Chapter V: Part 5

They both leaned on their elbows and gazed out of the tiny aperture, under the sacking, away over the sea-like ridges of pulverized mud, into the autumn evening. Between the rain-clouds, torn and shredded as if by the shell-fire, watery gleams were pouring, as though the heavens were wounded and bled. They spilled all over the jagged stonework of that little old medieval walled town, compact within its ramparts, for the third time in its history garrisoned by an English army. Kavanagh told him of it, but Dormer remained unimpressed. The history of the world that mattered began after the battle of Waterloo, with Commerce and Banking, Railway and Telegraph, the Education and Ballot Acts. Previous events were all very well, as scenery for Shakespeare’s plays or Wagner’s Operas. But otherwise, negligible. Yet the interlude did him good. He felt he had brought Kavanagh up short, in an argument, and he went to his night’s work with a lighter heart, and a strengthened confidence in himself.

Of course, a few weeks later, the offensive was over, with the results he had foreseen, and with another result he was also not alone in foreseeing. Once back in rest, near Watten, he heard people talking in this strain, in G. office:

“I suppose, sir, we shall go on fighting next year?”

“Um--I suppose we shall. But perhaps some arrangement may be come to, first. There’s been a good deal of talk about Peace!”

That was the mood of Divisional Head-quarters. A growing scepticism as to the continuance of the War. At the moment, Dormer missed the motive at the back of it. Away from H.Q. while the Division was in action, he had lost a good deal of ominous news. The talk about the transference of German Divisions from one front to another was old talk. He had heard it for years. He did not at the moment grasp that it had now a new significance. Then something happened that put everything else out of his head. He was not feeling too well, though he had nothing to complain of worse than the usual effects of damp and loss of sleep. Colonel Birchin had got himself transferred to a better appointment, and his place was taken by a much younger officer, glad to take it as a “step” up from a dangerous and difficult staff-captaincy. They had been out at rest less than a week and Dormer had assumed as a matter of course that he would be put in charge of organized sports for the winter, as usual. But he was only just becoming sensible of the change that had come over H.Q. Colonel Birchin used to have a certain pre-War regular soldier’s stiffness and want of imagination (which Dormer had privately deplored), but he had kept the Q. office well in hand. This new man, Vinyolles, very amicable and pleasant, and much nearer to Dormer’s new army view of the War (he was in fact younger than Dormer, and than most of the clerical N.C.O.’s in the office), had nothing like the standoff power of his predecessor. Also, the office, like everything else, had grown, half a dozen odd-job officers were now attached, and without wearing red, sat and worked with Dormer. So that when Dormer went to show his Football Competition Time Table and his schedule for use of the Boxing Stadium, he found that he had to explain how these things were usually done. Colonel Vinyolles had no idea. Dormer ought to have been warned. But his head was not working at its very best. He had a temperature, he thought, and wanted to go and lie down at his billet for a bit and take some aconite, a remedy he had carried with him throughout the War. Colonel Vinyolles was quite nice about the Sports, and just as Dormer was turning to go, said to him:

“Perhaps you can help me in this matter. I see your name occurs in the correspondence!”

Of course, he might have known. It was the familiar _dossier_, as the French called it, the sheaf of papers, clipped together, at the bottom the original blue Questionnaire form that old Jerome Vanderlynden had signed. At the top a fresh layer of official correspondence, “Passed to you please, for necessary action.” “This does not appear to concern this office.” “Kindly refer to A.Q.M.G.’s minute dated July 1916.” And so on. Dormer knew quite a lot of it by heart and the remainder he could have “reconstructed” with no difficulty. The only fresh thing that had happened was a minute from the new chief of the French Mission enclosing a cutting from a newspaper--a French newspaper of all conceivable rags--from which it appeared that some deputy or other had “interpellated” a minister about the matter, asked a question in the “House” would be the English of it, Dormer supposed.

“What am I to tell the Mission?” Colonel Vinyolles was asking.

Dormer was not a violent man by habit, but he felt that he was getting to his limit with this affair. He thought a moment, wanting to say: “Tell them to go to the Devil!” but held it in reserve, and substituted: “Tell them the matter has attention!”

“Thanks very much!”

Dormer went and rested.

The following day he felt no better and did not do much. He had the Sports well in hand, and there was no movement of troops. The day following that he felt queerer than ever, and jibbed at his breakfast. He went along to see the D.A.D.M.S., always a friend of his, who put a thermometer under his tongue, looked at it, shook it, looked at Dormer, gave him an aspirin, and advised him to go and lie down for a bit. On his way to his billet Dormer put his head into Q. office to tell the Sergeant-major where he was to be found if wanted. He was called by Colonel Vinyolles from the farther room. It was again full of people he considered (as rank counted for less than experience) to be his juniors. He could see something was “up.” They were all highly amused except Vinyolles.

“I say, Dormer, I consider you let me down on this.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“Trouble! I’ve got a nice chit back, in reply to my saying ‘the matter has attention.’ They say that any further delay is ‘inadmissible’ and that they will be obliged to carry the matter higher.”

“Let ’em!”

“Oh, that won’t do at all. The General has seen this, and he wants to know what you mean by it.”

“He ought to know by this time!”

“Captain Dormer!”

Of course he was wrong, but he felt rotten. It wasn’t Vinyolles’ fault. He pulled himself together.

“Sorry, sir. I mean that the case has been going on for nearly two years, and has certainly not been neglected. I think every one who counts is familiar with it.”

He meant it for a snub for some of those chaps who were sitting there grinning. He saw his mistake in a moment. Vinyolles was as new as any of them, and naturally replied: “I’m afraid I have no knowledge of it. Perhaps you will enlighten me?”

“It must have been June, 1916, when we first received the claim. The late A.P.M., Major Stevenage, took it up as a matter of discipline, but on investigation considered that it was rather a case for compensation, as damage in billets. The French Mission insisted that an arrest must be made, and I have made every possible effort to trace the soldier responsible. But formations change so quickly, during offensives especially, that it is impossible.”

“I see. What exactly did he do, to cause such a rumpus?”

At the prospect of having to retell the whole story, Dormer got an impression that something was after him, exactly like the feeling of trying to get cover in a barrage, and wondering which moment would be the last. He put his hand to his head and found some one had pushed a chair against his knees. He sat down vaguely conscious of the D.A.D.M.S. standing near by.

“An officer of 469 T.M.B. was wounded and his servant was given two mules, sick or wounded, to lead. He got to the billet mentioned and seems to have taken a dislike to the horse-lines. He found one of those little memorial chapels that you often see, in the corner of the pasture, and knocked in the front of it to shelter the beasts. The farmer didn’t like it and sent for the Mayor to make a _procès-verbal_. By the time the Mayor got there, the Battery was on the move again. It was about the time of one of those awkward little shows the Bosche put up to contain us during Verdun. The Battery had been badly knocked about, and the men were excited and made some sort of a scene! The Mayor told his Deputy and his Deputy told some one at French G.H.Q. It all keeps going round in my head. I don’t want to find the chap who did it. He’s no worse than you or I. He was just making the best of the War, and I don’t blame him. I blame it. You might as well crime the whole British Army.”

What had he said? He fancied he had given the facts concisely, but was not sure of himself, his head felt so funny, and he was aware that people--he could no longer be sure who they were--Q. office seemed crowded--were tittering!--Some one else was talking now, but he was not interested. He rested his head on his hand and heard Vinyolles: “Well, Dormer, you go along to your billet, and we’ll see what can be done!”

He got up and walked out. The D.A.D.M.S. was at his elbow, saying to him:

“Get into this ambulance, I’ll run you across!” but he never got to his billet. He got into a train. He did not take much notice, but refused the stuff they wanted him to eat. After that he must have gone to sleep, but woke up, under a starlit sky, with an unmistakable smell of the sea. They were lifting him under a canvas roof. Now, from the motion, he perceived he was at sea, but it did not seem greatly to matter. He was out of it, he had cut the whole disgusting show. He had done his bit, now let some one else take a turn.

* * * * *

Dormer had not been home on leave since early spring, and the leave that he got for convalescence gave him not only some idea of the vast changes going on in England, while he, in France, had been engaged in the same old War, but a notion of changes that had gone on in that old War without his having perceived them. He was let loose from Hospital just before Christmas, at that unfortunate period when the public at home were still feeling the reaction from the Bell-ringing of Cambrai, were just learning the lengths to which the collapse of Russia had gone and were to be confronted with the probable repercussion of that collapse upon the prospects of the campaign in the West. There was no escaping these conclusions because his own home circumstances had so changed as to throw him back completely on himself. His father having died while he was in France, his mother had taken a post under one of the semi-official War organizations that abounded. The old home in which he had grown up had been dispersed, and he found his only near relative in his native town was his sister, a teacher by profession, who had moved the remnants of the old furniture and his and her own small belongings to a new house in one of the high, healthy suburbs that surrounded the old town. She was, however, busy all day, and he fell into the habit, so natural to anyone who has lived in a Mess for years, of dropping in at one of the better-class bars, before lunch, for an _apéritif_, and a glance at the papers. Here he would also pickup some one for a round of golf, which would keep him employed until tea-time, for he could not rid himself of the War-time habit of looking upon each day as something to be got through somehow, in the hopes that the morrow might be better.

These ante-prandial excursions were by far the closest contact he had had with anything like a normal, representative selection of his fellow-countrymen, since they and he had become so vitally altered from the easy-going, sport-loving England of pre-War, and he had to readjust his conception considerably. He soon grasped that there was a lot of money being made, and a lot of khaki being worn as a cover for that process. There was plenty of energy, a good deal of fairly stubborn intention to go on and win, but a clear enough understanding that the War was not going to be won in the trenches. And when he had got over some little spite at this, his level habit of mind obliged him to confess that there was a good deal in it. There were many signs that those who held that view were right.

Sipping his drink, smoking and keeping his nose carefully in his newspaper, in those bars lighted by electric light, in the middle of the dark Christmas days, he listened and reflected. The offensives he had seen? How had they all ended? How did he say himself they always must end? Exactly as these chaps had made up their minds! Would he not see if there did not remain some relative who could get him one of these jobs at home, connected with supplying some one else with munitions? No, he would not. He understood and agreed with the point of view, but some very old loyalty in him would keep him in France, close up to the guns, that was the place for him. He had no illusions as to that to which he was returning. He knew that he had never been appointed to Divisional Staff, had merely been attached. There was no “establishment” for him, and directly he had been sent down as sick, his place had been filled, some one else was doing “head housemaid” as he had been called, to young Vinyolles, and he, Dormer, would go shortly to the depôt of his regiment, from thence to reinforcement camp, and thus would be posted to any odd battalion that happened to want him. The prospect did not worry him so much as might have been supposed. He felt himself pretty adept at wangling his way along, and scrounging what he wanted, having had a fine first-hand experience of how the machinery worked. He did not want to go into the next offensive, it was true, but neither did he want the sort of job he had had, and even less did he want to be at Base, or in England. Boredom he feared almost as much as physical danger. Accustomed to having his day well filled, if he must go to War he wanted to be doing something, not nothing, which was apparently a soldier’s usual occupation. But he did not feel his participation in the next offensive very imminent. He had heard them all talking about “Not fighting any more,” and now here was Russia out of it and America not yet in, and Peace might be patched up.

The most striking thing therefore that he learned was this new idea of the Bosche taking the initiative, and attacking again. A new army officer, his knowledge of the Western Front dated from Loos, and was of allied offensives only. He had never seen the earlier battles of Ypres, the retreat from Mons was just so much history to him. When he heard heated arguments as to which particular point the Bosche would select for their offensive, in France, or (so nervous were these people at home) in England even, he was astonished, and then incredulous. The level balance of his mind saved him. He had no superfluous imagination. He had never seen a German offensive, didn’t want to, and therefore didn’t think he would. As usual, the bar-parlour oracles knew all about it, gave chapter and verse, could tick off on their fingers how many German Divisions could be spared from the Eastern Front. He had heard it all before. He remembered how nearly the cavalry got through after Vimy, how Moorslede Ridge was to give us command of the country up to Courtrai, how Palestine or Mespot were to open an offensive right in the Bosche rear, not to mention all the things these Russians had always been said to be going to do. This might be another of what the French so well called “Canards”--Wild Ducks. He would wait and see.

He was impressed in a different way by the accounts that now began to filter through, of what had been happening in Russia. Officers shot, and regiments giving their own views on the campaign. That was what happened when the Headless Man got loose! No doubt the Russians, from all he had heard, had suffered most, so far as individual human suffering went. And then, Russians were, to him, one of these over-brainy people. Had anyone acquainted with his ruminations taxed him to say if English people were under-brainy, he would have said no, not necessarily, but brainy in a different way. Left to himself he felt that all the opinions he had ever formed of the Russians were justified. Look at their Music. Some of it was pretty good, he admitted, but it was--awkward--beyond the reach of amateurs, in the main. This appeared to him, quite sincerely, to be a grave defect. He was conscious--more, he was proud--of being an amateur soldier, and knowing himself to be modest, he did not fear any comparison between the actual results obtained by English amateurs like himself, and the far more largely professional armies of other countries. And now these over-brainy ones had gone and done it. He knew as well as anyone the hardships and dangers of soldiering, had experienced them, shared them with the ranks, in the trenches. Why even in this beastly Vanderlynden affair, it would have puzzled him to say if he were more sorry than glad that the private soldier had never been brought to Justice. But English--and even Frenchmen--as he had seen with his own eyes, if they mutinied, got over it, and went on. It was only people like the Russians that went and pushed things to their logical conclusion.

He had a hatred of that, being subconsciously aware that the logical conclusion of Life is Death. Naturally, from his upbringing and mental outlook, he had no sympathy with the alleged objects and achievements of the Russian Revolution. He could not see what anyone wanted with a new social order, and as for the domination of Europe by the Proletariat, if he understood it, he was all against it in principle. He was against it because it was Domination. That was precisely the thing that had made him feel increasingly antagonistic to Germany and German ideas. It had begun long ago, during brief continental holidays. He had met Germans on trains and steamers, in hotels and on excursions. He had grudged them their efficient way of sight-seeing, feeding and everything else. But he had grudged them most their size and their way of getting there first. If it had not been for that, he had a good deal more sympathy with them, in most ways, than with the French. Subsequently he had found Germans infringing on the business of his native town, selling cheaper, better-tanned hides than its tanners, more scientifically compounded manures than its merchants. Then they invaded politics and became a scare at election times. And after the false start of 1911, in 1914 they had finally kicked over the tea-table of the old quiet comfortable life. He did not argue about this. He had felt it simply, truly, directly. Under all the hot-air patriotism and real self-sacrifice of August, 1914, it had been this basic instinct which had made him and all his sort enlist. The Germans had asked for it, and they should darn-well have it. If they didn’t they would go on asking. They were after Domination.

That craze had started something that would be difficult now to stop. Dormer saw very well that other people besides Russians might find grievances and the same wrong-headed way of venting them. The Russians would probably go on with their propaganda, all over the world. The Germans, on the other hand, had probably set the Japanese off. And so we should go on, all the aristocratic classes calling for Domination by their sort, all the ultra-brainy democracies calling for their particular brand.

So when he was passed as fit and told to rejoin the depôt of his regiment, at a seaport town, he went without any panic fear of the future, German or otherwise. He went with a deep conviction that whatever happened, life had been cheapened and vulgarized. It was not by any means mere theory. He had seen what sort of a home he might hope to make after the Peace, with his mother or sisters, or if, conceivably, he married. Not a bad home, his job would always be there, and certain remnants of that bourgeois comfort that had grown up in all the old quiet streets of the provincial towns of England during the nineteenth century, privileged, aloof from the troubles of the “continent,” self-contained. But remnants only, not nearly enough. He and all his sort had been let down several pegs in the social scale. Without any narrow spite, or personal grievance, he felt that the Germans had caused this upset and the Russians had put the finishing stroke to it, made it permanent, as it were. He happened to be opposite the Germans in the particular encounter that was not yet ended, and he was able to draw upon an almost inexhaustible supply of obstinate ill-will.

He went to the depôt in its huts on a sandy estuary. It was commanded by a Major of the usual type, and no one knew better than Dormer how to keep on the right side of such a one. He was, of course, a Godsend to the Major. He had all the practical experience and none of the fussiness. He merely wanted the job finished. That suited the Major exactly, who didn’t want it to finish in a hurry, but wanted even less to have to find ideas for training troops. Dormer, with his two and a half years in France, was the very man. He looked trustworthy. He was set to instructing the raw material, of which the camp was full. He disliked it intensely, but, as always, took what was given him in his sober fashion and did his limited best with it. He was amazed to find such reserves of men still untouched. His own recollections of early 1915 were of camps filled with an eager volunteer crowd of all ages and conditions, who were astounded when it was suggested to them that certain of them ought to take a commission. Now he found that his sort went a different way, direct to O.T.C. or Cadet Corps. There was a permanence about the camp staff that he had never seen in the old days. But most of all he was impressed with the worn appearance of the camp. Thousand after thousand had passed through it, been drafted overseas, and disappeared. Thousand after thousand had followed. In the town and at the railway, there were no longer smiles and encouragement. People had got painfully used to soldiers, and from treating them as heroes, and then as an unavoidable, and profitable incident, had come to regard them chiefly as a nuisance. He forgot how he had wondered if the men would stand it, he forgot how often he had heard the possibility of an early Peace discussed. He began to wonder now if people at home would stand it--the lightless winter nights, the summer full of bombing, the growing scarcity of comforts, the queues for this, that, and the other, the pinch that every gradually depleted family was beginning to feel, as one after another of its members had to go. He had been so long out of all this, up against the actual warfare, glad enough of small privileges and of the experience that enabled him to avoid the more onerous duties, the worst sorts of want, that he only now began to realize what he had never grasped, in his few short leaves, that there was still quite a considerable, probably the greater portion of the nation, who did not share his view of the necessity of going on. Another avenue of speculation was opened to him. What if all the people at home made Peace behind the backs of the Armies. Yet, being Dormer, he did not submit to this home-grown philosophy. He just went on and did the next thing that his hand found to do.

Of one thing he became pretty certain. All these people at home had “got the wind up.” He didn’t know which were the worst, the lower middle class, who were beginning to fear invasion, as a form of damage to their shops and houses. He thought of those ten departments of France that were either occupied by, or shot over, by the Germans. Or again the newspapers, with their scare-lines, their everlasting attempt to bring off this or that political coup. Or again the people in power, who were keeping this enormous number of troops in England, presumably to defend the beaches of the island from an armed landing. He had become during the three years that had contained for him an education that he could not otherwise have got in thirty, a more instructed person.

An offensive was an offensive, could be nothing more or less. Every offensive had been a failure except for some local or temporary object, and in his opinion, always must be a failure. The idea of an offensive conducted across a hundred leagues of sea made him smile. It was hard enough to get a mile forward on dry land, but fancy the job of maintaining communications across the water! He attended enough drills to fill in the time, organized the football of the Brigade to his liking and let it go at that. At moments he was tempted to apply to be sent to France, at others to try and join one of these Eastern expeditions, Salonika, Palestine or Mespot. But the certainty of being more bored and of being farther than ever from the only life he cared for, made him hesitate. He hesitated for two long months.

Then on the 21st March he was ordered by telegram to proceed to France. He felt, if anything, a not unpleasant thrill. With all his care, he had not been able to dodge boredom altogether. The depôt camp had also been much too near the scenes of his pre-War life. He had gone home, as a matter of duty, for several week-ends and had always returned finely exasperated, it was so near to and yet so far from home as he had pictured it, in his dreams. Now, here was an end to this Peace-time soldiering. The news, according to the papers, seemed pretty bad, but he remembered so well the awful scurry there was for reinforcements on the morning that the nature of the Second Battle of Ypres became known. This could not be so desperate as that was. Practically the whole of the rank and file in the depôt were under orders. He took jolly good care not to get saddled with a draft, and spent the night in London. People were in a rare stew there. He had a bath and a good dinner and left it all behind. He took a little more note of the traffic at the port of embarkation. On the other side, he found lorries waiting and went jolting and jamming away up to Frecourt, forty miles. He rather approved. It looked as though our people were waking up.

At Corps reinforcement camp--a new dodge evidently--he got posted to a North Country battalion; and proceeded to try and find their whereabouts. He was told that they were going to Bray, but it took him some time to understand that they were falling back on that place. When, by chance, he hit upon the Division to which they belonged, they were on the road, looking very small, but intact and singing. He soon found plenty to do, for he grasped that practically the whole battalion was composed of reinforcements, and had only been together two or three days. They set to work at once to strengthen some half-completed entrenchments, but after two days were moved back again.

It was during those two days that he saw what he had never to that moment beheld, an army in retreat. The stream of infantry, artillery and transport was continuous--here in good formation, there a mere mass of walking wounded mixed up with civilians, as the big hospitals and the small villages of the district turned out before the oncoming enemy. He thought it rotten luck on those people, many of whom had been in German hands until February, 1917, and had only had a twelvemonth in their small farms, living in huts, and had now to turn out before a further invasion. The bombardment was distinctly nasty, he never remembered a nastier, but as usual, the pace of the advance soon outdistanced the slow-moving heavy artillery, whose fire was already lessening. He had no feelings of sharp despair, for as he had foreseen, a modern army could not be crumpled up and disposed of. What he did now anticipate, was any amount of inconvenience.

Amiens, he gathered, was uninhabitable, that meant many good restaurants out of reach. New lines of rail, new lateral communications would be necessary, that meant marching. Just when they had begun to get the trenches fairly reliable, they were entrained and sent wandering all round the coast. The wonderful spring weather broke with the end of March, as the weather always did, when it had ceased to be of any use to the Bosche, and had he been superstitious, he might have thought a good deal of that. It was in a cold and rainy April that he found himself landed on the edge of the coal-fields, behind a canal, with a slag heap on one side of him, and a little wood on the other, amid an ominous quiet.

The company of which he had been given command was now about a hundred and fifty strong and he had done what little he could to equalize the four platoons. He had one officer with him, a middle-aged Lieutenant called Merfin, of no distinguishable social status, or local characteristics. The day when a battalion came from one town or corner of a county, under officers that were local personages in the civil life of its district, was long past. Dormer placed his second-in-command socially as music-hall, or pawnbroking, but the chap had been out before and had been wounded, and probably knew something of the job. The men were satisfactory enough, short, stumpy fellows with poor teeth, but exactly that sort of plainness of mind that Dormer appreciated. They would do all right. Perhaps a quarter of them had been out before, and the remainder seemed fairly efficient in their musketry and bombing, and talked pigeons and dogs in their spare time, when not gambling.

The bit of line they held was Reserve, a bridge-head over the canal, a strong point round a half-demolished château in the wood, and some wet trenches to the right, where the next battalion joined on. Battalion Head-quarters was in a farm half a mile back. Dormer and Merfin improvised a Mess in the cellar of the Château, saw that the cooker in the stables was distributing tea, and let all except the necessary guards turn in. He had some machine gunners at the strong point, and across the canal were two guns, whose wagons had just been up with rations and ammunition. His own lot of rations came soon after and he told Merfin to take the first half of the night, and rolled himself in his coat to sleep.

As he lay there, listening to the scatter of machine-gun fire, and the mutter of officers’ servants in the adjoining coal-hole, watching the candle shadows flicker on the walls that had been whitewashed, as the draught stirred the sacking over the doorway, his main thought was how little anything changed. Two and a half years ago he had been doing exactly the same thing, a few miles away, in the same sort of cellar, in front of an enemy with the same sort of advantage in ground and initiative, machine guns and heavy artillery. He was as far from beating the Germans as ever he had been. He supposed that practically all the gains of 1916 and 1917 south of Arras had been lost. On the other hand, the Germans, so far as he could see, were equally far from winning. What he now feared was, either by prolonged War or premature Peace, a continuance of this sort of thing. And slowly, for he was as mild and quiet-mannered a man as one could find, his gorge began to rise. He began to want to get at these Germans. It was no longer a matter of principle, a feeling that it was his duty as it had been in the days when he enlisted, took a commission, and had come to France. He was no longer worrying about the injustice of the attack on Belgium or the danger of a Germany paramount in Europe. He had now a perfectly plain and personal feeling. But being Dormer, this did not make him cry out for a _sortie en masse_ like a Frenchman, nor evolve a complicated and highly scientific theory as to how his desire was to be realized. The French and Portuguese who fought beside him would have found him quite incomprehensible. The Germans actually invented a logical Dormer whom they had to beat, who was completely unlike him. If he had any ideas as to what he was going to do, they amounted to a quiet certainty that once the enemy came away from his heavy and machine guns, he, Dormer, could do him in.

So he went on with the next thing, which was to turn over and sleep. He woke, sitting bolt upright, to the sound of two terrific crashes. One was right over his head. The candle had been blown out, and as he struggled out of the cellar, barking his shins and elbows, he was aware that the faint light of the sky was obscured by a dense cloud all round him. Instinctively he pulled up his gas mask, but the sound of falling masonry and the grit he could taste between his lips, reassured him. It was a cloud of brick dust. Across the canal, the barrage was falling on the front lines with the thunder of a waterfall. The Bosche had hit the Château, and if he were not mistaken, had put in another salvo, somewhere near by. At the gate of the little park-like garden he ran into a figure he recognized for Merfin, by the red light of the battle, just across the canal.

“What is it?”

“Aw--they’ve knocked in the bridge!”

“Every one standing-to?”

“Can’t help ’emselves.”

They went to look at the damage. The bridge was a small, one vehicle affair, with steel lattice sides, and an asphalt roadway. The bridge piers at the near end had been blown away, and the whole had settled down some four or five feet, on to the mud of the tow-path.

“Can you get across?”

“Aw--yes--easy!”

“Better get across and wait a bit!”

He himself went back to find up his stretcher bearers, who, he had always noticed, wanted an order to get them in motion. The guard on the bridge was dead so far as he could see, but some one was shouting, behind, at the Château.

He found the C.S.M with two men digging out the servants whose coal-cellar had been blocked. One of them was badly crushed, but his own man only shaken. Then there were horses on the road. Gunners, trying to get their teams up to the advanced guns. Hopeless, of course. Then came a runner from battalion. Send Merfin with two platoons. He saw to that, and rearranged his depleted company. It took some time. The barrage appeared to be creeping nearer. The ground shook with the continuous concussion and whiffs of gas were more and more noticeable, but the heavier stuff was already falling farther to the rear. Then came a runner from across the bridge. There was a crowd on the road. Dormer went and found just what he expected. Walking wounded and those who wanted to be treated as such. He sorted them out, directing the former down the road to the dressing station, and setting the others to dig. If he had got to hang on to this place, and he supposed he had, he meant to have some cover. The stream of people across the broken bridge increased. Trench mortars and machine gunners, platoons of his own regiment. The Bosche was “through” on the left, and they were to come back behind the canal. The barrage died out, to confirm this. The machine-gun fire came nearer and nearer.

In the cold grey light of a wet April dawn, a tin-helmeted figure dashed up on a borrowed motor-cycle. It was the Brigade Major. What had Dormer got? He heard and saw, and took a platoon and all the sundries. His last words were: “Hang on here, whatever you do!” Dormer heard the words without emotion. He realized that it meant that he was expected to gain time. He got hold of his Sergeant, and overhauled the rations and ammunition. They were not too badly off, and the cooker lay stranded in the stable yard. That meant hot water, at least. He took a turn round the place. The Château grounds had once been wired as part of some forgotten scheme of defence of 1915 or early 1916. That was all right. On the other hand, the “bridge-head”--a precious half-boiled concoction--was full of gas and the barrier on the road blown away.

He got his few men out of it, with their several casualties, and started them carting brick rubble from the dilapidations of the Château to make an emplacement for a machine-gun on the near side of the bridge. He stood looking at the road by which the Bosche must come--a mere lane that led from one of the neighbouring coal-pits, and was used, he imagined, for transport of coal that was required locally. It meandered out of sight, among low fenceless fields, until the shallow undulations of the ground hid it. In the distance was the steamy reek of last night’s battle, but nothing that moved, amid the silence broken only by long-distance shots, and fusillade somewhere on the left. Then, down that road he saw a party advancing, led by an officer. There was no doubt that they wore khaki. He waited by the bridge for them, and shouted directions to them how to cross. He got an answer:

“Hallo, you old devil, what are you doing?”

It was that Kavanagh. There had been an advanced signal exchange, and he had gone to bring his men in. They were tired, hungry and disgusted, but Kavanagh had the jauntiness of old. He wasn’t going back to Division, he was going to stay with dear old Dormer, and see this through. Dormer thought a moment, then said: “All right.”

“All right. I should think so. I don’t suppose I could catch Division, even on a motor-byke. They must be nearly at Calais. It’s all rot. The Bosche are done!”

“Are they?”

“Sure. What are they waiting for now?”

“Bringing up their artillery?”

“That won’t blow the water out of the canal.”

“Possibly not. But we may as well have some food while it’s possible.”

“You old guts. Always eating!”

“Yes, when I can. Aren’t you?”

“Now, Dormer. You know me better than that. Glory is my manna.”

“Will you take cold bully and tea with it?” asked Dormer as they dropped into the cellar.

Kavanagh made no objection, and they ate in silence, fast, for ten minutes. Then they saw the men were being fed, and relapsed, in their hiding-place, into pipes, and whisky out of Kavanagh’s flask.

“How did you get into this show?” Dormer asked.

“The Division--your old Division, my boy, left me here to hand over! They might have spared themselves the trouble. But I’d got a most lovely scheme of lateral communication. Corps gave me a lot of sweet words about it. I suppose I shall get the M.C. Now the silly old Hun has gone and blown it all to bits. What about you?”

“You know I got wrong and was sent home sick.”

“I heard all that. It was about that Vanderlynden affair, wasn’t it?”

“It was!”

“Well, you’ve no idea what a sensation you created. Vinyolles got simply wet behind the ears with it. Some French Deputy said, after the Somme show, that English troops did more damage to France than to Germany. Of course every one on Divisional H.Q. has changed in the last few months. They all established an alibi or Habeas Corpus or something. It was one of the things that made the French Press go for unity of command! You were a boon to them!”

“I wish them joy of the business. I don’t know why you mix me up with it.”

“Why, it was your pet show, wasn’t it?”

“It got fathered on to me because I could understand what it was about.”

“Yes, you told Vinyolles, didn’t you?”

“The ignorant brute asked me.”

“I know. He’s all fresh. I find him trying also. Well, he knows all about it now.”

“Tell you the truth, I’ve no idea what I said, Kavanagh! I was feeling queer!”

“Vinyolles thought you’d gone potty.”

“He wasn’t far wrong.”

“He said you told him the whole British Army was guilty of the Kerrime at Vanderlynden’s!”

It was the first time Dormer had heard it called that.

“Well, in a sense, so they are.”

“In a sense, War is a foolish business!”

“I thought you liked it?”

“I was trying to talk like you----”

Before Dormer could reply, the sacking over the door was lifted, by Dormer’s Sergeant.

“Cop’l Arbone is back, sir!”

“Very good. Did he get in touch with the Major?”

“He only found a Lewis-gun section, sir. The Major moved most of the men along the canal, where there’s more trouble!”

“All right!”

“Well, I suppose I may as well go and have a look at my lot,” Kavanagh stretched himself.

“I told ’em to hunt round and see if they could get this place wired up!”

“Umpteenth Corps ought to have thought of that, long ago!”

“Did you ever know Corps think of anything.”

While Kavanagh was so engaged, Dormer took a turn round the various guards and posts he had established. There appeared to be fair cover from view, and even from small-arm and field-gun fire. Of course when the Bosche really wanted to get the place, nothing Dormer and Kavanagh and some forty men could do would stop it. In coming round to the stables behind the Château he found his Sergeant with two men, laboriously trundling on a hand cart what he soon verified to be slabs of marble. What would they think of next? The explanation was, “There was a champion bathroom, sir, an’ I thought we could set up our Lewis better with these!”

When Kavanagh saw what was going on, he laughed.

“More damage in billets, Dormer!”

“Well, the stuff will be smashed up anyhow, won’t it?”

“Two blacks don’t make a white. I understand why you told Vinyolles the whole army was guilty. You’re doing just what your friend did about his mules.”

“Why will you drag in that beastly business? This has nothing in common with it.”

“To the common all things are common. You tell the owner of the Château that when he finds out.”

Dormer was going to say “He won’t find out!” but refrained. He disliked arguing. This seemed a particularly bad argument. Also, at that moment, a Lewis gun began, just below. Then another. He went to the garden wall, and peered out. Nothing visible, as usual. He thought of all the battle pictures he had ever seen. The prancing horses, the gay uniforms, the engrossing action of figures that pointed muzzle or bayonet at each other, that wielded sword or lance. Here he was, an incident in one of the biggest battles in the world. All he could see was neglected arable, smashed buildings, a broken bridge and a blocked by-road, all shrouded in steamy vapour. He made out that it was the Lewis opposite the end of the bridge that was firing. He crawled along the gully that had been dug from the Château gate to the roadway, and so to the emplacement by the step-off of the bridge. The Corporal in charge of the section turned to him.

“Got ’im, sir!”

“What is it?”

“Bosche in the ditch, under them bushes!”

Dormer waited a moment, but nothing happened. He crawled back, and sent his Sergeant round to see that every one was under cover. Back in the cellar he found Kavanagh, and told him.

“I know. Once more into the breach!”

“It’s not poetry, Kavanagh. This is the start. Once they find we’re stopping them here, they’ll shift us, you may bet!”

“I shouldn’t wonder. My lot are trying to get into touch with Brigade. They’re running a line back behind the wood. There’s no one on our left, as far as can be found.”

“Must be some one.”

“Why should there be? Brigade have probably moved by this time.”

“Ah, well, can’t be helped.”

No use telling the chap that it was all useless. He just sat down and lit his pipe. He perceived clearly enough that they were being sacrificed--just left there to hold the Bosche up for a few hours, while the Division went back.

During the day there was sporadic machine gunning. The Bosche was feeling his way for crossing the canal, but had found it far less easy than in the sectors farther north. Tolerably certain that the main attack would come at dawn, Dormer and Kavanagh got what rest they could, though proper sleep was out of the question. Their servants had found a well-upholstered sofa, and a superior brass bedstead, which now adorned the cellar, causing Kavanagh to gibe about damage in billets. Their vigil was lightened by the sounds of song from the stables where such men as they had set apart as reserves were lodged.

“Old soldiers never die,
They only fade away.”

to a well-known hymn tune, made Dormer home-sick, but delighted Kavanagh.

“Listen to that!”

“I can’t help it, unless I send and stop them.”

“Never, man, never stop men who can sing at such a moment. It means philosophy and courage!”

“It means foolishness and rum!”

“Dormer, I fear you are no born leader!”

“No, of course I wasn’t.”

“But you’ve got to lead men now, and lead ’em to victory.”

“I don’t mind much so long as I lead ’em to Peace!”

“Yes, but don’t you see, mere Peace will mean Revolution!”

“I don’t believe it. I saw that affair at Étaples. I saw the trouble among the French troops in May. Those chaps prefer to take orders from you and me rather than from their own sort.”

“How do you account for Russia, then?”

“I can’t. But it’s an object lesson rather than an example, I should say.”

“You used not to talk like that. You used to say that the men wouldn’t stand it.”

“I’ve lived and learned!”

“Both, I am sure.”

“You needn’t be so superior. No one knew what any of this would be like until it was tried. We’ve something to go by, now! This War depends on turning a crank. The side that goes on turning it efficiently the longer will win. Our chaps look like lasting!”

“So do the Bosche. No, Dormer, you’re all wrong----”

At that moment a fresh burst of song came from the stables. A Cockney voice to a waltz tune:

“Orl that I wawnt is larve,
Orl that I need is yew----”

“There,” cried Kavanagh, his voice rising into his excited croak. “That’s what we want!”

Dormer did not reply. With dusk came a few long-range shots, gradually broadening and deepening into a bombardment towards dawn. Both of them had to be out and about all night. They had several casualties, and the whole place reeked with gas. As the grey light of another day began to change the texture of the shadows, movement was discernible about the road. It was their chance and with a higher heart and the feeling of relief, they were able to let loose the Lewis guns, which they had managed to save intact. For more than an hour, Dormer crawled from one to the other, seeing that they did not overheat or jam, for the fact that they were killing Germans pleased him. Then there was a slackening of fire on both sides.

They waited and the suspense from being irksome, became tolerable. There was a good deal of noise each side of them, and Dormer began to wonder if his detachment were surrounded, especially as the servants whom he had sent back to get into touch with Brigade, had not returned. It was a dull rainy afternoon prematurely dark, and the rain as it increased, seemed to beat down the gunning, as water quenches a fire. He must have been in that half-waking state that often superimposed on sleeplessness and the awful din, when he was thoroughly roused by trampling in the trees round the Château. He called to Kavanagh but got no reply. Then there was a pushing and scrambling at the wall behind the stable, and English cavalrymen came swinging over it. Dormer and Kavanagh were relieved, and were shortly able to hand over and prepare to march their command back to rejoin their Division, which, depleted by four weeks of continual mauling, was being taken out of the line.

The battle was by no means over. They next went in farther north, and Dormer had the queer experience of going into trenches where Corps H.Q. had been, of billeting in rooms where Major-Generals had slept. Gradually he became aware of lessening tension, reduced shelling, and slackened machine-gun fire, but it was the end of May before he found, when sent to raid an enemy post, that there was no one there. He had been right after all. The German offensive also had failed. Anticlimax was the rule of the War. He was glad that he had parted from Kavanagh, who had gone back to his proper job with his Division, goodness knew where. He felt that the fellow would remind him that for several hours while they lay together in those scratched-out trenches round that little Château by the canal, he had given up hope. He need not have bothered. If the Bosche could not win on that day, he never would. Slowly now the British lines were creeping forward. Then he found American troops behind him.

It was during this phase of things that he found himself upon familiar ground. Except on Kavanagh’s lips, he had not heard of the crime at Vanderlynden’s since before Christmas. It was now September. Here he was, detrained and told to march to Hondebecq. He passed what had been Divisional Head-quarters in 1916 and noticed the shell-holes, the open, looted, evacuated houses. He passed along the road which he and Major Stevenage had traversed all those years ago. The Brigade were in Divisional Reserve, and were quartered in a string of farms just outside the village. He looked at the map squares attentively, but on the larger scale map he found it actually marked Ferme l’Espagnole. Being Dormer, he just saw to the billeting of his company and then learned that the Battalion Head-quarters were located at the Vanderlyndens’, and had no difficulty in finding good reason to walk over there, after tea.