In the April of 1915, east of "that mad place called Ypres,"--a city
of ruinous white towers reddened by an angry sunrise, lying ahead and
to the left. A grim grey road leading from Divisional Headquarters
to the battle-front, a double crescent of blown-in trenches
ankle-deep in water, and bottomed with West Flanders mud. A road
fanged with the stumps of trees shattered by H.E. and scarred by
iron-shod wheels; pitted with shell-holes, and generally knee-deep in
sludge of an adhesive character. A road along which progressed,
under cover of the darkness, long columns of men, guns and
Army-lorries; A.S.C. cars and motor-cycles carrying ammunition,
supplies, mails and despatches for the advanced trenches; unless
German star-shell or searchlights made it daylight, when traffic
stopped dead, to move on when the menace passed.
Day found the road deserted as a rule, though German hate played on
it regularly at intervals, with rifle and machine-guns and clouds of
poison-gas. But sometimes under the leaden scowl of a rainy day, or
the brassy glare of a sunny one, the road displayed a double moving
line. This, when one of the myriad little wars, presently to be
merged in Warfare,--demanded the attainment of some objective
infinitely insignificant,--at the cost of some great sacrifice of
human life.
On this particular April day, what time the British line from Ypres
southwards was strengthened--in default of missing sandbags--with
tins of uneatable jam of the apple-blackberry brand, and equally bad
corned-beef: columns of muddy Londoners and Scotsmen with helmets and
gas-respirators at the alert, were going up to Support-trenches.
Afoot now,--having disembarked at a marked danger-point from the grey
Army lorries--or green and yellow motor 'buses that had carried many
of the Londoners to business in the days that seemed so dim and so
far off. And as they went, though shrapnel burst about them, and
High Explosive dug new craters beside old, and wiped out a platoon or
so in doing it,--they sang to the accompaniment of mouth-organs;
"_Keep the Home Fires Burning_," or "_Piccadilly_," or "_I Love a
Lassie_," or excruciatingly-parodied hymns.
But the troops that were coming down from the fighting-line to
rest-billets (mostly Canadians, red with rust, muddy to the eyebrows,
marching raggedly in companies or jumbled up anyhow in the lorries),
did not sing "_The Maple Leaf_" or "_My Little Grey Home_." Many
wore First Aid bandages smeared with iodine; nine out of ten hobbled
and coughed and vomited; and the mucus they wrenched from their
labouring lungs was yellow and mingled not infrequently with blood.
It was their first experience of a German gas-attack, and the horror
of the strange and evil thing was upon them; and the reek of it was
in their clothes and breath. Yet those who could--called out
cheerfully to recognised friends; or grinned with their cracked and
swollen mouths in answer to cheery hails. Their reddened eyes of
sleeplessness stared out of haggard, unshaved faces, and their muddy
shoulders humped under their muddy kit-packs, as though the muddy
ground were drawing them to lie down upon it and sleep. And every
now and then one would falter in his stride and smile stupidly; and
heavily and soggily collapse in the gluey mush. A comrade who had
energy enough left in him would kick and shake such a sleeper into
temporary wakefulness; or one of the men who perched beside the
drivers of the Hospital cars and ambulances,--R.A.M.C. orderlies or
Red Cross bearers, would play the Samaritan thus, when the subject
would stagger on, to fall again. Or room would be made for him in
some omnibus or lorry where lightly-wounded or badly-gassed men were
packed like bloaters in a barrel, and so the game went on.
Private John Hazel, crunching a muddy apple, trudged through the
sticky mud as part of a somewhat straggling route-column representing
the Fourth Battalion of the Fenchurch Street Regiment. One novel
sensation had that morning thrilled the Terriers, stale with the
deadly boredom of life in the rear lines. Necks were yet being
twisted to get the last of it, and joyous comments tossed it from
tongue to tongue. A cow,--hidden away for months by an ancient
peasant in some subterranean stable in No Man's Land (whence her milk
had been retailed at the price of Veuve Cliquot to the Canadians in
the firing-line)--was being brought down to the rear by her
proprietor; her late lodgings having been discovered and thoroughly
spring-cleaned by a German H.E. shell....
"Moi hoi, if it be-ant a cow!" said a voice that had the roll and
twang of Berkshire. "Coosh-coosh, Snowdrop, ole beauty!"
"My Gawd, she don't 'arf look natural, do 'er?" came from a Cockney
tongue....
Not a human unit of all those trudging columns but had slewed his
head to stare at Crummy, and sniff the homely odours of hay and
farmyard-muck that shook from her muddy flanks as she kloop-klooped
by. What though she had raw patches of mange upon her
withers--testifying to the poorness of her diet and the closeness of
her quarters! To men who had not seen a cow, pig, cock or hen for
weeks, moving upon that devastated country of once prosperous farms,
productive fields, fruitful orchards, and stately rural mansions, the
sight was comforting; bringing reassurance that in regions as yet
unscathed by the frightfulness of War, yet were to be found quiet and
order, laughter and pleasure, savoury food, sleep in one's own bed,
and the humble, harmless things of everyday use, that make life sweet
by their very homeliness.
Another sensation was in store that day, and though the novelty of it
wore off with retrospection, John Hazel's keen enjoyment of the
episode never blunted....
Down through the return-traffic on his left hand side, came a stately
fleet of motor-waggon ambulances of the Red Cross, British and
American; escorted by a train of Auxiliary Army Service cars of all
imaginable makes, nationalities and sizes, from the aristocratic
Rolls-Royce to the runabout Ford; from the Mercedes-Daimler of the
Parisian boulevards to the roomy Schneider touring-car,--bringing
wounded from the advanced dressing-stations down to the
clearing-hospitals six miles back of the Reserve Lines.
The grey ambulances passed, in a mingled whiff of carbolic and
iodoform: leaving a sense of grey paint, mystery and merciful
swiftness. The cars, mostly carrying sitting-cases--flowed after
them; steering neatly among the shell-holes, picking their way with
practised smoothness among the various obstacles encumbering the
road. And they left behind an impression of still figures wrapped in
brown Army blankets: and grey-green or livid faces with closed or
staring eyes, shaded by sacking-covered steel hats or bloody
bandages: of an even stronger blast of carbolic and iodoform, and of
Beauty, calm, alert, composed and eminently practical.
For all these auxiliary ambulance-cars were driven by women: in the
black leather overcoats of Foreign Service, with D.B. Kitchener
collars, and plain shoulder-straps with the button of the Red Cross
Society's V.A.D. The pick and pride of the Old Country they
seemed,--all young, or in the splendour of the early thirties. The
best blood in Britain, John Hazel could have sworn,--raced under the
sunburn of those quiet clear-cut faces, topped by peaked storm-caps
of Navy blue cloth. He saw the neck of the lieutenant leading his
platoon blaze red between his sweat-blackened collar and the edge of
his tin hat, and the muddy glove swing up in the salute, as a clear
voice rang out gaily from a driving-seat:
"He knows one of 'em. Lucky beast! I wonder--" John had reached
thus far in his conjecture when a pip-squeak burst overhead with
three sharp crashes; and a shell from a German howitzer dropped in an
ancient neighbouring shellpit, considerably enlarging it--and
producing the fantastic smoke-effect known as "Woolly Bear."
John Hazel bolted the core of his muddy apple, and mechanically made
sure that "they" had not got him this time. The head under his tin
hat was ringing, his eyes and lungs were full of acrid vapour: but no
shrapnel was located in any portion of his frame. The cars were
running by as smoothly as ever.... You could see through the
thinning fumes the faces of the drivers, set like rock to confront
War's risks and chances: and a blatant pride in them surged up in
John Hazel and he caught his breath... They were his
countrywomen.... Then Wallis, his front-file man, suddenly fell back
upon him, knocking him breathless with his pack, and cutting his top
lip badly with the edge of his shrapnel hat. With blood running over
his long chin, blue and stubbly with bad shaving, John held up
Wallis, who was making queer, clucking, farmyard noises:
"_Auch--auch--auch!_ ..."
"The bloody 'Uns," growled John's left-hand man to his neighbour,
"'as copped pore Ginger!" and the lieutenant ahead looked around.
Wallis had ceased clucking by now; and the hand of John's supporting
arm, where it went round across his cartridge-belt under his
tunic-pockets, was wet with the usual warm, sticky stuff. And a
voice that was clear-cut and ringing called out something, and a car
slowed down its speed, and those behind it swept round and on....
And the lieutenant was shouting through the myriad noises of traffic:
"If you can, it would be topping of you.... This isn't a healthy
road to stop on. Thanks frightfully! ... You, Hazel, hoist him in
and catch us up after! ... Forward. March! ..."
The V.A.D. driver had never quite stopped her car, John Hazel
remembered. She had checked it to a crawl and he had kept pace with
it, carrying the now rapidly-buckling Wallis--whose head had dropped
forward, and whose helmet had fallen off--at the full stretch of his
long arms since he stripped the pack from him. A Red Cross orderly
had taken it together with Wallis's rifle.
"No room behind!" came in the ringing, feminine tones. "We're four
over the proper load already! ... This seat beside me ... the
orderly can sit on the step. You'll be all right there, won't you,
Martynside? Now please lift when I give the word; _Go!_ ... Don't
worry about the blood. Lean your head against my shoulder!" She
added for the cheer of Wallis, who was trying to say something
apologetic: "Quite all right, if you're careful of my steering
arm.... Comfortable? ... All right, Martynside! And--don't be too
anxious about your friend. We shall look after him!"
Perhaps something in the comrade's gaunt brown face, a flare of
wistfulness burning in his big hollow black eyes had drawn the
attention of the speaker. As a matter of fact, the way in which her
strong womanly shoulder had swayed to meet Wallis's limply sagging
head, had given John Hazel a sensation as of plucking at the
heartstrings. And--where had he heard that voice before? ... She
went on, answering the hungry look in the gaunt black eyes that met
hers:
"You shall hear of him, if news can possibly be got to you. I'll
send a post-card if you'll give me your name. 'Private John Hazel,
No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London
Regiment, Support Trenches, Ypres.' That's quite all right! ... Your
Reserve is at St. Jean.... Hang on to this!" This being a thick,
squat packet of Dundee Butterscotch. "Good-bye and good luck! ...
You'll be coming down this way in a week or two."
"If I don't get gassed or wounded.... Good-bye and thanks
tremendously!"
John grinned, showing his big white teeth with the effect of a sudden
illumination in his gaunt brown face; and there and then,--with a
snort from the now rapidly-moving car, and a nod and smile from the
driver,--the little episode had ended. Leaving John Hazel with a
pleasanter flavour upon his mental palate than the sour American
apple had left in his mouth. Something that was sweet with the
aromatic sweetness of the ripe gold-and-crimson pippin whose rich
juices have been perfected by the lightest touch of frost. And She
had had the frankest and most candid eyes, of the clearest cairngorm
golden-brown, that John had ever seen in a woman's head, and a wide,
kind, charming mouth, that had shown two rows of dazzling teeth in a
parting smile that had crinkled the eyes deliciously at the
corners.... And so they had parted; going east and south-west, the
V.A.D. to her clearing-hospital, the Londoner with a new, strange
warmth about the heart, catching up his Company on the edge of a
new-made crater, in time to take over the duty of Harris, now
platoon-Sergeant, killed with three other men by a shell from "Silent
Lizzie," the terrible 5.9 German Navy gun.
Thus the mantle of heroism had been transferred to the broad,
unwilling shoulders of John Hazel, from those of the energetic young
N.C.O. who had been to him as a thorn in the flesh. He had loathed
Harris, with his pink and white complexion, his auburn quiff, and his
appalling, crushing efficiency. And Harris, who as a Boy Scout had
passed every imaginable test of ability and gained every badge
obtainable,--had warmly abhorred John, as the shrieking example of
everything a British soldier should not be....
"It's for your good I keep on what you call nagging at you, Hazel!"
would be the introduction to every exordium: "A dirty soldier is a
disgrace to his King and Country, and that's what you'd be if you
couldn't afford to bribe men you consider your inferiors to wind your
puttees tight, and fasten 'em properly, and keep your straps and
buckles clean."
Or:
"It's for your good I follow you up, as you express it; and when
you're able to make a fire out of mud and rotten beet-leaves, and an
'ot meal out of bully beef, ration-biscuit and an onion, more like an
Egyptian 'All professor of ledgerdemang than a British Tommy'--which
is like your nerve to use such language, so much the better it'll be
for you! Don't tell me you can't keep your puttees from trailin'
about your legs like snakes and the rust from disguising the metal on
your 'coutrements. Don't say you can put up with 'ardships, and that
you mean to stick it, ... To make Bad Better is your duty! and to
'unker like an 'og in the slush of Belgium, when you could sit on a
faggot and keep reasonable dryish: and shiver when you could 'eat
yourself inside and out by a bit of forethought--is your disgrace and
not your praise!"
And Harris would light the fire and set the stew going, or thrust on
his unwilling subordinate a portion of his own; and depart cheerfully
whistling, and ostentatiously in possession of the equable temper
which a Scout must never, never lose!--leaving the prodded object of
his zealousness frothing with impotent rage.
Small wonder that the alert personality of Harris, his observant
glance, unsparing criticism and unfailing Preparedness in every
emergency were,--with his orange quiff and the trench-rings on his
little fingers--by Private Hazel utterly abhorred.
After the clubbing of a certain German prisoner who had treacherously
shot a comrade of John's, Harris did not hesitate to denounce Private
Hazel as "a butcherly brute." Yet dying on the edge of the big new
crater hollowed at the roadside by "Silent 'Lizzie," he used his last
forces to faintly shout in the stooped ear of his platoon-lieutenant:
"Let Hazel carry on in my place, Sir! He's a filthy fighter--but the
best man we've got!"
So, ex-Scout Harris died, true to the last to his ideals, having
played the game for his side right up to the end.... And within
twenty-four hours of reaching the second-line trenches, Harris's
reluctant deputy, saddled with the necessity of keeping up Harris's
reputation as a daredevil, had led a company to the support of the
front line in the place of a lieutenant wounded--and had won the
D.C.M. by a single-handed bomb-attack upon an enemy machine-gun
position,--which enabled our London Terriers to charge over the
parapet and clear out the wasp's nest. Had been offered and
respectfully declined promotion--on the grounds that he didn't like
responsibility!--and had subsequently, in the act of drinking tea at
the door of the platoon dug-out--been knocked out of action by a
splinter of shell.
Thus, adhering in death as in life to his policy of well-meant
aggravation, Sergeant Harris came between his bugbear and the
promised, longed-for post-card. For if indeed it had been sent, it
had never reached John.... Damn Harris! But what good was there in
damning Sergeant Harris? Hell wasn't the place you'd catch that
efficient young beggar going to. Hadn't he, assiduously as he kept
his body, looked after his cocky little soul! In the gusts of fever
that shook his brain as he lay in his cot at the Receiving Hospital,
John pictured Harris with his quiff all curled and shiny,--dressed in
the spruce white clothing of the righteous--heard him with the ears
of imagination, shouting hymns that went with a marching swing.
The fever subsided by and by, and, after four months of bitter
fighting, Private John Benn Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company,
4th Battalion, (subsequently to a brief sojourn at a French Base
Hospital) found himself back in Blighty, well pleased to be alive.
He ended his final period of residence as a patient at the Auxiliary
Military War Hospital of Colthill in Middlesex, in the July when
German South-west Africa surrendered to Smuts and Botha: and was
pronounced convalescent by the C.M.O. in the first week of December,
1915; the self-same raw, bleak and nipping day that saw the Fenchurch
Streets'--with other British forces transferred to the Egyptian
Expeditionary--embark for Salonika.