ROMANCE
The young recruit is apt to think
Of war as a romance;
But he'll find its boots and bayonets
When he's somewhere out in France.
When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from ---- his
heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he
is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the
branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew,
hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are
thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring,
murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool,
mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the
roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and
on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into
the land of mystery, the Unknown.
In front is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward (p. 301)
as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can
mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of
smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-shells and
lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of
death.
Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is
a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken
homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of
yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last
autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.
Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead,
and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the
skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle
in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the
wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In
it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery,
the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to
the heart of the young soldier.
I have looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed with (p. 302)
the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the
heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-shells burst into fire and
drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of
evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses,
gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.
Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and
catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame.
Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of
smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of
bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.
Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty passion and deadly
hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of
God, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the
Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.
He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can
never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening
sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsy ringing of church (p. 303)
bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to evensong;
the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the harness of
war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the darkness; the
stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky; the trees by
the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as if listening
and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm night, half
moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages with their
chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling engines and
dusty trucks.
There is a quicker throbbing of the heart when the men arrive at the
crest of the hill, well known to all, but presenting fresh aspects
every time the soldier reaches its summit, that overlooks the firing
line.
Ahead, the star-shells, constellations of green, electric white, and
blue, light the scenes of war. From the ridge of the hill, downwards
towards an illimitable plain, the road takes its way through a
ghost-world of ruined homes where dark and ragged masses of broken
roof and wall stand out in blurred outlines against indistinct and
formless backgrounds.
A gun is belching forth murder and sudden death from an (p. 304)
emplacement on the right; in a spinney on the left a battery is noisy
and the flashes from there light up the cluster of trees that stand
huddled together as if for warmth. Vehicles of war lumber along the
road, field-kitchens, gun-limbers, water-carts, motor-ambulances, and
Red Cross waggons. Men march towards us, men in brown, bearing rifles
and swords, and pass us in the night. A shell bursts near, and there
is a sound as of a handful of peas being violently flung to the
ground.
For the night we stop in a village where the branches of the trees are
shrapnelled clean of their leaves, and where all the rafters of the
houses are bared of their covering of red tiles. A wind may rise when
you're dropping off to sleep on the stone flags of a cellar, and then
you can hear the door of the house and of nearly every house in the
place creaking on its hinges. The breeze catches the telephone wires
which run from the artillery at rear to their observation stations,
and the wires sing like light shells travelling through space.
At dawn you waken to the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing at
aeroplanes which they never bring down. The bullets, falling back from
exploding shells, swish to the earth with a sound like burning (p. 305)
magnesium wires and split a tile if any is left, or crack a skull, if
any is in the way, with the neatest dispatch. It is wise to remain in
shelter until the row is over.
Outside, the birds are merry on the roofs; you can hear them sing
defiantly at the lone cat that watches them from the grassy spot which
was once a street. Spiders' webs hang over the doorways, many flies
have come to an untimely end in the glistening snares, poor little
black, helpless things. Here and there lies a broken crucifix and a
torn picture of the Holy Family, the shrines that once stood at the
street corners are shapeless heaps of dust and weeds and the village
church is in ruins.
No man is allowed to walk in the open by day; a German observation
balloon, a big banana of a thing, with ends pointing downwards stands
high over the earth ten kilometres away and sees all that takes place
in the streets.
There is a soldiers' cemetery to rear of the last block of buildings
where the dead have been shovelled out of earth by shell fire. In this
village the dead are out in the open whilst the quick are underground.
How fine it is to leave the trenches at night after days of (p. 306)
innumerable fatigues and make for a hamlet, well back, where beer is
good and where soups and salads are excellent. When the feet are sore
and swollen, and when the pack-straps cut the shoulder like a knife,
the journey may be tiring, but the glorious rest in a musty old barn,
with creaking stairs and cobwebbed rafters, amply compensates for all
the strain of getting there.
Lazily we drop into the straw, loosen our puttees and shoes and light
a soothing cigarette from our little candles. The whole barn is a
chamber of mysterious light and shade and strange rustlings. The
flames of the candles dance on the walls, the stars peep through the
roof. Eyes, strangely brilliant under the shadow of the brows, meet
one another inquiringly.
"Is this not a night?" they seem to ask. "The night of all the world?"
Apart from that, everybody is quiet, we lie still resting, resting.
Probably we shall fall asleep as we drop down, only to wake again when
the cigarettes burn to the fingers. We can take full advantage of a
rest, as a rest is known to the gloriously weary.
There is romance, there is joy in the life of a soldier.
THE END.