Inscrutable appear the ways of the Staff to the young lions of our
army in France. For a month the Battalion had been fondly nursing
the idea of going into action, yet here they were back again in the
old routine of trench warfare. True, they were on the battlefield of
the Somme, though that singularly diminutive stream was away to the
southward of them; but there was no sign of immediate action in their
neighbourhood--the traces were all of the fighting which had been.
A modern battle is run very much on the lines of a railway time-table.
The attack is entrusted to certain armies, and the corps of which
these armies are composed send their divisions and brigades “over the
top” in due course and duly take them out of the line, whereupon fresh
troops take their places. Each corps has its own billeting area, towns
and villages and camps, where its troops are billeted on the way to
or from battle. As one division or brigade moves out of one billet,
the successor moves in by schedule, just as, on the railway, one train
follows another on the same set of metals. This disposition of troops
in a vast battle, over widely devastated country, is a very important
feature of the operations; for nothing must be left to chance, and,
with the tide of battle ebbing and flowing, success or failure may
depend on the accessibility of the reserves.
But the hot blood of our young officers does not always comprehend
these strategical considerations, and our Ensign’s Battalion groused
mightily at the way the Guards were being “shunted about,” while the
rest of the British army were busily collecting laurels on the Somme.
The Battalion took over from some very cheery “Kitchener chaps,” and
the officers of the company which our Ensign’s company relieved in
the support position--a bowl-shaped chalk quarry with some excellent
dug-outs--provided our Ensign and his brother officers with a very
good luncheon. As No. 2 Company had been in the front line on the last
occasion, it was now their turn to be in support, where their only
duties were fetching rations and water for themselves and the companies
in the front line. During their wanderings the double-company Mess
had received some fresh members, including one Bryan, who went to our
Ensign’s company, and one Duke, who went to No. 1,--our Ensign had been
friends with both men in barracks at home, and their coming in no wise
disturbed but only increased the _cameraderie_ of the double-company
Mess.
The principal duty of the Guards in these trenches, as far as the
front-line companies were concerned, was to “clean up.” This part of
the line had been the scene of a holding attack in the earlier stages
of the Somme battle. The troops concerned had done their work, but had
not been able to hold the ground gained, and had fallen back to their
front line, which had had a regular pounding from the German artillery.
The trenches were badly battered and required a lot of repair, the dead
bodies were scattered thickly about, and the atmosphere, especially in
the warm showery weather then prevalent, was very bad.
So every night parties sallied forth, some to wire, others to repair
the parapet, others again to bury the dead and salve the equipment
lying about, both British and German. The burial parties had the worst
time: you wanted strong nerves to stomach the sights about those
trenches. Our Ensign used to see the fruits of these midnight salvage
enterprises laid out afterwards in the trench--pay-books and identity
discs and rifles and boxes of ammunition and helmets--ready to be sent
down to the Brigade. Altogether, during the few days they were in that
part of the line, the Battalion buried several hundred bodies and
brought in a very large amount of salvage, for which good service they
subsequently received the thanks of their Brigadier.
Life was pretty quiet in those trenches. The Hun was having such a
desperate struggle to keep his line together where the sledge-hammer
blows were being dealt, that in the quieter spots he was only too glad
to live and let live. The daily Intelligence Summary showed clearly, on
the plain testimony of German army orders, letters found on the dead,
and the less reliable statements of prisoners, that not only was the
invincibility of the German army exploded amongst the very men who had
most sedulously spread the myth, but that the German Higher Commands
were seriously concerned at the growing demoralisation of the troops,
as shown by such significant symptoms as desertions, slackness in
patrolling, and the like.
As a scrupulous chronicler of the adventures of our Ensign, I must not
overlook a curious experience that befell him one morning in these
trenches. Lured by the promise of a perfect dawn, he ventured forth
before breakfast to visit the officers in the front line, foolishly
omitting to take his Burberry with him. As he was walking down to have
breakfast with The Beak and Bryan in the chalk quarry, he was surprised
by a drenching downpour of rain. The approach to the front line was
very simple--any one of four communication trenches would take you
there--but, in his haste to get home out of the wet, our Ensign took
a wrong turn and presently found himself in a part of the front line
which seemed unfamiliar to him.
Now, out in France, one trench looks very much like another. It was
daylight, and the sentries had stood down, and in that downpour every
man who was not on duty would naturally take shelter in the dug-outs.
So our Ensign was not surprised to find the trench deserted, thinking
that presently he would come to a sentry who would tell him where he
was. He noticed rifles leaning against the fire-steps, and boxes of
bombs in shelves cut in the parados, and here and there a pack or a
mess-tin left outside a dug-out. In fact, the trench looked very much
as most trenches do in the early morning, after the men have had their
breakfast and are snatching a few hours’ sleep.
In places the trench was very battered: at one point a huge gap had
been blown clean away, so that he found himself in full view of the
German lines. Presently, as he hurried along, with his head down before
the driving rain, he began to notice that the trench showed signs of
most unusual untidiness. Picks and shovels were lying about all over
the place: here a greatcoat had been trodden down into the mud, there a
box of small-arms ammunition lay gaping on the ground. Then, even as he
realised that the broken fire-bays were void of sentries, and that the
trench was deserted, he came to a dead stop. For there, in the bottom
of the trench, half a dozen yards from him, a khaki-clad figure lay
face downwards in the mud.
An eerie sensation crept over our young man. He felt like the hero
of that stirring tale of old Clark Russell’s when he boards _The
Frozen Pirate_ and finds himself in the midst of an arrested life.
For, after stepping gingerly over the prone figure in the mud, he
came to a dug-out before which a stretcher stood. On the stretcher
lay a man with head swathed in bandages, and he was dead. So was
the stretcher-bearer on the ground beside him, amid a litter of
field-dressings. And there were many other dead bodies, besides these
two, in that abandoned trench.
Our Ensign faced round and retraced his steps the way he had come, for
he was fearful lest he should walk into the German lines if he went any
farther. On his return he noticed many little signs that had escaped
him in his previous haste,--remains of food spread out on tables in
the silent dug-outs, old books and newspapers, sodden and mud-stained,
some gum-boots lying in a pile behind the trench, a woollen waistcoat
hanging on a nail in a ruined shelter; it was a desolate, uncanny
place, and our Ensign was glad when he heard the sizzle of bacon and
walked into a bombing-post of the Welsh Guards, who were holding the
right of his Battalion, and was put on his road for home.
The Battalion came out of the line on a chilly Sunday afternoon--the
approach trenches were so good that reliefs could be effected by
daylight--and marched to a camp in a forest, charmingly situated on
high ground outside a large village. The forest had not been touched
by shell fire; only the trees had been thinned a little to make room
for the huts and tents. The ground was clean, not fouled like their
last sylvan camping-ground in the wood of M----, and the green moss
made a soft carpet under their feet. There was a series of camps where
the whole Brigade was lodged, and the black-roofed huts and the white
bell-tents made a pretty picture spread out among the trees, the blue
smoke from the wood fires curling up between, and vistas of forest
glades on every hand.
The Brigade spent a very agreeable two days in the forest. The weather
completely reformed itself. A fine warm burst set in, bringing out all
the healthy, resinous odours of the woods. The men exulted in their
surroundings--a wholesome change, in truth, from their long nights
burying the dead in the rain. When their day’s work was done, they sat
about in groups on the mossy ground under the trees and smoked and
yarned. And (tell it not in Gath!) they sometimes contrived to have
rabbit for supper.
There were a lot of Guards in and about the forest. Our Ensign,
route-marching with the company, used to meet them on the road. Such
encounters generally started the men on anecdotes and reminiscences
of the old 4th (Guards’) Brigade, extending back to the days of the
Retreat from Mons. In conversation with each other the men always
referred to the Guards by their different nicknames, most Guards’
battalions having a sobriquet of some sort. Thus the Coldstream are
“the Coalies,” the Scots Guards, “the Jocks,” and the Irish Guards,
“the Micks.”
Every morning the drums of the different Guards’ battalions in the
camps roused the echoes of the forest (and everybody generally) with
the stirring strains of the _Grand Réveille_: every evening at Retreat,
in the dying sunshine, they made the woods resound to their music until
that pause came, bringing every man instinctively and by anticipation
to his feet, after which the fifes squealed and the drums rolled out
the National Anthem.
The company messes, which were all lodged in one long hut, had a
great dinner to celebrate their coming out of the Line. Ah! those
first dinners when the Battalion comes out of the trenches! Will
the future--that dim “After the War,” which is the great European
query-mark to-day--ever see their like? I doubt it.
How mind and body exult when you have had a hot bath, and there is
the cool caress of fresh linen next your skin, and you have cast
off your soiled uniform and heavy boots and changed into another
jacket and comfortable trousers and shoes, and the port has come from
Christopher’s, and the mess-sergeant has procured a melon! The past is
shoved behind you, with its blood and mud and evil odours; the present
is all high spirits and grateful relaxation; and as for the future,
you give it not a thought. Yet the future was there, though the Guards
in their forest camp did not realise it--somewhere out there beneath
that patch of starry sky framed in the low mess door, somewhere in the
Unknown where the guns throbbed faintly in the night.
* * * * *
Their next halting-place in their wanderings was no less pleasant--a
large comfortable village which had almost escaped the flow of humanity
towards the Somme. The barns where the men were billeted were spacious
and clean and dry; milk and butter and eggs and vegetables were
obtainable in plenty; and there were beds for all the officers. The
whole Brigade was billeted in the village, and made its entry down a
long slope leading to the main street, with drums beating at the head
of each long column of dusty, sun-browned men--a brave show.
Peter and our Ensign had a knotty point of military law to settle
with respect to their billet. Is an estaminet _consigné à la
troupe_--that is to say, put out of bounds for troops by the Assistant
Provost-Marshal for some contravention of the regulations--likewise
out of bounds as a billet for officers? For they were not using the
estaminet part of the establishment--they were merely to sleep in a
bedroom above it.
Madam and a mild-mannered old gentleman, who turned out to be her
husband, together with three or four peasants, seized upon this
tortuous point of law, when Madam very frankly stated her case to the
two officers and debated it ardently.
“_Ce sont les artilleurs_,” Madam sighed, “_qui sont venus comme ça
boire de la bière à la porte du derrière ... on est seule, n’est-ce
pas? On ne fait pas attention, n’est-ce pas? Et puis voilà, le
Prévôt-Maréchal qui vous consigne pour quinze jours! Mon Dieu, c’est
dur!_”
The husband echoed--
“_Sapristi, c’est dur!_”
And the peasants, removing their pipes to spit, chanted in chorus--
“_Bien sûr que c’est dur!_”
The upshot of it was that Peter and our Ensign, deciding that the
bedroom was not the estaminet within the meaning of the Act, passed
a very comfortable night on good beds in Madam’s exceptionally clean
room. They likewise purchased for a five-franc note two very plump
white and grey lop-eared rabbits, which the _patron_ carried grimly
into a back-yard and brought back neatly and expeditiously slain. The
mess waiter fetched them across to the mess, and they formed the
_pièce de résistance_ at dinner that evening.
When troops arrive in a village out at the Front they swamp it: they
make it their own. Within an hour or two of the Guards’ arrival in this
comfortable French hamlet, neat little boards or flags hung outside the
different billets clearly indicating who lodged there, the Headquarters
and billet guards were mounted, and, with their clothes brushed and
their faces shining with the recent vigorous application of yellow soap
and water, the men strolled out in groups to see what refreshment local
establishments could offer, and also to buy those sentimental picture
post-cards in which all soldiers delight.
The main street simply overflowed with troops, big and brown and
tranquil; and for an officer to pass along was to run the gauntlet of a
never-ceasing fire of salutes.
That evening Operation Orders announced that on the following morning
the Battalion would march on. And our Ensign found himself entrusted
with the duties of Billeting Officer.