Chapter VIII: Part III: The Western Front (2)

The battery was called together and the nature of the business explained. Each detachment pulled down the parados in the rear of the gun pits and such part of the pit itself as was necessary to allow the gun to come out,--no light task because the pits had been built to admit the gun from the front. As soon as each reported ready double detachments were told off to the drag ropes and the gun, camouflaged with branches, was run out and along the lane and round the corner of the château. There they were all parked, one by one. Then the ammunition was brought, piles of it. Then all the gun stores and kits.

At ten o’clock the teams were heard at the other end of the cobbled street. A moment later shells began to burst on the position, gun fire. From the cover afforded by the château and the wall we loaded up without casualty and hooked in, bits of shell and wall flying over our heads viciously.

I took charge of the left section in Archie Square. The vehicles were packed, dixies tied on underneath. The Major was to follow with the four guns and the other subaltern at ten minutes’ interval.

Keeping fifty yards between vehicles I set off, walking in front of the leading gun team. We clattered along the cobbled streets, rattling and banging. The station was being bombarded. We had to go over the level crossing a hundred yards or so in rear of it. I gave the order to trot. A piece of shell sent up a shower of sparks in front of the rear gun team. The horses bucked violently and various dixies fell off, but I kept on until some distance to a flank under the houses. The dixies were rescued and re-tied. There was Sandbag Corner to navigate yet, _and_ Snow Corner. It was horribly dark, impossible to see shell holes until you were into them, and all the time shells were bursting in every direction. The road up to the two Corners ran straight towards the Hun, directly enfiladed by him. We turned into it at a walk and were half-way along when a salvo fell round Crown Prince House just ahead. I halted immediately, wondering where in heaven’s name the next would fall, the horses snorting and prancing at my back. For a couple of minutes there was a ragged burst of gun fire while we stood with the bits missing us. Then I gave the order to trot. The horses needed no encouragement. I could only just keep in front, carrying maps and a torch and with most of my equipment on. We carried on past Crown Prince House, past Sandbag Corner and walked again, blown and tottering, towards Snow Corner, and only just got past it when a barrage dropped right on the cross-roads. It was there that the Major would have to turn to the right with his four guns presently. Please God it would stop before he came along.

We weren’t very far behind the support lines now and the pop-pop-pop, pop-pop-pop of machine guns was followed by the whistling patter of bullets. I kept the teams as close under the houses as I dared. There was every kind of devilment to bring a horse down, open drains, coils of tangled wire, loose debris. Eventually we reached the Chapelle and the teams went off at the trot as soon as the ammunition was dumped and the kits were off.

Then in the black night we heaved and hauled the guns into their respective pits and got them on to their aiming posts and S.O.S. lines.

It was 3 a.m. before I got back to the new headquarters, a house in an orchard, and found the Major safe and sound.

A couple of days later the Major was ordered to a rest camp and at a moment’s notice I found myself in command of the battery. It was one of the biggest moments of my life. Although I had gone down to take the Captain’s place my promotion hadn’t actually gone through and I was still a subaltern, faced with the handling of six guns at an extremely difficult moment and with the lives of some fifty men in my hands, to say nothing of the perpetual responsibility to the infantry in the front line.

It was only when the Major had said good-bye and I was left that I began to realize just how greatly one had depended on him. All the internal arrangements which he had handled so easily that they seemed no trouble loomed up as insurmountable difficulties--returns, ammunition, rations, relieving the personnel--all over and above the constant worry of gun detachments being shelled out, lines being cut, casualties being got away. It was only then that I realized what a frightful strain he must have endured during those days of continual gas and bombardment, the feeling of personal responsibility towards every single man, the vital necessity through it all of absolute accuracy of every angle and range, lest by being flustered or careless one should shoot one’s own infantry, the nights spent with one ear eternally on the telephone and the added strain of sleeplessness.--A lonely job, Battery Commander.

I realized, too, what little use I had been to him. Carrying out orders, yes, but not really taking any of the weight off his shoulders.

The insignificance of self was never so evident as that first night with my ear to the ’phone, all the night noises accentuated in the darkness, the increasing machine-gun fire which might mean an attack, the crashing of shells which might get my supply wagons on their way back, the jump when the ’phone buzzed suddenly, making my heart leap against my ribs, only to put me through to Group for an order to send over thirty rounds on a minnie firing in C 16 d o 4.--It was good to see the blackness turn to grey and recognize objects once more in the room, to know that at last the infantry were standing down and to sink at last into deep sleep as the grey became rose and the sun awoke.

Do the men ever realize, I wonder, that the Major who snaps out orders, who curses so freely, who gives them extra guards and docks their pay, can be a human being like themselves whose one idea is _their_ comfort and safety, that they may strafe the Hun and not get strafed?

It was my first experience in handling subalterns, too, and I came to see them from a new point of view. Hitherto one’s estimation of them had been limited by their being good fellows or not. The question of their knowledge or ignorance hadn’t mattered. One could always give them a hand or do the thing oneself. Now it was reversed. Their knowledge, working capabilities and stout-heartedness came first. Their being good fellows was secondary, but helpful. The most ignorant will learn more in a week in the line than in ten weeks in a gunnery school.

10

The first few days in the new position were calm. It gave one time to settle down. We did a lot of shooting and apart from a spare round or two in our direction nothing came back in return. The Hun was still plastering the Asylum and the avenue at all times of day, to our intense joy. The more he shelled it the more we chuckled. One felt that the Major had done Fritz in the eye. So we gathered plums and raspberries in the warm sun, rejoicing that the horrible smell of mustard gas was no more. There was a fly in the ointment, of course. It consisted of several thousand rounds of ammunition in the Asylum which we were ordered to salvage. The battery clerk, a corporal of astounding stout-heartedness who had had countless escapes by an inch already in the handling of it, and who subsequently became one of the best sergeants in the battery, undertook to go and see what could be done. He took with him the fitter, a lean Scot, who was broken-hearted because he had left a file there and who wanted to go and scratch about the ruins to try and recover it. These two disappeared into the Asylum during a momentary lull. Before they returned the Hun must have sent in about another fifteen hundred rounds, all big stuff. They came in hot and covered with brick dust. The fitter had got his file and showed it with joy and affection. The corporal had made a rough count of the rounds and estimated that at least a couple of hundred had “gone up” or were otherwise rendered useless.

To my way of thinking it would have been manslaughter to have sent teams to get the stuff away, so I decided to let time solve the problem and leave well alone. Eventually it did solve itself. Many weeks later another battery occupied the position (Poor devils. It still reeked of gas) and I had the pleasure of showing the Battery Commander where the ammunition was and handing it over.

Meanwhile the Boche had “found” the left and centre sections. In addition to that the Group Commander conceived a passion to experiment with guns in the front-line trenches, to enfilade the enemy over open sights at night and generally to put the fear of God into him. Who more suitable than the Army brigade battery commanded by that subaltern?

I was sent for and told all about it, and sent to reconnoitre suitable positions. Seeing that the enemy had all the observation and a vast preponderance of artillery I did all in my power to dissuade the Commander. He had been on active service, however, before I was born--he told me so--and had forgotten more things than I should ever know. He had, indeed, forgotten them.

The long and short of it was that I took a subaltern with me, and armed with compasses and trench maps, we studied the whole zone at distances varying from three to five hundred yards from the enemy front-line trench. The best place of all happened to be near Battalion Headquarters. Needless to say, the Colonel ordered me off.

“You keep your damn things away. There’s quite enough shelling here without your planting a gun. Come and have a drink.”

Eventually, however, we got two guns “planted” with cover for the detachments. It was an absolute waste of guns. The orders were only to fire if the enemy came over the top by day and on special targets by night. The difficulty of rationing them was extreme, it made control impossible from battery headquarters, because the lines went half a dozen times a day and left me only two sections to do all the work with.

The only thing they ever fired at was a very near balloon one afternoon. Who gave the order to fire remains a mystery. The sergeant swore the infantry Colonel gave it.

My own belief is that it was a joy shoot on the sergeant’s part. He was heartily cursed for his pains, didn’t hit the balloon, and within twenty-four hours the gun was knocked out. The area was liberally shelled, to the discomfort of the infantry, so if the Colonel did give the order, he had only himself to thank for the result.

The headquarters during this time was an odd round brick building, like a pagoda in the middle of a narrow orchard. A high red brick wall surrounded the orchard which ran down to the road. At the road edge were two houses completely annihilated. Plums, greengages, raspberries and red currants were in abundance. The signallers and servants were in dug-outs outside the wall. Curiously enough, this place was not marked on the map. Nor did the Hun seem to have it on his aeroplane photographs. In any case, although he shelled round about, I can only remember one which actually burst inside the walls.

Up at Chapelle d’Armentières the left section was almost unrecognizable. Five-nines had thumped it out of all shape, smashed down the trees, ploughed up the garden and scattered the houses into the street. The detachment spent its time day and night in clearing out into neighbouring ditches and dug-outs, and coming back again. They shot between whiles, neither of the guns having been touched, and I don’t think they slept at all. None of them had shaved for days.

As regards casualties we were extraordinarily lucky. Since leaving the town not a man had been hit or gassed. For the transport at night I had reconnoitred a road which avoided the town entirely and those dangerous cross-roads, and took them right through the support line, within a quarter of a mile of the Boche. The road was unshelled, and only a few machine-gun bullets spat on it from time to time. So they used it nightly, and not a horse or driver was touched.

Then the Right Group had another raid and borrowed us again. The white house and the orchard which we had used before were unoccupied. I decided to squeeze up a bit and get all six guns in. The night of the move was a colossal undertaking. The teams were late, and the Hun chose to drop a gas barrage round us. More than that, in the afternoon I had judged my time and dodged in between two bombardments to visit the left section. They were absolutely done in, so tired that they could hardly keep their eyes open. The others were little better, having been doing all the shooting for days. However, I ordered them to vacate the left section and come along to me at Battery Headquarters for a rest before the night’s work. They dragged themselves there, and fell asleep in heaps in the orchard in the wet. The subaltern and the sergeant came into the building, drank a cup of tea each and filled the place with their snores. So I sent for another sergeant and suggested that he and his men, who had had a brief rest that day, should go and get the left section guns out while these people handled his as best they could. He jumped at it and swore he’d get the guns out, begging me to keep my teams well to the side of the road. If he had to canter they were coming out, and he was going to ride the lead horse himself,--splendid fellow.

Then I collected the subalterns and detailed them for the plan of campaign. The left section man said he was going with his guns. So I detailed the junior to see the guns into the new positions, and send me back the ammunition wagons as he emptied them. The third I kept with the centre section. The corporal clerk was to look after the headquarters. I was to function between the lot.

The teams should have been up at 9 p.m. They didn’t arrive till ten, by which time the gas hung about thick, and people were sneezing right and left. Then they hung up again because of a heavy shelling at the corner on the way to the left section. However, they got through at last, and after an endless wait, that excellent sergeant came trotting back with both guns intact. We had, meanwhile yanked out the centre section and sent them back. The forward guns came back all right from the trenches, but no ammunition wagons or G.S. returned from the position, although filled by us ages before and sent off.

So I got on a bicycle and rode along to see what the trouble was. It was a poisonous road, pitch dark, very wet and full of shell holes. I got there to find a column of vehicles standing waiting all mixed up, jerked the bicycle into a hedge and went downstairs to find the subaltern.

There was the Major! Was I pleased?--I felt years younger. However, this was his night off. I was running the show. “Carry on, Old Thing,” said he.

So I went out into the chaotic darkness and began sorting things out. Putting the subaltern in charge of the ammunition I took the guns. It was a herculean task to get those six bundooks through the wet and spongy orchard with men who were fresh. With these men it was asking the impossible. But they did it, at the trot.

You know the sort of thing--“Take the strain--together--heave! Together--heave! Now keep her going! Once more--heave! Together--heave! and again--heave! Easy all! Have a blow--Now look here, you fellows, you _must_ wait for the word and put your weight on _together_. Heels into the mud and lean on it, but lean together, all at the same moment, and she’ll go like a baby’s pram. Now then, come on and I’ll bet you a bottle of Bass all round that you get her going at a canter if only you’ll heave together--Take the strain--_together_--heave! Ter-rot! Canter! Come on now, like that--splendid,--and you owe me a bottle of Bass all round.”

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? but oh, my God, to see those poor devils, dropping with fatigue, putting their last grunting ounce on to it, with always just one more heave left! Magnificent fellows, who worked till they dropped, and then staggered up again, in the face of gas and five-nines, and went on shooting till they were dead,--_they’ve_ won this war for us if anybody has, these Tommies who don’t know when they’re beaten, these “simple soldiers,” as the French call them, who grouse like hell but go on working whether the rations come up or whether they don’t, until they’re senseless from gas or stop a shell and get dropped into a hole in an army blanket. These are the men who have saved England and the world, these,--and not the gentlemen at home who make fortunes out of munitions and “war work,” and strike for more pay, not the _embusqué_ who cannot leave England because he’s “indispensable” to his job, not the politicians and vote-seekers, who bolster up their parties with comfortable lies more dangerous than mustard gas, not the M.L.O.’s and R.T.O.’s and the rest of the alphabetic fraternity and Brass Hats, who live in comfort in back areas, doing a lot of brain work and filling the Staff leave boat,--not any of these, but the cursing, spitting, lousy Tommy, God save him!

11

The last of the guns was in by three o’clock in the morning, but there wasn’t a stitch of camouflage in the battery. However, I sent every last man to bed, having my own ideas on the question of camouflage. The subaltern and I went back to the house. The ammunition was also unloaded and the last wagon just about to depart. The servants had tea and sandwiches waiting, a perfect godsend.

“What about tracks?” The Major cocked an eye in my direction. He was fully dressed, lying on his valise. I stifled a million yawns, and spoke round a sandwich. “Old Thing and I are looking after that when it gets light.”

“Old Thing” was the centre section commander, blinking like a tired owl, a far-away expression on his face.

“And camouflage?” said the Major.

“Ditto,” said I.

The servants were told to call us in an hour’s time. I was asleep before I’d put my empty tea-cup on the ground. A thin grey light was creeping up when I was roughly shaken. I put out a boot and woke Old Thing. Speechless, we got up shivering, and went out. The tracks through the orchard were feet deep.

We planted irregular branches and broke up the wheel tracks. Over the guns was a roof of wire netting which I’d had put up a day previously. Into these we stuck trailing vine branches one by one, wet and cold. The Major appeared in the middle of the operation and silently joined forces. By half-past four the camouflage was complete. Then the Major broke the silence.

“I’m going up to shoot ’em in,” he said.

Old Thing, dozing on a gun seat, woke with a start and stared. He hadn’t been with the Major as long as I had.

“D’you mind if one detachment does the whole thing?” said I. “They’re all just about dead, but C’s got a kick left.”

The Major nodded. Old Thing staggered away, collected two signallers who looked like nothing human, and woke up C sub-section. They came one by one, like silent ghosts through the orchard, tripping over stumps and branches, sightless with sleep denied.

The Major took a signaller and went away. Old Thing and I checked aiming posts over the compass.

Fifteen minutes later the O.P. rang through, and I reported ready.

The sun came out warm and bright, and at nine o’clock we “stood down.” Old Thing and I supported each other into the house and fell on our valises with a laugh. Some one pulled off our gum boots. It must have been a servant but I don’t know. I was asleep before they were off.

The raid came off at one o’clock that night in a pouring rain. The gunners had been carrying ammunition all day after about four hours’ sleep. Old Thing and I had one. The Major didn’t have any. The barrage lasted an hour and a half, during which one sub-section made a ghastly mistake and shot for five full minutes on a wrong switch.

A raid of any size is not just a matter of saying, “Let’s go over the top to-night, and nobble a few of ’em! Shall us?”

And the other fellow in the orthodox manner says, “Let’s”--and over they go with a lot of doughty bombers, and do a lot of dirty work. I wish it were.

What really happens is this. First, the Brigade Major, quite a long way back, undergoes a brain-storm which sends showers of typewritten sheets to all sorts of Adjutants, who immediately talk of transferring to the Anti-Aircraft. Other sheets follow in due course, contradicting the first and giving also a long list of code words of a domestic nature usually, with their key. These are hotly pursued by maps on tracing paper, looking as though drawn by an imaginative child.

At this point Group Commanders, Battalion Commanders, and Battery Commanders join in the game, taking sides. Battery Commanders walk miles and miles daily along duck boards, and shoot wire in all sorts of odd places on the enemy front trench, and work out an exhaustive barrage.

Then comes a booklet, which is a sort of revision of all that has gone before, and alters the task of every battery. A new barrage table is worked out. Follows a single sheet giving zero day.

The raiders begin cutting off their buttons and blacking their faces and putting oil drums in position.

Battery wagon lines toil all night, bringing up countless extra rounds. The trench mortar people then try and cut the real bit of wire, at which the raiders will enter the enemy front line. As a rule they are unsuccessful, and only provoke a furious retaliatory bombardment along the whole sector.

Then Division begins to get excited and talks rudely to Group. Group passes it on. Next a field battery is ordered to cut that adjective wire and does.

A Gunner officer is detailed to go over the top with the raid commander. He writes last letters to his family, drinks a last whisky, puts on all his Christmas-tree, and says, “Cheero” as though going to his own funeral. It may be.

Then telephones buzz furiously in every brigade, and everybody says “Carrots” in a whisper.

You look up “Carrots” in the code book, and find it means “raid postponed 24 hours.” Everybody sits down and curses.

Another paper comes round saying that the infantry have changed the colours of all the signal rockets to be used. All gunners go on cursing.

Then comes the night! Come up to the O.P. and have a dekko with me, but don’t forget to bring your gas mask.

Single file we zigzag down the communication trenches. The O.P. is a farmhouse, or was, in which the sappers have built a brick chamber just under the roof. You climb up a ladder to get to it, and find room for just the signaller and ourselves, with a long slit through which you can watch Germany. The Hun knows it’s an O.P. He’s got a similar one facing you, only built of concrete, and if you don’t shell him he won’t shell you. But if you do shell him with a futile 18-pounder H.E. or so, he turns on a section of five-nines, and the best thing you can do is to report that it’s “snowing,” clear out quick and look for a new O.P. The chances are you won’t find one that’s any good.

It’s frightfully dark; can’t see a yard. If you want to smoke, for any sake don’t strike matches. Use a tinder. See that sort of extra dark lump, just behind those two trees--all right, poles if you like. They _were_ trees!--Well, that’s where they’re going over.

Not a sound anywhere except the rumble of a battle away up north. Hell of a strafe apparently.

Hullo! What’s the light behind that bank of trees?--Fritz started a fire in his own lines? Doesn’t look like a fire.--It’s the moon coming up, moon, moon, so brightly shining. Pity old Pelissier turned up his toes.--Ever heard the second verse of “Au Clair de la Lune?”

(singing)

Au clair de la lune
Pierrot répondit,
“Je n’ai pas de plume,
Je suis dans mon lit.”

“Si tu es donc couché,”
Chuchotta Pierrette,
“Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour que je m’y mette.”

_’Tis_ the moon all right, a corker too.--What do you make the time?--A minute to go, eh? Got your gas mask at the alert?

The moon came out above the trees and shed a cold white light on the countryside. On our side, at least, the ground was alive with men, although there wasn’t a sound or a movement. Tree stumps, blasted by shell fire, stood out stark naked. The woods on the opposite ridge threw a deep belt of black shadow. The trenches were vague uneven lines, camouflaging themselves naturally with the torn ground.

Then a mighty roar that rocked the O.P., made the ground tremble and set one’s heart thumping, and the peaceful moonlight was defiled. Bursts of flame and a thick cloud of smoke broke out on the enemy trenches. Great red flares shot up, the oil drums, staining all the sky the colour of blood. Rifle and machine-gun fire pattered like the chattering of a thousand monkeys, as an accompaniment to the roaring of lions. Things zipped past or struck the O.P. The smoke out there was so thick that the pin-points of red fire made by the bursting shells could hardly be seen. The raiders were entirely invisible.

Then the noise increased steadily as the German sky was splashed with all-coloured rockets and Verey lights and star shells, and their S.O.S. was answered. There’s a gun flash! What’s the bearing? Quick.--There she goes again!--Nine-two magnetic, that’s eighty true. Signaller! Group.--There’s another! By God, that’s some gun. Get it while I bung this through.--Hullo! Hullo, Group! O.P. speaking. Flash of enemy gun eight--0 degrees true. Another flash, a hell of a big one, what is it?--One, one, two degrees,--Yes, that’s correct. Good-bye.

Then a mighty crash sent earth and duckboards spattering on to the roof of the O.P., most unpleasantly near. The signaller put his mouth to my ear and shouted, “Brigade reports gas, sir.” Curse the gas. You can’t see anything in a mask.--Don’t smell it yet, anyhow.

Crash again, and the O.P. rocked. Damn that five-nine. Was he shooting us or just searching? Anyhow, the line of the two bursts doesn’t look _quite_ right for us, do you think? If it hits the place, there’s not an earthly. Tiles begin rattling down off the roof most suggestively. It’s a good twenty-foot drop down that miserable ladder. Do you think his line.--Look out! She’s coming.--Crash!

God, not more than twenty yards away! However, we’re all right. He’s searching to the left of us. Where _is_ the blighter? Can you see his flash? Wonder how our battery’s getting on?--

Our people were on the protective barrage now, much slower. The infantry had either done their job or not. Anyhow they were getting back. The noise was distinctly tailing off. The five-nine was searching farther and farther behind to our left. The smell of gas was very faint. The smoke was clearing. Not a sign of life in the trenches. Our people had ceased fire.

The Hun was still doing a ragged gun fire. Then he stopped.

A Verey light or two went sailing over in a big arc.

The moon was just a little higher, still smiling inscrutably. Silence, but for that sustained rumble up north. How many men were lying crumpled in that cold white light?

Division reported “Enemy front line was found to be unoccupied. On penetrating his second line slight resistance was encountered. One prisoner taken. Five of the enemy were killed in trying to escape. Our casualties slight.”

At the end of our barrage I called that detachment up, reduced three of them to tears and in awful gloom of spirit reported the catastrophe to the Major. He passed it on to Brigade who said they would investigate.

A day later Division sent round a report of the “highly successful raid which from the adverse weather conditions owed its success to the brilliance of the artillery barrage....”

That same morning the Colonel went to Division, the General was on leave. The Major was sent for to command the Group, and my secret hopes of the wagon line were dashed to the ground. I was a Battery Commander again in deed if not in rank.

12

The wagon line all this while had, in the charge of the sergeant-major, been cursed most bitterly by horse masters and A.D.V.S.’s who could not understand how a sergeant-major, aged perhaps thirty-nine, could possibly know as much about horse management as a new-fledged subaltern anywhere between nineteen and twenty-one.

From time to time I pottered down on a bicycle for the purpose of strafing criminals and came away each time with a prayer of thanks that there was no new-fledged infant to interfere with the sergeant-major’s methods.

On one occasion he begged me to wait and see an A.D.V.S. of sorts who was due at two o’clock that afternoon and who on his previous tour of inspection had been just about as nasty as he could be. I waited.

Let it be granted as our old enemy Euclid says that the horse standings were the worst in France--the Division of course had the decent ones--and that every effort was being made to repair them. The number of shelled houses removed bodily from the firing line to make brick standings and pathways through the mud would have built a model village. The horses were doing this work in addition to ammunition fatigues, brigade fatigues and every other sort of affliction. Assuming too that a sergeant-major doesn’t carry as much weight as a Captain (I’d got my third pip) in confronting an A.S.C. forage merchant with his iniquities, and I think every knowledgeable person admitted that our wagon line was as good as, if not better than, shall we say, any Divisional battery. Yet the veterinary expert (?) crabbed my very loyal supporter, the sergeant-major, who worked his head and his hands off day in, day out. It was displeasing,--more, childish.

In due course he arrived,--in a motor car. True, it wasn’t a Rolls-Royce, but then he was only a Colonel. But he wore a fur coat just as if it had been a Rolls-Royce. He stepped delicately into the mud, and left his temper in the car. To the man who travels in motors, a splash of mud on the boots is as offensive as the sight of a man smoking a pipe in Bond Street at eleven o’clock in the morning. It isn’t done.

I saluted and gave him good morning. He grunted and flicked a finger. Amicable relations were established.

“Are you in charge of these wagon lines?” said he.

“In theory, yes, sir.”

He didn’t quite understand, and cocked a doubtful eye at me.

I explained. “You see, sir, the B.C. and I are carrying on the war. He’s commanding Group and I’m commanding the battery. But we’ve got the fullest confidence in the sergeant-maj.--”

Was it an oath he swallowed? Anyhow, it went down like an oyster.

The Colonel moved thus expressing his desire to look round.

I fell into step.

“Have you got a hay sieve?” said he.

“Sergeant-Major, where’s the hay sieve?” said I.

“This way, sir,” said the sergeant-major.

Two drivers were busily passing hay through it. The Colonel told them how to do it.

“Have you got wire hay racks above the horses?”

“Sergeant-Major,” said I, “have we got wire hay racks?”

“This way, sir,” said the sergeant-major.

Two drivers were stretching pieces of bale wire from pole to pole.

The Colonel asked them if they knew how to do it.

“How many horses have you got for casting?” said the Colonel.

“Do we want to cast any horses, Sergeant-Major?” said I.

“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant-Major. “We’ve got six.”

It was a delightful morning. Every question that the Colonel asked I passed on to the sergeant-major, whose answer was ever ready. Wherever the Colonel wished to explore, there were men working.

Could a new-fledged infant unversed in the ways of the Army have accomplished it?

One of the sections was down the road, quite five minutes away. During the walk we exchanged views about the war. He confided to me that the ideal was to have in each wagon line an officer who knew no more about gunnery than that turnip, but who knew enough about horses to take advice from veterinary officers.

In return I told him that there ought not to be any wagon lines, that the horse was effete in a war of this nature, that over half the man-power of the country was employed in grooming and cleaning harness, half the tonnage of the shipping taken up in fetching forage, and that there was more strafing over a bad turn-out than if a battery had shot its own infantry for four days running.

The outcome of it all was pure farce. He inspected the remaining section and then told me he was immensely pleased with the marked improvement in the condition of the animals and the horse management generally (nothing had been altered), and that if I found myself short of labour when it came to building a new wagon line, he thought he knew where he could put his hand on a dozen useful men. Furthermore, he was going to write and tell my Colonel how pleased he was.

The sergeant-major’s face was a study!

The psychology of it is presumably the same that brings promotion to the officer who, smartly and with well-polished buttons, in reply to a question from the General, “What colour is black?” whips out like a flash, “White, sir!”

And the General nods and says, “Of course!--Smart young officer that! What’s his name?”

Infallible!

13

It is difficult to mark the exact beginnings of mental attitudes when time out there is one long action of nights and days without names. One keeps the date, because of the orders issued. For the rest it is all one. One can only trace points of view, feelings, call them what you will, as dating before or after certain outstanding events. Thus I had no idea of war until the gas bombardment in Armentières, no idea that human nature could go through such experiences and emotions and remain sane. So, once in action, I had not bothered to find the reason of it all, contenting myself merely with the profound conviction that the world was mad, that it was against human nature,--but that to-morrow we should want a full échelon of ammunition. Even the times when one had seen death only gave one a momentary shock. One such incident will never leave me, but I cannot feel now anything of the horror I experienced at the moment.

It was at lunch one day before we had left the château. A trickle of sun filtered down into the cellar where the Major, one other subaltern and myself were lunching off bully beef and ration pickles. Every now and again an H.E. shell exploded outside, in the road along which infantry were constantly passing. One burst was followed by piercing screams. My heart gave a leap and I sprang for the stairs and out. Across the way lay three bodies, a great purple stain on the pavement, the mark of a direct hit on the wall against which one was huddled. I ran across. Their eyes were glassy, their faces black. Grey fingers curled upwards from a hand that lay back down. Then the screams came again from the corner house. I dashed in. Our corporal signaller was trying to bandage a man whose right leg was smashed and torn open, blood and loose flesh everywhere. He lay on his back, screaming. Other screams came from round the corner. I went out again and down the passage saw a man, his hands to his face, swaying backwards and forwards.

I ran to him. “Are you hit?”

He fell on to me. “My foot! Oh, my foot! Christ!”

Another officer, from the howitzer battery, came running. We formed a bandy chair and began to carry him up towards the road.

“Don’t take me up there,” he blubbered. “Don’t take me there!”

We had to. It was the only way, to step over those three black-faced corpses and into that house, where there was water and bandages. There was a padre there now and another man. I left them and returned to the cellar to telephone for an ambulance. I was cold, sick. But they weren’t _our_ dead. They weren’t our gunners with whose faces one was familiar, who were part of our daily life. The feeling passed, and I was able to go on with the bully beef and pickles and the war.

During the weeks that followed the last raid I was to learn differently. They were harassing weeks with guns dotted all over the zone. The luck seemed to have turned, and it was next to impossible to find a place for a gun which the Hun didn’t immediately shell violently. Every gun had, of course, a different pin-point, and map work became a labour, map work and the difficulty of battery control and rationing. One’s brain was keyed incessantly up to concert pitch.

Various changes had taken place. We had been taken into Right Group and headquarters was established in a practically unshelled farm with one section beside it. Another section was right forward in the Brickstack. The third was away on the other side of the zone, an enfilade section which I handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the section commander, who had his own O.P. in Moat Farm, and took on his own targets. We were all extremely happy, doing a lot of shooting.

One morning, hot and sunny, I had to meet the Major to reconnoitre an alternative gun position. So I sent for the enfilade section commander to come and take charge, and set out in shorts and shirt sleeves on a bicycle. The Major, another Headquarters officer and myself had finished reconnoitring, and were eating plums, when a heavy bombardment began in the direction of the battery farm. Five-nines they were in section salvos, and the earth went up in spouts, not on the farm, but mighty close. I didn’t feel anxious at first, for that subaltern had been in charge of the Chapelle section and knew all about clearing out. But the bombardment went on. The Major and the other left me, advising me to “give it a chance” before I went back.

So I rode along to an O.P. and tried to get through to the battery on the ’phone. The line was gone.

Through glasses I could see no signs of life round about the farm. They must have cleared, I thought. However, I had to get back some time or other, so I rode slowly back along the road. A track led between open fields to the farm. I walked the bicycle along this until bits of shell began flying. I lay flat. Then the bombardment slackened. I got up and walked on. Again they opened, so I lay flat again.

For perhaps half an hour bits came zooming like great stagbeetles all round, while I lay and watched.

They were on the gun position, not the farm, but somehow my anxiety wouldn’t go. After all, I was in charge of the battery, and here I was, while God knew what might have happened in the farm. So I decided to make a dash for it, and timed the bursts. At the end of five minutes they slackened and I thought I could do it. Two more crashed. I jumped on the bike, pedalled hard down the track until it was blotted out by an enormous shell hole into which I went, left the bike lying and ran to the farm gate, just as two pip-squeaks burst in the yard. I fell into the door, covered with brick dust and tiles, but unhurt.

The sound of singing came from the cellar. I called down, “Who’s there?” The servants and the corporal clerk were there. And the officer? Oh, he’d gone over to the guns to see if everybody had cleared the position. He’d given the order as soon as the bombardment began. But over at the guns the place was being chewed up.

Had he gone alone? No. One of the servants had gone with him. How long ago? Perhaps twenty minutes. Meanwhile, during question and answer, four more pip-squeaks had landed, two at the farm gate, one in the yard, one just over.

It was getting altogether too hot. I decided to clear the farm first. Two at a time, taking the word from me, they made a dash for it through the garden and the hedge to a flank, till only the corporal clerk and myself were left. We gathered the secret papers the “wind gadget,” my compass and the telephone and ran for it in our turn.

We caught the others who were waiting round the corner well to a flank. I handed the things we’d brought to the mess cook, and asked the corporal clerk if he’d come with me to make sure that the subaltern and the gunners had got away all right.

We went wide and got round to the rear of the position. Not a sign of any of the detachments in any houses round about. Then we worked our way up a hedge which led to the rear of the guns, dropping flat for shells to burst. They were more on the farm now than the guns. We reached the signal pit,--a sort of dug-out with a roof of pit props, and earth and a trench dug to the entrance.

The corporal went along the trench. “Christ!” he said, and came blindly back.

For an instant the world spun. Without seeing I saw. Then I climbed along the broken trench. A five-nine had landed on the roof of the pit and crashed everything in.

A pair of boots was sticking out of the earth.--

He had been in charge of the battery for _me_. From the safety of the cellar he had gone out to see if the men were all right. He had done _my_ job!

Gunners came with shovels. In five minutes we had him out. He was still warm. The doctor was on his way. We carried him out of the shelling on a duck board. Some of the gunners went on digging for the other boy. The doctor was there by the time we’d carried him to the road. He was dead.

14

A pair of boots sticking out of the earth.

For days I saw nothing else. That jolly fellow whom I’d left laughing, sitting down to write a letter to his wife,--a pair of boots sticking out. Why? Why?

We had laid him in a cottage. The sergeant and I went back, and by the light of a candle which flickered horribly, emptied his pockets and took off his ring. How cold Death was. It made him look ten years younger.

Then we put him into an army blanket with his boots on and all his clothes. The only string we had was knotted. It took a long time to untie it. At last it was done.

A cigarette holder, a penknife, a handkerchief, the ring. I took them out with me into the moonlight, all that King and country had left of him.

What had this youngster been born for, sent to a Public School, earned his own living and married the pretty girl whose photo I had seen in the dug-out? To die like a rat in a trap, to have his name one day in the Roll of Honour and so break two hearts, and then be forgotten by his country because he was no more use to it. What was the worth of Public School education if it gave the country no higher ideal than war?--to kill or be killed. Were there no brains in England big enough to avert it? He hadn’t wanted it. He was a representative specimen. What had he joined for? Because all his pals had. He didn’t want them to call him coward. For that he had left his wife and his home, and to-morrow he would be dropped into a hole in the ground and a parson would utter words about God and eternal life.

What did it all mean? Why, because it was the “thing to do,” did we all join up like sheep in a Chicago packing yard? What right had our country--the “free country”--to compel us to live this life of filth and agony?

The men who made the law that sent us out, they didn’t come too. They were the “rudder of the nation,” steering the “Ship of State.” They’d never seen a pair of boots sticking out of the earth. Why did we bow the neck and obey other men’s wills?

Surely these conscientious objectors had a greater courage in withstanding our ridicule than we in wishing to prove our possession of courage by coming out. What was the root of this war,--honour? How can honour be at the root of dishonour, and wholesale manslaughter? What kind of honour was it that smashed up homesteads, raped women, crucified soldiers, bombed hospitals, bayoneted wounded? What idealism was ours if we took an eye for an eye? What was our civilization, twenty centuries of it, if we hadn’t reached even to the barbaric standards,--for no barbarian could have invented these atrocities. What was the festering pit on which our social system was built?

And the parson who talked of God,--is there more than one God, then, for the Germans quoted him as being on their side with as much fervour and sincerity as the parson? How reconcile any God with this devastation and deliberate killing? This war was the proof of the failure of Christ, the proof of our own failure, the failure of the civilized world. For twenty centuries the world had turned a blind eye to the foulness stirring inside it, insinuating itself into the main arteries; and now the lid was wrenched off and all the foul stench of a humbug Christian civilization floated over the poisoned world.

One man had said he was too proud to fight. We, filled with the lust of slaughter, jeered him as we had jeered the conscientious objectors. But wasn’t there in our hearts, in saner moments, a respect which we were ashamed to admit,--because we in our turn would have been jeered at? Therein lay our cowardice. Death we faced daily, hourly, with a laugh. But the ridicule of our fellow cowards, that was worse than death. And yet in our knowledge we cried aloud for Peace, who in our ignorance had cried for War. Children of impulse satiated with new toys and calling for the old ones! We would set back the clock and in our helplessness called upon the Christ whom we had crucified.

And back at home the law-makers and the old men shouted patriotically from their club fenders, “We will fight to the last man!”

The utter waste of the brown-blanketed bundle in the cottage room!

What would I not have given for the one woman to put her arms round me and hide my face against her breast and let me sob out all the bitterness in my heart?

15

From that moment I became a conscientious objector, a pacifist, a most bitter hater of the Boche whose hand it was that had wrenched the lid off the European cesspit. Illogical? If you like, but what is logic? Logically the war was justified. We crucified Christ logically and would do so again.

From that moment my mind turned and twisted like a compass needle that had lost its sense of the north. The days were an endless burden blackened by the shadow of death, filled with emptiness, bitterness and despair.

The day’s work went on as if nothing had happened. A new face took his place at the mess table, the routine was exactly the same. Only a rough wooden cross showed that he had ever been with us. And all the time we went on shooting, killing just as good fellows as he, perhaps, doing our best to do so at least. Was it honest, thinking as I did? Is it honest for a convict who doesn’t believe in prisons to go on serving his time? There was nothing to be done but go on shooting and try and forget.

But war isn’t like that. It doesn’t let you forget. It gives you a few days, or weeks, and then takes some one else. “Old Thing” was the next, in the middle of a shoot in a front line O.P.

I was lying on my bed playing with a tiny kitten while the third subaltern at the ’phone passed on the corrections to the battery. Suddenly, instead of saying “Five minutes more right,” he said, “_What’s_ that?--Badly wounded?” and the line went.

I was on the ’phone in a flash, calling up battalion for stretcher bearers and doctors.

They brought me his small change and pencil-ends and pocketbook,--and the kitten came climbing up my leg.

The Major came back from leave--which he had got on the Colonel’s return--in time to attend Old Thing’s funeral with the Colonel and myself. Outside the cemetery a football match was going on all the time. They didn’t stop their game. Why should they? They were too used to funerals,--and it might be their turn in a day or two.

Thanks to the Major my leave came through within a week. It was like the answer to a prayer. At any price I wanted to get away from the responsibility, away from the sight of khaki, away from everything to do with war.

London was too full of it, of immaculate men and filmy girls who giggled. I couldn’t face that.

I went straight down to the little house among the beeches and pines,--an uneasy guest of long silences, staring into the fire, of bursts of violent argument, of rebellion against all existing institutions.

But it was good to watch the river flowing by, to hear it lapping against the white yacht, to hear the echo of rowlocks, flung back by the beech woods, and the wonderful whir! whir! whir! of swans as they flew down and down and away; to see little cottages with wisps of blue smoke against the brown and purple of the distant woods, not lonely ruins and sticks; to see the feathery green moss and the watery rays of a furtive sun through the pines, not smashed and torn by shells; at night to watch the friendly lights in the curtained windows and hear the owls hooting to each other unafraid and let the rest and peace sink into one’s soul; to shirk even the responsibility of deciding whether one should go for a walk or out in the dinghy, or stay indoors, but just to agree to anything that was suggested.

To decide anything was for out there, not here where war did not enter in.

Fifteen dream days, like a sudden strong whiff of verbena or honeysuckle coming out of an envelope. For the moment one shuts one’s eyes,--and opens them again to find it isn’t true. The sound of guns is everywhere.

So with that leave. I found myself in France again, trotting up in the mud and rain to report my arrival as though I’d never been away. It was all just a dream to try and call back.

16

Everything was well with the battery. My job was to function with all speed at the building of the new horse lines. Before going on leave I had drawn a map to scale of the field in which they were to be. This had been submitted to Corps and approved, and work had started on it during my leave.