'_Only when the fields and roads are sufficiently dry will the
favourable moment have come for an advance._'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL
DESPATCH.
It is Sunday, and the regiment marching out towards the firing line and
its turn of duty in the trenches meets on the road every now and then a
peasant woman on her way to church. Some of the women are young and
pretty, some old and wrinkled and worn; they walk alone or in couples
or threes, but all alike are dressed in black, and all alike tramp
slowly, dully, without spring to their step. Over them the sun shines
in a blue sky, round them the birds sing and the trees and fields
spread green and fresh; the flush of healthy spring is on the
countryside, the promise of warm, full-blooded summer pulses in the
air. But there is no hint of spring or summer in the sad-eyed faces or
the listless, slow movements of the women. It is a full dozen miles to
the firing line, and to eye or ear, unless one knows where and how to
look and listen, there is no sign of anything but peace and pleasant
life in the surroundings. But these black-clad women do know--know
that the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides a
roofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that for
all their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longer
visible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and
stone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of scarlet
yonder in the field is the rough wooden cross with a _képi_ on top
marking the grave of a soldier of France; that down in the hollow just
out of sight are over a score of those cap-crowned crosses; that a
broad belt of those graves runs unbroken across this sunlit face of
France. They know, too, that those dull booms that travel faintly to
the ear are telling plain of more graves and of more women that will
wear black. It is little wonder that there are few smiles to be seen
on the faces of these women by the wayside. They have seen and heard
the red wrath of war, not in the pictures of the illustrated papers,
not in the cinema shows, not even by the word-of-mouth tales of chance
men who have been in it; but at first-hand, with their own eyes and
ears, in the leaping flames of burning homes, in the puffing white
clouds of the shrapnel, the black spouting smoke of the high-explosive,
in the deafening thunder of the guns, the yelling shells, the crash of
falling walls, the groans of wounded men, the screams of frightened
children. Some of them may have seen the shattered hulks of men borne
past on the sagging stretchers; all of them have seen the laden
ambulance wagons and motors crawling slowly back to the hospitals.
And of these women you do not say, as you would of our women at home,
that they may perhaps have friend or relation, a son, a brother, a
husband, a lover, at the front. You say with certainty they have one
or other of these, and may have all, that every man they know, of an
age between, say, eighteen and forty, is serving his country in the
field or in the workshops--and mostly in the field--if so be they are
still alive to serve.
The men in the marching khaki regiment know all these things, and there
are respect and sympathy in the glances and the greetings that pass
from them to the women. 'They're good plucked 'uns,' they tell each
other, and wonder how our women at home would shape at this game, and
whether they would go on living in a house that was next door to one
blown to pieces by a shell yesterday, and keep on working in fields
where hardly a day passed without a shell screaming overhead, whether
they'd still go about their work as best they could for six days a week
and then to church on Sunday.
Two women, one young and lissom, the other bent and frail and clinging
with her old arm to the erect figure beside her, stand aside close to
the ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 'Cheer up, mother,' one man
calls. 'We're goin' to shift the Boshies out for you,' and 'Bong
jewer,' says another, waving his hand. Another pulls a sprig of lilac
from his cap and thrusts it out as he passes. 'Souvenir!' he says,
lightly, and the young woman catches the blossom and draws herself up
with her eyes sparkling and calls, 'Bonne chance, Messieurs. Goo-o-o-d
lock.' She repeats the words over and over while the regiment passes,
and the men answer, 'Bong chawnse' and 'Good luck,' and such scraps of
French as they know--or think they know. The women stand in the
sunshine and watch them long after they have passed, and then turn
slowly and move on to their church and their prayers.
The regiment tramps on. It moves with the assured stamp and swing of
men who know themselves and know their game, and have confidence in
their strength and fitness. Their clothes are faded and
weather-stained, their belts and straps and equipments chafed and worn,
the woodwork of their rifles smooth of butt and shiny of hand-grip from
much using and cleaning. Their faces bronzed and weather-beaten, and
with a dew of perspiration just damping their foreheads--where men less
fit would be streaming sweat--are full-cheeked and glowing with health,
and cheek and chin razored clean and smooth as a guardsman's going on
church parade. The whole regiment looks fresh and well set-up and
clean-cut, satisfied with the day and not bothering about the morrow,
magnificently strong and healthy, carelessly content and happy, not
anxious to go out of its way to find a fight, but impossible to move
aside from its way by the fight that does find it--all of which is to
say it looks exactly what it is, a British regiment of the regular
Line, war-hardened by eight or nine months' fighting, moving up from a
four days' rest back into the firing line.
It is fairly early in the day, and the sun, although it is bright
enough to bring out the full colour of the green grass and trees, the
yellow laburnum, and the purple lilac, is not hot enough to make
marching uncomfortable. The road, a main route between two towns, is
paved with flat cobbles about the size of large bricks, and bordered
mile after mile with tall poplars. There are farms and hamlets and
villages strung close along the road, and round and about all these
houses are women and children, and many men in khaki, a few dogs, some
pigs perhaps, and near the farms plenty of poultry. By most of the
farms, too, are orchards and fruit-trees in blossom; and in some of
these lines of horses are ranked or wagons are parked, sheltered by the
trees from aerial observation. For all this, it must be remembered, is
far enough back from the firing line to be beyond the reach of any but
the longest-range guns--guns so big that they are not likely to waste
some tons of shells on the off-chance of hitting an encampment and
disabling few or many horses or wagons.
Towards noon the regiment swings off the road and halts in a large
orchard; rifles are stood aside, equipments and packs are thrown off,
tunics unbuttoned and flung open or off, and the men drop with puffing
sighs of satisfaction on the springy turf under the shade of the
fruit-trees. The 'travelling cookers' rumble up and huge cauldrons of
stew and potatoes are slung off, carried to the different companies,
and served steaming hot to the hungry men. A boon among boons these
same cookers, less so perhaps now that the warmer weather is here, but
a blessing beyond price in the bitter cold and constant wet of the past
winter, when a hot meal served without waiting kept heart in many men
and even life itself in some. Their fires were lit before the regiment
broke camp this morning, and the dinners have been jolting over the
long miles since sun-up, cooking as comfortably and well as they would
in the best-appointed camp or barrack cook-house.
The men eat mightily, then light their pipes and cigarettes and loll at
their ease. The trees are masses of clustering pink and white blossom,
the grass is carpeted thick with the white of fallen petals and
splashed with sunlight and shade. A few slow-moving clouds drift
lazily across the blue sky, the big, fat bees drone their sleepy song
amongst the blossoms, the birds rustle and twitter amongst the leaves
and flit from bough to bough. It would be hard to find a more peaceful
picture in any country steeped in the most profound peace. There is
not one jarring note--until the 'honk, honk' of a motor is followed by
the breathless, panting whirr of the engine, and a big car flashes down
the road and past, travelling at the topmost of its top speed. There
is just time to glimpse the khaki hood and the thick scarlet cross
blazing on a white circle, and the car is gone. Empty as it is, it is
moving fast, and with luck and a clear road it will be well inside the
danger zone at the back door of the trenches in less than twenty
minutes. In half an hour perhaps it will have picked up its full load,
and be sliding back smoothly and gently down the cobbled road, swinging
carefully now to this side to avoid some scattered bricks, now to that
to dodge a shell-hole patched with gravel, driven down as tenderly and
gently as it was driven up fiercely and recklessly.
Presently there are a few quiet orders, a few minutes' stir and
movement, a shifting to and fro of khaki against the green and pink and
white . . . and the companies have fallen in and stand in straight
rulered ranks. A pause, a sharp order or two, and the quick staccato
of 'numbering off' ripples swiftly down the lines; another pause,
another order, the long ranks blur and melt, harden and halt instantly
in a new shape; and evenly and steadily the ranked fours swing off,
turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars.
There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing has
moved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of a
properly adjusted, well-oiled machine--which, after all, is just what
the regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, but
it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortest
of halts from dawn to dusk.
As the miles unwind behind the regiment the character of the country
begins to change. There are fewer women and children to be seen now;
there are more roofless buildings, more house-fronts gaping doorless
and windowless, more walls with ragged rents, and tumbled heaps of
brick lying under the yawning black holes. But the grass is still
green, and the trees thick with foliage, the fields neatly ploughed and
tilled and cultivated, with here and there a staring notice planted on
the edge of a field, where the long, straight drills are sprinkled with
budding green--'Crops sown. Do not walk here.' Altogether there is
little sign of the heavy hand of war upon the country, and such signs
as there are remain unobtrusive and wrapped up in springing verdure and
bloom and blossom. Even the trapping of war, the fighting machine
itself, wears a holiday or--at most--an Easter-peace-manoeuvre
appearance. A heavy battery has its guns so carefully concealed, so
bowered in green, that it is only the presence of the lounging gunners
and close, searching looks that reveal a few inches of muzzle peering
out towards the hill crest in front. Scattered about behind the guns,
covered with beautiful green turf, shadowed by growing trees, are the
dwelling-places of the gunners, deep 'dug-outs,' with no visible sign
of their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. Out
in the open a man sits with a pair of field-glasses, sweeping the sky.
He is the aeroplane look-out, and at the first sign of a distant speck
in the sky or the drone of an engine he blows shrilly on his whistle;
every man dives to earth or under cover, and remains motionless until
the whistle signals all clear again. An enemy aeroplane might drop to
within pistol shot and search for an hour without finding a sign of the
battery.
When the regiment swerves off the main road and moves down a winding
side-track over open fields, past tree-encircled farms, and along by
thick-leaved hedges, it passes more of these Jack-in-the-Green
concealed batteries. All wear the same look of happy and indolent
ease. Near one is a stream, and the gunners are bathing in an
artificially made pool, plunging and splashing in showers of glistening
drops. They are like school boys at a picnic. It seems utterly
ridiculous to think that they are grim fighting men whose business in
life for months past and for months to come is to kill and kill, and to
be killed themselves if such is the fortune of war. Another battery of
field artillery passes on the road. But even here, shorn of their
concealing greenery, in all the bare working-and-ready-for-business
apparel of 'marching order,' there is little to suggest real war.
Drivers and gunners are spruce and neat and clean, the horses are sleek
and well fed and groomed till their skins shine like satin in the sun,
the harness is polished and speckless, bits and stirrup-irons and
chains and all the scraps of steel and brass twinkle and wink in bright
and shining splendour. The ropes of the traces--the last touch of
pride in perfection this, surely--are scrubbed and whitened. The whole
battery is as spick and span, as complete and immaculate, as if it were
waiting to walk into the arena at the Naval and Military Tournament.
Such scrupulous perfection on active service sounds perhaps unnecessary
or even extravagant. But the teams, remember, have been for weeks past
luxuriating in comfortable ease miles back in their 'wagon-line'
billets, where the horses have done nothing for days on end but feed
and grow fat, and the drivers nothing but clean up and look after their
teams and harness. If the guns up in the firing line had to shift
position it has meant no more to the teams than a break of the monotony
for a day or two, a night or two's marching, and a return to the rear.
It is afternoon now, and the regiment is drawing near to the trenches.
The slanting sun begins to throw long shadows from the poplars. The
open fields are covered with tall grass and hay that moves in long,
slow, undulating waves under the gentle breeze that is rising. The
sloping light falling on them gives the waves an extraordinary
resemblance to the lazy swell on a summer sea. Here and there the
fields are splashed with broad bands of vivid colour--the blazing
scarlet of poppies, the glowing cloth-of-gold of yellow mustard, the
rich, deep, splendid blue of corn-flowers.
For one or two miles past the track has been plainly marked by
sign-posts bearing directions to the various trenches and their
entrances. Now, at a parting of the main track, a group of
'guides'--men from the regiment being relieved from the trenches--wait
the incoming regiment. Company by company, platoon by platoon, the
regiment moves off to the appointed places, and by company and platoon
the outcoming regiment gathers up its belongings and moves out. In
most parts of the firing line these changes would only be made after
dark. But this section bears the reputation of being a 'peaceful' one,
the Germans opposite of being 'tame,' so the reliefs are made in
daytime, more or less in safety. There has been no serious fighting
here for months. Constant sniping and bickering between the forward
firing trenches has, of course, always gone on, but there has been no
attack one way or the other, little shell-fire, and few aeroplanes over.
The companies that 'take over' the support trenches get varied
instructions and advice about tending the plants and flowers round the
dugouts, and watering the mustard-and-cress box. They absorb the
advice, strip their accoutrements and tunics, roll up their
shirt-sleeves, and open the throats, fish out soap and towels from
their packs, and proceed to the pump to lather and wash copiously. The
companies for the forward trench march down interminable communication
trenches, distribute themselves along the parapet, and also absorb
advice from the outgoing tenants--advice of the positions of enemy
snipers, the hours when activity and when peace may be expected, the
specially 'unhealthy' spots where a sniper's bullet or a bomb must be
watched for, the angles and loopholes that give the best look-out. The
trenches are deep and well-made, the parapets solidly constructed. For
four days or six, or as many as the regiment remains 'in,' the range of
the men's vision will be the walls of the trench, the piled sandbags,
the inside of their dug-outs, and a view (taken in peeps through a
loophole or reflected in a periscope mirror) of about fifty to a
hundred yards of 'neutral ground' and the German parapet beyond. The
neutral ground is covered with a jungle of coarse grass, edged on both
sides with a tangle of barbed wire.
Close to the German parapet are a few black, huddled heaps--dead
Germans, shot down while out in a working party on the wire at night,
and left there to rot, and some killed in their own trench, and tumbled
out over the parapet by their own comrades. The drowsy silence is
broken at long intervals by a rifle shot; a lark pours out a stream of
joyful thrilling song.
* * * * *
A mile or two back from the firing line a couple of big motor-cars
swing over the crest of a gentle rise, swoop down into the dip, and
halt suddenly. A little group of men with scarlet staff-bands on their
caps and tabs on their collars climb out of the cars and move off the
track into the grass of the hollow. They prod sticks at the ground,
stamp on it, dig a heel in, to test its hardness and dryness.
The General looks round. 'This is about as low-lying a spot as we have
on this part of front,' he says to his Chief of Staff. 'If it is dry
enough here it must be dry enough everywhere else.'
The Chief assents, and for a space the group stands looking round the
sunlit fields and up at the clear sky. But their thoughts are not of
the beauties of the peaceful landscape. The words of the General are
the key to all their thoughts. For them the promise of spring is a
grim and a sinister thing; to them the springy green turf carpet on the
fields means ground fit to bear the weight of teams and guns, dry
enough to give firm foothold to the ranks of infantry charging across
the death-trap of the neutral ground, where clogging, wet, slippery mud
adds to the minutes under the hail of fire and every minute there in
the open means hundreds of lives lost. The hard, dry road underfoot
means merely that roads are passable for heavy guns and transport. The
thick green foliage of the trees is so much cover for guns and the
moving of troops and transport under concealment from air observation;
the clear, blue sky promises the continuance of fine weather, the final
release from the inactivity of the trenches. To these men the 'Promise
of Spring' is the promise of the crescendo of battle and slaughter.
The General and his Staff are standing in the middle of a wide patch of
poppies, spread out in a bright scarlet that matches exactly the red
splashes on the brows and throats of the group. They move slowly back
towards the cars, and as they walk the red ripples and swirls against
their boots and about their knees.
One might imagine them wading knee-deep in a river of blood.