AN INTERLUDE
_... As many ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial's centre;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat._
There is something more than magic in the poetry of Shakespeare's
_Henry V._ when it is read to illustrate the stirring events of these
opening phases of the War. To set it side by side with the recital of
the story is to listen to the voice of a singer supported by the
gravely-sounding, deep-toned brass instruments of an orchestra.
There is more than beauty of accompaniment, there is the magic of
prophecy. I can hardly find an incident of those August days which was
not mirrored three centuries ago in the verse of this play. Thus, I
have sought in no other for the musical preludes of my chapters; and I
confess often to have rubbed my eyes in astonishment at the aptness of
the poetry to the incidents of the moment.
Now those few bars of introduction suggest another _motif_; let me try
to expand the theme a little.
In reading the cold, semi-official language which states that the
British Force halted at such and such an hour along a line extending
from So-and-So to Somewhere, one is apt to gain an impression which is
far removed from reality.
You picture, perhaps, the various units retiring along routes carefully
assigned by gilded Staff officers, and duly arriving at the scheduled
times in various villages and hamlets. That there they are met by
courteous billeting parties, who proceed to allot the men to more or
less unwilling householders. That at the hour specified in the report
you find the Dorsets in one place, the Irish Guards next to them, the
batteries with their guns neatly parked, and so on all down the line.
The various H.Q.'s of Brigades, Divisions or Corps all in readily
accessible spots, and everybody connected up with everybody else by
telegraph or telephone, so that any unit can be set in motion at any
minute.
That is the ideal. Well, that delightful ideal first assumed definite
shape after the Battle of the Marne and not before. Here is a little
sketch of a tiny village on the line of retreat on the evening of
Tuesday, August 25th:
M. le maire, old Pierre Godolphin, sat slowly pulling at a new clay
pipe as he looked with unseeing eyes up the long dusty road which led
out of the village away over the northern uplands. A trimly kept hedge
of privet bordered his rose-garden and the road, and his favourite seat
was set in a little niche of the greenery whence he could command all
that went on in his tiny kingdom and, without moving, could see exactly
what Madame la Femme du Maire was about in the stone-flagged kitchen.
That afternoon an avalanche of three-ton motor lorries had descended
upon the village, weird vehicles which announced in blatant language
the superiority over all others of Mayflower's margarine or the
outstanding merits of Pulltite's corsets. The men in authority were
obviously, from their uniforms, English officers, and not travellers
for the firms in question. But, frankly, old Pierre was puzzled. They
had come from the south, and why did they not continue their journey?
Two of the officers were actually proposing to stay with him, for an
indefinite period.
M. le boulanger walked slowly across the road to confer with him about
the baking of more bread. "But these English are like a locust swarm,
and I have no more flour," he explained.
"A glass of cider for monsieur, Henriette."
"I do not understand," Pierre went on, "what it is ces braves garçons
do here. It is the third week of war, and by now surely ces bêtes de
Boches should have been driven back into their own pigsties---- Mais,
nom de Dieu, qu'est ce que c'est?"
Down the village street a four-seater car came lurching from side to
side like a drunken man. Crash! It has caught a stone post and turned
over. In an instant the road is full of people running.
Two men lay dazed as they had been thrown out. Both in the
yellow-green uniform of the British, one, certainly, an officer.
Willing hands lift them tenderly, and someone dashes a jug of water
over their heads. Then one sees what has happened.
Between the shoulders on the officer's tunic there is spreading a great
dark stain. Very carefully they take off the coat and shirt and try to
stanch the blood. But it is too late; there is a bullet through the
lungs, and, with a little gasp, the officer lies still.
In a few minutes the other man recovers sufficiently to tell how they
were taking a dispatch through to the rear. The officer was driving
the car when they ran straight into a patrol of enemy cavalry. They
had got through, but the enemy opened fire, and now his officer lies
dead. Things are going badly up there--and the man vaguely indicates
the country up north: our men are retiring as hard as they can; whole
regiments are getting wiped out; and "Gawd knows where the French are."
Can he get a motor-bike to take on the message?
An A.S.C. officer runs for his car, the man is put in, and off they
start again.
Only the A.S.C. lorry drivers understood the story, but the villagers
were quick to realise that something serious was happening. Old Pierre
remembered 1870, and he knew what war meant; but to the rest it was a
new, hideous thing, dimly realised, but now, at last, with this mute
witness before them, very real.
Then things began to happen. No one ever knows how a crowd will spring
up in a city street, apparently by magic, and here suddenly the village
began to fill with men.
Four soldiers--two Scots, a Dorset and a Bedford man--black with grime,
three days' growth of beard, hollow-eyed and limping painfully,
appeared in front of Pierre and asked where they were to go. A captain
of the Guards, riding a tired farm-horse, with a colonel walking by his
side, one hand on the horse's flank, came behind, and, tackling the
A.S.C. captain, asked for something to eat.
"We've been on the trudge for twelve hours," said the colonel, "and
could get nothing. No one knows where anyone is. The regiment? Badly
cut up last night and all scattered, heaven knows where."
"Is the mayor about anywhere?" And a young Staff officer, with a
French interpreter, pushes his way through the crowd.
"A cavalry brigade (or what's left of it"--he adds in an undertone)
"will be here to-night. What barns and houses have you available? How
much hay can you get?"
Old Pierre is beginning to lose his wits in the amazing turn of events.
"If monsieur will come into the house I will try to arrange."
The officer follows, with a shrug of the shoulders which might have
meant many things.
The long summer's day is closing, but there is no hint of the evening's
cool in the heavy air. All over the little village green, where the
church tower has thrown a grateful shadow, lie groups of men worn with
exhaustion and sleeping with gulping breaths. In one corner Henriette
is busy with water and clean linen, bathing and bandaging horrible,
staring wounds. And the men lie patiently, with now and then a moan of
pain, gazing up at her with the great round eyes of a hurt collie dog.
And now the vanguard of the retiring army begins to stream in and
through--all arms, all regiments. Overhead a flight of aeroplanes
circle, like homing pigeons, seeking where they may alight. It is
incredible that these are the regiments which a little ten days ago
swung gaily down the Aldershot roads.
At the head of the column there marches a field battery. Two days ago
the major took it into action six guns and wagons strong, with perhaps
a couple of hundred men; so proud in his command, his men, his horses.
Now, stand by the path and watch the battery pass! And, as it passes,
uncover your head, for it has returned from the very gates of Death.
Two guns--with three horses each to draw them. There are still four
drivers left, and there are still half a dozen gunners. On the first
limber ride a subaltern and the sergeant-major, and by the gun walk
another sergeant and the quartermaster-sergeant. That is the battery.
On the second limber three men sit, swaying dizzily. A captain of a
cavalry regiment and two privates of a Scottish regiment.
Here marches a battalion of the Guards. Two days ago it went into
action perhaps 1,100 strong. Uncover your head once again as it
passes, for these men too have looked Death in the face.
At the head there paces slowly an ammunition mule. On it, wearing a
peasant's slouch hat, with breeches cut off above the knees, and with
left arm held close by a rough bandage, there rides the colonel. Count
the men as they march past in fours: 80, 120, 160, 180, 220. No, that
is the next regiment you are counting in. Just 200! That is the tale
of them.
Blackened by dust and powder, bearded, breeches cut short like those of
their commanding officer, the few puttees that are left to them wrapped
round their feet for boots--otherwise bits of sacking or cloth, bloody
bandages round heads or arms, some with hats like the colonel's, most
with none at all slowly they limp by. And, as they pass, the A.S.C.
drivers silently offer such biscuits or bread as they have. God, how
they wolf the food!
The colonel turns round on his "charger," and in a hoarse shout:
"Battalion! 'Tention! Pull yourselves together, lads; a French
village!"
Ah, the pride of them! The glory of race and blood! This is not the
Mons country, with its blood-soaked memories; 'tis the Horse Guards
Parade, and we're Trooping the Colour!
The click of rifles coming to the slope runs down the ranks. The fours
line by magic as the men straighten themselves; it is a new regiment,
marching into action, which the French villagers see pass before them.
"Defeat? Why, this is part of the joke! Just to draw the Germans on
into the trap." And at a word they would have turned to charge an army
corps.
And so the regiments pass. And as the last of the Division goes
through, lights twinkle from the tiny windows of the cottages and the
great yellow moon climbs slowly over the poplar trees. An A.S.C.
sergeant mounts a lorry with a copy of the Paris _Daily Mail_ in his
hand, and entertains an ever-growing audience with the news that the
Russians have invaded Germany and are marching on Berlin.
"It will be all over by Christmas--but I'd 'ave liked just one slap at
them Germans, so as I could tell the missis," says a late bus-driver.
But on the outskirts of the crowd the Staff officer is talking to the
A.S.C. captain:
"I've no orders for you, but you've evidently been forgotten. You
ought to have had your park fifteen miles farther south by now. Things
are bad, and there will be the hell of a scrap round here to-morrow
morning. I should clear out if I were you."
Away up to the north there is a blinding electric glare coming fast
down the road. Nearer, and it is the headlight on the first of a long
train of R.F.C. light motor-lorries, slipping silently down on rubber
tires. The dust rises in clouds above and about them. Half-way
through the village a motor-cyclist rides, meeting them. The dust
takes his shadow, and as he approaches the headlight the silhouette
rises higher and higher until it mounts to the sky and disappears.
Just as when children play a shadow pantomime and vanish by jumping
over the lamp.
The lorries pass, and the dust slowly settles once more. The little
lights twinkle clearly again, and the moon now floods the countryside
in a sheen of silver.
But the A.S.C. captain talks earnestly with his sergeant-major and M.
le maire.
"We must move, but how can we possibly carry all those wounded and
stragglers?"
M. le maire is of opinion that as _les Boches_ are being driven back
into Germany, the wounded might well remain until ambulances can be got.
The O.C. looks at his sergeant-major. They have both guessed the
meaning of that retirement, and they guess also something that they
dare not tell the mayor.
A few minutes suffice to rouse all the men and to get the wounded made
as comfortable as possible in the lorries. Lights are switched on the
cars, and within half an hour the column is clear of the village on its
way south.
An hour later the advance patrols of a German cavalry division ride in
from the north; and old Pierre finds that the hay he had collected for
_les anglais_ does not go very far with his new visitors.
Poor old Pierre, and Madame the mayoress, and the pretty little
rose-garden!
Such is a little pen-picture, not one whit exaggerated, of an evening
of the Retreat. And perhaps those few lines will serve to convey some
trifling idea of the wonder of the achievement.
Everywhere regiments and units forgotten, or lost, or acting on their
own initiative. And yet, somehow or other, making a composite whole to
turn and repel the attacking hordes. Staff work practically ceased to
exist, and yet the threads of communication held fast, though only by a
little.
Now you have had a glimpse of the men who, the very next day, fought
_and won_ perhaps the most glorious fight a British Army has ever
shared in.
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat.