Chapter III: Book II: The March to Conquest (1)

I

THERE’. no end of a thrill in night-marching, if one doesn’t get too much of it. One feels curiously winged when mounted in the darkness, as though the limitations to speed, space and possibility had broken down. The present merges with the past and with eternity. Doors open in the night, giving entrance to previous incarnations. The mounted men are a robber-band; the guns are wagons piled with loot. The villages, lying flattened by shell-fire, are walled towns which hide medieval palaces. The country through which we pass, takes on a hundred exquisite and grotesque shapes, the one melting into the other at the bidding of the imagination. Everything is unusual, everything is shifting, everything is distorted and capable of being changed at will. One has an extraordinary sense of timelessness and an overwhelming certainty that he has done all this before, marching to the sack of cities, and suffering weariness and death for unremembered causes. The ghosts of those forgotten tragedies and triumphs throng about him, bewildering him with a faint familiarity which he fails to associate with any land or clime.

On that first night-march we had to keep our column closed up to prevent straggling, since on a secret march to an unknown destination a straggler inevitably gets lost. If a vehicle had to halt to refit harness, to have a horse shod or for any other cause, we had to leave out-riders at every cross-road to guide it back to the main body.

The first part of our journey was through country we had fought over, every contour of which, despite the darkness, was pictured vividly in our minds. We passed the narrow valley behind the Maison Blanche, in which our battery had lain hidden up to the time when the Ridge was captured. We passed the cross-roads at the Ariane Dump, where we used to assemble midnight after midnight to build the artillery road up to the Front-line, that our guns might pass forward across No Man’s Land within four hours of the start of the offensive. Many spots were memorable to us because of men who had died. It was over there to the right that the Hun sniper got our signalling sergeant, when we were observing from behind the Five Hundred Crater. It was over there to the left that a Hun shell scored a direct hit on B. Sub’s gun-pit and sent all the gun-detachment west. Though we were to forget these homes that we have had in the mud, our horses remember and remind us; each time they pass one of their old wagon-lines, they try to turn in off the road from force of habit.

Through the mist and moonlight we can just make out the twin towers, blunted and splintered, of Mount St. Eloi. They look like the thumb and index-finger of a solemn hand, pointing heavenward.

One tower is tall and defiant: the other has been shorn by shell-fire. The Huns commenced their work of destruction during the Franco-Prussian war; since this war started, they have done their utmost to complete it, even sending over bombing-planes for that purpose. They have a good military reason, for the towers command a panoramic view of forty miles of country. But still the towers stand, exclaiming in a valiant gesture of architectural oratory that God still dwells beyond the clouds.

In the hollow, between Mount St. Eloi and the road which we travel, lies God’s Acre, with its endless forest of white crosses. It is there that very many of the pals who have served with us are taking their last rest. They are wrapped in the army blankets which made so many journeys with them. Each has a little scooped out hole, three feet beneath the ground and only just big enough to take his body. The blanket is pulled up over the face and hurriedly sewn into place for fear the sleeper should stir and be cold beneath the sod. As I gaze through the darkness towards the hollow, I can feel the wounds of the sleeping men. There’s Rennet with a bullet through the centre of his forehead: that happened when we were observing from Sap 29 in front of Ecurie. There’s Gordon, who came bark from a gay leave in Paris to have his leg shattered at the entrance to the Bentata Tunnel. How he made us laugh the night before he died with his account of “ze lady wiz ze vite furs,” who tried to make him pay for her dinner at the Cafi de la Paix! And there’s Athol, who was Brigade medical officer when we occupied the railroad in front of Farbus. Brigade headquarters were on the Ridge and the batteries were in the plain. The moment he saw that we were being strafed, he would come racing down through the shell-fire to our assistance. He got smashed to atoms when he was binding up some of our chaps in a blown-in dug-out; there was nothing but his face left undamaged. I wonder why it is that I still walk the earth while they sleep there so quietly. We all took the same risks. We all dreamt of the same adventure—the adventure on which we now are bound—of the day when trench-warfare would end and we should break the German line, and take our guns into action at the gallop. Do they strain their ears where they lie so narrowly as they catch the rumble of our departing guns? Do they push back the earth from their sunken eyes, raising themselves on their elbows to listen? Dick Dirk is there by now—he who returned ahead of time from Blighty because he wanted to “go straight for her.” His house underground is newer than the others. Does he wish us luck, or does he pay us no attention?———No, they do not stir. They lie heedless and silent. Having done their bit, they are contented, for they were very tired. As the hollow is swallowed up in the all-surrounding pool of night, I look back just once to where my dead companions rest, and again the words take shape in my mind, “Those about to die, salute thee.”

We wheel out on to the straight pavi road which runs like an arrow’s flight from Arras to St. Pol. In a long and regular line on either side stand pollarded trees, marking its direction for miles. They seem gigantic sentinels, silent and impassive. From all directions, from main-roads and bye-roads, comes the muffled roar of transport pouring along every artery of travel to the same unknown bourne to which we journey. A tremendous movement of troops is taking place—taking place under cover of darkness, anonymously, timed absolutely and without hurry. If we doubted that a big offensive was on foot, we do not doubt it now. But whose is the controlling brain? Rumour says that even our Corps Commander has had no warning as to our ultimate destination. The Sergeant-Major rides back to tell me that the Major wants me at the head of the column. I trot forward and find that he is walking, while his groom leads Fury a few paces behind. I salute, dismount and hand over my horse to a signaller.

II

THE Major wants to talk—he feels lonely. We begin by making guesses as to the scope of the new offensive. We converse very quietly for fear we should be overheard by any of our men. A corps order has been published forbidding any discussion of the object of our present movements. Such discussion, if it takes place in public, comes under the heading of “Giving information to the enemy.” It’s impossible to say who of the people with whom we associate are spies. Many a good life has been thrown away as the result of careless and boastful conversations in estaminets and officers’ tea-rooms. Some bounder, out of the line for a day, wants to air his superior knowledge of doings up front; he talks with a raised voice in order to impress strangers who may or may not be in British uniforms. In any case, the uniform is no proof of integrity; many an English-speaking Hun has passed secretly through our lines in the uniform of the man he has murdered. The result of such loose speaking is that the raid, which ought to have succeeded, fails. The Huns are forewarned: their trenches are stiff with machine-guns and many of our men go west.

Every precaution is being taken this time that no information of importance to the enemy shall leak out. In the first place, we know nothing ourselves; in the second, we are forbidden to conjecture out loud. Though we recognise landmarks in the landscape, we are under orders not to mention the fact. We are only to march when night has blindfolded our eyes; our tongues, under pain of court-martial, are to be kept silent.

To judge by the north-easterly direction in which we are marching, we might be going up to Flanders to recapture the Hun gains at Kernel. The Major believes, however, that our present direction gives no indication, as we’re probably only going to a railroad junction at which we shall entrain. He thinks that our goal lies to the south. It may be the Rheims salient, in which case we shall be in entirely new territory, fighting with the French and joining up with, the Americans, concerning whom we are exceedingly optimistic and curious. On the other hand there are rumours that the Americans are taking over from the French in the Argonne sector, thus releasing many French veteran troops who will be behind us to back us up in the counterstroke of which we are the hammer-head. One fact is known definitely—Canadians have been sent north to Ypris; but whether to fool the Hun or because the thrust is to be made there, remains uncertain.

The Hun knows that the Canadians have been trained to be the point of the fighting-wedge; he, therefore, knows that where we are there the blow is to be struck. All summer he has made every effort to keep track of our position in the line, his object being that he may have his reserves rightly placed to push back our thrust. For the war on the Western Front has become entirely a game of the handling of reserves. Neither side has sufficient man power to defend its trench-system if an attack were to take place all along its front. So it remains for the attacker to muster his storm-troops with such stealth that the people to be attacked may be kept unaware of what is planned against them and may be tricked into withdrawing their reserves to a place remotest from the point where the blow is to fall. If such strategy succeeds, the attacker has the element of surprise in his favour and gains so much ground in the impetus of his first rush that, by the time the enemy reserves can be brought up, the entire defense has become disorganised.

The great aim of the new strategy is to make a gap—to get through the enemy so that his right and left flanks are out of touch and railroad communications in his rear can be cut.

The new strategy was first practised by our Third Army in its November Drive against Cambrai; that drive failed for want of sufficient reinforcements to back it up. Until that time the Allies had always gone after what were known as “limited objectives,” such as high ground, trench-systems, villages, salients. When the objective had been taken, the attack rested. The Vimy Ridge was a limited objective. We didn’t want to break the Hun line; what we desired was the Ridge, because it commanded a great enemy plain on the other side. For two months before we actually struck, we advertised the fact that we were going to strike by the intensity of our incessant shell-fire. Systematically, day by day and night by night, we cut the enemy’s wire-entanglements, blew up his dumps, mined beneath his front-line, pounded his cement machine-gun emplacements, harassed his means of communication and stole his morale by making his life perilous and wretched. He knew as well as we did what was planned; his only uncertainty was as to the exact hour at which the attack was to be launched. We kept him wearily guessing, and wore his nerves to a frazzle by putting on intense bombardments at inconvenient times. Usually these bombardments took place at dawn, lasted for fifteen minutes and had all the appearance of being the genuine zero hour. When our barrage had descended, he would man his trenches, call up his reserves and set all the machinery for his counterthrust working. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the hell would die down into the intensest quiet.

The new strategy does not advertise the point to be attacked. It does not cut wire-entanglements with shell-fire many days before the show commences; it tramples down obstacles with battalions of tanks at the very moment that the infantry are advancing. It does not set out to capture a given and solitary object; its ambition is to double up the enemy’s line and to penetrate as far as success will allow. The new strategy is in all things more stealthy, more tiger-like, more reckless, more deadly; its most dangerous feature is the use which it makes of surprise.

This new method of fighting has developed out of the necessity for defeating a heavily entrenched enemy. It is a method which the Allies at last are able to adopt because of the almost limitless resources in man-power which America has placed at their disposal. For the Western Front to be rightly understood, must be regarded as a banjo-string, composed of living men holding hands from Switzerland to the English Channel. Under pressure the string may give and give, but it must never break. The moment it breaks, the thing happens which takes place when a banjo-string snaps—it curls up towards the ends and leaves a gap. The only power that can save the day when the banjo-string has snapped, is the masterly strategic employment of the reserves. The reserves may stop the rush by selling their lives to a man, or they may do it by luring the attacker on until he has advanced beyond his strength. But if the side attacked has guessed wrongly as to the point to be attacked, so that its reserves are at a distance when the disaster happens, a calamitous retreat on either flank will have to be begun or the jig is up. To compel this retreat is the purpose of Foch’s present thrust.

In adopting these hide-and-seek tactics of night-marches we are borrowing a lesson from the Hun. He has already tried to do precisely what we now intend to accomplish. In his great drive of the spring, when he all but took Rheims and Amiens, he massed his storm-troops seventy miles behind his objective. Day by day he kept them hidden from spy and aeroplane observation, moving them only by night. His railroad and transportation arrangements were so perfect that, commencing at dusk, he was able to fling the whole weight of his fighting-wedge up front and have it hammering at our doors by daylight.

As we rode beneath the August night, my Major summed up the situation: “We’re trying to bluff the Hun into expecting us up north, while we make for the south as fast as we can hurry. I’ll tell you what it is, Chris; we can afford to die, now that the Americans are behind us with their millions. Believe me, before this month is ended, there’s going to be some tall dying.”

That phrase, “We can afford to die,” arrested my attention. It was so brutally financial, as though human lives were only so much national capital, and not the focus-points of loyalties and affections. It was as though the casualties for the military year could be apportioned ahead of time, so that the national books of birth and death might be made to balance. It was making a mathematical calculation as to men’s uncalculated and individual sacrifice; no more must be killed in any given twelve months than the bodies of the living could re-supply. And yet———

Yes, it was true: for the first time in the history of the war we could afford to die. During the previous four years we had died, but we could not afford it. We had had to be careful about our deaths, so that our man-power might not sink below that of the enemy who faced us. Now at last, because the Americans were behind us, we could afford to become lavish in the spending of our lives. Where one British soldier fell, three American boys would spring up. Though we became sightless, soundless, nameless, trodden by shells into the oozing horror of the mud, other idealists of another nation, but still of our tongue and blood, would cross by the bridge our bodies had made, lighting on and up till the decency for which we had perished was won. Viewed in this light, the knowledge that we could afford to die became not brutal, but glorious.

The Major whistled softly, strutting through the darkness on his little bowed legs. The thought that they could afford to let him die caused his spirits to rise.

III

KEEP to the Right,” and, after an interval, “Ha-alt!” Passed back down the unseen column ahead of us come the hoarse cries, followed by a sudden cessation of wheels and then, sharp and emphatic, “Dismount the drivers.”

Our Major shouts back the orders to the Sergeant-Major; from him they are picked up by the Section-Commanders and Numbers One. We listen to them as they travel down the battery through the darkness, altered in tone and made more faint as each new voice takes up the cry. The B. C. party back their ridden and led animals into the grass on the side of the road, loosen the reins and allow their beasts to graze. This is the first halt that we have made, so it should be long enough to give us time to check over the fitting of the harness and to make sure that everything is correct. I climb into the saddle to ride down the line; as I turn away, the Major calls to me, “Oh, Chris, one minute!” I bend down to catch his words: “Find out what’s happened to Bully Beef and Suzette.”

What’s happened to Bully Beef and Suzette? That question has been in my mind, in the mind of the Major, and probably in every gunner’s and driver’s mind ever since we marched out from the wagon-lines. It’s dead against all army orders that a woman and child should accompany a fighting unit into action. Since the war started, camp-followers of whatever sort have been forbidden. From time to time, even the dogs in the army areas have been shot because many of them were spies, carrying messages to the Germans across No Man’s Land at night. It’s dead against every dictate of decency and humanity that fighting-men should take non-combatants with them into the kind of furious carnage towards which we——. But, somehow, Bully Beef and Suzette do not seem to be non-combatants; we regard them as soldiers. They march with us as representatives of the impassioned soul of France. Yes, and more than that—for they stand to us for everything tender and kindly that would have been ours, had we not been selected to die. Suzette is to us what Joan of Arc must have been to her soldiers—the dream of the woman we would have married had Fate been more lavish with life. And Bully Beef—he’s the might-have-been child of every boy and man in the battery.

Gun-carriages and wagons have been pulled well over to the right, clear of the pavi road, so as not to cause a block in the passing traffic. It’s difficult to see them in detail on account of the blackness caused by the wall of trees on either side. One can just make out the heads of horses and the huddled figures of men on the limbers, too tired to know that we have halted. Usually when I enquire, I find that the sleepers were on guard or picket the night previous. We let them sleep on. They are wise; none of us know how far we have to go or how many nights of wakefulness lie before us.

Behind the darkness I can hear the drivers lifting up the feet of their horses and feeling for stones. Good boys, these drivers! They love their beasts and speak to them as pals. There’s so much discipline that one doesn’t get much time for loving in the army. I remember a march on this same road when the drivers were so frozen that they had to be lifted out of their saddles; no one had the strength to unfasten a bit till he had thawed his fingers between the horse’s back and the saddle-blanket. Yet there wasn’t one man who quit when we limped into our muddy standings. Every gunner and driver went to work on the horses, grooming them with a will and trying to make them comfortable before he thought of himself—and this, not because it was ordered, but because he realised through his own misery the forlornness of his four-footed comrades. Good boys, all of them! I think the Lord of Compassion, when the final reckoning comes, will remember kindnesses even to horses. When he judges those drivers, he’ll not forget the bitter cold of that winter’s march and what it meant to stand grooming in the snow and sleet when you were bitten to the bone and almost crying with misery. So he’ll pass over their swearing and the times when they got drunk, and he’ll say, pointing to the horses who will also be in Heaven, “inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me.” If that should happen, the drivers will be most awfully surprised, because according to their standards they only did their duty.

Some of the chaps in my section, which is the leading and senior section of the battery, try to ask me questions as I pass.

“Are we going far, sir?”

“Are we going out for training?”

“Do you think, sir, that it’s the Big Push at last?” I cannot see their faces, but I recognise them by their voices. They are drawn from every class of society. Some of them were college boys, some were mechanics, some day-laborers, some adventurers, some came out of gaol to join. Now only one quality lifts one man above another—his courage. Their questions are asked from all kinds of motives—friendliness, curiosity, nervousness. I am conscious of an atmosphere of tension throughout the battery. It seems a shame that, they should be told nothing. In no other game in the world would you march men to their death, without so much as warning them that it was to their death that they were going. From one of my questioners—a man who was wounded eight months ago and has just re joined us—I pick up a significant piece of information.

“I can see you’re not telling, sir, but I know. It’s to the Big Push that we’re going. And here’s why I know—when we left England, they were emptying every camp—sending drafts to France secretly every night. When I got to our Corps Reinforcement Camp, not thirty kilometres from here, I found the place so jammed that you could hardly find a space to spread your blanket. With the men they have there, the Corps must be fifty per cent over-strength. That means just one thing, sir——that we’re getting ready for fifty per cent casualties.”

“Perhaps,” I answer him, “but, if I were you, I wouldn’t talk about it.”

I reach the centre section, which Tubby Grain is commanding. Tubby is a plump little officer and rides a wicked little Indian pony as well-fleshed as himself.

“The Major’s compliments, and he wants you to look over your section and report on it,” I tell him.

His reply is, as usual, insubordinate and cheery. “Holy, jumping cat-fish! What does the Major think I am? Don’t I always look over my section when there’s a halt?” And then confidentially, “I say, old top, what about Bully Beef and Suzette?”

I tell him that I’m on my way to find out. As I ride away he shouts after me the latest catchword from Blighty, “How’s your father?” To which, if you are in the know, the proper reply is, “Very well, thanks. He still has his baggy pants on.” I’m in too much of a hurry to give the correct countersign, so Tubby facetiously sends a mounted bombadier after me, who catches me up while I’m speaking to Gus Ed wine, the commander of the left and rear section. The bombadier salutes without a smile and sits to attention, waiting for me to take notice of him in the darkness.

“Well, what is it, Bombadier?”

“Mr. Grain’s compliments, sir, and if you meet his father, would you tell him that he really ought to have his baggy pants on these cold nights.”

Gus gaffaws and steals my dynamite by sending a return message: “My compliments to Mr. Grain, and tell him that it’s all right; Suzette is repairing his father’s baggy pants.” Then to me, “But how about Suzette? I went to look for her three hours before we left the wagon-lines; her bivouac was pulled down, and she and Bully Beef weren’t anywhere in sight. I didn’t like to ask because——. Well, you know, if we’re going to buck Army regulations, there are some things that most of us shouldn’t know too much about. If the General or the Colonel asks questions and you don’t know, you can’t tell. Ignorance saves a lot of lying.”

At the tail of the column I find the transport—the G. S. wagons, the water-cart, the officers’ mess-cart, the cook-cart, the shoeing-smith’s cart—looking humpy and nomadic as a travelling circus. The prisoners are there on foot with their escort, A group of stragglers are regaining their wind before reporting back to their proper sections. Mongrel curs, which we have adopted in our travels, yap down at me from the tarpaulin-covered mountains of stores or run sniffing about the heels of the horses. This house-keeping portion of our military life is in the care of the Captain. It is here, if anywhere, that I shall get the news I want.

I find Heming with the Quartermaster, directing the re-packing of some bales of hay which have shifted with the bumping of the journey. It always makes me smile to watch him engaged upon an unimaginative and practical task; he still has the aloofness of the artist. Beneath his khaki I can still discover the privileged dreamer whom the world flattered and who scarcely knew how to tie his own shoe-lace. He has compelled himself to become practical; but if the war were to end tomorrow, he would at once cease to be a soldier and fall back into his old way of life. I believe in his secret heart it is just that falling back that he dreads; out here he has learnt to be lean as a rapier. He loathes the thought of again becoming self-applauding and flabby. If the price of keeping lean is “going west” on the battlefield, he is perfectly content. To quote his own words, “There’s nothing leaner than a skeleton.”

“Captain Homing!”

“Hulloa, Chris! Pretty black, isn’t it? I didn’t see you. What’s your trouble?”

“A message from the Major.” I sink my voice. “He wants to know what you’ve done about Bully Beef and Suzette?”

“Suzette!” I can’t see his face. As he pronounces her name, he sucks the air through his teeth the way a man does when he shudders. Then, “Look here, does the Major really want to know what I’ve done with them?”

“He told me to find out.”

“But if he knows, he ought to take action. If he doesn’t take action, he becomes my accomplice and may get into trouble with those higher up. He’d better take it for granted that we left them behind at Vimy, unless——”

“Unless what?”

“Unless he really does wish that we had left them behind.”

“So——so we didn’t leave them behind?”

“Hand your horse over to one of the chaps,” he says; “you shall see for yourself.”

We go on foot towards the wagon on which the bales of hay were being re-packed. The job is all finished now; the tarpaulin has been pulled tightly over the top and roped down. The Quartermaster is standing in rear of the wagon as though he were on guard. He’s an old soldier who has fought through many wars; he wears the African ribbon and several Indian decorations. He’s a big, comfortable sort of man, with an immense stomach and a body over six foot high. He has a wart on the right side of his nose, which he rubs thoughtfully when he talks to you. His voice is thick, as though his throat were grown up with fat. Of all our noncommissioned officers he’s the kindest. He plays the part of a father to the chaps, and has saved many a young soldier from going on the wrong slant. His name is Dan Turpin—“Big Dan.” The only beast of sufficient strength to carry him is an ex-Toronto fire-engine horse, called “Little Dan”—not that he is little, but to distinguish him from his master. As we approach, Big Dan is singing to himself in a sepulchral voice,

Old soldiers never die

They simply fade away.

It would take more than a drive against the Huns to get Dan’s wind up.

“Quarter!”

“Yes sir.”

We hear his heels click together and the jingle of his spurs.

“Is the wagon re-packed all right?”

“All correct, sir.”

“Just loosen the flap of the tarpaulin at the back; I want to see for myself.”

The rope securing the flap is untied and we slip our heads under the tarpaulin. Carefully, so that none of the light may spill on to the road and give us away to aeroplanes, Heming turns on his flash. At first the illumination is blinding; then one sees that the bales of hay have been so stacked as to leave a hollow. Inside the hollow someone stirs, sighs and turns over, disturbed by the light. The figure is slight and covered by an officer’s trench-coat. Heming shifts the flash, so that it creeps along the body and reveals the face. Suzette! Her khaki tunic is unhooked and unbuttoned at the neck. Bully Beef lies snuggled in her arms, with his small head hidden against her breast. Her soldier’s cap has slipped aside and her hair, which was like honey and sunshine, has been cut square against the neck. From beneath the trench-coat I see that she is wearing puttees. I understand—she will pass for a man now. But why does she want to accompany us into danger? Is she so desperately alone and fed-up with life? And Heming, why does he——? She opens her eyes and smiles sleepily, knowing that we are friends.

From farther up the column we hear the order being shouted back, “Get mounted the drivers.” The flash goes out. “Good-night, Suzette.” The tarpaulin is lowered anil tied into place. From far ahead comes the groaning of guns and ammunition-wagons taking up the march.

All night as I ride, there burns in my brain the picture of that refugee French girl with her fatherless child, journeying with us towards the Calvary from which all the civilian world is fleeing. She is escaping towards death. And I think of another mother, no less a soldier-woman, who fled by Eastern highways that she might bring her son back to the death from which she fled, in order that men might live better.

Suzette! Why does she accompany us? She knows that we need her love, perhaps. That knowledge brings her very near to the peasant mother of Nazareth.

IV

THE dawn stole upon us like a ghost. It ran beside us, fell behind, dashed on ahead, following and peering from behind trees and ruins. Along the endless road we crawled, weary and spent. The gunners had been ordered to dismount from the limbers to ease the horses’ load. The out-riders and officers for the sake of example, had also dismounted and walked ahead of their chargers. All talking had ceased. We stumbled forward like somnambulists, pale and heavy-eyed. Had anyone been told that we were storm-troops, Foch’s Pets, the hammerhead of the attack, moving up to smash the Hun line, he would have laughed. We looked listless, washed out. Now and then a man would ask an officer, “How much further, sir?” The officer would reply, “I don’t know. Not much further, I should think.” The man’s head would sag forward again on his breast. In the army there is no complaining, no going on strike: one carries on and on til he drops. To carry on, however harsh the demands, and not to drop is one’s pride.

As day grew whiter and the sunrise reddened, we learnt a good deal about the condition of affairs that night had masked. Every few yards through the standing wheat new lines of defences had been dug. Trench-system behind trench-system stretched for miles, scarring the greenness of the landscape. They were all of recent construction, for the earth had been but newly turned. Here, behind a wood or a rise of ground, a battery position had been selected and gun-pits laid out. One came to what looked like a hay-stack or a pile of tumbled logs, only to find that it was a machine-gun nest, cunningly chosen to command a valley down which an advancing enemy must march. Beneath grass in ditches wire-entanglements had been hidden, so contrived that they could be set up across the road at a moment’s notice, to obstruct pursuing cavalry. One could follow the reasoning of the stealthy mind which had woven this maze of destruction. The enemy would have maps of our back-country worked out from their aeroplane photographs. They would know beforehand each dip and hollow where artillery and machine-gun resistance might be expected; consequently they would try to neutralise such resistance with their heavies before they sent their infantry forward. The stealthy mind had argued every probability; very often it had arranged its strong points in open places, where the position was so badly chosen that it would not be suspected. It became plain that whatever our game might be, this time it was to be neck or nothing. The Allies might be planning to attack; but, if they had to retire, they were reckoning on selling every yard of land at the highest cost in lives. All the machinery for the shambles was ready, only the bodies were lacking. One did not require to be highly imaginative to picture the murder holes these woods and valleys would become when once the slaughter started. For someone disaster was brewing; whether for ourselves or the Germans, it was impossible to guess.

Now that it was daylight, we recognised the country; it had been quiet and unwarlike when last we had passed through it. The rapid transformation enabled us to realise the terror of the fighting which had been taking place to the south—the desperate few, digging their toes in, determined not to budge, British, American, French, hanging on in the hope of reinforcements which could not come. The landscape lying smiling in the August dawn lost its peacefulness; one saw it as it might become—a hell ensanguined by death, through which men crawled from rifle-pit to rifle-pit like dogs with their spines broken.

Wherever the eye rested, fear threatened and muttered. The doubt sprang up that even we might be defeated. They marched us to and fro under sealed orders. They made us die and suffer; but they told us nothing. Who were they—these people who never spoke to us or saw us, these people whose lives were too valuable to endanger? They lived miles behind the lines in chbteaux. They slept in sheeted beds. They ate as much as they liked. They took two leaves to Blighty to our one. Their breasts were covered with decorations. They never knew the weariness of night-marches: staff-cars whisked them between breakfast and lunch across distances that it took us a week to trudge. What right had they to all this consideration? Were they really so wise as they thought they were? If they bungled, it was we who had to pay; it was our bodies that would be mangled; our blood, needlessly expended, that would wash out their errors. And when in spite of bad staff-work our courage had conquered, it would be we who would get whatever blame was coming and they who would get the credit.

In the centre section a horse fell down; it had gone to sleep while in draught. The driver must have been at fault; he, too, was probably nodding. From down the column Tubby Grain’s voice reached us, angrily strafing in unprintable language. The commotion grew fainter as the other teams swung out into the road and the column passed on.

At a bend we came across a Chinese Labour Battalion, shuffling up to work on the trenches. Across their shoulders they balanced poles, with the load tied on either end. Their clothing was nondescript—the refuse of every rag-shop of Europe and the Orient. The proudest Chinaman of the lot swaggered and sweltered in the remains of a great-coat, which had belonged to an officer in the Prussian Guard. They went by us clacking their tongues and laughing, happy as children if one of our chaps smiled back. Beside them, rigid and regimental, marched their British non-commissioned officers, hard, uncheerful men of the Indian service, who carried rods with which to enforce obedience.

A cruel war! A war to the point of exhaustion when the white man, that his God might be defended, had to rouse Confucius from his long contemplation. These men, they tell us, have been recruited from districts in China which have been stricken with famine. They have exchanged their rice-fields and pagodas for the bombed areas and dug-outs of war not for our sakes, but that their yellow wives and children may not starve. You can find representatives from all the world marching up to the trenches along the dusty roads of France. We Canadians have Japanese in our British Columbia battalions; our sharp-shooters are Red Indians. The New Zealanders have Maoris; the South Africans Kaffirs; the West Indians Negroes; the cavalry Sikhs. All mankind is here for one reason or another—for gain, adventure, principle, patriotism; but chiefly that they may prove that it was not in vain that Christ grew up in Nazareth. There are aborigines from the Pacific Islands, one generation removed from cannibals; Arab horsemen who have worshipped Allah in the desert; savages from the jungle; wanderers by divers trails, who had lost their way in the maze that leads out to civilization. They have all been sent here by their indignant gods that they may drag down the more brutal god of the Germans.

We drowse; we crawl; we halt. Again we move forward. Our eyes are aching with sleeplessness. We pass by a prison-camp, surrounded by a huge cage, inside of which Hun prisoners are lined up to get their breakfast. Our mouths are dry and we view their steaming mess-tins with envy.

We march on, scarcely interested now in our direction. Heels are blistered. Where we are going no longer matters, if they would only give us time to rest. Of a sudden there’s a cheering at the head of the column. Men pull themselves together. There’s been no order passed down that we should march to attention, but every gunner is marching close behind his vehicle and the drivers are sitting upright in their saddles. Far up the road, on the banks on either side, are standing men who wear a strange uniform. Their slouch hats at a distance look a little like the Australians’, but their tunics are much tighter. Before ever we come abreast of them, the word has been whispered back, “They’re here—the Americans!” There’s no sleepiness about us now. The blistered feet are forgotten; we’re marching like soldiers. “They’re here—the Americans!” It’s fifteen months since we heard that they were coming. We’ve sung their promise,

Over there, over there,

Send the word, send the word over there,

That the Yanks are coming——

We’ve waited and we’ve hoped—and many of the boys who hoped have died. We’ve heard that they were present at the great retreat before Cambrai in 1917. We’ve been told that they were coming by their thousands, but as yet we have seen none of them. Hun prisoners have consistently assured us that there were no Americans in France—that they were not coming. Now we are to see the Yanks with our own eyes.

“Battery, eyes front. March to attention”—the order passes smartly down the column.

We go by them, looking neither to left nor to right—so, after all, we can scarcely be said to have seen them. They are coloured troops—tremendous chaps with flashing teeth and rolling eyes. Our first Americans!

We no longer remember the wire-entanglements, the gun-emplacements and the new trendi-systems which are being constructed by Chinamen so many miles back of the line. Our tails are up. We shan’t retreat. The Yanks are no longer coming. They have come. We know now whither we are marching—to the end of the war and to conquest.

V

THE village into which we inarched this morning is an old friend; we were billeted here earlier in the summer when we were withdrawn from the line for training. It consists of, perhaps, a hundred grey farmhouses clustered together in a willow-swamp.

In the willow-groves nightingales were still singing when we entered.

In the swamp the River Scarpe has its source. At this point it is so weak and narrow that a boy could leap across it; the village geese touch bottom as they breast its ripples; a brigade of artillery could drink it dry if all the horses were led down together. Here it is peaceful, but to the south of Arras it becomes sufficiently broad to give its name to the valley through which the Hun tried to drive last spring, when the waters of the Scarpe ran scarlet. The houses of the village stand at irregular intervals, divided from the road by a strip of common upon which geese graze. One reaches the common by little bridges which cross the Scarpe, which wanders singing, paralleling the highway. Nothing has been marred by shell-fire; the roar of the guns is so distant that it is seldom heard by day—only at night does their flash flicker momentarily, like the glow of a lantern carried between trees.

It is a very quiet spot, well within the threatened area, where war is ignored and life has not altered its ways. Nature has conspired with the inhabitants in pretending that the world is unchanged. The gardens are fragrant with flowers; there are even more birds than formerly, for the refugee songsters from No Man’s Land have made these thickets their place of escape. The only terror that comes near to disturb them is the sullen explosion of bombs dropped at night from Hun planes, as is witnessed by raw scars in the greenness of the surrounding meadows.

When we entered, the white mists of morning still hung above the common; early risen cocks with their attendant harems were our only welcomers. We had set up our horse-lines and were half way through the grooming before the villagers discovered that old friends were again among them.

All day we have been wondering why we have been brought here. A part of the general plan of deception, I suppose—so that the Hun may think, if he hears of our whereabouts, that we’ve simply marched out for manoeuvres as before. All kinds of details confirm our belief that the big push is about to start. A Divisional Staff-car called in at Brigade this noon: the Canadian Maple Leaf and all the usual Divisional marks had been painted out. The patches and shoulder-badges of the car’s occupants had been torn off—nothing was left that would betray the fact that storm-troops are on the march. As yet we have received no orders as to how long we are to stay here—it would be normal to give us a few days’ rest; but none of the kit has been removed from the vehicles—which is significant. We could hook in and be off within the hour.

It was announced this morning that no more letters from our Corps would be accepted at the Army Post Office. This is the most certain sign we have had that an attack is going to be pulled off. Letters home are a frequent source of leakage of information. When men know that they are writing what may prove to be their last message to their mothers, wives, sweethearts, it is almost impossible for them to keep that knowledge to themselves. Moreover, we each one have codes, pre-arranged with our correspondents, by means of which we can get forbidden news past the censor—so it’s wise, if harsh, to insist on silence between ourselves and the outside world.

The outside world! How little it understands what our lives are like. In the outside world there are standards of freedom and politeness; in all personal matters a man has the power of choice. He is at liberty to make or ruin himself. He washes if he so desires; if he prefers to go dirty, he does not wash. Within reason, as far as is compatible with the earning of his daily bread, he sleeps as long as he wants. To miss one’s night’s rest is to court ill-health. To be verminous is to fall into the category of the slum-dweller; to go hungry is well-nigh impossible. To lay down one’s life for somebody else is exceptional and martyr like. To become a criminal is a really difficult affair.

With us everything is reversed. We grow moustaches under Army orders; we crop our hair to please the Colonel. We have no areas of privacy either in our bodies or our souls. We rise, sleep, eat and wash when we are commanded. We are physically examined, physicked, pumped full of anti toxins and marched off to church parade to worship God without our wishes being consulted. To die for someone else is not martyr-like, but our job. To go foodless, sleepless, shelterless and wet is not a matter for self-pity, but our accepted lot. We cannot give notice to our employers; we have no unions—no means of protest. To be always cheerful and smiling, the more cheerful and smiling in proportion to the hardship, is a duty for the performance of which we must expect no thanks. Our existence as individuals is ignored until we have fallen short, then, all of a sudden, we become important. What in civilian life would be errors in taste or mistakes in temper with us are offences and crimes. For a man in the ranks to come upon parade unshaven, with his buttons unshone or a few minutes late is an office offence To be found kicking a horse is a crime, demanding a court-martial. To strike a superior, to be asleep on sentry-go, or to be absent from the unit when it is moving into action means death.

Military punishments are largely physical and therefore degrading. They compel men to do better through fear of further punishment; they neither educate into a finer appreciation of righteousness, nor do they achieve any economic purpose. They consist in being strapped to a gun-wheel for so many hours a day or in being marched with heavy packs on the back when other men are resting. In the alloting of punishment the age, former social status or mental qualities of the offender are rarely taken into account. There are no excuses, no explanations. Take the gravest crime of all—cowardice. In peace times it was generally allowed that not every man was brave. Before anyone who had been unheroic was judged, his history and environment were taken into consideration. But in the Army if a man fails in courage he is shot. Had St. Peter been a soldier of the Allies, after denying Christ thrice he would never have been given the Keys of Heaven. He would have been executed at the feet of the hanging Judas. The Army asks every man to be infallible; it can afford to show no mercy and gives no second chance. We are judged and graded by our military virtues. What we knew, were or possessed, and what has been our individual sacrifice of happiness count for nought. We are fighting-men, and therefore not required to think—only to obey blindly.

I suppose I still retain my civilian mind, for I cannot treat men as automatons; I have to interpret them with imagination. If one were to see only their externals, they would appear to be rough chaps, coarse in speech and habits, with a scowling attitude towards authority which only an iron discipline can keep subordinate. But when you view them with imagination, you see their enthusiasm for an ideal, which made them willing to give up their freedom and jeopardise their lives. For no one in our brigade needed to be in France; they all came as volunteers. You also see how from the very first the Army has failed to appreciate or make use of that enthusiasm; it prefers to treat men as people who, having signed away their bodies and lives, have to obey because they cannot escape. Yet despite the Army, the enthusiasm of the men survives. It creeps out in their letters to their mothers and wives, to whom they still are heroes. It even creeps out in their conversation, when one’s up front with them and keeping watch through the dreary hours of the night. They are coarse and rough it is true, for they are leading a coarse and a rough existence. Their only bedding is their blanket; they can never remove their clothes at night. Their chances for bathing come very rarely. They can carry only one change of underclothing as their rolls have to be of an exact and limited size. While in the line their quarters consist of holes burrowed under-ground; when out at rest they consist of broken down stables and barns, into which they are packed so closely that they can scarcely turn over without disturbing the men on either side. All the niceties and decencies of civilised life are denied them; war is a nasty affair and its nastiness cannot be avoided. No outcast of the city streets, drowsing under bridges and being harried by the police, leads a more comfortless existence. At the end of the journey, as a reward for their sufferings, are probable mutilation and death. Is it to be wondered that some of them get drunk to escape their misery whenever the chance presents itself, and that when drunk, they become bold to challenge the discipline which in action is their greatest protection? The crimes which they commit are crimes only in the Army—few of them would be even offences anywhere else. A man suffers the death penalty on active service for an error which in a civil court would cost him no more than a warning and a fine.