here than being shut up in a gun-turret or--or down below, on account
of er--er--you understand, sir?"
"Oh, quite!" said I, and thereafter thought awhile, and, receiving
his ready permission, lighted my cigarette. "I think," said I, as we
prepared to descend from our lofty perch, "I'm sure it's just--er--that
kind of thing that brought one Francis Drake out of so very many tight
corners. By the way--do you smoke?"
My Midshipmite blushingly confessed he did, and helped himself from my
case with self-conscious fingers.
Reaching the main deck in due season, I found I had contrived to miss
the Chief Gunner's lecture on the great guns, whereupon who so agitated
and bitterly apologetic as my Midshipmite, who there and then ushered
me hastily down more awkward stairs and through narrow openings into
a place of glistening, gleaming polish and furbishment where, beside
the shining breech of a monster gun, muscular arm negligently leaning
thereon, stood a round-headed, broad-shouldered man, he the presiding
genius of this (as I afterwards found) most sacred place.
His lecture was ended and he was addressing a few well-chosen closing
remarks in slightly bored fashion (he had showed off his ponderous
playthings to divers kings, potentates and big-wigs at home and abroad,
I learned) when I, though properly awed by the gun but more especially
by the gunner, ventured to suggest that a gun that had been through
three engagements and had been fired so frequently must necessarily
show some signs of wear. The gunner glanced at me, and I shall never
forget that look. With his eyes on mine, he touched a lever in
negligent fashion, whereon silently the great breech slipped away with
a hiss and whistle of air, and with his gaze always fixed he suggested
I might glance down the bore.
Obediently I stooped, whereon he spake on this wise:
"If you cast your heyes to the right abaft the breech you'll observe
slight darkening of riflin's. Now glancin' t' left of piece you'll
per-ceive slight darkening of riflin's. Now casting your heyes right
forrard you'll re-mark slight roughening of riflin's towards muzzle of
piece and--there y'are, sir. One hundred and twenty-seven times she's
been fired by my 'and and good for as many more--both of us. Arternoon,
gentlemen, and--thank ye!"
Saying which he touched a lever in the same negligent fashion, the
mighty breech-block slid back into place, and I walked forth humbly
into the outer air.
Here I took leave of my Midshipmite, who stood among a crowd of his
fellows to watch me down the gang-plank, and I followed whither I
was led very full of thought as well I might be, until rousing, I
found myself on the deck of that famous _Warspite_, which our foes
are so comfortably certain lies a shattered wreck off Jutland. Here I
presently fell to discourse with a tall lieutenant, with whom I went
alow and aloft; he showed me cockpit, infirmary and engine-room; he
showed me the wonder of her steering apparatus, and pointed to the
small hand-wheel in the bowels of this huge ship whereby she had been
steered limping into port. He directed my gaze also to divers vast
shell-holes and rents in her steel sides, now very neatly mended by
steel plates held in place by many large bolts. Wherever we went were
sailors, by the hundred it seemed, and yet I was struck by the size
and airy spaciousness between decks.
"The strange thing about the Hun," said my companion, as we mounted
upward again, "is that he is so amazingly accurate with his big guns.
Anyway, as we steamed into range he registered direct hits time after
time, and his misses were so close the spray was flying all over us.
Yes, Fritz is wonderfully accurate, but"--here my companion paused to
flick some dust from his braided cuff--"but when we began to knock him
about a bit it was funny how it rattled him--quite funny, you know.
His shots got wider and wider, until they were falling pretty well a
mile wide--very funny!" and the lieutenant smiled dreamily. "Fritz will
shoot magnificently if you only won't shoot back. But really I don't
blame him for thinking he'd sunk us; you see, there were six of 'em
potting away at us at one time--couldn't see us for spray--"
"And how did you feel just then?" I enquired.
"Oh, rotten! You see I'd jammed my finger in some tackle for one thing,
and just then the light failed us. We'd have bagged the lot if the
light had held a little longer. But next time--who knows? Care for a
cup of tea?"
"Thanks!" I answered. "But where are the others?"
"Oh, by Jove! I fancy your party's gone--I'll see!"
This proving indeed the case, I perforce took my leave, and with a
midshipman to guide me, presently stepped aboard a boat which bore us
back beneath the shadow of that mighty bridge stark against the evening
sky.
Riding citywards through the deepening twilight I bethought me of the
Midshipmite who, amid the roar and tumult of grim battle had been "too
busy" to be afraid; of the round-headed gunner who, like his gun, was
ready and eager for more, and of the tall lieutenant who, with death in
many awful shapes shrieking and crashing about him, felt "rotten" by
reason of a bruised finger and failing light.
And hereupon I felt proud that I, too, was a Briton, of the same breed
as these mighty ships and the splendid fellows who man them--these
Keepers of the Seas, who in battle as in tempest do their duty unseen,
unheard, because it is their duty.
Therefore, all who are so blest as to live within these isles take
comfort and courage from this--that despite raging tempest and
desperate battle, we, trusting in the justice of our cause, in these
iron men and mighty ships, may rest secure, since truly worthy are
these, both ships and men, of the glorious traditions of the world's
most glorious navy.
But, as they do their duty by Britain and the Empire, let it be our
inestimable privilege as fellow Britons to do our duty as nobly both to
the Empire and--to them.
VII.
A HOSPITAL.
The departure platform of a great station (for such as have eyes to
see) is always a sad place, but now-a-days it is a place of tragedy.
He was tall and thin--a boyish figure--and his khaki-clad arm was close
about her slender form. The hour was early and their corner bleak and
deserted, thus few were by to heed his stiff-lipped, agonised smile and
the passionate clasp of her hands, or to hear her heartbreaking sobs
and his brave words of comfort; and I, shivering in the early morning
wind, hasted on, awed by a grief that made the grey world greyer.
Very soon London was behind us, and we were whirling through a
country-side wreathed in mist wherein I seemed to see a girl's tear-wet
cheeks and a boy's lips that smiled so valiantly for all their pitiful
quiver; thus I answered my companion somewhat at random and the
waiter's proffer of breakfast was an insult. And, as I stared out at
misty trees and hedgerow I began as it were to sense a grimness in the
very air--the million-sided tragedy of war; behind me the weeping girl,
before me and looming nearer with every mile, the Somme battle-front.
At a table hard by a group of clear-eyed subalterns were chatting and
laughing over breakfast, and in their merriment I, too, rejoiced. Yet
the grimness was with me still as we rocked and swayed through the
wreathing mist.
But trains, even on a foggy morning, have a way of getting there at
last, so, in due season, were docks and more docks, with the funnels
of ships, and beyond these, misty shapes upon a misty sea, the gaunt
outlines of destroyers that were to convoy us Francewards. Hereupon my
companion, K., a hardened traveller, inured to customs, passports and
the like noxious things, led me through a jostling throng, his long
legs striding rapidly when they found occasion, past rank upon rank
of soldiers returning to duty, very neat and orderly, and looking, I
thought, a little grim.
Presently the warps were cast off and very soon we were in the lift and
roll of the Channel; the white cliffs slowly faded, the wind freshened,
and I, observing that everyone had donned life-belts, forthwith girded
on one of the clumsy contrivances also.
In mid-channel it blew hard and the destroyers seemed to be making
heavy weather of it, now lost in spray, now showing a glistening height
of free-board, and, as I watched, remembering why they were there, my
cumbrous life-belt grew suddenly very comfortable.
Came a growing density on the horizon, a blue streak that slowly and
little by little grew into roofs, chimneys, docks and shipping, and
France was before us, and it was with almost reverent hands that I
laid aside my clumsy cork jacket and was presently on French soil.
And yet, except for a few chattering porters, the air rang with good
English voices hailing each other in cheery greetings, and khaki was
everywhere. But now, as I followed my companion's long legs past these
serried, dun-coloured ranks, it seemed to me that they held themselves
straighter and looked a little more grim even than they had done in
England.
I stood, lost in the busy scene before me, when, hearing K.'s voice, I
turned to be introduced to Captain R., tall, bright-eyed, immaculate,
and very much master of himself and circumstances it seemed, for,
despite crowded customs-office, he whisked us through and thence before
sundry officials, who glared at me and my passport, signed, stamped,
returned it and permitted me to go.
After luncheon we drove to a great base hospital where I was introduced
to the Colonel-Surgeon in charge, a quiet man, who took us readily
under his able guidance. And indeed a huge place was this, a place for
me of awe and wonder, the more so as I learned that the greater part of
it had come into being within one short year.
It lies beside the sea, this hospital, where clean winds blow, its neat
roadways are bordered by green lawns and flanked by long, low buildings
that reach away in far perspective, buildings of corrugated iron, of
wood and asbestos, a very city, but one where there is no riot and rush
of traffic, truly a city of peace and brooding quietude.
And as I looked upon this silent city, my awe grew, for the Colonel,
in his gentle voice, spoke of death and wounds, of shell-shock,
nerve-wrack and insanity; but he told also of wonderful cures, of
miracles performed on those that should have died, and of reason and
sanity won back.
"And you?" I questioned, "have you done many such wonders?"
"Few!" he answered, and sighed. "You see, my duties now are chiefly
administrative," and he seemed gently grieved that it should be so.
He brought us into wards, long, airy and many-windowed, places of
exquisite neatness and order, where calm-faced sisters were busied
and smart, soft-treading orderlies came and went. Here in white cots
lay many bandaged forms, some who, propped on pillows, watched us
bright-eyed and nodded in cheery greeting; others who lay so ominously
still.
But as I passed between the long rows of cots, I was struck with the
look of utter peace and content on so many of the faces and wondered,
until, remembering the hell whence they had so lately come, I thought I
understood. Thus, bethinking me of how these dire hurts had been come
by, I took off my hat, and trod between these beds of silent suffering
as softly as I could, for these men had surely come "out of great
tribulation."
In another ward I saw numbers of German wounded, most of them bearded;
many there were who seemed weakly and undersized, and among them were
many grey heads, a very motley company. These, the Colonel informed
us, received precisely the same treatment as our own wounded, even to
tobacco and cigarettes.
We followed our soft-voiced conductor through many other wards where
he showed us strange and wondrous devices in splints; he halted us
by hanging beds of weird shape and cots that swung on pulleys; he
descanted on wounds to flesh and bone and brain, of lives snatched
from the grip of Death by the marvels of up-to-date surgery, and as I
listened to his pleasant voice I sensed much of the grim wonders he
left untold. We visited X-ray rooms and operating theatre against whose
walls were glass cases filled with a multitudinous array of instruments
for the saving of life, and here it was I learned that in certain
cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a far more delicate tool than
the finest saw.
"A wonderful place," said I for the hundredth time as we stepped out
upon a trim, green lawn. The Colonel-Surgeon smiled.
"It took some planning," he admitted, "a little while ago it was a
sandy wilderness."
"But these lawns?" I demurred.
"Came to me of their own accord," he answered. "At least, the seed did,
washed ashore from a wreck, so I had it planted and it has done rather
well. Now, what else can I show you? It would take all the afternoon
to visit every ward, and they are all much alike--but there is the mad
ward if you'd care to see that? This way."
A strange place, this, divided into compartments or cubicles where were
many patients in the familiar blue overalls, most of whom rose and
stood at attention as we entered. Tall, soldierly figures they seemed,
and yet with an indefinable something in their looks--a vagueness of
gaze, a loose-lipped, too-ready smile, a vacancy of expression. Some
there were who scowled sullenly enough, others who sat crouched apart,
solitary souls, who, I learned, felt themselves outcast; others again
crouched in corners haunted by the dread of a pursuing vengeance always
at hand.
One such the Colonel accosted, asking what was wrong. The man looked
up, looked down and muttered unintelligibly, whereupon the Sister spoke.
"He believes that everyone thinks him a spy," she explained, and
touched the man's bowed head with a hand as gentle as her voice.
"Shell-shock is a strange thing," said the Colonel-Surgeon, "and
affects men in many extraordinary ways, but seldom permanently."
"You mean that those poor fellows will recover?" I asked.
"Quite ninety per cent," he answered in his quiet, assured voice.
I was shown over laundries complete in every detail; I walked
through clothing stores where, in a single day, six hundred men had
been equipped from head to foot; I beheld large machines for the
sterilisation of garments foul with the grime of battle and other
things.
Truly, here, within the hospital that had grown, mushroom-like, within
the wild, was everything for the alleviation of hurts and suffering
more awful than our fighting ancestors ever had to endure. Presently
I left this place, but now, although a clean, fresh wind blew and the
setting sun peeped out, the world somehow seemed a grimmer place than
ever.
In the Dark Ages, humanity endured much of sin and shame and suffering,
but never such as in this age of Reason and Culture. This same earth
has known evils of every kind, has heard the screams of outraged
innocence, the groan of tortured flesh, and has reddened beneath the
heel of Tyranny; this same sun has seen the smoke and ravishment of
cities and been darkened by the hateful mists of war--but never such
a war as this of cultured barbarity with all its new devilishness.
Shell-shock and insanity, poison-gas and slow strangulation, liquid
fire and poison shells. Rape, Murder, Robbery, Piracy, Slavery--each
and every crime is here--never has humanity endured all these horrors
together until now.
But remembering by whose will these evils have been loosed upon the
world, remembering the innocent blood, the bitter tears, the agony of
soul and heartbreak, I am persuaded that Retribution must follow as
sure as to-morrow's dawn. The evil that men do lives after them and
lives on for ever.
Should they, who have worked for and planned this misery, escape the
ephemeral justice of man, there is yet the inexorable tribunal of the
Hereafter, which no transgressor, small or great, humble or mighty, may
in any wise escape.
VIII.
THE GUNS.
A fine, brisk morning; a long, tree-bordered road dappled with fugitive
sunbeams, making a glory of puddles that leapt in shimmering spray
beneath our flying wheels. A long, straight road that ran on and on
unswerving, uphill and down, beneath tall, straight trees that flitted
past in never-ending procession, and beyond these a rolling, desolate
countryside of blue hills and dusky woods; and in the air from beyond
this wide horizon a sound that rose above the wind-gusts and the noise
of our going, a faint whisper that seemed in the air close about us
and yet to be of the vague distances, a whisper of sound, a stammering
murmur, now rising, now falling, but never quite lost.
In rain-sodden fields to right and left were many figures bent
in diligent labour, men in weather-worn, grey-blue uniforms and
knee-boots, while on the roadside were men who lounged, or sat smoking
cigarettes, rifle across knees and wicked-looking bayonets agleam,
wherefore these many German prisoners toiled with the unremitting
diligence aforesaid.
The road surface improving somewhat we went at speed and, as we lurched
and swayed, the long, straight road grew less deserted. Here and there
transport lorries by ones and twos, then whole convoys drawn up beside
the road, often axle deep in mud, or lumbering heavily onwards; and
ever as we went that ominous, stammering murmur beyond the horizon grew
louder and more distinct.
On we went, through scattered villages alive with khaki-clad figures
with morions cocked at every conceivable angle, past leafy lanes bright
with the wink of long bayonets; through country towns, whose wide
squares and narrow, old-world streets rang with the ordered tramp of
feet, the stamp of horses and rumble of gun-wheels, where ruddy English
faces turned to stare and broad khaki backs swung easily beneath their
many accoutrements. And in street and square and by-street, always and
ever was that murmurous stammer of sound more ominous and threatening,
yet which nobody seemed to heed--not even K., my companion, who puffed
his cigarette and "was glad it had stopped raining."
So, picking our way through streets athrong with British faces, dodging
guns and limbers, wagons and carts of all descriptions, we came out
upon the open road again. And now, there being no surface at all to
speak of, we perforce went slow, and I watched where, just in front,
a string of lorries lumbered heavily along, pitching and rolling very
much like boats in a choppy sea.
Presently we halted to let a column go by, officers a-horse and a-foot
with the long files behind, but all alike splashed and spattered with
mud. Men, these, who carried their rifles anyhow, who tramped along,
rank upon rank, weary men, who showed among them here and there grim
evidence of battle--rain-sodden men with hair that clung to muddy brows
beneath the sloping brims of muddy helmets; men who tramped ankle-deep
in mud and who sang and whistled blithe as birds. So they splashed
wearily through the mud, upborne in their fatigue by that indomitable
spirit that has always made the Briton the fighting man he is.
At second speed we toiled along again behind the lorries who were
making as bad weather of it as ever, when all at once I caught my
breath, hearkening to the far, faint skirling of Highland bagpipes,
and, leaning from the car, saw before us a company of Highlanders,
their mud-splashed knees a-swing together, their khaki kilts swaying
in rhythm, their long bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the
regular tramp of their felt and the wild, frenzied wailing of their
pipes. Soon we were up with them, bronzed, stalwart figures, grim
fighters from muddy spatterdashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes
turned to stare at us--eyes blue and merry, eyes dark and sombre--as
they swung along to the lilting music of the pipes.
At the rear the stretcher-bearers marched, the rolled-up stretchers
upon their shoulders; but even so, by various dark stains and marks
upon that dingy canvas, I knew that here was a company that had done
and endured much. Close by me was a man whose hairy knee was black with
dried blood--to him I tentatively proffered my cigarette case.
"Wull ye hae one the noo?" I questioned. For a moment he eyed me a
trifle dour and askance, then he smiled (a grave Scots smile).
"Thank ye, I wull that!" said he, and extracted the cigarette with
muddy fingers.
"Ye'll hae a sore leg, I'm thinking!" said I.
"Ou aye," he admitted with the same grave smile, "but it's no sae
muckle as a' that--juist a wee bit skelpit I--"
Our car moved forward, gathered speed, and we bumped and swayed on our
way; the bagpipes shrieked and wailed, grew plaintively soft, and were
drowned and lost in that other sound which was a murmur no longer, but
a rolling, distant thunder, with occasional moments of silence.
"Ah, the guns at last!" said I.
"Yes," nodded K., lighting another cigarette, "I've been listening to
them for the last hour."
Here my friend F., who happened to be the Intelligence Officer in
charge, leaned forward to say:
"I'm afraid we can't get into Beaumont Hamel, the Boches are strafing
it rather, this morning, but we'll go as near as we can get, and then
on to what was La Boiselle. We shall leave the car soon, so better get
into your tin hats." Forthwith I buckled on one of the morions we had
brought for the purpose and very uncomfortable I found it. Having made
it fairly secure, I turned, grinning furtively, to behold K.'s classic
features crowned with his outlandish-seeming headgear, and presently
caught him grinning furtively at mine.
"They're not so heavy as I expected," said I.
"About half a pound," he suggested.
Pulling up at a shell shattered village we left the car and trudged
along a shell-torn road, along a battered and rusty railway line, and
presently struck into a desolate waste intersected by sparse hedgerows,
and with here and there desolate, leafless trees, many of which, in
shattered trunk and broken bough, showed grim traces of what had been;
and ever as we advanced these ugly scars grew more frequent, and we
were continually dodging sullen pools that were the work of bursting
shells. And then it began to rain again.
On we went, splashing through puddles, slipping in mud, and ever as we
went my boots and my uncomfortable helmet grew heavier and heavier,
while in the heaven above, in the earth below and in the air about
us was the quiver and thunder of unseen guns. As we stumbled through
the muddy desolation I beheld wretched hovels wherein khaki-clad
forms moved, and from one of these damp and dismal structures a merry
whistling issued, with hoarse laughter.
On we tramped, through rain and mud, which, like my helmet, seemed to
grow momentarily heavier.
"K.," said I, as he floundered into a shell-hole, "about how heavy did
you say these helmets were?"
"About a pound!" said he, fierce-eyed. "Confound the mud!"
Away to our left and high in air a puff of smoke appeared, a
pearl-grey, fleecy cloud, and as I, unsuspecting, watched it writhe
into fantastic shapes, my ears were smitten with a deafening report,
and instinctively I ducked.
"Shrapnel!" said F., waving his hand in airy introduction. "They're
searching the road yonder I expect--ah, there goes another! Yes,
they're trying the road yonder--but here's the trench--in with you!"
I am free to confess that I entered that trench precipitately--so
hurriedly, in fact, that my helmet fell off, and, as I replaced it, I
was not sorry to see that this trench was very deep and narrow. As we
progressed, very slowly by reason of clinging mud, F. informed us that
this trench had been our old front line before we took Beaumont Hamel;
and I noticed many things, as, clips of cartridges, unexploded bombs,
Lewis gun magazines, parts of a broken machine gun, and various odds
and ends of accoutrements. In some places this trench had fallen in
because of rain and other things and was almost impassable, wherefore,
after much floundering and splashing, F. suggested we should climb out
again, which we did forthwith, very moist and muddy.