regiments of the 86th Brigade. Each felt that reliance could at any time
be placed upon the other: had they not already put their mettle to the
test and come through with honours?
The old humour re-asserted itself among the wild, careless fellows who
had come through. Tich, one of the Duo, Birfer, and Ginger were no
longer there to plot out their daily round of "schemes." Clarke, Martel,
Stumpy, and Old Casey were left to carry on--and they were quite capable
of doing so.
Stumpy formed a friendship with another of his diminutive height and
large waistband in the Middlesex, and the two were frequently hobnobbing
together in each others' billets.
"We lost a lot of good fellows," Stumpy sighed heavily over his pipe,
"wot we couldn't spare. There was three wot never drank rum and who all
got 'it." A roar of laughter interrupted him. "Yes, all got 'it. And
there was pore old Jack who got a dose in the arm an' 'ad to walk a 'ell
of a way to the dressin' station. 'E was bleedin' bad an' asked me ter
take orf 'is pack, which I did, an' his water-bottle as well, becos it
was full of rum and--an' rum is 'eavy."
"Rum, full of rum," his little pal looked up at him with dry lip,
"you--you ain't got any left?"
"No, becos I put it aside, an' some scrounger pinched it. All I 'opes is
that it bloomin' well choked 'im." Someone bawled from the doorway that
"supper was up."
Billets are a form of barracking troops in a number of barns and stables
spread over as small an area as possible. The one salient advantage of
these shelters is fresh air; it comes in with icy gusts through these
apertures made for the purpose and whistles through cracks in the
door--if there is a door--and gaps where once glass had kept it out. For
those to whom the sky on a star-lit night provides an hour's ecstacy a
hole or two in the roof is a blessing, but to the common mortal is a
damnation by which the winter wind tints the nose o' nights a soft shade
of deep purple or gives passage to a gentle flow of rain that forms
lakes and pools on your overcoat and blanket and which at the slightest
movement runs like a small river down your chest until you wake with a
shivering gasp.
Rats and mice make their way interestedly in and out of sleeping forms,
investigate with deliberate intent the contents of your pack, or
perchance make a tentative nibble at an odd toe or so. If anything
digestible is found in an overcoat pocket the exasperating rodents do
not enter by the obvious pocket-flap, but CHEW their way in from the
outside.
The weary old monotony of daily routine common to the Army set in,
parades and inspections forced their unpleasant encroachments upon each
day. Men whom a few weeks before had been forced to face the heaviest
fighting they had ever experienced, now made the abrupt discovery that
they were again liable to fall foul of the miles of red-tapeism that is
everywhere rampant in Regulations respecting innumerable minor offences.
This perpetual inspection by an officer sickens. His minute survey of
every inch of the uncouth, Army-rigged mortals, peppered with
injunctions in relation to an absence of polish on boots or equipment,
was never favorably received. There was a grain of humour in the actions
of subalterns who were wont to jab up and down the bolt of a rifle with
the air of an expert and solemnly inform the owner (who had fired
several hundred rounds through it at tight moments) that he must "... be
careful to oil the bolt--most important."
Much new clothing had to be issued to replace the battle-scared remnants
of the Cambrai stunt. Thrown to the men in the happy haphazard Army
method--there were created a new series of Parisian modes for draping
the figure. Army-rig! There was no lack of space or originality in the
cut of Le Huray's enormous wide trousers (the leg would comfortably have
encircled his waist), turned up when worn without puttees two and
one-half inches at the bottom; the top if hitched well up had manifest
advantages as a muffler. Issued on the same logical lines, Mahy received
a tiny pair of nether garments for his loner legs and a little tunic
that hung limply like an undersized Eton-jacket six inches short of
where it should have reached. Some lads were lost in shirts with sleeves
generally associated with Chinese or other Eastern gentlemen, others
moodily surveyed themselves in small shrunken garments that with only
superhuman effort could be forced to meet the waistband without emiting
a warning rip. Duport found it so.
"Look 'ere," he growled, "trousers won't reach me waist upwards; shirt
won't either, downwards. Leavin' a bloomin' two inches orl round of bare
flesh."
"Camouflage it."
"'Ow d'you mean?"
"Paint the space brown an' pretend it's a belt."
The Quarter-Master Sergeant and his assistant found an avalanche of new
material and old on their hands. (The Q.M.S.'s are those individuals who
keep ALL the new clothing in store and by only the wiliest of Tommies
can such material be wangled.) The Q.M.S. of the Ten Hundred was not
exactly popular among the ranks. N.B.--Neither Q.M.S.'s nor C.Q.M.S.'s
are acquainted as a rule with the gentle solitude of the first line
trenches. Their duty it is to receive and issue the "plum and apple,"
the "road-paving" biscuit and the weekly change of under-garments.
In the Field no man has actual possession of shirt, sock, or
under-garments. These are all given in at each visitation to the baths
and others issued in return. Your shirt thrown over to you by the
C.Q.M.S. might be somewhat decrepit and holey or might have some
resemblance to a new one. You might have two odd socks or (if you were
among the bevy of schemers) two or three pairs would be in your
possession--illegally.
Parades were detestable. They had imagined that England was the training
camp for these operations. In France they had expectation of fighting
and resting, NOT marching up and down with occasional halts, while the
Platoon Officer furtively asks his sergeant what order he must give
next.
The pivot round which all parades manoeuvre is always with the
Regimental Sergeant-Major (the main function of all R.S.M.'s is to walk
round with a big stick). He, an old Regular, despite the iron discipline
so candidly hated, was withall a staunch supporter of fair play for the
ranker, a tartar on parade, and feared more by the junior N.C.O.'s than
the very inhabitor of lower regions.
An N.C.O. (Non-Commissioned Officer) is an individual whose main talent
lies in the ability to bawl out orders at men one yard distant in a
voice having a hundred yards range. The possessors of some subtle
superiority not descernible by ordinary individuals, they are for this
reason forbidden to converse or walk with the men when "off parade."
These stringent regulations never materialise in actual practice, but it
conveys a hint of the tinge of "Hindenburgism" with which the Army is
tainted--excepting Dominion forces, wherein the negligible gulf between
officers and men is easily bridged.
There will always, however, be a sneaking regard in the hearts of the
few Normans who rested there; for Houvin. It was there that men could
sleep far from the haunting spectre of anticipated death or devastation:
there, too, life could be enjoyed to the full in the happy knowledge
that no shells would pitch near by, no machine-gun turn its whining
trail of bullets across your path. And it was at first difficult to
realise that danger to limb was past, that movement to and fro was free
from the hovering shrapnel that had so long dogged their steps and
penetrated the mind with its presence until accepted as an everyday
visitation such as the sun.
Parcels and mail arrived with a glad regularity. There is no more
pregnant a "reviver" of downheartedness than letters from the old
people, nor is anything more liable to inspire the "pip" than the
absence of such personal touches with familiar scenes. Papers can never
replace the badly penned and still more badly worded missives despatched
from some humble cottage. Those two pages of scrawled information go far
nearer to the receiver's heart than twenty columns of polished well
written print. The letter is almost a living link with all that in which
he has the strongest interest ... he is far more delighted at the news
of Tilly's overthrow of Jim for Jack than a mere possible fall of the
British Cabinet which might be pending.
"Besides," Stumpy pointed out with unconscious irony, "you opens a paper
an' you knows there ain't nothin' in it, while the ole woman might 'ave
put ten bob in yer letter."
Tommy has never sufficient a supply of cash. Everywhere a few miles
behind the Line a canteen or Y.M.C.A. had been pushed forward and in
these places the five francs a lad receives about once a fortnight does
not go very far or last long. Nor does its purchasing value cover more
than a meagre supply of such commodities as cake, chocolate, tobacco and
beer. With regard to the latter, stress must be laid on the fact that
Tommy is far less often in a state of drunkenness than the average
civilian and that he is far more prone to derive humour out of it than
to drink it.
X
DECEMBER-JANUARY, 1918
FLERS--LE PARCQ--VERCHOCQ
Snow had fallen and sprinkled the countryside with a semi-transparent
white mantle. Roads due to freezing o' nights were hard and slippery,
making the going for men labouring beneath the burden of full pack
irksome and heavy. The Normans had no eyes for the countryside (there is
no beauty in the finest masterpieces of Nature if physical conditions
are not in harmony) but had the surface before them fixedly under focus
in the interest of the neck's safety.
Eighteen or so kilos (approximately 11-1/4 miles) over the long straight
levels common to France and which, although of course the shortest route
between two points is viewed by the marching columns as far longer than
it actually is because of the distant visibility. And Tommy would prefer
a more winding journey even if the distance covered is greater.
The night's rest at Flers in the midst of heavy falls of snow put the
wind up the men at the knowledge of a longer march on the morrow, but
the alarm was false and a trek of four kilos materialised--hard going
the whole way--to Le Parcq, a town situated on the top of a hill, the
discovery of a short cut causing the break from schedule. The "cut" was
made up a steep incline that proved a severe obstacle to the wildly
struggling horses of transport waggons on the vile surface. Several
lorries with the all-essential stores, blankets, etc., found the "glass"
road utterly impassable.
This unfortunate set-back reacted on the men, who, because of the
blanket shortage were doomed to but ONE per man throughout the winter
night of fierce cold, against which the shivering, suffering lads had as
protection billets without roofs and in some instances with mere relics
of sides. The pain was acute, sleep difficult. Some unable to withstand
the torture paced up and down the whole night through, banging arms
heavily across bodies to stimulate some semblance of warmth.
At the first indications of dawn they were started on what proved to be
one of the longest marches in their experience. The weather was harsher
than on any of the preceding days and the frozen snow surface of the
roads presented in itself a factor that materially magnified the heavy
labouring beneath full pack, arduous to a degree under the easiest of
conditions. Before mid-day the constant vigilance and care necessary if
a hard fall was to be avoided began to tell on the nerves, irritability
forced its grip, and they glared savagely at one another at every
sideslip--inevitable in a long trek over such roads.
After twenty or so kilos had been reeled off physical exhaustion invaded
man after man, growling ceased, heads bent forward and the eyes watched
unseeing the heels of the man ahead. Mechanical rigidity of monotonous,
torturous march again held sway, the old dryness of tongue and aching of
burning feet grew more and more acute at each heavy step forward.
An hour passed in painful silence, and another, but ever onward along
the long trail of miles--left, right, left. At each step you muttered it
softly--left right--or counted them one by one until the mind rambled on
confused in tens of thousands. A stage had been attained when one felt
nothing, knew nothing, but just the unending chorus of padding feet
guided by the mere instinct of a mind in a condition of peculiar coma.
The ten minute halts were taken at each hour with no comment. Men threw
themselves prone on the road, closed eyes, stood up unthinking at the
order and fell again into the harsh rigidity of movement.
Just before dusk the "machine" halted at Verchocq, after a march of
thirty-three kilos. They were tired, worn, hungry....
No lorries or cookers turned up that night!
Followed that abrupt revival of spirits that cannot but remain a
pyschological mystery. No cookers--no grub. They threw aside without an
effort complete exhaustion, the outcome of an entire day's strenuous
bodily exertion, sallied forth with remarkable sangfroid and certainty
in Verchocq, there conversing with the inhabitants, made themselves
thoroughly at home and gratefully partook of the hot fare hospitably
provided them--the fierce inroads upon food that only the utterly
famished can readily appreciate, and which indelibly impressed upon the
intellect of their hosts a certainty that British troops could never
have their appetite satiated.
They returned to billets in varying moods and conditions, one or two
ignoring a straight walk and zig-zagging an uncertain course across the
roads. Stumpy, who had received a generous welcome from a misguided
patriot, sat down with smug complacency, holding one hand lovingly over
an abdomen over-filled with good fare.
"Weren't 'alf orl right," he said "lawd, wot with five eggs an' 'am an'
bread; but there weren't any beer, only," with a shudder, "a 'ome-made
lemonade."
"Yus," Duquemin agreed, "dam good-hic-sort these French people. Fine
lil' daughter wi' blue-hic-eyes. 'Eld my 'and, and she hic-said was
brave-hic soldier. Ver' proud ... 'allo wot-hic-doing'."
A lad was kneeling in his corner, hands clasped in prayer. (He did so
night after night unmolested.) The crowd watched curiously--but had
anyone dare to scoff they, as Mahieu said, "would a' knocked the b----
scoffer's 'ead orf."
Strange ingrained instinctive assertion of fair play predominant in the
attitude of those wild, uncouth mortals. Few of them had thought of
outward expression of God--a fierce resentment world galvanise into life
at the slightest sneer upon the unprotected back of those who HAD the
pluck. From his couch in a solitary blanket the agnostic grunted.
"Fetish," he observed quietly, "the warrior appealing to his oracle of
Delphi like a savage to his moon. Passing gods of a passing
generation...."
"Yesh," Duquemin agreed sagely. "Passin' gen'ral rashon--no
rashon-hic-pore-Guernseys. Oonly wot people gi'...."
The friendship originated during the Normans' first night at Vorchocq
with the French grew as the days progressed, accentuated by the Norman
knowledge of the people's mother-tongue.
They made the utmost of their time, lived life to the very full,
inspired by the knowledge that the draft of four hundred Staffords and
two hundred or so Guernseymen (the ten per cent. who had not
participated at Cambrai) who were to become absorbed into the Ten
Hundred were auguries of an approaching further acquaintance with the
Front Line.
Christmas Day provided an ample fare in addition to the ordinary
rations, small parties engaging rooms in estaminets and farms,
purchasing the very limit of eatables obtainable with what financial
lengths were at their disposal, obtained bottles of port and gave vent
to an unbounded vein of hilarious humour and uproarious chorus in
celebration of a Christmas that many knew would be their last.
In a quiet room four of the ascetic rankers (Clarke, Martel, Lomar and
White) passed an evening that will long remain a pleasant memory,
tempered with pain for the one who soon afterwards paid the Supreme
Sacrifice.
Everywhere uproar was rampant. Light, laughter, and good cheer
maintained undisputed sway upon all. Rose-cheeked daughters of France
were toasted again and again, taken into muscular arms and kissed times
without number.
The old marching rallies of the Ten Hundred were roared out from every
tiny house ablaze with light, echoed out into the inscrutable pall of
black and wafted far away into the shadows.
And they toasted the "Old Battalion," the warriors who were lying in the
damp Masnieres soil; the Future; and God's own Isle--their little
motherland. It hurt, how it hurt! How the tiny green island rose mistily
before the eyes in all its sun-bathed romance and mystery! How the sweet
aroma of its gold, furze-crowned cliffs, the laughter of blue waters,
the lowing of cattle, came flooding with glad memories on the mind ...
and YOU may not ever again scent that furze or glimpse those waters!
They laughed memory back into its dim past. WHAT of the future? Live
only for the present!
Bunny was happy. Reclining gracefully in the gutter he sang a jumbled
lullaby of melodies.
"There's maggots in the cheese,
You can 'ear the beggars sneeze--"
He struggled manfully to his feet, fell into a helpless fit of laughter
and collapsed again into the roadway with a heavy grunt. An N.C.O. found
him there a few minutes later.
"'Ere," he demanded, "wot are you doin' there?"
"Doin'," Bunny chuckled helplessly: "wot think I'm doin ... plantin'
daisies or diggin' for gold?"
"Look 'ere, me lad, if you're lookin' for trouble--!"
"Lookin' for trouble?--not lookin' for anything. Just 'avin' a rest by
the wayside an' gazin' at stars."
"Well, get up or I'll 'old you up, an' you'll SEE 'em then."
"Or-righ'. Want, want, lil' drop toddy?"
"Got much? Pass it over."
"Ain't got none. Only asked if you WANT a-a drop...." He moved away and
from far down the street his dirge carried faintly:
"There's whiskers on the pork
We curl 'em with a fork--."
In unhappy contract to Christmas. New Year proved to be a day of short
rations, bully beef and a rehearsal of an attack in the snow. The bread
ration dwindled down to Winkleian proportions.
A move up the line was pending in the near future and rumours that of
all hellish sectors they were going up the Passchendaele-Ypres areas,
were received with continuous outbursts of growling.
The young Staffords who had not the gruesome knowledge of Belgian
desolation were satisfied with a front anywhere near the magic Ypres.
They wanted to see the place where, as one of them was perpertually
saying. "A couple of Blighty regiments made a bloomin' 'ell of a mess of
the whole blooming' Jerry army."
There was everywhere a mutual recognition of a possible, a probable,
German attack on a scale to date unparalleled. Every battalion in the
Brigade was thoroughly cognisant that at some time during the next few
months they would be called upon to make another Cambrai stand. There
was a general feeling that he would attempt to crush the British Army at
a blow, seize the Channel ports, and thus isolate what armies had
escaped the first onslaught.
XI
DECEMBER-JANUARY, 1918
LEULENE--BRANDHOEK--YPRES
January 3.--Snow had, after three weeks on the ground beneath the
hardening influence of a temperature several degrees below zero, evolved
into a surface upon which a constant steady balance demanded no little
skill. Marching encumbered with a full pack, clumsy Army-shod feet, one
arm only free for a much hampered swing, increased the difficulties of
maintaining a secure foothold.
(Full pack: A conglomeration of articles intended in normal ages to be
transported by two mules, but under the influence of advanced
civilisation strapped on the back of one man, in addition to a rifle,
half a dozen Mills' bombs, a Lewis-gun, spade or shovel, sheet of
corrugated iron, or any other article that can be somewhere hung upon
him).
Weariness, fed-upity, after many miles had been laboriously reeled off,
was a factor in slackening vigilance on the semi-ice, many painful falls
resulting--to fall with a pack produces a situation resembling a beetle
on its back.
Stumpy pulled someone out of a snowdrift--then he fell into one himself,
unnoticed. He caught the Battalion up at the halt.
"Oh, 'ell," he shouted indignantly, "I might a' died for all you
bloomin' well cared."
"Why, wot's up?"
"Up? I fell into a bloomin' drift."
"Oh, an' wot the 'ell d'you do that for?"
"Do it for. Why, why...!" The crowd about him grinned.
"P'raps 'e saw 'is ole woman comin 'along the road."
"'E saw the bloomin' captain drop a 'skate' (fag-end) down an' went
after it."
"That's the way 'e 'as 'is weekly wash."
"He was playin' snowballs with 'is bloomin' self."
The command to "fall in" dropped the curtain.
In the grey of dusk the shadowy column marched into Leulene.
The Ten Hundred, after an eleven days' "rest" in the icy grip of a
winter's wind that clung to Leulene unabating throughout the period,
marched away and entrained upon their first portion of journey
front-linewards.
Cattle-trucks provide ample novelty, aroma and draughts. Refuse covering
the floor is swept by the occupants into a corner heap, but someone has
to sleep on it. An open space between a sliding door can comfortably
accommodate two with legs dangling over, but invariably has four or more
hunched-up, jumbled khaki figures.
These trains never hurry: always twist and turn and double back
half-a-dozen times in journeyings from one point to another. Jolting and
jarring is unnoticed--you are past noticing anything after the first
hour!
Officers have usually the luxury of railway carriages, but the private--
Privates: Individuals who form the large proportion of a Battalion.
Their salient duties embrace shining buttons, carrying up officers'
rations, dodging parades, scrubbing out sergeants' and officers' mess,
squad drill, guards, and C.B., picking up paper near the billets,
grousing and growing thin on short rations--during spare moments they
are used for fighting.
Detraining at Brandhoek, the Ten Hundred marched to Brake Camp, a
rambling collection of huts built in a wood near the main road running
between Poperinghe and Ypres, within a short distance of Vlamertynghe.
It was "Pop!" Unchanged, grim and grey, visited day and night by bomb
and shell with the ceaseless activity of that Belgian area. A battalion
of Worcesters, whom the Normans were relieving, painted a merry picture
of the sodden sector.
"Fritz ain't 'alf playin' 'ell wi' the front line. Washed out two
blasted regiments in less than a week...."
"No bloomm' trenches up there. Only shell 'oles an' hundreds of bodies.
Ration parties can't get up wi' the grub...."
"Jerry shells like 'ell orl night an' sends over gas in shells and cloud
orl day. Three 'undred casualties last week an' I 'eard that alf of 'em
kicked the bucket...."
"Old Jerry 'as a million troops from Russia waitin' to come over next
month for his offensive...."
"Yus, Sir Daggie 'Aig sez 'e must sacrifice 'is First Lines. An', wots
more, yer up to the neck in water...."
The Normans slept that night haunted by nightmare visitations created by
minds pervaded with strong "wind-upity." Stumpy succumbed to a. fit of
depression from which nothing could rouse him. Evans (a Stafford) gave
him a fag.
"Cheer up," he said.
"Can't? Bloomin' water up to yer neck an' they don't issue lifebelts an'
I can't swim."
"Garn. That's only wot they SEZ."
"Gas an' shells an' troops."
"Only bloomin' rumours."
"An' no ration parties can got up--oh gawd!"
"Wot about it?"
"No ration parties means no grub an' NO rum. Wot a pore Tommy 'as got
ter put up with."
The following day marching through Ypres they moved further up the Line
to a camp situated near St. Jean and from whence they would make their
final preparations and march towards the duckboard (a series of boards
resembling actual duck-boards and raised to a height above the ground
varying in accordance to the depth of water) track winding up the
wasted shell-torn soil to the communication trenches.