Whee ... ee ... ee ... oo ... oo ... PLUNK!
A rushing noise as of great wings beating the air, a reverberating
crash, like the slamming of an iron door, blended with the sound of
jangling glass, of splintering wood; then an unfamiliar, high-pitched
cry, “A ... a ... ah!” followed by a mechanical chant on a rising key,
as it passed from mouth to mouth--
“Stretcher-bearER!”
The platform of the station was deserted. A very familiar name stared
down upon our heroes from the lamps. Their fellow-travellers by the
train ... a handful of all sorts, officers, Australian privates, some
R.A.M.C. orderlies, a couple of Belgian interpreters ... had long since
vanished into safety.
The sky seemed full of odd noises. Every minute or so the new arrivals
heard the long-drawn-out whistle of a shell, cut short on its rising
note by the crash of the explosion. The first shell they had heard had
seemed to strike very close at hand: the succeeding crashes, though
equally loud, appeared to be farther away.
Everybody knows the sound of a shell, even when he hears it for the
first time. Concerned mainly with the fear lest the other should notice
that he “had the wind up,” our two young Guardsmen hastily pulled
their kits out of the train, and leaving them where they fell on the
platform, made for the station-hall.
There they saw two men on their knees beside a stretcher. To the right
of them a notice painted in white on a blackboard announced the office
of the R.T.O. or Railway Transport Officer, where our young men had to
report.
In the R.T.O.’s office, installed in what had probably been a lamp-room
or something of the sort, they found most of their fellow-passengers
assembled. Under the influence of their original welcome, everybody was
conversing in whispers.
The R.T.O. was shortish in his manner. (It is not easy to be polite
under shell fire.)
“Report at Headquarters of Guards’ Division!” he said curtly to our
Ensign and his companion when they had given in their names and
regiment.
“Where is that?” said our Ensign promptly.
Resignedly the officer explained. Yes, it was a goodish way; no, there
was no conveyance of any kind; yes, they would have to go through the
town; no, it was not safe; the town was being shelled. Had they not
heard the shell fall outside the station a minute ago?
“Next! Australian Light Horse?”
The R.T.O. turned to the next man.
“We’ll just have to foot it,” said our hero to The Lad as they made
their way outside, “unless we can get a lift of some kind. We’d better
leave our kits here in charge of some one!”
Outside in the station-hall our Ensign heard a stamp and a click beside
him, a familiar sound, the sound of a Guardsman saluting. Our Ensign
turned and saw a private in breeches and spurs, a well-known crest in
his cap, an old sleeveless rain-coat flying out behind him like a pair
of wings.
“I have a horse for you, sir,” he said, “to take you up to the
transport. I couldn’t get here before on account of the shelling.”
Our Ensign and The Lad were going to different battalions. The moment
of parting had come.
“Your mess-cart has come for you, sir,” said the groom to The Lad, “but
the driver waited outside until the shelling had stopped. If you will
come along with my officer, I can show you where I left him.”
On a long country road lined by tall poplars our Ensign found a couple
of horses and a little Maltese cart. He and The Lad shook hands; the
latter climbed into the cart, while our Ensign mounted a small brown
mare. Then the cart rattled off towards the centre of the town, while
our Ensign trotted down the road, the groom behind him.
Presently our young man drew rein to allow the groom to come up level.
The Ensign began to talk to the soldier.
“They,” said the groom, with a jerk of his head in the direction which
the mess-cart had taken, “are in rest, sir. Our Battalion is in the
line. The Transport Officer thought you would dine with the Transport,
and then go up along of him and the rations after dark to-night.”
The groom was a veteran of the original Expeditionary Force. So was the
little mare which our Ensign was riding, the man told him.
“Many’s the fine officer that little mare’s carried, sir,” he said,
scanning her affectionately: “there was Captain X., him as was killed
back at Soupeers, and Captain Y.--it was on the Zillebeke Ridge where
he got it, sir--and Captain Z., him as was shot by a sniper in the
trenches at Givenchy. Ah! I’ve seen some grand gentlemen go, sir!”
He shook his head mournfully.
“Maybe you’ll want this little switch of mine, sir,” the groom added,
handing our Ensign a small ash plant; “one or two draws o’ this won’t
be after hurting that little mare, she’s that idle!”
Our Ensign welcomed this change in the conversation. The groom’s train
of thought made him slightly uncomfortable in the circumstances.
For a mile or so along the road out of the town the noises still
resounded from the sky. The shells came “whooshing” over so loudly
above their heads that our Ensign felt an irrepressible titillation in
the neck--a strong inclination to duck. To distract his thoughts, he
looked about him.
It was a flat and uninteresting country, but well wooded and very
green. Every house they passed was wrecked by shell fire, more or less
completely; but he noticed that there were still some civilians about.
Practically all the soldiers they met, he observed, were Guardsmen,
and, though their cap-stars and buttons were dull and unpolished, their
uniforms stained and often badly worn, the men were all well shaved and
well brushed, with puttees neatly tied and boots well greased. They
were taking their ease in the cool of the evening, standing gossiping
in the streets of the villages through which our Ensign passed, or
sitting on the benches outside the estaminets.
A ride of more than an hour brought our hero and the groom to a muddy
side-track which led into a pleasant green field. Here a number of
tents were pitched. From a field in rear a prodigious squealing of
fifes and beating of drums resounded in a hopeless cacophony. “The
Drums” (by which generic term, in the Guards, the fife and drum band is
understood) of two battalions were practising in separate groups under
the trees.
The Transport Officer and the Quartermaster made our Ensign welcome
in the mess-tent, gave him a drink and a cigarette, informed him
that he was to dine with them, and eventually showed him into the
Interpreter’s tent, where our hero was much astonished to find his kit
lying. It had apparently been wafted there by some supernatural means
from the platform at the railway station. This was, of course, the
Quartermaster’s doing, but our Ensign was as yet too ignorant of usages
in the field to appreciate that heaven-sent boon, a good Quartermaster.
So he accepted it all as a matter of course, and proceeded to change
his clothes and don warmer things in anticipation of his first night in
the trenches.
The Belgian interpreter was sitting on the bed in his tent, warbling
a little air to himself. After our Ensign had disabused him of his
first impression--namely, that the new-comer proposed to take forcible
occupation of his sleeping apartment--he became extremely affable, and
produced water and soap and a towel. He was a sunny-natured person with
remarkable fluency in English, and made the young officer free of his
every possession with unbounded hospitality.
Then our Ensign dined in the mess-tent off an enamel plate, and drank
innocuous Belgian beer out of a tin mug. A captain of the Coldstream,
who turned out to be the Transport Officer of his battalion, dined
with the party. Outside the daylight was failing and a few pale stars
had begun to twinkle. The drums had ceased their practice, but the
crickets and the frogs supplied the table-music in their place.
“I hope you can ride,” said the Transport Officer to our Ensign, with a
note of warning in his voice.
Our Ensign pleaded guilty to a slight familiarity with that gentlemanly
accomplishment.
“... because,” the Transport Officer went on, “we have a good eight
miles to go, and the limbers with the rations started an hour ago. So
we shall have to ride fairly hard for the first part of the way to
catch ’em up.”
Our Ensign smiled in a superior fashion, as much as to say the other
could not ride hard enough for him. “Unconscious of his doom, the
little victim plays!” Our young man was to have a rude awakening.
By the time the groom had announced that the horses were waiting, our
Ensign was ready for the road. He had to carry on his person his whole
panoply of war--revolver, glasses, compass, gas-helmet, ammunition
pouch, and lamp--all slung on his belt, which he was wearing outside
his rain-coat. He felt like a trussed fowl, and it required a helping
hand from the groom to get him into the saddle. When he was up, the
Quartermaster handed him a steel helmet, which the groom slung on the
saddle for him. Then the Transport Officer led the way out along the
muddy side-track on to a better road, and immediately spurred his
powerful horse into a fast trot.
Several thoughts passed through our Ensign’s mind in rapid succession.
The first was that, if he did not shake “The Fat Lady” (for such was
the mare’s name) out of her contented amble, he would be left behind
in the dark, and irretrievably lost. The second was that, if he went
any faster, he must certainly part company with one or other article of
his equipment, which was dancing a merry jig round his waist. The third
was that he would take an early opportunity of verifying a suspicion
which had crossed his mind at dinner, from certain allusions in the
conversation--namely, that the Transport Officer man had acquired his
familiarity with horses in the hunting-field in Ireland!
Our young man had retained the ash plant, and, under the influence of
half a dozen “dhraws” applied to her flanks at regular intervals, the
mare bestirred itself, albeit protesting.
Thus our Ensign rode forth unto battle, in the Ethiopian blackness of
a close muggy night, sorely shaken, jingling like a jester, drenched
with perspiration, with a feverish eye on the dim figure of the rider
jogging briskly through the darkness ahead of him.
Far away in the distance, vivid white lights spouted continually into
the sky. Of gun fire there was little. It seemed a quiet night. By the
roadside, from time to time, the jagged silhouette of a broken wall,
a tottering chimney, a devastated church tower, stood out against
a patch of lighter cloud. Figures took shape suddenly out of the
gloom, marching in silence through the night, filling the empty road
with the acrid smell of hot and dirty men, filling the air with the
crunch-crunch of their feet. Guns jingled past them at the trot, with
cursing drivers plucking at their horses’ heads to keep their teams to
the road.
Presently, a continuous rumbling echoed out of the patch of blackness
enveloping the road ahead. Low voices came back with snatches of
conversation. The dark outline of a long string of tossing limbers
loomed out of the gloom. The Transport Officer galloped off up to the
head of the column. A whistle sounded. The rumbling ceased. The limbers
stopped. The Transport Officer’s voice spoke out of the darkness; our
Ensign could not see the speaker.
“We send our horses back here,”--our Ensign heard him spring to the
ground,--“better put your helmet on now! We are going to walk, and we
generally get shelled to blazes over this next bit that’s coming!”
Stiffly, our Ensign slipped his foot out of the stirrup and
precipitated himself from the saddle. He was wondering to himself
whether all wars were as uncomfortable as this one. He had only thought
of death on active service as a quick finish in the midst of an
exhilarating charge at the head of an excited band--not of a death that
came screaming suddenly at you out of the dark, when you were clammy
and stiff and tired, and generally uncomfortable!
The young man doffed his cap, and carried it in his hand. He put on his
helmet. It was heavy, and hideously unwieldy. He felt it would topple
over on his nose with very little provocation.
They plodded on in silence at the head of the rumbling limbers. After
an hour’s walk through the blackness (our Ensign had not the remotest
idea where they were), the blurr of many figures sitting about the
grass of the roadside bulked out in the gloom. The Transport Officer
switched on his light. The familiar features of the Drill Sergeant who
had initiated our hero into the intricacies of squad drill at home
stood revealed in the bright beam. About him, in silent groups, were
the ration parties, who, without delay or confusion, set about the work
of unloading the limbers.
The night was singularly quiet. Not a gun spoke. Never a shell came
to justify the Transport Officer’s gloomy forebodings. Only from the
higher ground ahead, the never-ceasing fountain of white lights showed
that the opposing lines of trenches were unremitting in their vigilance.
Darkness not only obscures the eyes,--it also clouds the memory. The
next thing our Ensign remembers was coming to what looked like a row
of ancient _tumuli_ in a field and a gap in a hedge which seemed to be
shaken by a violent wind, though the night was perfectly still. There
was a loud “swish ... swish ...” in the air and a quick “patter ...
patter ...” all around. Then a voice said very distinctly out of the
darkness--
“Blast that machine-gun!”
The swishing sounds ceased, our Ensign turned on his lamp and saw an
officer in a Burberry with a revolver hung on his belt worn outside.
The new arrival instantly recognised him as one of the most joyous
spirits of the ante-room at home. He was known to all and sundry as
“Peter.”
“Hullo!” said the other, switching on his light, “there you are! I
didn’t know if you’d be up to-night or not. I believe you’re coming to
our company. I suppose you are going to see the Commanding Officer now.
He’s in the dug-out. I’m out with a carrying party. See you later.
Where the devil’s that orderly gone?”
He turned off his light and was swallowed up in the dark amid a
shuffling throng of men. Our Ensign found the Commanding Officer in
a small dug-out with a very low entrance. Candles in white metal
candlesticks threw a yellow light over a roughly carpentered table,
where maps were spread out amid the remains of a meal. In the corner an
officer was bending over a telephone.
“This is the Adjutant speaking,” he was saying, “... oh, that is Mr
Barnard ... right.... Minnies were they ... yes, it sounded like them
... not in the trench ... good ... right ... we’ll get retaliation!”
“Four Minnies into No. 1 Company, sir,” he said, putting down the
receiver and addressing the Commanding Officer; “Barnard thinks he’d
like some retaliation. Shall I ask for it?”
The Commanding Officer nodded and offered the Transport Officer and
our Ensign a drink. Then he told our Ensign that he would be attached
to No. 2--Peter’s company,--the latter was commanding in the absence
of the regular company commander who was on leave. The company was
at present in support in trenches close at hand. The battalion was
coming out of the line the next night. Then they talked of the general
situation, the advance on the Somme, the situation in the Salient, what
the Russians were doing, whether the Rumanians would come in. Finally,
our Ensign took his leave, and the Transport Officer escorted him along
the trench to a small and extremely evil-smelling dug-out, where they
found a Grenadier subaltern working out chess-problems on a travelling
chess-board, by the light of a candle stuck in its own grease on the
table. He explained to the Transport Officer that he was in command of
two platoons left behind to help with the carrying work at night.
That night our Ensign slept in a low narrow hole, scraped out of the
parados of the trench. On turning in, he found that his servant, whom
he had brought up with him from the Base, had spread the dug-out with
nice clean sandbags. With his haversack for a pillow, and his rain-coat
spread over him as a wrap, the new-comer, who had never spent a night
out of bed in his life before, slept solidly for eight hours. When he
awoke the trenches were flooded with sunshine, and a most comfortable
smell of hot bacon stole across the clear morning air.
* * * * *
The company was not in the firing line, so that the men could move
pretty freely in and about the trenches. The weather was very fine
and warm, and the existence was not strenuous. The following evening
Peter marched half the company away into reserve, on relief by another
battalion, leaving our Ensign behind, with two platoons to help with
the carrying. In two days’ time our hero would rejoin his battalion in
reserve.
The new arrivals in the company Mess in the dirty little dug-out were
genial souls. Our Ensign took his meals and played chess with them,
and discussed the papers which came up with the utmost regularity in
company with the letters every afternoon. After dark our young man
slung his lamp and his revolver on his belt and went round the trenches
and the outposts, his orderly at his heels, a Celtic type of youth,
MacFinnigan by name.
The two days passed pleasantly enough. There was a little sporadic
shelling, generally after the passage of a Hun aeroplane, glittering
aloft, with black crosses on the under-surface of its planes, amid
little puffs of shrapnel and the “peugh ... peugh ... peugh” of the
anti-aircraft guns. The first afternoon--it was at tea--two sharp
salvoes of whizz-bangs rang out from farther up the trench. Our
Ensign sallied forth to review the situation. Up the trench he found
a big Grenadier lying on his face motionless in a great welter of
blood, while round the traverse an Irish Guardsman was flat on his
back on the trench-boards, a little rosary between his fingers, with a
stretcher-bearer ripping up one of his puttees, which was soaked with
blood.
The wounded man lifted a pallid face to the officer as he came up. The
stretcher-bearer was soothing him gently as he worked.
“Be asy now,” he was saying, “a little skelp like that won’t kill yez.
I’ll put yez in the dug-out beyond ... ye’ll be grand and snug there
till it’s dark, and then we’ll take yez down.”
“The others is all right, sir,” the stretcher-bearer added to our
Ensign; “him round the traverse was killed on the spot, but there’s
nobody else touched barrin’ this chap here!”
The wounded man said nothing, but his breath came heavily. His face was
very pale. The officer saw him tucked away into the dug-out, and went
back to tea with a heavy heart. It was his first casualty....
The next night our Ensign led his two platoons out of the trenches in
the wake of a guide sent up to meet them. He was a little disappointed
to find how lightly his responsibility as an officer rested upon him.
He had not the least idea of where they were going as they followed the
guide out into the darkness.
Their journey came to its finish on a timbered walk, leading past a
long array of shelters dug out of a bank and protected by layers of
neatly built-up sandbags. Everybody had gone to bed, for it was after
2 A.M.--that is, everybody save our Ensign’s servant, who, after our
hero had seen his men safely into their quarters, led the officer
into a fine roomy dug-out with a wooden door and wooden flooring.
There, on a bed made of sacking stretched over a framework, he
found his sleeping-sack spread, with his pyjamas on top; his canvas
washing-bucket, full of hot water, smoked on a primitive-looking
washstand; while a complete change of clothes was laid out on a
soap-box beside the bed.
“And what time will I call you in the morning, sir?” said Johnson--such
was the name of our Ensign’s servant--at the door.
“What time is parade?” asked the officer.
“There’s no parade for you, sir,--only rifle inspection at eleven.
Perhaps you’d care for a bath in the morning, sir!”
Our Ensign jumped at the suggestion and ordered a hot bath for
half-past nine. He crept gratefully into his sleeping-bag, his mind
bewildered by the sudden contrasts in his new and remarkable life....