cap. "The number looks like one--nought--seven--something," said the
chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor
lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the
men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported
fit for duty.
The English soldier hides his feelings as though he were ashamed of
them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal
twilight, and I sought to disperse it.
"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed
to leave nothing to be desired.
But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier
begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable--and not before. He
will bear without repining everything but luxury.
"One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about
this New Army getting four bob?"
"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently.
"Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls
themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And
those shuvvers--they're like fighting cocks."
"Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I
said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across
trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer
uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam
upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread
and butter, the whole representing a most interesting geological
formation and producing a startling chromatic effect.
"Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw
pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat
oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?"
My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander
affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull.
"Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!"
A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time
to go bye-bye. Parade--hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round
soon. Scoot, my sons."
They scooted.
The silvery notes of the bugle died away over the woods. Night was
falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray.
We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures,
his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old.
He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for
the best part of my life," he said simply, "and I had retired on a
pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly, "that it has pleased Him
to extend my days long enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I
know the British soldier and--to know him is to love him. Do you
understand?" he added, as he nodded in the direction the men had gone.
As I looked at him, there came into my mind the haunting lines of
Tennyson's "Ulysses."
"Yes," I said, "I understand."
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Pale.
[14] Confusing.
[15] Blaze.
[16] Empty.
[17] Smart.
[18] Welsh for a singing meeting.
[19] Mad.
[20] Imbecile.
[21] A mole.
[22] Trembled.
[23] Screaming.
XX
THE FUGITIVES
"But pray that your flight be not in the winter."
Some four or five miles north of Bailleul, where the _douane_ posts mark
the marches of the Franco-Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre.
Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills,
through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the
earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies
another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came
upon two lonely wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with
moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of
the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a
few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the
landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of
privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape. Not a living
thing appeared, and the secret promises of spring were so remote as to
seem incredible.
The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant class; the man, gnarled
like an old oak, the purple clots in the veins of his wrists betraying
the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap
had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other
end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the
axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart
the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed,
a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a
spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen
utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, clanked
together.
As our car drew up, they stopped, the woman holding her hands to her
side as though to recover breath.
"Who are you? Where do you come from?" said my companion, a French
officer.
They stared uncomprehendingly.
He spoke again, this time in Flemish:
"_Van waar komt gy? Waar gaat gy heen?_"
The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the direction of the Menin
ridge.
There followed a conversation of which I could make but little. But I
noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as
though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves.
"They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by
the Bosches near the Menin ridge."
"Are they all alone?" I asked.
He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the
Germans when they billeted there."
"Why?"
"They don't know. The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock
away. These few sticks are all they have left. Curious, isn't it," he
added meditatively, "that you never see any Flemish fugitives without
their feather-beds?" I had often noticed it. Also I had noticed the
curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save
everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence.
Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become
equally dear when you have to leave them.
"But where are they going?"
The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed
vacantly at the lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The
canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of
sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull
thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and
forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration.
The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the
cart as though seeking support.
We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the
spasms of his malady.
"He says he doesn't know," my companion translated. "He's never been
outside his parish before. But he thinks he'll go to Brussels and see
the King of the Belgians. He doesn't know the Germans are in Brussels.
And anyhow he's on the wrong road."
"But surely," I hazarded, "the _maire_ or the _curé_ could have told him
better."
"He says the Germans shot the _curé_ and carried off the _maire_. It's a
way they've got, you know."
It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted
sea. Their little world was in ruins. The bells that had called them to
the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had
knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the
great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their
hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the
heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields
which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry,
and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This
was the secret of their heavy lethargy.
My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to
maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul
had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it,
the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of
the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a
time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the
refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom
has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by
parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would
supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we
directed them to go.
But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still
standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man
gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary
humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their
inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair.
XXI
A "DUG-OUT"[24]
Driver George Hawkins, of the ----th Battery (K), was engaged in drying
one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he
felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that
morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy
should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He
performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive
great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical
expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a
sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a
utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering
the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism,
and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not
been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's fetlocks he would
have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back. But being
something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to
the ground, for he suspected corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins found
himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable.
Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder.
Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt. He looked at
Tommy with pained surprise.
"I feeds yer," he said reproachfully, "I waters yer, I grooms yer, I
stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it? Now I ask
yer?" Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence.
"What do I get for it?" he repeated argumentatively. "I gets a blooming
kick."
"Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a
matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive
functions, and cannot be set down here.
"Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the
Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment. The Major
was trying hard to repress a smile. "Go on with your catechism,
Hawkins," he said. It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral
Education League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for
the repression of vice.
"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Hawkins?" I said unguardedly. But
no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's reply was
disconcerting. "I 'ates 'em, sir," he whispered to me as the Major
turned his back; "I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They gives me
'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache something cruel."
"He doesn't, though," said the Major, who had overheard this auricular
confidence. We had left the stable. "Our drivers are mighty fond of
their horses--and proud of them too. It's quite an infatuation in its
way. But come and see the O.T.C. We've got them down here for the
weekend, by way of showing them the evolutions of a battery. They've got
their instructor, an N.C.O. who's been dug out for the job, and I've
lent him two of the guns to put them through their paces. He's quite
priceless--a regular chip of the old Army block."
"Now, sir," the sergeant was saying, "get them into single file." They
were to change from Battery Column to Column of Route.
"Battery...!" began the cadet in a piping voice.
"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mild expostulation. "You've
got to get it off your chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So!" And he gave a
stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and surprising performance, for
he was fat and scant of breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at
the ---- Club, after twenty-one years' service in the Army, had produced
a fatty degeneration which no studious arrangement of an Army belt could
altogether conceal.
"Battery!" began the cadet, as he threw his head back and took a deep
breath. "Advance in single file from the right. The rest mark time."
"Rest!" said the sergeant reproachfully. "There ain't no rest in the
British Army. Rear, say, 'Rear,' sir."
"Rear, mark time!" said the cadet uncomfortably.
"Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows, "double them back,
sir."
"Battery, run!" said the cadet brightly.
"As y' were! How could yer, Mr. ----?" said the sergeant grievously.
"The British Army never runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed at
the aspersion upon the reputation of the British Army into which he had
been betrayed.
"Double--march!"
They doubled.
The sergeant now turned his attention to a party at gun drill. It was a
sub-section, which means a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment
was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd numbers in front, even
numbers behind.
"Section tell off!"
"One," from the front row. "Two," from the back. "Three," from the
front. The tale was duly told in voices which ran up and down the scale,
tenor alternating with baritone.
"Without drag-ropes--prepare to advance!" shouted the sergeant. The odd
numbers shifted to the right of the gun, the evens to the left, but
numbers "4" and "6," being apparently under the impression that it was a
game of "musical chairs," found themselves on the right instead of the
left.
"Too many odds," shouted the sergeant. "The British Army be used to
'eavy hodds, but not that sort. Nos. 4 and 6 get over to the near side."
"Halt! Action front!" They unlimbered, and swung the gun round to point
in the direction of an imaginary enemy.
The detachment were now grouped round the gun, and I drew near to have a
look at it. No neater adaptation of means to end could be devised than
your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a child, and her "bubble" is
as sensitive to a touch as mercury in a barometer.
"No. 1 add one hundred. Two-nought minutes more left!" shouted the
sergeant, who, with the versatility of a variety artiste, was now
playing another part from his extensive repertoire. He was forward
observing officer.
One of his pupils turned the ranging gear until the range-drum
registered a further hundred yards, while another traversed the gun
until it pointed twenty minutes more left.
As we turned away they were performing another delicate and complicated
operation which was not carried through without some plaintive
expostulation from the N.C.O.
"It reminds me," remarked the Major colloquially, as we strolled away,
"of Falstaff drilling his recruits. So does the texture of the khaki
they serve out to the O.T.C. 'Dowlas, filthy dowlas!' But you've no idea
how soon he'll lick them into shape. These 'dug-outs' are as primitive
as cave-dwellers in their way but they know their job. And what is more,
they like it."
As we passed the stables I heard ecstatic sounds--a whinny of equine
delight and the blandishments of a human voice. Through the open door I
caught a glimpse of Driver Hawkins with his back turned towards us. His
left arm was round Tommy's neck and the left side of his face rested
upon Tommy's head; the fingers of his right hand were delicately
stroking Tommy's nose.
"I forgives yer," I heard him say with rare magnanimity, "yus, I
forgives yer, old boy. But if yer does it again, yer'll give me the
blooming 'ump."
I passed hurriedly on. It was not for a stranger to intrude on anything
so intimate.
FOOTNOTE:
[24] On leave in England.
XXII
CHRISTMAS EVE
(_1914_)
"Halt! Stop, I mean."
The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool
looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and
painful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in the annexe of a
Base hospital on Christmas Eve, and the sergeant was as hard to please
as if they were recruits doing their first squad drill. They were a
scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning chaplain to the Forces, from
Base "details" and convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their
time erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead and gaining audibly
with each lap despite the desperate spurts of the rest.
"Opened out his throttle--'e has," whispered an Army driver
professionally to his neighbour; "'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the
speed limit."
The sergeant glanced magisterially at the offender, a young Dorset, who
a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who
has lately done enough digging for a whole parish.
"You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he exclaimed reproachfully;
"you ain't out on patrol, yer know. 'Shun! Now again! 'Christians'."
Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn,
Whereon ...
The familiar melody was shut behind me as I closed the door. Those
West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and,
in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night,
illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a
luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the
window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the
nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered
mazily whether they had brought Father Christmas with them.
A low cry of pain reached my ears as I opened the door of Surgical Ward
A.I. A nurse was removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought
down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him ready to spray the wound
with peroxide. "Buck up, old chap," cried the patients in the
neighbouring beds who looked on encouragingly at these ministries.
Another moan escaped him as the discoloured bandage, with its faint
odour of perchloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed flesh.
"Next gramophone record, please!" chanted his neighbours. The patient
smiled faintly at the exhortation and set his teeth.
"That's better, sonny," whispered the nurse with benign approval.
"It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going to drain off the septic
matter," interjected the surgeon in holland overalls, with sleeves
tucked up to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The dresser handed
him a nickel reed from the sterilising basin.
With a few light quick movements the wound was sprayed, dressed,
cleansed, and anointed, and the surgeon, like the good Samaritan, passed
on to the next case. Only last night the patient was in the trenches,
moaning with pain, as the stretcher-bearers carried him to the aid-post,
and from the aid-post to the forward dressing station, whence by an
uneasy journey (there were no sumptuous hospital-trains in those days)
he had come hither. But what of the others who were hit outside the
trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas Eve, in that dreadful No
Man's Land swept by the enemy's fire, whither no stretcher-bearer can
go--lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping forms, some
quivering in the barbed wire, where dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping
only for a cleanly death from a bullet before their wounds fester and
poison the blood in their veins.
Whereon--the Saviour--of mankind--was--born.
The measured cadence fell on my ear as I left the ward and passed beyond
the annexe. The sergeant had now got his section well in hand. I turned
up the long winding road towards my quarters. It was a cold moonlight
night, and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a
black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as
though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the
Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible--or so it
seemed to me--as Mars in all that starry heraldry.
"Bon soir, monsieur!" It was the voice of the sentry, and came from
behind a barricade of hurdles, thatched with straw, on the crest of the
road over the downs. His bayonet gleamed like a silver needle in the
moonlight, and he was alone in his vigil. No shepherds watched their
flocks by night, neither did angels sing peace on earth and goodwill
towards men. Only the cold austerity of the stars kept him company.
Perhaps the first Christmas Eve was just such a starry night as this;
the same stars may have looked down upon a manger in Bethlehem. But on
the brow of the hill was one of those wayside shrines which symbolise
the anguish of the Cross, and these very stars may have looked down upon
the hill of Calvary.
IV
THE FRONT AGAIN
XXIII
THE COMING OF THE HUN
The _maire_ sat in his parlour at the Hôtel de Ville dictating to his
secretary. He was a stout little man with a firm mouth, an indomitable
chin, and quizzical eyes. His face would at any time have been
remarkable; for a French provincial it was notable in being
clean-shaven. Most Frenchmen of the middle class wear beards of an
Assyrian luxuriance, which to a casual glance suggest stage properties
rather than the work of Nature. The _maire_ was leaning back in his
chair, his elbows resting upon its arms and his hands extended in front
of him, the thumb and finger-tips of one hand poised to meet those of
the other as though he were contemplating the fifth proposition in
Euclid. It was a characteristic attitude; an observer would have said it
indicated a temperament at once patient and precise. He was dictating a
note to the _commissaire de police_, warning the inhabitants to conduct
themselves "paisiblement" in the event of a German occupation, an event
which was hourly expected. Much might depend upon that proclamation; a
word too little or too much and Heaven alone knew what innuendo a German
Commandant might discover in it. Perhaps the _maire_ was also not
indifferent to the question of style; he prided himself on his French;
he had in his youth won a prize at the Lycée for composition, and he
contributed occasional papers to the journal of the Société de
l'Histoire de France on the antiquities of his _department_. Most
Frenchmen are born purists in style, and the _maire_ lingered over his
words.
"Continuez, Henri," he said with a glance at the clerk. "_Le Maire,
assisté de son adjoint et de ses conseillers municipaux et de délégués
de quartier, sera en permanence à l'hôtel de Ville pour assurer_--"
There was a kick at the door and a tall loutish man in the uniform of a
German officer entered, followed by two grey-coated soldiers. The
officer neither bowed nor saluted, but merely glared with an
intimidating frown. The _maire's_ clerk sat in an atrophy of fear,
unable to move a muscle. The officer advanced to the desk, pulled out
his revolver from its leather pouch, and laid it with a lethal gesture
on the _maire's_ desk. The _maire_ examined it curiously. "Ah, yes, M.
le Capitaine, thank you; I will examine it in a moment, but I have seen
better ones--our new service pattern, for example. Ja! Ich verstehe ganz
gut," he continued, answering the officer's reckless French in perfect
German. "Consider yourself under arrest," declaimed the officer, with
increasing violence. "We are in occupation of your town; you will
provide us within the next twenty-four hours with ten thousand kilos of
bread, thirty thousand kilos of hay, forty thousand kilos of oats, five
thousand bottles of wine, one hundred boxes of cigars." ("Mon Dieu! it
is an inventory," said the _maire_ to himself.) "If these are not
forthcoming by twelve noon to-morrow you will be shot," added the
officer in a sudden inspiration of his own.