conclusion of Life is Death. Naturally, from his upbringing and mental
outlook, he had no sympathy with the alleged objects and achievements
of the Russian Revolution. He could not see what anyone wanted with
a new social order, and as for the domination of Europe by the
Proletariat, if he understood it, he was all against it in principle.
He was against it because it was Domination. That was precisely the
thing that had made him feel increasingly antagonistic to Germany and
German ideas. It had begun long ago, during brief continental holidays.
He had met Germans on trains and steamers, in hotels and on excursions.
He had grudged them their efficient way of sight-seeing, feeding and
everything else. But he had grudged them most their size and their way
of getting there first. If it had not been for that, he had a good
deal more sympathy with them, in most ways, than with the French.
Subsequently he had found Germans infringing on the business of his
native town, selling cheaper, better-tanned hides than its tanners,
more scientifically compounded manures than its merchants. Then they
invaded politics and became a scare at election times. And after the
false start of 1911, in 1914 they had finally kicked over the tea-table
of the old quiet comfortable life. He did not argue about this. He had
felt it simply, truly, directly. Under all the hot-air patriotism and
real self-sacrifice of August, 1914, it had been this basic instinct
which had made him and all his sort enlist. The Germans had asked for
it, and they should darn-well have it. If they didn’t they would go on
asking. They were after Domination.
That craze had started something that would be difficult now to stop.
Dormer saw very well that other people besides Russians might find
grievances and the same wrong-headed way of venting them. The Russians
would probably go on with their propaganda, all over the world. The
Germans, on the other hand, had probably set the Japanese off. And so
we should go on, all the aristocratic classes calling for Domination
by their sort, all the ultra-brainy democracies calling for their
particular brand.
So when he was passed as fit and told to rejoin the depôt of his
regiment, at a seaport town, he went without any panic fear of the
future, German or otherwise. He went with a deep conviction that
whatever happened, life had been cheapened and vulgarized. It was not
by any means mere theory. He had seen what sort of a home he might
hope to make after the Peace, with his mother or sisters, or if,
conceivably, he married. Not a bad home, his job would always be there,
and certain remnants of that bourgeois comfort that had grown up in
all the old quiet streets of the provincial towns of England during
the nineteenth century, privileged, aloof from the troubles of the
“continent,” self-contained. But remnants only, not nearly enough. He
and all his sort had been let down several pegs in the social scale.
Without any narrow spite, or personal grievance, he felt that the
Germans had caused this upset and the Russians had put the finishing
stroke to it, made it permanent, as it were. He happened to be opposite
the Germans in the particular encounter that was not yet ended, and
he was able to draw upon an almost inexhaustible supply of obstinate
ill-will.
He went to the depôt in its huts on a sandy estuary. It was commanded
by a Major of the usual type, and no one knew better than Dormer how
to keep on the right side of such a one. He was, of course, a Godsend
to the Major. He had all the practical experience and none of the
fussiness. He merely wanted the job finished. That suited the Major
exactly, who didn’t want it to finish in a hurry, but wanted even less
to have to find ideas for training troops. Dormer, with his two and a
half years in France, was the very man. He looked trustworthy. He was
set to instructing the raw material, of which the camp was full. He
disliked it intensely, but, as always, took what was given him in his
sober fashion and did his limited best with it. He was amazed to find
such reserves of men still untouched. His own recollections of early
1915 were of camps filled with an eager volunteer crowd of all ages
and conditions, who were astounded when it was suggested to them that
certain of them ought to take a commission. Now he found that his sort
went a different way, direct to O.T.C. or Cadet Corps. There was a
permanence about the camp staff that he had never seen in the old days.
But most of all he was impressed with the worn appearance of the camp.
Thousand after thousand had passed through it, been drafted overseas,
and disappeared. Thousand after thousand had followed. In the town and
at the railway, there were no longer smiles and encouragement. People
had got painfully used to soldiers, and from treating them as heroes,
and then as an unavoidable, and profitable incident, had come to regard
them chiefly as a nuisance. He forgot how he had wondered if the men
would stand it, he forgot how often he had heard the possibility of an
early Peace discussed. He began to wonder now if people at home would
stand it--the lightless winter nights, the summer full of bombing,
the growing scarcity of comforts, the queues for this, that, and the
other, the pinch that every gradually depleted family was beginning
to feel, as one after another of its members had to go. He had been so
long out of all this, up against the actual warfare, glad enough of
small privileges and of the experience that enabled him to avoid the
more onerous duties, the worst sorts of want, that he only now began
to realize what he had never grasped, in his few short leaves, that
there was still quite a considerable, probably the greater portion of
the nation, who did not share his view of the necessity of going on.
Another avenue of speculation was opened to him. What if all the people
at home made Peace behind the backs of the Armies. Yet, being Dormer,
he did not submit to this home-grown philosophy. He just went on and
did the next thing that his hand found to do.
Of one thing he became pretty certain. All these people at home had
“got the wind up.” He didn’t know which were the worst, the lower
middle class, who were beginning to fear invasion, as a form of damage
to their shops and houses. He thought of those ten departments of
France that were either occupied by, or shot over, by the Germans. Or
again the newspapers, with their scare-lines, their everlasting attempt
to bring off this or that political coup. Or again the people in power,
who were keeping this enormous number of troops in England, presumably
to defend the beaches of the island from an armed landing. He had
become during the three years that had contained for him an education
that he could not otherwise have got in thirty, a more instructed
person.
An offensive was an offensive, could be nothing more or less. Every
offensive had been a failure except for some local or temporary
object, and in his opinion, always must be a failure. The idea of an
offensive conducted across a hundred leagues of sea made him smile.
It was hard enough to get a mile forward on dry land, but fancy the
job of maintaining communications across the water! He attended enough
drills to fill in the time, organized the football of the Brigade to
his liking and let it go at that. At moments he was tempted to apply
to be sent to France, at others to try and join one of these Eastern
expeditions, Salonika, Palestine or Mespot. But the certainty of being
more bored and of being farther than ever from the only life he cared
for, made him hesitate. He hesitated for two long months.
Then on the 21st March he was ordered by telegram to proceed to France.
He felt, if anything, a not unpleasant thrill. With all his care, he
had not been able to dodge boredom altogether. The depôt camp had also
been much too near the scenes of his pre-War life. He had gone home,
as a matter of duty, for several week-ends and had always returned
finely exasperated, it was so near to and yet so far from home as he
had pictured it, in his dreams. Now, here was an end to this Peace-time
soldiering. The news, according to the papers, seemed pretty bad, but
he remembered so well the awful scurry there was for reinforcements on
the morning that the nature of the Second Battle of Ypres became known.
This could not be so desperate as that was. Practically the whole of
the rank and file in the depôt were under orders. He took jolly good
care not to get saddled with a draft, and spent the night in London.
People were in a rare stew there. He had a bath and a good dinner and
left it all behind. He took a little more note of the traffic at the
port of embarkation. On the other side, he found lorries waiting and
went jolting and jamming away up to Frecourt, forty miles. He rather
approved. It looked as though our people were waking up.
At Corps reinforcement camp--a new dodge evidently--he got posted
to a North Country battalion; and proceeded to try and find their
whereabouts. He was told that they were going to Bray, but it took him
some time to understand that they were falling back on that place.
When, by chance, he hit upon the Division to which they belonged, they
were on the road, looking very small, but intact and singing. He soon
found plenty to do, for he grasped that practically the whole battalion
was composed of reinforcements, and had only been together two or
three days. They set to work at once to strengthen some half-completed
entrenchments, but after two days were moved back again.
It was during those two days that he saw what he had never to that
moment beheld, an army in retreat. The stream of infantry, artillery
and transport was continuous--here in good formation, there a mere
mass of walking wounded mixed up with civilians, as the big hospitals
and the small villages of the district turned out before the oncoming
enemy. He thought it rotten luck on those people, many of whom had been
in German hands until February, 1917, and had only had a twelvemonth
in their small farms, living in huts, and had now to turn out before
a further invasion. The bombardment was distinctly nasty, he never
remembered a nastier, but as usual, the pace of the advance soon
outdistanced the slow-moving heavy artillery, whose fire was already
lessening. He had no feelings of sharp despair, for as he had foreseen,
a modern army could not be crumpled up and disposed of. What he did now
anticipate, was any amount of inconvenience.
Amiens, he gathered, was uninhabitable, that meant many good
restaurants out of reach. New lines of rail, new lateral communications
would be necessary, that meant marching. Just when they had begun
to get the trenches fairly reliable, they were entrained and sent
wandering all round the coast. The wonderful spring weather broke with
the end of March, as the weather always did, when it had ceased to be
of any use to the Bosche, and had he been superstitious, he might have
thought a good deal of that. It was in a cold and rainy April that he
found himself landed on the edge of the coal-fields, behind a canal,
with a slag heap on one side of him, and a little wood on the other,
amid an ominous quiet.
The company of which he had been given command was now about a
hundred and fifty strong and he had done what little he could to
equalize the four platoons. He had one officer with him, a middle-aged
Lieutenant called Merfin, of no distinguishable social status, or
local characteristics. The day when a battalion came from one town
or corner of a county, under officers that were local personages in
the civil life of its district, was long past. Dormer placed his
second-in-command socially as music-hall, or pawnbroking, but the chap
had been out before and had been wounded, and probably knew something
of the job. The men were satisfactory enough, short, stumpy fellows
with poor teeth, but exactly that sort of plainness of mind that Dormer
appreciated. They would do all right. Perhaps a quarter of them had
been out before, and the remainder seemed fairly efficient in their
musketry and bombing, and talked pigeons and dogs in their spare time,
when not gambling.
The bit of line they held was Reserve, a bridge-head over the canal, a
strong point round a half-demolished château in the wood, and some wet
trenches to the right, where the next battalion joined on. Battalion
Head-quarters was in a farm half a mile back. Dormer and Merfin
improvised a Mess in the cellar of the Château, saw that the cooker
in the stables was distributing tea, and let all except the necessary
guards turn in. He had some machine gunners at the strong point, and
across the canal were two guns, whose wagons had just been up with
rations and ammunition. His own lot of rations came soon after and he
told Merfin to take the first half of the night, and rolled himself in
his coat to sleep.
As he lay there, listening to the scatter of machine-gun fire, and
the mutter of officers’ servants in the adjoining coal-hole, watching
the candle shadows flicker on the walls that had been whitewashed, as
the draught stirred the sacking over the doorway, his main thought
was how little anything changed. Two and a half years ago he had been
doing exactly the same thing, a few miles away, in the same sort of
cellar, in front of an enemy with the same sort of advantage in ground
and initiative, machine guns and heavy artillery. He was as far from
beating the Germans as ever he had been. He supposed that practically
all the gains of 1916 and 1917 south of Arras had been lost. On the
other hand, the Germans, so far as he could see, were equally far from
winning. What he now feared was, either by prolonged War or premature
Peace, a continuance of this sort of thing. And slowly, for he was as
mild and quiet-mannered a man as one could find, his gorge began to
rise. He began to want to get at these Germans. It was no longer a
matter of principle, a feeling that it was his duty as it had been in
the days when he enlisted, took a commission, and had come to France.
He was no longer worrying about the injustice of the attack on Belgium
or the danger of a Germany paramount in Europe. He had now a perfectly
plain and personal feeling. But being Dormer, this did not make him cry
out for a _sortie en masse_ like a Frenchman, nor evolve a complicated
and highly scientific theory as to how his desire was to be realized.
The French and Portuguese who fought beside him would have found him
quite incomprehensible. The Germans actually invented a logical Dormer
whom they had to beat, who was completely unlike him. If he had any
ideas as to what he was going to do, they amounted to a quiet certainty
that once the enemy came away from his heavy and machine guns, he,
Dormer, could do him in.
So he went on with the next thing, which was to turn over and sleep.
He woke, sitting bolt upright, to the sound of two terrific crashes.
One was right over his head. The candle had been blown out, and as he
struggled out of the cellar, barking his shins and elbows, he was aware
that the faint light of the sky was obscured by a dense cloud all round
him. Instinctively he pulled up his gas mask, but the sound of falling
masonry and the grit he could taste between his lips, reassured him.
It was a cloud of brick dust. Across the canal, the barrage was falling
on the front lines with the thunder of a waterfall. The Bosche had hit
the Château, and if he were not mistaken, had put in another salvo,
somewhere near by. At the gate of the little park-like garden he ran
into a figure he recognized for Merfin, by the red light of the battle,
just across the canal.
“What is it?”
“Aw--they’ve knocked in the bridge!”
“Every one standing-to?”
“Can’t help ’emselves.”
They went to look at the damage. The bridge was a small, one vehicle
affair, with steel lattice sides, and an asphalt roadway. The bridge
piers at the near end had been blown away, and the whole had settled
down some four or five feet, on to the mud of the tow-path.
“Can you get across?”
“Aw--yes--easy!”
“Better get across and wait a bit!”
He himself went back to find up his stretcher bearers, who, he had
always noticed, wanted an order to get them in motion. The guard on
the bridge was dead so far as he could see, but some one was shouting,
behind, at the Château.
He found the C.S.M with two men digging out the servants whose
coal-cellar had been blocked. One of them was badly crushed, but his
own man only shaken. Then there were horses on the road. Gunners,
trying to get their teams up to the advanced guns. Hopeless, of
course. Then came a runner from battalion. Send Merfin with two
platoons. He saw to that, and rearranged his depleted company. It took
some time. The barrage appeared to be creeping nearer. The ground shook
with the continuous concussion and whiffs of gas were more and more
noticeable, but the heavier stuff was already falling farther to the
rear. Then came a runner from across the bridge. There was a crowd
on the road. Dormer went and found just what he expected. Walking
wounded and those who wanted to be treated as such. He sorted them
out, directing the former down the road to the dressing station, and
setting the others to dig. If he had got to hang on to this place, and
he supposed he had, he meant to have some cover. The stream of people
across the broken bridge increased. Trench mortars and machine gunners,
platoons of his own regiment. The Bosche was “through” on the left,
and they were to come back behind the canal. The barrage died out, to
confirm this. The machine-gun fire came nearer and nearer.
In the cold grey light of a wet April dawn, a tin-helmeted figure
dashed up on a borrowed motor-cycle. It was the Brigade Major. What had
Dormer got? He heard and saw, and took a platoon and all the sundries.
His last words were: “Hang on here, whatever you do!” Dormer heard
the words without emotion. He realized that it meant that he was
expected to gain time. He got hold of his Sergeant, and overhauled the
rations and ammunition. They were not too badly off, and the cooker lay
stranded in the stable yard. That meant hot water, at least. He took a
turn round the place. The Château grounds had once been wired as part
of some forgotten scheme of defence of 1915 or early 1916. That was all
right. On the other hand, the “bridge-head”--a precious half-boiled
concoction--was full of gas and the barrier on the road blown away.
He got his few men out of it, with their several casualties, and
started them carting brick rubble from the dilapidations of the Château
to make an emplacement for a machine-gun on the near side of the
bridge. He stood looking at the road by which the Bosche must come--a
mere lane that led from one of the neighbouring coal-pits, and was
used, he imagined, for transport of coal that was required locally. It
meandered out of sight, among low fenceless fields, until the shallow
undulations of the ground hid it. In the distance was the steamy reek
of last night’s battle, but nothing that moved, amid the silence broken
only by long-distance shots, and fusillade somewhere on the left. Then,
down that road he saw a party advancing, led by an officer. There was
no doubt that they wore khaki. He waited by the bridge for them, and
shouted directions to them how to cross. He got an answer:
“Hallo, you old devil, what are you doing?”
It was that Kavanagh. There had been an advanced signal exchange,
and he had gone to bring his men in. They were tired, hungry and
disgusted, but Kavanagh had the jauntiness of old. He wasn’t going back
to Division, he was going to stay with dear old Dormer, and see this
through. Dormer thought a moment, then said: “All right.”
“All right. I should think so. I don’t suppose I could catch Division,
even on a motor-byke. They must be nearly at Calais. It’s all rot. The
Bosche are done!”
“Are they?”
“Sure. What are they waiting for now?”
“Bringing up their artillery?”
“That won’t blow the water out of the canal.”
“Possibly not. But we may as well have some food while it’s possible.”
“You old guts. Always eating!”
“Yes, when I can. Aren’t you?”
“Now, Dormer. You know me better than that. Glory is my manna.”
“Will you take cold bully and tea with it?” asked Dormer as they
dropped into the cellar.
Kavanagh made no objection, and they ate in silence, fast, for ten
minutes. Then they saw the men were being fed, and relapsed, in their
hiding-place, into pipes, and whisky out of Kavanagh’s flask.
“How did you get into this show?” Dormer asked.
“The Division--your old Division, my boy, left me here to hand over!
They might have spared themselves the trouble. But I’d got a most
lovely scheme of lateral communication. Corps gave me a lot of sweet
words about it. I suppose I shall get the M.C. Now the silly old Hun
has gone and blown it all to bits. What about you?”
“You know I got wrong and was sent home sick.”
“I heard all that. It was about that Vanderlynden affair, wasn’t it?”
“It was!”
“Well, you’ve no idea what a sensation you created. Vinyolles got
simply wet behind the ears with it. Some French Deputy said, after
the Somme show, that English troops did more damage to France than to
Germany. Of course every one on Divisional H.Q. has changed in the
last few months. They all established an alibi or Habeas Corpus or
something. It was one of the things that made the French Press go for
unity of command! You were a boon to them!”
“I wish them joy of the business. I don’t know why you mix me up with
it.”
“Why, it was your pet show, wasn’t it?”
“It got fathered on to me because I could understand what it was about.”
“Yes, you told Vinyolles, didn’t you?”
“The ignorant brute asked me.”
“I know. He’s all fresh. I find him trying also. Well, he knows all
about it now.”
“Tell you the truth, I’ve no idea what I said, Kavanagh! I was feeling
queer!”
“Vinyolles thought you’d gone potty.”
“He wasn’t far wrong.”
“He said you told him the whole British Army was guilty of the Kerrime
at Vanderlynden’s!”
It was the first time Dormer had heard it called that.
“Well, in a sense, so they are.”
“In a sense, War is a foolish business!”
“I thought you liked it?”
“I was trying to talk like you----”
Before Dormer could reply, the sacking over the door was lifted, by
Dormer’s Sergeant.
“Cop’l Arbone is back, sir!”
“Very good. Did he get in touch with the Major?”
“He only found a Lewis-gun section, sir. The Major moved most of the
men along the canal, where there’s more trouble!”
“All right!”
“Well, I suppose I may as well go and have a look at my lot,” Kavanagh
stretched himself.
“I told ’em to hunt round and see if they could get this place wired
up!”
“Umpteenth Corps ought to have thought of that, long ago!”
“Did you ever know Corps think of anything.”
While Kavanagh was so engaged, Dormer took a turn round the various
guards and posts he had established. There appeared to be fair cover
from view, and even from small-arm and field-gun fire. Of course
when the Bosche really wanted to get the place, nothing Dormer and
Kavanagh and some forty men could do would stop it. In coming round
to the stables behind the Château he found his Sergeant with two men,
laboriously trundling on a hand cart what he soon verified to be slabs
of marble. What would they think of next? The explanation was, “There
was a champion bathroom, sir, an’ I thought we could set up our Lewis
better with these!”
When Kavanagh saw what was going on, he laughed.
“More damage in billets, Dormer!”
“Well, the stuff will be smashed up anyhow, won’t it?”
“Two blacks don’t make a white. I understand why you told Vinyolles the
whole army was guilty. You’re doing just what your friend did about his
mules.”
“Why will you drag in that beastly business? This has nothing in common
with it.”
“To the common all things are common. You tell the owner of the Château
that when he finds out.”
Dormer was going to say “He won’t find out!” but refrained. He disliked
arguing. This seemed a particularly bad argument. Also, at that moment,
a Lewis gun began, just below. Then another. He went to the garden
wall, and peered out. Nothing visible, as usual. He thought of all
the battle pictures he had ever seen. The prancing horses, the gay
uniforms, the engrossing action of figures that pointed muzzle or
bayonet at each other, that wielded sword or lance. Here he was, an
incident in one of the biggest battles in the world. All he could see
was neglected arable, smashed buildings, a broken bridge and a blocked
by-road, all shrouded in steamy vapour. He made out that it was the
Lewis opposite the end of the bridge that was firing. He crawled along
the gully that had been dug from the Château gate to the roadway, and
so to the emplacement by the step-off of the bridge. The Corporal in
charge of the section turned to him.
“Got ’im, sir!”
“What is it?”
“Bosche in the ditch, under them bushes!”
Dormer waited a moment, but nothing happened. He crawled back, and sent
his Sergeant round to see that every one was under cover. Back in the
cellar he found Kavanagh, and told him.
“I know. Once more into the breach!”
“It’s not poetry, Kavanagh. This is the start. Once they find we’re
stopping them here, they’ll shift us, you may bet!”
“I shouldn’t wonder. My lot are trying to get into touch with Brigade.
They’re running a line back behind the wood. There’s no one on our
left, as far as can be found.”
“Must be some one.”
“Why should there be? Brigade have probably moved by this time.”
“Ah, well, can’t be helped.”
No use telling the chap that it was all useless. He just sat down
and lit his pipe. He perceived clearly enough that they were being
sacrificed--just left there to hold the Bosche up for a few hours,
while the Division went back.