groaned. Late products of the at last up-to-date O.T.C.’s of England,
they had only been out a few months and although they had seen
shell-fire and heavy casualties, yet there had always been a retreating
enemy, and fresh ground won every week. The endless-seeming years
of Trench Warfare they had missed entirely. The slow attrition that
left one alone, with all one’s friends wounded or killed, dispersed
to distant commands or remote jobs, meant nothing to them. They had
been schoolboys when Paschendaele was being contested, Cadets when the
Germans burst through the Fifth Army. They wanted a victorious march to
Berlin.
Dormer read the message out to the company. The men received the news
with ironical silence. He had the guards changed, and the parade
dismissed, but confined to billets. He heard one of his N.C.O.’s say to
another: “Cease fire! We’ve got the same amount of stuff on us as we
had two days ago!”
It made him thoughtful. Ought he to crime the chap? Why should he? Had
the Armistice come just in time? If it hadn’t come, would he have been
faced with the spectacle of two armies making peace by themselves,
without orders, against orders, sections and platoons and companies
simply not reloading their rifles, machine gunners and Trench Mortars
not unpacking their gear, finally even the artillery keeping teams
by the guns, and the inertia gradually spreading upwards, until the
few at the top who really wanted to go on, would have found the dead
weight of unwillingness impossible to drag? The prospect, though
curious, was not alarming. In a country so denuded and starved, one
could keep discipline by the simple expedient of withholding rations.
He had already seen, a year before at Étaples, the leaderless plight
of all those millions of armed men, once they were unofficered. He was
not stampeded by panic, and his inherited, inbred honesty bade him ask
himself: “Why shouldn’t they make Peace themselves?” The object that
had drawn all these men together was achieved. The invasion of France
was at an end, that of Belgium a matter of evacuation only. “Cease
fire.” It almost began to look like an attempt to save face. Was it the
same on the German side too?
In the afternoon he proposed to walk over to Battalion H.Q. and have
a word with the Colonel. He knew quite well he should find the other
company commanders there. Naturally every one would want to get some
idea of what was to be expected under these totally unprecedented
circumstances. He was met at the door of his billet by a message from
the youngster he had left in charge. He had got a hundred and forty
prisoners.
Dormer went at once. He could see it all before he got there. All along
the opposite side of the street, faultlessly aligned and properly
“at ease” were men in field grey. At either end of the line stood a
guard of his own company, and not all Dormer’s pride in the men he had
led with very fair success, with whose training and appearance he had
taken great pains, could prevent his admitting to himself that the only
point at which his lot could claim superiority was in a sort of grumpy
humour. The machinery of War had conquered them less entirely than it
had conquered the Germans.
In the little time-keeper’s box, turned into the company office,
he found a tall, good-looking man, who immediately addressed him
in perfect English, giving the rank of Feld Webel, the quantity
and regiment of his party and adding: “I surrender to you, sir.”
Dormer gave instructions that the party should be marched to Brigade
Head-quarters. He wanted to send some report as to the capture, but
his subordinate replied: “We didn’t capture ’em. They just marched up
the street. The post at the bridge let ’em through.” Dormer let it go
at that, and having seen the street cleared, he walked over to see his
Colonel, who was billeted in a big school in a public park. His story
was heard with that sort of amusement that goes with the last bottle
of whisky, and the doubt as to when any more will be obtainable. The
Adjutant said: “Simply gave ’emselves up, did they?”
But the Captain commanding C Company, a man of about Dormer’s own sort
and service, voiced Dormer’s thought.
“I believe, in another week, we’d have had both sides simply laying
down their arms.”
“Oh, nonsense, soon stop that!” The Colonel spoke without real
conviction. He had to say that officially.
With regard to the object for which he had come, Dormer found every
one in his own difficulty. No one knew what was to happen, except that
arrangements were already on foot for enormous demobilization camps.
But the immediate steps were not even known at Brigade. Every one, of
course, aired some pet idea, and were interrupted by noise outside,
shouts and cries, the sound of marching, and orders given in German.
The room emptied in a moment. The park was at one end of the town,
and abutted on the smaller streets of artisans’ dwellings that, in
every town of the sort, goes by the name of Le Nouveau Monde. This
quarter had apparently emptied itself into the park, to the number of
some hundreds, mostly people of over military age, or children, but
one and all with those thin white faces that showed the long years of
insufficient and unsuitable food, and the spiritual oppression that lay
on “occupied” territory. They were shouting and shaking their fists
round the compact formation of Dormer’s prisoners, who had just been
halted, in front of the house. The N.C.O. in charge had been ordered
by Brigade to bring them back. A chit explained the matter: “Prisoners
taken after 11.0 a.m. to be sent back to their own units, on the line
of retreat.”
The Feld Webel enlightened the Colonel’s mystification: “We refuse
to obey the order, sir. Our regiment is twenty miles away. All the
peasants have arms concealed. We shall just be shot down.”
It was a dilemma. Dormer could not help thinking how much better the
Feld Webel showed up, than his own Colonel. The latter could not shoot
the men where they stood. Nor could he leave them to the mercies of
the natives. How difficult War became with the burden of civilization
clogging its heels. The first thing to do was obviously to telephone to
the A.P.M. for police. In the meantime a French Liaison Officer made a
speech, and Dormer grinned to hear him. Fancying apologizing for the
War. But what else could the fellow do. He did it well, considering.
The crowd quieted, thinned, dispersed. The police arrived, and had
a discussion with the Adjutant. Still no conclusion. The Feld Webel
strode up and down in front of his men, master of the situation. At
length, some one had an idea. Six lorries rolled up in the dark, an
interpreter was put on board, and the party moved off in the November
dusk. The Commander of C Company and Dormer left H.Q. together. Parting
at the corner that separated their scattered companies, they both
exclaimed together:
“What a War!” and burst out laughing.
* * * * *
It was perhaps, to a certain degree, Dormer’s fault, that during
the remainder of November he became conscious of a dreary sense of
anti-climax. No doubt he was that sort of person. The emergencies of
the War had considerably overstrained his normal powers, which he
had forced to meet the need. The need had ceased, and he had great
difficulty in goading himself up to doing the bare necessary routine of
Company office parades. He managed to avoid being sent up to the Rhine,
and even secured a reasonable priority in demobilization, but beyond
this there was nothing for it but to “continue the motion” of waiting
for the next thing to happen.
His principal job was to extract from an unwilling peasantry, enough
ground for football. How often did he go to this farm and that village
shop, with his best manner, his most indirect approach, liberal orders
for any of the many commodities that could be bought, and in the last
resort, cheerful payment of ready money out of his own pocket in order
to obtain a grudging leave to use this or that unsuitable meadow, not
to the extent that the game of football demanded, but to the extent
that the small proprietors considered to be the least they could make
him accept for the most money that he could possibly be made to pay.
Then, in the long dark evenings, there was the job of keeping the men
away from the worse sorts of estaminet. His own abilities, limited to
singing correctly the baritone part of Mendelssohn’s Sacred Works,
or Sullivan’s humorous ones, was not of any practical service. What
was wanted was the real star comic, the red-nosed man with improbable
umbrella, the stage clergyman with his stage double-life and voice
that recalled with such unintentional faithfulness, the affected
mock-culture of the closed and stereotyped mind. Any deformity was
welcome, not, Dormer observed, that they wanted to laugh at the
helplessness of the bandy leg or the stutterer, the dwarf or the
feeble-minded. On the contrary, the sentimentality of the poorer
English had never stood out in brighter relief than on the edge of
those devastated battlefields, where in their useless khaki, the men
who had perpetuated the social system that had so blindly and wantonly
used so many of them, waited patiently enough for the order of release
from the servitude that few of them had chosen or any of them deserved.
No, they liked to see the cunning and prowess of the old lady, or the
innocent boy, applauded the way in which all those characters portrayed
as having been born with less than normal capabilities showed more than
normal acquisitiveness or perspicacity.
Dormer could not help reflecting how different they were from the New
Army in which he had enlisted. In the squad of which, at the end of
three months’ violent training and keenly contested examinations, he
had become the Corporal, there had been one or two labourers, several
clerks from the humbler warehouses and railways, others in ascending
scale from Insurance Offices and Banks, one gorgeous individual who
signed himself a Civil Servant, three persons of private means, who
drove up to the parade ground in motor-cars. He well remembered one
of these latter going surreptitiously to the Colonel and applying
for a commission, and being indignantly refused, on the grounds that
the Colonel didn’t know who (socially) he (the applicant) was. But
when the news got out, the section were even more disrespectful to
that unfortunate individual because they considered he had committed
a breach of some sort of unwritten code that they had undertaken to
observe. So they went on together, the immense disparity of taste and
outlook cloaked by shoddy blue uniforms and dummy rifles, equal rations
and common fatigues.
But the first offensive of the spring of 1915 had brought new
conditions. The loss in infantry officers had been nothing short of
catastrophic. Very soon hints, and then public recommendation to
take commissions reached them. The section meanwhile had altered.
Two of the more skilled labourers had got themselves “asked for” by
munition works. Of the remainder Dormer and four others applied and
got commissions. He could see nothing like it now. There was more of
a mix-up than ever. For some men had been exempted from the earlier
“combings out” of the unenlisted for skill, and others for ill-health.
There was now only one really common bond, the imperative necessity to
forget the War and all that had to do with it. This was the general
impetus that had replaced the volunteering spirit, and it was this that
Dormer had to contend with. He mastered the business of amusing the men
pretty well, and his subordinates helped him. A more serious difficulty
was with the skilled mechanics. Fortunately, an infantry battalion
demanded little skill, and except for a few miners who had been out no
time at all, and were at present making no fuss, there was plenty of
grumbling but no organized obstruction.
He found a more advanced state of affairs when he went at the appointed
time, to supervise a football match between a team representing his own
Brigade and that of a neighbouring Brigade of Heavy Artillery. Crossing
the Grand’ Place of the village to call on the Gunner Mess he found a
khaki crowd, but it took him some minutes to realize that a full-dress
protest meeting was in progress. Senior N.C.O.’s were mounted upon a
G.S. wagon. These, he gathered, were the Chairman and speakers. Another
soldier, whose rank he could not see, was addressing the meeting.
More shocked than he had ever been in his life, he hastily circled
the square, and got to the Mess. He found most of the officers in;
there was silence, they were all reading and writing. After the usual
politenesses came a pause. He felt obliged to mention the object of his
visit. Silence again. Eventually the Captain with whom he had arranged
the preliminaries of the match said rather reluctantly:
“I’m afraid we shan’t be able to meet you this afternoon.”
Dormer forebore to ask the reason, but not knowing what else to do,
rose and prepared to take his leave. Possibly he spoke brusquely, he
was nervous in the atmosphere of constraint, but whatever may have
prompted the Gunner Captain, what he said was a confession:
“Our fellows are airing their views about demob.”
“Really!”
“Yes, perhaps you noticed it, as you came along?”
“Well, I did see a bit of a crowd.”
“You didn’t hear the speeches?” The other smiled.
“I heard nothing definitely objectionable, but it’s rather out of
order, isn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose so, but we get no help from up-atop!” The Captain
nodded in the direction of the Local Command.
“No, I suppose not,” Dormer sympathized.
The young Colonel interposed. “It’s very difficult to deal with the
matter. There’s a high percentage of skilled men in our formation. They
want to be getting back to their jobs.”
“It’s really rather natural,” agreed the Captain.
Dormer tried to help him. “We all do, don’t we?”
There was a sympathetic murmur in the Mess which evidently displeased
the Colonel.
“I’m not accustomed to all this going home after the battle.
Time-expired men I understand, but the New Army enlistments----” He
left it at that, and Dormer felt for him, probably, with the exception
of a few servants and N.C.O.’s, the only pre-War soldier in the Mess,
uncertain of himself and trying not to see the ill-suppressed sympathy
if not envy with which most of the officers around him regarded the
affair.
“Awfully sorry, Dormer,” the Captain concluded, “we simply can’t get
our crowd together. You see how it is. When this has blown over I’ll
come across and see you, and we will fix something up.”
Dormer went.
The Gunner Captain came that evening. In Dormer’s smaller Mess, it
needed only a hint to the youngsters to clear out for a few minutes.
Dormer admired the good humour with which the other approached him. It
was obviously the only thing to do.
Over drinks he asked, modelling himself on the other’s attitude:
“So that business blew over, did it?”
“It did, thank goodness. Awfully decent of you to take it as you did. I
hated letting you down.”
“Don’t mention it. I saw how you were placed.”
“The Colonel very much appreciated the way you spoke. I hope you had no
trouble with your chaps?”
“They were all right. I pitched them a yarn. They didn’t believe it, of
course. Some of them were at the--er----”
“The bloomin’ Parliament. Don’t mind saying it. It’s a dreadful shock
to a regular like our old man.”
“Naturally.”
“He spoke the plain unvarnished truth when he said he was unused to all
this demobbing.”
“Well, well, you can comfort him, I suppose, by pointing out that it
isn’t likely to occur again.”
“He’s a good old tough ’un. Splendid man in action, that’s what makes
one so sorry about it. Otherwise, of course, one knows what the men
mean. It’s only natural.”
“Perfectly.”
“His trouble is not only the newness of it. It’s his utter
helplessness.”
“Quite so. Absolutely nothing to be done. The--er--meeting was as
orderly as possible. I walked right through it. They simply ignored me.”
“Oh yes, there’s no personal feeling. They all paraded this morning
complete and regular.”
“That’s the end of it, I hope.”
“I think so. They came up to the Mess--three N.C.O.’s--a deputation, if
you please. They brought a copy of the resolution that was passed.”
Neither could keep a straight face, but laughter did not matter because
it was simultaneous. The Captain went on, finishing his drink:
“I believe the old man had a momentary feeling that he ought to crime
some one--but our Adjutant--topping chap--met them in the passage and
gave them a soft answer, and cooked up some sort of report, and sent it
up. It pacified ’em.”
“Did they need it?”
“Not really. ’Pon me word, never saw anything more reasonable in my
life, than what they had written out. It’s too bad, hanging ’em up for
months and months, while other people get their jobs. They know what
they want so much better than anyone else.”
“It’s impossible to please every one.”
“Yes. But when you think of what the men have done.”
Dormer did not reply. He was thinking of the Infantry, with their whole
possessions on their backs, always in front in the advance, last in
the retreat. The Gunner took his leave. Like everything else, either
because of the incident, or more probably without any relation to it,
the slow but steady progress of demobilization went on, those men who
had the more real grievance, or the greater power of expression, got
drafted off. The composition of units was always changing. Even where
it did not, what could “other ranks” do? To the last Dormer felt his
recurrent nightmare of the Headless Man to be the last word on the
subject. But it was becoming fainter and fainter as the violence of
the first impression dimmed, keeping pace with the actuality of the
dispersal of that khaki nation that lay spread across France, Germany,
Italy, the Balkans, and the East. The Headless Man was fading out.
* * * * *
It was mid-April, the first fine weather of the year, when his own turn
came. Of course the Mess gave him a little dinner, for although nothing
on earth, not even four years of War, could make him a soldier, his
length of service, varied experience, and neat adaptability had made
him invaluable; again no one had ever found it possible to quarrel with
him; further, his preoccupation with games had made him perhaps the
most sought-for person in the Brigade.
Had it not been for these reasons, there was little else to which
he had a farewell to say; casualty, change, and now demobilization
removed friends, then chance acquaintances, until there was no one with
whom he was in the slightest degree intimate. He might almost have been
some attached officer staying in the Mess, instead of its President,
for all he knew of the officers composing it. There was nothing in the
village that lay on the edge of the battlefield that he wanted to see
again. It was not a place where he had trained or fought, it was not
even the place at which the news of the Armistice had reached him. It
was just a place where the Brigade of which his battalion had formed
a part had been dumped, so as to be out of the way, but sufficiently
within reach of rail, for the gradual attrition of demobilization
to work smoothly. An unkind person might have wondered if the mild
festival that took place in the estaminet of that obscure commune was
not so much a farewell dinner to old Dormer, as an eagerly sought
opportunity for a little extra food and drink that might help to pass
the empty days. Slightly bleary-eyed in the morning, Dormer boarded the
train, waved his hand to the little group of officers on the platform,
and sat down to smoke until he might arrive at Dunkirk.
On a mild April evening, he paced the port side of the deck of the
steamer that was taking him home. He was aware that he might have to
spend a night in dispersal station, but it did not matter in the
least. The real end of the business to such an essential Englishman
as Dormer was here and now, watching the calm leaden sea-space widen
between him and the pier-head of Calais. Prophets might talk about the
obliteration of England’s island defences, but the sentiment that the
Channel evoked was untouched. After years of effort and sacrifice,
Dormer remained a stranger in France. He might know parts of it
tolerably well, speak its language fairly, fight beside its soldiers,
could feel a good deal of intelligent admiration for its people and
institutions, but nothing would ever make him French. It would perhaps
have been easier to assimilate him into Germany. But on the whole, in
spite of his unprovocative manner, he was difficult to assimilate, a
marked national type. Lengthier developments and slower, more permanent
revolutions were in his inherited mental make-up, than in that of any
of the other belligerents. In a Europe where such thrones as were left
were tottering and crashing, nothing violent was in his mind, or in
the minds of ninety per cent of those men who covered the lower deck,
singing together, with precisely the same lugubrious humour, as in the
days of defeat, of stalemate, or of victory:
“Old soldiers never die,
They only fade away.”
He turned to look at them, packed like sardines, so that even the sea
breeze could hardly dissipate the clouds of cigarette smoke, just as
no disaster and no triumph could alter their island characteristics,
however much talk there might be about town life sapping the race. As
he looked at them, herded and stalled like animals, but cheerful in
their queer way as no animal can ever be, he remembered that somewhere
among all those thousands that were being poured back into England day
by day (unless of course he were buried in one of those graveyards
that marked so clearly the hundred miles from Ypres to St. Quentin)
was a private soldier, whom he had been told to discover and bring to
justice for the Crime at Vanderlynden’s, as Kavanagh had called it. He
had never even got the fellow’s name and number, and he did not care.
He never wanted the job, nothing but his punctilious New Army spirit,
that had made him take the War as seriously as if it had been business,
had kept him at it. Now he had done with it, the man would never be
found. But in Dormer’s mind would always remain that phantom that he
had pursued for so many months--years even, over all those miles, in
and out of so many units and formations. It had come to stand for all
that mass whose minds were as drab as their uniform, so inarticulate,
so decent and likable in their humility and good temper. Theirs was the
true Republicanism, and no written constitution could add anything to
it. He had not thought of that affair, during all these last months
that had seen so many Empires fall, so many nations set upon their
feet, but he thought of it now.
He turned once again and surveyed that coastline, somewhere behind
which he had made that pilgrimage; there it lay, newly freed Belgium on
the left, on the right the chalky downs that ran from Gris-Nez far out
of sight, down to Arras. Between the two, on those marshes so like any
of South-Eastern England, had taken place that Crime at Vanderlynden’s,
that typified the whole War. There, on those flat valleys of the
Yser and the Lys, the English army had come to rest after its first
few weeks of romantic march and counter-march. There had the long
struggle of endurance been the longest and least spectacular. It was
there that the English Effort, as they called it, had played its
real part, far more than on the greater battlefields farther south,
or away on other continents. The Crime at Vanderlynden’s showed the
whole thing in miniature. The English had been welcomed as Allies,
resented as intruders, but never had they become homogeneous with
the soil and its natives, nor could they ever leave any lasting mark
on the body or spirit of the place. They were still incomprehensible
to Vanderlynden’s, and Vanderlynden’s to them. Dormer was of all men
most unwilling and perhaps unable to seek for ultimate results of
the phenomena that passed before his eyes. To him, at that moment,
it seemed that the English Effort was fading out, leaving nothing
but graveyards. And when he found this moving him, his horror of the
expression of any emotion asserted itself, and he elbowed his way down
the companion, to get a drink.