Chapter IX

From now on, the shadows of the events that stood before began to be more sharply defined. As the Brigade marched out of M---- behind the Drums on a dull grey morning, there were many besides our Ensign there who felt that the moment was close at hand when they would take their places in the battle-line of the Somme. Indeed, hardly had the men got shaken down in their new quarters--a bivouac on a bare and dirty hillside amidst rolling downs covered, as far as the eye could see, with camps and horse-lines and abandoned trenches,--than a message arrived--

“The Battalion is on ten minutes’ notice!”

Now they were on the very fringe of the fight. The bivouac was within the zone of “the heavies.” All that day, with a blinding flash of green flame, a sickly burst of yellow smoke, and a ponderous roar, the big guns gave tongue from their positions among the downs. All that day, down the white road running through the ruined village on the fringe of the bivouac, snorted and rattled and tramped the vast outgoing traffic of the battlefield. Motor ambulances whirred by in a constant stream, slowing up at the end of the village, where in cavernous dug-outs white-robed surgeons toiled over the human _débris_ of the fight. Motor-lorries fetching shells, ammunition limbers and water-carts going down to be filled, baggage carts--all through the morning and afternoon our Ensign saw them bumping slowly down the hill in the dust.

Between the gaps in the traffic, marching in a dense white haze, came the remnants of the battalions which had just written Ginchy in letters of blood upon their colours. Our Ensign had seen that splendid Irish Division marching into action less than a week before, with pipes skirling out the old Irish airs and green flags waving, a jaunty, defiant, deathless band. Not a whit less jaunty, not a whit less defiant, though the Reaper had been busy in their ranks, our Ensign saw them again to-day, slow-footed and mud-stained, dirty and unshaven, yet marching with the gait of victors.

Somewhere down the road the cry rang out--

“’Tis the Dubs.!”

In an instant the road was overflowing with Irish Guardsmen, swarming forward in the dust-clouds raised by the Dublin Fusiliers in their passage.

“Jasus! ’tis the Micks!” rang out a voice in the midst of the column.

Cheery salutations were exchanged. Here and there a brown hand stretched out from the roadside grasped a muddy one thrust forward from the ranks of marching men in a warm clasp. Chaff was freely bandied about as the Irishmen trudged past, “Dubs.” and Munsters and Connaughts and the rest.

“So they didn’t get yez this time, Micky, me boy!” shouted a droll Irish voice from the roadside.

“True for you, Patsy, true for you!” flashed back the answer from the ranks. “I’ll be meetin’ yez in Ould Dublin yet!”

“Begob! ye’ll have to get a move on yez, the Micks,” drawled out a rich brogue from the road, “if ye want to find anny of the Gerboys left! We didn’t lave manny of thim for yez! Didn’t we an’ the Dubs. knock hell’s own blazes out of thim?”

There was a roar of laughter and cheers, then brogue and its owner were swallowed up in the dust....

At tea that afternoon somebody announced that the Welsh Guards up in the front line had had a very bad shelling, and were probably coming out that night. Another battalion was to take their places, and two companies of our Ensign’s battalion were to go up and replace this battalion in support. After tea our Ensign was sent for by the Commanding Officer, and told to go on ahead and reconnoitre the route for the two companies as far as the Headquarters of another Guards’ Brigade, so that they should not lose their way in the dark. From Brigade Headquarters guides would take the two companies up to the line.

It was getting dusk, and there was no time to lose. Our Ensign sent his servant to the Signallers to borrow two bicycles; and after beating the bivouac for his orderly, and failing to find him, he selected a bright lad in the company to act as orderly, and a little later the pair might have been seen pushing their bicycles through the dust up the steep road leading towards the Front.

The experiences of that night lingered long in our Ensign’s memory. The road was terribly rough; and though, with the coming of evening, the traffic was less, there was still enough about to make riding in the half-light distinctly dangerous. Their way led them past miles of empty trenches, where weather-beaten wooden crosses, hung with withered flowers, remained to tell of the time when the French were holding these positions, then the front line. As they drew nearer to the Front, they passed imperceptibly from the zone of the biggest guns into the region of the lighter pieces. The guns were waking up. Now and then, as they pedalled along, a huge shell travelled over their heads, coming from their rear, “hooshing” and wailing as it sped through the air. Now from right and now from left of them ear-splitting reports resounded.

The traffic grew heavier as they approached their destination. At the entrance to a gloomy and shattered village, so wrecked by shell fire that every house was razed, the press of vehicles and of troops going up and coming down was so great that our Ensign and his orderly had to get off and walk their bicycles. Presently all further progress was hindered; so, after waiting for a spell, our Ensign shouldered his heavy machine and struck out among the ruins to try and get round the block in the road. It was very heavy going; but at last, soaked with perspiration and breathless, our Ensign and his orderly emerged upon a fairly clear stretch of road, and pedalled off into the gathering darkness.

Fortunately the way was not difficult to find. At a cross-roads, where a mass of blackened poles sticking up against the evening sky denoted the former location of a wood, our travellers branched off to the left into a small country road.

Guns were firing everywhere now. The stench of their fumes lay heavy on the air. It was almost dark, and the green glare of their discharges lit up fitfully the struggling masses that thronged the little road. Long lines of men in single file, stooping beneath the weight of two petrol tins filled with water, slung across their shoulders; similar lines laden with coils of wire, stakes, pickets and shovels; long columns of troops going to relieve battalions in the line; trains of mules, with tossing tails, plodding forward amid a hail of curses; ammunition carts, water-carts, ... all were jumbled up together in that narrow way. From time to time came the low cry: “Make way! Stretcher-bearers!” and a stretcher would appear carried shoulder-high by four sweating bearers. Now and again, by the flash of the guns of a neighbouring battery, our Ensign caught a glimpse of a form, motionless, under blood-stained bandages....

A few sand-bagged steps led into a narrow clearing made in the wood that ran along one side of the road. Over the steps hung the Brigade flag. The steps led up to a little kind of entrance way, where a number of officers were standing. Behind them was a heavily sand-bagged shelter, where by the guttering light of a couple of candles, the signallers stooped over their telephones.

“Toot-toot! Toot-toot! Toot-toot!”

The telephones shrilled their note clearly above the deafening crash of the guns all round. The 18-pounders were firing in salvoes now. The very sandbags shook with the noise. The signallers were shouting down their telephones. Oblivious of everything, an officer sat at the bench beside them and wrote.

They were all Guards’ officers in that little place. Our Ensign knew some of them. He spoke to a Coldstreamer whom he had met up in the salient, and asked him what the news was. The Coldstreamer said the Welsh Guards had had a baddish time; the Prince of Wales’ Company, in particular, had suffered. He mentioned the names of several men who had been killed. They were all waiting for news of the Grenadiers: they, too, had been having a roughish handling.

An officer with red tabs turned away from a very weary-looking Scots Guards captain, and came towards our Ensign. The young man reported himself, and was told that the guides were ready to take the two companies up to the line.

Then an orderly, covered with mud, emerged from nowhere, as orderlies do, with a message.

“Ah! from the Grenadiers!” said the officer in red tabs, and bolted off towards a deep dug-out in the corner.

Our Ensign bade good-night to the Coldstreamer, and went out again into the road. A regular whirlwind bombardment was in progress. The din was ear-splitting. Every gun for miles around seemed to be firing as fast as it could be loaded.

Our Ensign found his orderly staring open-mouthed at the distant horizon, where a never-ceasing spout of white lights marked the winding line of the front trenches. The lad was very young, and he had not been long in France. As they surveyed the black horizon together and noted the orange spurts of flame where the shells were bursting among the Verey lights, a deep auburn glare suddenly lit up the whole devastation of the landscape, and spread, upwards and outwards, in slow majesty across the night sky.

“Glory be to God, sir!” exclaimed the orderly, “what’s that?”

Our Ensign shook his head wisely.

“Looks like an ammunition dump going up!” he said, but he didn’t in the least know. It was an extraordinary spectacle, lasting a full minute, during which every single projection on the horizon stood out hard and black against the flaming sky. It reminded our Ensign of the backgrounds of battle scenes in the portraits of the Generals at the “Senior.”

Then they started off back to the bivouac in the darkness. When they reached the main road they halted and waited for the two companies of the battalion which were marching up. Presently dark shapes loomed up in the gloom ... the traffic was much lighter on the road now ... and the second in command of our Ensign’s battalion emerged into the bright glare of the young man’s electric torch. Our Ensign indicated to the party the turning off the main road which would bring them to Brigade Headquarters, where the guides awaited them, imparted to his senior officer the news of the casualties in the Welsh Guards, and then set off along that broken road again on his perilous homeward journey.

He crawled into his sleeping-bag at half-past one in the morning, feeling that he had earned a good night’s rest.