The movements of troops and the preparations for big events revealed
to every British soldier in France the “secret” of the coming battle.
Casualty clearing-stations were ordered to make ready for big numbers of
wounded. That was always one of the first signs of approaching massacre.
Vast quantities of shells were being brought up to the rail-heads and
stacked in the “dumps.” They were the first-fruit of the speeding up
of munition-factories at home after the public outcry against shell
shortage and the lack of high explosives. Well, at last the guns would
not be starved. There was enough high-explosive force available to blast
the German trenches off the map. So it seemed to our innocence--though
years afterward we knew that no bombardment would destroy all earthworks
such as Germans made, and that always machine-guns would slash our
infantry advancing over the chaos of mangled ground.
Behind our lines in France, in scores of villages where our men were
quartered, there was a sense of impending fate. Soldiers of the New Army
knew that in a little while the lessons they had learned in the School
of Courage would be put to a more frightful test than that of holding
trenches in stationary warfare. Their boredom, the intolerable monotony
of that routine life, would be broken by more sensational drama,
and some of them were glad of that, and said: “Let's get on with it.
Anything rather than that deadly stagnation.” And others, who guessed
they were chosen for the coming battle, and had a clear vision of what
kind of things would happen (they knew something about the losses at
Neuve Chapelle and Festubert), became more thoughtful than usual, deeply
introspective, wondering how many days of life they had left to them.
Life was good out of the line in that September of '15. The land of
France was full of beauty, with bronzed corn-stooks in the fields, and
scarlet poppies in the grass, and a golden sunlight on old barns and on
little white churches and in orchards heavy with fruit. It was good to
go into the garden of a French chateau and pluck a rose and smell its
sweetness, and think back to England, where other roses were blooming.
England!... And in a few days--who could say?--perhaps eternal sleep
somewhere near Lens.
Some officers of the Guards came into the garden of the little house
where I lived at that time with other onlookers. It was an untidy
garden, with a stretch of grass-plot too rough to be called a lawn, but
with pleasant shade under the trees, and a potager with raspberries
and currants on the bushes, and flower-beds where red and white roses
dropped their petals.
Two officers of the Scots Guards, inseparable friends, came to gossip
with us, and read the papers, and drink a little whisky in the evenings,
and pick the raspberries. They were not professional soldiers. One of
them had been a stock-broker, the other “something in the city.” They
disliked the army system with an undisguised hatred and contempt. They
hated war with a ferocity which was only a little “camouflaged” by the
irony and the brutality of their anecdotes of war's little comedies.
They took a grim delight in the humor of corpses, lice, bayonet--work,
and the sniping of fair-haired German boys. They laughed, almost
excessively, at these attributes of warfare, and one of them used to
remark, after some such anecdote, “And once I was a little gentleman!”
He was a gentleman still, with a love of nature in his heart--I saw him
touch the petals of living roses with a caress in his finger-tips--and
with a spiritual revolt against the beastliness of this new job of his,
although he was a strong, hard fellow, without weakness of sentiment.
His close comrade was of more delicate fiber, a gentle soul, not made
for soldiering at all, but rather for domestic life, with children about
him, and books. As the evenings passed in this French village, drawing
him closer to Loos by the flight of time, I saw the trouble in his eyes
which he tried to hide by smiling and by courteous conversation. He
was being drawn closer to Loos and farther away from the wife who knew
nothing of what that name meant to her and to him.
Other officers of the Guards came into the garden--Grenadiers. There
were two young brothers of an old family who had always sent their sons
to war. They looked absurdly young when they took off their tunics and
played a game of cricket, with a club for a bat, and a tennis-ball. They
were just schoolboys, but with the gravity of men who knew that life is
short. I watched their young athletic figures, so clean-limbed, so
full of grace, as they threw the ball, and had a vision of them lying
mangled.
An Indian prince came into the garden. It was “Ranjitsinji,” who had
carried his bat to many a pavilion where English men and women had
clapped their hands to him, on glorious days when there was sunlight on
English lawns. He took the club and stood at the wicket and was bowled
third ball by a man who had only played cricket after ye manner of
Stratford-atte-Bow. But then he found himself, handled the club like a
sword, watched the ball with a falcon's eye, played with it. He was
on the staff of the Indian Cavalry Corps, which was “to co-operate in
exploiting any success.”
“To-morrow we move,” said one of the Scots Guards officers. The colonel
of the battalion came to dinner at our mess, sitting down to a white
tablecloth for the last time in his life. They played a game of cards,
and went away earlier than usual.
Two of them lingered after the colonel had gone. They drank more whisky.
“We must be going,” they said, but did not go.
The delicate-looking man could not hide the trouble in his eyes.
“I sha'n't be killed this time,” he said to a friend of mine. “I shall
be badly wounded.”
The hard man, who loved flowers, drank his fourth glass of whisky.
“It's going to be damned uncomfortable,” he said. “I wish the filthy
thing were over. Our generals will probably arrange some glorious little
massacres. I know 'em!... Well, good night, all.”
They went out into the darkness of the village lane. Battalions were
already on the move, in the night. Their steady tramp of feet beat on
the hard road. Their dark figures looked like an army of ghosts. Sparks
were spluttering out of the funnels of army cookers. A British soldier
in full field kit was kissing a woman in the shadow-world of an
estaminet. I passed close to them, almost touching them before I was
aware of their presence.
“Bonne chance!” said the woman. “Quand to reviens--”
“One more kiss, lassie,” said the man.
“Mans comme to es gourmand, toi!”
He kissed her savagely, hungrily. Then he lurched off the sidewalk and
formed up with other men in the darkness.
The Scots Guards moved next morning. I stood by the side of the colonel,
who was in a gruff mood.
“It looks like rain,” he said, sniffing the air. “It will probably rain
like hell when the battle begins.”
I think he was killed somewhere by Fosse 8. The two comrades in the
Scots Guards were badly wounded. One of the young brothers was killed
and the other maimed. I found their names in the casualty lists which
filled columns of The Times for a long time after Loos.