Chapter VI

Inscrutable appear the ways of the Staff to the young lions of our army in France. For a month the Battalion had been fondly nursing the idea of going into action, yet here they were back again in the old routine of trench warfare. True, they were on the battlefield of the Somme, though that singularly diminutive stream was away to the southward of them; but there was no sign of immediate action in their neighbourhood--the traces were all of the fighting which had been.

A modern battle is run very much on the lines of a railway time-table. The attack is entrusted to certain armies, and the corps of which these armies are composed send their divisions and brigades “over the top” in due course and duly take them out of the line, whereupon fresh troops take their places. Each corps has its own billeting area, towns and villages and camps, where its troops are billeted on the way to or from battle. As one division or brigade moves out of one billet, the successor moves in by schedule, just as, on the railway, one train follows another on the same set of metals. This disposition of troops in a vast battle, over widely devastated country, is a very important feature of the operations; for nothing must be left to chance, and, with the tide of battle ebbing and flowing, success or failure may depend on the accessibility of the reserves.

But the hot blood of our young officers does not always comprehend these strategical considerations, and our Ensign’s Battalion groused mightily at the way the Guards were being “shunted about,” while the rest of the British army were busily collecting laurels on the Somme.

The Battalion took over from some very cheery “Kitchener chaps,” and the officers of the company which our Ensign’s company relieved in the support position--a bowl-shaped chalk quarry with some excellent dug-outs--provided our Ensign and his brother officers with a very good luncheon. As No. 2 Company had been in the front line on the last occasion, it was now their turn to be in support, where their only duties were fetching rations and water for themselves and the companies in the front line. During their wanderings the double-company Mess had received some fresh members, including one Bryan, who went to our Ensign’s company, and one Duke, who went to No. 1,--our Ensign had been friends with both men in barracks at home, and their coming in no wise disturbed but only increased the _cameraderie_ of the double-company Mess.

The principal duty of the Guards in these trenches, as far as the front-line companies were concerned, was to “clean up.” This part of the line had been the scene of a holding attack in the earlier stages of the Somme battle. The troops concerned had done their work, but had not been able to hold the ground gained, and had fallen back to their front line, which had had a regular pounding from the German artillery. The trenches were badly battered and required a lot of repair, the dead bodies were scattered thickly about, and the atmosphere, especially in the warm showery weather then prevalent, was very bad.

So every night parties sallied forth, some to wire, others to repair the parapet, others again to bury the dead and salve the equipment lying about, both British and German. The burial parties had the worst time: you wanted strong nerves to stomach the sights about those trenches. Our Ensign used to see the fruits of these midnight salvage enterprises laid out afterwards in the trench--pay-books and identity discs and rifles and boxes of ammunition and helmets--ready to be sent down to the Brigade. Altogether, during the few days they were in that part of the line, the Battalion buried several hundred bodies and brought in a very large amount of salvage, for which good service they subsequently received the thanks of their Brigadier.

Life was pretty quiet in those trenches. The Hun was having such a desperate struggle to keep his line together where the sledge-hammer blows were being dealt, that in the quieter spots he was only too glad to live and let live. The daily Intelligence Summary showed clearly, on the plain testimony of German army orders, letters found on the dead, and the less reliable statements of prisoners, that not only was the invincibility of the German army exploded amongst the very men who had most sedulously spread the myth, but that the German Higher Commands were seriously concerned at the growing demoralisation of the troops, as shown by such significant symptoms as desertions, slackness in patrolling, and the like.

As a scrupulous chronicler of the adventures of our Ensign, I must not overlook a curious experience that befell him one morning in these trenches. Lured by the promise of a perfect dawn, he ventured forth before breakfast to visit the officers in the front line, foolishly omitting to take his Burberry with him. As he was walking down to have breakfast with The Beak and Bryan in the chalk quarry, he was surprised by a drenching downpour of rain. The approach to the front line was very simple--any one of four communication trenches would take you there--but, in his haste to get home out of the wet, our Ensign took a wrong turn and presently found himself in a part of the front line which seemed unfamiliar to him.

Now, out in France, one trench looks very much like another. It was daylight, and the sentries had stood down, and in that downpour every man who was not on duty would naturally take shelter in the dug-outs. So our Ensign was not surprised to find the trench deserted, thinking that presently he would come to a sentry who would tell him where he was. He noticed rifles leaning against the fire-steps, and boxes of bombs in shelves cut in the parados, and here and there a pack or a mess-tin left outside a dug-out. In fact, the trench looked very much as most trenches do in the early morning, after the men have had their breakfast and are snatching a few hours’ sleep.

In places the trench was very battered: at one point a huge gap had been blown clean away, so that he found himself in full view of the German lines. Presently, as he hurried along, with his head down before the driving rain, he began to notice that the trench showed signs of most unusual untidiness. Picks and shovels were lying about all over the place: here a greatcoat had been trodden down into the mud, there a box of small-arms ammunition lay gaping on the ground. Then, even as he realised that the broken fire-bays were void of sentries, and that the trench was deserted, he came to a dead stop. For there, in the bottom of the trench, half a dozen yards from him, a khaki-clad figure lay face downwards in the mud.

An eerie sensation crept over our young man. He felt like the hero of that stirring tale of old Clark Russell’s when he boards _The Frozen Pirate_ and finds himself in the midst of an arrested life. For, after stepping gingerly over the prone figure in the mud, he came to a dug-out before which a stretcher stood. On the stretcher lay a man with head swathed in bandages, and he was dead. So was the stretcher-bearer on the ground beside him, amid a litter of field-dressings. And there were many other dead bodies, besides these two, in that abandoned trench.

Our Ensign faced round and retraced his steps the way he had come, for he was fearful lest he should walk into the German lines if he went any farther. On his return he noticed many little signs that had escaped him in his previous haste,--remains of food spread out on tables in the silent dug-outs, old books and newspapers, sodden and mud-stained, some gum-boots lying in a pile behind the trench, a woollen waistcoat hanging on a nail in a ruined shelter; it was a desolate, uncanny place, and our Ensign was glad when he heard the sizzle of bacon and walked into a bombing-post of the Welsh Guards, who were holding the right of his Battalion, and was put on his road for home.

The Battalion came out of the line on a chilly Sunday afternoon--the approach trenches were so good that reliefs could be effected by daylight--and marched to a camp in a forest, charmingly situated on high ground outside a large village. The forest had not been touched by shell fire; only the trees had been thinned a little to make room for the huts and tents. The ground was clean, not fouled like their last sylvan camping-ground in the wood of M----, and the green moss made a soft carpet under their feet. There was a series of camps where the whole Brigade was lodged, and the black-roofed huts and the white bell-tents made a pretty picture spread out among the trees, the blue smoke from the wood fires curling up between, and vistas of forest glades on every hand.

The Brigade spent a very agreeable two days in the forest. The weather completely reformed itself. A fine warm burst set in, bringing out all the healthy, resinous odours of the woods. The men exulted in their surroundings--a wholesome change, in truth, from their long nights burying the dead in the rain. When their day’s work was done, they sat about in groups on the mossy ground under the trees and smoked and yarned. And (tell it not in Gath!) they sometimes contrived to have rabbit for supper.

There were a lot of Guards in and about the forest. Our Ensign, route-marching with the company, used to meet them on the road. Such encounters generally started the men on anecdotes and reminiscences of the old 4th (Guards’) Brigade, extending back to the days of the Retreat from Mons. In conversation with each other the men always referred to the Guards by their different nicknames, most Guards’ battalions having a sobriquet of some sort. Thus the Coldstream are “the Coalies,” the Scots Guards, “the Jocks,” and the Irish Guards, “the Micks.”

Every morning the drums of the different Guards’ battalions in the camps roused the echoes of the forest (and everybody generally) with the stirring strains of the _Grand Réveille_: every evening at Retreat, in the dying sunshine, they made the woods resound to their music until that pause came, bringing every man instinctively and by anticipation to his feet, after which the fifes squealed and the drums rolled out the National Anthem.

The company messes, which were all lodged in one long hut, had a great dinner to celebrate their coming out of the Line. Ah! those first dinners when the Battalion comes out of the trenches! Will the future--that dim “After the War,” which is the great European query-mark to-day--ever see their like? I doubt it.

How mind and body exult when you have had a hot bath, and there is the cool caress of fresh linen next your skin, and you have cast off your soiled uniform and heavy boots and changed into another jacket and comfortable trousers and shoes, and the port has come from Christopher’s, and the mess-sergeant has procured a melon! The past is shoved behind you, with its blood and mud and evil odours; the present is all high spirits and grateful relaxation; and as for the future, you give it not a thought. Yet the future was there, though the Guards in their forest camp did not realise it--somewhere out there beneath that patch of starry sky framed in the low mess door, somewhere in the Unknown where the guns throbbed faintly in the night.

* * * * *

Their next halting-place in their wanderings was no less pleasant--a large comfortable village which had almost escaped the flow of humanity towards the Somme. The barns where the men were billeted were spacious and clean and dry; milk and butter and eggs and vegetables were obtainable in plenty; and there were beds for all the officers. The whole Brigade was billeted in the village, and made its entry down a long slope leading to the main street, with drums beating at the head of each long column of dusty, sun-browned men--a brave show.

Peter and our Ensign had a knotty point of military law to settle with respect to their billet. Is an estaminet _consigné à la troupe_--that is to say, put out of bounds for troops by the Assistant Provost-Marshal for some contravention of the regulations--likewise out of bounds as a billet for officers? For they were not using the estaminet part of the establishment--they were merely to sleep in a bedroom above it.

Madam and a mild-mannered old gentleman, who turned out to be her husband, together with three or four peasants, seized upon this tortuous point of law, when Madam very frankly stated her case to the two officers and debated it ardently.

“_Ce sont les artilleurs_,” Madam sighed, “_qui sont venus comme ça boire de la bière à la porte du derrière ... on est seule, n’est-ce pas? On ne fait pas attention, n’est-ce pas? Et puis voilà, le Prévôt-Maréchal qui vous consigne pour quinze jours! Mon Dieu, c’est dur!_”

The husband echoed--

“_Sapristi, c’est dur!_”

And the peasants, removing their pipes to spit, chanted in chorus--

“_Bien sûr que c’est dur!_”

The upshot of it was that Peter and our Ensign, deciding that the bedroom was not the estaminet within the meaning of the Act, passed a very comfortable night on good beds in Madam’s exceptionally clean room. They likewise purchased for a five-franc note two very plump white and grey lop-eared rabbits, which the _patron_ carried grimly into a back-yard and brought back neatly and expeditiously slain. The mess waiter fetched them across to the mess, and they formed the _pièce de résistance_ at dinner that evening.

When troops arrive in a village out at the Front they swamp it: they make it their own. Within an hour or two of the Guards’ arrival in this comfortable French hamlet, neat little boards or flags hung outside the different billets clearly indicating who lodged there, the Headquarters and billet guards were mounted, and, with their clothes brushed and their faces shining with the recent vigorous application of yellow soap and water, the men strolled out in groups to see what refreshment local establishments could offer, and also to buy those sentimental picture post-cards in which all soldiers delight.

The main street simply overflowed with troops, big and brown and tranquil; and for an officer to pass along was to run the gauntlet of a never-ceasing fire of salutes.

That evening Operation Orders announced that on the following morning the Battalion would march on. And our Ensign found himself entrusted with the duties of Billeting Officer.