of odd places on the enemy front trench, and work out an exhaustive

barrage.

Then comes a booklet, which is a sort of revision of all that has

gone before, and alters the task of every battery. A new barrage

table is worked out. Follows a single sheet giving zero day.

The raiders begin cutting off their buttons and blacking their faces

and putting oil drums in position.

Battery wagon lines toil all night, bringing up countless extra

rounds. The trench mortar people then try and cut the real bit of

wire, at which the raiders will enter the enemy front line. As a

rule they are unsuccessful, and only provoke a furious retaliatory

bombardment along the whole sector.

Then Division begins to get excited and talks rudely to Group. Group

passes it on. Next a field battery is ordered to cut that adjective

wire and does.

A Gunner officer is detailed to go over the top with the raid

commander. He writes last letters to his family, drinks a last

whisky, puts on all his Christmas-tree, and says, “Cheero” as though

going to his own funeral. It may be.

Then telephones buzz furiously in every brigade, and everybody says

“Carrots” in a whisper.

You look up “Carrots” in the code book, and find it means “raid

postponed 24 hours.” Everybody sits down and curses.

Another paper comes round saying that the infantry have changed the

colours of all the signal rockets to be used. All gunners go on

cursing.

Then comes the night! Come up to the O.P. and have a dekko with me,

but don’t forget to bring your gas mask.

Single file we zigzag down the communication trenches. The O.P. is a

farmhouse, or was, in which the sappers have built a brick chamber

just under the roof. You climb up a ladder to get to it, and find

room for just the signaller and ourselves, with a long slit through

which you can watch Germany. The Hun knows it’s an O.P. He’s got

a similar one facing you, only built of concrete, and if you don’t

shell him he won’t shell you. But if you do shell him with a futile

18-pounder H.E. or so, he turns on a section of five-nines, and the

best thing you can do is to report that it’s “snowing,” clear out

quick and look for a new O.P. The chances are you won’t find one

that’s any good.

It’s frightfully dark; can’t see a yard. If you want to smoke, for

any sake don’t strike matches. Use a tinder. See that sort of extra

dark lump, just behind those two trees--all right, poles if you like.

They _were_ trees!--Well, that’s where they’re going over.

Not a sound anywhere except the rumble of a battle away up north.

Hell of a strafe apparently.

Hullo! What’s the light behind that bank of trees?--Fritz started

a fire in his own lines? Doesn’t look like a fire.--It’s the moon

coming up, moon, moon, so brightly shining. Pity old Pelissier turned

up his toes.--Ever heard the second verse of “Au Clair de la Lune?”

(singing)

Au clair de la lune

Pierrot répondit,

“Je n’ai pas de plume,

Je suis dans mon lit.”

“Si tu es donc couché,”

Chuchotta Pierrette,

“Ouvre-moi ta porte

Pour que je m’y mette.”

_’Tis_ the moon all right, a corker too.--What do you make the

time?--A minute to go, eh? Got your gas mask at the alert?

The moon came out above the trees and shed a cold white light on the

countryside. On our side, at least, the ground was alive with men,

although there wasn’t a sound or a movement. Tree stumps, blasted by

shell fire, stood out stark naked. The woods on the opposite ridge

threw a deep belt of black shadow. The trenches were vague uneven

lines, camouflaging themselves naturally with the torn ground.

Then a mighty roar that rocked the O.P., made the ground tremble and

set one’s heart thumping, and the peaceful moonlight was defiled.

Bursts of flame and a thick cloud of smoke broke out on the enemy

trenches. Great red flares shot up, the oil drums, staining all the

sky the colour of blood. Rifle and machine-gun fire pattered like the

chattering of a thousand monkeys, as an accompaniment to the roaring

of lions. Things zipped past or struck the O.P. The smoke out there

was so thick that the pin-points of red fire made by the bursting

shells could hardly be seen. The raiders were entirely invisible.

Then the noise increased steadily as the German sky was splashed

with all-coloured rockets and Verey lights and star shells, and

their S.O.S. was answered. There’s a gun flash! What’s the bearing?

Quick.--There she goes again!--Nine-two magnetic, that’s eighty true.

Signaller! Group.--There’s another! By God, that’s some gun. Get

it while I bung this through.--Hullo! Hullo, Group! O.P. speaking.

Flash of enemy gun eight--0 degrees true. Another flash, a hell of a

big one, what is it?--One, one, two degrees,--Yes, that’s correct.

Good-bye.

Then a mighty crash sent earth and duckboards spattering on to the

roof of the O.P., most unpleasantly near. The signaller put his mouth

to my ear and shouted, “Brigade reports gas, sir.” Curse the gas. You

can’t see anything in a mask.--Don’t smell it yet, anyhow.

Crash again, and the O.P. rocked. Damn that five-nine. Was he

shooting us or just searching? Anyhow, the line of the two bursts

doesn’t look _quite_ right for us, do you think? If it hits the

place, there’s not an earthly. Tiles begin rattling down off the roof

most suggestively. It’s a good twenty-foot drop down that miserable

ladder. Do you think his line.--Look out! She’s coming.--Crash!

God, not more than twenty yards away! However, we’re all right. He’s

searching to the left of us. Where _is_ the blighter? Can you see his

flash? Wonder how our battery’s getting on?--

Our people were on the protective barrage now, much slower. The

infantry had either done their job or not. Anyhow they were getting

back. The noise was distinctly tailing off. The five-nine was

searching farther and farther behind to our left. The smell of gas

was very faint. The smoke was clearing. Not a sign of life in the

trenches. Our people had ceased fire.

The Hun was still doing a ragged gun fire. Then he stopped.

A Verey light or two went sailing over in a big arc.

The moon was just a little higher, still smiling inscrutably.

Silence, but for that sustained rumble up north. How many men were

lying crumpled in that cold white light?

Division reported “Enemy front line was found to be unoccupied. On

penetrating his second line slight resistance was encountered. One

prisoner taken. Five of the enemy were killed in trying to escape.

Our casualties slight.”

At the end of our barrage I called that detachment up, reduced

three of them to tears and in awful gloom of spirit reported the

catastrophe to the Major. He passed it on to Brigade who said they

would investigate.

A day later Division sent round a report of the “highly successful

raid which from the adverse weather conditions owed its success to

the brilliance of the artillery barrage....”

That same morning the Colonel went to Division, the General was on

leave. The Major was sent for to command the Group, and my secret

hopes of the wagon line were dashed to the ground. I was a Battery

Commander again in deed if not in rank.

12

The wagon line all this while had, in the charge of the

sergeant-major, been cursed most bitterly by horse masters and

A.D.V.S.’s who could not understand how a sergeant-major, aged

perhaps thirty-nine, could possibly know as much about horse

management as a new-fledged subaltern anywhere between nineteen and

twenty-one.

From time to time I pottered down on a bicycle for the purpose

of strafing criminals and came away each time with a prayer of

thanks that there was no new-fledged infant to interfere with the

sergeant-major’s methods.

On one occasion he begged me to wait and see an A.D.V.S. of sorts who

was due at two o’clock that afternoon and who on his previous tour of

inspection had been just about as nasty as he could be. I waited.

Let it be granted as our old enemy Euclid says that the horse

standings were the worst in France--the Division of course had the

decent ones--and that every effort was being made to repair them.

The number of shelled houses removed bodily from the firing line

to make brick standings and pathways through the mud would have

built a model village. The horses were doing this work in addition

to ammunition fatigues, brigade fatigues and every other sort of

affliction. Assuming too that a sergeant-major doesn’t carry as much

weight as a Captain (I’d got my third pip) in confronting an A.S.C.

forage merchant with his iniquities, and I think every knowledgeable

person admitted that our wagon line was as good as, if not better

than, shall we say, any Divisional battery. Yet the veterinary

expert (?) crabbed my very loyal supporter, the sergeant-major,

who worked his head and his hands off day in, day out. It was

displeasing,--more, childish.

In due course he arrived,--in a motor car. True, it wasn’t a

Rolls-Royce, but then he was only a Colonel. But he wore a fur coat

just as if it had been a Rolls-Royce. He stepped delicately into

the mud, and left his temper in the car. To the man who travels in

motors, a splash of mud on the boots is as offensive as the sight of

a man smoking a pipe in Bond Street at eleven o’clock in the morning.

It isn’t done.

I saluted and gave him good morning. He grunted and flicked a finger.

Amicable relations were established.

“Are you in charge of these wagon lines?” said he.

“In theory, yes, sir.”

He didn’t quite understand, and cocked a doubtful eye at me.

I explained. “You see, sir, the B.C. and I are carrying on the war.

He’s commanding Group and I’m commanding the battery. But we’ve got

the fullest confidence in the sergeant-maj.--”

Was it an oath he swallowed? Anyhow, it went down like an oyster.

The Colonel moved thus expressing his desire to look round.

I fell into step.

“Have you got a hay sieve?” said he.

“Sergeant-Major, where’s the hay sieve?” said I.

“This way, sir,” said the sergeant-major.

Two drivers were busily passing hay through it. The Colonel told them

how to do it.

“Have you got wire hay racks above the horses?”

“Sergeant-Major,” said I, “have we got wire hay racks?”

“This way, sir,” said the sergeant-major.

Two drivers were stretching pieces of bale wire from pole to pole.

The Colonel asked them if they knew how to do it.

“How many horses have you got for casting?” said the Colonel.

“Do we want to cast any horses, Sergeant-Major?” said I.

“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant-Major. “We’ve got six.”

It was a delightful morning. Every question that the Colonel asked

I passed on to the sergeant-major, whose answer was ever ready.

Wherever the Colonel wished to explore, there were men working.

Could a new-fledged infant unversed in the ways of the Army have

accomplished it?

One of the sections was down the road, quite five minutes away.

During the walk we exchanged views about the war. He confided to me

that the ideal was to have in each wagon line an officer who knew no

more about gunnery than that turnip, but who knew enough about horses

to take advice from veterinary officers.

In return I told him that there ought not to be any wagon lines,

that the horse was effete in a war of this nature, that over half

the man-power of the country was employed in grooming and cleaning

harness, half the tonnage of the shipping taken up in fetching

forage, and that there was more strafing over a bad turn-out than if

a battery had shot its own infantry for four days running.

The outcome of it all was pure farce. He inspected the remaining

section and then told me he was immensely pleased with the marked

improvement in the condition of the animals and the horse management

generally (nothing had been altered), and that if I found myself

short of labour when it came to building a new wagon line, he

thought he knew where he could put his hand on a dozen useful men.

Furthermore, he was going to write and tell my Colonel how pleased he

was.

The sergeant-major’s face was a study!

The psychology of it is presumably the same that brings promotion to

the officer who, smartly and with well-polished buttons, in reply to

a question from the General, “What colour is black?” whips out like a

flash, “White, sir!”

And the General nods and says, “Of course!--Smart young officer that!

What’s his name?”

Infallible!

13

It is difficult to mark the exact beginnings of mental attitudes when

time out there is one long action of nights and days without names.

One keeps the date, because of the orders issued. For the rest it

is all one. One can only trace points of view, feelings, call them

what you will, as dating before or after certain outstanding events.

Thus I had no idea of war until the gas bombardment in Armentières,

no idea that human nature could go through such experiences and

emotions and remain sane. So, once in action, I had not bothered

to find the reason of it all, contenting myself merely with the

profound conviction that the world was mad, that it was against

human nature,--but that to-morrow we should want a full échelon of

ammunition. Even the times when one had seen death only gave one a

momentary shock. One such incident will never leave me, but I cannot

feel now anything of the horror I experienced at the moment.

It was at lunch one day before we had left the château. A trickle

of sun filtered down into the cellar where the Major, one other

subaltern and myself were lunching off bully beef and ration pickles.

Every now and again an H.E. shell exploded outside, in the road along

which infantry were constantly passing. One burst was followed by

piercing screams. My heart gave a leap and I sprang for the stairs

and out. Across the way lay three bodies, a great purple stain on the

pavement, the mark of a direct hit on the wall against which one was

huddled. I ran across. Their eyes were glassy, their faces black.

Grey fingers curled upwards from a hand that lay back down. Then the

screams came again from the corner house. I dashed in. Our corporal

signaller was trying to bandage a man whose right leg was smashed

and torn open, blood and loose flesh everywhere. He lay on his back,

screaming. Other screams came from round the corner. I went out

again and down the passage saw a man, his hands to his face, swaying

backwards and forwards.

I ran to him. “Are you hit?”

He fell on to me. “My foot! Oh, my foot! Christ!”

Another officer, from the howitzer battery, came running. We formed a

bandy chair and began to carry him up towards the road.

“Don’t take me up there,” he blubbered. “Don’t take me there!”

We had to. It was the only way, to step over those three black-faced

corpses and into that house, where there was water and bandages.

There was a padre there now and another man. I left them and returned

to the cellar to telephone for an ambulance. I was cold, sick. But

they weren’t _our_ dead. They weren’t our gunners with whose faces

one was familiar, who were part of our daily life. The feeling

passed, and I was able to go on with the bully beef and pickles and

the war.

During the weeks that followed the last raid I was to learn

differently. They were harassing weeks with guns dotted all over the

zone. The luck seemed to have turned, and it was next to impossible

to find a place for a gun which the Hun didn’t immediately shell

violently. Every gun had, of course, a different pin-point, and map

work became a labour, map work and the difficulty of battery control

and rationing. One’s brain was keyed incessantly up to concert pitch.

Various changes had taken place. We had been taken into Right Group

and headquarters was established in a practically unshelled farm

with one section beside it. Another section was right forward in the

Brickstack. The third was away on the other side of the zone, an

enfilade section which I handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the

section commander, who had his own O.P. in Moat Farm, and took on his

own targets. We were all extremely happy, doing a lot of shooting.

One morning, hot and sunny, I had to meet the Major to reconnoitre

an alternative gun position. So I sent for the enfilade section

commander to come and take charge, and set out in shorts and shirt

sleeves on a bicycle. The Major, another Headquarters officer and

myself had finished reconnoitring, and were eating plums, when a

heavy bombardment began in the direction of the battery farm.

Five-nines they were in section salvos, and the earth went up in

spouts, not on the farm, but mighty close. I didn’t feel anxious at

first, for that subaltern had been in charge of the Chapelle section

and knew all about clearing out. But the bombardment went on. The

Major and the other left me, advising me to “give it a chance” before

I went back.

So I rode along to an O.P. and tried to get through to the battery on

the ’phone. The line was gone.

Through glasses I could see no signs of life round about the farm.

They must have cleared, I thought. However, I had to get back some

time or other, so I rode slowly back along the road. A track led

between open fields to the farm. I walked the bicycle along this

until bits of shell began flying. I lay flat. Then the bombardment

slackened. I got up and walked on. Again they opened, so I lay flat

again.

For perhaps half an hour bits came zooming like great stagbeetles all

round, while I lay and watched.

They were on the gun position, not the farm, but somehow my anxiety

wouldn’t go. After all, I was in charge of the battery, and here

I was, while God knew what might have happened in the farm. So I

decided to make a dash for it, and timed the bursts. At the end of

five minutes they slackened and I thought I could do it. Two more

crashed. I jumped on the bike, pedalled hard down the track until it

was blotted out by an enormous shell hole into which I went, left the

bike lying and ran to the farm gate, just as two pip-squeaks burst in

the yard. I fell into the door, covered with brick dust and tiles,

but unhurt.

The sound of singing came from the cellar. I called down, “Who’s

there?” The servants and the corporal clerk were there. And the

officer? Oh, he’d gone over to the guns to see if everybody

had cleared the position. He’d given the order as soon as the

bombardment began. But over at the guns the place was being chewed up.

Had he gone alone? No. One of the servants had gone with him. How

long ago? Perhaps twenty minutes. Meanwhile, during question and

answer, four more pip-squeaks had landed, two at the farm gate, one

in the yard, one just over.

It was getting altogether too hot. I decided to clear the farm first.

Two at a time, taking the word from me, they made a dash for it

through the garden and the hedge to a flank, till only the corporal

clerk and myself were left. We gathered the secret papers the “wind

gadget,” my compass and the telephone and ran for it in our turn.

We caught the others who were waiting round the corner well to

a flank. I handed the things we’d brought to the mess cook, and

asked the corporal clerk if he’d come with me to make sure that the

subaltern and the gunners had got away all right.

We went wide and got round to the rear of the position. Not a sign

of any of the detachments in any houses round about. Then we worked

our way up a hedge which led to the rear of the guns, dropping flat

for shells to burst. They were more on the farm now than the guns. We

reached the signal pit,--a sort of dug-out with a roof of pit props,

and earth and a trench dug to the entrance.

The corporal went along the trench. “Christ!” he said, and came

blindly back.

For an instant the world spun. Without seeing I saw. Then I climbed

along the broken trench. A five-nine had landed on the roof of the

pit and crashed everything in.

A pair of boots was sticking out of the earth.--

He had been in charge of the battery for _me_. From the safety of

the cellar he had gone out to see if the men were all right. He had

done _my_ job!

Gunners came with shovels. In five minutes we had him out. He was

still warm. The doctor was on his way. We carried him out of the

shelling on a duck board. Some of the gunners went on digging for the

other boy. The doctor was there by the time we’d carried him to the

road. He was dead.

14

A pair of boots sticking out of the earth.

For days I saw nothing else. That jolly fellow whom I’d left

laughing, sitting down to write a letter to his wife,--a pair of

boots sticking out. Why? Why?

We had laid him in a cottage. The sergeant and I went back, and by

the light of a candle which flickered horribly, emptied his pockets

and took off his ring. How cold Death was. It made him look ten years

younger.

Then we put him into an army blanket with his boots on and all his

clothes. The only string we had was knotted. It took a long time to

untie it. At last it was done.

A cigarette holder, a penknife, a handkerchief, the ring. I took them

out with me into the moonlight, all that King and country had left of

him.

What had this youngster been born for, sent to a Public School,

earned his own living and married the pretty girl whose photo I had

seen in the dug-out? To die like a rat in a trap, to have his name

one day in the Roll of Honour and so break two hearts, and then be

forgotten by his country because he was no more use to it. What was

the worth of Public School education if it gave the country no

higher ideal than war?--to kill or be killed. Were there no brains

in England big enough to avert it? He hadn’t wanted it. He was a

representative specimen. What had he joined for? Because all his pals

had. He didn’t want them to call him coward. For that he had left his

wife and his home, and to-morrow he would be dropped into a hole in

the ground and a parson would utter words about God and eternal life.

What did it all mean? Why, because it was the “thing to do,” did we

all join up like sheep in a Chicago packing yard? What right had our

country--the “free country”--to compel us to live this life of filth

and agony?

The men who made the law that sent us out, they didn’t come too. They

were the “rudder of the nation,” steering the “Ship of State.” They’d

never seen a pair of boots sticking out of the earth. Why did we bow

the neck and obey other men’s wills?

Surely these conscientious objectors had a greater courage in

withstanding our ridicule than we in wishing to prove our possession

of courage by coming out. What was the root of this war,--honour? How

can honour be at the root of dishonour, and wholesale manslaughter?

What kind of honour was it that smashed up homesteads, raped

women, crucified soldiers, bombed hospitals, bayoneted wounded?

What idealism was ours if we took an eye for an eye? What was our

civilization, twenty centuries of it, if we hadn’t reached even to

the barbaric standards,--for no barbarian could have invented these

atrocities. What was the festering pit on which our social system was

built?

And the parson who talked of God,--is there more than one God, then,

for the Germans quoted him as being on their side with as much

fervour and sincerity as the parson? How reconcile any God with this

devastation and deliberate killing? This war was the proof of the

failure of Christ, the proof of our own failure, the failure of the

civilized world. For twenty centuries the world had turned a blind

eye to the foulness stirring inside it, insinuating itself into the

main arteries; and now the lid was wrenched off and all the foul

stench of a humbug Christian civilization floated over the poisoned

world.

One man had said he was too proud to fight. We, filled with the

lust of slaughter, jeered him as we had jeered the conscientious

objectors. But wasn’t there in our hearts, in saner moments, a

respect which we were ashamed to admit,--because we in our turn would

have been jeered at? Therein lay our cowardice. Death we faced daily,

hourly, with a laugh. But the ridicule of our fellow cowards, that

was worse than death. And yet in our knowledge we cried aloud for

Peace, who in our ignorance had cried for War. Children of impulse

satiated with new toys and calling for the old ones! We would set

back the clock and in our helplessness called upon the Christ whom we

had crucified.

And back at home the law-makers and the old men shouted patriotically

from their club fenders, “We will fight to the last man!”

The utter waste of the brown-blanketed bundle in the cottage room!

What would I not have given for the one woman to put her arms round

me and hide my face against her breast and let me sob out all the

bitterness in my heart?

15

From that moment I became a conscientious objector, a pacifist, a

most bitter hater of the Boche whose hand it was that had wrenched

the lid off the European cesspit. Illogical? If you like, but what is

logic? Logically the war was justified. We crucified Christ logically

and would do so again.

From that moment my mind turned and twisted like a compass needle

that had lost its sense of the north. The days were an endless burden

blackened by the shadow of death, filled with emptiness, bitterness

and despair.

The day’s work went on as if nothing had happened. A new face took

his place at the mess table, the routine was exactly the same. Only

a rough wooden cross showed that he had ever been with us. And all

the time we went on shooting, killing just as good fellows as he,

perhaps, doing our best to do so at least. Was it honest, thinking

as I did? Is it honest for a convict who doesn’t believe in prisons

to go on serving his time? There was nothing to be done but go on

shooting and try and forget.

But war isn’t like that. It doesn’t let you forget. It gives you a

few days, or weeks, and then takes some one else. “Old Thing” was the

next, in the middle of a shoot in a front line O.P.

I was lying on my bed playing with a tiny kitten while the third

subaltern at the ’phone passed on the corrections to the battery.

Suddenly, instead of saying “Five minutes more right,” he said,

“_What’s_ that?--Badly wounded?” and the line went.

I was on the ’phone in a flash, calling up battalion for stretcher

bearers and doctors.

They brought me his small change and pencil-ends and pocketbook,--and

the kitten came climbing up my leg.

The Major came back from leave--which he had got on the Colonel’s

return--in time to attend Old Thing’s funeral with the Colonel and

myself. Outside the cemetery a football match was going on all the

time. They didn’t stop their game. Why should they? They were too

used to funerals,--and it might be their turn in a day or two.

Thanks to the Major my leave came through within a week. It was like

the answer to a prayer. At any price I wanted to get away from the

responsibility, away from the sight of khaki, away from everything to

do with war.

London was too full of it, of immaculate men and filmy girls who

giggled. I couldn’t face that.

I went straight down to the little house among the beeches and

pines,--an uneasy guest of long silences, staring into the fire,

of bursts of violent argument, of rebellion against all existing

institutions.

But it was good to watch the river flowing by, to hear it lapping

against the white yacht, to hear the echo of rowlocks, flung back

by the beech woods, and the wonderful whir! whir! whir! of swans

as they flew down and down and away; to see little cottages with

wisps of blue smoke against the brown and purple of the distant

woods, not lonely ruins and sticks; to see the feathery green moss

and the watery rays of a furtive sun through the pines, not smashed

and torn by shells; at night to watch the friendly lights in the

curtained windows and hear the owls hooting to each other unafraid

and let the rest and peace sink into one’s soul; to shirk even the

responsibility of deciding whether one should go for a walk or out in

the dinghy, or stay indoors, but just to agree to anything that was

suggested.

To decide anything was for out there, not here where war did not

enter in.

Fifteen dream days, like a sudden strong whiff of verbena or

honeysuckle coming out of an envelope. For the moment one shuts one’s

eyes,--and opens them again to find it isn’t true. The sound of guns

is everywhere.

So with that leave. I found myself in France again, trotting up in

the mud and rain to report my arrival as though I’d never been away.

It was all just a dream to try and call back.

16

Everything was well with the battery. My job was to function with all

speed at the building of the new horse lines. Before going on leave I

had drawn a map to scale of the field in which they were to be. This

had been submitted to Corps and approved, and work had started on it

during my leave.

My kit followed me and I installed myself in a small canvas hut with

the acting-Captain of another of our batteries whose lines were belly

deep in the next field. He had succeeded Pip Don who went home gassed

after the Armentières shelling and who, on recovering, had been sent

out to Mesopotamia.

The work was being handled under rather adverse conditions. Some of

the men were from our own battery, others from the Brigade Ammunition

Column, more from a Labour Company, and there was a full-blown Sapper

private doing the scientific part. They were all at loggerheads;

none of the N.C.O.’s would take orders from the Sapper private, and

the Labour Company worked Trades Union hours, although dressed in

khaki and calling themselves soldiers. The subaltern in charge was on

the verge of putting every one of them under arrest,--not a bad idea,

but what about the standings?

By the time I’d had a look round tea was ready. At least there seemed

to be plenty of material.

At seven next morning I was out. No one else was. So I took another

look round, did a little thinking, and came and had breakfast. By

nine o’clock there seemed to be a lot of cigarette smoke in the

direction of the works.

I began functioning. My servant summoned all the heads of departments

and they appeared before me in a sullen row. At my suggestion tongues

wagged freely for about half an hour. I addressed them in their own

language and then, metaphorically speaking, we shook hands all round,

sang hymn number 44 and standings suddenly began to spring up like

mushrooms.

It was really extraordinary how those fellows worked once they’d

got the hang of the thing. It left me free to go joy-riding with

my stable companion in the afternoons. We carried mackintoshes on

the saddle and scoured the country, splashing into Bailleul--it was

odd to revisit the scene of my trooper days after three years--for

gramophone records, smokes, stomachic delicacies and books. We also

sunk a lot of francs in a series of highly artistic picture postcards

which, pinned all round the hut at eye level, were a constant source

of admiration and delight to the servants and furnished us with a

splash of colour which at least broke the monotony of khaki canvas.

These were--it goes without saying--supplemented from time to time

with the more reticent efforts of _La Vie Parisienne_.

All things being equal we were extremely comfortable, and, although

the stove was full of surprises, quite sufficiently frowzy during the

long evenings, which were filled with argument, invention, music and

much tobacco. The invention part of the programme was supplied by my

stable companion who had his own theories concerning acetylene lamps,

and who, with the aid of a couple of shell cases and a little carbide

nearly wrecked the happy home. Inventions were therefore suppressed.

They were tranquil days, in which we built not only book shelves,

stoves and horse standings but a great friendship,--ended only by his

death on the battlefield. He was all for the gun line and its greater

strenuousness.

As for me, then, at least, I was content to lie fallow. I had seen

too much of the guns, thanked God for the opportunity of doing

something utterly different for a time and tried to conduct a mental

spring-clean and rearrangement. As a means to this I found myself

putting ideas on paper in verse--a thing I’d never done in all my

life--bad stuff but horribly real. One’s mind was tied to war, like

a horse on a picketing rope, and could only go round and round in a

narrow circle. To break away was impossible. One was saturated with

it as the country was with blood. Every cog in the machinery of war

was like a magnet which held one in spite of all one’s struggles,

giddy with the noise, dazed by its enormity, nauseated by its results.

The work provided one with a certain amount of comic relief.

Timber ran short and it seemed as if the standings would be denied

completion. Stones, gravel and cinders had been already a difficulty,

settled only by much importuning. Bricks had been brought from the

gun line. But asking for timber was like trying to steal the chair

from under the General. I went to Division and was promptly referred

to Corps, who were handling the job. Corps said, “You’ve had all

that’s allowed in the R.E. handbook. Good morning.” I explained that

I wanted it for wind screens. They smiled politely and suggested my

getting some ladies’ fans from any deserted village. On returning to

Division they said, “If Corps can’t help you, how the devil can you

expect us to?”

I went to Army. They looked me over and asked me where I came from

and who I was, and what I was doing, and what for and on what

authority, and why I came to them instead of going to Division and

Corps? To all of which I replied patiently. Their ultimate answer was

a smile of regret. There wasn’t any in the country, they said.

So I prevailed upon my brother who, as War Correspondent, ran a big

car and no questions asked about petrol, to come over and lunch with

me. To him I put the case and was immediately whisked off to O.C.

Forests, the Timber King. At the lift of his little finger down came

thousands of great oaks. Surely a few branches were going begging?

He heard my story with interest. His answer threw beams of light.

“Why the devil don’t Division and Corps and all the rest of them

_ask_ for it if they want it? I’ve got tons of stuff here. How much

do you want?”

I told him the cubic stature of the standings.

He jotted abstruse calculations for a moment. “Twenty tons,” said he.

“Are you anywhere near the river”?

The river flowed at the bottom of the lines.

“Right. I’ll send you a barge. To-day’s Monday. Should be with you by

Wednesday. Name? Unit?”

He ought to have been commanding an army, that man.

We lunched most triumphantly in Hazebrouck, had tea and dinner at

Cassel and I was dropped on my own doorstep well before midnight.

It was not unpleasing to let drop, quite casually of course, to

Division and Corps and Army, that twenty tons of timber were being

delivered at my lines in three days and that there was more where

that came from. If they wanted any, they had only to come and ask

_me_ about it.

17

During this period the Major had handed over the eighteen-pounders,

receiving 4.5 howitzers in exchange, nice little cannons, but

apparently in perpetual need of calibration. None of the gunners

had ever handled them before but they picked up the new drill with

extraordinary aptitude, taking the most unholy delight in firing gas

shells. They hadn’t forgotten Armentières either.

My wagon line repose was roughly broken into by an order one

afternoon to come up immediately. The Colonel was elsewhere and the

Major had taken his place once more.

Furthermore, a raid was to take place the same night and I hadn’t

the foggiest idea of the numberless 4.5 differences. However we did

our share in the raid and at the end of a couple of days I began to

hope we should stick to howitzers. The reasons were many,--a bigger

shell with more satisfactory results, gas as well as H.E., four guns

to control instead of six, far greater ease in finding positions and

a longer range. This was in October, ’17. Things have changed since

then. The air recuperator with the new range drum and fuse indicator

have made the 18-pounder a new thing.

Two days after my going up the Hun found us. Between 11 a.m. and 4

p.m. he sent over three hundred five-nines, but as they fell between

two of the guns and the billet, and he didn’t bother to switch, we

were perfectly happy. To my way of thinking his lack of imagination

in gunnery is one of the factors which has helped him to lose the

war. He is consistent, amazingly thorough and amazingly accurate. We

have those qualities too, not quite so marked perhaps, but it is the

added touch of imagination, of sportingness, which has beaten him.

What English subaltern for instance up in that Hun O.P. wouldn’t have

given her five minutes more right for luck,--and got the farm and

the gun and the ammunition? But because the Boche had been allotted

a definite target and a definite number of rounds he just went on

according to orders and never thought of budging off his line. We all

knew it and remained in the farm although the M.P.I. was only fifty

yards to a flank.

The morning after the raid I went the round of the guns. One of them

had a loose breechblock. When fired the back flash was right across

the gun pit. I put the gun out of action, the chances being that

very soon she would blow out her breech and kill every man in the

detachment.

As my knowledge was limited to eighteen-pounders, however, I sent for

the brigade artificer. His opinion confirmed mine.

That night she went down on the tail of a wagon. The next night she

came back again, the breech just as loose. Nothing had been done. The

Ordnance workshop sent a chit with her to say she’d got to fire so

many hundred more rounds at 4th charge before she could be condemned.

What was the idea? Surely to God the Hun killed enough gunners

without our trying to kill them ourselves? Assuming that a 4.5 cost

fifteen hundred pounds in round figures, four gunners and a sergeant

at an average of two shillings a day were worth economising, to say

nothing of the fact that they were all trained men and experienced

soldiers, or to mention that they were human beings with wives and

families. It cannot have been the difficulty of getting another gun.

The country was stiff with guns and it only takes a busy day to fire

four hundred rounds.

It was just the good old system again! I left the gun out of action.

Within a couple of days we had to hand over again. We were leaving

that front to go up into the salient, Ypres. But I didn’t forget to

tell the in-coming Battery Commander all about that particular gun.

Ypres! One mentions it quite casually but I don’t think there was an

officer or man who didn’t draw a deep breath when the order came. It

was a death trap.

There was a month’s course of gunnery in England about to take

place,--the Overseas Course for Battery Commanders. My name had been

sent in. It was at once cancelled so that the Ypres move was a double

disappointment.

So the battery went down to the wagon line and prepared for the

worst. For a couple of days we hung about uneasily. Then the Major

departed for the north in a motor lorry to take over positions.

Having seen him off we foregathered with the officers of the Brigade

Ammunition Column, cursed with uneasy laughter and turned the

rum-specialist on to brewing flaming toddy.

The next day brought a telegram from the Major of which two words at

least will never die: “Move cancelled.”

We had dinner in Estaires that night!

But the brigade was going to move, although none of us knew where.

The day before they took the road I left for England in a hurry to

attend the Overseas Course. How little did I guess what changes were

destined to take place before I saw them again!

18

The course was a godsend in that it broke the back of the winter.

A month in England, sleeping between sheets, with a hot bath every

day and brief week-ends with one’s people was a distinct improvement

on France, although the first half of the course was dull to

desperation. The chief interest, in fact, of the whole course was to

see the fight between the two schools of gunners,--the theoretical

and the practical. Shoebury was the home of the theoretical. We

filled all the Westcliff hotels and went in daily by train to

the school of gunnery, there to imbibe drafts of statistics--not

excluding our old friend T.O.B.--and to relearn all the stuff we

had been doing every day in France in face of the Hun, a sort of

revised up-to-date version, including witty remarks at the expense of

Salisbury which left one with the idea, “Well, if this is the last

word of _the_ School of Gunnery, I’m a damned sight better gunner

than I thought I was.”

Many of the officers had brought their wives down. Apart from them

the hotels were filled with indescribable people,--dear old ladies

in eighteenth-century garments who knitted and talked scandal and

allowed their giggling daughters to flirt and dance with all and

sundry. One or two of the more advanced damsels had left their

parents behind and were staying there with “uncles,”--rather

lascivious-looking old men, rapidly going bald. Where they all came

from is a mystery. One didn’t think England contained such people,

and the thought that one was fighting for them was intolerable.

After a written examination which was somewhat of a farce at the end

of the first fortnight, we all trooped down to Salisbury to see the

proof of the pudding in the shooting. Shoebury was routed. A couple

of hundred bursting shells duly corrected for temperature, barometer,

wind and the various other disabilities attaching to exterior

ballistics will disprove the most likely-sounding theory.

Salisbury said, “Of course they will tell you _this_ at Shoebury.

They may be perfectly right. I don’t deny it for a moment, but I’ll

show you what the ruddy bundook says about it.” And at the end of

half an hour’s shooting the “ruddy bundook” behind us had entirely

disposed of the argument. We had calibrated that unfortunate battery

to within half a foot a second, fired it with a field clinometer, put

it through its paces in snow-storms and every kind of filthy weather

and went away impressed. The gun does not lie. Salisbury won hands

down.

The verdict of the respective schools upon my work was amusing and

showed that at least they had fathomed the psychology of me.

Shoebury said, “Fair. A good second in command.” Salisbury said,

“Sound practical work. A good Battery Commander.”

Meanwhile the papers every day had been ringing with the Cambrai

show. November, ’17, was a memorable month for many others besides

the brigade. Of course I didn’t know for certain that we were in it,

but it wasn’t a very difficult guess. The news became more and more

anxious reading, especially when I received a letter from the Major

who said laconically that he had lost all his kit; would I please

collect some more that he had ordered and bring it out with me?

This was countermanded by a telegram saying he was coming home on

leave. I met him in London and in the luxury of the Carlton Grill he

told me the amazing story of Cambrai.

The net result to the brigade was the loss of the guns and many

officers and men, and the acquiring of one D.S.O. which should have

been a V.C., and a handful of M.C.’s, Military Medals, and Croix de

Guerre.

I found them sitting down, very merry and bright, at a place called

Poix in the Lines of Communication, and there I listened to stories

of Huns shot with rifles at one yard, of days in trenches fighting

as infantry, of barrages that passed conception, of the amazing

feats of my own Major who was the only officer who got nothing out

of it,--through some gross miscarriage of justice and to my helpless

fury.

There was a new Captain commanding my battery in the absence of the

Major. But I was informed that I had been promoted Major and was

taking over another battery whose commander had been wounded in the

recent show. Somehow it had happened that that battery and ours had

always worked together, had almost always played each other in the

finals of brigade football matches and there was as a result a strong

liking between the two. It was good therefore to have the luck to

go to them instead of one of the others. It completed the entente

between the two of us.

Only the Brigade Headquarters was in Poix. The batteries and the

Ammunition Column had a village each in the neighbourhood. My new

battery, my first command, was at Bergicourt, some three miles

away, and thither I went in the brigade trap, a little shy and

overwhelmed at this entirely unexpected promotion, not quite sure of

my reception. The Captain was an older man than I, and he and some

of the subalterns had all been lieutenants together with me in the

Heytesbury days.

From the moment of getting out of the trap, as midday stables

was being dismissed, the Captain’s loyalty to me was of the most

exceptional kind. He did everything in his power to help me the

whole time I remained in command, and I owe him more gratitude and

thanks than I can ever hope to repay. The subalterns too worked like

niggers, and I was immensely proud of being in command of such a

splendid fighting battery.