"I suppose you know," I remarked, "that Tom Birnie appointed yourself
and myself Roy's trustees and executors?"
"Yes. Tom wrote me a letter to that effect before he enlisted."
"He did enlist, then?"
"I believe so."
I did not press for details. Lord Eskerley has means at his disposal of
discovering most of the secrets of this world--which is not to say that
he is accustomed to pass these on to third parties.
"Have you seen Roy," I continued, "or heard from him of late?"
"I have not seen him, and he has not favoured me with a single line
since he went out for the first time. By the way, I observe she
received a decoration the other day--for conspicuous bravery during an
air-raid."
"Who?"
"Who? The girl!"
"The girl? You mean--the Netherby girl? Is that _affaire_ still--?"
"Yes. Name of Clegg. You know what became of her, I suppose?"
"No. Roy has never been communicative on the subject, although I
believe he used to maintain a correspondence with her. The junior
members of the mess were quite intrigued about it. I had almost
forgotten her existence. What became of her?"
"She couldn't stand Papa's peaceful principles, so ran away from home
and came to London. I employed her to drive my car for some time; but
she left me. Said the work wasn't hard enough. She now supports herself
on the stage, so as to have her days free for some sort of drudgery in a
canteen."
"And you think that she and Roy still--
"Married, last August!" replied his lordship simply.
"_What?_"
"On the quiet--registry office! Wonderful, heavenly secret, and all
that! How the young love a clandestine romance! And some of us never
grow up!" added the old man complacently.
*CHAPTER XIX*
*THE LAST THROW*
"I'm sorry, gentlemen," said the Divisional Commander, "but I can't
possibly let any unit proceed to rest areas at present. Our orders are
to stand by, day and night, and be ready to move in any direction at an
hour's notice. By the way, this is quite an informal meeting, so ask
any questions you like."
"What is the latest news of the tactical situation, sir?" inquired the
senior Brigadier, articulating the question that was on every one's
lips.
We were gathered together at a Commanding Officers' Meeting. The
Division had just emerged from four months of winter trench-warfare in
the north--only to be diverted from its search for well-earned repose by
an urgent summons to repair southward without delay to its ancient
stamping-ground behind Albert. We had marched all night, to be
intercepted at dawn by orders to bivouac where we stood. I myself was
summoned to the meeting, hastily convened in a village school five miles
farther on.
"It's a pretty sticky business all round," said the General frankly.
"The situation appears to be this. As you know, it has been obvious for
months that the Boche has been meditating a tremendous offensive against
some part of the British front. The Commander-in-Chief, not having
sufficient troops to give adequate protection to the whole of his line--
"Why _hasn't_ he sufficient troops?" inquired a voice--the voice of the
C.R.A., a fiery old gentleman with a monocle. He was a coeval of the
General's, so was qualified to act as cross-examiner for us lesser
lights.
"It's not my business to explain, or ours to wonder. I can only give
you the facts. Last year the British Army had, roughly speaking, one
million casualties. This year the British Army is fighting in France,
Belgium, Italy, Saloniki, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indian frontier,
and East Africa; so you can imagine the clamour for reinforcements that
is going on all over the globe. Thirdly, the French, not long ago,
asked us to take over another twenty-eight miles of line. We did so;
with the result that the C.-in-C. found himself in the position of
having to decide, since he hadn't enough men to hold all the line
securely, where he must hold on at all costs, and where he could afford
to take chances. Obviously, he had to make the Straits of Dover
impregnable; so the northern part of the line got the lion's share of
troops. Down here, the Fifth Army were strung out to a beggarly bayonet
per yard. North of them, the Third Army had about three bayonets to two
yards. Opposite this line, during the past few weeks, the Boche was
known to have accumulated a force averaging seven bayonets per yard--"
A low murmur ran round the crowded little school-room. It was fully
light now, and we could see one another's startled faces. "In other
words, sixty or seventy divisions. Against that force we had available
twenty-two divisions in the line, with twelve infantry divisions and
three cavalry divisions in reserve. The attack opened six days ago.
The Boches, as usual, had the Devil's own luck with the weather--thick
mist--and were on us in a solid phalanx before we saw them at all. I
may add that they were backed by the most terrific concentration of
artillery fire on record, and raised unexpected Sheol in our back areas
by a new very long range gas-shell. By all the rules they ought to have
wiped us right out. But they didn't. We were bowled over again and
again; but we always managed to re-form some sort of line--until the
want of reserves began to tell, and brigades and divisions, thinned out
to nothing, began to draw in upon themselves and leave gaps on their
flanks. The cavalry worked like heroes to cover the intervals; but they
couldn't be everywhere, and one position after another was outflanked
and had to be given up. Noyon has gone; Peronne has gone; Monchy has
gone; the whole Somme battle-field of Nineteen-Sixteen has gone. Even
Albert"--there came a groan here from all of us who had fought in the
Somme battle--"has fallen into Boche hands. Yes, I know! But things
might be worse. Arras is holding fast; and the good old Vimy Ridge is
still standing right up to them. It's tolerably certain now that the
Boche was booked to get Amiens in three days. He hasn't got it; and if
we can continue to make him pay his present price he will never get it
at all."
There was small comfort in this. The very fact that Amiens had become a
Boche possibility was a staggerer in itself. We thought of the Hotel du
Rhin, and other haunts of ancient peace, and sighed.
"How is morale?" asked the C.R.A.
The General held up a paper.
"Here is the Commander-in-Chief's latest dispatch," he said. "Listen to
this, gentlemen!"
_At no time was there anything approaching a breakdown of command or a
failure of morale. Under conditions that made rest and sleep impossible
for days together, officers and men remained undismayed, realising that
for the time being they must play a waiting game, and determined to make
the enemy pay the full price for the advantage which, for the moment,
was his._
We broke into applause. We could not help it.
"Naturally," continued the General, "the strain has been awful, because
we are employing tired men, fighting without reinforcements against ever
fresh bodies of troops. However, more divisions are coming down from
the north--you are one of the first arrivals--and Foch has taken supreme
command, which means that hereafter the Allied forces will be more
evenly distributed and the line stabilised. The long and short of it
all is that the enemy has been frustrated, for the time being, in his
amiable attempt to drive a wedge between the British and French armies."
"Still," said the voice of the C.R.A., "I suppose the situation is
pretty critical?"
"Critical isn't the word! But the line is still intact, though badly
bent, and we have beaten all our previous records for Boche-killing,
which is saying something. And if they fail to break through--good-bye
Germany! It's their last throw. A German who knows he cannot win is a
German beaten. Now, gentlemen, you will understand why it is that you
cannot go into retirement at present. That's all, I think! To your
tents, O Israel--and breakfast! But be ready to move at an hour's
notice."
Roy and I jogged wearily back across country to the field where the men
were bivouacking. Roy was my senior company commander, and I had brought
him to the meeting in preference to the adjutant, who was very young and
already bowed down with regimental routine. Roy, a seasoned Ironside of
twenty-two, with two-and-a-half years continuous active service to his
record, was now my shield and buckler and right-hand man.
We had little to say to one another. We were both dog-tired, and were
suffering in addition from that unpleasant form of reaction which comes
from hope deferred. We were thinking, too, of the men. They had
completed four months of exhausting and expensive trench duty, working
by "internal reliefs," which really means no relief at all; each man
staying his dour dogged heart with the only two consolations available
in those days--the humdrum certainty of ultimate relief by another
division, and the ever present possibility of a "Blighty" wound. And
now, when they had actually packed up and removed out of the shell area,
with a spell of rest and relaxation well within their grasp, they found
themselves pulled back into the line. That sort of experience is a
severer test of morale than an intensive bombardment. The danger was
that they might go stale--just as I had once seen a highly-trained
college crew go, when the races were postponed for a week owing to ice
on the river.
"We will call a pow-wow when we get back," I said to Roy, "and tell the
officers to explain matters to the men as well as they can. They must
sing the usual song about our trusty old indispensable Division, the
prop and stay of the weaker brethren, proudly filling the breach and
saving the situation, and so forth."
"They'll respond all right," said Roy confidently. "They are a
wonderful crowd."
"They certainly are; but it will break their hearts if they are shoved
back for another spell of trench duty. Of course, if we go right into
the scrap, with a fair chance to get above ground and grab the Boche by
the ears, they won't mind at all--quite the reverse. It will be a
perfect tonic."
"If half of what His Nibs said is true, they'll get all the tonic they
want!" remarked my sage young companion. "We're for it, this time!"
He was right. Even at that moment our task had been assigned to us; for
when we reached Battalion Headquarters--a G.S. waggon in the corner of a
field, in the middle of which certain incurable greathearts were playing
football--we found that the telephone had outstripped us, and that our
orders were waiting.
We gobbled breakfast, with that curious mingling of sentiment and
satisfaction which comes to men who are not sure if they will ever see a
poached egg again. Then I summoned my officers. I passed on to them
the substance of the General's statement, and spoke of the gaps that
were being created in the line by lack of reinforcements.
"Such a gap," I explained, "has occurred almost directly in front of us,
along the crest of a low ridge called Primrose Hill. (The Adjutant will
give you the map reference in a minute.) The gap is being filled at
present by a rather raw battalion of newly-arrived Territorials, rushed
up from Corps Reserve. It is a very important point, and we are to go
in and stiffen them. Written orders will be issued to you immediately;
but it may save time if I mention that I propose to march the battalion
direct to the back of Primrose Hill, deploy, and advance in lines of
companies until we strike the trench system which the Royal Loyals are
holding. In that way we ought to be able to plug any possible gap in
the shortest possible time. We may have to advance through a barrage;
but that, of course, is all in the day's work. Company commanders will
take such precautions as are possible to ensure the safety of their men,
but they must not waste time on this occasion looking for covered lines
of advance. In other words, the situation is critical, and must be
tackled bald-headed. The point of deployment, as at present fixed, is a
blacksmith's forge on the road running direct from here to Primrose
Hill. It is marked in the map, _Michelin Forge_; there's a big
motor-tyre advertisement on the western gable, the Brigade Major tells
me. I shall go there now myself, and establish temporary headquarters.
Companies will move off independently in succession, A Company leading.
Company commanders will report at Michelin Forge for further
instructions. Later, after we have deployed and advanced up the reverse
slope of Primrose Hill--it is a mere swelling in the ground, as a matter
of fact--Battalion Headquarters will be established, if possible, in a
_point d'appui_ just behind the crest, called Fountain Keep. It is a
ruined ornamental garden, I believe, with the wreck of a fountain in the
middle. I hope you'll all arrive there in due course--and find me
there! That's all! Good luck to you!"
My officers saluted in a manner that warmed my heart, and hurried off to
their duties. I felt sorry I had not been able to give them a more
stirring harangue: I felt sure that Eric would have done so. Still,
harangue or no harangue, I knew they would lead their men to the crest
of Primrose Hill. I looked after them affectionately. Most of them I
never saw again from that hour. But I remember them all to-day--their
faces, their voices, their characteristics. They were of many
types--the variegated types of a whole nation at last in arms. There
were Public School and Sandhurst products, like Roy; there were promoted
rankers, with permanently squared shoulders and little waxed moustaches;
there were professional and business men verging on middle-age, who had
long shed their stomachs and acquired a genuine passion for army forms
and regimental routine. The last two figures that caught my eye were
those of my machine-gun officer, a Mathematical Fellow of an ancient
Cambridge college, and Adams, second-in-command of B Company, who in a
previous existence had officiated as under gate-porter in the same
foundation. The British Army in those days was one great ladder, up
which all men, gentle or simple, might climb if they had the character
and the will. In that army at the end of the war there was a Divisional
General who had been editor of a newspaper; there was a
Brigadier-General who had been a taxi-cab driver; another who had been a
school-teacher. Numbered among that exclusive hierarchy, the General
Staff, were an insurance clerk, an architect's assistant, and a college
cook. A coal miner, a railway signalman, a market gardener, and
countless promoted private soldiers commanded battalions.
A few minutes later I rode off with my adjutant, young Hume-Logan, in
the direction of Michelin Forge. My faithful orderly--a gigantic,
inarticulate Lowland hind named Herriott--jogged along in rear of us.
It was a distressing ride. A badly mangled terrain, restored to France
and cultivation by Hindenburg's operatic retirement to the Siegfried
line, was being overrun once more: and the plucky, industrious peasant
population, which had been so busily employed for the past twelve months
in rebuilding their villages and re-ploughing their emancipated soil
behind the traditionally sure shield of a British trench line, found
itself uprooted and cast forth for the second time. The panic-stricken
flood of refugees had now subsided; but along the road we encountered
sights which wrung the heart and tweaked the conscience--here, a pitiful
little cart loaded with worldly possessions which hardly seemed worth
salving; there, a tired woman struggling along a muddy roadside with her
children
_Respiciens frustra rura laresque sua_
--as Ovid used to say in the Repetition Book. I felt somehow, perhaps
unjustifiably, but none the less poignantly, that for once the British
Army had failed in a trust.
But presently I saw something which inspired me. Down the road came a
big elderly peasant woman wheeling a barrow, piled high with household
furniture. (You have to invade French peasant territory very suddenly
and very early in the morning indeed, if you expect to find so much as
an orange-box left to sit down upon.) We looked down on the barrow as
it passed.
"She doesn't seem to have forgotten anything, sir," observed Master
Hume-Logan.
I gave Madame a respectful salute as we rode past. Her hard features
never relaxed. Instead, she set down her barrow by the roadside, turned
round, and started back in the same direction as ourselves: in fact, she
outstripped our two horses, which were walking delicately amid the
puddles.
"She seems to have forgotten something, after all," I said.
But I was wrong. She had forgotten nothing. Two hundred yards along the
road stood another wheelbarrow. In it--mute, helpless, patient--lay a
very old man. The old woman seized the shafts of this barrow and began
to wheel it after the first. In so doing she met us again--and again I
saluted her. We turned in our saddles and looked after her. At her
original halting-place she deposited the second barrow as close to the
side of the road as possible, turned again to the first, and trundled it
forward, without a moment's rest, another hundred yards or so. When last
we saw her she was coming back--grim, resolute, invincible--for the old
man. She _was_ France--La Patrie, incarnate!
At last we penetrated beyond what we may call the refugee zone, and
arrived at Michelin Forge. There was little of it left save the western
gable, which was still decorated by a tattered presentment of two
pre-war friends, the Bibendum Twins. The low ridge of Primrose Hill
defined the horizon about a mile or two ahead of us. It was nothing of
a hill; it looked no higher than its namesake in distant "N.W." A
quarter-of-a-mile away from us enemy shells were falling with Teutonic
regularity of interval into a group of poor houses, clustered round a
cross-roads. Over the ridge itself shrapnel was bursting intermittently.
Away to our left a large canteen hut was burning fiercely: probably it
had been cleared and set alight to save it from falling into enemy
hands. To the right of the forge a battery of our Four-point-Five
Howitzers was firing salvoes--securely dug in, and screened from
aeroplane view by nets interwoven with leaves and twigs. When, to the
great content of our horses, this performance ceased, I rode over and
sought out the young officer in command. He had not shaved for a week,
and his quite creditable beard was encrusted with mud.
"Yes, sir," he said, "I can tell you a little. The enemy are in force
just beyond that low ridge--Primrose Hill. We are strafing them now.
Our F.O.O. is somewhere in Fountain Keep, which is a strong point just
behind the crest, with one or two observation posts stretching over it.
He has direct observation; his last telephone-message said that the
enemy were massing again behind their own second line. I haven't heard
from him since: that's why I stopped firing. Something gone wrong with
the works, I expect."
"What's the distance from here to the ridge?" I asked.
"Well, we are firing at a range of four thousand three hundred; but
that, of course, reaches Boche territory. The range to the crest is
about three thousand five hundred."
"I see; a brisk country walk of about two miles? I shall deploy here.
Has the Boche been shelling the reverse slope of the hill at all?"
"Not lately. But yesterday afternoon, during a big attack, he put down
a heavy barrage from end to end of it."
"Hum! That means that when he attacks again he will put down another
heavy barrage. The sooner we get to the crest of that hill the better."