From now on, the shadows of the events that stood before began to be
more sharply defined. As the Brigade marched out of M---- behind the
Drums on a dull grey morning, there were many besides our Ensign there
who felt that the moment was close at hand when they would take their
places in the battle-line of the Somme. Indeed, hardly had the men
got shaken down in their new quarters--a bivouac on a bare and dirty
hillside amidst rolling downs covered, as far as the eye could see,
with camps and horse-lines and abandoned trenches,--than a message
arrived--
“The Battalion is on ten minutes’ notice!”
Now they were on the very fringe of the fight. The bivouac was within
the zone of “the heavies.” All that day, with a blinding flash of green
flame, a sickly burst of yellow smoke, and a ponderous roar, the big
guns gave tongue from their positions among the downs. All that day,
down the white road running through the ruined village on the fringe of
the bivouac, snorted and rattled and tramped the vast outgoing traffic
of the battlefield. Motor ambulances whirred by in a constant stream,
slowing up at the end of the village, where in cavernous dug-outs
white-robed surgeons toiled over the human _débris_ of the fight.
Motor-lorries fetching shells, ammunition limbers and water-carts going
down to be filled, baggage carts--all through the morning and afternoon
our Ensign saw them bumping slowly down the hill in the dust.
Between the gaps in the traffic, marching in a dense white haze, came
the remnants of the battalions which had just written Ginchy in
letters of blood upon their colours. Our Ensign had seen that splendid
Irish Division marching into action less than a week before, with pipes
skirling out the old Irish airs and green flags waving, a jaunty,
defiant, deathless band. Not a whit less jaunty, not a whit less
defiant, though the Reaper had been busy in their ranks, our Ensign saw
them again to-day, slow-footed and mud-stained, dirty and unshaven, yet
marching with the gait of victors.
Somewhere down the road the cry rang out--
“’Tis the Dubs.!”
In an instant the road was overflowing with Irish Guardsmen, swarming
forward in the dust-clouds raised by the Dublin Fusiliers in their
passage.
“Jasus! ’tis the Micks!” rang out a voice in the midst of the column.
Cheery salutations were exchanged. Here and there a brown hand
stretched out from the roadside grasped a muddy one thrust forward
from the ranks of marching men in a warm clasp. Chaff was freely
bandied about as the Irishmen trudged past, “Dubs.” and Munsters and
Connaughts and the rest.
“So they didn’t get yez this time, Micky, me boy!” shouted a droll
Irish voice from the roadside.
“True for you, Patsy, true for you!” flashed back the answer from the
ranks. “I’ll be meetin’ yez in Ould Dublin yet!”
“Begob! ye’ll have to get a move on yez, the Micks,” drawled out a rich
brogue from the road, “if ye want to find anny of the Gerboys left! We
didn’t lave manny of thim for yez! Didn’t we an’ the Dubs. knock hell’s
own blazes out of thim?”
There was a roar of laughter and cheers, then brogue and its owner were
swallowed up in the dust....
At tea that afternoon somebody announced that the Welsh Guards up in
the front line had had a very bad shelling, and were probably coming
out that night. Another battalion was to take their places, and
two companies of our Ensign’s battalion were to go up and replace
this battalion in support. After tea our Ensign was sent for by the
Commanding Officer, and told to go on ahead and reconnoitre the route
for the two companies as far as the Headquarters of another Guards’
Brigade, so that they should not lose their way in the dark. From
Brigade Headquarters guides would take the two companies up to the line.
It was getting dusk, and there was no time to lose. Our Ensign sent his
servant to the Signallers to borrow two bicycles; and after beating the
bivouac for his orderly, and failing to find him, he selected a bright
lad in the company to act as orderly, and a little later the pair might
have been seen pushing their bicycles through the dust up the steep
road leading towards the Front.
The experiences of that night lingered long in our Ensign’s memory.
The road was terribly rough; and though, with the coming of evening,
the traffic was less, there was still enough about to make riding in
the half-light distinctly dangerous. Their way led them past miles of
empty trenches, where weather-beaten wooden crosses, hung with withered
flowers, remained to tell of the time when the French were holding
these positions, then the front line. As they drew nearer to the Front,
they passed imperceptibly from the zone of the biggest guns into the
region of the lighter pieces. The guns were waking up. Now and then, as
they pedalled along, a huge shell travelled over their heads, coming
from their rear, “hooshing” and wailing as it sped through the air. Now
from right and now from left of them ear-splitting reports resounded.
The traffic grew heavier as they approached their destination. At the
entrance to a gloomy and shattered village, so wrecked by shell fire
that every house was razed, the press of vehicles and of troops going
up and coming down was so great that our Ensign and his orderly had to
get off and walk their bicycles. Presently all further progress was
hindered; so, after waiting for a spell, our Ensign shouldered his
heavy machine and struck out among the ruins to try and get round the
block in the road. It was very heavy going; but at last, soaked with
perspiration and breathless, our Ensign and his orderly emerged upon
a fairly clear stretch of road, and pedalled off into the gathering
darkness.
Fortunately the way was not difficult to find. At a cross-roads, where
a mass of blackened poles sticking up against the evening sky denoted
the former location of a wood, our travellers branched off to the left
into a small country road.
Guns were firing everywhere now. The stench of their fumes lay heavy on
the air. It was almost dark, and the green glare of their discharges
lit up fitfully the struggling masses that thronged the little road.
Long lines of men in single file, stooping beneath the weight of two
petrol tins filled with water, slung across their shoulders; similar
lines laden with coils of wire, stakes, pickets and shovels; long
columns of troops going to relieve battalions in the line; trains of
mules, with tossing tails, plodding forward amid a hail of curses;
ammunition carts, water-carts, ... all were jumbled up together in
that narrow way. From time to time came the low cry: “Make way!
Stretcher-bearers!” and a stretcher would appear carried shoulder-high
by four sweating bearers. Now and again, by the flash of the guns
of a neighbouring battery, our Ensign caught a glimpse of a form,
motionless, under blood-stained bandages....
A few sand-bagged steps led into a narrow clearing made in the wood
that ran along one side of the road. Over the steps hung the Brigade
flag. The steps led up to a little kind of entrance way, where a number
of officers were standing. Behind them was a heavily sand-bagged
shelter, where by the guttering light of a couple of candles, the
signallers stooped over their telephones.
“Toot-toot! Toot-toot! Toot-toot!”
The telephones shrilled their note clearly above the deafening crash
of the guns all round. The 18-pounders were firing in salvoes now. The
very sandbags shook with the noise. The signallers were shouting down
their telephones. Oblivious of everything, an officer sat at the bench
beside them and wrote.
They were all Guards’ officers in that little place. Our Ensign knew
some of them. He spoke to a Coldstreamer whom he had met up in the
salient, and asked him what the news was. The Coldstreamer said the
Welsh Guards had had a baddish time; the Prince of Wales’ Company, in
particular, had suffered. He mentioned the names of several men who had
been killed. They were all waiting for news of the Grenadiers: they,
too, had been having a roughish handling.
An officer with red tabs turned away from a very weary-looking Scots
Guards captain, and came towards our Ensign. The young man reported
himself, and was told that the guides were ready to take the two
companies up to the line.
Then an orderly, covered with mud, emerged from nowhere, as orderlies
do, with a message.
“Ah! from the Grenadiers!” said the officer in red tabs, and bolted off
towards a deep dug-out in the corner.
Our Ensign bade good-night to the Coldstreamer, and went out again into
the road. A regular whirlwind bombardment was in progress. The din was
ear-splitting. Every gun for miles around seemed to be firing as fast
as it could be loaded.
Our Ensign found his orderly staring open-mouthed at the distant
horizon, where a never-ceasing spout of white lights marked the
winding line of the front trenches. The lad was very young, and he had
not been long in France. As they surveyed the black horizon together
and noted the orange spurts of flame where the shells were bursting
among the Verey lights, a deep auburn glare suddenly lit up the whole
devastation of the landscape, and spread, upwards and outwards, in slow
majesty across the night sky.
“Glory be to God, sir!” exclaimed the orderly, “what’s that?”
Our Ensign shook his head wisely.
“Looks like an ammunition dump going up!” he said, but he didn’t in
the least know. It was an extraordinary spectacle, lasting a full
minute, during which every single projection on the horizon stood out
hard and black against the flaming sky. It reminded our Ensign of the
backgrounds of battle scenes in the portraits of the Generals at the
“Senior.”
Then they started off back to the bivouac in the darkness. When they
reached the main road they halted and waited for the two companies of
the battalion which were marching up. Presently dark shapes loomed up
in the gloom ... the traffic was much lighter on the road now ... and
the second in command of our Ensign’s battalion emerged into the bright
glare of the young man’s electric torch. Our Ensign indicated to the
party the turning off the main road which would bring them to Brigade
Headquarters, where the guides awaited them, imparted to his senior
officer the news of the casualties in the Welsh Guards, and then set
off along that broken road again on his perilous homeward journey.
He crawled into his sleeping-bag at half-past one in the morning,
feeling that he had earned a good night’s rest.