“’Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble....”
--_The Slaying of the Jabberwock._
“Did ye hear what that man O’Flanagan was sayin’, him I mane as come up
with the wather party las’ night?”
The speaker was a red-haired Irish Guardsman--what they would call
in Ireland a “foxy man”--who was cleaning his rifle and chatting the
while with a grizzled comrade, who was composedly scraping the mud off
his puttees with a piece of stick preparatory to going on parade for
rifle inspection. Our Ensign, standing in the open watching a British
aeroplane having a thrilling time in and out of Hun shrapnel puffs,
overheard the men talking in the trench behind him.
The elder man, busy with his scraping, only grunted contemptuously.
“Didn’t he see them with his own eyes,” the foxy man continued, tugging
at his pull-through, “leppin’ the ditch and off across the open the
same as they might be a lot of young horses? ‘The Lord save us!’ sez
th’ officer, him as was with the wather party, ‘’tis the cateypillars!’
‘Cateypillars?’ sez O’Flanagan, the chap as was tellin’ us about
it--‘cateypillars is ut?’ sez he. ‘Begob,’ sez he, ‘’tis the first time
ever I see cateypillars lep a ditch!’”
The other flung away his piece of stick, rubbed his hands together to
get rid of the mud, and cast a leisurely glance over his person.
“Some of you young lads,” he said, “do be believin’ all you hears!”
“Amn’t I after tellin’ yez that O’Flanagan see thim himself?” answered
the foxy man heatedly, applying his eye to the barrel of his rifle.
“Like great crockeydiles they are, sez he, with a crew of thirty men in
their inside and machine-guns and bombs and God knows what else, sez
he, and little windies to give the lads inside a blasht of fresh air.
Is ut tellin’ us lies the man was?”
“I wouldn’t be sayin’ that,” the old soldier replied cautiously; “but
some of you young lads has no sinse.”
And with that he stumped off to rifle inspection.
Now you know what our Ensign and his orderly were talking about so
earnestly as they trudged up the ridge in the last chapter. They spoke
of the Tanks, or, as they were then called, the Hush-hushes, which
everybody had heard about and nobody had seen--the mysterious engines
which were to lead the Guards into battle on a date not appointed.
Naturally it was Apollo who saw them first in the flesh, or should one
say more correctly, in the steel plating? He blew into the officers’
dug-out after rifle inspection that morning and said in a tone of
decision--
“I’ve seen ’em!”
“Who?” said our Ensign.
“What?” said Roderick more grammatically.
“Where?” said The Beak, whose forensic mind had already divined to what
Apollo referred.
“Just off the road, about 300 yards from here, ... the Tanks ... a
squadron of them ... charming fellow in charge ... showed me all round
... amazing, wonderful ... come along and I’ll take you down there!”
So they all trooped off behind him down the road, and presently in
a wayside field came upon those monstrously grotesque and ungainly
“ingins,” which everybody has seen in the photographs in the papers,
and which nobody is allowed to describe. A small and rotund Commodore
... or whatever a Tank squadron commander is called, ... who confessed
to having been out of bed for two nights, did the honours very
charmingly, ... but let us tread softly, for we are on censored ground.
Let it suffice to say that a captain, a subaltern, and three ensigns
returned to the officers’ dug-out, and swanked insufferably to their
less fortunate comrades-in-arms who had not been among the first to
see the Tanks, and that MacFinnigan and another orderly, who had been
taken with the party, had the morning of their lives, the centre of an
enthralled group of Guardsmen, all panting for information about “the
crocodiles.”
And for the moment everybody’s mind was taken off the future.
But that afternoon--it was September 14th--the Commanding Officer
came up, and the officers were bidden into the dug-out for a final
conference, at which, among many other equally, but to at least one of
them, less important details, they were informed that they would attack
at 6.20 A.M. in the morning, and that they would move up into position
at 9 o’clock that night.
That afternoon the men sat about in the trenches ... those of them
that were not otherwise employed ... and talked and smoked and read
the curious provincial papers sent out to them from home. Only a
bare handful of letters came in to the dug-out to be censored that
afternoon. The British soldier prefers to do his work first and
write about it afterwards. The men seemed bored by the waiting
about. They yawned, and cocked an eye at the sky, and discussed the
weather prospects for the next day, and argued unendingly about “the
crocodiles,” and the surprise they would be to “Fritz.”
In the course of the afternoon The Don turned up, in full battle array,
beaming with delight. After all, he was to “go over” with the company.
It had been decided that another officer should remain behind in his
place. That officer was one of the party in the dug-out in the copse
... a spirit more ardent for battle never breathed in mortal man ...
and he was stricken dumb, beaten to the ground, with the force of his
disappointment. Our Ensign, seeing the utter abasement of his grief,
reflected on the strange ways that Providence adopts to reveal the pure
metal that gleams in men of the British Army.
While it was still light, some of them went out to have a look at the
positions which they were to take up that evening, and from which they
were to attack in the morning. Night marching across the open, even
when you know the ground, is no joke; but when your direction leads
you across wide trenches running at every imaginable angle, through
tangles of barbed wire and over country that is nothing more or less
than an infinite number of holes connected together by a little loose
earth, why then, much forethought and preparation are required if you
wish to avoid disaster. So the officers who went out reconnoitring took
with them one man per platoon to mark the way and act as guides when
they should go up that evening. To mark the route the guides stuck a
few landmarks about in the shape of rusty rifles, picked up off the
battlefield, inserted in the earth by the bayonet and decorated with a
German helmet or a haversack--anything to catch the eye at night when
seen against the skyline.
The officers dined together in the dug-out at 7.30 that evening, a
very friendly and very business-like party of men. The table-talk was
pure unadulterated shop, the discussion of small details of company
organisation with occasional desultory snatches of debate upon that
fertile theme--the Tanks. But the greater issues of the morrow were
avoided by tacit consent, and a stranger suddenly bidden to that
dinner-table could hardly have supposed (our Ensign says) that his
hosts were preparing for anything more serious than a field-day on a
large scale.
Our Ensign has often since looked back upon that last dinner of Nos. 1
and 2 Company Mess--the last supper of the Girondins somebody called
it,--the long table (cunningly contrived out of trench-boards) covered
with the famous white American cloth cover, the candles stuck in
bottles, the white enamel mess crockery, the familiar faces all round
the board, the background of raincoats and glasses and revolvers and
belts hung on nails hammered into the tree-trunks forming the walls of
the dug-out; and in the chiaroscuro of the upper part of the room the
dimly-seen features of the Mess servants as they passed to and fro.
Some one had stored up a bottle of champagne for this special occasion;
needless to say it had been forgotten, and the Girondins raved at
the thought that their comrades back at the Transport were in all
probability even now toasting them in the goblet that should have
foamed at _their_ lips. So the double-company Mess had to fall back
upon a very moderate supply of a somewhat anæmic claret. They would
have undoubtedly pledged one another in this rare old wine (vintage,
Félix Potin, Amiens), only this formality was unfortunately overlooked
in a furious discussion which arose in the matter of fixing the
responsibilities in the affair of the forgotten bottle of champagne.
All through dinner messages kept arriving, company sergeant-majors
or orderlies bulking large in the low entrance to the dug-out. Here
an officer scribbled a note or an acknowledgment in his notebook
laid flat beside his plate: there a couple of ensigns, amid the
stewed pears in soup-plates, the glasses, the candles in their
bottles, and the white mugs of steaming coffee, pored over their maps
for the hundredth time to fix in their memories a mental picture
of the morrow’s line of advance. Servants crept in with flasks or
water-bottles filled, or with sandwiches wrapped in paper. Many were
the beverages recommended as sovereign for battle by the veterans.
One urged rum-and-water, another neat whisky, a third cold tea, a
fourth tea mixed with brandy. The last recipe appeared to command most
suffrages, and our Ensign accordingly decided for it.
As the hour of departure drew near, one by one, gradually, the officers
rose from the sandbag divan on which they had sat at meat and started
to array themselves for battle, girding on their belts hung with a
manifold collection of apparatus. One by one they clapped their helmets
on their heads and stumped up the little stair into the night.
Thus, imperceptibly, the double-company Mess broke up, and the
partnership of the summer months was dissolved for ever.
It was a cold, clear, starlit night, but still darkish, for the moon
had not yet risen. Once outside the dug-out, our Ensign heard the low
murmur of voices, the clatter of accoutrements from the open space in
front of the trenches where the company was assembling. On the road
in front he could see dim figures slowly advancing up the ridge: he
guessed these to be the other two companies, who had bivouacked in the
other part of the wood, moving up to their positions for the attack.
No smoking or talking was allowed; and it was in the most complete
silence that at length the two companies moved away, a platoon at a
time, each behind its guide. The air was dry and cold, with a touch
of frost: it would be cold sleeping out in the open, but anything was
better than rain.
The guides picked up their landmarks and led the men without trouble
into the segment of trench allotted to them. The trench was crumbling
from the autumn rains that had eaten into its shell-scored sides. In
parts it had a foot of water. There were many corpses in it. There was
no shelling. The night was very still. Only on the horizon, beyond
the ridge which on the morrow the Guards would cross, the star-shells
soared into a brief span of brilliant life, flickered, and died.
Quietly the men slipped into their places in the trench, or, where it
was water-logged, into shell-holes behind.
Now the moon, waning from full, began to rise and to shed its silver
radiance on the muffled forms asleep in shell-hole and in trench amid
the unburied dead. In the cold white light the ruined farm behind the
sleeping figures looked like a bleached skeleton, and the devastation
surrounding them stood out hard and clear. In the distance the
star-shells less brilliant than their wont in the effulgence of the
moon, seemed to beckon....