TORTUOUS TRAVELLING--CLIPPERS AND
TABLETS--DUMPED AT A SIDING--I JOIN
MY BATTALION
Not much sleep that night, a sort of feverish coma instead: wild dreams
in which I and the gendarme were attacking a German trench, the officer
in charge of which we found to be the Base Camp Adjutant after all.
However, I got up early--packed my few belongings in my valise, which
had mysteriously turned up from the docks, and went off on the tram down
to Havre. That hundred men I had brought over had nothing to do with me
now. I was entirely on my own, and was off to the Front to join my
battalion. Down at Havre the officials at the station gave me a
complicated yellow diagram, known as a travelling pass, and I got into a
carriage in the train bound for Rouen.
I was not alone now; a whole forest of second lieutenants like myself
were in the same train, and with them a solid, congealed mass of
valises, packs, revolvers and haversacks. At last the train started, and
after the usual hour spent in feeling that you have left all the most
important things behind, I settled down on a mound of equipment and
tried to do a bit of a sleep.
So what with sleeping, smoking and talking, we jolted along until we
pulled up at Rouen. Here I had to leave the train, for some obscure
reason, in order to go to the Palais de Justice to get another ticket. I
padded off down over the bridge into Rouen, found the Palais, went in
and was shown along to an office that dealt in tickets.
In this dark and dingy oak-panelled saloon, illuminated by electric
light and the glittering reflections from gold braid, there lurked a
general or two. I was here given another pass entitling me to be
deposited at a certain siding in Flanders.
Back I went to the station, and in due course rattled off in the train
again towards the North.
A fearfully long journey we had, up to the Front! The worst of it was
that nobody knew--or, if they did, wouldn't tell you--which way you
were going, or how long it would take to get to your destination. For
instance, we didn't know we were going to Rouen till we got there; and
we didn't know we were going from Rouen to Boulogne until, after a night
spent in the train, the whole outfit jolted and jangled into the Gare de
Something, down by the wharf at that salubrious seaport.
We spent a complete day and part of an evening at Boulogne, as our train
did not leave until midnight.
[Illustration: having a smoke]
I and another chap who was going to the next railhead to mine at the
Front, went off together into the town and had lunch at a café in the
High Street. We then strolled around the shops, buying a few things we
needed. Not very attractive things either, but I'll mention them here to
show how we thought and felt.
We first went to a "pharmacie" and got some boxes of morphia tablets,
after which we went to an ironmonger's (don't know the French for it)
and each bought a ponderous pair of barbed wire cutters. So what with
wire clippers and morphia tablets, we _were_ gay. About four o'clock we
calmed down a bit, and went to the same restaurant where we had
lunched.
Here we had tea with a couple of French girls, exceeding good to look
upon, who had apparently escaped from Lille. We got on splendidly with
them till a couple of French officers, one with the Legion of Honour,
came along to the next table. That took all the shine out of us, so we
determined to quit, and cleared off to the Hotel de Folkestone, where we
had a bath to console us. Dinner followed, and then, feeling
particularly hilarious, I made my will. Not the approved will of family
lawyer style, but just a letter announcing, in bald and harsh terms
that, in the event of my remaining permanently in Belgium, I wanted my
total small worldly wealth to be disposed of in a certain way.
Felt better after this outburst, and, rejoining my pal, we went off into
the town again and by easy stages reached the train.
At about one a.m. the train started, and we creaked and groaned our way
out of Boulogne. We were now really off for the Front, and the
situation, consequently, became more exciting. We were slowly getting
nearer and nearer to the real thing. But what a train! It dribbled and
rumbled along at about five miles an hour, and, I verily believe,
stopped at every farmhouse within sight of the line. I could not help
thinking that the engine driver was a German in disguise, who was trying
to prevent our ever arriving at our destination. I tried to sleep, but
each time the train pulled up, I woke with a start and thought that we'd
got there. This went on for many hours, and as I knew we must be getting
somewhere near, my dreams became worse and worse.
I somehow began to think that the engine driver was becoming
cautious--(he was a Frenchman again)--thought that, perhaps, he had to
get down occasionally and walk ahead a bit to see if it was safe to go
on.
Nobody in the train had the least idea where the Front was, how far off,
or what it was like. For all we knew, our train might be going right up
into the rear of the front line trenches. Somewhere round 6 a.m. I
reached my siding. All the others, except myself and one other, had got
out at previous halts. I got down from the carriage on to the cinder
track, and went along the line to the station. Nobody about except a few
Frenchmen, so I went back to the carriage again, and sat looking out
through the dimmed window at the rain-soaked flat country. The other
fellow with me was doing the same. A sudden, profound depression came
over me. Here was I and this other cove dumped down at this horrible
siding; nothing to eat, and nobody to meet us. How rude and callous of
someone, or something. I looked at my watch; it had stopped, and on
trying to wind it I found it was broken.
I stared out of the window again; gave that up, and stared at the
opposite seat. Suddenly my eye caught something shiny under the seat. I
stooped and picked it up; it was a watch! I have always looked upon this
episode as an omen of some sort; but of what sort I can't quite make
out. Finding a watch means finding "Time"--perhaps it meant I would find
time to write this book; on the other hand it may have meant that my
time had come--who knows?
At about eight o'clock by my new watch I again made an attack on the
station, and at last found the R.T.O., which, being interpreted, means
the Railway Transport Officer. He told me where my battalion was to be
found; but didn't know whether they were in the trenches or out. He also
added that if he were me he wouldn't hurry about going there, as I could
probably get a lift in an A.S.C. wagon later on. I took his advice, and
having left all my tackle by his office, went into the nearest estaminet
to get some breakfast. The owner, a genial but garrulous little
Frenchman, spent quite a lot of time explaining to me how those hateful
people, the Boches, had occupied his house not so long before, and had
punched a hole in his kitchen wall to use a machine-gun through. After
breakfast I went to the station and arranged for my baggage to be sent
on by an A.S.C. wagon, and then started out to walk to Nieppe, which I
learnt was the place where my battalion billeted. As I plodded along the
muddy road in the pouring rain, I became aware of a sound with which I
was afterwards to become horribly familiar.
"Boom!" That was all; but I knew it was the voice of the guns, and in
that moment I realized that here was the war, and that I was in it.
I ploughed along for about four miles down uninteresting mud
canals--known on maps as roads--until, finally, I entered Nieppe.
The battalion, I heard from a passing soldier, was having its last day
in billets prior to going into the trenches again. They were billeted at
a disused brewery at the other end of the town. I went on down the
squalid street and finally found the place.
A crowd of dirty, war-worn looking soldiers were clustered about the
entrance in groups. I went in through the large archway past them into
the brewery yard. Soldiers everywhere, resting, talking and smoking. I
inquired where the officers' quarters were, and was shown to the brewery
head office. Here I found the battalion officers, many of whom I knew,
and went into their improvised messroom, which, in previous days, had
apparently been the Brewery Board room.
I found everything very dark, dingy and depressing. That night the
battalion was going into the trenches again, and last evenings in
billets are not generally very exhilarating. I sat and talked with those
I knew, and presently the Colonel came in, and I heard what the orders
were for the evening. I felt very strange and foreign to it all, as
everyone except myself had had their baptism of trench life, and,
consequently, at this time I did not possess that calm indifference,
bred of painful experience, which is part of the essence of a true
trench-dweller.
The evening drew on. We had our last meal in billets--sardines, bread,
butter and cake sort of thing--slung on to the bare table by the soldier
servants, who were more engrossed in packing up things they were taking
to the trenches than in anything else.
And now the time came to start off. I found the machine-gun section in
charge of a sergeant, a most excellent fellow, who had looked after the
section since the officer (whose place I had come to fill) had been
wounded. I took over from him, and, as the battalion moved off along the
road, fell in behind with my latest acquisition--a machine-gun section,
with machine guns to match. It was quite dusk now, and as we neared the
great Bois de Ploegstert, known all over the world as "Plugstreet
Wood," it was nearly night. The road was getting rougher, and the
houses, dotted about in dark silhouettes against the sky-line, had a
curiously deserted and worn appearance. Everything was looking dark,
damp and drear.
On we went down the road through the wood, stumbling along in the
darkness over the shell-pitted track. Weird noises occasionally floated
through the trees; the faint "crack" of a rifle, or the rumble of limber
wheels. A distant light flickered momentarily in the air, cutting out in
bold relief the ruins of the shattered chateau on our left. On we went
through this scene of dark and humid desolation, past the occasional
mounds of former habitations, on into the trenches before Plugstreet
Wood.