happened an immense time ago. He remembered how the subaltern had warned
him that the only thing to do when a German flare lit up the night was
to stand quite still. And he had not stood still, for one of the most
difficult things for a man to believe is that to see suddenly is not the
same thing as being seen; he had ducked, and as he moved something
seared his right cheek like red-hot iron, and then--but why recall that
shameful moment? A paradoxical psychologist in a learned essay on "the
Expression of Emotion" has argued gravely that the "expression" precedes
the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is afraid but is afraid
because he runs. Sergeant Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to
this day he believes that it was his first start that was his undoing.
He had begun to run without knowing why, until he knew why he ran--he
was afraid. Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army vernacular, "cold
feet." But why he ran in the first instance he did not know. It was true
he hadn't slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as N.C.O. to
go round every half-hour during the night to watch the men and stare at
that inscrutable field, and to post and relieve, had made him very
jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in his arms the day before
that fatal night--he could see the grey film glistening on his face like
a clouded glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But what had that to
do with the charge? Nothing at all.
And while the prisoner pondered on these things he was recalled by the
voice of the President. Did he wish to ask the witness any questions?
His company commander had been giving evidence. No; he had no questions
to ask. And as each witness was called, and sworn, and gave evidence,
all of which the Judge-Advocate repeated like a litany and duly wrote
down with his own hand--the prisoner always returned the same answer.
Now the prisoner's friend, a young officer who had never played that
_rôle_ before, and who was both nervous and conscientious, had been
studying Rule 40 in the Red Book with furtive concentration. What was he
to do with a prisoner who elected neither to make a statement nor to put
questions to witnesses, and who never gave him any lead? But he had
there read something about calling witnesses as to character, and,
reading, recollected that the company commander had glanced at the
prisoner with genuine commiseration. And so he persuaded Stokes, after
some parley, to call the captain to give evidence as to character. The
captain's words were few and weighty. The prisoner, he testified, was
one of the best N.C.O.'s in his company, and, with the latitude which is
characteristic of court-martial proceedings, the captain went on to tell
of the testimony borne by the dead subaltern to the excellent character
of John Stokes, and how the said John Stokes had been greatly affected
by the death of the subaltern. And for the first time John Stokes hung
his head. But beyond that and the quivering of his eyelashes he made no
sign.
And it being a clear case the Judge-Advocate, as a Judge-Advocate may
do, elected not to sum up, and the prisoner was taken to the place from
whence he came. And the Court proceeded to consider their finding and
sentence, which finding and sentence, being signed by the President and
the Judge-Advocate, duly went its appointed way to the Confirming
Authority and there remained. For the General in Chief command in the
field was hard pressed with other and weightier matters, having reason
to believe that he would have to meet an attack of three Army Corps on a
front of eight miles with only one Division. Which belief turned out to
be true, and had for Sergeant John Stokes momentous consequences, as you
shall hear.
II
When John Stokes found himself once more in charge of a platoon he was
greatly puzzled. He had been suddenly given back his arms and his belt,
which no prisoner, whether in close or open arrest, is supposed to wear,
and his guard had gone with him. He knew nothing about Paragraph 482 of
the King's Regulations, which contemplates "emergencies"; still less did
he know that an emergency had arisen--such an emergency as will cast
lustre upon British arms to the end of time. But that strange things
were happening ahead he knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly
made up as Falstaff's army: gunners, cooks, and A.S.C. drivers were all
lumped together to make a company. Some carried their rifles at the
slope and some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had not, certain
details from the Rifle Brigade marched with their own quick trot, and
some wore spurs.
Of one thing he was thankful: his old battalion, wherever they were,
were not there. And the company commander coming along and perceiving
the stripes on his sleeve, had, without further inquiry, put him in
charge of a platoon, and thereafter he lost sight of his guard
altogether.
He knew nothing of where he was. Few soldiers at the Front ever do: they
will be billeted in a village for a week and not know so much as the
name of it. But that big business was afoot was evident to him, for they
were marching in column of route almost at the double, under a faint
moon and in absolute silence--the word having gone forth that there was
to be no smoking or talking in the ranks.
Not a sound was to be heard, except the whisper of the poplars and the
tramp of the men's feet upon the _pavé_. The road was so greasy with mud
that it might have been beeswaxed, and Stokes's boots, the nails of
which had been worn down, kept slipping as on a parquet floor. As they
passed through the mean little villages not a light was to be seen; even
the _estaminets_ were shut, but now and again a dog barked mournfully at
its chain. Once a whispered command was given at the head of the column,
which halted so suddenly that the men behind almost fell upon the men in
front, and then backed hastily; and these movements were automatically
communicated all down the column, so that the sections of fours lurched
like the trucks of a train which is suddenly pulled up. At that moment
something flashed at the head of the column, and Stokes suddenly caught
a glimpse of the faces of the captain and the subaltern in an aureole of
light lit by the needle-like rays of an electric torch as they studied a
map and compass.
But in no long time their ears told them they were nearing their
destination, even as a traveller learns that he is nearing the sea. For
they heard the crackle of musketry following upon the altercation of
guns. All this passed as in a dream, and it seemed little more than a
few minutes before Sergeant Stokes, having passed through a curtain of
shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some shallow support trenches to
which the remnants of the regiment whom they were called upon to stiffen
had fallen back. It was a critical moment: our first trenches were in
the hands of the enemy, and the whole line was sagging under the impact
of the German hordes. Somehow that trench had to be recaptured--to be
recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into an
invulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of machine-guns to sweep
with a crossfire the right and left flanks, where our line curved in
like a gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes knew as little
as is usually given to one platoon to know on a front of eight miles.
As dawn broke and the stars paled, the word came down the line, and, in
a series of short rushes, stooping somewhat in the attitude of a man who
is climbing a very steep hill, they moved forward in extended order
about eight or ten paces apart carrying their rifles with bayonets
fixed. A hail-storm of lead greeted them, and all around him Sergeant
Stokes saw men falling, and as they fell lying in strange attitudes and
uncouth--some stumbling (he had seen a hare shot in the back dragging
its legs in just that way), others lying on their faces and clutching
the earth convulsively as they drummed with their feet, and some very
still. Overhead there was a sobbing and whimpering in the air. A little
ahead to the left of him a machine-gun was tap-tapping like a telegraph
instrument, and as it traversed the field of their advance the men went
down in swathes.
If only he could get to that gun! On the right a low hedge ran at right
angles to the German trench, and making for it he took such little cover
as it afforded, and ran forward as he had never run before, not even on
that night of baneful memory. His heart was thumping violently, there
was a prodigious "stitch" in his side; and something warm was trickling
down his forehead into his eyes and half blinding him, while in his ears
the bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees. The next moment he
was up against a little knot of grey-coated figures with toy-like
helmets, he heard a word that sounded like "Himmel," and he had emptied
his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing,
parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very
faint....
That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For
the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense
distance--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was
coming to after a spell of gas--was saying something to him as he seemed
to be rising, rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable
depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and
then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at
the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent thing in
woman--was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was
impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew--he was in
hospital.
III
"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a
certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field
Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious
case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making
hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up
all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had
been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking.
Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and
not reduced by one stripe."
"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw
forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day
singing--singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of
course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a
few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that
cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to
breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of
sheer weariness--well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the
scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them,
but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made
us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at
that."
The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the
table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial."
He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a
Parliamentary draughtsman. "Yes," he said, after some pertinent
emendations, "it'll do. But the title is too long for common use at
G.H.Q."
"Why!" said the other with a certain paternal sensitiveness, "what do
you suggest?"
"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pensively,--"I suggest we call it
Stokes's Act."
* * * * *
Now this story has one merit--if it has no other. It is true. And as
for the rest of the Act and its preamble, and its sections and its
sub-sections, are they not written in the Statute Book? In the Temple
they call it 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But out there they call it "Stokes's
Act."
X
THE FRONT
Persons of a rheumatic habit are said to apprehend the approach of damp
weather by certain presentiments in their bones. So people of a nervous
temperament--like the writer--have premonitions of the approach to "the
Front" by a feeling of cold feet. These are usually induced by the
spectacle of large and untimely cavities in the road, but they may be
accentuated, as not infrequently happened, by seeing the process of
excavation itself--and hearing it. The effect on the auditory nerves is
known as "k-r-rump," which is, phonetically speaking, a fairly literal
translation. The best thing to do on such occasions is to obey the
nursery rhyme, and "open your mouth and shut your eyes." The intake of
air will relieve the pressure on your ear-drums. I have been told by one
of our gunners that the gentle German has for years been experimenting
in order to produce as "frightful" and intimidating a sound by the
explosion of his shells as possible. He has succeeded. Cases have been
known of men without a scratch laughing and crying simultaneously after
a too-close acquaintance with the German hymnology of hate. The results
are, however, sometimes disappointing from the German point of view, as
in the case of the soldier who, being spattered with dirt but otherwise
untouched, picked himself up, and remarked with profound contempt, "The
dirty swine!"
The immediate approach to the trenches is usually marked by what sailors
call a "dodger," which is to say, a series of canvas screens. These do
not conceal your legs, and if you are exceptionally tall, they may not
conceal your head. Your feet don't matter, but if you are wise you duck
your head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate pride in walking
upright, and will laugh at you most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in
the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of
course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I
visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to
admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up
ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as
wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the
approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible,
the latter object being effected by frequent "traversing." To reach the
fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of
them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it
with innumerable junctions and small depôts in the shape of dug-outs,
and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering
as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is
complicated by frequent traverses--something after the pattern of a
Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to
prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these
things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb
and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part
of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a
lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the
right and left of you. The delivery of a bomb serves as a very effective
notice of ejectment. The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of
earth commonly known as a parados. My servant, whose vocabulary was
limited, called it a paradox, and was not very wide of the mark.
Somewhere behind the trenches at varying distances are the batteries.
The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their
guns, and if none are to be found they improvise them. Hop-poles
trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a
delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf
emplacements are constructed for the six guns, and turfed dug-outs house
the telephone-operator and the gunners. The battery officers are
billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farmhouse, whose chief
decorative feature is a midden-heap; in England it would promptly be the
subject of a closing order by any Public Health authority.
There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun. As a ship answers her
helm or an aeroplane its controls, so does an eighteen-pounder respond
to every turn of her elevating and traversing gear. Watch a gunner
laying his gun on a target he cannot see; observe him switch the gun
round from the aiming point to the target; remark the way in which the
sight clinometer registers the angle of sight and the drum registers the
range; and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship that ever sailed
the high seas could be more docile to a turn of the wheel. With perfect
simplicity did a man in the R.F.A. once say to me, "We feel towards our
gun as a mother feels to her child; we'd sooner lose our lives than our
gun." In that confession of faith you have the whole of the gunner's
creed.
The heavy guns are generally to be found in splendid isolation; one
such I visited and I marvelled at its appearance; it resembled nothing
so much as the mottled trunk of a decayed plane-tree except for its
girth. "Futurist art," explained the major deprecatingly as I stared at
its daubed surface; "it makes it unrecognisable." It certainly did.
Close by were what looked at a distance like a bed of copper cucumbers.
"More gardening?" I asked. "Yes, market gardening," replied the major;
"if we lay the shells like that with sand-bags between them we prevent
their igniting one another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver
the goods."
A mile or two from the battery headquarters at X---- Y---- was the
observing station. The battery-major and myself were accompanied thither
by a huge mastiff who in civil life was a dairyman by profession and
turned a churn, but had long since attached himself to the major as
orderly. We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point the
mastiff stopped dead and declined to come any further. I thought this
churlish, and told him so, but he merely wagged his tail. When we
entered the farmyard I understood. It was pitted with shell-holes, and
they were obviously of very recent excavation. As a matter of fact the
Huns suspected that farm, and with good reason, and treated it to
intermittent "Hate." The mastiff therefore always waited for the
battery-major at what it judged, quite erroneously, to be a safe
distance. We clambered up into a loft by means of unreliable ladders. In
the roof of the loft some tiles had been removed, and leaning our arms
on the rafters we looked out. "You see that row of six poplars over
there?" said the Major, pointing to a place behind the German trenches.
I recognised them, for the same six poplars I had seen through a
periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a
house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned
to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft. "Lay No. 2 on the
register! Report when ready!" The operator repeated the words
confidentially to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the receiver
answered "Ready!" "Fire!" I had my eyes glued to the house, yet nothing
seemed to happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously with my
pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed? Even as I speculated there was a
puff of smoke and a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between the
poplars. We had delivered the goods.
If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the
chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in
billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in
their habits, and change their positions according as they are wanted.
But a field ambulance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a unit
of the R.A.M.C, with a major or a colonel in charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S.
of a division has three field ambulances under him, and when an attack
in force is projected he mobilises these three units at forward dressing
stations in the rear of the trenches. They are a link between the
aid-posts in front and the collecting stations behind. From the
collecting stations the wounded are sent on to the clearing hospitals
and thence to the base. It sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The
most eloquent compliment to its perfection was the dreamy reminiscence
of a soldier I met at the base: "I got hit up at Wipers, sir; something
hit me in the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard somebody
saying 'Drink this,' and I found myself in bed at Boulogne." Every field
ambulance has an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he usually is.
Is the soldier sick, he visits him; penitent, he shrives him; dying, he
comforts him. One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two, and a
mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was often longing for a shot at
the Huns, and as often imposing penances upon himself for such
un-ghostly desires. He found consolation in confessing the Irishmen
before they went into the trenches: "The bhoys fight all the better for
it," he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his flock; the only
doubts he had were about his own. We all loved him.
There is one great difference between life in billets and life in the
trenches. In billets the soldier "grouses" often, in trenches never.
This may be partly due to a very proper sense of proportion; it may also
be due to the fact that, the necessity for vigilance being relaxed and
the occasions for industry few, life in billets is apt to become a great
bore. The small Flemish and French towns offer few amenities; in our
mess we found our principal recreation in reunions with other
fraternities at the _pâtisserie_ or in an occasional mount. Of
_pâtisseries_ that at Bethune is the best; that at Poperinghe the worst.
Besides, the former has a piano and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In the
earlier stages of our occupation some of the officers at G.H.Q. did a
little coursing and shooting, but there was trouble about _délits de
chasse_, and now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big game--namely,
Germans--although I have heard of an irresponsible Irishman in the
trenches who vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more
remarkable, returned with it. Needless to say, his neighbours were
Saxons. As for the men, their opportunities of relaxation are more
circumscribed. Much depends on the house in which they are billeted. If
there is a baby, you can take the part of mother's help; one of the most
engaging sights I saw was a troop of our cavalrymen (they may have been
the A.V.C.) riding through Armentières, leading a string of remounts,
each remount with a laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can wash.
If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has
the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like
Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a
pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other
with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the
inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think it indecent, or merely
eccentric; perhaps both. But then, as Anatole France has gravely
remarked, a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of chastity.
Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals has reminded us, cleanliness
of body is next to orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you
may, with God's grace, escape one or more of the seven plagues of
Flanders. These seven are lice, flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and
"souvenirs." The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean
cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsmanlike and irritating habits
they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not
entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too
much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from
an impassive man with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room.
But it may well happen that in spite of babies, and baths, and brass
bands, and footballs, and boxing-gloves, and playing marbles (the
General in command of one of our divisions told me he had seen six
Argyll and Sutherland sergeants playing marbles with shrapnel bullets in
some support trenches), the men get bored. They are often very crowded,
and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate
shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his
neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may
become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander
sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a
good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in
the winter months, when out visiting Divisional Headquarters, did I, in
the shameful luxury of my car, come across a battalion slogging along
ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing with almost reproachful
unction:
Last night I s-s-aw you, I s-saw you, you naughty boy!