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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17978-8.txt b/17978-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e3c2fb5 --- /dev/null +++ b/17978-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7263 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leaves from a Field Note-Book, by J. H. Morgan + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Leaves from a Field Note-Book + +Author: J. H. Morgan + +Release Date: March 13, 2006 [EBook #17978] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + +LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO + +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. + +TORONTO + + + + +LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK + +BY + +J.H. MORGAN + +LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE + + + "And my delights were with the sons of men." + + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON + +1916 + + + + +TO + +LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. + +ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE + + + + +PREFACE + + +This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during +the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as +Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His +official duties during that period involved daily visits to the +headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field, +and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the +trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance +with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So +much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of +the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down. +The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major +E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger, +for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the +chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete +without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D. +Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the +discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the +unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the +pages of the _Nineteenth Century and After_, under the title to which +the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his +obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to +republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of +_Blackwood's Magazine_ for permission to reprint the short story, +"Stokes's Act," and to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_ in whose +hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared--sometimes +anonymously. + +The reader will observe that many of these sketches appear in the form +of what, to borrow a French term, is called the _conte_. The writer has +adopted that form of literary expression as the most efficacious way of +suppressing his own personality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of +"Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether disproportionate and +impertinent in view of the magnitude and poignancy of the great events +amid which it was his privilege to live and move. Moreover, his own +duties were neither spirited nor glorious. But the characters pourtrayed +and the events narrated in these pages are true in substance and in +fact. The writer has not had the will, even if he had had the power, to +"improve" the occasions; the reality was too poignant for that. +"Stokes's Act" and "The Coming of the Hun" are therefore "true" +stories--using truth in the sense of veracity not value--and the facts +came within the writer's own investigation. The investiture of fiction +has been here adopted for the obvious reason that neither of the +principal characters in these two stories would desire his name to be +known. So, too, in the other sketches, although the characters are +"real"--I can only hope that they will be half as real to the reader as +they were and are to me--the names are assumed. + +It is my privilege to inscribe this little book to Lieut.-General Sir +C.F.N. Macready, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., to whose staff I was attached and to +whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality I owe a debt which no +words can discharge. + + J. H. M. + +_January 1916._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I + +THE BASE + PAGE + I. BOBS BAHADUR 3 + II. AT THE BASE DEPÔT 11 +III. THE WILTSHIRES 17 + IV. THE BASE 26 + V. A COUNCIL OF INDIA 36 + VI. THE TROOP TRAIN 45 + + +II + +THE FRONT + + VII. THE TWO RICHEBOURGS 59 +VIII. IDOLS OF THE CAVE 65 + IX. STOKES'S ACT 73 + X. THE FRONT 92 + XI. AT G.H.Q. 103 + XII. MORT POUR LA PATRIE 119 +XIII. MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS 128 + XIV. THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS 134 + + +III + +UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES + + XV. A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 143 + XVI. PETER 154 + XVII. THREE TRAVELLERS 166 +XVIII. BARBARA 173 + XIX. AN ARMY COUNCIL 178 + XX. THE FUGITIVES 189 + XXI. A "DUG-OUT" 195 + XXII. CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914 202 + + +IV + +THE FRONT AGAIN + + XXIII. THE COMING OF THE HUN 209 + XXIV. THE HILL 226 + XXV. THE DAY'S WORK 232 + XXVI. FIAT JUSTITIA 244 + XXVII. HIGHER EDUCATION 252 +XXVIII. THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 259 + XXIX. THE "FRONT" ONCE MORE 270 + XXX. HOME AGAIN 288 + + + + +I + +THE BASE + + + + +I + +BOBS BAHADUR + + +It had gone eight bells on the S.S. _G----_. The decks had been +washed down with the hosepipe and the men paraded for the morning's +inspection. The O.C. had scanned them with a roving eye, till catching +sight of an orderly two files from the left he had begged him, almost as +a personal favour, to get his hair cut. To an untutored mind the +orderly's hair was about one-eighth of an inch in length, but the O.C. +was inflexible. He was a colonel in that smartest of all medical +services, the I.M.S., whose members combine the extensive knowledge of +the general practitioner with the peculiar secrets of the Army surgeon, +and he was fastidious. Then he said "Dismiss," and they went their +appointed ways. The Indian cooks were boiling _dhal_ and rice in the +galley; the bakers were squatting on their haunches on the lower deck, +making _chupattis_--they were screened against the inclemency of the +weather by a tarpaulin--and they patted the leathery cakes with +persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided +like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the +sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper +deck and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure with white moustaches and +"imperial"; the eyes were of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad +in a general's field-service uniform, and on his shoulder-straps were +the insignia of a field-marshal. The colonel stared for a moment, then +ran hastily down the ladder and saluted. + + * * * * * + +Together they passed down the companion-ladder. At the foot of it they +encountered a Bengali orderly, who made a profound obeisance. + +"Shiva Lal," said the O.C., "I ordered the portholes to be kept +unfastened and the doors in the bulkheads left open. This morning I +found them shut. Why was this?" + +"Sahib, at eight o'clock I found them open." + +"It was at eight o'clock," said the colonel sternly, "that I found them +shut." + +The Bengali spread out his hands in deprecation. "If the sahib says so +it must be so," he pleaded, adding with truly Oriental irrelevancy, "I +am a poor man and have many children." It is as useless to argue with +an Indian orderly as it is to try conclusions with a woman. + +"Let it not occur again," said the colonel shortly, and with an apology +to his guest they passed on. + +They paused in front of a cabin. Over the door was the legend "Pathans, +No. 1." The door was shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened the +door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic features and bearded +like the pard, stood up and saluted. The colonel made a mental note of +the closed door; he looked at the porthole--it was also closed. The +Pathan loves a good "fug," especially in a European winter, and the +colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation. A kind of +guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect +politeness, had been going on for some days between him and the Pathans. +The Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the atmosphere. At +last he had met them halfway, or, to be precise, he had met them with a +concession of three inches. He had ordered the ship's carpenter to fix a +three-inch hook to the jamb and a staple to the door, the terms of the +truce being that the door should be kept three inches ajar. And now it +was shut. "Why is this?" he expostulated. For answer they pointed to the +hook. "Sahib, the hook will not fasten!" + +The colonel examined it; it was upside down. The contumacious Pathans +had quietly reversed the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was +now useless without being ornamental. With bland ingenuous faces they +stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent +craftsmanship. The Field-Marshal smiled--he knew the Pathan of old; the +colonel mentally registered a black mark against the delinquents. + +"Whence come you?" said the Field-Marshal. + +"From Tirah, Sahib." + +"Ah! we have had some little trouble with your folk at Tirah. But all +that is now past. Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be well with +you." + +"Ah! Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind." + +"And wherefore?" + +"My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and +abducted our women-folk. I would fain have leave to go on furlough and +lie in a nullah at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him. Then would I +return to France." + +"Patience! That can wait. How like you the War?" + +"_Burra Achha Tamasha_,[1] Sahib. But we like not their big guns. We +would fain come at them with the bayonet. Why are we kept back in the +trenches, Sahib?" + +"Peace! It shall come in good time." + +They passed into another cabin reserved for native officers. A tall Sikh +rose to a half-sitting posture and saluted. + +"What is your name?" + +"H---- Sing, Sahib." + +"There was a H---- Sing with me in '78," said the Field-Marshal +meditatively. "With the Kuram Field Force. He was my orderly. He served +me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted to subadar." + +The aquiline features of the Sikh relaxed, his eyes of lustrous jet +gleamed. "Even so, Sahib, he was my father." + +"Good! he was a man. Be worthy of him. And you too are a subadar?" + +"Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King's salt these twelve years." + +"That is well. Have you children?" + +"Yea, Sahib, God has been very good." + +"And your lady mother, is she alive?" + +"The Lord be praised, she liveth." + +"And how is your 'family'?" + +"She is well, Sahib." + +"And how like you this War?" + +"Greatly, Sahib. The _Goora-log_[2] and ourselves fight like brothers +side by side. But we would fain see the fine weather. Then there will be +some _muzza_[3] in it." + +The Field-Marshal smiled and passed on. + +They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were +avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as +snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some +were sitting up--the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the +_kangha_ and the _chakar_, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring, +which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry. The Field-Marshal +stopped to talk to a big _sowar_. As he did so the men in their cots +raised their heads and a sudden whisper ran round the ward. Dogras, +Rajputs, Jats, Baluchis, Garhwalis clutched at the little pulleys over +their cots, pulled themselves up with painful efforts, and saluted. In a +distant corner a Mahratta from the aboriginal plains of the Deccan, his +features dark almost to blackness, looked on uncomprehendingly; Ghurkhas +stared in silence, their broad Mongolian faces betraying little of the +agitation that held them in its spell. From the rest there arose such a +conflict of tongues as has not been heard since the Day of Pentecost. +From bed to bed passed the magic words, "It is he." Every man uttered a +benediction. Many wept tears of joy. A single thought seemed to animate +them, and they voiced it in many tongues. + +"Ah, now we shall smite the _German-log_ exceedingly. We shall fight +even as tigers, for Jarj Panjam.[4] The great Sahib has come to lead us +in the field. Praised be his exalted name." + +The Field-Marshal's eyes shone. + +"No, no," he said, "my time is finished. I am too old." + +"Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on painfully to his pulley, "the +body may be old but the brain is young." + +The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not. He suddenly turned on +his heel and rushed up the companion-ladder. When halfway up he +remembered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears were streaming +down his face. + +"Sir," he said, in a voice the deliberate sternness of which but ill +concealed an overmastering emotion, "your hospital arrangements are +excellent. I have seen none better. I congratulate you. Good-day." The +next moment he was gone. + + * * * * * + +Five days later the colonel was standing on the upper deck; he gripped +the handrail tightly and looked across the harbour basin. Overhead the +Red Cross ensign was at half-mast, and at half-mast hung the Union Jack +at the stern. And so it was with every ship in port. A great silence lay +upon the harbour; even the hydraulic cranes were still, and the winches +of the trawlers had ceased their screaming. Not a sound was to be heard +save the shrill poignant cry of the gulls and the hissing of an exhaust +pipe. As the colonel looked across the still waters of the harbour basin +he saw a bier, covered with a Union Jack, being slowly carried across +the gangway of the leave-boat; a little group of officers followed it. +In a few moments the leave-boat, after a premonitory blast from the +siren which woke the sleeping echoes among the cliffs, cast off her +moorings and slowly gathered way. Soon she had cleared the harbour mouth +and was out upon the open sea. The colonel watched her with straining +eyes till she sank beneath the horizon. Then he turned and went +below.[5] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] A jolly fine show. + +[2] The English soldiers. + +[3] Spice. + +[4] King George the Fifth. + +[5] The writer can vouch for the truth of this narrative. He owes his +knowledge of what passed to the hospitality on board of his friend the +O.C. the Indian hospital ship in question. + + + + +II + +AT THE BASE DEPÔT + + Any enunciation by officers responsible for training of principles + other than those contained in this Manual or any practice of + methods not based on those principles is forbidden.--_Infantry + Training Manual._ + + +The officers in charge of details at No. 19 Infantry Base Depôt had made +their morning inspections of the lines. They had seen that blankets were +folded and tent flies rolled up, had glanced at rifles, and had +inspected the men's kits with the pensive air of an intending purchaser. +Having done which, they proceeded to take an unsympathetic farewell of +the orderly officer whom they found in the orderly room engaged in +reading character by handwriting with the aid of the office stamp. + +"I never knew there was so much individuality in the British Army," the +orderly officer dolefully exclaimed as he contemplated a pile of letters +waiting to be franked and betraying marked originality in their +penmanship. + +"You're too fond of opening other people's letters," the subaltern +remarked pleasantly. "It's a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go +home you'll never be able to resist it. You'll be unfit for decent +society." + +"Go away, War Baby," retorted the orderly officer, as he turned aside +from the subaltern, who has a beautiful pink and white complexion, and +was at Rugby rather less than a year ago. + +The War Baby smiled wearily. "Let's go and see the men at drill," he +remarked. "We've got a corporal here who's A1 at instruction." As we +passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly across the small of +the butt of his rifle, and, seeing the Major behind us, brought the +rifle to the present. + +We came out on a field sprinkled with little groups of men in charge of +their N.C.O.'s. They were the "details." These were drafts for the +Front, and every regiment of the Division had sent a deputation. Two or +three hundred yards away a platoon was marching with a short quick trot, +carrying their rifles at the trail, and I knew them for Light Infantry, +for such are their prerogatives. Concerning Light Infantry much might be +written that is not to be found in the regimental records. As, for +example, the reason why the whole Army shouts "H.L.I." whenever the ball +is kicked into touch; also why the Oxford L.I. always put out their +tongues when they meet the Durhams. Some day some one will write the +legendary history of the British Army, its myth, custom, and folklore, +and will explain how the Welsh Fusiliers got their black "flash" (with a +digression on the natural history of antimacassars), why the 7th Hussars +are called the "White Shirts," why the old 95th will despitefully use +you if you cry, "Who stole the grog?" and what happens on Albuera day in +the mess of the Die Hards. But that is by the way. + +The drafts at No. 19, having done a route march the day before, had been +turned out this morning to do a little musketry drill by way of keeping +them fit. A platoon lay flat on their stomachs in the long grass, the +burnished nails on the soles of their boots twinkling in the sun like +miniature heliographs. From all quarters of the field sharp words of +command rang out like pistol shots. "Three hundred. Five rounds. Fire." +As the men obeyed the sergeant's word of command, the air resounded with +the clicking of bolts like a chorus of grasshoppers. We pursued a +section of the Royal Fusiliers in command of a corporal until he halted +his men for bayonet exercise. He drew them up in two ranks facing each +other, and began very deliberately with an allocution on the art of the +bayonet. + +"There ain't much drill about the bayonet," he said encouragingly. "What +you've got to do is to get the other fellow, and I don't care how you +get 'im as long as you knock 'im out of time. On guard!" + +The men in each rank brought the butts of their rifles on to their right +hips and pointed with their left feet forward at the breasts of the men +opposite. "Rest!" The rifles were brought to earth between twelve pairs +of feet. "Point! Withdraw! On guard!" They pointed, withdrew, and were +on guard again with the precision of piston-rods. + +"Now watch me, for your life may depend upon it," and the corporal +proceeded to give them the low parry which is useful when you are taking +trenches and find a _chevaux-de-frise_ of the enemy's bayonets +confronting you. Each rank knocked an imaginary bayonet aside and +pointed at invisible feet. The high parry followed. So far the men had +been merely nodding at each other across a space of some twelve yards, +and it was hot work and tedious. The sweat ran down their faces, which +glistened in the sun. "Now I'm going to give you the butt exercises"; +they brightened visibly. + +"I am pointing--so!--and 'ave been parried. I bring the butt round on +'is shoulder, using my weight on it. I bring my left leg behind 'is left +leg. I throw 'im over. Then I give the beggar what for. So!" The words +were hardly out of his mouth before he had thrown himself upon the +nearest private and laid him prostrate. The others smiled faintly as No. +98678 picked himself up and nonchalantly returned to his old position as +if this were a banal compliment. "Now then. First butt exercise." One +rank advanced upon the other, and the two ranks were locked in a close +embrace. They remained thus with muscles strung like bowstrings, +immobile as a group of statuary. + +"That'll do. Now I'll give you the second butt exercise. You bring the +butt round on 'is jaw--so!--and then kick 'im in the guts with your +knee." Perhaps the section, which stood like a wall of masonry, looked +surprised; more probably the surprise was mine. But the corporal +explained. "Don't think you're Tottenham Hotspur in the Cup Final. Never +mind giving 'im a foul. You've got to 'urt 'im or 'e'll 'urt you. Kick +'im anywhere with your knees or your feet. Your ammunition boots will +make 'im feel it. No!"--he turned to a young private whose left hand was +grasping his rifle high up between the fore-sight and the +indicator--"You mustn't do that. Always get your 'and between the +back-sight and the breech. So! The back-sight will protect your fingers +from being cut by the other fellow. Now the third butt exercise." + +As we turned away the Major thoughtfully remarked to me, "There isn't +much of that in the Infantry Manual. But the corporal knows his job. +When you're in a scrap you haven't time to think about the rules of the +game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got +to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or +anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney +is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar, +and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as +mechanical as a vacuum brake, and he's no good in a scrap." + +We returned to the orderly room. The orderly officer had a pile of +letters on his right impressed with a red triangle, and contemplated the +completion of his labours with gloomy satisfaction. "But it's very +interesting--such a revelation of the emotions of battle and all that," +I incautiously remarked. "Oh yes, very revealing," he yawned. "Look at +that"; and he held out a letter. It ran: + + + DEAR MOTHER--I'm reported fit for duty and am going back + to the Front with the new drafts. I forgot to tell you we were in a + bit of a scrap before I came here. We outed a lot of Huns. How is + old Alf?-- + + Your loving son, JIM. + + +The "bit of a scrap" was the battle of Neuve Chapelle. The British +soldier is an artist with the bayonet. But he is no great man with the +pen. Which is as it should be. + + + + +III + +THE WILTSHIRES + + +"You talk to him, sir. He zeed a lot though he be kind o' mazed like +now; he be mortal bad, I do think. But such a cheerful chap he be. I +mind he used to say to us in the trenches: 'It bain't no use grousing. +What mun be, mun be.' Terrible strong he were, too. One of our officers +wur hit in front of the parapet and we coulden get 'n in nohow--'twere +too hot; and Hunt, he unrolled his puttees and made a girt rope of 'em +and threw 'em over the parapet and draw'd en in. Ah! that a did." + +It was in one of the surgical tents of "No. 6 General" at the base. The +middle of the ward was illuminated by an oil-lamp, shaped like an +hour-glass, which shed a circle of yellow radiance upon the faces of the +nurse and the orderly officer, as they stood examining a case-sheet by +the light of its rays. Beyond the penumbra were rows of white beds, and +in the farthest corner lay the subject of our discourse. "Can I talk to +him?" I said to the nurse. "Yes, if you don't stay too long," she +replied briskly, "and don't question him too much. He's in a bad way, +his wounds are very septic." + +He nodded to me as I approached. At the head of the bed hung a +case-sheet and temperature-chart, and I saw at a glance the +superscription-- + + + Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. ---- Wiltshires. + + +I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply upwards on the chart. + +"So you're a Wiltshireman?" I said. "So am I." And I held out my hand. +He drew his own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in an iron +grip. + +"What might be your parts, sir?" + +"W---- B----." + +His eyes lighted up with pleasure. "Why, zur, it be nex' parish; I come +from B----. I be main pleased to zee ye, zur." + +"The pleasure is mine," I said. "When did you join?" + +"I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist." + +"You have been out a long time, then?" + +"Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I han't seen B---- since. I +mind how parson, 'e came to me and axed, 'What! bist gwine to fight for +King and Country, Jarge?' And I zed, 'Yes, sur, that I be--for King and +Country and ould Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two Gloster +men any day though they do call us 'Moon-rakers.' Not but what the +Glosters ain't very good fellers," he added indulgently. "Parson, he be +mortal good to I; 'e gied I his blessing and 'e write and give I all the +news of the parish. He warnt much of a preacher though a did say 'Dearly +beloved' in church in a very taking way as though he were a-courting." + +"What was I a-doin', zur? Oh, I wur with Varmer Twine, head labr'er I +was. Strong? Oh yes, zur, pretty fair. I mind I could throw a zack o' +vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy o' vourteen. Why! I wur stronger +then than I be now. 'Twas India that done me." + +"Is it a large farm?" I asked, seeking to beguile him with homely +thoughts. + +"Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to do, and I could turn me +hands to most things, though I do say it. There weren't a man in the +parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a hackle on a rick, though I +do say it. And I could drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were. +The soil be stiff clay, as ye knows, zur. This Vlemish clay be very +loike it. Lord, what a mint o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to +be sure. And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes." + +"Are your parents alive?" I asked. + +"No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom come. Poor old feyther," he said +after a pause. "I mind 'un now in his white smock all plaited in vront +and mother in her cotton bonnet--you never zee 'em in Wiltshire now. +They brought us all up on nine shillin' a week--ten on us we was." + +"I suppose you sometimes wish you were back in Wiltshire now?" I said. + +"Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. "It'll be about over with lambing +season, now," he added reflectively. "Many's the tiddling lamb I've +a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the may'll soon be out in +blossom. And the childern makin' daisy-chains." + +"Yes," I said. "And think of the woods--the bluebells and anemones! You +remember Folly Wood?" + +He smiled. "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there, +when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up +a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus +very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many a +toime we childern went moochin' in thuck wood--nutting and bird-nesting. +Though I never did hold wi' taking more'n one egg out of a nest, and I +allus did wet my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's nest. They +do say as the little bird 'ull never go back if ye doant." + +His mind went roaming among childhood's memories and his eyes took on a +dreaming look. + +"Mother, she were a good woman--no better woman in the parish, parson +did say. She taught us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in +heaven'--I often used to think on it at night in the trenches. Them +nights--they do make you think a lot. It be mortal queer up there--you +veels as if you were on the edge of the world. I used to look up at the +sky and mind me o' them words in the Bible, 'When I conzider the +heavens, the work o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast made, +what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' One do feel oncommon small in +them trenches at night." + +"I suppose you've had a hot time up there?" + +"Ah that I have. And I zeed some bad things." + +"Bad?" + +"Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur dree weeks come Monday.[6] +We wur in an advance near Wypers--'bout as far as 'tis from our village +to Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a house. We knowed 'twould be +hot work, and Jacob Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e zed, +'if I be took write to my wife and tell 'er it be the Lard's will and +she be not to grieve.' And I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the same +for I.' Our Officer, Capt'n S---- T----, d'you know 'en, sir? No? 'E com +from Devizes way, he wur a grand man, never thinking of hisself but only +of us humble chaps--he said, 'Now for it, lads,' and we advances in +'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a +section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined +the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out +so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there +house--you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a +reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ +Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a +good man, wur Scaplehorn"--he added musingly--"and 'e did good things. +And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs as if they did'n b'long +to 'em. I sort o' saw all that wi'out seeing it, in a manner o' spaking; +'twere only arterwards it did come back to me. There warn't no time to +think. And by the toime we got to thic house there were only 'bout +vifteen on us left. We had to scrouge our way in through the buttry +winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside, sort o' scuffling; 'twere the +Germans makin' for the cellar. And our Capt'n posted some on us at top +of cellar steps and led the rest on us up the stairs to a kind o' tallet +where thuck machine-gun was. And what d'ye think we found, sir?" he +said, raising himself on his elbow. + +"What?" + +"There was a poor girl there--half daft she wur--wi' nothing on but a +man's overcoat. And she rushed out avore us on the landing and began +hammering with her hands against a bedroom door and it wur locked. We +smashed 'en in wi' our rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we found a poor +woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast all bloody an' her +clothes torn. I could'n mak' out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told +us as the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used our field-dressings and +tried to make the poor soul comfortable and Capt'n 'e sent a volunteer +back for stretcher-bearers." + +"And what about the Germans?" I asked. + +"Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to +reckon with those devils down below.' And we went downstairs and he +stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up +out o' that there.' And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear +'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar +steps were main narrow, as narrow as th' opening in that tent over +there. So Capt'n 'e says, 'Fetch me some straw, Hunt.' 'Twere a kind o' +farmhouse and I went out into the backside and vetched some. And Capt'n +and us put a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more vurther +down, using our rifles like pitchforks and then 'e blew on his tinder +and set it alight. 'Stand back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'em +with the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no manner o' use shooting; 'twere too close +in there and our bullets might ha' ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'em +a-coughing. There wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there wur we +a-waiting at top of them stairs for 'em to come up like rats out of a +hole. And two on 'em made a rush for it and we caught 'em just like's we +was terriers by an oat-rick; we had to be main quick. 'Twere like +pitching hay. And then three more, and then more. And none on us uttered +a word. + +"An' when it wur done and we had claned our bay'nets in the straw, +Capt'n 'e said, 'Men, you ha' done your work as you ought to ha' done.'" + +He paused for a moment. "They be bad fellows," he mused. "O Christ! they +be rotten bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good 'ull come to men +what abuses wimmen and childern. But I'm afeard they be nation +strong--there be so many on 'em." + +His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the telling of it had been +too much for him. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it +was time for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind away from the +contemplation of these tragic things. + +"Are you married?" I asked. The eyes brightened in the flushed face. +"Yes, that I be, and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap." + +"And what are you going to make of him?" + +"I'm gwine to bring un up to be a soldjer," he said solemnly. "To fight +them Germans," he added. He saw the great War in an endless perspective +of time; for him it had no end. "You will soon be home in Wiltshire +again," I said encouragingly. He mused. "Reckon the Sweet Williams 'ull +be out in the garden now; they do smell oncommon sweet. And +mother-o'-thousands on the wall. Oh-h-h." A spasm of pain contracted his +face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw my time was up. "My dear +fellow," I said lamely, "I fear you are in great pain." + +"Ah!" he said, "but it wur worth it." + + * * * * * + +The next day I called to have news of him. The bed was empty. He was +dead. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[6] This story is here given as nearly as possible in the exact words of +the narrator.--J.H.M. + + + + +IV + +THE BASE + + +If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart. +For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the +systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of +its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To +and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses, +supplies, and ordnance. + +The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage. +If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and +understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position +on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the +harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at +their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the _patois_ of the +littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the +shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the Military Police are on +point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a +trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an +A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for +the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their +moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships +unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile +up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless +concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here +are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's +brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate +palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of +ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate +supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board +ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond +the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the +grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two +amphibious petty officers darning their socks. + +In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps +officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables, +and indents, what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his +train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more +stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is +_litera scripta manet_--which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant, +instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything +without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one." For an +A.S.C. court of inquiry has as impassioned a preference for written over +oral evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that if your way-bill +testifies: + + + Truck No. Contents + 19414 Jam 36 x 50 + + +and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot of jam is missing on +arrival at rail-head, then, though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your +labels undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Officer unless you +can produce that pot. + +For the feeding of the Army is a delicate business and complicated. It +is not enough to secure that there be sufficient "caloric units" in the +men's rations; there are questions of taste. The Brahmin will not touch +beef; the Mahomedan turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vegetarian; +the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the goat. And every Indian must have his +ginger, garlic, red chilli, and turmeric, and his chupattis of +unleavened bread. One such warehouse we entered and beheld with +stupefaction mountainous boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, rice, +dried apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. Storekeepers in turbans stood +round us, who, being asked whether it was well with the Indian and his +food, answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians, "Yea, the +exalted Government hath done great things and praised be its name." To +which we replied "Victory to the Holy Ganges water." Their lustrous eyes +beamed at the salutation. + +Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies manna in the wilderness, and +like the manna of the Israelites it has never been known to fail. It is +of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in the words of the +prophet, "He hath filled my belly with his delicates." And his caravans +cover the face of the earth. You meet them everywhere, each Supply +Column a self-contained unit like a fleet. It has its O.C., its cooks, +its seventy-two motor lorries, with three men to each, and its "mobiles" +or travelling workshops with dynamo, lathe, drilling machine, and a crew +of skilled artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is put out +of action. I take off my hat to those handy-men; many times have they +helped me out of a tight place and performed delicate operations on the +internal organs of my military car in the inhospitable night. It is a +brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out +between the poplars on the perilously arched _pavé_ of the long sinuous +roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and +every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the +tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder +to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it. +It is his caravan. Many a time, on long and lonely journeys from the +Base to the Front, have I been cheered to find a Supply Column drawn up +on the roadside in a wooded valley, on a bare undulating down, or in a +chalk quarry, while the men were making tea over a blue wood fire. If +you love a gipsy life join the A.S.C. + +Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. headquarters at the Base are +some twenty military hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses, +and railway waiting-rooms. For the Base is the great Clearing House for +the sick and wounded, and its register of patients is a kind of +barometer of the state of affairs at the Front. When that register sinks +very low, it means that the atmospheric conditions at the Front are +getting stormy, and that an order has come down to evacuate and prepare +four thousand beds. Then you watch the newspapers, for you know +something is going to happen up there. And in those same hospitals men +are working night and day; the bacteriologists studying "smears" under +microscopes, while the surgeons are classifying, operating, "dressing," +marking temperature-charts, and annotating case-sheets. And in every +hospital there is a faint mysterious incense, compounded not +disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised catgut, which intensifies +the dim religious atmosphere of the shaded wards. If G.H.Q. is the +greatest of military academies, the Base hospitals are indubitably the +wisest of medical schools. Never have the sciences of bacteriology and +surgery been studied with such devotion as under these urgent clinical +impulses. Here are men of European reputation who have left their +laboratories and consulting-rooms at home to wage a never-ending +scientific contest with death and corruption. They have slain +"frostbite" with lanoline, turpentine, and a change of socks; they have +fought septic wounds with chloride of sodium and the ministries of +unlimited oxygen; they have defied "shock" after amputation by +"blocking" the nerves of the limb by spinal injection, as a signalman +blocks traffic. They have called in Nature to the aid of science and +have summoned the oxygen of the air and the lymph of the body to the +self-help of wounds. + +High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp. Here the O.C. has turned +what was a swamp last December into a Garden City, draining, planting, +building, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, disinfectors, laundries, +and shower-baths, constructing turf incinerators and laying down +pavements of brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass sown, and +shrubs and trees put up--all this with the labour of the convalescents. +There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose, +for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or +neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's +reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an +afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained +community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two +neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and +cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache and +temperature he is segregated there, preparatory to being sent down to +No. 14 Stationary to have his spinal fluid examined by the +bacteriologists. Here, in fact, the man and his kit, instead of being +thrown on the scrap-heap, are renewed and made whole, restored in mind, +body, and estate, his clothes disinfected and mended, the "snipers" +treated to a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced. + +For true it is that at the Base they study loving-kindness, and +chaplains and doctors and nurses are busy with delicate ministries +seeking to cure, to assuage, and to console. Alas! on what tragic +errands do so many come and go; parents like Joseph and Mary seeking +their child, and wives their husbands, in hope, in fear, in joy, in +anguish, too often finding that the bright spirit has returned to God +Who gave it, and that nothing is left but to follow him behind the bier +draped with the Union Jack to the little cemetery on the hill.... But +for one that is buried here a thousand lie where they fell. Those +stricken fields of Flanders! nevermore will they be for us the scene of +an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of +prayer. I well remember--I can never forget--a journey I made in the +company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between +Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in +the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and +between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little +tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden +cross. By each cross was a soldier's képi, and sometimes a coat, +bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as +we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind us +muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of +the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth +will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by +share or sickle. They are holy ground. + +So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead +lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them +for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in +August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose +ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram, +they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of +exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the +drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a +friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price--youth, +health, life--too high to pay for the country of their birth and their +devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet +her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away. + + * * * * * + +The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was +guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping +cinque-foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation +of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw +an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon +was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing +from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively +protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured +lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A +troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south, +their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no +lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with +pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and diastole of the Base. + + + + +V + +A COUNCIL OF INDIA + + +"And I said, 'Nay, I who have eaten the King's salt cannot do this +thing.' And the _German-log_ said to me, 'But we will give you both +money and land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this thing, and +bring sorrow and shame upon my people?'" + +It was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his words were exceeding clear +as Holy Writ. + +"And what did they do then?" + +"They took my _chupattis_, sahib, and offered me of their bread in +return. But I said, 'Nay, I am a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they +said thrice unto me, 'We will give you money and land.' And I thrice +said, 'Nay.' Then said they, 'Thou art a fool. Go to, but if thou comest +against us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my comrades." + +"Yea, to me also they said these things." It was a jemindar of the 129th +who spoke. "Yes, a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, '_Ham dost +hein_--_Hamari pas ao_--_Ham tum Ko Nahn Marenge_.'" Which being +translated is, "We are friends, come to us, we won't kill you." + +"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?" + +The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war, +since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought +Pandu." + +Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard +curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of +the Sikh freemasonry--nay, he had taken the _kangha_ out of his hair and +shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and +had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were +friends. "All wars are but _shikkar_ to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?" +"Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war." + +"Nay, this is a fine war--a hell of a fine war." The speaker was an +Afridi from Tirah, whose strongly marked aquiline features reminded me +of nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in Whitechapel. He lacks every +virtue except courage, and his one regret is that he has missed the +family blood-feud. There have been great doings in his family on the +frontier in his absence--two abductions and one homicide. "If I had not +come home," his brother has written reproachfully to him from Tirah, +"things had gone ill with us. But never mind about all this now. Do your +duty well." And even so has he done. + +"And how like you this war?" + +"Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of a fine war, but for the great guns." + +"And wherefore?" + +"Because we cannot come nigh unto them. But I, I have slain many men." + +"And what is your village?" asks my friend, Major D----, of the I.M.S. + +"Chorah." + +"Why, I was there in the Tirah campaign." + +"Even so, sahib." + +The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at our symposium, their broad +Mongolian faces inscrutable. But Shiva Lal, a Brahmin surgeon, who all +this while has been eager to speak, for he is a pundit, and loves the +sound of his own voice, here thrust forward his quaint countenance, +whose walrus-like moustache conceals a row of teeth projecting like the +spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs his hands and thus he speaks +in English: "Sahib, I had charge of a German sahib--wounded. And I said +unto him, 'How is it that you, who are Christians, treat the Tommies +so? We' (Major D---- looks at me with the hint of a twinkle in his +eye--for has he not told me at mess of that surprising change in the +Indian vernacular whereby their speech is no longer of "Goora-log" and +"Sahib-log" but of "We," which fraternal pronoun is significant of +much)--'we shave you and feed you, we wash you and dress your wounds, +even as one of ourselves, and you kill our wounded Tommies, yea, and do +these things and worse even unto women. Are you not Christians? We' +(there is a return to old habits of speech)--'we are only Indians, but I +have read in your Bible that if one smite on the one cheek'"--here Shiva +Lal, who has now what he loves most in the world, an audience, and is +easily histrionic, smites his face mightily on the right side--"'one +should turn to him the other. Why is this?'" + +"And what said the German officer, Shiva Lal?" + +"Nay, sahib, he said nothing." We also say nothing. For Shiva Lal needs +but little encouragement to talk from sunset to cock-crow. Perhaps the +unfortunate German officer divined as much. But the spell of Shiva Lal's +eloquence is rudely broken by Major D----, who takes me by the arm to go +elsewhere. And the little group squatting on their haunches at their +mid-day meal cease listening and dip their _chupattis_ in the aromatic +_dhal_, in that slow, ruminant, ritualistic way in which the Indian +always eats his food. + +"_Ram, Ram! Tumhi kothun allé?_" said my friend Smith, turning aside to +a lonely figure on my right. A cry of joy escapes a dark-featured +Mahratta who has been looking mournfully on from his bed of pain, +comprehending nothing of these dialogues. We have, indeed, been talking +in every language except Mahrathi. And he, poor soul, has lost both +feet--they were frostbitten--and will never answer the music of the +charge again. But at the sound of his own tongue he raises his body by +the pulley hanging at the head of his cot, and gravely salutes the +sahib. Like Ruth amid the alien corn, his heart is sad with thoughts of +home, and he has been dreaming between these iron walls of the wide, +sunlit spaces of the Deccan. As his feverish brain counts and re-counts +the rivets on the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before his +wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village with its grove of +mangoes and its sacred banyan on the inviolable _otla_; he hears once +again the animated chatter of the wayfarers in the _chowdi_. + +"Where is thy home?" + +"Sahib, it is at Pirgaon." + +"I know it--is not Turkaran Patal the head-man?" + +The dark face gleams with pleasure. "Even so, sahib." + +"Shall I write to thy people?" + +"The sahib is very kind." + +"So will I do, and, perhaps, prepare thy people for thy homecoming. I +will tell them that thou hast lost thy feet with the frostbite, but art +otherwise well." + +"Nay, sahib, tell them everything but that, for if my people hear that +they will neither eat nor drink--nay, nor sleep, for sorrow." + +"Then will I not. But I will tell them that thou art a brave man." + +The Mahratta smiles mournfully. + +"And have you heard from your folk at home?" I ask of the others, +leaving Smith and the Mahratta together. + +"Yea, sahib, the exalted Government is very good to us. We get letters +often." It is a sepoy in the 107th who speaks. "My brother writes even +thus," and he reads with tears in his eyes: "'We miss you terribly, but +such is the will of God. I have been daily to Haji Baba Ziarat' (it is a +famous shrine in India), 'and day and night I pray for you, and am very +distressed. I am writing to tell you to have no anxiety about us at +home, but do your duty cheerfully and say your prayers. Repeat the +beginning with the word "Kor" and breathe forty times on your body. +Your father is well, but is very anxious for you, and weeps day and +night.'" + +"I also have received a letter." The speaker is a Bengali, and, though a +surgeon and non-combatant, must have his say. "My brother writes that I +am to enlight the names of my ancestors, who were tiger-like warriors, +and were called Bahadurs, by performing my duties to utmost +satisfaction." This is truly Babu English. + +"And you will do the same?" + +"Yea, I must do likewise. My brother writes to me, 'If you want to face +this side again, face as Bahadur.' And he saith, 'Long live King George, +and may he rule on the whole world.' And so say we all, sahib." + +"And you?" This to a Shia Mahomedan whose right hand is bandaged. + +"Ah, sahib, my people can write to me, but write to them I cannot. Will +the honourable sahib send a word for me who am thus crippled?" + +"Yea, gladly; what shall the words be?" + +"Say, then, oh sahib, these words: 'Your servant is well and happy here. +You should pray the God of Mercy that the victory may be to our King, +Jarj Panjam. And to my lady mother and my lady the sister of my father, +and to my brother, and to my dear ones the greetings of peace and +prayer. And the sum of fifty rupees which I arranged for my family' (his +wife) 'will be paid to you every month.' The sahib is very kind." + +"The sahib would like to hear a story?" The speaker is a jemadar of the +59th. "So be it. Know then, sahib, that I and twelve men of my company +were cut off by the _German-log_, and I, even I only, am left. It was in +this wise. My comrades advanced too far beyond the trenches, and we lost +our way. And the _German-log_ make signs to us to surrender, but it is +not our way and we still advance. And they open fire with a +machine-gun--so!" The speaker makes sounds as a man who stutters. "And +we are all hit--killed and wounded, and fall like ripe corn to the +sickle. And I am wounded in the leg and I fall. And the German officer, +he come up and hitted me in the buttock to see if I were dead. But I lay +exceeding still and hold my breath. And they pull me by the leg" (can it +be that the jemadar is pulling mine?), "a long way they pull me but +still I am as one dead. And so I escaped." He looks round for approval. + +"That was well done, jemadar." His lustrous eyes flash with pleasure. +"And how is it with your food?" + +"Good" ("_Bahout accha_"), comes a chorus of voices. "The exalted +Government has done great things. We have _ghee_"--a clarified butter +made of buffalo or cow's milk--"and _goor_"--unrefined sugar. "And we +have spices for our _dhal_--ginger and garlic and chilli and turmeric. +Yea, and fruits also--apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What more can +man want?" + +"It is well." But it is time for me to go. Smith is still talking to the +Mahratta, whose eyes never leave his face. "Come on, old man," I say, +"it is time to go." Smith turns reluctantly away. As I looked over my +shoulder the Mahratta was weeping softly. + + + + +VI + +THE TROOP TRAIN + + +We were standing in the lounge of the Hotel M---- at the Base. "I'll +introduce you to young C---- of the Guards when he comes in," the Major +was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the +troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see +he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's +a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. +He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of +mine. Hulloa, C----, my boy. Allow me to introduce you." + +A youth with the milk and roses complexion of a girl, blue eyes, and +fair hair, well-built, but somewhat under the middle height--such was +C----, and he was good to look upon. + +Introductions being made, we filed into the _salle à manger_. + +"Chambertin, Julie, s'il vous plaît," said the Major. "There's nothing +like a good burgundy to warm the cockles of your heart." He had the +radiant eye of an Irishman, and smiled on Julie as he gave the order. + +"So you're leaving your hospital to go up and join a Field Ambulance?" I +said. + +"That's so, old man. There was a chance of my being made A.D.M.S. at the +Base some day if I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front, and +I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with +my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always worrying the O.C.'s. Talking +about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the story of how I pulled the leg +of old Macassey in South Africa?" + +"No," I said, although B---- had a way of telling the same stories twice +over occasionally. The one story he never told, not even once, was how +he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other +men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tell +you that to know B---- and have the privilege of his friendship, is to +be admitted to the largest freemasonry of officers in the British Army. + +"Well, it was like this," continued B----. "The A.D.M.S. was a thorn in +the side of every O.C. at the Base, walking up and down like the very +devil, seeking whose reputation he might devour, and ordering every +O.C. to turn his hospital upside down. He took a positive delight in +breaking men. You know the type, the kind of man who breaks his wife's +heart not because he's bad, but because he's querulous. The nagging +type. Nothing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show, +where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got +accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a +recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very +good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey +with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up, +as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a +devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of +any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban. +However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked +than ever, but I thought I'd have it in black and white; so I saluted +and said, 'Bad memory, sir, my old wound in India, d'you mind writing +the order down?'" + +"My dear B----," I interrupted, "you know you've the memory of a +Recording Angel." + +"So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew that Macassey's memory, +like that of most fussy men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought I'd +catch him out sooner or later. He and I went round the camp, and, after +about half-an-hour of the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught sight +of some double-roofed Indian tents that Simpson had got together with +great difficulty for the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin huts, and +in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Macassey +wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me +have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four, +and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I +said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field +Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who +can say 'No' to B----.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally +I took care of those pages. Next day old Macassey must have remembered +that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me +to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And +he knew that I had first-class documentary evidence, and that I guarded +his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at +Sotheby's. He never troubled us any more." + +"That was unkind of you, Major," I said insincerely. + +"Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been worrying old Simpson, and he +wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! have you never +heard the story of Simpson and the giddy goat?" + +"The goat?" said the sub. + +"Yes, the goat. Useful animal the goat, if a trifle capricious. It was +like this. Old Simpson, who's got a head on his shoulders big enough to +do all the thinking for the Royal College of Physicians, and ditto of +Surgeons, with a good few ideas left over for the R.A.M.C., determined +to get to the bottom of Mediterranean Fever--a nasty complaint, which +had worried the Malta garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do +when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say in the children's +picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to +suspect the goat. Why? Well, because he'd noticed that goat's milk was +drunk in Malta and Egypt. So he began to study the geographical +distribution of the goat with the zeal of an anthropologist localising +dolicocephalic and brachycephalic races. He found eventually that +wherever you could 'place' a goat you would find the fever. Wherefore he +took some goat's milk and cultivated it assiduously in an alluring +medium of Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus." + +"Dot and carry one. Please repeat," I interjected. + +"Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus," repeated the Major. + +"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar-man, +thief," soliloquised the subaltern, who was brightening up. + +"Quite so," said the Major with a benignant glance. "Well, he then got a +culture." + +"A what?" + +"Culture. Poisonous growth; hence German 'Kultur,'" said the Major +etymologically. "To proceed. He then inoculated some guinea-pigs. No! I +don't mean directors in the City, though he might have done worse. And +lo! and behold! he found the fever. You know the four canons of the +bacteriologist? One, 'get'; two, 'cultivate'; three, 'inoculate'; four, +'recover.'" + +"Well done, Simpson," I said. + +"You may say that, my friend. And now there's old Simpson down at the +Base in charge of No. 12 General saving lives by hundreds and thousands. +You know while the bullet slew its thousands, septicaemia has slain its +tens of thousands. How did he stop it? Why, by doing the obvious, which, +you may have observed, no one ever does till a wise man comes along. He +got wounds to heal themselves. He promoted a lymphatic flow from the +rest of the body by putting suppositories of chloride of sodium inside +drainage-tubes in the wound. The heat of the body melts them, you see. +There are three great medical heroes of this war--Almroth Wright, +Martin-Leake, and Simpson." + +I could have named a fourth, but I held my tongue. + +"Time to get on our hind legs," the Major now said monitorily. "Julie, +_l'addition_ s'il vous plaît." + +"Bien, monsieur," said Julie, who had been watching the Major admiringly +without comprehending a word of what he said. Women have a way of +falling in love with the Major at first sight. + +We stumbled along between the rails and over the sleepers, led by the +Major, who carried a hurricane lamp, and by the help of its fitful rays +we leapt across the pools of water left in every hollow. We passed some +cattle-trucks. The Major held up the lamp and scrutinised a legend in +white letters-- + + + Hommes 40. Chevaux 12. + + +"Reminds me of the Rule of Three," said the Major meditatively. "If one +Frenchman is equal to three and one-third horses, how many Huns are +equal to one British soldier?" + +"They are never equal to him," said the subaltern brightly. "If it +wasn't for machinery we'd have crumpled them up long ago." + +"True, my son," said the Major, "and well spoken." + +The men were grouped round the cattle-trucks, each man with his kit and +120 rounds of ammunition. They had just been through a kit inspection, +and the O.C. in charge of details had audited and found it correct by +entering up a memorandum to that effect in each man's pay-book. Though +how the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft, and certifies +that nothing from a housewife to thirty pairs of laces per man is +missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to +understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the +opaque integument of a ground-sheet at one glance. Also the Medical +Officer at the Base Depôt had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after +scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's naked body, with the +aid of a tallow candle stuck in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of +three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and +bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each +truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the +off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in +command of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very +soon. + +We were now opposite a first-class compartment, and a slim figure loomed +up out of the darkness. + +"Halloa! is that you, C----? I thought you were gone on ahead of us, my +boy." + +"So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing, and I'm sending a +corporal to hunt them up. We're off in a few minutes. I met young T---- +just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident +that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of +cheering other fellows up. "He's feeling rather blue," he continued. +"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know." + +"Oh, that's no good. Tell him I've got a plum-pudding and a bottle of +whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur." + +I looked at B----'s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the +kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable +acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a +darkness which you could almost feel with your hand. + +"I say, B----," I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, "what's +the regulation allowance for an officer's luggage? I forget." + +"One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may laugh, old chap, but I got round +the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can stow it in my billet. +Cheers the other fellows up, you know." + +B----'s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a +ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service +regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing +elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage. He would +gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know. + +"Major," I said, "you are a 'carrier'!" + +"Carter Paterson?" said the Major, with a glance at his luggage. + +"No, I didn't mean that. You are not as quick in the uptake as usual, +especially considering your medical qualifications. What I meant was +that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get +typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they +become immune from them themselves. You're diffusing a gaiety which you +no longer feel." + +It was a bold shot, and if we hadn't been pretty old friends it would +have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me +aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit the +bull's-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don't give me away. +Come into the carriage." + +He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment, +each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of +them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say +were trivial irrelevancies. Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and +showed me a photograph. + +"My wife and Pat--you've never seen Pat, I think? We christened her +Patricia, you know?" + +It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls, +aged, I should say, about two. + +"Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter. +She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field +Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B---- studied it intently +for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly he +leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way. "I say, old chap, write to my +wife!" + +"But, my dear fellow, I've never met her except once. She must have +quite forgotten who I am." + +"I know. But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the +top of my form. Merry and bright, you know." + +We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised. + +There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as +C---- sprang in. I grasped B----'s hand, and jumped on to the footboard +of the moving train. + +"Good-bye, old chap." + +"Good-bye, old man." + +B---- had gone to the front. I never saw him again. + + * * * * * + +Three weeks later I was sitting at _déjeuner_ in the Metropole, when a +ragamuffin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the +leave-boat. I took up the _Times_ and looked, as one always looks +nowadays, at the obituary column. I looked again. In the same column, +one succeeding the other, I read the following: + + + Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur Hamilton C---- + of the ---- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur C. + and of Mrs. C. of the Red House, Little Twickenham, aged 19. + + + Behold! I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke. + + + Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier + under fire, Major Ronald B----, D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical + Corps, aged 42. + + + Greater love hath no man than this. + + + + +II + +THE FRONT + + + + +VII + +THE TWO RICHEBOURGS + + +We had business with the _maire_ of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast. +Any one who looks at a staff map of North-West France will see that +there are two Richebourgs; there is Richebourg St. Vaast, but there is +also Richebourg l'Avoué, and although those two communes are separated +by a bare three or four kilometres there was in point of climate a +considerable difference between the two. In those days we had not yet +taken Neuve Chapelle, and Richebourg l'Avoué, which was in front of our +lines, was considered "unhealthy." Richebourg St. Vaast, on the other +hand, was well behind our lines and was considered by our billeting +officers quite a good residential neighbourhood. + +We had left G.H.Q., and after a journey of two hours or so passed +through Laventie, which had been rather badly mauled by shell-fire, and +began to thread our way through the skein of roads and by-roads that +enmeshes the two Richebourgs. The natural features of the country were +inscrutable, and landmarks there were none. The countryside grew +absolutely deserted and the solitary farms were roofless and untenanted. +Eventually we found our road blocked by a barricade of fallen masonry in +front of a village which was as inhospitable as the Cities of the Plain. + +A vast silence brooded over the landscape, broken now and again by a +noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot. As we took cover behind +a wall of ruined houses we heard a sinister hiss, but whence it came or +what invisible trajectory it traced through the leaden skies overhead +neither of us could tell. Silence again fell like a mist upon the land; +not a bird sang, not a twig moved. The winter sun was sinking in the +west behind a pall of purple cloud in a lacquered sky--the one touch of +colour in the sombre greyness. The land was flat as the palm of one's +hand, its monotony relieved only by lines of pollarded willows on which +some sappers had strung a field telephone. Raindrops hung on the copper +wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was +scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as +if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay +walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed +wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown. The +village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land +between the enemy's lines and our own, and the sodden fields were not +more desolate. + +A tornado of artillery fire had swept over it, and of the houses nothing +was left but indecencies, shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath +which were choked heaps of household furniture, broken beds, battered +lamps, and a wicker-chair overturned as in a drunken brawl. What had +once been the street was now a quarry of broken bricks, with here and +there vast circular craters as though a gigantic oak-tree had been torn +out of the earth by the roots. And now the weird silence was broken by +sounds as of some one playing a lonely tattoo with his fingers upon a +hollow wooden board, but the player was invisible, and as we looked at +each other the sound ceased as suddenly as it began. Our practised ear +told us that somewhere near us a machine-gun was concealed, but these +furtive sounds were so homeless, so impersonal, that they eluded us like +an echo. + +It was this complete absence of visible human agency that impressed us +most disagreeably, as with a sense of being utterly forlorn amid a play +of the elements, like Lear upon the heath. There came into my mind, as +our eyes groped for some human sign in the brooding landscape, the +thought of the prophet upon the mount amid the wind and the earthquake +and the fire seeking the presence of his God and finding it not. And +here too all these assaults upon our senses were fugitive and ghostly, +and we felt ourselves encompassed about as by some great conspiracy. We +walked curiously up the little street until we reached the last house in +the village, and came out beyond the screen of its wall. At the same +instant something sang past my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my +foot caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My companion, +lagging behind and not yet clear of the friendly wall, stopped dead and +cried to me not to stand up. I crawled back among the rubbish to the +cover of the house. We took counsel together. To retreat were perilous, +but to advance might be fatal. We lowered our voices as, cowering behind +walls, and picking our way delicately among the _débris_, we crept back +to our car behind the entrance to the village. The driver started the +engine and we moved forlornly along the narrow causeway, skirting the +unfathomable mud that lay on either side, until we spied a ruined +farmhouse where a company had made its billet and mud-coloured knots of +soldiers stood round braziers of glowing coals. We had some parley with +the company commander, who was of the earth earthy. His words were few +and discouraging. As we crawled on, darkness enveloped us, but we dared +not light our head-lamps. Suddenly the car slipped on the greasy road, +staggered, and lurched over into the morass, hurling us violently upon +our sides. We clambered out and contemplated it solemnly as we saw our +right wheels over the axles in mud. No friendly billet was now in sight, +and as we stood profanely considering our plight the darkness behind us +was split by a long shaft of greenish light, and the whole landscape was +illuminated with a pallid glow, as the German star-shells discharged +themselves over the fan-like tops of the elms silhouetted against the +sky. The jack was useless in the soft mud, it sank like a stone, and as +we shoved and cursed we awaited each fresh discharge of the star-shells +with increasing apprehension, for we presented an obvious target to the +enemy's snipers. On the seat of the car was my despatch-box, and in that +box was a little dossier of papers marked "O.H.M.S. German Atrocities. +Secret and Confidential." "If the Germans catch us there'll be one +atrocity the more," remarked my Staff Officer grimly, "but they'll spare +us the labour of recording it." + +Our futile efforts were interrupted by the sound of feet upon the +causeway as a column of reliefs loomed up out of the darkness. A hurried +altercation in low tones, a subdued word of command, and a dozen men, +their rifles and entrenching tools slung over their shoulders, applied +themselves to the back of our car, and slowly it slithered out of the +mud. The column broke into file to allow us to pass, my companion went +on ahead with a tiny electric torch to show the way, and with infinite +caution we nudged slowly along the rank, the faint light of the torch +bringing face after face out of the darkness into _chiaroscuro_, faces +young and fresh and ruddy. Not a word was spoken save a whispered +command carried down the rank, mouth to ear, "No smoking, no talking +"--"No smoking, no talking "--"No talking, no smoking." Mules, carrying +sections of machine-guns and packs of straw, loomed up out of the +darkness as we passed, until the last of the column was reached and the +frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the night. We drew a +long breath, for we knew now from the colonel of the battalion whose men +had delivered us from that Slough of Despond that we had been within 150 +yards of the German lines. We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoué for +Richebourg St. Vaast. + + + + +VIII + +IDOLS OF THE CAVE + + +Like the Cyclopes they dwelt in hollow caves, and each Colonel uttered +the law to his children and recked not of the others except when the +Brigadier came round. True there were two and a half battalions in their +line of 2700 yards, but all they knew was that the next battalion to +their own was the Highlanders; it was only when the five days were up +and they were marched back to billets that they were able to cultivate +that somewhat exclusive society. Their trenches were like the suburbs, +they were faintly conscious that people lived in the next street, but +they never saw them. Their neighbours were as self-contained and silent +as themselves, except when their look-outs or machine-guns became +loquacious. Then they too became eloquent, and the whole line talked +freely at the Germans 200 yards away. By day the men slept heavily on +straw in hollows under the parapet, supported with crates and sprinkled +with chloride of lime; by night they were out at the listening posts, +in the sap-heads, or behind the parapet, with their eyes glued to the +field of yellow mustard in front of us. They had watched that field for +three months. They knew every blade of grass therein. No experimental +agriculturist ever studied his lucerne and sainfoin as they have studied +the grasses of that field. They have watched it from winter to spring; +they have seen the lesser celandine give way to pink clover and sorrel, +and the grass shoot up from an inch to a foot. They have, indeed, been +studying not botany but ethnology, searching for traces of that species +of primitive man known to anthropologists as the Hun. They have never +found him except once, when one of our look-outs saw something crawling +across that field about midnight and promptly emptied his magazine. In +the morning they saw a grey figure lying out in the open; the days +passed and the long grass sprang up and concealed it till nothing was +left to attest its obscene presence except a little cloud of black +flies. Their horizon is bounded by rows of sand-bags, and their interest +in those sand-bags is only equalled by their interest in the field in +front of them. Occasionally one of our men finds them more than usually +interesting. There is a loud report, the click of a bolt, and the +pungent smell of burnt cordite. Then all is still again. + +The tangent-sight on the standard of their machine-gun is always at 200, +and they have not altered the range for three months. Occasionally at +night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles, and with his thumb on +the button slowly sweeps that range of sand-bags, till the feed-block +sucks up the cartridge-belt like a chaff-cutter and the empty +cartridge-cases lie as thick round the tripod as acorns under an oak. +The Huns reply by taking a flashlight photograph of us with a calcium +flare, and then all is still again. In such excursions and alarms do +they pass the long night. + +Though five-sixths of them slept stertorously in their holes by day, by +night they were as wakeful as owls, and not less predatory. Life in the +trenches is one long struggle for existence, and in the course of it +they developed those acquired characteristics whereby the birds of the +air and the beasts of the field maintain themselves in a world of +carnage. They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their feet as +silently as hares, to see in the dark like foxes, to wriggle like the +creeping things of the field, to lower their voices with the direction +of the wind, to select a background with the moonlight, and to stand +motionless on patrol with muscles rigid like a pointer when the +star-shells dissolved the security of the night. They studied to +dissemble with their lips and to imitate the vocabulary of nature. They +grew more and more chary of human speech, and listening posts talked +with the trenches by pulls on a fishing-reel. They never sheathed their +claws, and working-parties wore their equipment as though it were the +integument of nature. Bayonets were never unfixed unless the moon were +very bright. At night they scraped out their earths like a badger, and, +like the badger's, those earths were exceeding clean. The men were +numbered off by threes from the flank, and one in three watched for two +hours while the other two worked, repairing parapets, strengthening +entanglements, and filling sand-bags. Every half-hour the N.C.O. on duty +crept round to report, or to post and relieve, while now and again a +patrol went out to observe. All this was done stealthily and with an +amazing economy of speech. Night was also the time of their foraging, +when the company's rations were brought up the communication trench and +handed over by the C.Q.M.S. to each platoon sergeant, who passed them on +to the section commander, and he in turn distributed them among his men +in such silence and with such little traffic that it seemed like the +provision of manna in the wilderness. At dawn pick-axe and spade were +laid aside, the rum ration was served out, and all men stood to, for +dawn was the hour of their apprehension. + +Two miles behind them is a battery of our field guns, and they have with +them an observing officer who talks intimately to his battery on the +field telephone in that laconic language of which gunners are so fond, +such as "One hundred. Twenty minutes to the left." Then the shells sing +over their heads with a pretty low trajectory, and the Huns, beginning +to get annoyed, reply with their heavy guns. There is a low whistle up +aloft, a noise like the fluttering of invisible wings, and the next +moment a cloud of black smoke rises over the village of X---- Y----, +behind the trenches. The Smoke Prevention Society ought to turn their +attention to "Jack Johnsons"; their habits are positively filthy. + +These things, however, disturbed them but little and bored them a great +deal. So they set to work to make their particular rabbit-warren into a +Garden City. They held it on a repairing lease, and were constantly +filling sand-bags, but that was merely to prevent depreciation, and +didn't count. They first of all paved their trenches with bricks; there +was no difficulty about the supply, as the "Jack Johnsons" obligingly +acted as house-breakers in the village behind our lines, and bricks +could be had for the fetching. Then the orderly transplanted some +pansies and forget-me-nots from the garden of a ruined house, and made a +border in front of the company commander's dug-out. The communication +trench had been carried across a stream with some planks, and one day a +man with a gift for carpentry fixed up a balustrade out of the arms of +an apple-tree, which had been lopped off by shell, and we had a rustic +bridge. When May came, water anemones opened their star-like petals on +the surface of the clear amber stream, the orchard through which the +communication trench had been cut burst into blossom, the sticky clay +walls of the trench became hard as masonry in the sun, and one morning a +board appeared with the legend "Hyde Park. Keep off the grass." + +With these amenities their manners grew more and more refined. I have +read somewhere, in one of those dull collections of sweeping +generalisations that are called sociology, that each species of the +_genus homo_ has to go through a normal sequence of stages from +barbarism to civilisation, and that we were once what the South Sea +Islanders are now. Which may be very true, but as regards that +particular primitive community I can testify that their social evolution +has in three months gone through all the stages that occupy other +communities three thousand years. They began as cave-dwellers and they +end by occupying suburban villas--the captain's dug-out has a roof of +corrugated iron, a window, a book-shelf, a table, and even chairs, and +his table manners have vastly improved. They have progressed from +candles stuck in bully-beef tins to electric reading-lamps. Three months +ago they were hairy men whose beards did grow beneath their shoulders, +and their puttees were cemented with wet clay; to-day they are +clean-shaven and their Burberrys might be worn in Piccadilly. They slept +with nothing between them and the earth but a ground sheet what time +they were not, like the elephant, sleeping on their feet and propped +against a trench wall. Now they sleep on a bed with a wooden frame. I +have read somewhere that for a thousand years Europe was unwashed. It +may be so, but I know that this particular tribal community progressed +rapidly through all such stages, from a bucket to a shower-bath in +billets, in about six weeks, and you can see their men any day washing +themselves to the waist near the support trenches--men who a month or +two ago had forgotten how to take their clothes off. They are, in fact, +a highly civilised community. Some traces of their aboriginal state they +still retain, and they cherish their totem, which is a bundle of black +ribbons, rather like the flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to +the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night +some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out +on their stomachs with a hand-grenade to get as near as may be to the +enemy's listening posts and taste the joy of killing. But by day they +are as demure and sleepy as the tortoiseshell cat which has taken up its +quarters in the dug-out. + +Such is their life. But they are quietly preparing to get a move on. +Some R.G.A. men have arrived with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and +one fine morning they are going to disturb those sand-bags opposite them +with a battery of trench mortars; our field guns will draw a curtain of +shrapnel in front of the German support trenches, and then they will +satisfy their curiosity as to what is behind those inscrutable +sand-bags. + + + + +IX + +STOKES'S ACT + + An offender when in arrest is not to bear arms except by order of + his C.O. or in an emergency.--_The King's Regulations._ + + +I + +The President of the Court and the Judge-Advocate stood in private +colloquy in one of the deep traverse-like windows of the Hôtel de Ville +over-looking the Place. A heavy rain was falling from a sullen sky, and +the deserted square was a dancing sea of agitation as the raindrops +smote the little pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a +multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind swept across, and the +rain rattled against the windows. On the opposite side of the square one +of the houses gaped curiously, with bedroom and parlour exposed to view, +as though some one had snatched away the walls and laid the scene for +one of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters pursue a +complicated domestic intrigue on two floors at once. That house, with +its bed exposed to the rain dripping from the open rafters, was indeed +both farcical and indecent; it stood among its unscathed neighbours like +a pariah. The rain was loud and insistent, but not so loud as to dull +the distant thunder of the guns. The intermittent gusts of wind now and +again interrupted its monotonous theme, but the intervals were as brief +as they were violent, and in this polyphonic composition of rain, wind, +and guns, the hissing of the raindrops came and went as in a fugue and +with an inexpressible mournfulness. + +Inside the room was a table covered with green baize, on which were +methodically arranged in extended order a Bible, an inkstand, a sheaf of +paper, and a copy of the _Manual of Military Law_. Behind the table were +seven chairs, and to the right and left of them stood two others. The +seven chairs were for the members of the court; the chair on the extreme +right was for the "prisoner's friend," that on the left awaited the +Judge-Advocate. About five yards in front of the table, in the centre of +an empty space, stood two more chairs turned towards it. Otherwise the +room was as bare as a guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it a +certain dignity of its own as of a place where nothing was allowed to +distract the mind from the serious business in hand. At the door stood +an orderly with a red armlet bearing the imprint of the letters "M.P." +in black. + +"I have read the summary pretty carefully," the Judge-Advocate was +saying, "and it seems to me a clear case. The charge is fully made out. +And yet the curious thing is, the fellow has an excellent record, I +believe." + +"That proves nothing," said the Colonel; "I've had a fellow in my +battalion found sleeping at his post on sentry-go, a fellow I could have +sworn by. And you know what the punishment for that is. It's these night +attacks; the men must not sleep by night and some of them cannot sleep +by day, and there are limits to human nature. We've no reserves to speak +of as yet, and the men are only relieved once in three weeks. Their feet +are always wet, and their circulation goes all wrong. It's the puttees +perhaps. And if your circulation goes wrong you can't sleep when you +want to, till at last you sleep when you don't want to. Or else your +nerves go wrong. I've seen a man jump like a rabbit when I've come up +behind him." + +"Yes," mused the Judge-Advocate, "I know. But hard cases make bad law." + +"Yes, and bad law makes hard cases. Between you and me, our military law +is a bit prehistoric. You're a lawyer and know more about it than I do. +But isn't there something for civilians called a First Offenders Act? +Bind 'em over to come up for judgment if called on--that kind of thing. +Gives a man another chance. Why not the soldier too?" + +"Yes," replied the Judge-Advocate, "there is. I believe the War Office +have been talking about adopting it for years. But this is not the time +of day to make changes of that kind. Everybody's worked off his head." + +Eight officers had entered the room at intervals, the subalterns a +little ahead of their seniors in point of time, as is the first duty of +a subaltern whether on parade or at a "general," and, having saluted the +President in the window, they stood conversing in low tones. + +The Colonel suddenly glanced at his left wrist, walked to the middle +chair behind the table, and taking his seat said, "Now, gentlemen, carry +on, please!" As they took their places the Colonel, as President of the +Court, ordered the prisoner to be brought in. There was a shuffle of +feet outside, and a soldier without cap or belt or arms, and with a +sergeant's stripes upon his sleeve, was marched in under a sergeant's +escort. His face was not unpleasing--the eyes well apart and direct in +their gaze, the forehead square, and the contours of the mouth firm and +well-cut. The two took their places in front of the chair, and stood to +attention. The prisoner gazed fixedly at the letters "R.F.," which +flanked the arms of the Republic on the wall above the President's +head, and stood as motionless as on parade. A close observer, however, +would have noticed that his thumb and forefinger plucked nervously at +the seam of his trousers, and that his hands, though held at attention, +were never quite still. The escort kept his head covered. + +At the President's order to "bring in the evidence," the soldier on duty +at the door vanished to return with a squad of seven soldiers in charge +of a sergeant, who formed them up in two ranks behind the prisoner and +his escort. And they also stood exceeding still. + +The President read the order convening the court, and, as he recited +each officer's name and regiment, the owner acknowledged it with "Here, +sir." When he came to the prisoner's name he looked up and said, "Is +that your name and number?" The escort nudged the prisoner, who recalled +his attention from the wall with an immense effort and said "Yes, sir." + +"Captain Herbert appears as prosecutor and takes his place." As the +ritual prescribed by the Red Book was religiously gone through, the +prisoner continued to stare at the wall above the President's head, and +the rain rattled against the window-panes with intermittent violence. +Having finished his recital, the President rose, and with him all the +members of the court rose also. He took a Bible in his hand and faced +the Judge-Advocate, who exhorted him that he should "well and truly try +the accused before the court according to the evidence," and that he +would duly administer justice according to the Army Act now in force, +without partiality, favour, or affection.... "So help you God." As the +colonel raised the book to his lips he chanted the antiphon "So help me +God." And the Judge-Advocate proceeded to swear the other members of the +court, individually or collectively, three subalterns who were jointly +and severally sworn holding the book together with a quaint solemnity, +as though they were singing hymns at church out of a common hymn-book. +Then the Judge-Advocate was in turn sworn by the President with his own +peculiar oath of office, and did faithfully and with great earnestness +promise that he would neither divulge the sentence, nor disclose nor +discover any votes or opinions as to the same. Which being done, and the +President having ordered the military policeman to march out the +evidence, the sergeant in charge cried "Left turn. Quick march. Left +wheel," and the little cloud of witnesses vanished through the doorway. + +The President proceeded to read the charge-sheet:-- + + + "_The accused, No. , Sergeant John Stokes, 2nd Battalion + Downshire Regiment, is charged with Misbehaving before the enemy in + such a manner as to show cowardice, in that he at , on + October 3rd, 1914, when on patrol, and when under the enemy's fire, + did run away._" + + +All this time the prisoner had been studying the wall, his eyes +travelling from the right to the left of the frieze, and then from the +left to the right again. It was noticeable that his lips moved slightly +at each stage of this laborious visual journey. "Forty-seven." +"Forty-nine." "Forty-eight." Stokes was immensely interested in that +compelling frieze. He counted and recounted the number of figures in the +Greek fret with painful iteration. Apparently he was satisfied at last, +and then his eyes began to study the inkstand in front of the President. +The President seemed an enormous distance away, but the inkstand very +near and very large, and he found himself wondering why it was round, +why it wasn't square, or hexagonal, or elliptic. Then he speculated +whether the ink was blue or black, or red, and why people never used +green or yellow. His brain had gone through all the colours of the +spectrum when a pull at his sleeve by the escort attracted his +attention. Apparently the Colonel was saying something to him. + +"Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" + +The prisoner stared, but said nothing. The escort again pulled his +sleeve as the Colonel repeated the question. + +Stokes cleared his throat, and looking his interlocutor straight in the +face, said, "Guilty, sir." The members of the court looked at each +other, the Colonel whispered to the Judge-Advocate, the Judge-Advocate +to the Prosecutor. The Judge-Advocate turned to the prisoner, "Do you +realise," he asked, not unkindly, "that if you plead 'Guilty' you will +not be able to call any evidence as to extenuating circumstances?" The +prisoner pondered for a moment; it seemed to him that the +Judge-Advocate's voice was almost persuasive. + +"Well, I'll say 'not guilty,' sir." + +He now saw the President quite close to him; that monstrous inkstand had +diminished to its natural size. Nothing was to be heard beyond the +hissing of the rain but the scratching of the Judge-Advocate's quill, as +he slowly dictated to himself the words "The--prisoner--pleads--'not +guilty.'" But why they had asked him a question which could only admit +of one answer and then persuaded him to give the wrong one, was a thing +that both puzzled and distressed John Stokes. Why all this solemn +ritual, he speculated painfully; he was surely as good as dead already. +He found himself wondering whether the sentence of the Court would be +carried out in the presence of only the firing party, or whether the +whole of his battalion would be paraded. And he fell to wondering +whether he would be reported in the casualty lists as "killed in +action," or would it be "missing"? And would they send his wife his +identity-disc, as they did with those who had fallen honourably on the +field? All these questions both interested and perplexed him, but the +proceedings of the Court he regarded little, or not at all. + +Meanwhile the Prosecutor was unfolding the charge in a clear, even +voice, neither extenuating nor setting down aught in malice. In a +court-martial no Prosecutor ever "presses" the charge; he may even +alleviate it. Which shows that Assizes and Sessions have something to +learn from courts-martial. The case was simple. Prisoner had gone out on +the night of the 3rd with a patrol commanded by a subaltern. An alarm +was raised, and he and the greater part of the patrol had run back to +the trenches, leaving the officer to stand his ground and to return +later with his left arm shattered by a German bullet. + +All this Stokes remembered but too well, though it seemed to have +happened an immense time ago. He remembered how the subaltern had warned +him that the only thing to do when a German flare lit up the night was +to stand quite still. And he had not stood still, for one of the most +difficult things for a man to believe is that to see suddenly is not the +same thing as being seen; he had ducked, and as he moved something +seared his right cheek like red-hot iron, and then--but why recall that +shameful moment? A paradoxical psychologist in a learned essay on "the +Expression of Emotion" has argued gravely that the "expression" precedes +the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is afraid but is afraid +because he runs. Sergeant Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to +this day he believes that it was his first start that was his undoing. +He had begun to run without knowing why, until he knew why he ran--he +was afraid. Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army vernacular, "cold +feet." But why he ran in the first instance he did not know. It was true +he hadn't slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as N.C.O. to +go round every half-hour during the night to watch the men and stare at +that inscrutable field, and to post and relieve, had made him very +jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in his arms the day before +that fatal night--he could see the grey film glistening on his face like +a clouded glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But what had that to +do with the charge? Nothing at all. + +And while the prisoner pondered on these things he was recalled by the +voice of the President. Did he wish to ask the witness any questions? +His company commander had been giving evidence. No; he had no questions +to ask. And as each witness was called, and sworn, and gave evidence, +all of which the Judge-Advocate repeated like a litany and duly wrote +down with his own hand--the prisoner always returned the same answer. + +Now the prisoner's friend, a young officer who had never played that +_rôle_ before, and who was both nervous and conscientious, had been +studying Rule 40 in the Red Book with furtive concentration. What was he +to do with a prisoner who elected neither to make a statement nor to put +questions to witnesses, and who never gave him any lead? But he had +there read something about calling witnesses as to character, and, +reading, recollected that the company commander had glanced at the +prisoner with genuine commiseration. And so he persuaded Stokes, after +some parley, to call the captain to give evidence as to character. The +captain's words were few and weighty. The prisoner, he testified, was +one of the best N.C.O.'s in his company, and, with the latitude which is +characteristic of court-martial proceedings, the captain went on to tell +of the testimony borne by the dead subaltern to the excellent character +of John Stokes, and how the said John Stokes had been greatly affected +by the death of the subaltern. And for the first time John Stokes hung +his head. But beyond that and the quivering of his eyelashes he made no +sign. + +And it being a clear case the Judge-Advocate, as a Judge-Advocate may +do, elected not to sum up, and the prisoner was taken to the place from +whence he came. And the Court proceeded to consider their finding and +sentence, which finding and sentence, being signed by the President and +the Judge-Advocate, duly went its appointed way to the Confirming +Authority and there remained. For the General in Chief command in the +field was hard pressed with other and weightier matters, having reason +to believe that he would have to meet an attack of three Army Corps on a +front of eight miles with only one Division. Which belief turned out to +be true, and had for Sergeant John Stokes momentous consequences, as you +shall hear. + + +II + +When John Stokes found himself once more in charge of a platoon he was +greatly puzzled. He had been suddenly given back his arms and his belt, +which no prisoner, whether in close or open arrest, is supposed to wear, +and his guard had gone with him. He knew nothing about Paragraph 482 of +the King's Regulations, which contemplates "emergencies"; still less did +he know that an emergency had arisen--such an emergency as will cast +lustre upon British arms to the end of time. But that strange things +were happening ahead he knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly +made up as Falstaff's army: gunners, cooks, and A.S.C. drivers were all +lumped together to make a company. Some carried their rifles at the +slope and some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had not, certain +details from the Rifle Brigade marched with their own quick trot, and +some wore spurs. + +Of one thing he was thankful: his old battalion, wherever they were, +were not there. And the company commander coming along and perceiving +the stripes on his sleeve, had, without further inquiry, put him in +charge of a platoon, and thereafter he lost sight of his guard +altogether. + +He knew nothing of where he was. Few soldiers at the Front ever do: they +will be billeted in a village for a week and not know so much as the +name of it. But that big business was afoot was evident to him, for they +were marching in column of route almost at the double, under a faint +moon and in absolute silence--the word having gone forth that there was +to be no smoking or talking in the ranks. + +Not a sound was to be heard, except the whisper of the poplars and the +tramp of the men's feet upon the _pavé_. The road was so greasy with mud +that it might have been beeswaxed, and Stokes's boots, the nails of +which had been worn down, kept slipping as on a parquet floor. As they +passed through the mean little villages not a light was to be seen; even +the _estaminets_ were shut, but now and again a dog barked mournfully at +its chain. Once a whispered command was given at the head of the column, +which halted so suddenly that the men behind almost fell upon the men in +front, and then backed hastily; and these movements were automatically +communicated all down the column, so that the sections of fours lurched +like the trucks of a train which is suddenly pulled up. At that moment +something flashed at the head of the column, and Stokes suddenly caught +a glimpse of the faces of the captain and the subaltern in an aureole of +light lit by the needle-like rays of an electric torch as they studied a +map and compass. + +But in no long time their ears told them they were nearing their +destination, even as a traveller learns that he is nearing the sea. For +they heard the crackle of musketry following upon the altercation of +guns. All this passed as in a dream, and it seemed little more than a +few minutes before Sergeant Stokes, having passed through a curtain of +shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some shallow support trenches to +which the remnants of the regiment whom they were called upon to stiffen +had fallen back. It was a critical moment: our first trenches were in +the hands of the enemy, and the whole line was sagging under the impact +of the German hordes. Somehow that trench had to be recaptured--to be +recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into an +invulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of machine-guns to sweep +with a crossfire the right and left flanks, where our line curved in +like a gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes knew as little +as is usually given to one platoon to know on a front of eight miles. + +As dawn broke and the stars paled, the word came down the line, and, in +a series of short rushes, stooping somewhat in the attitude of a man who +is climbing a very steep hill, they moved forward in extended order +about eight or ten paces apart carrying their rifles with bayonets +fixed. A hail-storm of lead greeted them, and all around him Sergeant +Stokes saw men falling, and as they fell lying in strange attitudes and +uncouth--some stumbling (he had seen a hare shot in the back dragging +its legs in just that way), others lying on their faces and clutching +the earth convulsively as they drummed with their feet, and some very +still. Overhead there was a sobbing and whimpering in the air. A little +ahead to the left of him a machine-gun was tap-tapping like a telegraph +instrument, and as it traversed the field of their advance the men went +down in swathes. + +If only he could get to that gun! On the right a low hedge ran at right +angles to the German trench, and making for it he took such little cover +as it afforded, and ran forward as he had never run before, not even on +that night of baneful memory. His heart was thumping violently, there +was a prodigious "stitch" in his side; and something warm was trickling +down his forehead into his eyes and half blinding him, while in his ears +the bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees. The next moment he +was up against a little knot of grey-coated figures with toy-like +helmets, he heard a word that sounded like "Himmel," and he had emptied +his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing, +parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very +faint.... + +That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For +the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense +distance--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was +coming to after a spell of gas--was saying something to him as he seemed +to be rising, rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable +depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and +then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at +the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent thing in +woman--was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was +impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew--he was in +hospital. + + +III + +"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a +certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field +Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious +case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making +hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up +all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had +been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking. +Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and +not reduced by one stripe." + +"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw +forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day +singing--singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of +course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a +few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that +cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to +breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of +sheer weariness--well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the +scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them, +but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made +us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at +that." + +The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the +table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial." +He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a +Parliamentary draughtsman. "Yes," he said, after some pertinent +emendations, "it'll do. But the title is too long for common use at +G.H.Q." + +"Why!" said the other with a certain paternal sensitiveness, "what do +you suggest?" + +"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pensively,--"I suggest we call it +Stokes's Act." + + * * * * * + +Now this story has one merit--if it has no other. It is true. And as +for the rest of the Act and its preamble, and its sections and its +sub-sections, are they not written in the Statute Book? In the Temple +they call it 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But out there they call it "Stokes's +Act." + + + + +X + +THE FRONT + + +Persons of a rheumatic habit are said to apprehend the approach of damp +weather by certain presentiments in their bones. So people of a nervous +temperament--like the writer--have premonitions of the approach to "the +Front" by a feeling of cold feet. These are usually induced by the +spectacle of large and untimely cavities in the road, but they may be +accentuated, as not infrequently happened, by seeing the process of +excavation itself--and hearing it. The effect on the auditory nerves is +known as "k-r-rump," which is, phonetically speaking, a fairly literal +translation. The best thing to do on such occasions is to obey the +nursery rhyme, and "open your mouth and shut your eyes." The intake of +air will relieve the pressure on your ear-drums. I have been told by one +of our gunners that the gentle German has for years been experimenting +in order to produce as "frightful" and intimidating a sound by the +explosion of his shells as possible. He has succeeded. Cases have been +known of men without a scratch laughing and crying simultaneously after +a too-close acquaintance with the German hymnology of hate. The results +are, however, sometimes disappointing from the German point of view, as +in the case of the soldier who, being spattered with dirt but otherwise +untouched, picked himself up, and remarked with profound contempt, "The +dirty swine!" + +The immediate approach to the trenches is usually marked by what sailors +call a "dodger," which is to say, a series of canvas screens. These do +not conceal your legs, and if you are exceptionally tall, they may not +conceal your head. Your feet don't matter, but if you are wise you duck +your head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate pride in walking +upright, and will laugh at you most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in +the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of +course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I +visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to +admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up +ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as +wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the +approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible, +the latter object being effected by frequent "traversing." To reach the +fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of +them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it +with innumerable junctions and small depôts in the shape of dug-outs, +and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering +as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is +complicated by frequent traverses--something after the pattern of a +Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to +prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these +things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb +and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part +of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a +lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the +right and left of you. The delivery of a bomb serves as a very effective +notice of ejectment. The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of +earth commonly known as a parados. My servant, whose vocabulary was +limited, called it a paradox, and was not very wide of the mark. + +Somewhere behind the trenches at varying distances are the batteries. +The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their +guns, and if none are to be found they improvise them. Hop-poles +trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a +delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf +emplacements are constructed for the six guns, and turfed dug-outs house +the telephone-operator and the gunners. The battery officers are +billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farmhouse, whose chief +decorative feature is a midden-heap; in England it would promptly be the +subject of a closing order by any Public Health authority. + +There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun. As a ship answers her +helm or an aeroplane its controls, so does an eighteen-pounder respond +to every turn of her elevating and traversing gear. Watch a gunner +laying his gun on a target he cannot see; observe him switch the gun +round from the aiming point to the target; remark the way in which the +sight clinometer registers the angle of sight and the drum registers the +range; and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship that ever sailed +the high seas could be more docile to a turn of the wheel. With perfect +simplicity did a man in the R.F.A. once say to me, "We feel towards our +gun as a mother feels to her child; we'd sooner lose our lives than our +gun." In that confession of faith you have the whole of the gunner's +creed. + +The heavy guns are generally to be found in splendid isolation; one +such I visited and I marvelled at its appearance; it resembled nothing +so much as the mottled trunk of a decayed plane-tree except for its +girth. "Futurist art," explained the major deprecatingly as I stared at +its daubed surface; "it makes it unrecognisable." It certainly did. +Close by were what looked at a distance like a bed of copper cucumbers. +"More gardening?" I asked. "Yes, market gardening," replied the major; +"if we lay the shells like that with sand-bags between them we prevent +their igniting one another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver +the goods." + +A mile or two from the battery headquarters at X---- Y---- was the +observing station. The battery-major and myself were accompanied thither +by a huge mastiff who in civil life was a dairyman by profession and +turned a churn, but had long since attached himself to the major as +orderly. We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point the +mastiff stopped dead and declined to come any further. I thought this +churlish, and told him so, but he merely wagged his tail. When we +entered the farmyard I understood. It was pitted with shell-holes, and +they were obviously of very recent excavation. As a matter of fact the +Huns suspected that farm, and with good reason, and treated it to +intermittent "Hate." The mastiff therefore always waited for the +battery-major at what it judged, quite erroneously, to be a safe +distance. We clambered up into a loft by means of unreliable ladders. In +the roof of the loft some tiles had been removed, and leaning our arms +on the rafters we looked out. "You see that row of six poplars over +there?" said the Major, pointing to a place behind the German trenches. +I recognised them, for the same six poplars I had seen through a +periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a +house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned +to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft. "Lay No. 2 on the +register! Report when ready!" The operator repeated the words +confidentially to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the receiver +answered "Ready!" "Fire!" I had my eyes glued to the house, yet nothing +seemed to happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously with my +pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed? Even as I speculated there was a +puff of smoke and a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between the +poplars. We had delivered the goods. + +If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the +chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in +billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in +their habits, and change their positions according as they are wanted. +But a field ambulance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a unit +of the R.A.M.C, with a major or a colonel in charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S. +of a division has three field ambulances under him, and when an attack +in force is projected he mobilises these three units at forward dressing +stations in the rear of the trenches. They are a link between the +aid-posts in front and the collecting stations behind. From the +collecting stations the wounded are sent on to the clearing hospitals +and thence to the base. It sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The +most eloquent compliment to its perfection was the dreamy reminiscence +of a soldier I met at the base: "I got hit up at Wipers, sir; something +hit me in the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard somebody +saying 'Drink this,' and I found myself in bed at Boulogne." Every field +ambulance has an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he usually is. +Is the soldier sick, he visits him; penitent, he shrives him; dying, he +comforts him. One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two, and a +mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was often longing for a shot at +the Huns, and as often imposing penances upon himself for such +un-ghostly desires. He found consolation in confessing the Irishmen +before they went into the trenches: "The bhoys fight all the better for +it," he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his flock; the only +doubts he had were about his own. We all loved him. + +There is one great difference between life in billets and life in the +trenches. In billets the soldier "grouses" often, in trenches never. +This may be partly due to a very proper sense of proportion; it may also +be due to the fact that, the necessity for vigilance being relaxed and +the occasions for industry few, life in billets is apt to become a great +bore. The small Flemish and French towns offer few amenities; in our +mess we found our principal recreation in reunions with other +fraternities at the _pâtisserie_ or in an occasional mount. Of +_pâtisseries_ that at Bethune is the best; that at Poperinghe the worst. +Besides, the former has a piano and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In the +earlier stages of our occupation some of the officers at G.H.Q. did a +little coursing and shooting, but there was trouble about _délits de +chasse_, and now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big game--namely, +Germans--although I have heard of an irresponsible Irishman in the +trenches who vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more +remarkable, returned with it. Needless to say, his neighbours were +Saxons. As for the men, their opportunities of relaxation are more +circumscribed. Much depends on the house in which they are billeted. If +there is a baby, you can take the part of mother's help; one of the most +engaging sights I saw was a troop of our cavalrymen (they may have been +the A.V.C.) riding through Armentières, leading a string of remounts, +each remount with a laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can wash. +If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has +the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like +Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a +pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other +with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the +inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think it indecent, or merely +eccentric; perhaps both. But then, as Anatole France has gravely +remarked, a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of chastity. +Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals has reminded us, cleanliness +of body is next to orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you +may, with God's grace, escape one or more of the seven plagues of +Flanders. These seven are lice, flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and +"souvenirs." The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean +cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsmanlike and irritating habits +they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not +entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too +much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from +an impassive man with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room. + +But it may well happen that in spite of babies, and baths, and brass +bands, and footballs, and boxing-gloves, and playing marbles (the +General in command of one of our divisions told me he had seen six +Argyll and Sutherland sergeants playing marbles with shrapnel bullets in +some support trenches), the men get bored. They are often very crowded, +and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate +shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his +neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may +become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander +sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a +good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in +the winter months, when out visiting Divisional Headquarters, did I, in +the shameful luxury of my car, come across a battalion slogging along +ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing with almost reproachful +unction: + + + Last night I s-s-aw you, I s-saw you, you naughty boy! + + +Some one ought to make an anthology (for private circulation only) of +the songs most affected by our men, and also of the topographical +Limericks with which they beguile the long hours in the trenches. And if +the English soldier is addicted to versifying it may be pleaded in his +behalf that, as Mommsen apologetically remarks of Caesar, "they were +weak verses." Not always, however, I have seen some unpublished verses +by a young officer on the staff of the late General Hubert Hamilton, a +man beloved by all who knew him, describing the burial of his dead chief +at night behind the firing-line, which in their sombre and elegiac +beauty are not unworthy to rank with the classical lines on the burial +of Sir John Moore. And there is that magnificent _Hymn before Battle_ by +Captain Julian Grenfell, surely one of the most moving things of its +kind. + +With such diversions do our men beguile the interminable hours. After +all it is the small things that men resent in life, not the big ones. I +once asked a French soldier over a game of cards--in civil life he was a +plumber, whom we shall meet again[7]--whether he could get any sleep in +the trenches amid the infernal din of the guns. "Oh, I slept pretty well +on the whole," he explained nonchalantly, "mais mon voisin, +celui-là"--he pointed reproachfully to a comrade who was imperturbably +shuffling the pack--"il ronflait si fort qu'il finissait par me +dégoûter." + +FOOTNOTE: + +[7] See Chapter XV. + + + + +XI + +AT G.H.Q.[8] + ++-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +| Billet de Logement. | +| | +| Mme. Bonnard, 131 rue Robert le Frisson, logera les sous-dits, | +| savoir: un officier, un sous officier, deux hommes; fournira le lit, | +| place au feu et à la chandelle, conformément à loi du 3 juillet, 1877.| +| Délivré à la Mairie, | +| le 31me Janvier, 1915. | +| Le Maire ---- | ++-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +The Camp Commandant, who is a keeper of lodging-houses and an Inspector +of Nuisances, had given me a slip of paper on which was inscribed the +address No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson and a printed injunction to the +occupier to know that by these presents she was enjoined to provide me +with bed, fire, and lights. Armed with this billeting-paper and +accompanied by my servant, a private in the Suffolks, who was carrying +my kit, I knocked at the door of No. 131, affecting an indifference to +my reception which I did not feel. It seemed to me that a +rate-collector, presenting a demand note, could have boasted a more +graceful errand. The door opened and an old lady in a black silk gown +inquired, "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, M'sieu'?" I presented my +billeting-paper with a bow. Her waist was girt with a kind of +bombardier's girdle from which hung a small armoury of steel implements +and leather scabbards: scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a +button-hook, and other more or less intimidating things. "Jeanne," she +called in a quavering voice, and as the _bonne_ appeared, tying her +apron-strings, they read the billeting-paper together, the one looking +over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading the words as a child +reads, and as though she were speaking to herself. The paper shook in +her tremulous hands, and I could see that she was very old. It was +obvious that my appearance in that quiet household was as agitating as +it was unexpected. "Et votre ordonnance?" she asked, with a glance at my +servant. "Non, il dort dans la caserne." "Bien!" she said, and with a +smile made me welcome. + + +It was soon evident that, my credentials being once established, I was +to be regarded as a member of the household, and nothing would satisfy +Madame but that I should be assured of this. Having shown me my bedroom, +with its pompous bed draped with a tent of curtains, she took me on a +tour of her _ménage_. I was conducted into the kitchen, bright with +copper pans and the _marmite_--it was as sweet and clean as a dairy; the +resources of the still-room were displayed to me, and the confitures and +spices were not more remarkable than the domestic pharmacy in which the +herbs of the field had been distilled by Madame's own hands to yield +their peculiar virtues, rue for liver, calamint for cholera, plantain +for the kidneys, fennel for indigestion, elderberry for sore throat, and +dandelion for affections of the blood. Then I was shown the oak presses +full of linen white as snow and laid up in lavender. This inventory +being concluded, I was presented with a key of the front door to mark my +admission into the freedom of the house, and invited to take a glass of +Burgundy while Sykes was unpacking my kit upstairs. + +Madame, it seemed, was a widow of eighty-five years of age, without +issue, and if her eyes were dim and her natural force abated, her teeth, +as she proudly told me, were her own. She obviously belonged to that +_rentier_ class who spend the evening of their days in the quiet town +which serves as G.H.Q.--a town which has a kind of faded gentility, and +which, behind its inscrutable house-fronts, conceals a good deal of +quiet opulence in the matter of old china, silver, and oak. In her youth +Madame had kept a _pension_ and had had English demoiselles among her +charges. She had never been to England but she had heard of "Hyde Park." +Did I know it? She received my assurance with obvious gratification as +though it established a personal intimacy between us. "Avez-vous tué des +Allemands?" My negative answer left her disappointed but hopeful. + +"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?" interjected the _bonne_, who, I +afterwards found, had a husband at the war. Those interrogatories were +to become very familiar to me. Every evening, when I returned from my +visits to Divisional and Brigade Headquarters, mistress and servant +always put me through the same catechism: + +"Avez-vous tué des Allemands?" + +"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?" + +The immense seriousness, not to say solicitude, with which these +inquiries were addressed to me eventually led me into the most +enterprising mendacities. I killed a German every day, greatly to +Madame's satisfaction, and my total bag when I came away was +sufficiently remarkable to be worth a place in an official _communiqué_. +I think it gave Madame a feeling of security, and I hoped Jeanne might +consider that it appreciably accelerated the end of the war. But +"Guillaume," as she always called him, was the principal object of +Madame's aversion, and she never mentioned the name of the All-Highest +without a lethal gesture as she drew her tremulous hand across her +throat and uttered the menacing words: "Couper la gorge." She often +uttered these maledictions to Sykes in the kitchen, as she watched him +making the toast for my breakfast, and I have no doubt that the "Oui, +Madame," with which he invariably assented, gave her great satisfaction. +Doubtless it made her feel that the heart of the British Army was sound. +Sykes used to study furtively a small book called _French, and how to +speak it_, but he was very chary of speaking it, and seemed to prefer a +deaf-and-dumb language of his own. But he was naturally a man of few +words, and phlegmatic. He described the first battle of Ypres, in which +he had been "wownded," in exactly twenty-four words, and I could never +get any more out of him, though he became comparatively voluble on the +subject of his wife at Norwich and the twins. He was an East Anglian, +and made four vowels do duty for five, his e's being always pronounced +as a's; he had done his seven years' "sarvice" with the colours, and was +a reservist; he was an admirable servant--steady, cool, and honest. I +imagine he had never acted as servant to any of his regimental officers, +for on the first occasion when he brought up my breakfast I was not a +little amused to observe that the top of the egg had been carefully +removed, the rolls sliced and buttered, and the bread and butter cut +into slender "fingers," presumably for me to dip into the ochreous +interior of the egg; it reminded me of my nursery days. Perhaps he was +in the habit of doing it for the twins. I gently weaned him from this +tender habit. He performed all his duties, such as making my bed, or +handing me a letter, with quick automatic movements as though he were +presenting arms. Also his face, which was usually expressionless as +though his mind were "at ease," had a way of suddenly coming to +"attention" when you spoke to him. He had a curious and recondite +knowledge of the folk-lore of the British Army, and entertained me at +times with stories of "Kruger's Own," "The White Shirts," "The Dirty +Twelfth," "The Holy Boys," "The Saucy Seventh," having names for the +regiments which you will never find in the _Army List_. In short, he was +a survival and in a way a tragic survival. For how many of the old Army +are left? I fear very few, and many traditions may have perished with +them. + +In his solicitude for me Sykes had jealous rivals in Madame and Jeanne. +Madame reserved to herself as her peculiar prerogative the deposit of a +hot-water "bottle" in my bed every night, such a hot-water bottle as I +have never seen elsewhere. It reminded me of nothing so much as the +barrel of one of the newer machine-guns, being a long fluted cylinder of +black steel. This was always borne by Madame every night in ritualistic +procession, Jeanne following with a silver candlestick and a +night-light. The ceremony concluded with a bow and "good-night," two +words of which Madame was inordinately proud. She never attained +"good-morning," but she more than supplied the deficiency of English +speech by the grace of her French manners, always entering my room at 8 +A.M. as I lay in bed, with the greeting, "Bon matin, M'sieu', +avez-vous bien dormi?" Perhaps I looked, as I felt, embarrassed on the +first occasion, for she quickly added in French, "I am old enough to be +your mother"--as indeed she was. She had at once the resignation in +repose and the agitation in action of extreme old age. I have seen her +dozing in her chair in the salon, as I passed through the hall, with her +gnarled hands extended on her knees in just that attitude of quiet +waiting which one associates with the well-known engraving in which +Death is figured as the coming of a friend. But when she was on her feet +she moved about with a kind of aimless activity, opening drawers and +shutting them and reopening them and speaking to herself the while, +until Jeanne, catching my puzzled expression, would whisper loudly in +my ear with a tolerant smile, "Elle est très VIEILLE." Jeanne had +acquired a habit of raising her voice, owing to Madame's deafness, which +resulted in her whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those +stage asides which, by a curious convention, while audible at the very +back of the dress circle, are quite inaudible to the other characters on +the stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these auricular confidences I +know not. If she did, I doubt if she regarded them, for she was under +the illusion, common to very old people who live in the society of a +younger generation and were mature adults when their companions were +merely adolescent, that Jeanne, who had entered her service as a child, +had never grown up. If Madame seemed "très vieille" to Jeanne, it was +indisputable that Jeanne continued "très jeune" to Madame. She was, +indeed, firmly convinced that she was looking after Jeanne, whereas in +truth it was Jeanne who looked after her. For Jeanne was at least +thirty-five, with a husband at the war, in virtue of whom she enjoyed a +separation allowance of one franc a day, and a boy for whom she received +ten sous. Her husband, a _pompier_, got nothing. It never occurred to +her to regard this provision as inadequate. And she was as capable as +she was contented, and sang at her work. + +It was often difficult to believe that this quiet backwater was within +an hour or two of the trenches. G.H.Q. was indeed situated well back +behind "the Front," which, however precise the maps in the newspapers +may affect to make it, is, like the Equator of our school-books, a more +or less "imaginary line drawn across the earth's surface." Imaginary +because if a line be, as we were taught with painful reiteration, length +without breadth, then "the Front" is not a line at all, much less a +straight line in the sense of the shortest distance between two points. +It is not straight, for it curves and sags and has its salients and +re-entrant angles; and it is not a line, for it has breadth as well as +length. Broadly speaking, the Front extends back to the H.Q. of the +armies (to say nothing of the H.Q. of corps, divisions, and brigades), +and thence to G.H.Q. itself, which may be regarded as being "the Back of +the Front," to vary a classical expression of _Punch_. The Front is, +indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened +fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of +communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we +extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just +expand our fan a little more. When we come to make a general advance all +along the periphery, the whole fan will be thrust forward, and the +knuckle with it, for the relative distances of General Headquarters, +and minor Headquarters, from this periphery and from one another are a +more or less constant quantity, being determined by such fixed +considerations as the range of modern guns and the mobility of +transport. + +From G.H.Q., the brain of the Army, the volitional centre of the whole +organism, radiate the sensory and motor nerves by which impressions at +the Front are registered and plans for action transmitted. It is the +home of the Staff, not of the Armies, and contains more "brass hats" +than all the other Headquarters put together. Beyond the "details" in +the barracks it contains few of the rank and file, and its big square +betrays little of the crowded animation of the towns nearer the fighting +line, with their great parks of armoured cars, motor lorries, and +ammunition waggons, their filter-carts, and their little clusters and +eddies of men resting in billets. The Military Police on point-duty have +a comparatively quiet time, although despatch-riders are, of course, for +ever whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the Front. It is as +full of departmental offices as Whitehall itself--some 153 of them to be +exact--each one indicated by a combination of initial letters, for staff +officers are men of few words and cogent, and it saves time to say "O." +when you mean Operations, "I." for Intelligence, "A.G." for +Adjutant-General; a fashion which is faithfully followed at the other +H.Q., for D.A.A.Q.M.G. saves an enormous number of polysyllables. + +Hence the proximity of hostilities has left but little outward and +visible sign upon the ancient town. The tradesmen have, it is true, made +some concessions to our presence, and one remarks the inviting legends +"Top-hole Tea" in the windows of a _pâtisserie_ and "High life" over the +shop of a tailor. Four of us made a private arrangement with a buxom +housewife, whereby, in return for four francs per head a day and the +pooling of our rations, she undertook to provide us with lunch and +dinner, thereby establishing a "Mess" of our own. Many such fraternities +there were in the absence of a regular regimental mess. But these +arrangements were more private than military, the only obligation on the +ordinary householder being the furnishing of billets. Occasionally the +cobbled streets became the scene of an unwonted animation when young +French recruits celebrated their call to the colours by marching down +the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German +prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which +they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd. One such squad I saw +arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down +to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen +stones, landed heavily in his ammunition boots from a height of about +five feet on the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter winced +and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond that gave no sign; I wondered +whether, had the positions been reversed and the scene laid across the +Rhine, a German guard would have exhibited a similar tolerance. I doubt +it. + +The town itself seemed to be living on its past, for indubitably it had +seen better days. An ancient foundation of the Jesuits now converted +into the Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a church whose huge +nave had been secularised to the uses of motor transport, a museum which +served to incarcerate the German prisoners, all testified to the +vanished greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a +kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double +doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking +of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and +secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no +great effort of the imagination--especially at night when not a light +showed--to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch +which they must have witnessed some centuries before. The very names of +the streets--such as the _Rue d'Arbalête_--held in them something of +romance. To find one's billet at night was like a game of blind man's +buff, and one felt rather than saw one's way. Not a soul was to be seen, +for the whole town was under _droit de siège_, and the civilian +inhabitants had to be within doors by nine o'clock, while all the +entrances and exits to and from the town were guarded by double sentries +night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry, +and my own office boasted a corporal's guard--presumably because the +Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly +medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed +an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every +morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the precincts +were not without a certain beauty, and every side of the town was +approached through an avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the +sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just +that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to +the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De +Vigny's known to literature as _Laurette_. + +Such was the country and such the town in which we were billeted. Now +upon a morning in February it happened that I was smoking a cigarette in +the little garden, bordered by hedges of box, while waiting for my car, +and as I waited I watched Jeanne, with her sleeves rolled up to her +elbows and a clothes-peg in her mouth, busy over the wash-tub. "Vous +êtes une blanchisseuse, aujourd'hui?" I remarked. She corrected me. +"Non, m'sieu', une lessiveuse." "Une lessiveuse?" For answer Jeanne +pointed to a linen-bag which was steeping in the tub. The linen-bag +contained the ashes of the beech-tree; it is a way of washing that they +have in some parts of France, and very cleansing. To specialise thus is +_lessiver_. As we talked in this desultory fashion I let fall a word +concerning a journey I was about to undertake to the French lines, a +journey that would take me over the battlefield of the Marne. "La Marne! +Hélas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped her eyes with the corner +of her apron. "But it was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes, but +Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the battle of the Marne. She +pulled out of her bosom a frayed letter, bleached, stained, and +perforated with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed it to me. +I could make nothing of it. She handed me another letter. "Son +camarade," she explained, and no longer attempted to hide her tears. +And this was what I read: + + + Le 10 sept., 1914. + + CHÈRE MADAME--Comme j'étais très bon camarade avec votre frère Paul + Duval et que le malheur vient de lui arriver, je tient à vous le + faire savoir, car peut-être vous serai dans l'inquiétude de pas + recevoir de ces nouvelles et de ne pas savoir où il est. Je vous + dirai que je vient de lui donner du papier à lettre et une enveloppe + pour vous écrire et aussitôt la lettre finit il l'a mis dans son + képi pour vous l'envoyé le plus vite possible et malheureusement un + obus est arriver, et il à etait tué. Heureusement nous étions trois + près de l'un l'autre et il n'y a eut de lui de touché. Je vous envoi + la petite lettre qu'il venait de vous faire, et en même tant vous + verrez les trous que les éclats d'obus l'on attrapper. Recevez de + moi chère madame mes sincères salutations. + + JULES COPPÉE. + + Tambour au 151e Regiment d'Inf., + 2e Cie 42e Division, Secteur postale 56. + + +Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble +simplicity. "Très gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and +thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much +circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple +request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne--yes? I +assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and +perhaps if he found it he would take a photograph. "Why, certainly," I +said, little knowing what I promised. But the request was to have a +strange sequel, as you shall hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the +door. As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell, Madame and +Jeanne stood on the doorstep to wish me _bon voyage_. "J'espère que vous +tuerez plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering voice. +"Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried Jeanne wistfully. I waved my +hand, and had soon left rue Robert le Frisson far behind me. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[8] The town described in this sketch is described not as it is, but as +it was some months ago, and nothing is to be inferred from the title as +to its present significance. + + + + +XII + +MORT POUR LA PATRIE + + +Two days later a French staff-officer greeted me in the vestibule of the +Hôtel de Crillon at Paris. It was the Comte de G----; he had been +deputed by the Ministry of War to act as my escort on my tour of the +French lines. He proved to be a charming companion. He was a magnificent +figure of a man six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of +dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard, embroidered in gold +with a design of forked lightning, which is the prerogative of the +staff. A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy furs +awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde. It was a sumptuous car, +upholstered in green corded silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying +on its panels the motto _Quand même_, and the monogram of a famous +actress. It had been requisitioned. The air was cold--there had been +frost overnight--but the sun was brilliant. As we threaded our way +through Paris and its suburbs, a Paris chastened and resolute, I caught +a glimpse of the barges upon the Seine with the women standing on the +convex hatches hanging out clothes to dry--and I thought of Daudet and +_La Belle Nivernaise_. As more and yet more men are called up to the +colours women take their place, until the houses of business are like +nunneries--with a few aged Fathers Superior. Having had business the day +before at the Société Générale, I had had occasion to reflect on these +things as I stood in the counting-house watching some fifty girl typists +at work, the room resounding with the tap-tap of their machines, as +though fifty thrushes were breaking snails upon a stone. A wizened +little clerk, verging upon superannuation, had beguiled my time of +waiting with talk of the war: how his wife from Picardy had lost fifteen +of her _parents_, while of four painters and paper-hangers who had +started doing up his flat on the 2nd of July only one--disabled--had +returned to finish the job; the rest were dead. Musing on these things +as we drove through the Bois de Vincennes I understood the resolution of +our Allies and the significance of the things my companion pointed out +to me as we drove: here a row of trees felled to provide a field of +fire, there a gun emplacement, and reserve trenches all the way from +Paris to Soissons. They are leaving nothing to chance. + +Our journey was uneventful until we reached Coulommiers, where we had +certain inquiries to make which have nothing to do with this narrative. +We interviewed the _maire_ in his parlour at the Hôtel de Ville, a +little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German +occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the +lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of +municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of +deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to +the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the +faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy +also. Doubtless it appeals to their sinister sense of humour, when two +of their own men get drunk and shoot at one another, to execute a French +citizen by way of punishment. It happened that during the German +occupation of Coulommiers the gas supply gave out. The _maire_ was +informed by a choleric commandant that unless gas were forthcoming in +twenty-four hours he would be shot. The little man replied quietly: +"M'éteindre, ce n'est pas allumer le gaz." This illuminating remark +appears to have penetrated the dark places of the commandant's mind, and +although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all +called up to the colours) the _maire_ was not molested. It was here +that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch) +of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in +amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who, +having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a +horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town. As to what became of +him afterwards nothing was known, but the worst was suspected. The Huns +have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders +and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a +cruel death. + +At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La +Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne, +approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible +for many miles. Here we had lunch at the inn--a dish of perch caught +that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for +which La Ferté is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and +excellent vintage. The landlord's wife waited on us with her own hands, +and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town. +The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much +frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous +losses on the pigs of La Ferté. It reminded me of the satirical +headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great +slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize--"Les +Bosches s'entregorgent!" Madame told us with much spirit how she had +saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far +more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the +Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the +cellar. Her pig is now a local celebrity. People come from afar to see +the pig which escaped the Bosches. For the pigs whom the Bosches love +are apt to die young. But what had impressed her most was the treatment +meted out by a German officer, a certain von Bülow, who was quartered at +the inn, to one of his men. The soldier had been ordered to stick up a +lantern outside the officer's quarters, and had been either slow or +forgetful. Von Bülow knocked him down, and then, as he lay prostrate, +jumped upon him, kicked him, and beat him about the head and face with +sabre and riding-whip. The soldier lay still and uttered not a cry. +Madame shuddered at the recollection, "Épouvantable!" + +We crossed the _place_ and called on a prominent burgess. He received us +hospitably. In the hall of his house was a Uhlan's lance with drooping +pennon which excited our curiosity. How had it come here? He was only +too pleased to explain. He had taken it from a marauding Uhlan with whom +he had engaged in single combat, strangling him with his own hands--so! + + + I took by the throat the circumcised dog + And smote him, thus! + + +He held out a pair of large fat hands of the consistency of clay; he was +of a full habit and there were pouches under his eyes. In England he +would have been a small tradesman, with strong views on total +abstinence, accustomed to a diet of high tea, and honoured as the +life-long superintendent of a Sunday school. I was more astonished than +sceptical, but perhaps, as the Comte suggested in a whisper, the Uhlan +was drunk. Here, too, we heard tales of loot, especially among ladies' +wardrobes. It is a curious fact that there is nothing the Hun loves so +much as women's underclothing. As to what happens when he gets hold of +the _lingerie_ many scandalous stories are told, and none more +scandalous than the one which appeared in the whimsical pages of _La Vie +Parisienne_. But that is, most emphatically, quite another story. + +From La Ferté we drove on to Lizy, where the gendarme, wiping his mouth +as he came hurriedly from the inn, told us a harrowing tale, and then to +Barcy, where the _maire_, though busy with a pitch-fork upon a manure +heap, received us with municipal gravity. We were now nearing the +battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the +trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by +lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral +beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a +team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing +machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an +oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional +passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. As we raced +along, the furrows, running at right angles to the road, seemed to be +eddying away from us in pleats and curves, and this illusion of a +stationary car in a whirling landscape was fortified by the contours of +the countryside, which were those of a great plain, great as any sea, +stretching away to a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly the car slowed +down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound +was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing +machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a +breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked +around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against +small wooden staves. It was the battlefield of the Marne, the scene of +that immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted the sons of France +to conquer or die where they stood. As he had commanded, so had they +done. With an emotion too deep for words we each contemplated these +plaintive memorials of the heroes who lay where they fell. Our orderly +wept and made no effort to hide his tears. I thought of Jeanne's wistful +petition, but my heart sank, for these graves were to be numbered not by +hundreds but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible!" said the +Comte, to whom I had communicated my quest. A sudden cry from the +orderly, who was moving from grave to grave in a close scrutiny of the +inscriptions, arrested us. He was standing by a wooden cross, half +draped by a tattered blue coat and covered with wreaths of withered +myrtle. A képi pierced with holes lay upon the grave. And sure enough, +by some miracle of coincidence, he had found it. On a wooden slab we +read these words: + + + PAUL DUVAL, + 151e Rég. d'Inf. + 6 sept. 1914 + MORT POUR LA PATRIE. + + +The sun was fast declining over the chalk hills and it grew bitter cold. +I unfolded my camera, stepped back eight paces, and pressed the trigger. +We clambered back into the car and resumed the road to Meaux. As I +looked over my shoulder the last things I saw in the enfolding twilight +were those little flags still fluttering wistfully in the wind. + + + + +XIII + +MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS + + +We lay the night at Meaux. It was a town which breathed the enchantments +of the Middle Ages and had for me the intimacy of a personal +reminiscence. Sixteen years earlier, when reading for a prize essay at +Oxford, I had studied the troubled times of Étienne Marcel in the +treasures of the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, and I knew every +kilometre of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux, Compiègne, +Senlis--they called to my mind dreamy hours in the dim religious light +of muniment-rooms and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart. +Little did I think when I read those belligerent chronicles in the +sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian and the Bibliothèque Nationale, +tracing out the warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the Dauphin +and the Provost of the Merchants, that the day would come when I would +be traversing these very fields engaged in detective enterprises upon +the footprints of contemporary armies. To compare the _variae +lectiones_ of two manuscripts concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish +is good, it has all the excitement of the chase; but to be collating the +field note-book of a living Hun with the _dossier_ of a contemporary +Justice de Paix, this is better. It has all the contact of reality and +the breathless joy of the hue and cry. And, after all, were things so +very different? Generations come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but +the earth endureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and valleys +that have witnessed the devastation of the Hun have also seen the +ravages of the mercenaries and free companies of the Middle Age. As I +lay in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the pages of my pocket +volume of M. Zeller's _Histoire de France racontée par les +contemporains_, and hit on the "Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marchès," +ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of widows' houses. And as I +read, it seemed as though I were back in the department _du Contentieux_ +of the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages of a German +officer's field note-book. For thus speaks Aimerigot Marchès in the +delectable pages of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern French: + + + There is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of + the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How + blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on a rich + abbé, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from + Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with + the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices + from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours + or was to ransom at our sweet will. Every day we had more money. + The peasants of Auvergne and Limousin provisioned us and brought to + our camp corn and meal, and baked bread, hay for the horses and + straw for their litter, good wines, oxen, and fine fat sheep, + chicken, and poultry. We carried ourselves like kings and were + caparisoned as they, and when we rode forth the whole country + trembled before us. Par ma foi, cette vie était bonne et belle. + + +Is not that your very Hun? He is a true reversion to type. Only, whereas +among the French he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans he +is a product of the kultured present. And to turn from the field +note-book of the German soldier with its swaggering tale of loot, lust, +and maudlin cups, its memoranda of stolen toys for Felix and of ravished +lingerie for Bertha, all viewed in the rosy light of the writer's +egotism as a laudable enterprise, to the plain depositions of the +Justice de Paix, and see the reverse side of the picture with its tale +of ruined homes and untilled fields, was just such an experience as it +had been to turn from the glittering pages of Froissart to the sombre +story of Jean de Venette,[9] a monk of Compiègne, Little Brother of the +Poor and chronicler of his times, as he pondered on these things in the +scriptorium: + + + In this year 1358, the vines, source of that beneficent liquor + which gladdens the heart of man, were no longer cultivated; the + fields were neither tilled nor sown; the oxen and the sheep went no + longer to the pasture. The churches and houses, falling into decay, + presented everywhere traces of devouring flames or sombre ruins and + smouldering. The eye was no longer gladdened as before with the + sight of green meadows and yellowing harvests, but rather afflicted + by the aspect of briers and thistles, which clustered everywhere. + The church bells no longer rang joyously to call the faithful to + the divine offices, but only to give the alarm to the peasants at + the approach of the enemy and the signal for flight. + + +As it was in the days of Jean de Venette, so it is now. I thought of +that mournful passage as I wandered next day among the ruins of +Choisy-au-Bac, a village not twenty miles from the place where Jean de +Venette was born, and saw old women cowering among the ruins of their +burnt-out homes. + +If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century returned to Meaux to-day +he would have little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for +though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little. +The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of +the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century, +and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window--though +it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the +flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent +adventures when he feels the first chill of age--is stamped with the +characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would +find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for +like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in +procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and +white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty +consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And +it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German +occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese +like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting a +_maire_, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he +fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See. +Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little +house--surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which +there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and +his biretta. + +We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial +mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and, +having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I +applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open +the window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least +responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made +demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite +simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before. +With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hôtel +de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning, +and thus also had the aged waiter at the Métropole disposed of a +flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough; +gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and +in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was +purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and +imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after +all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could +hear the thunder of their guns. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[9] Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de +Nangis. See M. Lacabane in the _Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes_ (1e +série), t. iii. + + + + +XIV + +THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS + + +We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away +betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a +flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crépy-en-Valois we entered the Forest +of Compiègne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and +grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead +in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a +sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs +and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like +figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when +men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums +beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the +silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the +charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to +certain soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain +in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern +guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough, +as we drove into Compiègne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as +our own, in their mouse-coloured _couvre-casques_ and cavalry cloaks, +though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal +conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood +about the square in front of the exquisite Hôtel de Ville, with its +high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many +pinnacles. North and east of Compiègne lie the zones of the respective +armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our +passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass +appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to +the south of us between Compiègne and Paris. + +The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to +the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of +spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made +patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the +blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of +the more distant woodlands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we +neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon +the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer +appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of +trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms--just such an avenue as that +along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbé +Lantaigne--yet not a soul was to be seen upon the _trottoir_. A brooding +silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost +menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which +froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing +perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay +with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose. +And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers, +blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry. +And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise +as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as +porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon +these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out. + +In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was +not until we sought out the house of a captain of dragoons, a friend of +my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. +The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge, +and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as +he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he +were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of +which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the +impact of bullets. And this was his tale. + +One afternoon early in September--it was the second day of the month, he +remembered it because there had been an untimely frost over night--he +heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of the town, and a column +of grey-coated men suddenly appeared in the street. An officer blew a +whistle, and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion, +the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears +and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms +he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the +tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there +panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of +furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. +And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And after that +silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands +and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; +he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of +smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked +and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge +heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid +himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied +with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a +lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry +and sang lustily--the concierge thought they had been drinking; they +sang thus, "_comme ça!_" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a +tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his +life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn: + + + Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott. + + +Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile the _maire_, M. Odent, a good man and +greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hôtel de Ville. His secretary +proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the _maire_ tranquilly, +"one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb +of Chammont, the headquarters of von Kluck, and his guards buffeted him +and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death. +He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them--"très +dignement," the concierge had been told--handed them his papers, and +bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into +a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it +the next day; the feet were protruding. + +All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as +he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he +spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed +to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu +he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our +salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round +towards Compiègne. I shall never see Senlis again. + + + + +III + +UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES + + + + +XV + +A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" + + Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la + guerre. Manier des armes, revêtir l'uniforme, monter à cheval ou + marcher au commandement, _être redoutable sans cesser d'être + aimable_, dépasser le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grâce + s'il se peut, défier l'ennemi, connaître l'aventure, jouer ce qui a + peu duré, ce qui est encore illusion, rêve, ambition, ce qui est + encore une beauté, ô jeunesse, voilà ce que vous aimez! Vous n'êtes + pas liée, vous n'êtes pas fanée, vous pouvez courir le + monde.--RENÉ BAZIN, _Récits du temps de la guerre_. + + +Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda--never had I seen such a +multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind +congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them +everywhere--Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage +of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital--orderly, +subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors +and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of +wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights +extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single café, +faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which +the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz +and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all +either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the +colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from +the _Mairie_ at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at +street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle, +held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old +woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and +hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so +far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured +motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a +stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their +insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by +rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm +beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything, +accentuated; much was "défendu," and many things which were still lawful +were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones--it was only the +wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were +the picture postcards in the shops--I had forgotten them--nothing more +characteristically _macabre_ have I ever seen. One such I bought one +morning--a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden +horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the +horse--I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai dué le +cavalier, foilà le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Héros." + + +It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war, +that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The +ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and +it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing +cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had +answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garçon!" in a big Paris hotel, +and was now a _sous-officier_ in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds +received in the thick of the fighting round Mülhausen. He was enjoying +his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he +confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly +satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he +not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your +own job--particularly if he does it badly? The _sous-officier_ nearly +wept with joy when, a moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With +him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner +which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's +vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye +while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a +distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his +chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked +on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the +voluptuous pages of _La Vie Parisienne_. + +The _sous-officier_, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a +histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge +of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and +followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended +his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the +height of the leaping earth. + +"_Quinze mètres--comme ça, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!_ And +they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (_sur l'épaule_)--so! +They shoot under the arm (_sous le bras_)--so! And they like to join +hands like children--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the +wood crouching like dogs--one behind the other. They are a bad +lot--_canaille_. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on +church-towers. There was one of our sappers--_diable!_ they tied him to +a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him." + +"But you make them pay for that?" + +He smiled grimly. "_Mais oui!_ When they see us they throw everything +away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, '_Pas +de mal, Alsatien_.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through +them like butter and say, '_Pour vous!_' A little _étrenne_, you know, +monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim +recollection. + +"_Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!_[10] _Ja!_" It was the Alsatian who +was speaking. + +"_Sie sprechen Deutsch!_"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment. + +"_Ja, ich kann nicht anders--um so mehr schade!_"[12] he replied +mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having +deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear +him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way +the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I +interpolated, "it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get +away like yourself." + +"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German +army. They watch us--and they put Prussian _sous-officiers_ over us to +spy. So when we see the _sous-officier_ sneaking about, we raise our +voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when +we are alone--well, then we say what we think." + +And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits--how +they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies, +like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the +knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources +of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied +territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other +such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful +silence and then told a tale. + +"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my +company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good--not +too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"--he bowed +apologetically to me--"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he +talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our +captain noticed something--two things. First, monsieur, the English +officer was very troubled with his eyes--he was always applying a large +white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the +English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was +the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly--the weather +was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground +was too wet. And the German shells--they begin to fall right in the +midst of us--they had been so wide before. So the captain was very +concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very +politely and says he had better see the doctor. A _sous-officier_ and +two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor' +was the _liaison_ officer with our brigade--an English officer. And he +finds that the officer is a spy--a Bosche. He have no more trouble with +his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to +spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that. + +"You like the bayonet?" I asked. + +"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a _bon enfant_," said the +_sous-officier_. "And they can't fence (_escrimer_), the Bosches--they +are too _lourds_. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men +fought like tiger-cats--so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no +one said a word. Nor a sound except the clash of steel." His eyes +flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go +through them--they grunt, _comme un cochon_." Perhaps I shuddered +slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (_ruses +honteuses_). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands +after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave +a snort of contempt. + +"What do they cry?" + +"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German +pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a +minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had +wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any +longer. And so perish all Germans! + +The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards. +"We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispassionately. +"Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many +dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were +leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire--such a +stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been +killed with the bayonet--they are quite black. I suppose it's the +grease." + +"The grease?" + +"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting +rusty." + +He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a +battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The +reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further +recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French +shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans--they had been surprised by a +shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in +their hands, monsieur, just as you see us--and they hadn't got a +scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre." + +"Yes," said the _sous-officier_, "I have seen them like that. I remember +I found a big Bosche--six feet four he must have been--sitting dead in a +house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there +like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff--yes! _comme +une poupée_. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not one! And do you +know what he had on--a woman's chemise! _Écoutez!_" he added suddenly, +and he held up a monitory hand. + +Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat +of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the +measure--who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a trumpet. The +door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing +a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas +"crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his +heels. + +Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice: + + + Allons! enfants de la Patrie! + + +A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown +down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The +others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The +Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of +his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops, +with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick +child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default +of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage +way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum, +more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant +cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed! +To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying +men with its _viaticum_. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has +exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to +the side of men: + + + Tout est soldat pour vous combattre: + S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros, + La terre en produit de nouveaux + Contre vous tout prêts à se battre. + Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons: + Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. + + +As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor +on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of +joy: + + + Le jour de gloire est arrivé! + + +It was the note of the conqueror. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians! + +[11] You speak German! + +[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity! + + + + +XVI + +PETER + + +My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his +sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term +as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly +confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up +their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without +reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of +many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the +cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill +like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one +might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite. +The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional +slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous +stones, was unmistakable. + +"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We +knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel +every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the +silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from +the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we +heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down +and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, +the upturned faces of the men. + +"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French +soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that _vade mecum_ (price +one penny) of the British soldier: _French, and how to speak it_. It was +night, not day, but that didn't matter. + +"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us. + +"Good-night"--"Good-night, old chap"--"Good-night, my son"--the men +shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely +saluted. + +"It's Peter," said T----; "he'll be frightfully bucked up." + +"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the +rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the +bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure +in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window. + +"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The +light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's +shoulder from the window. + +"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They +saluted me! Did _you_ see?" he said, turning to me. + +"I did, Major Peter." + +"You're kidding!" + +"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you +commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future +to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to +salute you too, now." + +This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to +Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always +addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was +ordering him to bed. At such times--there was a nightly contest on the +matter--the paternal authority could not afford to concede any +prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be +reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning. + +"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know +lots of officers up there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly. +Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his +preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and +domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards. +"Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from +his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of +_The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_, _The Cock-House at Fellsgarth_, and +Newbolt's _Pages from Froissart_. Peter was rather eclectic in his +tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents +of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his +father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys' +jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental +inventory of them: + + + (1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers. + + (2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun + requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground. + + (3) A miniature aeroplane--the wings rather crumpled as though the + aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent. + + (4) A knife. + + (5) Several pieces of string. + + (6) A coloured "alley." + + (7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord + Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien. + + (8) A top. + + (9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops. + + +For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was +certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being +included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than +some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber +officers at the Front. + +The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter +piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in +which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and +graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and +proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole +business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated +airman. + +"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the +aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast. + +"It's me, Captain S----," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend +----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He's +attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first +time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather +a personage. + +The Captain and I discussed the merits of the new Lewis machine-gun, +while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and +monoplanes. + +"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in +an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for +Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a +Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views. +He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is +now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the +prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him +that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my +question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was +mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked. + +Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties +which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the +public service--the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian +Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or +Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether +it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of +Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in +the R.F.A., saved a battery at X---- Y----. Another is the chief of the +most mysterious of our public services--a man who speaks little and +listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who +changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a +price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He +neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands +an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this +uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle Dick's got eyes like +gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public +Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know +such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored +expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the +counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of +the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most, +although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to +know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it +_The Man behind the Scenes_. + +Such was Peter's family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he +feared God, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had +promised Peter that he would let him see the new Lewis machine-gun. It +is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the +bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the +back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in +this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of +Peter's private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged +his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded +to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This +interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful. + +"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked. + +"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"--Peter now calls other +boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a +West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as +"niggers"--"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must +send them something." + +He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with +the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That's from Jackson +minor," he said. "Cheek, isn't it?" + +I began reading the letter aloud. + + + DEAR OLD PAN--You must be having a ripping time. I see + your letter is headed "The Front" ... + + +I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably. + + + ... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully + bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's.... + + +"What's Fenner's?" I said to Peter. + +"Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end +of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term. +But we beat them at footer." + + + We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder + Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I + showed him the envelope of your letter with "Passed by the Censor" + on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, + "That's proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll + get the V.C. or something--the Head'll be sure to give us a + half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's + newspaper when he leaves it lying about--you know how he swanks + about it--said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French + kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of + Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion + of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was + rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to + command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of + devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that + legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you + get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you + can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something. + + +"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was +pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky. + +"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round. +He was very red. + +"I didn't mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says +at the end." + +I read on--this time in silence: + + + I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to + tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at + center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod--we + hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never + saw one. We've given up German this term--beastly language; it's + just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never + know what he's driving at. + + +Then followed a sentence heavily underlined: + + + _By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last + term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on + it, German blood I mean_.--Yours to a cinder, + + ARTHUR JACKSON. + + +I handed this priceless missive back to Peter. + +"Cheek, isn't it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a +bayonet!" + +"But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you +can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know." + +Peter blushed. + +"Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the Front, and the fellows +wouldn't think anything of me if I hadn't been _near_ the Front," he +said, apologetically. "Hullo, they're going up!" + +An aeroplane was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across +the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by +pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she +gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She +took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and +gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he +promised to take me up some day," he said sadly. + +"Yes, some day, Peter," I said encouragingly. "But it's time we were +getting back. You know you've got to catch the leave-boat at four +o'clock this afternoon." + + * * * * * + +Peter's father and I stood on the quay, having taken farewell of Peter. +There was an eminent Staff Officer going home on leave--a very great man +at G.H.Q., a lieutenant-general, who inspired no less fear than respect +among us all. He knew Peter's father in his distant way, and had not +only returned his salute, but had even condescended to ask, in his +laconic style, "Who is the boy?"--whereupon Peter's father had, with +some nervousness, introduced him. All the other officers going home on +leave, from a Brigadier down to the subalterns, stood at a respectful +distance, glancing furtively at the hawk-like profile of the great man, +and lowering their voices. It was a tribute not only to rank but to +power. As the ship gathered way and moved slowly out of the harbour I +pulled the sleeve of Peter's father. "Look!" I said. The +Lieutenant-General and Peter were engaged in an animated conversation on +the deck, and the great man, usually as silent as the sphinx and not +less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some warmth and great +interest, as though hard put to keep his end up, some point of debate +propounded to him by Peter. + +"T----, old chap," I said, "Peter'll be a great man some day." + +Peter's father said nothing, but his eyes grew misty. Perhaps he was +thinking of that lonely grave in the distant plains of the Deccan where +Peter's mother sleeps. + + + + +XVII + +THREE TRAVELLERS + +(_October 1914_) + + +My train left Paris at 1.52 in the afternoon. It was due at Calais at +eight o'clock the same evening. But it soon became apparent that +something was amiss with our journey--we crawled along at a pace which +barely exceeded six miles an hour. At every culvert, guarded by its +solitary sentry, we seemed to pause to take breath. As we approached +Amiens, barely halfway on our journey, somewhere about 9.30 P.M., we +passed on the opposite line of rails a Red Cross train, stationary, and +throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of +an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor. +It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, +and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far +behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out +of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape +were a Japanese print. Through the open door of the horse-box I saw a +soldier stretched upon his straw, with a red gaping wound in his +half-naked body. Over him stooped a nurse, improvising with delicate +ministries a hasty dressing. In the next carriage the black face of a +wounded Senegalese looked out, unearthly in the moonlight. Ahead of us +an interminable line of trains (some seventy of them I was told) had +passed, conveying fresh troops. Then I knew. The Germans, hovering like +a dark cloud some twenty miles away, had been reinforced, and a fierce +battle was in progress. The news of it had travelled by some mysterious +telepathy to every village along the line, and at every crossing groups +of pale-faced women, silent and intent, kept a restless vigil. They +looked like ghosts in the moonlight; no cheer escaped them as we passed, +no hand waved an exuberant greeting. In the twilight we had already seen +red-trousered soldiers, vivid as poppies against the grass, digging +trenches along the line, and at one point a group of sappers improvising +a wire footbridge across the river. The contagion of suspense was in the +air,--you seemed to catch it in the faint susurrus of the poplars. + +"Shall we get to Calais?" I asked. + +"Bon Dieu! I know not," was the reply of the harassed guard. + +We pursued our stealthy journey, reached Abbeville somewhere about +midnight, and Boulogne in the small hours. 4 A.M. Calais at last! I +joyfully exclaimed. But between Calais Ville and Calais Maritime a group +of officers boarded our train and, for some mysterious reason, we were +headed off to Dunkirk. It grew colder and more cold, and I had had no +food since noon of yesterday. But my thoughts were with our men, the men +whom I had lately come to know, now lying out on the bare earth in the +moonlit trenches, keeping their everlasting vigil and blowing on their +fingers numbed with cold. We reached Dunkirk at 6 A.M. No explanation +why the train had played truant at Calais was vouchsafed me, nor was any +hope held out of a return. In those days I was travelling as a private +person, and was not yet endowed with the prerogatives by which, in the +name of a Secretary of State, I could requisition cars and impress men +to do my bidding. + +At a hopeless moment I had the good fortune to fall in with a King's +Messenger, carrying despatches, who was in the next carriage. He +produced his special passports, and the prestige of "Courrier du Roi," +Knight of the Order of the Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every +one was at our service. We were escorted to the military headquarters +of Dunkirk--through streets already echoing with the march of French +infantry, each carrying a big baton of bread and munching as he kept +step, to an office in which the courteous commandant was just completing +his toilet. The Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of the +English officers was rung up, and thither we went through an ambuscade +of motor-cars in the courtyard. + +A lieutenant of the Naval Flying Squadron was ready for us with his +powerful Rolls-Royce, and we were soon on the high road to Calais. +Everywhere were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of barbed-wire +entanglements in the distant fields, deep trenches, earthworks six feet +thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were +stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the +shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the +steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy +of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and +presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive +cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a little group of French +soldiers, their cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sunk in deep +black hollows by their eternal vigil. "Officier Anglais!" "Courrier du +Roi!" we exclaimed, and were sped on our way with a weary smile and +"Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men were already toiling in the +fields, stooping like the figures in Millet's "Gleaners," as we raced +through an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed inns, past +depopulated farms, past wooden windmills, perched high upon wooden +platforms like gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre word was +exchanged about Antwerp--again that strange telepathy of peril. Calais +at last! and a great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger. + + * * * * * + +He was a London wine-merchant of repute, who had got here at last from +Rheims, whither he had gone to pay his yearly inspection of the +champagne vintage, only to find the red wine-press of war. Three weeks +he had lived like primitive man in the wine-cellars of Rheims, with the +shells screaming overhead--screaming, he says, just like the long-drawn +sobbing whistle of an express train as it leaves a tunnel. Never has he +lived such days before; never, he fervently prays, will he live them +again. From his narrative I got a glimpse of a subterranean existence, +as tenebrous and fearful as the deepest circle of Dante's _Inferno_, +with a river of tears falling always in the darkness of the vaults. A +great wine-cellar--there are ten miles of them at Rheims--crowded with +four thousand people, lighted only by candles, and swarming with huge +rats; the blanched faces of women, the crying of children, the wail of +babies at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling masonry--the men had +armed themselves with big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the +vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one long threnody of +anguish. Outside, the conscious stone of the great monument of mediaeval +aspiration was being battered to pieces, and the glorious company of the +apostles, the goodly fellowship of the martyrs, suffered another and a +less resurgent martyrdom. After days of this crepuscular existence he +emerged to find the cathedral less disfigured than he had feared. One +masterpiece of the mediaeval craftsmen's chisel is, however, +irremediably destroyed--the figure of the devil. We hope it is a +portent. + + * * * * * + +The King's Messenger had posted from a distant country, and his way +through Dijon had been truly a Via Dolorosa. Thirty-six people standing +in the corridor, and in his own crowded compartment--he had surrendered +his royal prerogative of exclusion--was a woman on the verge of +hysteria, finding relief not in tears but in an endless recital of her +sorrow. She and her husband had a son--the only son of his mother--gone +to the front, reported badly wounded, and for days, like Joseph and +Mary, the anxious parents had sought him, only to find him on the +threshold of death, with a bullet in his liver. Again and again she +beguiled her anguish by chronicles of his miraculous childhood--his +precocious intelligence at five, his prescience at six, his unfathomable +wisdom at seven. The silent company of wayfarers listened in patience to +the twice-told tale. No one could say her nay as she repeated her litany +of pain. She was, indeed, the only passenger in that compartment whose +eyes were dry. _Stabat Mater Dolorosa._ + + + + +XVIII + +BARBARA + + +It was the Duchess of X.'s Hospital at a certain _plage_ on the coast. I +had motored thither through undulating country dotted with round beehive +ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the +distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we +neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, +fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of +broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate +existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held +up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave +of the sky. The bare needle-like branches of the broom and fir stood out +blackly against the biscuit-coloured sand with the sharp outlines of an +etching. + +I had taken a hospitable cup of tea with the Duchess in the Matron's +room. She was clothed in fine linen but without her purple; she wore +the ordinary and serviceable slate-coloured dress of a nurse. It was +here I had the honour of being introduced to Barbara. She was nursing a +doll with great tenderness, and had been asking the Duchess why she did +not wear her "cowonet." + +"This is Barbara--our little Egyptian," said the matron. + +Barbara repudiated the description hotly. + +"She was born in Egypt," explained the matron. + +"Ah," I said, "that wasn't your fault, Barbara, was it? But it was +Egypt's good fortune." + +Barbara ignored the compliment with the simplicity of childhood, and +proceeded to explain with great seriousness: "You see, Mummy was +travelling, and she comed to Egypt. She didn't know I was going to +happen," she added as if to clear Mummy of any imputation of +thoughtlessness. + +"And your birthday, Barbara?" + +Barbara and I discovered that both of us have birthdays in March--only +six days apart. This put us at once on a footing of intimacy--we must +have been born under the same star. Barbara proceeded to inform me that +she rather liked birthdays--except the one which happened in Egypt. I +had half a mind to execute a deed of conveyance on the spot, assigning +to her all my own birthdays as an estate _pour autre vie_, with all +_profits à prendre_ and presents arising therefrom, for I am +thirty-eight and have no further use for them. + +"I am afraid there are more than six years between us, Barbara," I said +pensively. + +Barbara regarded me closely with large round eyes. + +"About ten, I fink. I'm seven, you know." + +"How nice of you to say that, Barbara. Then I'm only seventeen." + +Barbara regarded me still more closely. + +"A little more, p'waps--ten monfs." + +"Thank you, Barbara. I'll remind you of that some day." After all, ten +years is no obstacle to the course of true love. "But what is the matter +with the doll?" Despite a rosy flush the doll has a field-dressing round +her auburn locks, and one leg is immensely stout owing to a tourniquet. + +Barbara looked at me rather less favourably than before. It was evident +that she now thought poorly of my intelligence, and that I had made a +_faux pas_. + +"I'm a nurse," Barbara explained, loftily, showing an armlet bearing the +ensign of the Red Cross. I was about to remind her of 1 & 2 Geo. V. cap. +20, which threatens the penalties of a misdemeanour against all who wear +the Red Cross without the authority of Army Council, but I thought +better of it. Instead of anything so foolish, I exhibit a delicate +solicitude about the health of the patient. I put myself right by +referring to it as "he." A less intelligent observer might pronounce it +to be decidedly of the female sex. Still, I reflected, women have +enlisted in the Army before now. I proceeded to inspect the injured limb +with professional gravity. "A compound fracture, I think, Barbara. He +will require careful nursing." + +Barbara liked this--no one in the matron's room had ever exhibited such +a clinical interest in the case before, and she thinks "fwacture" rather +imposing. + +"Let me feel his pulse," I said. I held a waxen arm between my thumb and +forefinger, and looked at my wrist-watch for some seconds, Barbara +gazing at me intently. + +"Hum! hum! I think we had better take his temperature," I said, as I +held a clinical thermometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the +rosebud lips of the patient. "103, I think." + +"Will you wite a pwescwiption?" asked Barbara anxiously. + +"Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara. Let me see, will this do, +do you think?" I scribbled on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and +handed it to Barbara. + + + Brom. Potass. 3 grs. + Hydrochl. 5 quarts. + Quin. Sulph. 1 pt. + + +She scrutinised it closely. It puzzled her, though her bewilderment was +nothing to the astonishment which that prescription would have excited +in a member of the medical profession. + +"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who +tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo +of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a +respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying. + +I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a +tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung +on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature--Pwomise?" + +I promised. + + + + +XIX + +AN ARMY COUNCIL + +(_October 1914_) + + +All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy +between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches. The country had the +delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the skies were of that +unforgettable blue which is the secret of France. The end of my journey +found me at No. ---- General Hospital. The chaplain, an old C.F. +attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the +war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore +the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's +overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with +red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone +betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every +regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect from +John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk was of the great retreat. + +"Hell it was--fire and brimstone," said a R.F.A. man. "We limbered up, +our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were +more like a blooming ambulance than a battery. We had our limbers and +waggons chock full o' details--fellers who'd been wounded or crocked up. +And reservists wi' sore feet--out o' training, I reckon," he added +magisterially. + +"Never you mind about resarvists, my son," interjected a man in the +Suffolks. "We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for +miles. We ain't no chickens." + +"No, that we bain't," said a West-countryman. "I reckon we can teach +them young fellers zummat. Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish[13] when +they was under foire the fust time. Though they were middlin' steady, +arterwards," he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his +regiment. + +"'Twere all a duddering[14] mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it +afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry; we +could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried some o' the little +'uns. And girt fires a-burnin' at night loike ricks--a terrible +blissey[15] on the hills. And 'twere that dusty and hot oi did get +mortal drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my water-bottle; +I'd gied it all to the childer." + +"What about rations?" said the chaplain. + +"Oh I were bit leery[16] i' my innerds at toimes, but oi had my +emargency ration, and them A.S.C. chaps were pretty sprack;[17] they kep +up wi' us most times. 'Twere just loike a circus procession--lorries and +guns and we soldjers all a-mixed up. And some of the harses went cruel +lame and had to be left behind." + +"That they did," said a small man in the 19th Hussars who was obviously +a Londoner. He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the deliberate +gait of the cavalryman on his feet. "Me 'orse got the blooming 'ump with +corns." + +"Ah! and what do you think of the Uhlans?" + +He sniffed. "Rotten, sir! They never gives us a chawnce. They ain't no +good except for lootin'. Regular 'ooligans. We charged 'em up near Mons, +our orficer goin' ahead 'bout eight yards, and when we got up to 'em 'e +drops back into our line. We charges in a single line, you know, knee to +knee, as close together as us can get, riding low so as to present as +small a target as we can." + +"And you got home with the Uhlans?" I asked. + +"Once. Their lances ain't much good except for lightin' street-lamps." + +"Street-lamps?" said the chaplain literally. + +"Yuss. They're too long. The blighters 'ave no grip on them. We just +parry and then thrust with the point; we've giv' up cutting exercises. +If the thrust misses, you uses the pommel--so!" He executed an +intimidating gesture with his stick. + +"Well, ah've had ma bit o' fun," interjected a small H.L.I. man +irrelevantly, feeling, apparently, it was his turn in the symposium, as +he thrust a red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones into the +group. "Ah ken verra weel ah got 'im. It was at a railway stashon where +we surprised 'em. Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer--I thocht he were +drunk--and he fired three times aht me with a ree-vol-ver. But ah got +'im. Yes, ah've had ma bit o' fun," he said complacently as he cherished +an arm in a sling. + +With him was a comrade belonging to the "Lilywhites," the old 82nd, now +known as the first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the H.L.I. +have an ancient friendship. The South Lancs have also their +antipathies--the King's Liverpools among them--but that is neither here +nor there. + +"It were just like a coop-tie crowd was the retreat," he drawled in the +broad Lancashire dialect. "A fair mix-up, it were." + +"What do you think of the Germans?" + +There was a chorus of voices. "Not much"--"Blighters"--"Swine." + +"Their 'coal-boxes' don't come off half the time," said the R.F.A. man +professionally. "And their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours has. +Ours is a treat--like sugar-loaf." The German gunnery has become deadly +enough since then. + +"Their coal-boxes do stink though," said a Hoxton man in the Royal +Fusiliers. "Reminds me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War; they used +to let off a lot of stuff that turned yellow. I've seen Boers--hairy +men, you know, sir--with their beards turned all yellow by them. Regular +hair-restorers, they was." + +"I remember up on the Aisne," continued the Hoxton man, who had an +ingenuous countenance, "one of our chaps shouted 'Waiter,' and about +fifty on 'em stuck their heads up above the trenches and said, 'Coming, +sir.'" + +There was a shout of laughter. The chaplain looked incredulous. "Don't +mind him, he's pulling your leg, sir," said his neighbour. It is a +pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately fond. + +"They can't shoot for nuts, that's a fact," said a Rifleman. "They +couldn't hit a house if they was in it. We can give them five rounds +rapid while they're getting ready to fire one. Fire from the hips, they +do. I never seen the likes of it." It was the professional criticism of +the most perfectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and we +listened with respect. "But they've got some tidy snipers," he added +candidly. + +"They was singing like an Eisteddfod," said a man in the South Wales +Borderers, "when they advanced. Yess, they was singing splendid. Like a +_cymanfa ganu_,[18] it wass. Fair play." + +"And what do you boys do?" asked the chaplain. "Do you sing too?" + +"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters, "I used every name but a +saint's name." The speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was Church +of England, or he might have been less candid. + +"There was a mon in oor company," said the red-headed one, feeling it +was his turn again, "that killed seven Jerrmans--he shot six and +baynitted anither. And he wur fair fou[19] afterwards. He grat like a +bairn." + +"Aye, mon," said a ruddy man of the Yorks L.I., "ah knaw'd ah felt mysen +dafflin[20] when ah saw me pal knocked over. He comed fra oor toon, and +he tellt me hissen the neet afore: 'Jock,' 'e said, 'tha'll write to me +wife, woan't tha?' And ah said, 'Doan't be a fule, Ben, tha'll be all +right.' 'Noa, Jock,' he tellt me, 'ah knaw'd afore ah left heeam ah +should be killt. Ah saw a mouldiwarp[21] dead afore oor door; me wife +fair dithered[22] when she saw't.'" + +The chaplain and myself looked puzzled. "It's a kind o' sign among the +fouk in our parts, sir," he proceeded, enlightening our ignorance. "And +'e asked me to take his brass for the wife. But ah thowt nowt of it. And +we lost oor connectin' files and were nobbut two platoons, and we got it +somethin' cruel; the shells were a-skirling[23] like peewits ower our +heids. And Ben were knocked over and 'e never said a ward. And then ah +got fair daft." + +There was silence for a moment. + +"I found this," suddenly interrupted a despatch-rider. He was a +fair-spoken youth, obviously of some education. He explained, in reply +to our interrogatories, that he was a despatch-rider attached to a +Signal Company of the R.E. He produced a cap, apparently from nowhere, +by mere sleight of hand. It was greasy, weather-stained, and in no +respect different from a thousand such Army caps. It bore the badge and +superscription of the R.E. We looked at it indifferently as he held it +out with an eleemosynary gesture. + +"A collection will now be taken," said the Hoxton man with a grin. + +But the despatch-rider did not laugh. "I found this cap," he said +gravely, "on Monday, September 7th, in a house near La Ferté. We stopped +there for four hours while the artillery were in action. We saw a broken +motor bicycle outside a house to which the people pointed. We went in. +We found one of our despatch-riders with an officer's sword sticking in +him. Our section officer asked the people about it, and they told him +that the despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost his way and +knocked at the door of the house. There were German officers billeted +there. They let him in, and then they stuck him up against a wall and +cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts," he added quietly. + +No one laughed any more. We all crowded round to look at that tragic +cap. "The number looks like one--nought--seven--something," said the +chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor +lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the +men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported +fit for duty. + +The English soldier hides his feelings as though he were ashamed of +them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal +twilight, and I sought to disperse it. + +"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed +to leave nothing to be desired. + +But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier +begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable--and not before. He +will bear without repining everything but luxury. + +"One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about +this New Army getting four bob?" + +"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently. + +"Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls +themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And +those shuvvers--they're like fighting cocks." + +"Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I +said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across +trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer +uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam +upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread +and butter, the whole representing a most interesting geological +formation and producing a startling chromatic effect. + +"Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw +pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat +oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?" + +My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander +affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. +"Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!" + +A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time +to go bye-bye. Parade--hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round +soon. Scoot, my sons." + +They scooted. + +The silvery notes of the bugle died away over the woods. Night was +falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray. +We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures, +his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old. +He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for +the best part of my life," he said simply, "and I had retired on a +pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly, "that it has pleased Him +to extend my days long enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I +know the British soldier and--to know him is to love him. Do you +understand?" he added, as he nodded in the direction the men had gone. + +As I looked at him, there came into my mind the haunting lines of +Tennyson's "Ulysses." + +"Yes," I said, "I understand." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] Pale. + +[14] Confusing. + +[15] Blaze. + +[16] Empty. + +[17] Smart. + +[18] Welsh for a singing meeting. + +[19] Mad. + +[20] Imbecile. + +[21] A mole. + +[22] Trembled. + +[23] Screaming. + + + + +XX + +THE FUGITIVES + + "But pray that your flight be not in the winter." + + +Some four or five miles north of Bailleul, where the _douane_ posts mark +the marches of the Franco-Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre. +Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills, +through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the +earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies +another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came +upon two lonely wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with +moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of +the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a +few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the +landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of +privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape. Not a living +thing appeared, and the secret promises of spring were so remote as to +seem incredible. + + +The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant class; the man, gnarled +like an old oak, the purple clots in the veins of his wrists betraying +the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap +had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other +end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the +axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart +the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, +a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a +spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen +utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, clanked +together. + +As our car drew up, they stopped, the woman holding her hands to her +side as though to recover breath. + +"Who are you? Where do you come from?" said my companion, a French +officer. + +They stared uncomprehendingly. + +He spoke again, this time in Flemish: + +"_Van waar komt gy? Waar gaat gy heen?_" + +The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the direction of the Menin +ridge. + +There followed a conversation of which I could make but little. But I +noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as +though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves. + +"They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by +the Bosches near the Menin ridge." + +"Are they all alone?" I asked. + +He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the +Germans when they billeted there." + +"Why?" + +"They don't know. The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock +away. These few sticks are all they have left. Curious, isn't it," he +added meditatively, "that you never see any Flemish fugitives without +their feather-beds?" I had often noticed it. Also I had noticed the +curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save +everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence. +Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become +equally dear when you have to leave them. + +"But where are they going?" + +The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed +vacantly at the lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The +canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of +sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull +thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and +forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration. +The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the +cart as though seeking support. + +We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the +spasms of his malady. + +"He says he doesn't know," my companion translated. "He's never been +outside his parish before. But he thinks he'll go to Brussels and see +the King of the Belgians. He doesn't know the Germans are in Brussels. +And anyhow he's on the wrong road." + +"But surely," I hazarded, "the _maire_ or the _curé_ could have told him +better." + +"He says the Germans shot the _curé_ and carried off the _maire_. It's a +way they've got, you know." + +It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted +sea. Their little world was in ruins. The bells that had called them to +the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had +knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the +great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their +hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the +heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields +which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry, +and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This +was the secret of their heavy lethargy. + +My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to +maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul +had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it, +the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of +the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a +time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the +refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom +has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by +parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would +supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we +directed them to go. + +But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still +standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man +gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary +humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their +inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair. + + + + +XXI + +A "DUG-OUT"[24] + + +Driver George Hawkins, of the ----th Battery (K), was engaged in drying +one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he +felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that +morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy +should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He +performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive +great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical +expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a +sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a +utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering +the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism, +and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not +been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's fetlocks he would +have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back. But being +something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to +the ground, for he suspected corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins found +himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable. +Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder. +Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt. He looked at +Tommy with pained surprise. + +"I feeds yer," he said reproachfully, "I waters yer, I grooms yer, I +stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it? Now I ask +yer?" Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence. + +"What do I get for it?" he repeated argumentatively. "I gets a blooming +kick." + +"Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a +matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive +functions, and cannot be set down here. + +"Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the +Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment. The Major +was trying hard to repress a smile. "Go on with your catechism, +Hawkins," he said. It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral +Education League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for +the repression of vice. + +"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Hawkins?" I said unguardedly. But +no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's reply was +disconcerting. "I 'ates 'em, sir," he whispered to me as the Major +turned his back; "I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They gives me +'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache something cruel." + +"He doesn't, though," said the Major, who had overheard this auricular +confidence. We had left the stable. "Our drivers are mighty fond of +their horses--and proud of them too. It's quite an infatuation in its +way. But come and see the O.T.C. We've got them down here for the +weekend, by way of showing them the evolutions of a battery. They've got +their instructor, an N.C.O. who's been dug out for the job, and I've +lent him two of the guns to put them through their paces. He's quite +priceless--a regular chip of the old Army block." + +"Now, sir," the sergeant was saying, "get them into single file." They +were to change from Battery Column to Column of Route. + +"Battery...!" began the cadet in a piping voice. + +"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mild expostulation. "You've +got to get it off your chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So!" And he gave a +stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and surprising performance, for +he was fat and scant of breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at +the ---- Club, after twenty-one years' service in the Army, had produced +a fatty degeneration which no studious arrangement of an Army belt could +altogether conceal. + +"Battery!" began the cadet, as he threw his head back and took a deep +breath. "Advance in single file from the right. The rest mark time." + +"Rest!" said the sergeant reproachfully. "There ain't no rest in the +British Army. Rear, say, 'Rear,' sir." + +"Rear, mark time!" said the cadet uncomfortably. + +"Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows, "double them back, +sir." + +"Battery, run!" said the cadet brightly. + +"As y' were! How could yer, Mr. ----?" said the sergeant grievously. +"The British Army never runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed at +the aspersion upon the reputation of the British Army into which he had +been betrayed. + +"Double--march!" + +They doubled. + +The sergeant now turned his attention to a party at gun drill. It was a +sub-section, which means a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment +was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd numbers in front, even +numbers behind. + +"Section tell off!" + +"One," from the front row. "Two," from the back. "Three," from the +front. The tale was duly told in voices which ran up and down the scale, +tenor alternating with baritone. + +"Without drag-ropes--prepare to advance!" shouted the sergeant. The odd +numbers shifted to the right of the gun, the evens to the left, but +numbers "4" and "6," being apparently under the impression that it was a +game of "musical chairs," found themselves on the right instead of the +left. + +"Too many odds," shouted the sergeant. "The British Army be used to +'eavy hodds, but not that sort. Nos. 4 and 6 get over to the near side." + +"Halt! Action front!" They unlimbered, and swung the gun round to point +in the direction of an imaginary enemy. + +The detachment were now grouped round the gun, and I drew near to have a +look at it. No neater adaptation of means to end could be devised than +your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a child, and her "bubble" is +as sensitive to a touch as mercury in a barometer. + +"No. 1 add one hundred. Two-nought minutes more left!" shouted the +sergeant, who, with the versatility of a variety artiste, was now +playing another part from his extensive repertoire. He was forward +observing officer. + +One of his pupils turned the ranging gear until the range-drum +registered a further hundred yards, while another traversed the gun +until it pointed twenty minutes more left. + +As we turned away they were performing another delicate and complicated +operation which was not carried through without some plaintive +expostulation from the N.C.O. + +"It reminds me," remarked the Major colloquially, as we strolled away, +"of Falstaff drilling his recruits. So does the texture of the khaki +they serve out to the O.T.C. 'Dowlas, filthy dowlas!' But you've no idea +how soon he'll lick them into shape. These 'dug-outs' are as primitive +as cave-dwellers in their way but they know their job. And what is more, +they like it." + +As we passed the stables I heard ecstatic sounds--a whinny of equine +delight and the blandishments of a human voice. Through the open door I +caught a glimpse of Driver Hawkins with his back turned towards us. His +left arm was round Tommy's neck and the left side of his face rested +upon Tommy's head; the fingers of his right hand were delicately +stroking Tommy's nose. + +"I forgives yer," I heard him say with rare magnanimity, "yus, I +forgives yer, old boy. But if yer does it again, yer'll give me the +blooming 'ump." + +I passed hurriedly on. It was not for a stranger to intrude on anything +so intimate. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[24] On leave in England. + + + + +XXII + +CHRISTMAS EVE + +(_1914_) + + +"Halt! Stop, I mean." + +The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool +looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and +painful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in the annexe of a +Base hospital on Christmas Eve, and the sergeant was as hard to please +as if they were recruits doing their first squad drill. They were a +scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning chaplain to the Forces, from +Base "details" and convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their +time erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead and gaining audibly +with each lap despite the desperate spurts of the rest. + +"Opened out his throttle--'e has," whispered an Army driver +professionally to his neighbour; "'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the +speed limit." + +The sergeant glanced magisterially at the offender, a young Dorset, who +a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who +has lately done enough digging for a whole parish. + +"You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he exclaimed reproachfully; +"you ain't out on patrol, yer know. 'Shun! Now again! 'Christians'." + + + Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn, + Whereon ... + + +The familiar melody was shut behind me as I closed the door. Those +West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and, +in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night, +illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a +luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the +window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the +nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered +mazily whether they had brought Father Christmas with them. + +A low cry of pain reached my ears as I opened the door of Surgical Ward +A.I. A nurse was removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought +down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him ready to spray the wound +with peroxide. "Buck up, old chap," cried the patients in the +neighbouring beds who looked on encouragingly at these ministries. +Another moan escaped him as the discoloured bandage, with its faint +odour of perchloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed flesh. + +"Next gramophone record, please!" chanted his neighbours. The patient +smiled faintly at the exhortation and set his teeth. + +"That's better, sonny," whispered the nurse with benign approval. + +"It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going to drain off the septic +matter," interjected the surgeon in holland overalls, with sleeves +tucked up to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The dresser handed +him a nickel reed from the sterilising basin. + +With a few light quick movements the wound was sprayed, dressed, +cleansed, and anointed, and the surgeon, like the good Samaritan, passed +on to the next case. Only last night the patient was in the trenches, +moaning with pain, as the stretcher-bearers carried him to the aid-post, +and from the aid-post to the forward dressing station, whence by an +uneasy journey (there were no sumptuous hospital-trains in those days) +he had come hither. But what of the others who were hit outside the +trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas Eve, in that dreadful No +Man's Land swept by the enemy's fire, whither no stretcher-bearer can +go--lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping forms, some +quivering in the barbed wire, where dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping +only for a cleanly death from a bullet before their wounds fester and +poison the blood in their veins. + + + Whereon--the Saviour--of mankind--was--born. + + +The measured cadence fell on my ear as I left the ward and passed beyond +the annexe. The sergeant had now got his section well in hand. I turned +up the long winding road towards my quarters. It was a cold moonlight +night, and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a +black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as +though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the +Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible--or so it +seemed to me--as Mars in all that starry heraldry. + +"Bon soir, monsieur!" It was the voice of the sentry, and came from +behind a barricade of hurdles, thatched with straw, on the crest of the +road over the downs. His bayonet gleamed like a silver needle in the +moonlight, and he was alone in his vigil. No shepherds watched their +flocks by night, neither did angels sing peace on earth and goodwill +towards men. Only the cold austerity of the stars kept him company. +Perhaps the first Christmas Eve was just such a starry night as this; +the same stars may have looked down upon a manger in Bethlehem. But on +the brow of the hill was one of those wayside shrines which symbolise +the anguish of the Cross, and these very stars may have looked down upon +the hill of Calvary. + + + + +IV + +THE FRONT AGAIN + + + + +XXIII + +THE COMING OF THE HUN + + +The _maire_ sat in his parlour at the Hôtel de Ville dictating to his +secretary. He was a stout little man with a firm mouth, an indomitable +chin, and quizzical eyes. His face would at any time have been +remarkable; for a French provincial it was notable in being +clean-shaven. Most Frenchmen of the middle class wear beards of an +Assyrian luxuriance, which to a casual glance suggest stage properties +rather than the work of Nature. The _maire_ was leaning back in his +chair, his elbows resting upon its arms and his hands extended in front +of him, the thumb and finger-tips of one hand poised to meet those of +the other as though he were contemplating the fifth proposition in +Euclid. It was a characteristic attitude; an observer would have said it +indicated a temperament at once patient and precise. He was dictating a +note to the _commissaire de police_, warning the inhabitants to conduct +themselves "paisiblement" in the event of a German occupation, an event +which was hourly expected. Much might depend upon that proclamation; a +word too little or too much and Heaven alone knew what innuendo a German +Commandant might discover in it. Perhaps the _maire_ was also not +indifferent to the question of style; he prided himself on his French; +he had in his youth won a prize at the Lycée for composition, and he +contributed occasional papers to the journal of the Société de +l'Histoire de France on the antiquities of his _department_. Most +Frenchmen are born purists in style, and the _maire_ lingered over his +words. + +"Continuez, Henri," he said with a glance at the clerk. "_Le Maire, +assisté de son adjoint et de ses conseillers municipaux et de délégués +de quartier, sera en permanence à l'hôtel de Ville pour assurer_--" +There was a kick at the door and a tall loutish man in the uniform of a +German officer entered, followed by two grey-coated soldiers. The +officer neither bowed nor saluted, but merely glared with an +intimidating frown. The _maire's_ clerk sat in an atrophy of fear, +unable to move a muscle. The officer advanced to the desk, pulled out +his revolver from its leather pouch, and laid it with a lethal gesture +on the _maire's_ desk. The _maire_ examined it curiously. "Ah, yes, M. +le Capitaine, thank you; I will examine it in a moment, but I have seen +better ones--our new service pattern, for example. Ja! Ich verstehe ganz +gut," he continued, answering the officer's reckless French in perfect +German. "Consider yourself under arrest," declaimed the officer, with +increasing violence. "We are in occupation of your town; you will +provide us within the next twenty-four hours with ten thousand kilos of +bread, thirty thousand kilos of hay, forty thousand kilos of oats, five +thousand bottles of wine, one hundred boxes of cigars." ("Mon Dieu! it +is an inventory," said the _maire_ to himself.) "If these are not +forthcoming by twelve noon to-morrow you will be shot," added the +officer in a sudden inspiration of his own. + +The _maire_ was facing the officer, who towered above him. "Ah, yes, +Monsieur le Capitaine, you will not take a seat? No? And your +requisition--you have your commandant's written order and signature, no +doubt?" The officer blustered. "No, no, Monsieur le Capitaine, I am the +head of the civil government in this town; I take no orders except from +the head of the military authority. You have doubtless forgotten Hague +Regulation, Article 52; your Government signed it, you will recollect." +The officer hesitated. The _maire_ looked out on the _place_; it was +full of armed men, but he did not flinch. "You see, monsieur," he went +on suavely, "there are such things as receipts, and they have to be +authenticated." The officer turned his back on him, took out his field +note-book, scribbled something on a page, and, having torn it out, +handed it to one of his men with a curt instruction. + +The _maire_ resumed his dictation to the hypnotised clerk, while the +officer sat astride a chair and executed an impatient _pas seul_ with +his heels upon the parquet floor. Once or twice he spat demonstratively, +but the _maire_ took no notice. In a few minutes the soldier returned +with a written order, which the officer threw upon the desk without a +word. + +The _maire_ scrutinised it carefully. "Ten thousand kilos of bread! +Monsieur, we provide five thousand a day for the refugees, and this will +tax us to the uttermost. The bakers of the town are nearly all _sous les +drapeaux_. Very well, monsieur," he added in reply to an impatient +exclamation from the officer, "we shall do our best. But many a poor +soul in this town will go hungry to-night. And the receipts?" "The +requisitioning officer will go with you and give receipts," retorted the +officer, who had apparently forgotten that he had placed the _maire_ +under arrest. + + * * * * * + +Subdued lights twinkled like glow-worms in the streets as the _maire_ +returned across the square to the Hôtel de Ville. He threaded his way +through groups of infantry, narrowly escaped a collision with three +drunken soldiers, who were singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" with laborious +unction, skirted the park of ammunition waggons, and reached the main +entrance. He had been on his feet for hours visiting the _boulangeries_, +the _pâtisseries_, the hay and corn merchants, persuading, +expostulating, beseeching, until at last he had wrung from their +exiguous stores the apportionment of the stupendous tribute. It was a +heavy task, nor were his importunities made appreciably easier by the +receipt-forms tendered, readily enough, by the requisitioning officer +who accompanied him, for the inhabitants seemed to view with terror the +possession of these German documents, suspecting they knew not what. But +the task was done, and the _maire_ wearily mounted the stairs. + +The officer greeted him curtly. The _maire_ now had leisure to study his +appearance more closely. He had high cheek-bones, protruding eyes, and a +large underhung mouth which, when he was pleased, looked sensual, and, +when he was annoyed, merely cruel. The base of his forehead was square, +but it rapidly receded with a convex conformation of head, very closely +shaven as though with a currycomb, and his ears stood out almost at +right angles to his skull. The ferocity that was his by nature he +seemed to have assiduously cultivated by art, and the points of his +moustaches, upturned in the shape of a cow's horns, accentuated the +truculence of his appearance. In short, he was a typical Prussian +officer. In peace he would have been merely comic. In war he was +terrible, for there was nothing to restrain him. + +Meanwhile the officer called for a corporal's guard to place the _maire_ +under arrest. "But you will first sign the following _affiche_--by the +General's orders," he exclaimed roughly. + + + Le Maire informe ses concitoyens que le commandant en chef des + troupes allemandes a ordonné que le maire et deux notables soient + pris comme otages pour la raison que des civils aient tiré sur des + patrouilles allemandes. Si un coup de fusil était tiré à nouveau + par des civils, les trois otages seraient fusillés et la ville + serait incendiée immédiatement. + + Si des troupes alliées rentraient le maire rappelle à la population + que tout civil ne doit pas prendre part à la guerre et que si l'un + d'eux venait à y participer le commandant des troupes allemandes + ferait fusilier également les otages. + + +"One moment," said the _maire_ as he took up a pen, "'_les civils_'! I +ordered the civil population to deposit their arms at the _mairie_ two +days ago, and the _commissaire de police_ and the gendarmes have +searched every house. We have no armed civilians here." + +"Es macht nichts," said the officer; "we shall add '_ou peut-être des +militaires en civil_.'" + +The _maire_ shrugged his shoulders at the disingenuous parenthesis. It +was, he knew, useless to protest. For all he knew he might be signing +his own death-warrant. He studied the style a little more attentively. +"Mon Dieu, what French!" he said to himself; "'était,' 'seraient,' +'venait'! What moods! What tenses! Monsieur le Capitaine," he continued +aloud, "if I had used such French in my exercises at the Lycée my +instituteur would have said I deserved to be shot. Pray allow me to make +it a little more graceful." But the Prussian's ignorance of French +syntax was only equalled by his suspicion of it. The _maire's_ irony +merely irritated him and his coolness puzzled him. "I give you thirty +seconds to sign," he said, as he took out his watch and the inevitable +revolver. The _maire_ took up a needle-like pen, dipped it in the ink, +and with a sigh wrote in fragile but firm characters "X---- Y----." The +officer called a corporal's guard, and the _maire_, who had fasted since +noon, was marched out of the room and thrust into a small closet upon +the door of which were the letters "_Cabinet_." This, he reflected +grimly, was certainly what in military language is called "close +confinement." The soldiers accompanied him. There was just room for him +to stretch his weary body upon the stone floor; one soldier remained +standing over him with fixed bayonet, the others took up their position +outside. + +Meanwhile a company of Landwehr had bivouacked in the square, four +machine-guns had been placed so as to command the four avenues of +approach, patrols had been sent out, sentries posted, all lights +extinguished, and all doors ordered to be left open by the householders. +Billeting officers had gone from house to house, chalking upon the doors +such legends as "_Drei Männer_," "_6 Offiziere--Eingang verboten_," and, +on rare occasions "_Gute Leute hier_." The trembling inhabitants had +been forced to wait on their uninvited guests as they clamoured noisily +for wine and liqueurs. All the civilians of military age, and many +beyond it, had been rounded up and taken under guard to the church; +their wives and daughters alone remained, and were the subject of +menacing pleasantries. So much the _maire_ knew before he had returned +from his errand. As he lay in his dark cell he speculated painfully as +to what might be happening in the homes of his fellow-townsmen. He sat +up once or twice to listen, until the toe of the sentry's boot in his +back reminded him of his irregularity. Now and again a woman's cry broke +the silence of the night, but otherwise all was still. He composed +himself to sleep on the floor, reflecting that he must husband his +strength and his nerves for what might lie ahead of him. He was very +tired and slept heavily in spite of his cold stone bed. At the hour of +one in the morning he was awakened by a kick, and he found himself +staring at an electric torch which was being held to his face by a tall +figure shrouded in darkness. It was the captain. He sat up and rubbed +his eyes. + +"'_Fusillé_'! Bien! so I am to be shot! and wherefore, Monsieur le +Capitaine?" + +"Some one has fired upon us," said the officer, "one of your dirty +fellows; you must pay for it." + +"And the order?" asked the _maire_ sleepily; "you have the Commandant's +order?" + +"Never mind about the order," said the officer reassuringly, "the order +will be forthcoming at eight o'clock. Oh yes, we shall shoot you most +authoritatively--never fear." + +The officer knew that nothing could be done until eight o'clock, for he +dared not wake the Commandant, but he did not see why he should deny +himself the pleasure of waking up this pig of a _maire_ to see how he +would take it. The _maire_ divined his thoughts, and without a word +turned over on his side and pretended to go to sleep again. From under +his drooping eyelids he saw the officer gazing at him with a look in +which dislike, disappointment, and pleasurable expectation seemed to be +struggling for mastery. Then with a click he extinguished his torch and +withdrew. + +At eight o'clock the _maire_ awoke to learn with mild surprise that he +was not to be shot. Beyond that his guard would tell him nothing. It was +only afterwards he learnt that one of the drunken revellers had been +prowling the streets, and, having given the sentries a bad fright by +letting off his rifle at a lamp-post, had expiated his adventure at the +hands of a firing party in the cemetery outside the town. + +For two days the _maire_ was unmolested. He was allowed to see his +_adjoint_,[25] who came to him with a troubled face. + +"The babies are crying for milk," he said, "the troops have taken it +all. I begged one of the officers to leave a little for the inhabitants, +but he said the men did not like their coffee without plenty of hot +milk." The _maire_ reflected for a moment, and then dictated an _avis_ +to the inhabitants enjoining upon them to be as sparing in their +consumption of milk as possible for the sake of the "mères de famille" +and "les petits enfants." + +"Tell the _commissaire de police_ to have that posted up immediately," +he added. "We can do no more." + +"They have taken the bread out of our mouths," resumed the _adjoint_, +"and now they are despoiling us of our goods. They are like a swarm of +bailiffs let loose upon our homes. Everywhere they levy a distress upon +our chattels. There is an ammunition waggon outside my house; they have +put all the furniture of my _salon_ upon it." + +"You should make a protest to the Commandant," said the _maire_, but not +very hopefully. + +"It is no use," replied the _adjoint_ despondingly. "I have. He simply +shrugged his shoulders and said, 'C'est la guerre.' It is always so. +They have shot Jules Bonnard." + +"Et pourquoi?" asked the _maire_. + +"I know not," said the _adjoint_. "They found four market-gardeners +returning from the fields last night and shot them too--they made them +dig their own graves, and tied their hands behind their backs with their +own scarves. I protested to a Staff officer; he said it was 'verboten' +to dig potatoes. I said they did not know; how could they? He said they +ought to know. Then he abused me, and said if I made any more complaints +he would shoot me too. They have made the _civils_ dig trenches." + +"Ah," said the _maire_. He knew it was a flagrant violation of the Hague +Regulations, but it was not the tithe of mint and cummin of the law that +troubled him. It was the reflection that the _civil_ who is forced to +dig trenches is already as good as dead. He knows too much. + +"And the women," continued the _adjoint_, in a tone of stupefied horror, +"they are crying, many of them, and will not look one in the face. Some +of them have black eyes. And the young girls!" + +The _maire_ brooded in impotent horror. His meditations were interrupted +by the entrance of the captain. "The Commandant wishes to see you _tout +de suite_," he exclaimed. "March!" He was conducted by a corporal's +guard, preceded by the captain, into the presence of the General, who +had taken up his quarters in the principal mansion looking out upon the +square. The General was a stout, square-headed man, with grey moustaches +and steel-blue eyes, and the _maire_ divined at a glance that here was +no swashbuckler, but a man who had himself under control. "I have +imposed a fine of 300,000 francs upon your town; you will collect it in +twenty-four hours; if it is not forthcoming to the last franc I shall be +regretfully compelled to burn this town to the ground." + +"And why?" exclaimed the _maire_, whom nothing could now surprise, +though much might perplex. + +The General seemed unprepared for the question. He paused for a moment +and said, "Some one has been giving information to the enemy." +"No!"--he held up his hand, not impolitely but finally, as the _maire_ +began to expostulate--"I have spoken." + +"But," said the _maire_ desperately, "we shall be ruined. We have not +got it. And all our goods have been taken already." + +"You have our receipts," said the General. "They are as good as gold. +German credit is very high; the Imperial Government has just floated a +loan of several milliards. And you have our stamped _Quittungen_." He +became at once voluble and persuasive in his cupidity, and forgot +something of his habitual caution. "You surely do not doubt the word of +the German Government?" he said. The _maire_ doubted it very much, but +he discreetly held his tongue. "And our requisitioning officers have not +been niggardly," continued the General; "they have put a substantial +price on the goods we have taken." This was true. It had not escaped the +_maire_ that the receipt-forms had been lavish. + +"I will do my best," said the _maire_ simply. + +He was now released from arrest, and he retired to his house to think +out the new problem that had presented itself. The threat to burn down +the town might or might not be anything but bluff; he himself doubted +whether the German Commandant would burn the roofs over his men's +heads, as long as the occupation lasted. The military disadvantages were +too obvious, though what the enemy might do when they left the town was +another matter. They might shoot him, of course; that was more than +probable. + +But how to find the money was an anxious problem and urgent. The +municipal _caisse_ was empty: the managers of the banks had closed their +doors and carried their deposits off to Paris before the Germans had +entered the town; of the wealthier bourgeoisie some had fled, many were +ruined, and the rest were inadequate. The _maire_ pondered long upon +these things, leaning back in his chair with knitted brows in that +pensive attitude which was characteristic. Suddenly he caught sight of a +blue paper with German characters lying upon a walnut table at his +elbow. He took it up, scrutinised it, and studied the signature: + + + Empfangschein. + Werth 500 fr. erhalten. + Herr Hauptmann von Koepenick. + + +Then he smiled. He got up, put on his overcoat, took up his hat and +cane, and went forth into the drizzling rain. + + * * * * * + +Two hours later he was at the headquarters of the Staff and asked to see +the Commandant. He was shown into his presence without delay. "Well?" +said the Commandant. "Monsieur le Général, I have collected the fine," +said the _maire_. The General's face relaxed its habitual sternness; he +grew at once pleasant and polite. "Good," he said. The _maire_ opened a +fat leather wallet and placed upon the table under the General's +predatory nose a large pile of blue documents, some (but not all) +stamped with the violet stamp of the German A.Q.M.G. "If the +_hochgeehrter_ General will count them," said the _maire_, "he will see +they come to 325,000 francs. It is rather more than the fine," he +explained, "but I have made allowance for the fact that they are not +immediately redeemable. They are mostly stamped, and--_they are as good +as gold_." + +For three minutes there was absolute silence in the room. The gilt clock +in its glass sepulchre on the mantelpiece ticked off the seconds as +loudly as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the night. The +_maire_ speculated with more curiosity than fear as to how many more of +these seconds he had to live. Never had the intervals seemed so long nor +their registration so insistent. The ashes fell with a soft susurrus in +the grate. The Commandant looked at the _maire_; the _maire_ looked at +the Commandant. Then the Commandant smiled. It was an inscrutable smile; +a smile in which the eyes participated not at all. There was merely a +muscular relaxation of the lips disclosing the teeth; to the _maire_ +there seemed something almost canine in it. At last the General spoke. +"Gut!" he said gutturally; "you may go." + + * * * * * + +"You astonish me," I said to the _maire_, as he concluded his narrative. +We were sitting in his parlour, smoking a cigar together one day in +February in a town not a thousand miles from the German lines. "You +know, Monsieur le Maire, they have shot many a municipal magistrate for +less. I wonder they didn't make up their minds to shoot you." The +_maire_ smiled. "They did," he said quietly. He carefully nicked the ash +off his cigar, as he laid it down upon his desk, and opened the drawer +of his escritoire. He took out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It +was an order in German to shoot the _maire_ on the evacuation of the +town. + +"You see, monsieur," he exclaimed, "your brave soldiers were a little +too quick for them. You made a surprise attack in force early one +morning and drove the enemy out. So surprising was it that the Staff +officers billeted in my house left a box half full of cigars on my +sideboard! You are smoking one of them now--a very good cigar, is it +not?" It was. "And they left a good many official papers behind--what +you call 'chits,' is it not?--and this one among them. Please mind your +cigar-ash, monsieur! You see I rather value my own death-warrant." + +Moved by an irresistible impulse I rose from my chair and held out my +hand. The _maire_ took it in mild surprise. "Monsieur," I said frankly, +if crudely, "you are a brave man. And you have endured much." + +"Yes, monsieur," said the _maire_ gravely, as he glanced at a +proclamation on the wall which he has added to his private collection of +antiquities, "that is true. I have often been _très fâché_ to think that +I who won the Michelet prize at the Lycée should have put my name to +that thing over there."[26] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[25] Deputy. + +[26] This narrative follows with some fidelity the course of events as +related to the writer by the _maire_ of the town in question. But for +the most obvious of reasons the writer has deemed it his duty to +suppress names, disguise events, and give the narrative something of the +investiture of fiction. It is, however, true "in substance and in +fact."--J.H.M. + + + + +XXIV + +THE HILL + + +It was one of those perfect spring days when the whole earth seems to +bare her bosom to the caresses of the sun. The sky was without a cloud +and in the vault overhead, blue as a piece of Delft, a lark was +ascending in transports of exultant song. The hill on which we stood was +covered with young birch saplings bursting into leaf, and the sky itself +was not more blue than the wild hyacinths at our feet. Here and there in +the undergrowth gleamed the pallid anemone. A copper wire ran from pole +to pole down the slope of the hill and glittered in the sun like a +thread of gold. A little to our right two circular mirrors, glancing +obliquely at each other, stood on a tripod, and a graduated sequence of +flashes came and went, under the hands of the signallers, with the +velocity of light itself. A few yards behind us on the crest of the hill +stood a windmill, its great sails motionless as though it were a brig +becalmed and waiting for a wind, and astride one arm, like a sailor on +a yard, a carpenter was busy, with his mouth full of nails. The tapping +of his hammer and the song of the lark were the only sounds that broke +the warm stillness of the April day. A great plain stretched away at our +feet, and in the fields below women were stooping forward over their +hoes. + +The white towers of Ypres gleamed ghostlike in the distant haze. The +city had the wistful fragility of some beautiful mirage, and looking at +it across the pleasant landscape I thought of the Pilgrim's vision of +the Golden City shining in the sun beyond the Land of Beulah. Two or +three miles away on our right the ground rose gently to a range of low +wooded hills, and on their bare green slopes brown furrows showed up +like a cicatrice. They were the German trenches. On the crest of the +ridge a white house peeped out between the trees. That house seemed an +object of peculiar interest to the battery-major at my side. He was +stooping behind the "Director" with his eye to the sights as though he +was focussing the distant object for a photograph. He fixed the outer +clamp, unscrewed the inner clamp, and having got his sights on the +house, he reversed the process and swung round the sights to bear on a +little copse to our left. "One hundred and five," he said meditatively +as he found the angle. The N.C.O. took up the range-finder and measured +the distances first to the house, then to the copse. The major took up +an adjustable triangle, and with a movement of thumb and forefinger +converted it into the figure of an irregular "X." As he read off the +battery angle on the "Plotter" the N.C.O. communicated it and the +elevation to the telephone operator, who in turn communicated it to the +battery in the copse. "Battery angle seventy. Range four thousand." +Gunners are a laconic people, and their language is as economical of +words as a proposition in Euclid; their sentences resemble those +Oriental languages in which the verb is regarded as a superfluous +impertinence. Language is to them a visual and symbolical thing in which +angles and distances are predicated of churches, trees, and four-storied +houses. Now in the copse on our left six field-guns were cunningly +concealed, and even as the telephone operator spoke the dial-sights of +those six guns were being screwed round and the elevating gear adjusted +till they and the range-drum recorded the results of the major's +meditations upon the hill. Then the guns in the copse spoke, and the air +was sibilant with their speech. A little cloud no bigger than a man's +hand arose above the roof of the white house on the ridge. Our battery +had found its mark. + +Somewhere behind that ridge were the enemy's batteries and they were +yet to find. But even as we searched the landscape with our +field-glasses an aeroplane rose from behind our own position and made +for the distant ridge, its diaphanous wings displaying red, white, and +blue concentric circles to our glasses like the scales of some huge +magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke made faint +pencillings in the sky behind it. As it hovered above the ridge seven or +eight little white clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared from +nowhere just below it. They were German shrapnel. But the aeroplane +passed imperturbably on, leaving the little feathers to float in the sky +until in time they faded away and disappeared. In no long time the +aeroplane was retracing its flight, and certain little coloured discs +were speaking luminously to the battery, telling it of what the observer +had seen beyond the ridge. Between the aeroplane, the observer, the +telephone, and the guns, there seemed to be some mysterious freemasonry. +And this impression of secret and collusive agencies was heightened by +the vibration of the air above us, in which the shells from the +batteries made furrows that were audible without being visible, as +though the whole firmament were populated with disembodied spirits. The +passivity of the toilers in the field below us, who, absorbed in their +husbandry, regarded not the air above them, and the dreaming beauty of +the distant city almost persuaded us that we were the victims of a +gigantic illusion. But even as we gazed the city acquired a desperate +and tragic reality. Voices of thunder awoke behind the ridge, the air +was rent like a garment, and first one cloud and then another and +another rose above the city of Ypres, till the white towers were blotted +out of sight. A black pall floated over the doomed city, and from that +moment the air was never still, as a rhythm of German shells rained upon +it. The storm spread until other villages were involved, and a fierce +red glow appeared above the roofs of Vlamertinge. + +Yet the clouds and flame that rose above the white towers had at that +distance a flagrant beauty of their own, and it was hard to believe that +they stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men. Beyond the +voluminous smoke and darting tongues of fire, our field-glasses could +show us nothing. But we knew--for we had seen but yesterday--that behind +that haze there was being perpetrated a destruction as mournful and +capricious as that which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives overtook +Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one was even now being taken and +the other left; he who was upon the housetop would not come down to take +anything out of his house, neither would he who was in the field return +to take away his clothes. The great cathedral was crumbling to dust, +and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their +niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal +contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that +while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe +were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men +hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper pans, and stumbling +under the weight of feather-beds, while whimpering children fumbled +among their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies each of the shells, +whose trajectory we heard ever and anon in the skies overhead, were +making in that living stream were to us a subject of poignant +speculation. + +But as I looked immediately around me I found it ever more difficult to +believe that such things were being done upon the earth. The carpenter +went on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade his eyes with his +hand and gaze out over the plain, the peasants in the field continued to +hoe, a woman came out of a cottage with a child clinging to her skirts, +and said, "La guerre, quand finira-t-elle, M'sieu'?" From far above us +the song of the lark, now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated down +upon the drowsy air. + + + + +XXV + +THE DAY'S WORK + + +It was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some dozen of us all +told--the Camp Commandant, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General, the +Assistant-Provost-Marshal, the Assistant-Director of Medical Services, +the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective has nothing to do with his +personal habits), the Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a +_padre_, and myself. Most of us were known by our initials--our official +initials--for the use of them saves time and avoids pomposity. Our +duties were both extensive and peculiar, as will presently appear, for +we were in the habit of talking shop. There was, indeed, little else to +talk about. When you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with no +amusements and few amenities--neither theatres, nor sport, nor +books--and with little prospect of getting a move on, you can but +chronicle the small beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be +engaging enough at times. + +As we sat down to the stew which our orderly had compounded with the +assistance of the ingenious Mr. Maconochie, the Camp Commandant sighed +heavily. "I am a kind of receptacle for the waste products of +everybody's mind," he exclaimed petulantly. "This morning I was rung up +on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian +Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done. +Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier--_un soldat +discret_--to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant, +who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to +ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as +she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act." + +The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence. +Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to +whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much +may legitimately be expected. "Well, you may think yourself lucky you +haven't my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General at length. +"I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm +like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading +Bradshaw, except that I don't boast of it and it isn't a +recreation--it's damned hard work. I have to read the Army List for +about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong +there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone +and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd +Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having +died of heart failure on the 22nd inst." + +"Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?" asked the Camp Commandant. + +"He is the regimental goat," replied the D.A.A.G. "I suppose they +thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade +Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a +member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species." + +"Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets," said +the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. "I've been on the +trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the +Downshires are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with +them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that +they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the +trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was +spreading like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. At last I tracked it +down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about five years ago +and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a +carrier." + +"What did you do with him?" said the A.D.M.S. + +"He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a +perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy." + +"Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more +honourable than cure," said he whom we know as "Smells," and who has a +nose like a fox-terrier's. "I am the _avant-garde_ of the Staff, and you +fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make +my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue +parties, where would you all be?" + +"We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it," said +the A.P.M. ungratefully. + +"The _maire_ thinks I'm mad, of course," continued 'Smells,' "and I +can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street +are not conducive to health." + +"I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our +phylacteries," said the Assistant Provost Marshal. "Now I'm a sort of +licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and +the _estaminet_ proprietors think I'm a Temperance fanatic," he said, +as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. "One of them told me the +other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the +Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm +sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my +loins any day." + +"Yes," said the Camp Commandant, "it's our melancholy duty to be +impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I +stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again +at the Base or somewhere else _en route_; it would relieve me of any +compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the +envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably." + +"I'm something of a handwriting expert myself," said the A.P.M., +ignoring the aspersion. "They have changed the colour of the passes +again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s +signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour +of the pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance," he +murmured dreamily; "I believe I could now forge his signature very +artistically." + +"I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.," said +the A.D.M.S. "I believe I receive more chits than any man on the +staff." "Chits," it should be explained, are the billets-doux of the +Army wherein officers send tender messages to one another and make +assignations. + +"Did you hear about that chit the Camp Commandant at the Headquarters of +the ----th Corps sent to the A.Q.M.G.?" asked the A.P.M. "No? Well, the +A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to Ferrers asking if they had made use +of any Ammonal and, if so, whether the results were satisfactory. +Ferrers sent it on to the Camp Commandant for report and the Camp +Commandant wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is not +understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used--is it a drug or an +explosive?' Ferrers told him to ask the Medical Officer attached to +Corps headquarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back another chit +to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had informed him that 'Ammonal' was a +compound drug extensively used in America in cases of abnormal neurotic +excitement, and that, so far as he knew, it was not a medical issue to +Corps H.Q. He therefore regretted that he was unable to report results, +but promised that if occasion should arise to administer it to any of +the Corps H.Q. _personnel_ he would faithfully observe the effects and +report the same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he betrayed a quite +abnormal degree of neurotic excitement; in fact, he was quite nasty +about it." + +"What the devil did he mean?" asked the A.D.M.S. + +"Well, that points the moral of your remarks about handwriting," said +the A.P.M. encouragingly. "The Camp Commandant had written what looked +like an 'o' in place of an 'a.' Ammonol is a drug; ammonal is an +explosive." + +"Well, I wish some one would teach the Huns how to write decently." The +speaker was Summersby of the Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence are a +corps of detectives and have to estimate the strength, the location, and +the composition of the enemy's forces. Everything is grist that comes to +their mill and they will perform surprising feats of induction. They can +reconstruct a German Army Corps out of a Landwehr man's bootlace, his +diary, his underclothing, or his shoulder-strap--but the greatest of +these is his diary. "I've been studying the diaries of prisoners until I +feel a Hun myself. They remind me of the diary I used to keep at school, +they are all about eating and drinking. The Hun is a glutton and a +wine-bibber. But I found something to-day--'Keine Gefangene' in an +officer's field note-book." + +"Translate, my Hunnish friend," said the A.P.M. + +"No prisoners," replied Summersby shortly. + +"I hope you handed the swine over to the P.M.," said the Camp +Commandant. + +"Well, no," said Summersby. "You see he had a plausible explanation--by +the way, what perfect English those German officers talk; I'll bet that +man has eaten our bread and salt some time. He said it was a Brigade +order to the men not to make the taking of prisoners a pretext for going +back to the rear in large parties but to leave them to the supports when +they came up. The curious thing is that that officer belongs to the +112th and we've our eye on the 112th. One of their men, a fellow named +Schmidt, who surrendered on the 19th of last month, said they'd had an +order to take no prisoners but kill them all. His regiment was the +112th," he added darkly. + +"The filthy swine!" we cried in a chorus, and our talk grew sombre as we +exchanged reminiscences. + +"What pleases me about you fellows," said Ponsonby, who had been +listening with a languid air, and who was formerly in the F.O. where he +composed florid speeches in elegant French for Hague Plenipotentiaries, +"is your habits of speech. In diplomacy we contrive to talk a lot +without saying anything, whereas Army men manage to talk little and say +a great deal. You've got four words in the Army which seem to be a +mighty present help in trouble at H.Q. Their sustaining properties are +remarkable and they seem to tide over very anxious moments. When you +are in a hole you say 'Damn all,' and when you are asked for +instructions you cry 'Carry on.' I suppose it's by sitting tight and +using those words with discrimination that you fellows arrive at +greatness and attain Brigadier rank. That seems to be the first thing a +third-grade staff-officer learns." + +"The first thing a third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak +respectfully of his superiors," said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion +at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in +spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him. He turned +to the D.A.A.G. and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten to say grace. For +what we have _not_ received"--he added, with a meaning glance at a +Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.'s wife has sent out from home and which +remained on the sideboard--"the Lord make us truly thankful." This was +an allusion to the D.A.A.G.'s sacerdotal functions. For the +Adjutant-General and his staff, who know the numbers of all the Field +Ambulances, can lay hands--but not in the apostolic sense--upon every +chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and +can admonish, deprive, and suspend. + +The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction. "I think we've fixed it +up with those Red Cross drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s +department had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented +by these birds of passage on the lines of communication. "We've decided +that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the +Army Act, and that you 'follow' the British Army from the moment you +accept a pass to H.Q. My chief called some of them together yesterday, +and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under +military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days' +field-punishment to the punishment of death. This was _pour encourager +les autres_. They looked quite thoughtful." + +"That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby pensively. "Should an Army +follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot? I put it to you," he +added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I want counsel's opinion." + +"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the man of law. "But the +safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards." + +"Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put +you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because +Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously +untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts--that's a legal +expression for fraud, isn't it?--his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie. +What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?" +Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as _Aquila +vulgaris_, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of +them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by +an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode. +Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as "missing," and go to +some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return. Ponsonby +glances suspiciously at Slingsby's portly figure. + +But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of +"proceedings," and his departure was the signal for a general +dispersion. "Come and have a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I" man. +"Can't, you slacker," was the reply. "I've got to go and make up an 'I' +summary. 'Notes of an Air Reconnaissance. Distribution of the enemy's +forces. Copy of a German Divisional Circular. Notes on the German system +of signalling from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of thing. +Just now we're trying to discover how many guns they've got in the +batteries of their new formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm. +projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns +have been withdrawn. But it may be only a blind." + +As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our +respective offices a supply column rumbled over the _pavé_, each of the +seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a +fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their +motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the +aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible +from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60 +again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow the casualty returns +will come in. Good God! will it never end?" + + + + +XXVI + +FIAT JUSTITIA + + PARQUET + du + Tribunal de Ière Instance + d'Ypres + + +At last I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking +out the _procureur du roi_, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to +be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of +mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed +among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city +like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes +strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a +deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a +spectacle at once tragic and whimsical--the brass lectern still stood +upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as +with a gesture of reproof. The sight of those scrambling chairs all +huddled together and fallen headlong upon one another had something +oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts. Ypres is an +uncanny place. + +We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops, +pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until +all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt +for the _procureur du roi_--who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to +Poperinghe--we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with +French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl +exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely +boy, who regarded A----, the Staff officer accompanying me, with a +hypnotic stare. He peered at him from under drooping eyelids, flanking a +nose without a bridge, and my companion didn't like it. "He is admiring +you," I remarked by way of consolation, as indeed he was. "What do you +call it?" said A---- petulantly to a R.A.M.C. officer who was lunching +with us. The latter looked at the boy with a clinical eye. +"Necrosis--syphilitic," he said dispassionately. "And he's handing us +the cakes!" A---- exclaimed with horror. "Fetch me an ounce of civet." +We declined the cakes, and, having paid our _addition_, hastily departed +to resume our quest of the _procureur_. + +Eventually we found the legend set out above. It was a placard stuck on +the door of a private house. We entered and found ourselves in a kitchen +with a stone floor; japanned tin boxes, calf-bound volumes, and fat +registers, all stamped with the arms of Belgium, were grouped on the +shelves of the dresser. A courteous gentleman, well-groomed and +debonair, with waxed moustaches, greeted us. It was the _procureur du +roi_. With him was another civilian--the _juge d'instruction_. They +politely requested us to take a seat and to excuse a judicial +preoccupation. The _juge d'instruction_ was interrogating an inhabitant +of Poperinghe. The _procureur_ explained to me that the _prévenu_ (the +accused), who was not present but was within the precincts, was charged +with _calomnie_[27] under Section 444 of the _Code Pénal_. "But," I +exclaimed in astonishment, "are you still administering justice?" +"Pourquoi non?" he asked in mild surprise. It was true, he admitted, +that his office at Ypres had been destroyed by shell-fire, the _maison +d'arrêt_--in plain English, the prison--was open to the four winds of +heaven, and warders and gendarmes had been called up to the colours. But +justice must be done and the majesty of the King of the Belgians upheld. +The King's writ still ran, even though its currency might be limited to +the few square miles which were all that remained of Belgian territory +in Belgian hands. All this he explained to me with such gravity that I +felt further questions would be futile, if not impertinent. I therefore +held my tongue and determined to follow the proceedings closely, being +not a little curious to observe how the judgment would be enforced. + +The witness took the oath to say the truth and nothing but the truth +("rien que la vérité"), concluding with the solemn invocation, "Ainsi +m'aide Dieu." The parties had elected to have the proceedings taken in +French. + +"Your name?" said the judge, as he studied the procès-verbal prepared by +the _procureur_. + +"Jules F----." + +"Age?" + +"Cinquante-cinq." + +"Profession?" + +"Cordonnier." + +"Résidence?" + +"Rue d'Ypres 32." + +This preliminary catechism being completed, the prosecutor unfolded his +tale. He had been drinking the health of His Majesty the King of the +Belgians and confusion to his enemies in an _estaminet_ at the crowded +hour of 7 P.M. The accused had entered, and in the presence of many of +his neighbours had said to him, "Vous êtes un Bosche." "Un Bosche!" +repeated the witness indignantly. "It is a gross defamation." With +difficulty had he been restrained from the shedding of blood. But, being +a law-abiding, peaceful man and the father of a family, he volubly +explained, he had laid this information ("dénonciation") before the +_procureur du roi_. + +The judge looked grave. But he duly noted down the testimony, after some +perfunctory cross-examination, and, it being read over to the witness, +the judge added "Lecture faite," and the persisting witness signed the +deposition with his own hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other +witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty, came forward and testified +to the same effect. And they also signed their depositions and withdrew. + +The magistrate ordered the usher to bring in the accused, who had been +summoned to appear by a _mandat d'amener_. He was a stout, dark, +convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of +the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these +proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him +into knots, and reduced him to a state of extreme penitence. + +"Where were you on the 3rd of April at 7 P.M.?" began the magistrate, +making what gunners call a ranging shot. The accused appeared to have +been everywhere in Poperinghe except at the _estaminet_. He had been to +the butcher's, the baker's, and the candlestick-maker's. + +"At what hour did you enter the Café à l'Harmonie?" + +The accused tried to look as if he now heard of the Café "À l'Harmonie" +for the first time, but under the searching eye of the magistrate he +failed. He might, he conceded, have looked in there for a thirsty +moment. + +"Do you know Jules F----?" the magistrate persisted. The accused +grudgingly admitted the existence of such a person. "Is he a German?" +asked the magistrate pointedly. The accused pondered. "Would you call +him a Bosche?" persisted the magistrate. "I never _meant_ to call him 'a +Bosche,'" the accused said in an unguarded moment. The magistrate +pounced on him. He had found the range. After that the result was a +foregone conclusion. The duel ended in the accused tearfully admitting +he thought he must have been drunk, and throwing himself on the mercy of +the magistrate. + +"It is a grave offence," said the magistrate severely, as he +contemplated the lachrymose delinquent. "An _estaminet_ is a public +place within the meaning of Section 444 of the Code Pénal. Vous avez +méchamment imputé à une personne un fait précis qui est de nature à +porter atteinte à son honneur." "And calculated to provoke a breach of +the peace," he added. "It is punishable with a term of imprisonment not +exceeding one year." The face of the accused grew long. "Or a fine of +200 francs," he pursued. The lips of the accused quivered. "You may have +to go to a _maison de correction_," continued the magistrate pitilessly. +The accused wept. + +I grew more and more interested. If this was a "correctional" offence, +the magistrate must in the ordinary course of things commit the prisoner +to a _chambre de conseil_, thereafter to take his trial before a +Tribunal Correctionnel. But chamber and tribunal were scattered to the +four corners of the earth. + +Here, I felt sure, the whole proceedings must collapse and the +magistrate be sadly compelled to admit his impotence. The magistrate, +however, appeared in nowise perturbed, nor did he for a moment relax his +authoritative expression. He was turning over the pages of the _Code +d'Instruction Criminelle_, glancing occasionally at a now wholly +penitent prisoner trembling before the majesty of the law. At last he +spoke. "I will deal with you," he said with an air of indulgence, "under +Chapter VIII. of the Code. You will be bound over to come up for +judgment at the end of the war if called upon. You will deposit a +_cautionnement_ of twenty francs. And now, gentlemen, we are at your +service." + +"Fiat justitia ruat coelum," whispered A---- to me, as the prisoner, +deeply impressed, opened a leather purse and counted out four greasy +five-franc notes. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[27] Defamation. It is a misdemeanour according to Belgian law. + + + + +XXVII + +HIGHER EDUCATION + + +British Headquarters must, I think, be the biggest Military Academy in +the world. It has its Sandhurst and its Woolwich and even its Camberley. +It ought long ago to have been incorporated by Order in Council as a +University with Sir John French as Chancellor. It has more schools in +the Art of War than I can remember, and every School has an Instructor +who deserves to rank as a full-time Professor. To graduate in one of +those schools you must get a fortnight's leave from your trenches or +your battery, at the end of which time you return to do a little +post-graduate work of a very practical kind with the aid of a +machine-gun or a trench-mortar. At the beginning of the war higher +education at G.H.Q. was somewhat neglected, and the company officer who +desired to improve himself in the lethal arts had to be content with +private study. Company officers went in for applied chemistry by making +flares out of a test-tube full of water, delicately balanced in a +bully-beef tin containing sodium. The tins were tied to the barbed-wire +entanglements in front of our trenches, and when the stealthy Hun, +creeping on his stomach, bumped against the wire the test-tube +overflowed into the tin and a lurid patch of greenish flame revealed the +clumsy visitor to our look-outs. That was before we were supplied with +calcium flares. Then, too, the sappers went in for experimental research +by making trench-mortars out of old stove-pipes. + +To-day all that is changed. A chemical corps has come out to join the +sappers, and the gunners have received some highly finished +trench-mortars from Vickers's. A trench mortar is a kind of toy howitzer +and very useful when you want to try conclusions with a neighbouring +trench at short range. The mortars are not exactly things to play with, +and so two "schools" of mortars have been instituted to teach R.G.A. men +how to handle them. Every morning at nine o'clock two young subalterns +meet their class of fifty pupils in a château, and explain with the aid +of a diagram on a blackboard the internal economy of the mortar and its +50-lb. bomb, the adjustment of angles of elevation to ranges, and the +respective offices of fuse, charge, and detonator. When the class have +had enough of this they go off to a neighbouring field to simulate +trench warfare and hold a demonstration. This is real sport. They have +dug a sector of trenches, duly traversed, and at some two or three +hundred yards distance have dug another sector and decorated it +realistically with barbed-wire entanglements. Thither one afternoon we +conveyed the mortar to the first trenches on an improvised carriage, +placed it behind one of the traverses, and duly clamped it down. The +subaltern took up a periscope and got the thread-line on the target--you +find the range without instruments and by your own intuitions. "Three +hundred, I think," he remarked pensively. A pupil adjusted the range +indicator at 71·30 to get the elevation, and his assistant took up what +looked like a huge jar of preserved ginger. It was the bomb. Having put +the tail to it he inserted the detonator. "Fuse at 27." He set the +indicator with as much care as if he were setting the hands of his +watch. The man took the fuse delicately, put in the test-tube and +attached the lanyard. These operations had been closely followed by the +class, who made a circle round the bomb like a football "scrum." It was +now time to line the trenches, for the "tail" of the bomb is apt to kick +viciously when the thing is fired. As they spread out, the man removed +the two safety-pins in the top of the fuse and pulled the lanyard. There +was a voice of thunder and a sheet of flame, followed by what seemed an +interminable pause. We scanned the brown furrows in front of us and +suddenly the earth shot skywards in a fan; a cloud of dirty-black smoke +floated over our target. The whole class leapt the parapet and streamed +away across the furrows like a pack of hounds in full cry, until they +suddenly disappeared below the surface of the earth. We followed and +found them standing in a huge crater whose sides were hollowed out as +neatly as those of a cup. "Done it again," said the subaltern +complacently, "we've never had a blind." + +At the Machine-gun School they do things on a larger scale, and Wren's +could teach them nothing in the art of cramming. The Instructor reckons +to put his class of 200 officers and men through a six months' course in +a fortnight. There is need for it. The Germans started this war with +eleven machine-guns (it is now anything from twenty to forty) to a +battalion. We started with two. For years they have enlisted, trained, +and paid a special class of men to man them. Consequently we had a great +deal of leeway to make up. We are making it up, hand over fist, thanks +to the Instructor, one of the most brilliant and devoted officers I +know, and a man who spends his nights in inventing or perfecting +improvements. He has got a pocket edition of a machine-gun made of +tempered steel and weighing only 27 lb., as against our old one, which +is of gun-metal and weighs 58 lb.--a material difference when it is a +question of an advance. The new one, he explains somewhat illogically, +with paternal pride, can be carried into action "like a baby." Having +decided to give it a trial we carried it tenderly to a quarry and +proceeded to "feed" it with a belt of cartridges. The Instructor set up +a small stick against the bank of a gravel quarry and returned and +adjusted the tangent-sight at 100 on the standard. He got the fore-sight +and back-sight in a line on the stick, seized the traversing-handles, +released the safety-catch, and pressed the button with his right thumb +with the persistency of a man who cannot make the waiter answer the +electric bell. "Tap--tap--tap." There was a series of explosions as +though the sparking plug of a motor-bicycle was playing tricks. The +target danced like a thing possessed. It hopped and skipped and curtsied +under that deadly stream of bullets. Then he slowly swept that gravel +bank with the traversing handles till the pebbles jumped like +hailstones. "I think she'll do," he remarked appreciatively as he folded +up the tripod. + +The R.E. is the Army's school of technology. To do a survey or make a +bridge or lay a telephone is all in the day's work. But your sapper is +a man of ideas, and is for ever seeking out new inventions. So he has +turned his attention to chemistry, and "R.E." has a chemical corps which +has put aside the blow-pipe and the test-tube at home to come out and +study the applied chemistry of war. Just now they are engaged in +discovering the most effective method of laying noxious gases. Copper +vessels of ammonia in a trench to disperse the gas when it gets there +are all very well, but by that time you may have more pressing +attentions of the enemy to engage you; the thing is to prevent the gas +getting there. Hence ingenious minds are considering how to project with +a spray something upon the advancing fog which will bring it to earth in +the form of an innocuous compound. Spray that something over the +parapet, and if you can spray it far enough and wide enough you may +precipitate the deadly green and brown mists into chlorides or bromides +which will be as harmless as bleaching-powder and not less salubrious. + +Others have turned their attention to automatic flares. You can get a +startling illuminant if you suspend a test-tube containing sulphuric +acid in a vessel of chlorate of potash, and it will be all the better if +you add a little common sugar and salt. You balance your test-tube in +the hollow of a bamboo stick and fill the top knot of the stick with +the chlorate of potash; then you plant your sticks, not too securely, +outside your barbed-wire entanglements, and string them together with a +trip-wire. As for the patrolling Hun who bumps against that trip-wire, +it were better for him that a millstone were hung round his neck. + +This is Higher Education and post-graduate research. But elementary +education is not neglected. At the H.Q. of the --th Corps is an O.T.C. +where privates in the H.A.C. and the Artists practise the precepts of +the _Infantry Manual_ and study night operations in the meadows within +sound of the guns. + +Truly it is, in the words of the stout Puritan, a nation not slow and +dull but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, +subtle and sinewy, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that +human capacity can soar to. + + + + +XXVIII + +THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS + + +The little towns of Flanders and Artois are Aire, Hazebrouck, Bethune, +Armentières, Bailleul, Poperinghe, and Cassel. They are known in the +Army vernacular as Air, Hazybrook, Betoon, Arm-in-tears, Ballyhool +(occasionally Belial), Poperingy, and Kassel. The fairest of these is +Cassel. For Cassel is set upon a hill which rises from the interminable +plain, salient and alluring as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to +the fretful wayfarer, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary, and I will +give you rest." For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, +the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the +wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a +great peace. The motor-lorries avoid the declivities of Cassel, and the +horsemen pass by on the other side. Some twenty windmills--no less and +perhaps more--are perched like dovecots on the hill, lifting their +sails to the blue sky. Some day I will seek out a notary at Cassel and +will get him to execute a deed of conveyance assigning to me, with no +restrictive covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for I have +coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to the enchantments of _Lettres de +mon moulin_. True, Flanders is not Provence, and the croaking of the +frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the willows in the plains +below is a poor exchange for the chant of the _cigale_. But these mills +look out over a landscape that is now dearer to me than Abana and +Pharpar, for many a gallant friend of mine lies beneath its sod. + +Cassel is approached by a winding road that turns and returns upon +itself like a corkscrew, and is bordered by an avenue of trees. It has a +bandstand--what town in Flanders and Artois has not?--and a church. +Cheek by jowl with the church is a place of convenience, which seems to +me profane in more senses than one. I have never been able to make up my +mind whether such secularisation of a church wall is the expression of +anti-clerical antipathies, or of a clerical common-sense peculiarly +French in its practical and unblushing acceptance of the elementary +facts of life. But about Cassel I am not so sure. The sight of that +shameless annexe is too familiar in France to please our fastidious +English tastes--it seems to express a truculent nonconformity, it is too +like a dissenting chapel-of-ease. + + + Wherever God erects a house of prayer + The devil always builds a chapel there. + + +I have never had the courage to solve my uncertainties by buttonholing a +Frenchman and asking him what is the truth of the matter. I am sure +Anatole France could supply me with any number of whimsical +explanations, all of them suggestive, and not one of them true. + +But, except for this sauciness, Cassel is a demure and pleasant place. + +Bailleul is mean in comparison, though it has a notable church tower in +which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither, +perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which +is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and the +_châtelaine_ of which answers your lame and halting French in nimble +English. On the road to Locre it has those Baths and Wash-houses which +have become so justly famous, and whence hosts of British soldiers come +forth like Naaman white as snow, but infinitely more companionable. +Almost any day you may see a bathing-towel unit marching thither or +thence in column of route, their towels held at the slope or the trail +as it pleases their fancy. And in a field outside Bailleul I have seen +open-air smithies and the glow of hot coals, the air resounding with the +clink of hammers upon the anvil--a cheering spectacle on a wet and +inclement winter's day. But Bailleul has few amenities and no charms. It +is, however, occasionally visited by that amazing troupe of variety +artistes, known as the Army Pierrots, who provide the men in billets +with a most delectable entertainment for 50 centimes, the proceeds being +a "deodand," and appropriated to charitable uses. For all that, Bailleul +stinks in the nostrils of fatigue-parties. + +Bethune is like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land, for it is +the rendezvous of the British Army, and men tramp miles to warm their +hands at its fires of social life. Its _pâtisserie_ has the choicest +cakes, and its hairdresser's the most soothing unguents of any town in +our occupation. It has a great market-place, where the peasants do a +thriving business every Saturday, producing astonished rabbits by the +ears from large sacks, like a conjuror, and holding out live and +plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it +has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of +a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct +unbecoming an officer and a gentleman--a spectacle as melancholy as it +is rare, and of which the less said the better. It has a church with +some lurid glass of indifferent quality, and (if I remember rightly) a +curious dovecote of a tower. The transepts are hemmed in by shops and +warehouses. To the mediaevalist there is nothing strange in such +neighbourliness of the world and the Church. The great French churches +of the Middle Ages--witness Nôtre Dame d'Amiens with its inviting +ambulatory--were places of municipal debate, and their sculpture was, to +borrow the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political "liberty of +speech" at a time when the chisel of the sculptor might say what the pen +of the scrivener dared not, for fear of the common hangman, express. +Bethune is not the only place where I have seen shops coddling churches, +and the conjunction was originally less impertinent than it now seems. +It was not that the Church was profaned, but that the world was +consecrated; honest burgesses trading under the very shadow of the +flying buttresses were reminded that usury was a sin, and that to charge +a "just price" was the beginning of justification by works. But I have +not observed that the shopkeepers of Bethune now entertain any very +mediaeval compunction about charging the British soldier an unjust +price. + +Armentières is on the high road to Lille, but at present there is no +thoroughfare. It's a dispiriting town, given over to industrial +pursuits, and approached by rows of mean little cottages such as you may +see on the slopes of the mining valleys of South Wales. Two things stand +out in my memory--one, the spectacle of a corporal being tried for his +life in the Town Hall by a court-martial--there had been a quarrel over +a girl in billets and he had shot his comrade; the other the sight of a +regiment of Canadians ("Princess Pat's," I believe), drawn up in the +square for parade one winter afternoon before they went into the +trenches for the first time. And a very gallant and hefty body of men +they were. + +Poperinghe is a dismal place, and to be avoided. + +Hazebrouck is not without some pretentiousness. It has the largest +_place_ of any of them, with a town-hall of imposing appearance, but +something of a whited sepulchre for all that. I remember calling on a +civilian dignitary there--I forget what he was; he sat in a long narrow +corridor-like room, all the windows were hermetically sealed, a +gas-stove burnt pungently, some fifty people smoked cigarettes, and at +intervals the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffled his foot +over the spot as a concession to public hygiene. Therefore I did not +tarry. The precincts of the railway-station are often crowded by batches +of German prisoners, villainous-looking rascals, and usually of the +earth earthy. I watched some of them entraining one day; with them was a +surly German officer who looked at his fellow-prisoners with contempt, +the crowd of inhabitants with dislike, and (so it seemed to me) his +guards with hatred. No one spoke to him, and he stood apart in +melancholy insolence. Perhaps he was the German officer of whom the +story is told that, being conducted to the Base in a third-class +carriage in the company of some of his own men, and under the escort of +some British soldiers, he declaimed all the way down against being +condemned to such low society, until one of his guards, getting rather +"fed up" with it all, bluntly cut him short with the admonition: "Stow +it, governor, we'd have hired a blooming Pullman if we'd known we was +going to have the pleasure of your society. Yus, and we'd have had Sir +John French 'ere to meet you. But yer'll have to put up with us low +fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it, +and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his +bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was +impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way +they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed into a thoughtful +silence. + +Hazebrouck has a witty and pleasant _procureur de la République_, who +once confided to me that the English were "irresistible." "In war?" I +asked. "_Vraiment_," he replied, "but I meant in love." + +But the towns occupied by our Army are monotonously lacking in +distinction. To tell the truth they wear an impoverished look, and are +singularly unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small châteaux +built on grassy mounds surrounded by moats, and the timbered farm-houses +with their red-tiled roofs and barns big enough to billet a whole +company at a pinch. The country is one vast bivouac, and every cottage, +farm, and mansion is a billet. Near the edge of the Front you may see +men who have just come out of action; I remember once meeting a group of +Royal Irish, only forty-seven left out of a Company, who had been in the +attack by the 8th Division at Fleurbaix, and I gazed at them with +something of the respectful consternation with which the Babylonians +must have regarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego after their ordeal in +the fiery furnace. Yet nothing of their demeanour betrayed the brazen +fury they had gone through; they sat by the hedge cleaning their +accoutrements with the utmost nonchalance. They reminded me of the North +Staffords, one of whose officers, whom I know very well, when I asked +him what were his impressions of a battle, replied, after some +reflection: "I haven't got any; all I can remember of a hot corner we +were in near Oultersteen was that my men, while waiting to advance, were +picking blackberries." It was a man of the North Staffords who, +according to the same unimpeachable authority, was heard shouting out +when half the trench was blown in by a shell, and he had extricated +himself with difficulty: "'Ere, where's my pipe? Some one's pinched my +pipe!" + +But it isn't always quite as comforting as that. The servant of a friend +of mine, a young subaltern in the Black Watch, whom, alas! like so many +other friends, I shall never see again, in describing the church parade +held after the battle of Loos, in which his master was killed by a +shell, wrote that when the chaplain gave out the hymn "Rock of Ages" the +men burst into tears, their voices failed them, and they broke down +utterly. And I remember that on one occasion when some four-fifths of +the officers of a certain battalion had gone down in the advance, and +the shaken remnant fell back upon their trenches, deafened and +distraught, one of the officers--he had been a master in a great public +school before the war--took out of his pocket a copy of the _Faerie +Queene_, and began in a slow, even voice to read the measured cadences +of one of its cantos, and, having read, handed it to a subaltern and +asked him to follow suit. The others listened, half in wonder, half in +fear, thinking he had lost his senses, but there was method in his +madness and a true inspiration. The musical rhythm of the words +distracted their terrible memories, and soon acted like a charm upon +their disordered nerves. + + + And on his breast a bloody cross he bore, + The dear remembrance of his dying Lord, + For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, + And dead (as living) ever him adored: + Upon his shield the like was also scored, + For sovereign hope, which in his help he had: + Right faithful true he was in deed and word; + But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad: + Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad. + + +Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-march to keep them fit; +Indian cavalry jogging along on the footpath with lances in rest; herds +of tethered horses in rest-camps; a string of motor-buses painted a +khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling workshop) with its dynamo humming +like a top and the mechanics busy upon the lathe; an Army Postal van +coming along, like a friend in need, to tow my car, stranded in the mud, +with a long cable; sappers, like Zaccheus, up a tree (but not +metaphorically); despatch-riders whizzing past at sixty miles an +hour--these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they +lend a variety to the monotonous countryside without which it would be +dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight +lines--straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less +straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without +their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our occupation, as you +leave G.H.Q. for the Base, you exchange these plains of sticky clay and +stagnant dykes for a pleasant country of undulating downs and noble +beech woods, and one seems to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency. + +It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is +painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. It is merely a heap of +stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are not more desolate. + + + + +XXIX + +THE FRONT ONCE MORE + + +A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long +boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear. All men would emphasise +the boredom, and most men would admit the fear. The only soldiers I ever +met who affected to know nothing of the fear were Afridis, and the +Afridi is notoriously a ravisher of truth. But the predominant +feeling--in the winter months at any rate--was the boredom. There was a +time when some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only relieved +once every three weeks, and time hung heavy on their hands. Under these +circumstances they began to take something more than a professional +interest in their neighbours opposite. The curiosity was reciprocated. +Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches +were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse. Curious conventions +grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the +night, there was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour +of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded as consecrated to "private business," and +certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of bounds by the +snipers on both sides. On many occasions working parties toiled with +pick and shovel within talking distance of one another, and, although it +was, of course, never safe to presume upon immunity, they usually +forbore to interfere with one another. The Bedfords and the South +Staffords worked in broad daylight with their bodies half exposed above +the trenches, raising the parapet as the water rose. About 200 yards +away the Germans were doing the same. Neither side interfered with the +navvy-work of the other, and for the simplest of all reasons: both were +engaged in fighting a common foe--the underground springs. When two +parties are both in danger of being drowned they haven't time to fight. +To speak of drowning is no hyperbole; the mud of Flanders in winter is +in some places like a quicksand, and men have been sucked under beyond +redemption. A common misery begat a mutual forbearance. + +It was under such circumstances that the following exchange of +pleasantries took place. The men of a certain British regiment heard at +intervals a monologue going on in the trenches opposite, and every time +the speaker stopped his discourse shouts of guttural laughter arose, +accompanied by cries of "Bravo, Müller!" "Sehr komisch!" "Noch einmal, +Müller!" Our men listened intently, and an acquaintance with German, so +imperfect as to be almost negligible, could not long disguise from them +the fact that their Saxon neighbours possessed a funny man whose name +was Müller. Their interest in Müller, always audible but never visible, +grew almost painful. At last they could restrain it no longer. At a +given signal they began chanting, like the gallery in a London theatre, +except that their voices came from the pit: + + + We--want--Müller! We--want--Müller! We--want--Müller! + + +The refrain grew more and more insistent. At last a head appeared above +the German parapet. It rose gradually, as though the owner were being +hoisted by unseen hands. He rose, as the principal character in a Punch +and Judy show rises, with jerky articulations of his members from the +ventriloquial depths below. The body followed, until a three-quarter +posture was attained. The owner, with his hand upon his heart, bowed +gracefully three times and then disappeared. It was Müller! + +It is some months since I was in the British trenches,[28] and I often +wonder how our men have accommodated themselves to the ever-increasing +multiplication of the apparatus of war. The fire trenches I visited were +about wide enough to allow two men to pass one another--and that was +all. Obviously the wider your trench the greater your exposure to the +effects of shell-fire, and if we go on introducing trench-mortars, and +gas-pumps, and gas-extinguishers, to say nothing of a great store of +bombs, as pleasing in variety and as startling in their effects as +Christmas crackers, our trenches will soon be as full of furniture as a +Welsh miner's parlour. But doubtless the sappers have arranged all that. +Some of these improvements are viewed by company officers without +enthusiasm. The trench-mortar, for example, is distinctly unpopular, for +it draws the enemy's fire, besides being an uncanny thing to handle, +although the handling is done not by the company but by a "battery" of +R.G.A. men, who come down and select a "pitch." I have seen a +trench-mortar in action--it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a +prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It +is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and, +incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a +large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing +cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I +know nothing except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in +the chemical corps of the sappers, and your corporal is, in nine cases +out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one +of considerable distinction. He is usually a lecturer or +Assistant-Professor in Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who +has left his test-tubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting +allurements of the trenches. I sometimes wonder what name the fertile +brain of the British soldier has found for him--probably "the squid." He +has three gases in his repertoire, each more deadly than the other. One +of them is comparatively innocuous--it disables without debilitating; +and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes. The truth is that we +do not take very kindly to the use of this kind of thing. Still, our men +know their business, and our gas, whichever variety it was, played a +very effective part in the capture of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. + +For the greater part of the winter months the "Front" was, to all +appearances above ground, as deserted as the Sahara and almost as +silent. Everybody who had to be there was, for obvious reasons, +invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who found himself between the +lines was in a wilderness whose intimidating silence was occasionally +interrupted by the sound of projectiles coming he knew not whence and +going he knew not whither. The effect was inexpressibly depressing. But +a mile or two behind our lines all was animation, for here were +Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked up by a network of field +telephones, which in turn communicated with Divisional Headquarters +farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under the care of a pigeon +fancier, who figures in the Army List as a captain in the R.E., are kept +at these places for use in sudden emergency when the wires get destroyed +by shell-fire. The sappers must, I think, belong to the order of +Arachnidae; they appear to be able to spin telephone wires out of their +entrails at the shortest notice. Moreover, they possess an uncanny +adhesiveness, and a Signal Company man will leg up a tree with a coil of +wire on his arm and hang glutinously, suspended by his finger-tips, +while he enjoys the view. These acrobatic performances are sometimes +exchanged for equestrian feats. He has been known to lay cable for two +miles across country at a gallop with the cable-drum paying out lengths +of wire. The sapper is the "handy man" of the Army. + +The location of these Headquarters on our side of the line is a constant +object of solicitude to the enemy on the other. Very few officers even +on our side know where they all are. I had confided to me, for the +purpose of my official duties, a complete list of such Headquarters, +and the first thing I did, in pursuance of my instructions, was to +commit it to memory and then burn it. To find out the enemy's H.Q.--with +a view to making them as unhealthy as possible--is almost entirely the +work of aeroplane reconnaissance. To discover the number and composition +of the units whose H.Q. they are is the work of our "Intelligence." Of +our Intelligence work the less said the better--by which I intend no +aspersion but quite the contrary. The work is extraordinarily effective, +but half its effectiveness lies in its secrecy. It is all done by an +elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate to say that the "I" +officers discover the location of the H.Q. of captured Germans by a +geological analysis of the mud on the soles of their boots, in the +classical manner of Sherlock Holmes; but I should be equally indisposed +to deny it. There is nothing too trivial or insignificant to engage the +detective faculties of an "I" man. He has to allow a wide margin for the +probability of error in his calculations; shoulder-straps, for example, +are no longer conclusive data as to the composition of the enemy's +units, for the intelligent Hun has taken of late to forging +shoulder-straps with the same facility as he forges diplomatic +documents. Oral examination of prisoners has to be used with caution. +But there are other resources of which I shall say nothing. It is not +too much to say, however, that we have now a pretty complete +comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German +brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One +thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence +staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military +authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of +mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to say _De minimis +non curatur_. + +If "I" stands for the Criminal Investigation Department (and the study +of the Hun may be legitimately regarded as a department of criminology) +the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be described as a kind of +Metropolitan Police. The P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are the _Censores Morum_ +of the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are the _Aediles_. +It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visit _estaminets_, +keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences +of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is +more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I +remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had +already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his +particular district daily, I had never once been stopped or questioned +by his police. "No," he said quietly, "they reported you the first day +two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions; +we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff, +and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite +a lively time at X----," which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q. +itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for +their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark +doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a +needle than to get into that town--or out of it. As for the "Society +ladies," of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they +were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew +anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be +had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into +G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the +left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a +needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them +takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to assist +you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in +their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for +traces of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with +your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the +fifth rib--at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his +right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle, and by that masonic +sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the +conversation. + +Still, holders of authorised passes sometimes lose them, and +unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and "convert" them to +their own unlawful uses. The career of these adventurers is usually as +brief as it is inglorious; when apprehended they are handed over to the +French authorities, and the place that knew them knows them no more. +They are shot into some mysterious _oubliette_. The rest is silence, or, +as a mediaeval chronicler would say, "Let him have a priest." + +We have taught the inhabitants of Flanders and Artois three things: one, +to sing "Tipperary"; two, to control their street traffic; and three, to +flush their drains. The spectacle of the military police on point duty +agitatedly waving little flags like a semaphore in the middle of narrow +and congested street corners was at first a source of great +entertainment to the inhabitants, who appeared to think it was a kind of +performance thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delectation. +Their applause was quite disconcerting. It all so affected the mind of +one good lady at H---- that she used to rush out into the street every +time she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth gestures with her +arms and legs, to the no small embarrassment of the supply columns, the +confusion of the military police, and the unconcealed delight of our +soldiers, who regard the latter as their natural enemy. Gentle +remonstrances against such gratuitous assistance were of no avail, and +eventually she was handed over to the French authorities for an inquiry +into the state of her mind. + +Drains are looked after by the Camp Commandant, assisted by the sanitary +section of the R.A.M.C. It is an unlovely duty. I am not sure that the +men in the trenches are not better off in this respect than the +unfortunate members of the Staff who are supposed to live on the fat of +the land in billets. In the trenches there are easy methods of disposing +of "waste products"; along some portion of the French front, where the +lines are very close together, the favourite method, so I have been +told, is to hurl the buckets at the enemy, accompanied by extremely +uncomplimentary remarks. In the towns where we are billeted public +hygiene is a neglected study, and the unfortunate Camp Commandants have +to get sewage pumps from England and vast quantities of chloride of +lime. Fatigue parties do the rest. + +The C.C. has, however, many other things to do. + +Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a "chit" to the +C.C.: + + + Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would + be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be + issued to his office. + + +A laconic message came back by my servant: + + + No. 105671A. The Camp Commandant presents his compliments to + --------- Mr. M., and begs to inform him that he is not an + 2 ironmonger. The correct procedure is for Mr. M. + to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to send in the + account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged. + + +The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his +reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under +the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply +desks and tables--the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them +out at the shortest notice--and he could produce stationery, but he drew +the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings. + +The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the +Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as +"transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a +field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap. +And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with +men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, +and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a +battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It +is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of +all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is +made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger +affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one--the +transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong +battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in +England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the +agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are +alive or dead. + +It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is +done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers +and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry +Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves +lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a château used as +the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the +curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the +Front is one vast cemetery--a "God's Acre" hallowed by prayers if +unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has +shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill +has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of +every grave with a view to its preservation. + +The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the +Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of +courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the +Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you +are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting "hearsay." He never +prosecutes--that is always the task of some officer specially assigned +for the purpose--but he may "sum up." Officers are not usually familiar +with the mysteries of the Red Book,[29] however much they may know of +the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One +Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious, +instituted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of +Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and +inadmissibility of evidence in the most "unhealthy" places. Speaking +with some knowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial +proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things +considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the +enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of +this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the +hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and "went +for" the latter, declaring his intention to "do him in," as he had, he +alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There +was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was +fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification +was, however, not absolutely conclusive--one Prussian guardsman is +strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the +doubt. + +The prisoner gets all the assistance he may require from a "prisoner's +friend" if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a +charge--he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges +of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely, +justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young +subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was +as straightforward as it was brief: + + + I had just been ordered up to the Front. So I stood my friends a + dinner; I had a bottle of Burgundy, two liqueurs, and a brandy and + soda, and--I am just nineteen. + + +This ingenuous plea in confession and avoidance pleased the Court. He +got off with a reprimand. + +The _liaison_ officers deserve a chapter to themselves. Their name alone +is so endearing. Their mission is not, as might be supposed, to promote +_mariages de convenance_ between English Staff officers and French +ladies, but to transmit billets-doux between the two Armies and, +generally, to promote the amenities of military intercourse. As a rule +they are charming fellows, chosen with a very proper eye to their +personal qualities as well as their proficiency in the English language. +Among them I met a Count belonging to one of the oldest families in +France, an Oriental scholar of European reputation, and a Professor of +English literature. The younger ones studied our peculiarities with the +most ingratiating zeal, and one of them, in particular, played and sang +"Tipperary" with masterly technique at an uproarious tea-party in a +_pâtisserie_ at Bethune. Also they smoothed over little +misunderstandings about _délits de chasse_, gently forbore to smile at +our French, and assisted in the issue of the _laisser-passer_. Doubtless +they performed many much more weighty and mysterious duties, but I only +speak of what I know. To me they were more than kind; they gave me +introductions to their families when I went on official visits to Paris +and to the French lines; zealously assisted me to hunt down evidence, +and sometimes accompanied me on my tour of investigation. Among the many +agreeable memories I cherish of the _camaraderie_ at G.H.Q. the +recollection of their constant kindness and courtesy is not the least. + +One word before I leave the subject of the Staff. There has been of late +a good deal of pestilential gossip by luxurious gentlemen at home about +the Staff and its work. It is, they say, very bad--mostly beer and +skittles. I have already referred to these charges elsewhere; here I +will only add one word. A Staff is known by its chief. He it is who sets +the pace. During the time I was attached to it, the G.H.Q. Staff had two +chiefs in succession. The first was a brilliant soldier of high +intellectual gifts, now chief of the Imperial Staff at home, who, +although embarrassed by indifferent health, worked at great pressure +night and day. His successor at G.H.Q. is a man of stupendous energy, +commanding ability, and great force of character, who has risen from the +ranks to the great position he now holds. By their chiefs ye shall know +them. Under such as these there was and is no room for the "slacker" at +G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were very few of that undesirable +species at G.H.Q., and as soon as they were discovered they were sent +home. I sometimes wonder whether one could not trace, if it were worth +while (which it isn't), these ignoble slanders to their origin in the +querulous lamentations of these deported gentlemen, whence they have +percolated into Parliamentary channels. But it really isn't worth while. +The public has, I believe, taken the thing at its true valuation. In +plain speech it is "all rot." + + + NOTE.--The last paragraph was written before the recent changes at + G.H.Q. and at the War Office, but the reader will not need any + assistance in the identification of the two distinguished Chiefs of + Staff here referred to.--J.H.M. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[28] The writer's experience of the trenches is described in some detail +in Chapter VIII. + +[29] _The Manual of Military Law_. + + + + +XXX + +HOME AGAIN + + +Sykes had finished packing my kit and had succeeded with some difficulty +in re-establishing the truth of the axiom that a whole is greater than +its parts. When I contemplated my valise and its original constituents, +it seemed to me that the parts would prove greater than the whole, and I +had in despair abandoned the problem to Sykes. He succeeded, as he +always did. One of the first things that an officer's servant learns is +that, as regards the regulation Field Service allowance of luggage, +nothing succeeds like excess. + +Sykes had not only stowed away my original impedimenta but had also +managed to find room for various articles of _vertu_ which had enriched +my private collection, to wit: + + + (1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel. + + (2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-looking brass heads. + + (3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets villainously + reversed. + + (4) A copper loving-cup--_i.e._, an empty shell-case presented to + me with a florid speech by Major S---- on behalf of the ----th + Battery of the R.F.A. + + (5) An autograph copy of _The Green Curve_ bestowed on me by my + friend "Ole Luk-Oie" (to whom long life and princely royalties). + + (6) The sodden Field Note-book of a dead Hun given me by Major + C---- of the Intelligence, with a graceful note expressing the hope + that, as a man of letters, I would accept this gift of + _belles-lettres_. + + (7) A duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of + Ammonal[30] (original very scarce, and believed to be in the + muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting + it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of the Red Cross + Fund). + + (8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on English political + philosophers presented to me by the author, one of the _liaison_ + officers, who in the prehistoric times of peace was a University + professor at Avignon. + + (9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest Britannia metal, + bestowed on me with much ceremony by a Field Ambulance at Bethune, + and prized beyond rubies and fine gold. + + (10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne.[31] + + +To these Madame[32] had added her visiting-card--it was nearly as big +as the illuminated address presented to me by the electors of a Scottish +constituency which I once wooed and never won--wherewith she reminded me +that my billet at No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson would always be waiting +for me, the night-light burning as for a prodigal son, and steam up in +the hot-water bottle. + +I had said my farewells the night before to the senior officers on the +Staff, in particular that distinguished soldier and gallant gentleman +the A.G., to whose staff I had been attached (in more senses than one), +and who had treated me with a kindness and hospitality I can never +forget. The senior officers had done me the honour of expressing a hope +that I should soon return; their juniors had expressed the same +sentiments less formally and more vociferously by an uproarious song at +their mess overnight. + +The latter had also, with an appearance of great seriousness, laden me +with messages for His Majesty the King, the Prime Minister, Lord +Kitchener, the two Houses of Parliament, and the ministers and clergy of +all denominations: all of which I promised faithfully to remember and to +deliver in person. Sykes, with more modesty, had asked me if I would +send a photograph, when the film was developed of the snapshot I had +taken of him, to his wife and the twins at Norwich. + +My car, upon whose carburettor an operation for appendicitis had been +successfully performed by the handy men up at the H.Q. of the Troop +Supply Column, stood at the door. I held out my hand to Sykes, who was +in the act of saluting; he took it with some hesitation, and then gave +me a grip that paralysed it for about a quarter of an hour. + +"If you be coming back again, will you ask for me to be de-tailed to +you, sir? My number is ----. Sergeant Pope at the Infantry Barracks sees +to them things, sir." + +I nodded. + +"Bon voyage, monsieur," cried Madame in a shrill voice. + +"Bon voyage," echoed Jeanne. + +I waved my hand, and the next moment I had seen the last of two noble +women who had never looked upon me except with kindness, and who, from +my rising up till my lying down, had ministered to me with unfailing +solicitude. + + * * * * * + +At the Base I boarded the leave-boat. Several officers were already on +board, their boots still bearing the mud of Flanders upon them. It was +squally weather, and as we headed for the open sea I saw a dark object +gambolling upon the waves with the fluency of a porpoise. A sailor +stopped near me and passed the time of day. + +"Had any trouble with German submarines?" I asked. + +"Only once, sir. A torpedo missed us by 'bout a hund-erd yards." + +"Only once! How's that?" + +For answer the sailor removed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the +other by a surprisingly alert act of stowage and nodded in the direction +of the dark object whose outlines were now plain and salient. It was +riding the sea like a cork. + +"Them," he said briefly. It was a t.b.d. + +At the port of our arrival the sheep were segregated from the goats. The +unofficial people formed a long queue to go through the smoking-room, +where two quiet men awaited them, one of whom, I believe, always says, +"Take your hat off," looks into the pupil of your eyes, and lingers +lovingly over your pulse; the other, as though anxious to oblige you, +says, "Any letters to post?" But his inquiries are not so disinterested +as they would seem. + +The rest of us, being highly favoured persons, got off without ceremony, +and made for the Pullman. As the train drew out of the station and +gathered speed I looked out upon the countryside as it raced past us. +England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and +orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its spinneys of +beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The +friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed +to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with +garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in +the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked +down the length of the saloon, and everywhere I saw the blithe and eager +faces of England's gallant sons who had fought, and would fight again, +to preserve this heritage from the fire and sword of bloody sacrilege. +Fairer than the cedars of Lebanon were these russet beeches, nobler than +the rivers of Damascus these amber streams; and the France of our new +affections was not more dear. + +Twilight was falling as the guard came round and adjured us to shut out +the prospect by drawing the blinds. As we glided over the Thames I drew +the blind an inch or two aside and caught a vision of the mighty city +steeped in shadows, and the river gleaming dully under the stars like a +wet oilskin. At a word from the attendant I released the blind and shut +out the unfamiliar nocturne. Men rose to their feet, and there was a +chorus of farewells. + +"So long, old chap, see you again at battalion headquarters." + +"Good-bye, old thing, we meet next week at H.Q." + +"To-morrow night at the Savoy--rather! You must meet my sister." + +As I alighted on the platform I saw a crowd of waiting women. "Hullo, +Mother!" "Oh, darling!" I turned away. I was thinking of that platform +next week when these brief days, snatched from the very jaws of death, +would have run their all too brief career and the greetings of joy would +be exchanged for heart-searching farewells. + + * * * * * + +I was dining at my club with two friends, one of them a young Dutch +attaché, the other a barrister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well, +and took our cigars into the smoking-room, which was crowded. Some men +in a corner were playing chess; the club bore, decent enough in peace +but positively lethal in war, was demonstrating to a group of impatient +listeners that the Staff work at G.H.Q. was all wrong, when, catching +sight of me, he came up and said, "Hullo, old man, back from the Front? +When will the war end?" I returned the same answer as a certain D.A.A.G. +used to provide for similar otiose questions: "Never!" + +"Never! Hullo, what's that?" + +Every one in the room suddenly rose to their feet, the chess players +rising so suddenly that they overturned the board. "Damn it, and it was +my move, I could have taken your queen," said one of them. Outside there +was a noise like the roaring of the lion-house at the Zoo; your +anti-aircraft gun has a growl of its own. "They're here," said some one, +and we all made for the terrace. + +I looked up and saw in the dim altitudes a long silvery object among the +stars. As the searchlights played upon it, it seemed almost diaphanous, +and the body appeared to undulate like a trout seen in a clear stream. +Jupiter shone hard and bright in the southern hemisphere, and suddenly a +number of new planets appeared in the firmament as though certain stars +shot madly from their spheres. Round and about the monster came and went +these exploding satellites. Then another appeared close under her, and +like a frightened fish she swerved sharply and was lost to view among +the Pleiades. + +"Let's go and see what's happened," said one of my friends. "I hear +she's dropped a lot of bombs down----." + +As we went down the street I saw that for about two hundred yards ahead +it was sparkling as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of our boots +"scrunched" something underfoot. I looked down. The ground was covered +with splinters of glass. As we drew nearer we caught sight of a cordon +of police, and behind them a great fire springing infernally from the +earth, and behind the fire a group of soldiers, whose figures were +silhouetted against the background. Our way was impeded by curious +crowds, among whom one heard the familiar chant of "Pass along, please!" + +We stopped. Close to us two men were stooping with heads almost knocking +together and searching the ground, while one of them husbanded a lighted +match against the wind. + +"Blimey, Bill," said one to the other, "I've found 'un!" + +"What have you found?" we asked of him. + +"A souvenir, sir!" + +Truly, they know not the stomach of this people. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[30] See Chapter XXV. + +[31] See Chapter XI. + +[32] _Ibid._ + +THE END + +_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. + + +SOME RECENT BOOKS + +FRANCE AT WAR. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net. + + _SPECTATOR._--"A picture of France at work which will be an + inspiration to thousands. It is all the more powerful for its + brevity." + + +THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net. + + _PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"A classic in descriptive journalism which no + collector and no patriot will miss." + + +THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net. + + _SPECTATOR._--"We have read, we think, most of what has appeared + about the navy and its subsidiary services during the war, but + nothing we have seen has been comparable with these brief + sketches." + + +ORDEAL BY BATTLE. By FREDERICK SCOTT OLIVER. 24th Thousand. +8vo. 6s. net. + + _MORNING POST._--"Both for statesmanship and for style (style which + is the shadow of personality) Mr. F.S. Oliver's book on the causes + and conditions of the war is by far the best that has yet + appeared." + + +FIGHTING FRANCE. From Dunkerque to Belfort. By EDITH WHARTON. +Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. + + _DAILY NEWS._--"Mrs. Wharton, as was to be expected, has written + one of the most distinguished books on the war from the point of + view of the non-combatant." + + +THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY. By OWEN WISTER. Sixth Impression. +Crown 8vo. 2s. net. + + _DAILY MAIL_.--"One of the wisest and tenderest books on the war that + have come from an American writer. He analyses the German temperament + with perfect insight." + + +THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY. By R.W. SETON-WATSON, D.Litt., J. DOVER WILSON, +ALFRED E. ZIMMERN, and ARTHUR GREENWOOD. 23rd Thousand. +Crown 8vo. 2s. net. + + _THE TIMES_.--"The essays are of high quality. They go more fully and + deeply into the underlying problems of the war than most of the + pamphlets and books which have appeared in such profusion." + + +LETTERS FROM A FIELD HOSPITAL. By MABEL DEARMER. With a Memoir of the +Author by STEPHEN GWYNN. Third Impression. 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By Dean H. HENSLEY HENSON. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. + + _WESTMINSTER GAZETTE._--"Beyond all doubt, the Dean of Durham has a + great message for the nation in this time of conflict.... The + sermons deserve a place among the most memorable declarations of + Christian principles which the nation has received in this time of + crisis." + + +HOLY GROUND. Sermons Preached in Time of War. By Dean J. ARMITAGE +ROBINSON. Crown 8vo. 1s. net. + + _CHALLENGE._--"In _Holy Ground_ Dr. Armitage Robinson's sermons + preached during the South African War are available for a + generation to whom they will come afresh and with a wealth of + spiritual insight that we shall be the richer for." + + +THE CALIPHS' LAST HERITAGE. Travels in the Turkish Empire. By Sir +MARK SYKES, Bart., M.P. Illustrated. 8vo. 20s. net. + + _THE TIMES._--"Sir Mark Sykes' book is full of first-hand facts and + acute observation.... It is a book of intense interest and present + importance." + + +HEART OF EUROPE. 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Morgan. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .strike {text-decoration: line-through; } + .right {text-align: right;} + .left {text-align: left;} + .tbrk { margin-top: 2.75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem div {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem div.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + + + + /* index*/ + + div.index ul { list-style: none; } + div.index ul li span.mono {font-family: monospace;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leaves from a Field Note-Book, by J. H. Morgan + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Leaves from a Field Note-Book + +Author: J. H. Morgan + +Release Date: March 13, 2006 [EBook #17978] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p> +<h1>LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>J. H. MORGAN</h2> + +<h4>LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE</h4> + +<p class='center'>"And my delights were with the sons of men."</p> + +<p class="center"><img src="images/logo.png" width='250' height='73' alt="Publisher's logo" /></p> + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON</p> + +<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> +LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE</p> + +<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO</p> + +<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd</span>.<br />TORONTO</p> + +<p class="center">1916</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<p class="center">TO</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Lieut.-General Sir</span> C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.</p> + +<p class="center">ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p>This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during +the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as +Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His +official duties during that period involved daily visits to the +headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field, +and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the +trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance +with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So +much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of +the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down. +The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major +E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger, +for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the +chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> +without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D. +Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the +discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the +unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the +pages of the <i>Nineteenth Century and After</i>, under the title to which +the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his +obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to +republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of +<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> for permission to reprint the short story, +"Stokes's Act," and to the Editor of the <i>Westminster Gazette</i> in whose +hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared—sometimes +anonymously.</p> + +<p>The reader will observe that many of these sketches appear in the form +of what, to borrow a French term, is called the <i>conte</i>. The writer has +adopted that form of literary expression as the most efficacious way of +suppressing his own personality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of +"Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether disproportionate and +impertinent in view of the magnitude and poignancy of the great events +amid which it was his privilege to live and move. Moreover, his own +duties were neither spirited nor glorious. But the characters pourtrayed +and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> events narrated in these pages are true in substance and in +fact. The writer has not had the will, even if he had had the power, to +"improve" the occasions; the reality was too poignant for that. +"Stokes's Act" and "The Coming of the Hun" are therefore "true" +stories—using truth in the sense of veracity not value—and the facts +came within the writer's own investigation. The investiture of fiction +has been here adopted for the obvious reason that neither of the +principal characters in these two stories would desire his name to be +known. So, too, in the other sketches, although the characters are +"real"—I can only hope that they will be half as real to the reader as +they were and are to me—the names are assumed.</p> + +<p>It is my privilege to inscribe this little book to Lieut.-General Sir +C.F.N. Macready, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., to whose staff I was attached and to +whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality I owe a debt which no +words can discharge.</p> + +<p class='right'>J. H. M.</p> + +<p><i>January 1916.</i></p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<p class="center"><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE</a></p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#AI">I</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE BASE</p> + +<div class="index"> +<ul> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#I">I.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Bobs Bahadur</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#II">II.</a></span> <span class="smcap">At the Base Depôt</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#III">III.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Wiltshires</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#IV">IV.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Base</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#V">V.</a></span> <span class="smcap">A Council of India</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#VI">VI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Troop Train</span></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<p class="center"><a href="#AII">II</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE FRONT</p> + +<div class="index"> +<ul> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#VII">VII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Two Richebourgs</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Idols of the Cave</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#IX">IX.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Stokes's Act</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#X">X.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Front</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XI">XI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">At G.H.Q.</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XII">XII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Mort pour la Patrie</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XIII">XIII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Meaux and some Brigands</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XIV">XIV.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Concierge at Senlis</span></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span><a href="#AIII">III</a></p> + +<p class="center">UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES</p> + +<div class="index"> +<ul> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XV">XV.</a></span> <span class="smcap">A "Conseil de La Guerre"</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XVI">XVI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Peter</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XVII">XVII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Three Travellers</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Barbara</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XIX">XIX.</a></span> <span class="smcap">An Army Council</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XX">XX.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Fugitives</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXI">XXI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">A "Dug-out"</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXII">XXII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Christmas Eve, 1914</span></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<p class="center"><a href="#AIV">IV</a></p> + +<p class="center">THE FRONT AGAIN</p> + +<div class="index"> +<ul> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXIII">XXIII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Coming of the Hun</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXIV">XXIV.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Hill</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXV">XXV.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Day's Work</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXVI">XXVI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Fiat Justitia</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXVII">XXVII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Higher Education</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Little Towns of Flanders and Artois</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXIX">XXIX.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The "Front" once more</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#XXX">XXX.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Home again</span></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<p class="center"><a href="#SOME_RECENT_BOOKS">SOME RECENT BOOKS</a></p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="AI" id="AI"></a>I</h2> + +<h2>THE BASE</h2> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3> + +<h3>BOBS BAHADUR</h3> + +<p>It had gone eight bells on the <span class="smcap">s.s.</span> <i>G——</i>. The decks had been +washed down with the hosepipe and the men paraded for the morning's +inspection. The O.C. had scanned them with a roving eye, till catching +sight of an orderly two files from the left he had begged him, almost as +a personal favour, to get his hair cut. To an untutored mind the +orderly's hair was about one-eighth of an inch in length, but the O.C. +was inflexible. He was a colonel in that smartest of all medical +services, the I.M.S., whose members combine the extensive knowledge of +the general practitioner with the peculiar secrets of the Army surgeon, +and he was fastidious. Then he said "Dismiss," and they went their +appointed ways. The Indian cooks were boiling <i>dhal</i> and rice in the +galley; the bakers were squatting on their haunches on the lower deck, +making <i>chupattis</i>—they were screened against the inclemency of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the +weather by a tarpaulin—and they patted the leathery cakes with +persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided +like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the +sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper +deck and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure with white moustaches and +"imperial"; the eyes were of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad +in a general's field-service uniform, and on his shoulder-straps were +the insignia of a field-marshal. The colonel stared for a moment, then +ran hastily down the ladder and saluted.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Together they passed down the companion-ladder. At the foot of it they +encountered a Bengali orderly, who made a profound obeisance.</p> + +<p>"Shiva Lal," said the O.C., "I ordered the portholes to be kept +unfastened and the doors in the bulkheads left open. This morning I +found them shut. Why was this?"</p> + +<p>"Sahib, at eight o'clock I found them open."</p> + +<p>"It was at eight o'clock," said the colonel sternly, "that I found them +shut."</p> + +<p>The Bengali spread out his hands in deprecation. "If the sahib says so +it must be so," he pleaded, adding with truly Oriental irrelevancy, "I +am a poor man and have many children." It is as useless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> to argue with +an Indian orderly as it is to try conclusions with a woman.</p> + +<p>"Let it not occur again," said the colonel shortly, and with an apology +to his guest they passed on.</p> + +<p>They paused in front of a cabin. Over the door was the legend "Pathans, +No. 1." The door was shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened the +door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic features and bearded +like the pard, stood up and saluted. The colonel made a mental note of +the closed door; he looked at the porthole—it was also closed. The +Pathan loves a good "fug," especially in a European winter, and the +colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation. A kind of +guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect +politeness, had been going on for some days between him and the Pathans. +The Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the atmosphere. At +last he had met them halfway, or, to be precise, he had met them with a +concession of three inches. He had ordered the ship's carpenter to fix a +three-inch hook to the jamb and a staple to the door, the terms of the +truce being that the door should be kept three inches ajar. And now it +was shut. "Why is this?" he expostulated. For answer they pointed to the +hook. "Sahib, the hook will not fasten!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> + +<p>The colonel examined it; it was upside down. The contumacious Pathans +had quietly reversed the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was +now useless without being ornamental. With bland ingenuous faces they +stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent +craftsmanship. The Field-Marshal smiled—he knew the Pathan of old; the +colonel mentally registered a black mark against the delinquents.</p> + +<p>"Whence come you?" said the Field-Marshal.</p> + +<p>"From Tirah, Sahib."</p> + +<p>"Ah! we have had some little trouble with your folk at Tirah. But all +that is now past. Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be well with +you."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind."</p> + +<p>"And wherefore?"</p> + +<p>"My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and +abducted our women-folk. I would fain have leave to go on furlough and +lie in a nullah at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him. Then would I +return to France."</p> + +<p>"Patience! That can wait. How like you the War?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Burra Achha Tamasha</i>,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Sahib. But we like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> not their big guns. We +would fain come at them with the bayonet. Why are we kept back in the +trenches, Sahib?"</p> + +<p>"Peace! It shall come in good time."</p> + +<p>They passed into another cabin reserved for native officers. A tall Sikh +rose to a half-sitting posture and saluted.</p> + +<p>"What is your name?"</p> + +<p>"H—— Sing, Sahib."</p> + +<p>"There was a H—— Sing with me in '78," said the Field-Marshal +meditatively. "With the Kuram Field Force. He was my orderly. He served +me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted to subadar."</p> + +<p>The aquiline features of the Sikh relaxed, his eyes of lustrous jet +gleamed. "Even so, Sahib, he was my father."</p> + +<p>"Good! he was a man. Be worthy of him. And you too are a subadar?"</p> + +<p>"Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King's salt these twelve years."</p> + +<p>"That is well. Have you children?"</p> + +<p>"Yea, Sahib, God has been very good."</p> + +<p>"And your lady mother, is she alive?"</p> + +<p>"The Lord be praised, she liveth."</p> + +<p>"And how is your 'family'?"</p> + +<p>"She is well, Sahib."</p> + +<p>"And how like you this War?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Greatly, Sahib. The <i>Goora-log</i><a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and ourselves fight like brothers +side by side. But we would fain see the fine weather. Then there will be +some <i>muzza</i><a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> in it."</p> + +<p>The Field-Marshal smiled and passed on.</p> + +<p>They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were +avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as +snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some +were sitting up—the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the +<i>kangha</i> and the <i>chakar</i>, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring, +which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry. The Field-Marshal +stopped to talk to a big <i>sowar</i>. As he did so the men in their cots +raised their heads and a sudden whisper ran round the ward. Dogras, +Rajputs, Jats, Baluchis, Garhwalis clutched at the little pulleys over +their cots, pulled themselves up with painful efforts, and saluted. In a +distant corner a Mahratta from the aboriginal plains of the Deccan, his +features dark almost to blackness, looked on uncomprehendingly; Ghurkhas +stared in silence, their broad Mongolian faces betraying little of the +agitation that held them in its spell. From the rest there arose such a +conflict of tongues as has not been heard since the Day of Pentecost. +From bed to bed passed the magic words, "It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> he." Every man uttered a +benediction. Many wept tears of joy. A single thought seemed to animate +them, and they voiced it in many tongues.</p> + +<p>"Ah, now we shall smite the <i>German-log</i> exceedingly. We shall fight +even as tigers, for Jarj Panjam.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> The great Sahib has come to lead us +in the field. Praised be his exalted name."</p> + +<p>The Field-Marshal's eyes shone.</p> + +<p>"No, no," he said, "my time is finished. I am too old."</p> + +<p>"Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on painfully to his pulley, "the +body may be old but the brain is young."</p> + +<p>The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not. He suddenly turned on +his heel and rushed up the companion-ladder. When halfway up he +remembered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears were streaming +down his face.</p> + +<p>"Sir," he said, in a voice the deliberate sternness of which but ill +concealed an overmastering emotion, "your hospital arrangements are +excellent. I have seen none better. I congratulate you. Good-day." The +next moment he was gone.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Five days later the colonel was standing on the upper deck; he gripped +the handrail tightly and looked across the harbour basin. Overhead the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +Red Cross ensign was at half-mast, and at half-mast hung the Union Jack +at the stern. And so it was with every ship in port. A great silence lay +upon the harbour; even the hydraulic cranes were still, and the winches +of the trawlers had ceased their screaming. Not a sound was to be heard +save the shrill poignant cry of the gulls and the hissing of an exhaust +pipe. As the colonel looked across the still waters of the harbour basin +he saw a bier, covered with a Union Jack, being slowly carried across +the gangway of the leave-boat; a little group of officers followed it. +In a few moments the leave-boat, after a premonitory blast from the +siren which woke the sleeping echoes among the cliffs, cast off her +moorings and slowly gathered way. Soon she had cleared the harbour mouth +and was out upon the open sea. The colonel watched her with straining +eyes till she sank beneath the horizon. Then he turned and went +below.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A jolly fine show.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The English soldiers.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Spice.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> King George the Fifth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The writer can vouch for the truth of this narrative. He +owes his knowledge of what passed to the hospitality on board of his +friend the O.C. the Indian hospital ship in question.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h3> + +<h3>AT THE BASE DEPÔT</h3> + +<blockquote><p>Any enunciation by officers responsible for training of principles +other than those contained in this Manual or any practice of +methods not based on those principles is forbidden.—<i>Infantry +Training Manual.</i></p></blockquote> + + +<p>The officers in charge of details at No. 19 Infantry Base Depôt had made +their morning inspections of the lines. They had seen that blankets were +folded and tent flies rolled up, had glanced at rifles, and had +inspected the men's kits with the pensive air of an intending purchaser. +Having done which, they proceeded to take an unsympathetic farewell of +the orderly officer whom they found in the orderly room engaged in +reading character by handwriting with the aid of the office stamp.</p> + +<p>"I never knew there was so much individuality in the British Army," the +orderly officer dolefully exclaimed as he contemplated a pile of letters +waiting to be franked and betraying marked originality in their +penmanship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You're too fond of opening other people's letters," the subaltern +remarked pleasantly. "It's a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go +home you'll never be able to resist it. You'll be unfit for decent +society."</p> + +<p>"Go away, War Baby," retorted the orderly officer, as he turned aside +from the subaltern, who has a beautiful pink and white complexion, and +was at Rugby rather less than a year ago.</p> + +<p>The War Baby smiled wearily. "Let's go and see the men at drill," he +remarked. "We've got a corporal here who's A1 at instruction." As we +passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly across the small of +the butt of his rifle, and, seeing the Major behind us, brought the +rifle to the present.</p> + +<p>We came out on a field sprinkled with little groups of men in charge of +their N.C.O.'s. They were the "details." These were drafts for the +Front, and every regiment of the Division had sent a deputation. Two or +three hundred yards away a platoon was marching with a short quick trot, +carrying their rifles at the trail, and I knew them for Light Infantry, +for such are their prerogatives. Concerning Light Infantry much might be +written that is not to be found in the regimental records. As, for +example, the reason why the whole Army shouts "H.L.I." whenever the ball +is kicked into touch; also why the Oxford L.I. always put out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> their +tongues when they meet the Durhams. Some day some one will write the +legendary history of the British Army, its myth, custom, and folklore, +and will explain how the Welsh Fusiliers got their black "flash" (with a +digression on the natural history of antimacassars), why the 7th Hussars +are called the "White Shirts," why the old 95th will despitefully use +you if you cry, "Who stole the grog?" and what happens on Albuera day in +the mess of the Die Hards. But that is by the way.</p> + +<p>The drafts at No. 19, having done a route march the day before, had been +turned out this morning to do a little musketry drill by way of keeping +them fit. A platoon lay flat on their stomachs in the long grass, the +burnished nails on the soles of their boots twinkling in the sun like +miniature heliographs. From all quarters of the field sharp words of +command rang out like pistol shots. "Three hundred. Five rounds. Fire." +As the men obeyed the sergeant's word of command, the air resounded with +the clicking of bolts like a chorus of grasshoppers. We pursued a +section of the Royal Fusiliers in command of a corporal until he halted +his men for bayonet exercise. He drew them up in two ranks facing each +other, and began very deliberately with an allocution on the art of the +bayonet.</p> + +<p>"There ain't much drill about the bayonet," he said encouragingly. "What +you've got to do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> is to get the other fellow, and I don't care how you +get 'im as long as you knock 'im out of time. On guard!"</p> + +<p>The men in each rank brought the butts of their rifles on to their right +hips and pointed with their left feet forward at the breasts of the men +opposite. "Rest!" The rifles were brought to earth between twelve pairs +of feet. "Point! Withdraw! On guard!" They pointed, withdrew, and were +on guard again with the precision of piston-rods.</p> + +<p>"Now watch me, for your life may depend upon it," and the corporal +proceeded to give them the low parry which is useful when you are taking +trenches and find a <i>chevaux-de-frise</i> of the enemy's bayonets +confronting you. Each rank knocked an imaginary bayonet aside and +pointed at invisible feet. The high parry followed. So far the men had +been merely nodding at each other across a space of some twelve yards, +and it was hot work and tedious. The sweat ran down their faces, which +glistened in the sun. "Now I'm going to give you the butt exercises"; +they brightened visibly.</p> + +<p>"I am pointing—so!—and 'ave been parried. I bring the butt round on +'is shoulder, using my weight on it. I bring my left leg behind 'is left +leg. I throw 'im over. Then I give the beggar what for. So!" The words +were hardly out of his mouth before he had thrown himself upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> +nearest private and laid him prostrate. The others smiled faintly as No. +98678 picked himself up and nonchalantly returned to his old position as +if this were a banal compliment. "Now then. First butt exercise." One +rank advanced upon the other, and the two ranks were locked in a close +embrace. They remained thus with muscles strung like bowstrings, +immobile as a group of statuary.</p> + +<p>"That'll do. Now I'll give you the second butt exercise. You bring the +butt round on 'is jaw—so!—and then kick 'im in the guts with your +knee." Perhaps the section, which stood like a wall of masonry, looked +surprised; more probably the surprise was mine. But the corporal +explained. "Don't think you're Tottenham Hotspur in the Cup Final. Never +mind giving 'im a foul. You've got to 'urt 'im or 'e'll 'urt you. Kick +'im anywhere with your knees or your feet. Your ammunition boots will +make 'im feel it. No!"—he turned to a young private whose left hand was +grasping his rifle high up between the fore-sight and the +indicator—"You mustn't do that. Always get your 'and between the +back-sight and the breech. So! The back-sight will protect your fingers +from being cut by the other fellow. Now the third butt exercise."</p> + +<p>As we turned away the Major thoughtfully remarked to me, "There isn't +much of that in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> Infantry Manual. But the corporal knows his job. +When you're in a scrap you haven't time to think about the rules of the +game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got +to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or +anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney +is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar, +and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as +mechanical as a vacuum brake, and he's no good in a scrap."</p> + +<p>We returned to the orderly room. The orderly officer had a pile of +letters on his right impressed with a red triangle, and contemplated the +completion of his labours with gloomy satisfaction. "But it's very +interesting—such a revelation of the emotions of battle and all that," +I incautiously remarked. "Oh yes, very revealing," he yawned. "Look at +that"; and he held out a letter. It ran:</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mother</span>—I'm reported fit for duty and am going back +to the Front with the new drafts. I forgot to tell you we were in a +bit of a scrap before I came here. We outed a lot of Huns. How is +old Alf?—</p> + +<p>Your loving son, <span class="smcap">Jim</span>.</p></blockquote> + +<p>The "bit of a scrap" was the battle of Neuve Chapelle. The British +soldier is an artist with the bayonet. But he is no great man with the +pen. Which is as it should be.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3> + +<h3>THE WILTSHIRES</h3> + +<p>"You talk to him, sir. He zeed a lot though he be kind o' mazed like +now; he be mortal bad, I do think. But such a cheerful chap he be. I +mind he used to say to us in the trenches: 'It bain't no use grousing. +What mun be, mun be.' Terrible strong he were, too. One of our officers +wur hit in front of the parapet and we coulden get 'n in nohow—'twere +too hot; and Hunt, he unrolled his puttees and made a girt rope of 'em +and threw 'em over the parapet and draw'd en in. Ah! that a did."</p> + +<p>It was in one of the surgical tents of "No. 6 General" at the base. The +middle of the ward was illuminated by an oil-lamp, shaped like an +hour-glass, which shed a circle of yellow radiance upon the faces of the +nurse and the orderly officer, as they stood examining a case-sheet by +the light of its rays. Beyond the penumbra were rows of white beds, and +in the farthest corner lay the subject of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> our discourse. "Can I talk to +him?" I said to the nurse. "Yes, if you don't stay too long," she +replied briskly, "and don't question him too much. He's in a bad way, +his wounds are very septic."</p> + +<p>He nodded to me as I approached. At the head of the bed hung a +case-sheet and temperature-chart, and I saw at a glance the +superscription—</p> + +<blockquote><p>Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. —— Wiltshires.</p></blockquote> + +<p>I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply upwards on the chart.</p> + +<p>"So you're a Wiltshireman?" I said. "So am I." And I held out my hand. +He drew his own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in an iron +grip.</p> + +<p>"What might be your parts, sir?"</p> + +<p>"W—— B——."</p> + +<p>His eyes lighted up with pleasure. "Why, zur, it be nex' parish; I come +from B——. I be main pleased to zee ye, zur."</p> + +<p>"The pleasure is mine," I said. "When did you join?"</p> + +<p>"I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist."</p> + +<p>"You have been out a long time, then?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I han't seen B—— since. I +mind how parson, 'e came to me and axed, 'What! bist gwine to fight for +King and Country, Jarge?' And I zed, 'Yes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> sur, that I be—for King and +Country and ould Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two Gloster +men any day though they do call us 'Moon-rakers.' Not but what the +Glosters ain't very good fellers," he added indulgently. "Parson, he be +mortal good to I; 'e gied I his blessing and 'e write and give I all the +news of the parish. He warnt much of a preacher though a did say 'Dearly +beloved' in church in a very taking way as though he were a-courting."</p> + +<p>"What was I a-doin', zur? Oh, I wur with Varmer Twine, head labr'er I +was. Strong? Oh yes, zur, pretty fair. I mind I could throw a zack o' +vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy o' vourteen. Why! I wur stronger +then than I be now. 'Twas India that done me."</p> + +<p>"Is it a large farm?" I asked, seeking to beguile him with homely +thoughts.</p> + +<p>"Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to do, and I could turn me +hands to most things, though I do say it. There weren't a man in the +parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a hackle on a rick, though I +do say it. And I could drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were. +The soil be stiff clay, as ye knows, zur. This Vlemish clay be very +loike it. Lord, what a mint o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to +be sure. And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Are your parents alive?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom come. Poor old feyther," he said +after a pause. "I mind 'un now in his white smock all plaited in vront +and mother in her cotton bonnet—you never zee 'em in Wiltshire now. +They brought us all up on nine shillin' a week—ten on us we was."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you sometimes wish you were back in Wiltshire now?" I said.</p> + +<p>"Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. "It'll be about over with lambing +season, now," he added reflectively. "Many's the tiddling lamb I've +a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the may'll soon be out in +blossom. And the childern makin' daisy-chains."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said. "And think of the woods—the bluebells and anemones! You +remember Folly Wood?"</p> + +<p>He smiled. "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there, +when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up +a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus +very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many a +toime we childern went moochin' in thuck wood—nutting and bird-nesting. +Though I never did hold wi' taking more'n one egg out of a nest, and I +allus did wet my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> nest. They +do say as the little bird 'ull never go back if ye doant."</p> + +<p>His mind went roaming among childhood's memories and his eyes took on a +dreaming look.</p> + +<p>"Mother, she were a good woman—no better woman in the parish, parson +did say. She taught us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in +heaven'—I often used to think on it at night in the trenches. Them +nights—they do make you think a lot. It be mortal queer up there—you +veels as if you were on the edge of the world. I used to look up at the +sky and mind me o' them words in the Bible, 'When I conzider the +heavens, the work o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast made, +what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' One do feel oncommon small in +them trenches at night."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you've had a hot time up there?"</p> + +<p>"Ah that I have. And I zeed some bad things."</p> + +<p>"Bad?"</p> + +<p>"Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur dree weeks come Monday.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> +We wur in an advance near Wypers—'bout as far as 'tis from our village +to Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a house. We knowed 'twould be +hot work, and Jacob Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> zed, +'if I be took write to my wife and tell 'er it be the Lard's will and +she be not to grieve.' And I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the same +for I.' Our Officer, Capt'n S—— T——, d'you know 'en, sir? No? 'E com +from Devizes way, he wur a grand man, never thinking of hisself but only +of us humble chaps—he said, 'Now for it, lads,' and we advances in +'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a +section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined +the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out +so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there +house—you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a +reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ +Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a +good man, wur Scaplehorn"—he added musingly—"and 'e did good things. +And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs as if they did'n b'long +to 'em. I sort o' saw all that wi'out seeing it, in a manner o' spaking; +'twere only arterwards it did come back to me. There warn't no time to +think. And by the toime we got to thic house there were only 'bout +vifteen on us left. We had to scrouge our way in through the buttry +winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside, sort o' scuffling; 'twere the +Germans makin' for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the cellar. And our Capt'n posted some on us at top +of cellar steps and led the rest on us up the stairs to a kind o' tallet +where thuck machine-gun was. And what d'ye think we found, sir?" he +said, raising himself on his elbow.</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"There was a poor girl there—half daft she wur—wi' nothing on but a +man's overcoat. And she rushed out avore us on the landing and began +hammering with her hands against a bedroom door and it wur locked. We +smashed 'en in wi' our rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we found a poor +woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast all bloody an' her +clothes torn. I could'n mak' out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told +us as the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used our field-dressings and +tried to make the poor soul comfortable and Capt'n 'e sent a volunteer +back for stretcher-bearers."</p> + +<p>"And what about the Germans?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to +reckon with those devils down below.' And we went downstairs and he +stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up +out o' that there.' And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear +'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar +steps were main narrow, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> narrow as th' opening in that tent over +there. So Capt'n 'e says, 'Fetch me some straw, Hunt.' 'Twere a kind o' +farmhouse and I went out into the backside and vetched some. And Capt'n +and us put a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more vurther +down, using our rifles like pitchforks and then 'e blew on his tinder +and set it alight. 'Stand back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'em +with the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no manner o' use shooting; 'twere too close +in there and our bullets might ha' ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'em +a-coughing. There wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there wur we +a-waiting at top of them stairs for 'em to come up like rats out of a +hole. And two on 'em made a rush for it and we caught 'em just like's we +was terriers by an oat-rick; we had to be main quick. 'Twere like +pitching hay. And then three more, and then more. And none on us uttered +a word.</p> + +<p>"An' when it wur done and we had claned our bay'nets in the straw, +Capt'n 'e said, 'Men, you ha' done your work as you ought to ha' done.'"</p> + +<p>He paused for a moment. "They be bad fellows," he mused. "O Christ! they +be rotten bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good 'ull come to men +what abuses wimmen and childern. But I'm afeard they be nation +strong—there be so many on 'em."</p> + +<p>His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> telling of it had been +too much for him. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it +was time for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind away from the +contemplation of these tragic things.</p> + +<p>"Are you married?" I asked. The eyes brightened in the flushed face. +"Yes, that I be, and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap."</p> + +<p>"And what are you going to make of him?"</p> + +<p>"I'm gwine to bring un up to be a soldjer," he said solemnly. "To fight +them Germans," he added. He saw the great War in an endless perspective +of time; for him it had no end. "You will soon be home in Wiltshire +again," I said encouragingly. He mused. "Reckon the Sweet Williams 'ull +be out in the garden now; they do smell oncommon sweet. And +mother-o'-thousands on the wall. Oh-h-h." A spasm of pain contracted his +face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw my time was up. "My dear +fellow," I said lamely, "I fear you are in great pain."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" he said, "but it wur worth it."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The next day I called to have news of him. The bed was empty. He was +dead.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> This story is here given as nearly as possible in the exact +words of the narrator.—J. H. M.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h3> + +<h3>THE BASE</h3> + +<p>If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart. +For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the +systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of +its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To +and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses, +supplies, and ordnance.</p> + +<p>The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage. +If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and +understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position +on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the +harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at +their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the <i>patois</i> of the +littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the +shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Military Police are on +point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a +trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an +A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for +the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their +moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships +unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile +up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless +concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here +are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's +brewery—wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate +palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of +ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate +supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board +ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond +the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the +grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two +amphibious petty officers darning their socks.</p> + +<p>In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps +officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables, +and indents,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his +train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more +stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is +<i>litera scripta manet</i>—which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant, +instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything +without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one." For an +A.S.C. court of inquiry has as impassioned a preference for written over +oral evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that if your way-bill +testifies:</p> + +<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='40' summary='way-bill'> + <tr align='center'> + <td>Truck No.<br />19414</td> + <td>Contents<br />Jam 36 x 50</td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p>and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot of jam is missing on +arrival at rail-head, then, though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your +labels undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Officer unless you +can produce that pot.</p> + +<p>For the feeding of the Army is a delicate business and complicated. It +is not enough to secure that there be sufficient "caloric units" in the +men's rations; there are questions of taste. The Brahmin will not touch +beef; the Mahomedan turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vegetarian; +the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the goat. And every Indian must have his +ginger, garlic, red chilli, and turmeric, and his chupattis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> of +unleavened bread. One such warehouse we entered and beheld with +stupefaction mountainous boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, rice, +dried apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. Storekeepers in turbans stood +round us, who, being asked whether it was well with the Indian and his +food, answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians, "Yea, the +exalted Government hath done great things and praised be its name." To +which we replied "Victory to the Holy Ganges water." Their lustrous eyes +beamed at the salutation.</p> + +<p>Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies manna in the wilderness, and +like the manna of the Israelites it has never been known to fail. It is +of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in the words of the +prophet, "He hath filled my belly with his delicates." And his caravans +cover the face of the earth. You meet them everywhere, each Supply +Column a self-contained unit like a fleet. It has its O.C., its cooks, +its seventy-two motor lorries, with three men to each, and its "mobiles" +or travelling workshops with dynamo, lathe, drilling machine, and a crew +of skilled artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is put out +of action. I take off my hat to those handy-men; many times have they +helped me out of a tight place and performed delicate operations on the +internal organs of my military car in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> inhospitable night. It is a +brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out +between the poplars on the perilously arched <i>pavé</i> of the long sinuous +roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and +every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the +tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder +to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it. +It is his caravan. Many a time, on long and lonely journeys from the +Base to the Front, have I been cheered to find a Supply Column drawn up +on the roadside in a wooded valley, on a bare undulating down, or in a +chalk quarry, while the men were making tea over a blue wood fire. If +you love a gipsy life join the A.S.C.</p> + +<p>Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. headquarters at the Base are +some twenty military hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses, +and railway waiting-rooms. For the Base is the great Clearing House for +the sick and wounded, and its register of patients is a kind of +barometer of the state of affairs at the Front. When that register sinks +very low, it means that the atmospheric conditions at the Front are +getting stormy, and that an order has come down to evacuate and prepare +four thousand beds. Then you watch the newspapers, for you know +something is going to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> happen up there. And in those same hospitals men +are working night and day; the bacteriologists studying "smears" under +microscopes, while the surgeons are classifying, operating, "dressing," +marking temperature-charts, and annotating case-sheets. And in every +hospital there is a faint mysterious incense, compounded not +disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised catgut, which intensifies +the dim religious atmosphere of the shaded wards. If G.H.Q. is the +greatest of military academies, the Base hospitals are indubitably the +wisest of medical schools. Never have the sciences of bacteriology and +surgery been studied with such devotion as under these urgent clinical +impulses. Here are men of European reputation who have left their +laboratories and consulting-rooms at home to wage a never-ending +scientific contest with death and corruption. They have slain +"frostbite" with lanoline, turpentine, and a change of socks; they have +fought septic wounds with chloride of sodium and the ministries of +unlimited oxygen; they have defied "shock" after amputation by +"blocking" the nerves of the limb by spinal injection, as a signalman +blocks traffic. They have called in Nature to the aid of science and +have summoned the oxygen of the air and the lymph of the body to the +self-help of wounds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + +<p>High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp. Here the O.C. has turned +what was a swamp last December into a Garden City, draining, planting, +building, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, disinfectors, laundries, +and shower-baths, constructing turf incinerators and laying down +pavements of brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass sown, and +shrubs and trees put up—all this with the labour of the convalescents. +There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose, +for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or +neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's +reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an +afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained +community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two +neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and +cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache and +temperature he is segregated there, preparatory to being sent down to +No. 14 Stationary to have his spinal fluid examined by the +bacteriologists. Here, in fact, the man and his kit, instead of being +thrown on the scrap-heap, are renewed and made whole, restored in mind, +body, and estate, his clothes disinfected and mended, the "snipers" +treated to a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> + +<p>For true it is that at the Base they study loving-kindness, and +chaplains and doctors and nurses are busy with delicate ministries +seeking to cure, to assuage, and to console. Alas! on what tragic +errands do so many come and go; parents like Joseph and Mary seeking +their child, and wives their husbands, in hope, in fear, in joy, in +anguish, too often finding that the bright spirit has returned to God +Who gave it, and that nothing is left but to follow him behind the bier +draped with the Union Jack to the little cemetery on the hill.... But +for one that is buried here a thousand lie where they fell. Those +stricken fields of Flanders! nevermore will they be for us the scene of +an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of +prayer. I well remember—I can never forget—a journey I made in the +company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between +Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in +the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and +between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little +tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden +cross. By each cross was a soldier's képi, and sometimes a coat, +bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as +we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> us +muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of +the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth +will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by +share or sickle. They are holy ground.</p> + +<p>So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead +lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them +for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in +August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose +ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram, +they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of +exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the +drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a +friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price—youth, +health, life—too high to pay for the country of their birth and their +devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet +her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was +guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping +cinque-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation +of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw +an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon +was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing +from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively +protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured +lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A +troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south, +their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no +lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with +pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and diastole of the Base.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h3> + +<h3>A COUNCIL OF INDIA</h3> + +<p>"And I said, 'Nay, I who have eaten the King's salt cannot do this +thing.' And the <i>German-log</i> said to me, 'But we will give you both +money and land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this thing, and +bring sorrow and shame upon my people?'"</p> + +<p>It was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his words were exceeding clear +as Holy Writ.</p> + +<p>"And what did they do then?"</p> + +<p>"They took my <i>chupattis</i>, sahib, and offered me of their bread in +return. But I said, 'Nay, I am a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they +said thrice unto me, 'We will give you money and land.' And I thrice +said, 'Nay.' Then said they, 'Thou art a fool. Go to, but if thou comest +against us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my comrades."</p> + +<p>"Yea, to me also they said these things." It was a jemindar of the 129th +who spoke. "Yes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, '<i>Ham dost +hein</i>—<i>Hamari pas ao</i>—<i>Ham tum Ko Nahn Marenge</i>.'" Which being +translated is, "We are friends, come to us, we won't kill you."</p> + +<p>"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?"</p> + +<p>The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war, +since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought +Pandu."</p> + +<p>Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard +curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of +the Sikh freemasonry—nay, he had taken the <i>kangha</i> out of his hair and +shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and +had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were +friends. "All wars are but <i>shikkar</i> to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?" +"Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war."</p> + +<p>"Nay, this is a fine war—a hell of a fine war." The speaker was an +Afridi from Tirah, whose strongly marked aquiline features reminded me +of nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in Whitechapel. He lacks every +virtue except courage, and his one regret is that he has missed the +family blood-feud. There have been great doings in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> family on the +frontier in his absence—two abductions and one homicide. "If I had not +come home," his brother has written reproachfully to him from Tirah, +"things had gone ill with us. But never mind about all this now. Do your +duty well." And even so has he done.</p> + +<p>"And how like you this war?"</p> + +<p>"Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of a fine war, but for the great guns."</p> + +<p>"And wherefore?"</p> + +<p>"Because we cannot come nigh unto them. But I, I have slain many men."</p> + +<p>"And what is your village?" asks my friend, Major D——, of the I.M.S.</p> + +<p>"Chorah."</p> + +<p>"Why, I was there in the Tirah campaign."</p> + +<p>"Even so, sahib."</p> + +<p>The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at our symposium, their broad +Mongolian faces inscrutable. But Shiva Lal, a Brahmin surgeon, who all +this while has been eager to speak, for he is a pundit, and loves the +sound of his own voice, here thrust forward his quaint countenance, +whose walrus-like moustache conceals a row of teeth projecting like the +spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs his hands and thus he speaks +in English: "Sahib, I had charge of a German sahib—wounded. And I said +unto him, 'How is it that you, who are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> Christians, treat the Tommies +so? We' (Major D—— looks at me with the hint of a twinkle in his +eye—for has he not told me at mess of that surprising change in the +Indian vernacular whereby their speech is no longer of "Goora-log" and +"Sahib-log" but of "We," which fraternal pronoun is significant of +much)—'we shave you and feed you, we wash you and dress your wounds, +even as one of ourselves, and you kill our wounded Tommies, yea, and do +these things and worse even unto women. Are you not Christians? We' +(there is a return to old habits of speech)—'we are only Indians, but I +have read in your Bible that if one smite on the one cheek'"—here Shiva +Lal, who has now what he loves most in the world, an audience, and is +easily histrionic, smites his face mightily on the right side—"'one +should turn to him the other. Why is this?'"</p> + +<p>"And what said the German officer, Shiva Lal?"</p> + +<p>"Nay, sahib, he said nothing." We also say nothing. For Shiva Lal needs +but little encouragement to talk from sunset to cock-crow. Perhaps the +unfortunate German officer divined as much. But the spell of Shiva Lal's +eloquence is rudely broken by Major D——, who takes me by the arm to go +elsewhere. And the little group squatting on their haunches at their +mid-day meal cease<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> listening and dip their <i>chupattis</i> in the aromatic +<i>dhal</i>, in that slow, ruminant, ritualistic way in which the Indian +always eats his food.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ram, Ram! Tumhi kothun allé?</i>" said my friend Smith, turning aside to +a lonely figure on my right. A cry of joy escapes a dark-featured +Mahratta who has been looking mournfully on from his bed of pain, +comprehending nothing of these dialogues. We have, indeed, been talking +in every language except Mahrathi. And he, poor soul, has lost both +feet—they were frostbitten—and will never answer the music of the +charge again. But at the sound of his own tongue he raises his body by +the pulley hanging at the head of his cot, and gravely salutes the +sahib. Like Ruth amid the alien corn, his heart is sad with thoughts of +home, and he has been dreaming between these iron walls of the wide, +sunlit spaces of the Deccan. As his feverish brain counts and re-counts +the rivets on the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before his +wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village with its grove of +mangoes and its sacred banyan on the inviolable <i>otla</i>; he hears once +again the animated chatter of the wayfarers in the <i>chowdi</i>.</p> + +<p>"Where is thy home?"</p> + +<p>"Sahib, it is at Pirgaon."</p> + +<p>"I know it—is not Turkaran Patal the head-man?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> + +<p>The dark face gleams with pleasure. "Even so, sahib."</p> + +<p>"Shall I write to thy people?"</p> + +<p>"The sahib is very kind."</p> + +<p>"So will I do, and, perhaps, prepare thy people for thy homecoming. I +will tell them that thou hast lost thy feet with the frostbite, but art +otherwise well."</p> + +<p>"Nay, sahib, tell them everything but that, for if my people hear that +they will neither eat nor drink—nay, nor sleep, for sorrow."</p> + +<p>"Then will I not. But I will tell them that thou art a brave man."</p> + +<p>The Mahratta smiles mournfully.</p> + +<p>"And have you heard from your folk at home?" I ask of the others, +leaving Smith and the Mahratta together.</p> + +<p>"Yea, sahib, the exalted Government is very good to us. We get letters +often." It is a sepoy in the 107th who speaks. "My brother writes even +thus," and he reads with tears in his eyes: "'We miss you terribly, but +such is the will of God. I have been daily to Haji Baba Ziarat' (it is a +famous shrine in India), 'and day and night I pray for you, and am very +distressed. I am writing to tell you to have no anxiety about us at +home, but do your duty cheerfully and say your prayers. Repeat the +beginning with the word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> "Kor" and breathe forty times on your body. +Your father is well, but is very anxious for you, and weeps day and +night.'"</p> + +<p>"I also have received a letter." The speaker is a Bengali, and, though a +surgeon and non-combatant, must have his say. "My brother writes that I +am to enlight the names of my ancestors, who were tiger-like warriors, +and were called Bahadurs, by performing my duties to utmost +satisfaction." This is truly Babu English.</p> + +<p>"And you will do the same?"</p> + +<p>"Yea, I must do likewise. My brother writes to me, 'If you want to face +this side again, face as Bahadur.' And he saith, 'Long live King George, +and may he rule on the whole world.' And so say we all, sahib."</p> + +<p>"And you?" This to a Shia Mahomedan whose right hand is bandaged.</p> + +<p>"Ah, sahib, my people can write to me, but write to them I cannot. Will +the honourable sahib send a word for me who am thus crippled?"</p> + +<p>"Yea, gladly; what shall the words be?"</p> + +<p>"Say, then, oh sahib, these words: 'Your servant is well and happy here. +You should pray the God of Mercy that the victory may be to our King, +Jarj Panjam. And to my lady mother and my lady the sister of my father, +and to my brother, and to my dear ones the greetings of peace and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +prayer. And the sum of fifty rupees which I arranged for my family' (his +wife) 'will be paid to you every month.' The sahib is very kind."</p> + +<p>"The sahib would like to hear a story?" The speaker is a jemadar of the +59th. "So be it. Know then, sahib, that I and twelve men of my company +were cut off by the <i>German-log</i>, and I, even I only, am left. It was in +this wise. My comrades advanced too far beyond the trenches, and we lost +our way. And the <i>German-log</i> make signs to us to surrender, but it is +not our way and we still advance. And they open fire with a +machine-gun—so!" The speaker makes sounds as a man who stutters. "And +we are all hit—killed and wounded, and fall like ripe corn to the +sickle. And I am wounded in the leg and I fall. And the German officer, +he come up and hitted me in the buttock to see if I were dead. But I lay +exceeding still and hold my breath. And they pull me by the leg" (can it +be that the jemadar is pulling mine?), "a long way they pull me but +still I am as one dead. And so I escaped." He looks round for approval.</p> + +<p>"That was well done, jemadar." His lustrous eyes flash with pleasure. +"And how is it with your food?"</p> + +<p>"Good" ("<i>Bahout accha</i>"), comes a chorus of voices. "The exalted +Government has done great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> things. We have <i>ghee</i>"—a clarified butter +made of buffalo or cow's milk—"and <i>goor</i>"—unrefined sugar. "And we +have spices for our <i>dhal</i>—ginger and garlic and chilli and turmeric. +Yea, and fruits also—apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What more can +man want?"</p> + +<p>"It is well." But it is time for me to go. Smith is still talking to the +Mahratta, whose eyes never leave his face. "Come on, old man," I say, +"it is time to go." Smith turns reluctantly away. As I looked over my +shoulder the Mahratta was weeping softly.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h3> + +<h3>THE TROOP TRAIN</h3> + +<p>We were standing in the lounge of the Hotel M—— at the Base. "I'll +introduce you to young C—— of the Guards when he comes in," the Major +was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the +troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see +he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's +a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. +He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of +mine. Hulloa, C——, my boy. Allow me to introduce you."</p> + +<p>A youth with the milk and roses complexion of a girl, blue eyes, and +fair hair, well-built, but somewhat under the middle height—such was +C——, and he was good to look upon.</p> + +<p>Introductions being made, we filed into the <i>salle à manger</i>.</p> + +<p>"Chambertin, Julie, s'il vous plaît," said the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> Major. "There's nothing +like a good burgundy to warm the cockles of your heart." He had the +radiant eye of an Irishman, and smiled on Julie as he gave the order.</p> + +<p>"So you're leaving your hospital to go up and join a Field Ambulance?" I +said.</p> + +<p>"That's so, old man. There was a chance of my being made A.D.M.S. at the +Base some day if I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front, and +I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with +my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always worrying the O.C.'s. Talking +about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the story of how I pulled the leg +of old Macassey in South Africa?"</p> + +<p>"No," I said, although B—— had a way of telling the same stories twice +over occasionally. The one story he never told, not even once, was how +he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other +men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tell +you that to know B—— and have the privilege of his friendship, is to +be admitted to the largest freemasonry of officers in the British Army.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was like this," continued B——. "The A.D.M.S. was a thorn in +the side of every O.C. at the Base, walking up and down like the very +devil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> seeking whose reputation he might devour, and ordering every +O.C. to turn his hospital upside down. He took a positive delight in +breaking men. You know the type, the kind of man who breaks his wife's +heart not because he's bad, but because he's querulous. The nagging +type. Nothing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show, +where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got +accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a +recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very +good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey +with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up, +as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a +devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of +any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban. +However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked +than ever, but I thought I'd have it in black and white; so I saluted +and said, 'Bad memory, sir, my old wound in India, d'you mind writing +the order down?'"</p> + +<p>"My dear B——," I interrupted, "you know you've the memory of a +Recording Angel."</p> + +<p>"So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that Macassey's memory, +like that of most fussy men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought I'd +catch him out sooner or later. He and I went round the camp, and, after +about half-an-hour of the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught sight +of some double-roofed Indian tents that Simpson had got together with +great difficulty for the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin huts, and +in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Macassey +wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me +have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four, +and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I +said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field +Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who +can say 'No' to B——.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally +I took care of those pages. Next day old Macassey must have remembered +that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me +to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And +he knew that I had first-class documentary evidence, and that I guarded +his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at +Sotheby's. He never troubled us any more."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That was unkind of you, Major," I said insincerely.</p> + +<p>"Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been worrying old Simpson, and he +wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! have you never +heard the story of Simpson and the giddy goat?"</p> + +<p>"The goat?" said the sub.</p> + +<p>"Yes, the goat. Useful animal the goat, if a trifle capricious. It was +like this. Old Simpson, who's got a head on his shoulders big enough to +do all the thinking for the Royal College of Physicians, and ditto of +Surgeons, with a good few ideas left over for the R.A.M.C., determined +to get to the bottom of Mediterranean Fever—a nasty complaint, which +had worried the Malta garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do +when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say in the children's +picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to +suspect the goat. Why? Well, because he'd noticed that goat's milk was +drunk in Malta and Egypt. So he began to study the geographical +distribution of the goat with the zeal of an anthropologist localising +dolicocephalic and brachycephalic races. He found eventually that +wherever you could 'place' a goat you would find the fever. Wherefore he +took some goat's milk and cultivated it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> assiduously in an alluring +medium of Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus."</p> + +<p>"Dot and carry one. Please repeat," I interjected.</p> + +<p>"Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus," repeated the Major.</p> + +<p>"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar-man, +thief," soliloquised the subaltern, who was brightening up.</p> + +<p>"Quite so," said the Major with a benignant glance. "Well, he then got a +culture."</p> + +<p>"A what?"</p> + +<p>"Culture. Poisonous growth; hence German 'Kultur,'" said the Major +etymologically. "To proceed. He then inoculated some guinea-pigs. No! I +don't mean directors in the City, though he might have done worse. And +lo! and behold! he found the fever. You know the four canons of the +bacteriologist? One, 'get'; two, 'cultivate'; three, 'inoculate'; four, +'recover.'"</p> + +<p>"Well done, Simpson," I said.</p> + +<p>"You may say that, my friend. And now there's old Simpson down at the +Base in charge of No. 12 General saving lives by hundreds and thousands. +You know while the bullet slew its thousands, septicaemia has slain its +tens of thousands. How did he stop it? Why, by doing the obvious, which, +you may have observed, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> one ever does till a wise man comes along. He +got wounds to heal themselves. He promoted a lymphatic flow from the +rest of the body by putting suppositories of chloride of sodium inside +drainage-tubes in the wound. The heat of the body melts them, you see. +There are three great medical heroes of this war—Almroth Wright, +Martin-Leake, and Simpson."</p> + +<p>I could have named a fourth, but I held my tongue.</p> + +<p>"Time to get on our hind legs," the Major now said monitorily. "Julie, +<i>l'addition</i> s'il vous plaît."</p> + +<p>"Bien, monsieur," said Julie, who had been watching the Major admiringly +without comprehending a word of what he said. Women have a way of +falling in love with the Major at first sight.</p> + +<p>We stumbled along between the rails and over the sleepers, led by the +Major, who carried a hurricane lamp, and by the help of its fitful rays +we leapt across the pools of water left in every hollow. We passed some +cattle-trucks. The Major held up the lamp and scrutinised a legend in +white letters—</p> + +<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='40' summary='cattle-truck legend'> + <tr align='center'> + <td>Hommes 40.</td> + <td>Chevaux 12.</td> + </tr> + +</table> + +<p>"Reminds me of the Rule of Three," said the Major meditatively. "If one +Frenchman is equal to three and one-third horses, how many Huns are +equal to one British soldier?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> + +<p>"They are never equal to him," said the subaltern brightly. "If it +wasn't for machinery we'd have crumpled them up long ago."</p> + +<p>"True, my son," said the Major, "and well spoken."</p> + +<p>The men were grouped round the cattle-trucks, each man with his kit and +120 rounds of ammunition. They had just been through a kit inspection, +and the O.C. in charge of details had audited and found it correct by +entering up a memorandum to that effect in each man's pay-book. Though +how the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft, and certifies +that nothing from a housewife to thirty pairs of laces per man is +missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to +understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the +opaque integument of a ground-sheet at one glance. Also the Medical +Officer at the Base Depôt had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after +scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's naked body, with the +aid of a tallow candle stuck in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of +three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and +bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each +truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the +off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in +com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>mand of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very +soon.</p> + +<p>We were now opposite a first-class compartment, and a slim figure loomed +up out of the darkness.</p> + +<p>"Halloa! is that you, C——? I thought you were gone on ahead of us, my +boy."</p> + +<p>"So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing, and I'm sending a +corporal to hunt them up. We're off in a few minutes. I met young T—— +just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident +that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of +cheering other fellows up. "He's feeling rather blue," he continued. +"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's no good. Tell him I've got a plum-pudding and a bottle of +whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur."</p> + +<p>I looked at B——'s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the +kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable +acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a +darkness which you could almost feel with your hand.</p> + +<p>"I say, B——," I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, "what's +the regulation allowance for an officer's luggage? I forget."</p> + +<p>"One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> laugh, old chap, but I got round +the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can stow it in my billet. +Cheers the other fellows up, you know."</p> + +<p>B——'s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a +ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service +regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing +elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage. He would +gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know.</p> + +<p>"Major," I said, "you are a 'carrier'!"</p> + +<p>"Carter Paterson?" said the Major, with a glance at his luggage.</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't mean that. You are not as quick in the uptake as usual, +especially considering your medical qualifications. What I meant was +that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get +typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they +become immune from them themselves. You're diffusing a gaiety which you +no longer feel."</p> + +<p>It was a bold shot, and if we hadn't been pretty old friends it would +have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me +aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit the +bull's-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don't give me away. +Come into the carriage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p> + +<p>He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment, +each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of +them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say +were trivial irrelevancies. Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and +showed me a photograph.</p> + +<p>"My wife and Pat—you've never seen Pat, I think? We christened her +Patricia, you know?"</p> + +<p>It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls, +aged, I should say, about two.</p> + +<p>"Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter. +She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field +Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B—— studied it intently +for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly he +leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way. "I say, old chap, write to my +wife!"</p> + +<p>"But, my dear fellow, I've never met her except once. She must have +quite forgotten who I am."</p> + +<p>"I know. But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the +top of my form. Merry and bright, you know."</p> + +<p>We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised.</p> + +<p>There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of the couplings, as +C—— sprang in. I grasped B——'s hand, and jumped on to the footboard +of the moving train.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, old chap."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, old man."</p> + +<p>B—— had gone to the front. I never saw him again.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Three weeks later I was sitting at <i>déjeuner</i> in the Metropole, when a +ragamuffin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the +leave-boat. I took up the <i>Times</i> and looked, as one always looks +nowadays, at the obituary column. I looked again. In the same column, +one succeeding the other, I read the following:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur Hamilton C—— +of the —— Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur C. +and of Mrs. C. of the Red House, Little Twickenham, aged 19.</p> + +<p class='center'>Behold! I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke.</p> + +<p>Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier +under fire, Major Ronald B——, D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical +Corps, aged 42.</p> + +<p class='center'>Greater love hath no man than this.</p></blockquote> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="AII" id="AII"></a>II</h2> + +<h2>THE FRONT</h2> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h3> + +<h3>THE TWO RICHEBOURGS</h3> + +<p>We had business with the <i>maire</i> of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast. +Any one who looks at a staff map of North-West France will see that +there are two Richebourgs; there is Richebourg St. Vaast, but there is +also Richebourg l'Avoué, and although those two communes are separated +by a bare three or four kilometres there was in point of climate a +considerable difference between the two. In those days we had not yet +taken Neuve Chapelle, and Richebourg l'Avoué, which was in front of our +lines, was considered "unhealthy." Richebourg St. Vaast, on the other +hand, was well behind our lines and was considered by our billeting +officers quite a good residential neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>We had left G.H.Q., and after a journey of two hours or so passed +through Laventie, which had been rather badly mauled by shell-fire, and +began to thread our way through the skein of roads and by-roads that +enmeshes the two Richebourgs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> The natural features of the country were +inscrutable, and landmarks there were none. The countryside grew +absolutely deserted and the solitary farms were roofless and untenanted. +Eventually we found our road blocked by a barricade of fallen masonry in +front of a village which was as inhospitable as the Cities of the Plain.</p> + +<p>A vast silence brooded over the landscape, broken now and again by a +noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot. As we took cover behind +a wall of ruined houses we heard a sinister hiss, but whence it came or +what invisible trajectory it traced through the leaden skies overhead +neither of us could tell. Silence again fell like a mist upon the land; +not a bird sang, not a twig moved. The winter sun was sinking in the +west behind a pall of purple cloud in a lacquered sky—the one touch of +colour in the sombre greyness. The land was flat as the palm of one's +hand, its monotony relieved only by lines of pollarded willows on which +some sappers had strung a field telephone. Raindrops hung on the copper +wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was +scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as +if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay +walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed +wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> The +village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land +between the enemy's lines and our own, and the sodden fields were not +more desolate.</p> + +<p>A tornado of artillery fire had swept over it, and of the houses nothing +was left but indecencies, shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath +which were choked heaps of household furniture, broken beds, battered +lamps, and a wicker-chair overturned as in a drunken brawl. What had +once been the street was now a quarry of broken bricks, with here and +there vast circular craters as though a gigantic oak-tree had been torn +out of the earth by the roots. And now the weird silence was broken by +sounds as of some one playing a lonely tattoo with his fingers upon a +hollow wooden board, but the player was invisible, and as we looked at +each other the sound ceased as suddenly as it began. Our practised ear +told us that somewhere near us a machine-gun was concealed, but these +furtive sounds were so homeless, so impersonal, that they eluded us like +an echo.</p> + +<p>It was this complete absence of visible human agency that impressed us +most disagreeably, as with a sense of being utterly forlorn amid a play +of the elements, like Lear upon the heath. There came into my mind, as +our eyes groped for some human sign in the brooding landscape, the +thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> of the prophet upon the mount amid the wind and the earthquake +and the fire seeking the presence of his God and finding it not. And +here too all these assaults upon our senses were fugitive and ghostly, +and we felt ourselves encompassed about as by some great conspiracy. We +walked curiously up the little street until we reached the last house in +the village, and came out beyond the screen of its wall. At the same +instant something sang past my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my +foot caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My companion, +lagging behind and not yet clear of the friendly wall, stopped dead and +cried to me not to stand up. I crawled back among the rubbish to the +cover of the house. We took counsel together. To retreat were perilous, +but to advance might be fatal. We lowered our voices as, cowering behind +walls, and picking our way delicately among the <i>débris</i>, we crept back +to our car behind the entrance to the village. The driver started the +engine and we moved forlornly along the narrow causeway, skirting the +unfathomable mud that lay on either side, until we spied a ruined +farmhouse where a company had made its billet and mud-coloured knots of +soldiers stood round braziers of glowing coals. We had some parley with +the company commander, who was of the earth earthy. His words were few +and discouraging. As we crawled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> on, darkness enveloped us, but we dared +not light our head-lamps. Suddenly the car slipped on the greasy road, +staggered, and lurched over into the morass, hurling us violently upon +our sides. We clambered out and contemplated it solemnly as we saw our +right wheels over the axles in mud. No friendly billet was now in sight, +and as we stood profanely considering our plight the darkness behind us +was split by a long shaft of greenish light, and the whole landscape was +illuminated with a pallid glow, as the German star-shells discharged +themselves over the fan-like tops of the elms silhouetted against the +sky. The jack was useless in the soft mud, it sank like a stone, and as +we shoved and cursed we awaited each fresh discharge of the star-shells +with increasing apprehension, for we presented an obvious target to the +enemy's snipers. On the seat of the car was my despatch-box, and in that +box was a little dossier of papers marked "O.H.M.S. German Atrocities. +Secret and Confidential." "If the Germans catch us there'll be one +atrocity the more," remarked my Staff Officer grimly, "but they'll spare +us the labour of recording it."</p> + +<p>Our futile efforts were interrupted by the sound of feet upon the +causeway as a column of reliefs loomed up out of the darkness. A hurried +altercation in low tones, a subdued word of command,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> and a dozen men, +their rifles and entrenching tools slung over their shoulders, applied +themselves to the back of our car, and slowly it slithered out of the +mud. The column broke into file to allow us to pass, my companion went +on ahead with a tiny electric torch to show the way, and with infinite +caution we nudged slowly along the rank, the faint light of the torch +bringing face after face out of the darkness into <i>chiaroscuro</i>, faces +young and fresh and ruddy. Not a word was spoken save a whispered +command carried down the rank, mouth to ear, "No smoking, no talking +"—"No smoking, no talking "—"No talking, no smoking." Mules, carrying +sections of machine-guns and packs of straw, loomed up out of the +darkness as we passed, until the last of the column was reached and the +frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the night. We drew a +long breath, for we knew now from the colonel of the battalion whose men +had delivered us from that Slough of Despond that we had been within 150 +yards of the German lines. We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoué for +Richebourg St. Vaast.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h3> + +<h3>IDOLS OF THE CAVE</h3> + +<p>Like the Cyclopes they dwelt in hollow caves, and each Colonel uttered +the law to his children and recked not of the others except when the +Brigadier came round. True there were two and a half battalions in their +line of 2700 yards, but all they knew was that the next battalion to +their own was the Highlanders; it was only when the five days were up +and they were marched back to billets that they were able to cultivate +that somewhat exclusive society. Their trenches were like the suburbs, +they were faintly conscious that people lived in the next street, but +they never saw them. Their neighbours were as self-contained and silent +as themselves, except when their look-outs or machine-guns became +loquacious. Then they too became eloquent, and the whole line talked +freely at the Germans 200 yards away. By day the men slept heavily on +straw in hollows under the parapet, supported with crates and sprinkled +with chloride<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> of lime; by night they were out at the listening posts, +in the sap-heads, or behind the parapet, with their eyes glued to the +field of yellow mustard in front of us. They had watched that field for +three months. They knew every blade of grass therein. No experimental +agriculturist ever studied his lucerne and sainfoin as they have studied +the grasses of that field. They have watched it from winter to spring; +they have seen the lesser celandine give way to pink clover and sorrel, +and the grass shoot up from an inch to a foot. They have, indeed, been +studying not botany but ethnology, searching for traces of that species +of primitive man known to anthropologists as the Hun. They have never +found him except once, when one of our look-outs saw something crawling +across that field about midnight and promptly emptied his magazine. In +the morning they saw a grey figure lying out in the open; the days +passed and the long grass sprang up and concealed it till nothing was +left to attest its obscene presence except a little cloud of black +flies. Their horizon is bounded by rows of sand-bags, and their interest +in those sand-bags is only equalled by their interest in the field in +front of them. Occasionally one of our men finds them more than usually +interesting. There is a loud report, the click of a bolt, and the +pungent smell of burnt cordite. Then all is still again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p> + +<p>The tangent-sight on the standard of their machine-gun is always at 200, +and they have not altered the range for three months. Occasionally at +night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles, and with his thumb on +the button slowly sweeps that range of sand-bags, till the feed-block +sucks up the cartridge-belt like a chaff-cutter and the empty +cartridge-cases lie as thick round the tripod as acorns under an oak. +The Huns reply by taking a flashlight photograph of us with a calcium +flare, and then all is still again. In such excursions and alarms do +they pass the long night.</p> + +<p>Though five-sixths of them slept stertorously in their holes by day, by +night they were as wakeful as owls, and not less predatory. Life in the +trenches is one long struggle for existence, and in the course of it +they developed those acquired characteristics whereby the birds of the +air and the beasts of the field maintain themselves in a world of +carnage. They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their feet as +silently as hares, to see in the dark like foxes, to wriggle like the +creeping things of the field, to lower their voices with the direction +of the wind, to select a background with the moonlight, and to stand +motionless on patrol with muscles rigid like a pointer when the +star-shells dissolved the security of the night. They studied to +dissemble with their lips and to imitate the vocabulary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> of nature. They +grew more and more chary of human speech, and listening posts talked +with the trenches by pulls on a fishing-reel. They never sheathed their +claws, and working-parties wore their equipment as though it were the +integument of nature. Bayonets were never unfixed unless the moon were +very bright. At night they scraped out their earths like a badger, and, +like the badger's, those earths were exceeding clean. The men were +numbered off by threes from the flank, and one in three watched for two +hours while the other two worked, repairing parapets, strengthening +entanglements, and filling sand-bags. Every half-hour the N.C.O. on duty +crept round to report, or to post and relieve, while now and again a +patrol went out to observe. All this was done stealthily and with an +amazing economy of speech. Night was also the time of their foraging, +when the company's rations were brought up the communication trench and +handed over by the C.Q.M.S. to each platoon sergeant, who passed them on +to the section commander, and he in turn distributed them among his men +in such silence and with such little traffic that it seemed like the +provision of manna in the wilderness. At dawn pick-axe and spade were +laid aside, the rum ration was served out, and all men stood to, for +dawn was the hour of their apprehension.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + +<p>Two miles behind them is a battery of our field guns, and they have with +them an observing officer who talks intimately to his battery on the +field telephone in that laconic language of which gunners are so fond, +such as "One hundred. Twenty minutes to the left." Then the shells sing +over their heads with a pretty low trajectory, and the Huns, beginning +to get annoyed, reply with their heavy guns. There is a low whistle up +aloft, a noise like the fluttering of invisible wings, and the next +moment a cloud of black smoke rises over the village of X—— Y——, +behind the trenches. The Smoke Prevention Society ought to turn their +attention to "Jack Johnsons"; their habits are positively filthy.</p> + +<p>These things, however, disturbed them but little and bored them a great +deal. So they set to work to make their particular rabbit-warren into a +Garden City. They held it on a repairing lease, and were constantly +filling sand-bags, but that was merely to prevent depreciation, and +didn't count. They first of all paved their trenches with bricks; there +was no difficulty about the supply, as the "Jack Johnsons" obligingly +acted as house-breakers in the village behind our lines, and bricks +could be had for the fetching. Then the orderly transplanted some +pansies and forget-me-nots from the garden of a ruined house, and made a +border<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> in front of the company commander's dug-out. The communication +trench had been carried across a stream with some planks, and one day a +man with a gift for carpentry fixed up a balustrade out of the arms of +an apple-tree, which had been lopped off by shell, and we had a rustic +bridge. When May came, water anemones opened their star-like petals on +the surface of the clear amber stream, the orchard through which the +communication trench had been cut burst into blossom, the sticky clay +walls of the trench became hard as masonry in the sun, and one morning a +board appeared with the legend "Hyde Park. Keep off the grass."</p> + +<p>With these amenities their manners grew more and more refined. I have +read somewhere, in one of those dull collections of sweeping +generalisations that are called sociology, that each species of the +<i>genus homo</i> has to go through a normal sequence of stages from +barbarism to civilisation, and that we were once what the South Sea +Islanders are now. Which may be very true, but as regards that +particular primitive community I can testify that their social evolution +has in three months gone through all the stages that occupy other +communities three thousand years. They began as cave-dwellers and they +end by occupying suburban villas—the captain's dug-out has a roof of +corrugated iron, a window, a book-shelf, a table, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> even chairs, and +his table manners have vastly improved. They have progressed from +candles stuck in bully-beef tins to electric reading-lamps. Three months +ago they were hairy men whose beards did grow beneath their shoulders, +and their puttees were cemented with wet clay; to-day they are +clean-shaven and their Burberrys might be worn in Piccadilly. They slept +with nothing between them and the earth but a ground sheet what time +they were not, like the elephant, sleeping on their feet and propped +against a trench wall. Now they sleep on a bed with a wooden frame. I +have read somewhere that for a thousand years Europe was unwashed. It +may be so, but I know that this particular tribal community progressed +rapidly through all such stages, from a bucket to a shower-bath in +billets, in about six weeks, and you can see their men any day washing +themselves to the waist near the support trenches—men who a month or +two ago had forgotten how to take their clothes off. They are, in fact, +a highly civilised community. Some traces of their aboriginal state they +still retain, and they cherish their totem, which is a bundle of black +ribbons, rather like the flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to +the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night +some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out +on their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> stomachs with a hand-grenade to get as near as may be to the +enemy's listening posts and taste the joy of killing. But by day they +are as demure and sleepy as the tortoiseshell cat which has taken up its +quarters in the dug-out.</p> + +<p>Such is their life. But they are quietly preparing to get a move on. +Some R.G.A. men have arrived with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and +one fine morning they are going to disturb those sand-bags opposite them +with a battery of trench mortars; our field guns will draw a curtain of +shrapnel in front of the German support trenches, and then they will +satisfy their curiosity as to what is behind those inscrutable +sand-bags.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h3> + +<h3>STOKES'S ACT</h3> + +<blockquote><p>An offender when in arrest is not to bear arms except by order of +his C.O. or in an emergency.—<i>The King's Regulations.</i></p></blockquote> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>The President of the Court and the Judge-Advocate stood in private +colloquy in one of the deep traverse-like windows of the Hôtel de Ville +over-looking the Place. A heavy rain was falling from a sullen sky, and +the deserted square was a dancing sea of agitation as the raindrops +smote the little pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a +multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind swept across, and the +rain rattled against the windows. On the opposite side of the square one +of the houses gaped curiously, with bedroom and parlour exposed to view, +as though some one had snatched away the walls and laid the scene for +one of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters pursue a +complicated domestic intrigue on two floors at once. That house, with +its bed exposed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the rain dripping from the open rafters, was indeed +both farcical and indecent; it stood among its unscathed neighbours like +a pariah. The rain was loud and insistent, but not so loud as to dull +the distant thunder of the guns. The intermittent gusts of wind now and +again interrupted its monotonous theme, but the intervals were as brief +as they were violent, and in this polyphonic composition of rain, wind, +and guns, the hissing of the raindrops came and went as in a fugue and +with an inexpressible mournfulness.</p> + +<p>Inside the room was a table covered with green baize, on which were +methodically arranged in extended order a Bible, an inkstand, a sheaf of +paper, and a copy of the <i>Manual of Military Law</i>. Behind the table were +seven chairs, and to the right and left of them stood two others. The +seven chairs were for the members of the court; the chair on the extreme +right was for the "prisoner's friend," that on the left awaited the +Judge-Advocate. About five yards in front of the table, in the centre of +an empty space, stood two more chairs turned towards it. Otherwise the +room was as bare as a guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it a +certain dignity of its own as of a place where nothing was allowed to +distract the mind from the serious business in hand. At the door stood +an orderly with a red armlet bearing the imprint of the letters "M.P." +in black.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>"I have read the summary pretty carefully," the Judge-Advocate was +saying, "and it seems to me a clear case. The charge is fully made out. +And yet the curious thing is, the fellow has an excellent record, I +believe."</p> + +<p>"That proves nothing," said the Colonel; "I've had a fellow in my +battalion found sleeping at his post on sentry-go, a fellow I could have +sworn by. And you know what the punishment for that is. It's these night +attacks; the men must not sleep by night and some of them cannot sleep +by day, and there are limits to human nature. We've no reserves to speak +of as yet, and the men are only relieved once in three weeks. Their feet +are always wet, and their circulation goes all wrong. It's the puttees +perhaps. And if your circulation goes wrong you can't sleep when you +want to, till at last you sleep when you don't want to. Or else your +nerves go wrong. I've seen a man jump like a rabbit when I've come up +behind him."</p> + +<p>"Yes," mused the Judge-Advocate, "I know. But hard cases make bad law."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and bad law makes hard cases. Between you and me, our military law +is a bit prehistoric. You're a lawyer and know more about it than I do. +But isn't there something for civilians called a First Offenders Act? +Bind 'em over to come up for judgment if called on—that kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> thing. +Gives a man another chance. Why not the soldier too?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied the Judge-Advocate, "there is. I believe the War Office +have been talking about adopting it for years. But this is not the time +of day to make changes of that kind. Everybody's worked off his head."</p> + +<p>Eight officers had entered the room at intervals, the subalterns a +little ahead of their seniors in point of time, as is the first duty of +a subaltern whether on parade or at a "general," and, having saluted the +President in the window, they stood conversing in low tones.</p> + +<p>The Colonel suddenly glanced at his left wrist, walked to the middle +chair behind the table, and taking his seat said, "Now, gentlemen, carry +on, please!" As they took their places the Colonel, as President of the +Court, ordered the prisoner to be brought in. There was a shuffle of +feet outside, and a soldier without cap or belt or arms, and with a +sergeant's stripes upon his sleeve, was marched in under a sergeant's +escort. His face was not unpleasing—the eyes well apart and direct in +their gaze, the forehead square, and the contours of the mouth firm and +well-cut. The two took their places in front of the chair, and stood to +attention. The prisoner gazed fixedly at the letters "R.F.," which +flanked the arms of the Republic on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> wall above the President's +head, and stood as motionless as on parade. A close observer, however, +would have noticed that his thumb and forefinger plucked nervously at +the seam of his trousers, and that his hands, though held at attention, +were never quite still. The escort kept his head covered.</p> + +<p>At the President's order to "bring in the evidence," the soldier on duty +at the door vanished to return with a squad of seven soldiers in charge +of a sergeant, who formed them up in two ranks behind the prisoner and +his escort. And they also stood exceeding still.</p> + +<p>The President read the order convening the court, and, as he recited +each officer's name and regiment, the owner acknowledged it with "Here, +sir." When he came to the prisoner's name he looked up and said, "Is +that your name and number?" The escort nudged the prisoner, who recalled +his attention from the wall with an immense effort and said "Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"Captain Herbert appears as prosecutor and takes his place." As the +ritual prescribed by the Red Book was religiously gone through, the +prisoner continued to stare at the wall above the President's head, and +the rain rattled against the window-panes with intermittent violence. +Having finished his recital, the President rose, and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> him all the +members of the court rose also. He took a Bible in his hand and faced +the Judge-Advocate, who exhorted him that he should "well and truly try +the accused before the court according to the evidence," and that he +would duly administer justice according to the Army Act now in force, +without partiality, favour, or affection.... "So help you God." As the +colonel raised the book to his lips he chanted the antiphon "So help me +God." And the Judge-Advocate proceeded to swear the other members of the +court, individually or collectively, three subalterns who were jointly +and severally sworn holding the book together with a quaint solemnity, +as though they were singing hymns at church out of a common hymn-book. +Then the Judge-Advocate was in turn sworn by the President with his own +peculiar oath of office, and did faithfully and with great earnestness +promise that he would neither divulge the sentence, nor disclose nor +discover any votes or opinions as to the same. Which being done, and the +President having ordered the military policeman to march out the +evidence, the sergeant in charge cried "Left turn. Quick march. Left +wheel," and the little cloud of witnesses vanished through the doorway.</p> + +<p>The President proceeded to read the charge-sheet:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>The accused, No. , Sergeant John Stokes, 2nd Battalion +Downshire Regiment, is charged with Misbehaving before the enemy in +such a manner as to show cowardice, in that he at , on +October 3rd, 1914, when on patrol, and when under the enemy's fire, +did run away.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>All this time the prisoner had been studying the wall, his eyes +travelling from the right to the left of the frieze, and then from the +left to the right again. It was noticeable that his lips moved slightly +at each stage of this laborious visual journey. "Forty-seven." +"Forty-nine." "Forty-eight." Stokes was immensely interested in that +compelling frieze. He counted and recounted the number of figures in the +Greek fret with painful iteration. Apparently he was satisfied at last, +and then his eyes began to study the inkstand in front of the President. +The President seemed an enormous distance away, but the inkstand very +near and very large, and he found himself wondering why it was round, +why it wasn't square, or hexagonal, or elliptic. Then he speculated +whether the ink was blue or black, or red, and why people never used +green or yellow. His brain had gone through all the colours of the +spectrum when a pull at his sleeve by the escort attracted his +attention. Apparently the Colonel was saying something to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"</p> + +<p>The prisoner stared, but said nothing. The escort again pulled his +sleeve as the Colonel repeated the question.</p> + +<p>Stokes cleared his throat, and looking his interlocutor straight in the +face, said, "Guilty, sir." The members of the court looked at each +other, the Colonel whispered to the Judge-Advocate, the Judge-Advocate +to the Prosecutor. The Judge-Advocate turned to the prisoner, "Do you +realise," he asked, not unkindly, "that if you plead 'Guilty' you will +not be able to call any evidence as to extenuating circumstances?" The +prisoner pondered for a moment; it seemed to him that the +Judge-Advocate's voice was almost persuasive.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll say 'not guilty,' sir."</p> + +<p>He now saw the President quite close to him; that monstrous inkstand had +diminished to its natural size. Nothing was to be heard beyond the +hissing of the rain but the scratching of the Judge-Advocate's quill, as +he slowly dictated to himself the words "The—prisoner—pleads—'not +guilty.'" But why they had asked him a question which could only admit +of one answer and then persuaded him to give the wrong one, was a thing +that both puzzled and distressed John Stokes. Why all this solemn +ritual, he speculated painfully; he was surely as good as dead already. +He found himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> wondering whether the sentence of the Court would be +carried out in the presence of only the firing party, or whether the +whole of his battalion would be paraded. And he fell to wondering +whether he would be reported in the casualty lists as "killed in +action," or would it be "missing"? And would they send his wife his +identity-disc, as they did with those who had fallen honourably on the +field? All these questions both interested and perplexed him, but the +proceedings of the Court he regarded little, or not at all.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Prosecutor was unfolding the charge in a clear, even +voice, neither extenuating nor setting down aught in malice. In a +court-martial no Prosecutor ever "presses" the charge; he may even +alleviate it. Which shows that Assizes and Sessions have something to +learn from courts-martial. The case was simple. Prisoner had gone out on +the night of the 3rd with a patrol commanded by a subaltern. An alarm +was raised, and he and the greater part of the patrol had run back to +the trenches, leaving the officer to stand his ground and to return +later with his left arm shattered by a German bullet.</p> + +<p>All this Stokes remembered but too well, though it seemed to have +happened an immense time ago. He remembered how the subaltern had warned +him that the only thing to do when a German flare lit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> up the night was +to stand quite still. And he had not stood still, for one of the most +difficult things for a man to believe is that to see suddenly is not the +same thing as being seen; he had ducked, and as he moved something +seared his right cheek like red-hot iron, and then—but why recall that +shameful moment? A paradoxical psychologist in a learned essay on "the +Expression of Emotion" has argued gravely that the "expression" precedes +the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is afraid but is afraid +because he runs. Sergeant Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to +this day he believes that it was his first start that was his undoing. +He had begun to run without knowing why, until he knew why he ran—he +was afraid. Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army vernacular, "cold +feet." But why he ran in the first instance he did not know. It was true +he hadn't slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as N.C.O. to +go round every half-hour during the night to watch the men and stare at +that inscrutable field, and to post and relieve, had made him very +jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in his arms the day before +that fatal night—he could see the grey film glistening on his face like +a clouded glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But what had that to +do with the charge? Nothing at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p> + +<p>And while the prisoner pondered on these things he was recalled by the +voice of the President. Did he wish to ask the witness any questions? +His company commander had been giving evidence. No; he had no questions +to ask. And as each witness was called, and sworn, and gave evidence, +all of which the Judge-Advocate repeated like a litany and duly wrote +down with his own hand—the prisoner always returned the same answer.</p> + +<p>Now the prisoner's friend, a young officer who had never played that +<i>rôle</i> before, and who was both nervous and conscientious, had been +studying Rule 40 in the Red Book with furtive concentration. What was he +to do with a prisoner who elected neither to make a statement nor to put +questions to witnesses, and who never gave him any lead? But he had +there read something about calling witnesses as to character, and, +reading, recollected that the company commander had glanced at the +prisoner with genuine commiseration. And so he persuaded Stokes, after +some parley, to call the captain to give evidence as to character. The +captain's words were few and weighty. The prisoner, he testified, was +one of the best N.C.O.'s in his company, and, with the latitude which is +characteristic of court-martial proceedings, the captain went on to tell +of the testimony borne by the dead subaltern to the excellent character +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> John Stokes, and how the said John Stokes had been greatly affected +by the death of the subaltern. And for the first time John Stokes hung +his head. But beyond that and the quivering of his eyelashes he made no +sign.</p> + +<p>And it being a clear case the Judge-Advocate, as a Judge-Advocate may +do, elected not to sum up, and the prisoner was taken to the place from +whence he came. And the Court proceeded to consider their finding and +sentence, which finding and sentence, being signed by the President and +the Judge-Advocate, duly went its appointed way to the Confirming +Authority and there remained. For the General in Chief command in the +field was hard pressed with other and weightier matters, having reason +to believe that he would have to meet an attack of three Army Corps on a +front of eight miles with only one Division. Which belief turned out to +be true, and had for Sergeant John Stokes momentous consequences, as you +shall hear.</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>When John Stokes found himself once more in charge of a platoon he was +greatly puzzled. He had been suddenly given back his arms and his belt, +which no prisoner, whether in close or open arrest, is supposed to wear, +and his guard had gone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> with him. He knew nothing about Paragraph 482 of +the King's Regulations, which contemplates "emergencies"; still less did +he know that an emergency had arisen—such an emergency as will cast +lustre upon British arms to the end of time. But that strange things +were happening ahead he knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly +made up as Falstaff's army: gunners, cooks, and A.S.C. drivers were all +lumped together to make a company. Some carried their rifles at the +slope and some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had not, certain +details from the Rifle Brigade marched with their own quick trot, and +some wore spurs.</p> + +<p>Of one thing he was thankful: his old battalion, wherever they were, +were not there. And the company commander coming along and perceiving +the stripes on his sleeve, had, without further inquiry, put him in +charge of a platoon, and thereafter he lost sight of his guard +altogether.</p> + +<p>He knew nothing of where he was. Few soldiers at the Front ever do: they +will be billeted in a village for a week and not know so much as the +name of it. But that big business was afoot was evident to him, for they +were marching in column of route almost at the double, under a faint +moon and in absolute silence—the word having gone forth that there was +to be no smoking or talking in the ranks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<p>Not a sound was to be heard, except the whisper of the poplars and the +tramp of the men's feet upon the <i>pavé</i>. The road was so greasy with mud +that it might have been beeswaxed, and Stokes's boots, the nails of +which had been worn down, kept slipping as on a parquet floor. As they +passed through the mean little villages not a light was to be seen; even +the <i>estaminets</i> were shut, but now and again a dog barked mournfully at +its chain. Once a whispered command was given at the head of the column, +which halted so suddenly that the men behind almost fell upon the men in +front, and then backed hastily; and these movements were automatically +communicated all down the column, so that the sections of fours lurched +like the trucks of a train which is suddenly pulled up. At that moment +something flashed at the head of the column, and Stokes suddenly caught +a glimpse of the faces of the captain and the subaltern in an aureole of +light lit by the needle-like rays of an electric torch as they studied a +map and compass.</p> + +<p>But in no long time their ears told them they were nearing their +destination, even as a traveller learns that he is nearing the sea. For +they heard the crackle of musketry following upon the altercation of +guns. All this passed as in a dream, and it seemed little more than a +few minutes before Sergeant Stokes, having passed through a curtain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> of +shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some shallow support trenches to +which the remnants of the regiment whom they were called upon to stiffen +had fallen back. It was a critical moment: our first trenches were in +the hands of the enemy, and the whole line was sagging under the impact +of the German hordes. Somehow that trench had to be recaptured—to be +recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into an +invulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of machine-guns to sweep +with a crossfire the right and left flanks, where our line curved in +like a gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes knew as little +as is usually given to one platoon to know on a front of eight miles.</p> + +<p>As dawn broke and the stars paled, the word came down the line, and, in +a series of short rushes, stooping somewhat in the attitude of a man who +is climbing a very steep hill, they moved forward in extended order +about eight or ten paces apart carrying their rifles with bayonets +fixed. A hail-storm of lead greeted them, and all around him Sergeant +Stokes saw men falling, and as they fell lying in strange attitudes and +uncouth—some stumbling (he had seen a hare shot in the back dragging +its legs in just that way), others lying on their faces and clutching +the earth convulsively as they drummed with their feet, and some very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +still. Overhead there was a sobbing and whimpering in the air. A little +ahead to the left of him a machine-gun was tap-tapping like a telegraph +instrument, and as it traversed the field of their advance the men went +down in swathes.</p> + +<p>If only he could get to that gun! On the right a low hedge ran at right +angles to the German trench, and making for it he took such little cover +as it afforded, and ran forward as he had never run before, not even on +that night of baneful memory. His heart was thumping violently, there +was a prodigious "stitch" in his side; and something warm was trickling +down his forehead into his eyes and half blinding him, while in his ears +the bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees. The next moment he +was up against a little knot of grey-coated figures with toy-like +helmets, he heard a word that sounded like "Himmel," and he had emptied +his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing, +parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very +faint....</p> + +<p>That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For +the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense +distance—just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was +coming to after a spell of gas—was saying something to him as he seemed +to be rising,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable +depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and +then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at +the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet—an excellent thing in +woman—was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was +impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew—he was in +hospital.</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a +certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field +Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious +case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making +hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up +all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had +been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking. +Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and +not reduced by one stripe."</p> + +<p>"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw +forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day +singing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>—singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of +course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a +few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that +cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to +breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of +sheer weariness—well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the +scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them, +but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made +us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at +that."</p> + +<p>The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the +table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial." +He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a +Parliamentary draughtsman. "Yes," he said, after some pertinent +emendations, "it'll do. But the title is too long for common use at +G.H.Q."</p> + +<p>"Why!" said the other with a certain paternal sensitiveness, "what do +you suggest?"</p> + +<p>"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pensively,—"I suggest we call it +Stokes's Act."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Now this story has one merit—if it has no other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> It is true. And as +for the rest of the Act and its preamble, and its sections and its +sub-sections, are they not written in the Statute Book? In the Temple +they call it 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But out there they call it "Stokes's +Act."</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h3> + +<h3>THE FRONT</h3> + +<p>Persons of a rheumatic habit are said to apprehend the approach of damp +weather by certain presentiments in their bones. So people of a nervous +temperament—like the writer—have premonitions of the approach to "the +Front" by a feeling of cold feet. These are usually induced by the +spectacle of large and untimely cavities in the road, but they may be +accentuated, as not infrequently happened, by seeing the process of +excavation itself—and hearing it. The effect on the auditory nerves is +known as "k-r-rump," which is, phonetically speaking, a fairly literal +translation. The best thing to do on such occasions is to obey the +nursery rhyme, and "open your mouth and shut your eyes." The intake of +air will relieve the pressure on your ear-drums. I have been told by one +of our gunners that the gentle German has for years been experimenting +in order to produce as "frightful" and intimidating a sound by the +explosion of his shells<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> as possible. He has succeeded. Cases have been +known of men without a scratch laughing and crying simultaneously after +a too-close acquaintance with the German hymnology of hate. The results +are, however, sometimes disappointing from the German point of view, as +in the case of the soldier who, being spattered with dirt but otherwise +untouched, picked himself up, and remarked with profound contempt, "The +dirty swine!"</p> + +<p>The immediate approach to the trenches is usually marked by what sailors +call a "dodger," which is to say, a series of canvas screens. These do +not conceal your legs, and if you are exceptionally tall, they may not +conceal your head. Your feet don't matter, but if you are wise you duck +your head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate pride in walking +upright, and will laugh at you most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in +the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of +course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I +visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to +admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up +ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as +wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the +approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible, +the latter object being effected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> by frequent "traversing." To reach the +fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of +them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it +with innumerable junctions and small depôts in the shape of dug-outs, +and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering +as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is +complicated by frequent traverses—something after the pattern of a +Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to +prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these +things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb +and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part +of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a +lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the +right and left of you. The delivery of a bomb serves as a very effective +notice of ejectment. The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of +earth commonly known as a parados. My servant, whose vocabulary was +limited, called it a paradox, and was not very wide of the mark.</p> + +<p>Somewhere behind the trenches at varying distances are the batteries. +The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their +guns, and if none are to be found they improvise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> them. Hop-poles +trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a +delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf +emplacements are constructed for the six guns, and turfed dug-outs house +the telephone-operator and the gunners. The battery officers are +billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farmhouse, whose chief +decorative feature is a midden-heap; in England it would promptly be the +subject of a closing order by any Public Health authority.</p> + +<p>There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun. As a ship answers her +helm or an aeroplane its controls, so does an eighteen-pounder respond +to every turn of her elevating and traversing gear. Watch a gunner +laying his gun on a target he cannot see; observe him switch the gun +round from the aiming point to the target; remark the way in which the +sight clinometer registers the angle of sight and the drum registers the +range; and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship that ever sailed +the high seas could be more docile to a turn of the wheel. With perfect +simplicity did a man in the R.F.A. once say to me, "We feel towards our +gun as a mother feels to her child; we'd sooner lose our lives than our +gun." In that confession of faith you have the whole of the gunner's +creed.</p> + +<p>The heavy guns are generally to be found in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> splendid isolation; one +such I visited and I marvelled at its appearance; it resembled nothing +so much as the mottled trunk of a decayed plane-tree except for its +girth. "Futurist art," explained the major deprecatingly as I stared at +its daubed surface; "it makes it unrecognisable." It certainly did. +Close by were what looked at a distance like a bed of copper cucumbers. +"More gardening?" I asked. "Yes, market gardening," replied the major; +"if we lay the shells like that with sand-bags between them we prevent +their igniting one another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver +the goods."</p> + +<p>A mile or two from the battery headquarters at X—— Y—— was the +observing station. The battery-major and myself were accompanied thither +by a huge mastiff who in civil life was a dairyman by profession and +turned a churn, but had long since attached himself to the major as +orderly. We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point the +mastiff stopped dead and declined to come any further. I thought this +churlish, and told him so, but he merely wagged his tail. When we +entered the farmyard I understood. It was pitted with shell-holes, and +they were obviously of very recent excavation. As a matter of fact the +Huns suspected that farm, and with good reason, and treated it to +intermittent "Hate." The mastiff therefore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> always waited for the +battery-major at what it judged, quite erroneously, to be a safe +distance. We clambered up into a loft by means of unreliable ladders. In +the roof of the loft some tiles had been removed, and leaning our arms +on the rafters we looked out. "You see that row of six poplars over +there?" said the Major, pointing to a place behind the German trenches. +I recognised them, for the same six poplars I had seen through a +periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a +house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned +to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft. "Lay No. 2 on the +register! Report when ready!" The operator repeated the words +confidentially to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the receiver +answered "Ready!" "Fire!" I had my eyes glued to the house, yet nothing +seemed to happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously with my +pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed? Even as I speculated there was a +puff of smoke and a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between the +poplars. We had delivered the goods.</p> + +<p>If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the +chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in +billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in +their habits, and change their positions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> according as they are wanted. +But a field ambulance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a unit +of the R.A.M.C, with a major or a colonel in charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S. +of a division has three field ambulances under him, and when an attack +in force is projected he mobilises these three units at forward dressing +stations in the rear of the trenches. They are a link between the +aid-posts in front and the collecting stations behind. From the +collecting stations the wounded are sent on to the clearing hospitals +and thence to the base. It sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The +most eloquent compliment to its perfection was the dreamy reminiscence +of a soldier I met at the base: "I got hit up at Wipers, sir; something +hit me in the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard somebody +saying 'Drink this,' and I found myself in bed at Boulogne." Every field +ambulance has an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he usually is. +Is the soldier sick, he visits him; penitent, he shrives him; dying, he +comforts him. One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two, and a +mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was often longing for a shot at +the Huns, and as often imposing penances upon himself for such +un-ghostly desires. He found consolation in confessing the Irishmen +before they went into the trenches: "The bhoys fight all the better for +it,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his flock; the only +doubts he had were about his own. We all loved him.</p> + +<p>There is one great difference between life in billets and life in the +trenches. In billets the soldier "grouses" often, in trenches never. +This may be partly due to a very proper sense of proportion; it may also +be due to the fact that, the necessity for vigilance being relaxed and +the occasions for industry few, life in billets is apt to become a great +bore. The small Flemish and French towns offer few amenities; in our +mess we found our principal recreation in reunions with other +fraternities at the <i>pâtisserie</i> or in an occasional mount. Of +<i>pâtisseries</i> that at Bethune is the best; that at Poperinghe the worst. +Besides, the former has a piano and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In the +earlier stages of our occupation some of the officers at G.H.Q. did a +little coursing and shooting, but there was trouble about <i>délits de +chasse</i>, and now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big game—namely, +Germans—although I have heard of an irresponsible Irishman in the +trenches who vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more +remarkable, returned with it. Needless to say, his neighbours were +Saxons. As for the men, their opportunities of relaxation are more +circumscribed. Much depends on the house in which they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> billeted. If +there is a baby, you can take the part of mother's help; one of the most +engaging sights I saw was a troop of our cavalrymen (they may have been +the A.V.C.) riding through Armentières, leading a string of remounts, +each remount with a laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can wash. +If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has +the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like +Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a +pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other +with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the +inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think it indecent, or merely +eccentric; perhaps both. But then, as Anatole France has gravely +remarked, a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of chastity. +Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals has reminded us, cleanliness +of body is next to orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you +may, with God's grace, escape one or more of the seven plagues of +Flanders. These seven are lice, flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and +"souvenirs." The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean +cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsmanlike and irritating habits +they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not +entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> partake too +much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from +an impassive man with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room.</p> + +<p>But it may well happen that in spite of babies, and baths, and brass +bands, and footballs, and boxing-gloves, and playing marbles (the +General in command of one of our divisions told me he had seen six +Argyll and Sutherland sergeants playing marbles with shrapnel bullets in +some support trenches), the men get bored. They are often very crowded, +and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate +shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his +neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may +become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander +sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a +good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in +the winter months, when out visiting Divisional Headquarters, did I, in +the shameful luxury of my car, come across a battalion slogging along +ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing with almost reproachful +unction:</p> + +<p class='center'>Last night I s-s-aw you, I s-saw you, you naughty boy!</p> + +<p>Some one ought to make an anthology (for private circulation only) of +the songs most affected by our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> men, and also of the topographical +Limericks with which they beguile the long hours in the trenches. And if +the English soldier is addicted to versifying it may be pleaded in his +behalf that, as Mommsen apologetically remarks of Caesar, "they were +weak verses." Not always, however, I have seen some unpublished verses +by a young officer on the staff of the late General Hubert Hamilton, a +man beloved by all who knew him, describing the burial of his dead chief +at night behind the firing-line, which in their sombre and elegiac +beauty are not unworthy to rank with the classical lines on the burial +of Sir John Moore. And there is that magnificent <i>Hymn before Battle</i> by +Captain Julian Grenfell, surely one of the most moving things of its +kind.</p> + +<p>With such diversions do our men beguile the interminable hours. After +all it is the small things that men resent in life, not the big ones. I +once asked a French soldier over a game of cards—in civil life he was a +plumber, whom we shall meet again<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>—whether he could get any sleep in +the trenches amid the infernal din of the guns. "Oh, I slept pretty well +on the whole," he explained nonchalantly, "mais mon voisin, +celui-là"—he pointed reproachfully to a comrade who was imperturbably +shuffling the pack—"il ronflait si fort qu'il finissait par me +dégoûter."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See <a href="#XV">Chapter XV.</a></p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h3> + +<h3>AT G.H.Q.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></h3> + + +<table border='1' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='5' summary='billeting-paper'> + <tr> + <td align='center'>Billet de Logement.<br /> +Mme. Bonnard, 131 rue Robert le Frisson, logera les sous-dits,<br /> +savoir: un officier, <span class='strike'>un sous officier, deux hommes;</span> fournira le lit,<br /> +place au feu et à la chandelle, conformément à loi du 3 juillet, 1877.<br /> +Délivré à la Mairie,<br /> +le 31<sup>me</sup> Janvier, 1915.<br /> +Le Maire ——</td> + </tr> + +</table> + +<p>The Camp Commandant, who is a keeper of lodging-houses and an Inspector +of Nuisances, had given me a slip of paper on which was inscribed the +address No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson and a printed injunction to the +occupier to know that by these presents she was enjoined to provide me +with bed, fire, and lights. Armed with this billeting-paper and +accompanied by my servant, a private in the Suffolks, who was carrying +my kit, I knocked at the door of No. 131, affecting an indifference to +my reception which I did not feel. It seemed to me that a +rate-collector, presenting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> a demand note, could have boasted a more +graceful errand. The door opened and an old lady in a black silk gown +inquired, "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, M'sieu'?" I presented my +billeting-paper with a bow. Her waist was girt with a kind of +bombardier's girdle from which hung a small armoury of steel implements +and leather scabbards: scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a +button-hook, and other more or less intimidating things. "Jeanne," she +called in a quavering voice, and as the <i>bonne</i> appeared, tying her +apron-strings, they read the billeting-paper together, the one looking +over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading the words as a child +reads, and as though she were speaking to herself. The paper shook in +her tremulous hands, and I could see that she was very old. It was +obvious that my appearance in that quiet household was as agitating as +it was unexpected. "Et votre ordonnance?" she asked, with a glance at my +servant. "Non, il dort dans la caserne." "Bien!" she said, and with a +smile made me welcome.</p> + + +<p>It was soon evident that, my credentials being once established, I was +to be regarded as a member of the household, and nothing would satisfy +Madame but that I should be assured of this. Having shown me my bedroom, +with its pompous bed draped with a tent of curtains, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> took me on a +tour of her <i>ménage</i>. I was conducted into the kitchen, bright with +copper pans and the <i>marmite</i>—it was as sweet and clean as a dairy; the +resources of the still-room were displayed to me, and the confitures and +spices were not more remarkable than the domestic pharmacy in which the +herbs of the field had been distilled by Madame's own hands to yield +their peculiar virtues, rue for liver, calamint for cholera, plantain +for the kidneys, fennel for indigestion, elderberry for sore throat, and +dandelion for affections of the blood. Then I was shown the oak presses +full of linen white as snow and laid up in lavender. This inventory +being concluded, I was presented with a key of the front door to mark my +admission into the freedom of the house, and invited to take a glass of +Burgundy while Sykes was unpacking my kit upstairs.</p> + +<p>Madame, it seemed, was a widow of eighty-five years of age, without +issue, and if her eyes were dim and her natural force abated, her teeth, +as she proudly told me, were her own. She obviously belonged to that +<i>rentier</i> class who spend the evening of their days in the quiet town +which serves as G.H.Q.—a town which has a kind of faded gentility, and +which, behind its inscrutable house-fronts, conceals a good deal of +quiet opulence in the matter of old china, silver, and oak. In her youth +Madame had kept a <i>pension</i> and had had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> English demoiselles among her +charges. She had never been to England but she had heard of "Hyde Park." +Did I know it? She received my assurance with obvious gratification as +though it established a personal intimacy between us. "Avez-vous tué des +Allemands?" My negative answer left her disappointed but hopeful.</p> + +<p>"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?" interjected the <i>bonne</i>, who, I +afterwards found, had a husband at the war. Those interrogatories were +to become very familiar to me. Every evening, when I returned from my +visits to Divisional and Brigade Headquarters, mistress and servant +always put me through the same catechism:</p> + +<p>"Avez-vous tué des Allemands?"</p> + +<p>"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?"</p> + +<p>The immense seriousness, not to say solicitude, with which these +inquiries were addressed to me eventually led me into the most +enterprising mendacities. I killed a German every day, greatly to +Madame's satisfaction, and my total bag when I came away was +sufficiently remarkable to be worth a place in an official <i>communiqué</i>. +I think it gave Madame a feeling of security, and I hoped Jeanne might +consider that it appreciably accelerated the end of the war. But +"Guillaume," as she always called him, was the principal object of +Madame's aversion, and she never mentioned the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> name of the All-Highest +without a lethal gesture as she drew her tremulous hand across her +throat and uttered the menacing words: "Couper la gorge." She often +uttered these maledictions to Sykes in the kitchen, as she watched him +making the toast for my breakfast, and I have no doubt that the "Oui, +Madame," with which he invariably assented, gave her great satisfaction. +Doubtless it made her feel that the heart of the British Army was sound. +Sykes used to study furtively a small book called <i>French, and how to +speak it</i>, but he was very chary of speaking it, and seemed to prefer a +deaf-and-dumb language of his own. But he was naturally a man of few +words, and phlegmatic. He described the first battle of Ypres, in which +he had been "wownded," in exactly twenty-four words, and I could never +get any more out of him, though he became comparatively voluble on the +subject of his wife at Norwich and the twins. He was an East Anglian, +and made four vowels do duty for five, his e's being always pronounced +as a's; he had done his seven years' "sarvice" with the colours, and was +a reservist; he was an admirable servant—steady, cool, and honest. I +imagine he had never acted as servant to any of his regimental officers, +for on the first occasion when he brought up my breakfast I was not a +little amused to observe that the top of the egg had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> carefully +removed, the rolls sliced and buttered, and the bread and butter cut +into slender "fingers," presumably for me to dip into the ochreous +interior of the egg; it reminded me of my nursery days. Perhaps he was +in the habit of doing it for the twins. I gently weaned him from this +tender habit. He performed all his duties, such as making my bed, or +handing me a letter, with quick automatic movements as though he were +presenting arms. Also his face, which was usually expressionless as +though his mind were "at ease," had a way of suddenly coming to +"attention" when you spoke to him. He had a curious and recondite +knowledge of the folk-lore of the British Army, and entertained me at +times with stories of "Kruger's Own," "The White Shirts," "The Dirty +Twelfth," "The Holy Boys," "The Saucy Seventh," having names for the +regiments which you will never find in the <i>Army List</i>. In short, he was +a survival and in a way a tragic survival. For how many of the old Army +are left? I fear very few, and many traditions may have perished with +them.</p> + +<p>In his solicitude for me Sykes had jealous rivals in Madame and Jeanne. +Madame reserved to herself as her peculiar prerogative the deposit of a +hot-water "bottle" in my bed every night, such a hot-water bottle as I +have never seen elsewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> It reminded me of nothing so much as the +barrel of one of the newer machine-guns, being a long fluted cylinder of +black steel. This was always borne by Madame every night in ritualistic +procession, Jeanne following with a silver candlestick and a +night-light. The ceremony concluded with a bow and "good-night," two +words of which Madame was inordinately proud. She never attained +"good-morning," but she more than supplied the deficiency of English +speech by the grace of her French manners, always entering my room at 8 +<span class="smcap">a.m.</span> as I lay in bed, with the greeting, "Bon matin, M'sieu', +avez-vous bien dormi?" Perhaps I looked, as I felt, embarrassed on the +first occasion, for she quickly added in French, "I am old enough to be +your mother"—as indeed she was. She had at once the resignation in +repose and the agitation in action of extreme old age. I have seen her +dozing in her chair in the salon, as I passed through the hall, with her +gnarled hands extended on her knees in just that attitude of quiet +waiting which one associates with the well-known engraving in which +Death is figured as the coming of a friend. But when she was on her feet +she moved about with a kind of aimless activity, opening drawers and +shutting them and reopening them and speaking to herself the while, +until Jeanne, catching my puzzled expression, would whisper loudly in +my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> ear with a tolerant smile, "Elle est très VIEILLE." Jeanne had +acquired a habit of raising her voice, owing to Madame's deafness, which +resulted in her whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those +stage asides which, by a curious convention, while audible at the very +back of the dress circle, are quite inaudible to the other characters on +the stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these auricular confidences I +know not. If she did, I doubt if she regarded them, for she was under +the illusion, common to very old people who live in the society of a +younger generation and were mature adults when their companions were +merely adolescent, that Jeanne, who had entered her service as a child, +had never grown up. If Madame seemed "très vieille" to Jeanne, it was +indisputable that Jeanne continued "très jeune" to Madame. She was, +indeed, firmly convinced that she was looking after Jeanne, whereas in +truth it was Jeanne who looked after her. For Jeanne was at least +thirty-five, with a husband at the war, in virtue of whom she enjoyed a +separation allowance of one franc a day, and a boy for whom she received +ten sous. Her husband, a <i>pompier</i>, got nothing. It never occurred to +her to regard this provision as inadequate. And she was as capable as +she was contented, and sang at her work.</p> + +<p>It was often difficult to believe that this quiet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> backwater was within +an hour or two of the trenches. G.H.Q. was indeed situated well back +behind "the Front," which, however precise the maps in the newspapers +may affect to make it, is, like the Equator of our school-books, a more +or less "imaginary line drawn across the earth's surface." Imaginary +because if a line be, as we were taught with painful reiteration, length +without breadth, then "the Front" is not a line at all, much less a +straight line in the sense of the shortest distance between two points. +It is not straight, for it curves and sags and has its salients and +re-entrant angles; and it is not a line, for it has breadth as well as +length. Broadly speaking, the Front extends back to the H.Q. of the +armies (to say nothing of the H.Q. of corps, divisions, and brigades), +and thence to G.H.Q. itself, which may be regarded as being "the Back of +the Front," to vary a classical expression of <i>Punch</i>. The Front is, +indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened +fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of +communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we +extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just +expand our fan a little more. When we come to make a general advance all +along the periphery, the whole fan will be thrust forward, and the +knuckle with it, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> relative distances of General Headquarters, +and minor Headquarters, from this periphery and from one another are a +more or less constant quantity, being determined by such fixed +considerations as the range of modern guns and the mobility of +transport.</p> + +<p>From G.H.Q., the brain of the Army, the volitional centre of the whole +organism, radiate the sensory and motor nerves by which impressions at +the Front are registered and plans for action transmitted. It is the +home of the Staff, not of the Armies, and contains more "brass hats" +than all the other Headquarters put together. Beyond the "details" in +the barracks it contains few of the rank and file, and its big square +betrays little of the crowded animation of the towns nearer the fighting +line, with their great parks of armoured cars, motor lorries, and +ammunition waggons, their filter-carts, and their little clusters and +eddies of men resting in billets. The Military Police on point-duty have +a comparatively quiet time, although despatch-riders are, of course, for +ever whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the Front. It is as +full of departmental offices as Whitehall itself—some 153 of them to be +exact—each one indicated by a combination of initial letters, for staff +officers are men of few words and cogent, and it saves time to say "O."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> +when you mean Operations, "I." for Intelligence, "A.G." for +Adjutant-General; a fashion which is faithfully followed at the other +H.Q., for D.A.A.Q.M.G. saves an enormous number of polysyllables.</p> + +<p>Hence the proximity of hostilities has left but little outward and +visible sign upon the ancient town. The tradesmen have, it is true, made +some concessions to our presence, and one remarks the inviting legends +"Top-hole Tea" in the windows of a <i>pâtisserie</i> and "High life" over the +shop of a tailor. Four of us made a private arrangement with a buxom +housewife, whereby, in return for four francs per head a day and the +pooling of our rations, she undertook to provide us with lunch and +dinner, thereby establishing a "Mess" of our own. Many such fraternities +there were in the absence of a regular regimental mess. But these +arrangements were more private than military, the only obligation on the +ordinary householder being the furnishing of billets. Occasionally the +cobbled streets became the scene of an unwonted animation when young +French recruits celebrated their call to the colours by marching down +the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German +prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which +they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> One such squad I saw +arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down +to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen +stones, landed heavily in his ammunition boots from a height of about +five feet on the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter winced +and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond that gave no sign; I wondered +whether, had the positions been reversed and the scene laid across the +Rhine, a German guard would have exhibited a similar tolerance. I doubt +it.</p> + +<p>The town itself seemed to be living on its past, for indubitably it had +seen better days. An ancient foundation of the Jesuits now converted +into the Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a church whose huge +nave had been secularised to the uses of motor transport, a museum which +served to incarcerate the German prisoners, all testified to the +vanished greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a +kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double +doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking +of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and +secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no +great effort of the imagination—especially at night when not a light +showed—to call to mind the ambuscades and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> adventures with the watch +which they must have witnessed some centuries before. The very names of +the streets—such as the <i>Rue d'Arbalête</i>—held in them something of +romance. To find one's billet at night was like a game of blind man's +buff, and one felt rather than saw one's way. Not a soul was to be seen, +for the whole town was under <i>droit de siège</i>, and the civilian +inhabitants had to be within doors by nine o'clock, while all the +entrances and exits to and from the town were guarded by double sentries +night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry, +and my own office boasted a corporal's guard—presumably because the +Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly +medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed +an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every +morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the precincts +were not without a certain beauty, and every side of the town was +approached through an avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the +sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just +that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to +the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De +Vigny's known to literature as <i>Laurette</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> + +<p>Such was the country and such the town in which we were billeted. Now +upon a morning in February it happened that I was smoking a cigarette in +the little garden, bordered by hedges of box, while waiting for my car, +and as I waited I watched Jeanne, with her sleeves rolled up to her +elbows and a clothes-peg in her mouth, busy over the wash-tub. "Vous +êtes une blanchisseuse, aujourd'hui?" I remarked. She corrected me. +"Non, m'sieu', une lessiveuse." "Une lessiveuse?" For answer Jeanne +pointed to a linen-bag which was steeping in the tub. The linen-bag +contained the ashes of the beech-tree; it is a way of washing that they +have in some parts of France, and very cleansing. To specialise thus is +<i>lessiver</i>. As we talked in this desultory fashion I let fall a word +concerning a journey I was about to undertake to the French lines, a +journey that would take me over the battlefield of the Marne. "La Marne! +Hélas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped her eyes with the corner +of her apron. "But it was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes, but +Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the battle of the Marne. She +pulled out of her bosom a frayed letter, bleached, stained, and +perforated with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed it to me. +I could make nothing of it. She handed me another letter. "Son +camarade," she ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>plained, and no longer attempted to hide her tears. +And this was what I read:</p> + +<blockquote><p class='right'>Le 10 sept., 1914.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Chère Madame</span>—Comme j'étais très bon camarade avec votre +frère Paul Duval et que le malheur vient de lui arriver, je tient à +vous le faire savoir, car peut-être vous serai dans l'inquiétude de +pas recevoir de ces nouvelles et de ne pas savoir où il est. Je +vous dirai que je vient de lui donner du papier à lettre et une +enveloppe pour vous écrire et aussitôt la lettre finit il l'a mis +dans son képi pour vous l'envoyé le plus vite possible et +malheureusement un obus est arriver, et il à etait tué. +Heureusement nous étions trois près de l'un l'autre et il n'y a eut +de lui de touché. Je vous envoi la petite lettre qu'il venait de +vous faire, et en même tant vous verrez les trous que les éclats +d'obus l'on attrapper. Recevez de moi chère madame mes sincères +salutations.</p> + +<p class='right'><span class="smcap">Jules Coppée</span>. <br /> +Tambour au 151<sup>e</sup> Regiment d'Inf., <br /> +2<sup>e</sup> Cie 42<sup>e</sup> Division, Secteur postale 56.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble +simplicity. "Très gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and +thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much +circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple +request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne—yes? I +assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and +perhaps if he found it he would take a photograph. "Why, certainly," I +said, little knowing what I promised. But the request was to have a +strange sequel, as you shall hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the +door. As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> Madame and +Jeanne stood on the doorstep to wish me <i>bon voyage</i>. "J'espère que vous +tuerez plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering voice. +"Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried Jeanne wistfully. I waved my +hand, and had soon left rue Robert le Frisson far behind me.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The town described in this sketch is described not as it +is, but as it was some months ago, and nothing is to be inferred from +the title as to its present significance.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h3> + +<h3>MORT POUR LA PATRIE</h3> + +<p>Two days later a French staff-officer greeted me in the vestibule of the +Hôtel de Crillon at Paris. It was the Comte de G——; he had been +deputed by the Ministry of War to act as my escort on my tour of the +French lines. He proved to be a charming companion. He was a magnificent +figure of a man six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of +dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard, embroidered in gold +with a design of forked lightning, which is the prerogative of the +staff. A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy furs +awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde. It was a sumptuous car, +upholstered in green corded silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying +on its panels the motto <i>Quand même</i>, and the monogram of a famous +actress. It had been requisitioned. The air was cold—there had been +frost overnight—but the sun was brilliant. As we threaded our way +through Paris and its suburbs, a Paris chastened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> and resolute, I caught +a glimpse of the barges upon the Seine with the women standing on the +convex hatches hanging out clothes to dry—and I thought of Daudet and +<i>La Belle Nivernaise</i>. As more and yet more men are called up to the +colours women take their place, until the houses of business are like +nunneries—with a few aged Fathers Superior. Having had business the day +before at the Société Générale, I had had occasion to reflect on these +things as I stood in the counting-house watching some fifty girl typists +at work, the room resounding with the tap-tap of their machines, as +though fifty thrushes were breaking snails upon a stone. A wizened +little clerk, verging upon superannuation, had beguiled my time of +waiting with talk of the war: how his wife from Picardy had lost fifteen +of her <i>parents</i>, while of four painters and paper-hangers who had +started doing up his flat on the 2nd of July only one—disabled—had +returned to finish the job; the rest were dead. Musing on these things +as we drove through the Bois de Vincennes I understood the resolution of +our Allies and the significance of the things my companion pointed out +to me as we drove: here a row of trees felled to provide a field of +fire, there a gun emplacement, and reserve trenches all the way from +Paris to Soissons. They are leaving nothing to chance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p> + +<p>Our journey was uneventful until we reached Coulommiers, where we had +certain inquiries to make which have nothing to do with this narrative. +We interviewed the <i>maire</i> in his parlour at the Hôtel de Ville, a +little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German +occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the +lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of +municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of +deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to +the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the +faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy +also. Doubtless it appeals to their sinister sense of humour, when two +of their own men get drunk and shoot at one another, to execute a French +citizen by way of punishment. It happened that during the German +occupation of Coulommiers the gas supply gave out. The <i>maire</i> was +informed by a choleric commandant that unless gas were forthcoming in +twenty-four hours he would be shot. The little man replied quietly: +"M'éteindre, ce n'est pas allumer le gaz." This illuminating remark +appears to have penetrated the dark places of the commandant's mind, and +although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all +called up to the colours) the <i>maire</i> was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> molested. It was here +that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch) +of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in +amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who, +having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a +horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town. As to what became of +him afterwards nothing was known, but the worst was suspected. The Huns +have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders +and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a +cruel death.</p> + +<p>At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La +Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne, +approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible +for many miles. Here we had lunch at the inn—a dish of perch caught +that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for +which La Ferté is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and +excellent vintage. The landlord's wife waited on us with her own hands, +and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town. +The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much +frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous +losses on the pigs of La Ferté. It re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>minded me of the satirical +headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great +slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize—"Les +Bosches s'entregorgent!" Madame told us with much spirit how she had +saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far +more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the +Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the +cellar. Her pig is now a local celebrity. People come from afar to see +the pig which escaped the Bosches. For the pigs whom the Bosches love +are apt to die young. But what had impressed her most was the treatment +meted out by a German officer, a certain von Bülow, who was quartered at +the inn, to one of his men. The soldier had been ordered to stick up a +lantern outside the officer's quarters, and had been either slow or +forgetful. Von Bülow knocked him down, and then, as he lay prostrate, +jumped upon him, kicked him, and beat him about the head and face with +sabre and riding-whip. The soldier lay still and uttered not a cry. +Madame shuddered at the recollection, "Épouvantable!"</p> + +<p>We crossed the <i>place</i> and called on a prominent burgess. He received us +hospitably. In the hall of his house was a Uhlan's lance with drooping +pennon which excited our curiosity. How had it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> come here? He was only +too pleased to explain. He had taken it from a marauding Uhlan with whom +he had engaged in single combat, strangling him with his own hands—so!</p> + +<div class='poem'> +<div class='stanza'><div>I took by the throat the circumcised dog</div> +<div>And smote him, thus!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He held out a pair of large fat hands of the consistency of clay; he was +of a full habit and there were pouches under his eyes. In England he +would have been a small tradesman, with strong views on total +abstinence, accustomed to a diet of high tea, and honoured as the +life-long superintendent of a Sunday school. I was more astonished than +sceptical, but perhaps, as the Comte suggested in a whisper, the Uhlan +was drunk. Here, too, we heard tales of loot, especially among ladies' +wardrobes. It is a curious fact that there is nothing the Hun loves so +much as women's underclothing. As to what happens when he gets hold of +the <i>lingerie</i> many scandalous stories are told, and none more +scandalous than the one which appeared in the whimsical pages of <i>La Vie +Parisienne</i>. But that is, most emphatically, quite another story.</p> + +<p>From La Ferté we drove on to Lizy, where the gendarme, wiping his mouth +as he came hurriedly from the inn, told us a harrowing tale, and then to +Barcy, where the <i>maire</i>, though busy with a pitch-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>fork upon a manure +heap, received us with municipal gravity. We were now nearing the +battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the +trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by +lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral +beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a +team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing +machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an +oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional +passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. As we raced +along, the furrows, running at right angles to the road, seemed to be +eddying away from us in pleats and curves, and this illusion of a +stationary car in a whirling landscape was fortified by the contours of +the countryside, which were those of a great plain, great as any sea, +stretching away to a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly the car slowed +down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound +was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing +machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a +breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked +around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against +small wooden staves. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> was the battlefield of the Marne, the scene of +that immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted the sons of France +to conquer or die where they stood. As he had commanded, so had they +done. With an emotion too deep for words we each contemplated these +plaintive memorials of the heroes who lay where they fell. Our orderly +wept and made no effort to hide his tears. I thought of Jeanne's wistful +petition, but my heart sank, for these graves were to be numbered not by +hundreds but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible!" said the +Comte, to whom I had communicated my quest. A sudden cry from the +orderly, who was moving from grave to grave in a close scrutiny of the +inscriptions, arrested us. He was standing by a wooden cross, half +draped by a tattered blue coat and covered with wreaths of withered +myrtle. A képi pierced with holes lay upon the grave. And sure enough, +by some miracle of coincidence, he had found it. On a wooden slab we +read these words:</p> + +<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Paul Duval</span>,<br /> +151<sup>e</sup> Rég. d'Inf.<br /> +6 sept. 1914<br />MORT POUR LA PATRIE.</p> + +<p>The sun was fast declining over the chalk hills and it grew bitter cold. +I unfolded my camera, stepped back eight paces, and pressed the trigger. +We clambered back into the car and resumed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> road to Meaux. As I +looked over my shoulder the last things I saw in the enfolding twilight +were those little flags still fluttering wistfully in the wind.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h3> + +<h3>MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS</h3> + +<p>We lay the night at Meaux. It was a town which breathed the enchantments +of the Middle Ages and had for me the intimacy of a personal +reminiscence. Sixteen years earlier, when reading for a prize essay at +Oxford, I had studied the troubled times of Étienne Marcel in the +treasures of the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, and I knew every +kilometre of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux, Compiègne, +Senlis—they called to my mind dreamy hours in the dim religious light +of muniment-rooms and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart. +Little did I think when I read those belligerent chronicles in the +sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian and the Bibliothèque Nationale, +tracing out the warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the Dauphin +and the Provost of the Merchants, that the day would come when I would +be traversing these very fields engaged in detective enterprises upon +the footprints of contemporary armies. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> compare the <i>variae +lectiones</i> of two manuscripts concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish +is good, it has all the excitement of the chase; but to be collating the +field note-book of a living Hun with the <i>dossier</i> of a contemporary +Justice de Paix, this is better. It has all the contact of reality and +the breathless joy of the hue and cry. And, after all, were things so +very different? Generations come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but +the earth endureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and valleys +that have witnessed the devastation of the Hun have also seen the +ravages of the mercenaries and free companies of the Middle Age. As I +lay in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the pages of my pocket +volume of M. Zeller's <i>Histoire de France racontée par les +contemporains</i>, and hit on the "Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marchès," +ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of widows' houses. And as I +read, it seemed as though I were back in the department <i>du Contentieux</i> +of the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages of a German +officer's field note-book. For thus speaks Aimerigot Marchès in the +delectable pages of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern French:</p> + +<blockquote><p>There is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of +the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How +blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> a rich +abbé, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from +Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with +the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices +from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours +or was to ransom at our sweet will. Every day we had more money. +The peasants of Auvergne and Limousin provisioned us and brought to +our camp corn and meal, and baked bread, hay for the horses and +straw for their litter, good wines, oxen, and fine fat sheep, +chicken, and poultry. We carried ourselves like kings and were +caparisoned as they, and when we rode forth the whole country +trembled before us. Par ma foi, cette vie était bonne et belle.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Is not that your very Hun? He is a true reversion to type. Only, whereas +among the French he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans he +is a product of the kultured present. And to turn from the field +note-book of the German soldier with its swaggering tale of loot, lust, +and maudlin cups, its memoranda of stolen toys for Felix and of ravished +lingerie for Bertha, all viewed in the rosy light of the writer's +egotism as a laudable enterprise, to the plain depositions of the +Justice de Paix, and see the reverse side of the picture with its tale +of ruined homes and untilled fields, was just such an experience as it +had been to turn from the glittering pages of Froissart to the sombre +story of Jean de Venette,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> a monk of Compiègne, Little Brother of the +Poor and chronicler of his times, as he pondered on these things in the +scriptorium:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>In this year 1358, the vines, source of that beneficent liquor +which gladdens the heart of man, were no longer cultivated; the +fields were neither tilled nor sown; the oxen and the sheep went no +longer to the pasture. The churches and houses, falling into decay, +presented everywhere traces of devouring flames or sombre ruins and +smouldering. The eye was no longer gladdened as before with the +sight of green meadows and yellowing harvests, but rather afflicted +by the aspect of briers and thistles, which clustered everywhere. +The church bells no longer rang joyously to call the faithful to +the divine offices, but only to give the alarm to the peasants at +the approach of the enemy and the signal for flight.</p></blockquote> + +<p>As it was in the days of Jean de Venette, so it is now. I thought of +that mournful passage as I wandered next day among the ruins of +Choisy-au-Bac, a village not twenty miles from the place where Jean de +Venette was born, and saw old women cowering among the ruins of their +burnt-out homes.</p> + +<p>If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century returned to Meaux to-day +he would have little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for +though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little. +The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of +the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century, +and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window—though +it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the +flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent +adventures when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> he feels the first chill of age—is stamped with the +characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would +find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for +like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in +procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and +white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty +consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And +it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German +occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese +like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting a +<i>maire</i>, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he +fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See. +Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little +house—surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which +there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and +his biretta.</p> + +<p>We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial +mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and, +having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I +applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least +responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made +demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite +simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before. +With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hôtel +de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning, +and thus also had the aged waiter at the Métropole disposed of a +flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough; +gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and +in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was +purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and +imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after +all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could +hear the thunder of their guns.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume +de Nangis. See M. Lacabane in the <i>Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes</i> +(1<sup>e</sup> série), t. iii.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h3> + +<h3>THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS</h3> + +<p>We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away +betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a +flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crépy-en-Valois we entered the Forest +of Compiègne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and +grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead +in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a +sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs +and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like +figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when +men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums +beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the +silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the +charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to +certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain +in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern +guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough, +as we drove into Compiègne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as +our own, in their mouse-coloured <i>couvre-casques</i> and cavalry cloaks, +though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal +conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood +about the square in front of the exquisite Hôtel de Ville, with its +high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many +pinnacles. North and east of Compiègne lie the zones of the respective +armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our +passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass +appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to +the south of us between Compiègne and Paris.</p> + +<p>The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to +the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of +spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made +patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the +blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of +the more distant wood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>lands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we +neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon +the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer +appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of +trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms—just such an avenue as that +along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbé +Lantaigne—yet not a soul was to be seen upon the <i>trottoir</i>. A brooding +silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost +menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which +froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing +perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay +with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose. +And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers, +blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry. +And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise +as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as +porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon +these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out.</p> + +<p>In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was +not until we sought out the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> house of a captain of dragoons, a friend of +my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. +The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge, +and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as +he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he +were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of +which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the +impact of bullets. And this was his tale.</p> + +<p>One afternoon early in September—it was the second day of the month, he +remembered it because there had been an untimely frost over night—he +heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of the town, and a column +of grey-coated men suddenly appeared in the street. An officer blew a +whistle, and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion, +the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears +and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms +he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the +tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there +panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of +furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. +And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> after that +silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands +and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; +he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of +smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked +and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge +heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid +himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied +with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a +lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry +and sang lustily—the concierge thought they had been drinking; they +sang thus, "<i>comme ça!</i>" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a +tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his +life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn:</p> + +<p class='center'>Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.</p> + +<p>Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile the <i>maire</i>, M. Odent, a good man and +greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hôtel de Ville. His secretary +proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the <i>maire</i> tranquilly, +"one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb +of Chammont, the headquarters of von<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> Kluck, and his guards buffeted him +and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death. +He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them—"très +dignement," the concierge had been told—handed them his papers, and +bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into +a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it +the next day; the feet were protruding.</p> + +<p>All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as +he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he +spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed +to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu +he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our +salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round +towards Compiègne. I shall never see Senlis again.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="AIII" id="AIII"></a>III</h2> + +<h2>UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES</h2> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h3> + +<h3>A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE"</h3> + +<blockquote><p>Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la +guerre. Manier des armes, revêtir l'uniforme, monter à cheval ou +marcher au commandement, <i>être redoutable sans cesser d'être +aimable</i>, dépasser le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grâce +s'il se peut, défier l'ennemi, connaître l'aventure, jouer ce qui a +peu duré, ce qui est encore illusion, rêve, ambition, ce qui est +encore une beauté, ô jeunesse, voilà ce que vous aimez! Vous n'êtes +pas liée, vous n'êtes pas fanée, vous pouvez courir le +monde.—<span class="smcap">René Bazin</span>, <i>Récits du temps de la guerre</i>.</p></blockquote> + + +<p>Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda—never had I seen such a +multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind +congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them +everywhere—Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage +of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital—orderly, +subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors +and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of +wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights +extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single café, +faintly illuminated, looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> like some mysterious grotto within which +the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz +and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all +either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the +colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from +the <i>Mairie</i> at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at +street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle, +held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old +woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and +hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so +far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured +motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a +stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their +insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by +rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm +beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything, +accentuated; much was "défendu," and many things which were still lawful +were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones—it was only the +wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were +the picture postcards in the shops—I had forgotten them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>—nothing more +characteristically <i>macabre</i> have I ever seen. One such I bought one +morning—a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden +horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the +horse—I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai dué le +cavalier, foilà le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Héros."</p> + +<p class='tbrk'>It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war, +that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The +ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and +it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing +cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had +answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garçon!" in a big Paris hotel, +and was now a <i>sous-officier</i> in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds +received in the thick of the fighting round Mülhausen. He was enjoying +his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he +confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly +satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he +not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your +own job—particularly if he does it badly? The <i>sous-officier</i> nearly +wept with joy when, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With +him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner +which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's +vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye +while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a +distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his +chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked +on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the +voluptuous pages of <i>La Vie Parisienne</i>.</p> + +<p>The <i>sous-officier</i>, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a +histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge +of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and +followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended +his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the +height of the leaping earth.</p> + +<p>"<i>Quinze mètres—comme ça, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!</i> And +they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (<i>sur l'épaule</i>)—so! +They shoot under the arm (<i>sous le bras</i>)—so! And they like to join +hands like children—they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the +wood crouching like dogs—one behind the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> other. They are a bad +lot—<i>canaille</i>. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on +church-towers. There was one of our sappers—<i>diable!</i> they tied him to +a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him."</p> + +<p>"But you make them pay for that?"</p> + +<p>He smiled grimly. "<i>Mais oui!</i> When they see us they throw everything +away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, '<i>Pas +de mal, Alsatien</i>.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through +them like butter and say, '<i>Pour vous!</i>' A little <i>étrenne</i>, you know, +monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim +recollection.</p> + +<p>"<i>Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!</i><a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> <i>Ja!</i>" It was the Alsatian who +was speaking.</p> + +<p>"<i>Sie sprechen Deutsch!</i>"<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> I exclaimed in astonishment.</p> + +<p>"<i>Ja, ich kann nicht anders—um so mehr schade!</i>"<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> he replied +mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having +deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear +him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way +the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I +interpolated, "it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> must be very painful for those of you who cannot get +away like yourself."</p> + +<p>"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German +army. They watch us—and they put Prussian <i>sous-officiers</i> over us to +spy. So when we see the <i>sous-officier</i> sneaking about, we raise our +voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when +we are alone—well, then we say what we think."</p> + +<p>And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits—how +they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies, +like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the +knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources +of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied +territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other +such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful +silence and then told a tale.</p> + +<p>"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my +company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good—not +too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"—he bowed +apologetically to me—"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he +talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our +captain noticed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> something—two things. First, monsieur, the English +officer was very troubled with his eyes—he was always applying a large +white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the +English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was +the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly—the weather +was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground +was too wet. And the German shells—they begin to fall right in the +midst of us—they had been so wide before. So the captain was very +concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very +politely and says he had better see the doctor. A <i>sous-officier</i> and +two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor' +was the <i>liaison</i> officer with our brigade—an English officer. And he +finds that the officer is a spy—a Bosche. He have no more trouble with +his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to +spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that.</p> + +<p>"You like the bayonet?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a <i>bon enfant</i>," said the +<i>sous-officier</i>. "And they can't fence (<i>escrimer</i>), the Bosches—they +are too <i>lourds</i>. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men +fought like tiger-cats—so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no +one said a word. Nor a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> sound except the clash of steel." His eyes +flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go +through them—they grunt, <i>comme un cochon</i>." Perhaps I shuddered +slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (<i>ruses +honteuses</i>). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands +after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave +a snort of contempt.</p> + +<p>"What do they cry?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German +pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a +minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had +wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any +longer. And so perish all Germans!</p> + +<p>The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards. +"We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispassionately. +"Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many +dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were +leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire—such a +stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been +killed with the bayonet—they are quite black. I suppose it's the +grease."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The grease?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting +rusty."</p> + +<p>He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a +battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The +reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further +recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French +shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans—they had been surprised by a +shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in +their hands, monsieur, just as you see us—and they hadn't got a +scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the <i>sous-officier</i>, "I have seen them like that. I remember +I found a big Bosche—six feet four he must have been—sitting dead in a +house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there +like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff—yes! <i>comme +une poupée</i>. And I couldn't find a scratch on him—not one! And do you +know what he had on—a woman's chemise! <i>Écoutez!</i>" he added suddenly, +and he held up a monitory hand.</p> + +<p>Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat +of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the +measure—who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> trumpet. The +door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing +a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas +"crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his +heels.</p> + +<p>Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice:</p> + +<p class='center'>Allons! enfants de la Patrie!</p> + +<p>A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown +down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The +others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The +Turco—"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of +his any one could understand—who had been deploying imaginary troops, +with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick +child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default +of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage +way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum, +more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant +cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed! +To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying +men with its <i>viaticum</i>. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has +exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to +the side of men:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'>Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:</div> +<div class='i2'>S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,</div> +<div class='i2'>La terre en produit de nouveaux</div> +<div class='i2'>Contre vous tout prêts à se battre.</div> +<div>Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons:</div> +<div>Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor +on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of +joy:</p> + +<p class='center'>Le jour de gloire est arrivé!</p> + +<p>It was the note of the conqueror.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> German swine! Stinking Prussians!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> You speak German!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h3> + +<h3>PETER</h3> + +<p>My friend T—— and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his +sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term +as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly +confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up +their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without +reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of +many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the +cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill +like a gully—between tall houses standing so close together that one +might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite. +The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional +slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous +stones, was unmistakable.</p> + +<p>"New drafts!" said T——. Instinctively we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> both moved to the window. We +knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel +every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the +silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from +the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we +heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down +and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, +the upturned faces of the men.</p> + +<p>"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French +soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that <i>vade mecum</i> (price +one penny) of the British soldier: <i>French, and how to speak it</i>. It was +night, not day, but that didn't matter.</p> + +<p>"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.</p> + +<p>"Good-night"—"Good-night, old chap"—"Good-night, my son"—the men +shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely +saluted.</p> + +<p>"It's Peter," said T——; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."</p> + +<p>"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase—the +rest of the household were plunged in slumber—turned the handle of the +bedroom door, and could just make out in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> darkness a little figure +in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.</p> + +<p>"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The +light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's +shoulder from the window.</p> + +<p>"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They +saluted me! Did <i>you</i> see?" he said, turning to me.</p> + +<p>"I did, Major Peter."</p> + +<p>"You're kidding!"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you +commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future +to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to +salute you too, now."</p> + +<p>This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to +Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always +addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was +ordering him to bed. At such times—there was a nightly contest on the +matter—the paternal authority could not afford to concede any +prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be +reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.</p> + +<p>"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know +lots of officers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> up there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly. +Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his +preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and +domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards. +"Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from +his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of +<i>The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes</i>, <i>The Cock-House at Fellsgarth</i>, and +Newbolt's <i>Pages from Froissart</i>. Peter was rather eclectic in his +tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents +of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his +father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys' +jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental +inventory of them:</p> + +<blockquote><p>(1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers.</p> + +<p>(2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun +requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground.</p> + +<p>(3) A miniature aeroplane—the wings rather crumpled as though the +aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent.</p> + +<p>(4) A knife.</p> + +<p>(5) Several pieces of string.</p> + +<p>(6) A coloured "alley."</p> + +<p>(7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord +Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien.</p> + +<p>(8) A top.</p> + +<p>(9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops.</p></blockquote><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p> + +<p>For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was +certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being +included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than +some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber +officers at the Front.</p> + +<p>The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter +piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in +which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and +graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and +proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole +business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated +airman.</p> + +<p>"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the +aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.</p> + +<p>"It's me, Captain S——," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend +----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He's +attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first +time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather +a personage.</p> + +<p>The Captain and I discussed the merits of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> new Lewis machine-gun, +while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and +monoplanes.</p> + +<p>"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in +an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for +Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a +Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views. +He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is +now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the +prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him +that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my +question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was +mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked.</p> + +<p>Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties +which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the +public service—the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian +Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or +Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether +it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of +Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> in +the R.F.A., saved a battery at X—— Y——. Another is the chief of the +most mysterious of our public services—a man who speaks little and +listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who +changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a +price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He +neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands +an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this +uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle Dick's got eyes like +gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public +Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know +such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored +expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the +counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of +the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most, +although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to +know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it +<i>The Man behind the Scenes</i>.</p> + +<p>Such was Peter's family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he +feared God, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had +promised Peter that he would let him see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> new Lewis machine-gun. It +is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the +bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the +back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in +this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of +Peter's private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged +his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded +to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This +interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful.</p> + +<p>"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"—Peter now calls other +boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a +West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as +"niggers"—"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must +send them something."</p> + +<p>He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with +the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That's from Jackson +minor," he said. "Cheek, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>I began reading the letter aloud.</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear old Pan</span>—You must be having a ripping time. I see +your letter is headed "The Front" ...</p></blockquote><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + +<p>I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably.</p> + +<blockquote><p>... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully +bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's....</p></blockquote> + +<p>"What's Fenner's?" I said to Peter.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end +of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term. +But we beat them at footer."</p> + +<blockquote><p>We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder +Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I +showed him the envelope of your letter with "Passed by the Censor" +on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, +"That's proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll +get the V.C. or something—the Head'll be sure to give us a +half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's +newspaper when he leaves it lying about—you know how he swanks +about it—said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French +kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of +Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion +of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was +rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to +command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of +devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that +legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you +get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you +can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.</p></blockquote> + +<p>"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was +pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round. +He was very red.</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says +at the end."</p> + +<p>I read on—this time in silence:</p> + +<blockquote><p>I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to +tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at +center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod—we +hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never +saw one. We've given up German this term—beastly language; it's +just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never +know what he's driving at.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Then followed a sentence heavily underlined:</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last +term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on +it, German blood I mean</i>.—Yours to a cinder,</p> + +<p class='right'><span class="smcap">Arthur Jackson</span>.</p></blockquote> + +<p>I handed this priceless missive back to Peter.</p> + +<p>"Cheek, isn't it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a +bayonet!"</p> + +<p>"But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you +can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know."</p> + +<p>Peter blushed.</p> + +<p>"Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the Front, and the fellows +wouldn't think anything of me if I hadn't been <i>near</i> the Front," he +said, apologetically. "Hullo, they're going up!"</p> + +<p>An aeroplane was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across +the water, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> mechanics having assisted her initial progress by +pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she +gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She +took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and +gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he +promised to take me up some day," he said sadly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, some day, Peter," I said encouragingly. "But it's time we were +getting back. You know you've got to catch the leave-boat at four +o'clock this afternoon."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Peter's father and I stood on the quay, having taken farewell of Peter. +There was an eminent Staff Officer going home on leave—a very great man +at G.H.Q., a lieutenant-general, who inspired no less fear than respect +among us all. He knew Peter's father in his distant way, and had not +only returned his salute, but had even condescended to ask, in his +laconic style, "Who is the boy?"—whereupon Peter's father had, with +some nervousness, introduced him. All the other officers going home on +leave, from a Brigadier down to the subalterns, stood at a respectful +distance, glancing furtively at the hawk-like profile of the great man, +and lowering their voices. It was a tribute not only to rank but to +power. As the ship gathered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> way and moved slowly out of the harbour I +pulled the sleeve of Peter's father. "Look!" I said. The +Lieutenant-General and Peter were engaged in an animated conversation on +the deck, and the great man, usually as silent as the sphinx and not +less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some warmth and great +interest, as though hard put to keep his end up, some point of debate +propounded to him by Peter.</p> + +<p>"T——, old chap," I said, "Peter'll be a great man some day."</p> + +<p>Peter's father said nothing, but his eyes grew misty. Perhaps he was +thinking of that lonely grave in the distant plains of the Deccan where +Peter's mother sleeps.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h3> + +<h3>THREE TRAVELLERS</h3> + +<p class='center'>(<i>October 1914</i>)</p> + +<p>My train left Paris at 1.52 in the afternoon. It was due at Calais at +eight o'clock the same evening. But it soon became apparent that +something was amiss with our journey—we crawled along at a pace which +barely exceeded six miles an hour. At every culvert, guarded by its +solitary sentry, we seemed to pause to take breath. As we approached +Amiens, barely halfway on our journey, somewhere about 9.30 +<span class="smcap">p.m.</span>, we passed on the opposite line of rails a Red Cross +train, stationary, and throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid +moonlight. One glimpse of an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash +the secret of our languor. It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode +high in a starless sky, and there must have been ten or twelve degrees +of frost. We had left far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist +hovering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> above river banks, out of which the poplars stood argent and +fragile, as though the landscape were a Japanese print. Through the open +door of the horse-box I saw a soldier stretched upon his straw, with a +red gaping wound in his half-naked body. Over him stooped a nurse, +improvising with delicate ministries a hasty dressing. In the next +carriage the black face of a wounded Senegalese looked out, unearthly in +the moonlight. Ahead of us an interminable line of trains (some seventy +of them I was told) had passed, conveying fresh troops. Then I knew. The +Germans, hovering like a dark cloud some twenty miles away, had been +reinforced, and a fierce battle was in progress. The news of it had +travelled by some mysterious telepathy to every village along the line, +and at every crossing groups of pale-faced women, silent and intent, +kept a restless vigil. They looked like ghosts in the moonlight; no +cheer escaped them as we passed, no hand waved an exuberant greeting. In +the twilight we had already seen red-trousered soldiers, vivid as +poppies against the grass, digging trenches along the line, and at one +point a group of sappers improvising a wire footbridge across the river. +The contagion of suspense was in the air,—you seemed to catch it in the +faint susurrus of the poplars.</p> + +<p>"Shall we get to Calais?" I asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Bon Dieu! I know not," was the reply of the harassed guard.</p> + +<p>We pursued our stealthy journey, reached Abbeville somewhere about +midnight, and Boulogne in the small hours. 4 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> Calais at +last! I joyfully exclaimed. But between Calais Ville and Calais Maritime +a group of officers boarded our train and, for some mysterious reason, +we were headed off to Dunkirk. It grew colder and more cold, and I had +had no food since noon of yesterday. But my thoughts were with our men, +the men whom I had lately come to know, now lying out on the bare earth +in the moonlit trenches, keeping their everlasting vigil and blowing on +their fingers numbed with cold. We reached Dunkirk at 6 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> No +explanation why the train had played truant at Calais was vouchsafed me, +nor was any hope held out of a return. In those days I was travelling as +a private person, and was not yet endowed with the prerogatives by +which, in the name of a Secretary of State, I could requisition cars and +impress men to do my bidding.</p> + +<p>At a hopeless moment I had the good fortune to fall in with a King's +Messenger, carrying despatches, who was in the next carriage. He +produced his special passports, and the prestige of "Courrier du Roi," +Knight of the Order of the Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every +one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> was at our service. We were escorted to the military headquarters +of Dunkirk—through streets already echoing with the march of French +infantry, each carrying a big baton of bread and munching as he kept +step, to an office in which the courteous commandant was just completing +his toilet. The Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of the +English officers was rung up, and thither we went through an ambuscade +of motor-cars in the courtyard.</p> + +<p>A lieutenant of the Naval Flying Squadron was ready for us with his +powerful Rolls-Royce, and we were soon on the high road to Calais. +Everywhere were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of barbed-wire +entanglements in the distant fields, deep trenches, earthworks six feet +thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were +stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the +shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the +steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy +of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and +presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive +cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a little group of French +soldiers, their cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sunk in deep +black hollows by their eternal vigil. "Officier<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> Anglais!" "Courrier du +Roi!" we exclaimed, and were sped on our way with a weary smile and +"Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men were already toiling in the +fields, stooping like the figures in Millet's "Gleaners," as we raced +through an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed inns, past +depopulated farms, past wooden windmills, perched high upon wooden +platforms like gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre word was +exchanged about Antwerp—again that strange telepathy of peril. Calais +at last! and a great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>He was a London wine-merchant of repute, who had got here at last from +Rheims, whither he had gone to pay his yearly inspection of the +champagne vintage, only to find the red wine-press of war. Three weeks +he had lived like primitive man in the wine-cellars of Rheims, with the +shells screaming overhead—screaming, he says, just like the long-drawn +sobbing whistle of an express train as it leaves a tunnel. Never has he +lived such days before; never, he fervently prays, will he live them +again. From his narrative I got a glimpse of a subterranean existence, +as tenebrous and fearful as the deepest circle of Dante's <i>Inferno</i>, +with a river of tears falling always in the darkness of the vaults. A +great wine-cellar—there are ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> miles of them at Rheims—crowded with +four thousand people, lighted only by candles, and swarming with huge +rats; the blanched faces of women, the crying of children, the wail of +babies at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling masonry—the men had +armed themselves with big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the +vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one long threnody of +anguish. Outside, the conscious stone of the great monument of mediaeval +aspiration was being battered to pieces, and the glorious company of the +apostles, the goodly fellowship of the martyrs, suffered another and a +less resurgent martyrdom. After days of this crepuscular existence he +emerged to find the cathedral less disfigured than he had feared. One +masterpiece of the mediaeval craftsmen's chisel is, however, +irremediably destroyed—the figure of the devil. We hope it is a +portent.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The King's Messenger had posted from a distant country, and his way +through Dijon had been truly a Via Dolorosa. Thirty-six people standing +in the corridor, and in his own crowded compartment—he had surrendered +his royal prerogative of exclusion—was a woman on the verge of +hysteria, finding relief not in tears but in an endless recital of her +sorrow. She and her husband had a son<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>—the only son of his mother—gone +to the front, reported badly wounded, and for days, like Joseph and +Mary, the anxious parents had sought him, only to find him on the +threshold of death, with a bullet in his liver. Again and again she +beguiled her anguish by chronicles of his miraculous childhood—his +precocious intelligence at five, his prescience at six, his unfathomable +wisdom at seven. The silent company of wayfarers listened in patience to +the twice-told tale. No one could say her nay as she repeated her litany +of pain. She was, indeed, the only passenger in that compartment whose +eyes were dry. <i>Stabat Mater Dolorosa.</i></p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h3> + +<h3>BARBARA</h3> + +<p>It was the Duchess of X.'s Hospital at a certain <i>plage</i> on the coast. I +had motored thither through undulating country dotted with round beehive +ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the +distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we +neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, +fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of +broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate +existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held +up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave +of the sky. The bare needle-like branches of the broom and fir stood out +blackly against the biscuit-coloured sand with the sharp outlines of an +etching.</p> + +<p>I had taken a hospitable cup of tea with the Duchess in the Matron's +room. She was clothed in fine linen but without her purple; she wore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> +the ordinary and serviceable slate-coloured dress of a nurse. It was +here I had the honour of being introduced to Barbara. She was nursing a +doll with great tenderness, and had been asking the Duchess why she did +not wear her "cowonet."</p> + +<p>"This is Barbara—our little Egyptian," said the matron.</p> + +<p>Barbara repudiated the description hotly.</p> + +<p>"She was born in Egypt," explained the matron.</p> + +<p>"Ah," I said, "that wasn't your fault, Barbara, was it? But it was +Egypt's good fortune."</p> + +<p>Barbara ignored the compliment with the simplicity of childhood, and +proceeded to explain with great seriousness: "You see, Mummy was +travelling, and she comed to Egypt. She didn't know I was going to +happen," she added as if to clear Mummy of any imputation of +thoughtlessness.</p> + +<p>"And your birthday, Barbara?"</p> + +<p>Barbara and I discovered that both of us have birthdays in March—only +six days apart. This put us at once on a footing of intimacy—we must +have been born under the same star. Barbara proceeded to inform me that +she rather liked birthdays—except the one which happened in Egypt. I +had half a mind to execute a deed of conveyance on the spot, assigning +to her all my own birthdays as an estate <i>pour autre vie</i>, with all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> +<i>profits à prendre</i> and presents arising therefrom, for I am +thirty-eight and have no further use for them.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid there are more than six years between us, Barbara," I said +pensively.</p> + +<p>Barbara regarded me closely with large round eyes.</p> + +<p>"About ten, I fink. I'm seven, you know."</p> + +<p>"How nice of you to say that, Barbara. Then I'm only seventeen."</p> + +<p>Barbara regarded me still more closely.</p> + +<p>"A little more, p'waps—ten monfs."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Barbara. I'll remind you of that some day." After all, ten +years is no obstacle to the course of true love. "But what is the matter +with the doll?" Despite a rosy flush the doll has a field-dressing round +her auburn locks, and one leg is immensely stout owing to a tourniquet.</p> + +<p>Barbara looked at me rather less favourably than before. It was evident +that she now thought poorly of my intelligence, and that I had made a +<i>faux pas</i>.</p> + +<p>"I'm a nurse," Barbara explained, loftily, showing an armlet bearing the +ensign of the Red Cross. I was about to remind her of 1 & 2 Geo. V. cap. +20, which threatens the penalties of a misdemeanour against all who wear +the Red Cross without the authority of Army Council, but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> thought +better of it. Instead of anything so foolish, I exhibit a delicate +solicitude about the health of the patient. I put myself right by +referring to it as "he." A less intelligent observer might pronounce it +to be decidedly of the female sex. Still, I reflected, women have +enlisted in the Army before now. I proceeded to inspect the injured limb +with professional gravity. "A compound fracture, I think, Barbara. He +will require careful nursing."</p> + +<p>Barbara liked this—no one in the matron's room had ever exhibited such +a clinical interest in the case before, and she thinks "fwacture" rather +imposing.</p> + +<p>"Let me feel his pulse," I said. I held a waxen arm between my thumb and +forefinger, and looked at my wrist-watch for some seconds, Barbara +gazing at me intently.</p> + +<p>"Hum! hum! I think we had better take his temperature," I said, as I +held a clinical thermometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the +rosebud lips of the patient. "103, I think."</p> + +<p>"Will you wite a pwescwiption?" asked Barbara anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara. Let me see, will this do, +do you think?" I scribbled on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and +handed it to Barbara.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> + + +<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='30' summary='prescription'> + <tr> + <td>Brom. Potass.<br />Hydrochl.<br />Quin. Sulph.</td> + <td>3 grs.<br />5 quarts.<br />1 pt.</td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p>She scrutinised it closely. It puzzled her, though her bewilderment was +nothing to the astonishment which that prescription would have excited +in a member of the medical profession.</p> + +<p>"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who +tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo +of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a +respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying.</p> + +<p>I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a +tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung +on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature—Pwomise?"</p> + +<p>I promised.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h3> + +<h3>AN ARMY COUNCIL</h3> + +<p class='center'>(<i>October 1914</i>)</p> + +<p>All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy +between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches. The country had the +delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the skies were of that +unforgettable blue which is the secret of France. The end of my journey +found me at No. —— General Hospital. The chaplain, an old C.F. +attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the +war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore +the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's +overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with +red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone +betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every +regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> from +John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk was of the great retreat.</p> + +<p>"Hell it was—fire and brimstone," said a R.F.A. man. "We limbered up, +our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were +more like a blooming ambulance than a battery. We had our limbers and +waggons chock full o' details—fellers who'd been wounded or crocked up. +And reservists wi' sore feet—out o' training, I reckon," he added +magisterially.</p> + +<p>"Never you mind about resarvists, my son," interjected a man in the +Suffolks. "We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for +miles. We ain't no chickens."</p> + +<p>"No, that we bain't," said a West-countryman. "I reckon we can teach +them young fellers zummat. Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> when +they was under foire the fust time. Though they were middlin' steady, +arterwards," he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his +regiment.</p> + +<p>"'Twere all a duddering<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it +afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry; we +could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried some o' the little +'uns. And girt fires a-burnin' at night loike ricks—a terrible +blissey<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> on the hills.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> And 'twere that dusty and hot oi did get +mortal drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my water-bottle; +I'd gied it all to the childer."</p> + +<p>"What about rations?" said the chaplain.</p> + +<p>"Oh I were bit leery<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> i' my innerds at toimes, but oi had my +emargency ration, and them A.S.C. chaps were pretty sprack;<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> they kep +up wi' us most times. 'Twere just loike a circus procession—lorries and +guns and we soldjers all a-mixed up. And some of the harses went cruel +lame and had to be left behind."</p> + +<p>"That they did," said a small man in the 19th Hussars who was obviously +a Londoner. He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the deliberate +gait of the cavalryman on his feet. "Me 'orse got the blooming 'ump with +corns."</p> + +<p>"Ah! and what do you think of the Uhlans?"</p> + +<p>He sniffed. "Rotten, sir! They never gives us a chawnce. They ain't no +good except for lootin'. Regular 'ooligans. We charged 'em up near Mons, +our orficer goin' ahead 'bout eight yards, and when we got up to 'em 'e +drops back into our line. We charges in a single line, you know, knee to +knee, as close together as us can get, riding low so as to present as +small a target as we can."</p> + +<p>"And you got home with the Uhlans?" I asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Once. Their lances ain't much good except for lightin' street-lamps."</p> + +<p>"Street-lamps?" said the chaplain literally.</p> + +<p>"Yuss. They're too long. The blighters 'ave no grip on them. We just +parry and then thrust with the point; we've giv' up cutting exercises. +If the thrust misses, you uses the pommel—so!" He executed an +intimidating gesture with his stick.</p> + +<p>"Well, ah've had ma bit o' fun," interjected a small H.L.I. man +irrelevantly, feeling, apparently, it was his turn in the symposium, as +he thrust a red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones into the +group. "Ah ken verra weel ah got 'im. It was at a railway stashon where +we surprised 'em. Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer—I thocht he were +drunk—and he fired three times aht me with a ree-vol-ver. But ah got +'im. Yes, ah've had ma bit o' fun," he said complacently as he cherished +an arm in a sling.</p> + +<p>With him was a comrade belonging to the "Lilywhites," the old 82nd, now +known as the first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the H.L.I. +have an ancient friendship. The South Lancs have also their +antipathies—the King's Liverpools among them—but that is neither here +nor there.</p> + +<p>"It were just like a coop-tie crowd was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> retreat," he drawled in the +broad Lancashire dialect. "A fair mix-up, it were."</p> + +<p>"What do you think of the Germans?"</p> + +<p>There was a chorus of voices. "Not much"—"Blighters"—"Swine."</p> + +<p>"Their 'coal-boxes' don't come off half the time," said the R.F.A. man +professionally. "And their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours has. +Ours is a treat—like sugar-loaf." The German gunnery has become deadly +enough since then.</p> + +<p>"Their coal-boxes do stink though," said a Hoxton man in the Royal +Fusiliers. "Reminds me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War; they used +to let off a lot of stuff that turned yellow. I've seen Boers—hairy +men, you know, sir—with their beards turned all yellow by them. Regular +hair-restorers, they was."</p> + +<p>"I remember up on the Aisne," continued the Hoxton man, who had an +ingenuous countenance, "one of our chaps shouted 'Waiter,' and about +fifty on 'em stuck their heads up above the trenches and said, 'Coming, +sir.'"</p> + +<p>There was a shout of laughter. The chaplain looked incredulous. "Don't +mind him, he's pulling your leg, sir," said his neighbour. It is a +pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately fond.</p> + +<p>"They can't shoot for nuts, that's a fact," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> a Rifleman. "They +couldn't hit a house if they was in it. We can give them five rounds +rapid while they're getting ready to fire one. Fire from the hips, they +do. I never seen the likes of it." It was the professional criticism of +the most perfectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and we +listened with respect. "But they've got some tidy snipers," he added +candidly.</p> + +<p>"They was singing like an Eisteddfod," said a man in the South Wales +Borderers, "when they advanced. Yess, they was singing splendid. Like a +<i>cymanfa ganu</i>,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> it wass. Fair play."</p> + +<p>"And what do you boys do?" asked the chaplain. "Do you sing too?"</p> + +<p>"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters, "I used every name but a +saint's name." The speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was Church +of England, or he might have been less candid.</p> + +<p>"There was a mon in oor company," said the red-headed one, feeling it +was his turn again, "that killed seven Jerrmans—he shot six and +baynitted anither. And he wur fair fou<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> afterwards. He grat like a +bairn."</p> + +<p>"Aye, mon," said a ruddy man of the Yorks L.I., "ah knaw'd ah felt mysen +dafflin<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> when ah saw me pal knocked over. He comed fra oor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> toon, and +he tellt me hissen the neet afore: 'Jock,' 'e said, 'tha'll write to me +wife, woan't tha?' And ah said, 'Doan't be a fule, Ben, tha'll be all +right.' 'Noa, Jock,' he tellt me, 'ah knaw'd afore ah left heeam ah +should be killt. Ah saw a mouldiwarp<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> dead afore oor door; me wife +fair dithered<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> when she saw't.'"</p> + +<p>The chaplain and myself looked puzzled. "It's a kind o' sign among the +fouk in our parts, sir," he proceeded, enlightening our ignorance. "And +'e asked me to take his brass for the wife. But ah thowt nowt of it. And +we lost oor connectin' files and were nobbut two platoons, and we got it +somethin' cruel; the shells were a-skirling<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> like peewits ower our +heids. And Ben were knocked over and 'e never said a ward. And then ah +got fair daft."</p> + +<p>There was silence for a moment.</p> + +<p>"I found this," suddenly interrupted a despatch-rider. He was a +fair-spoken youth, obviously of some education. He explained, in reply +to our interrogatories, that he was a despatch-rider attached to a +Signal Company of the R.E. He produced a cap, apparently from nowhere, +by mere sleight of hand. It was greasy, weather-stained, and in no +respect different from a thousand such Army caps. It bore the badge and +superscription of the R.E.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> We looked at it indifferently as he held it +out with an eleemosynary gesture.</p> + +<p>"A collection will now be taken," said the Hoxton man with a grin.</p> + +<p>But the despatch-rider did not laugh. "I found this cap," he said +gravely, "on Monday, September 7th, in a house near La Ferté. We stopped +there for four hours while the artillery were in action. We saw a broken +motor bicycle outside a house to which the people pointed. We went in. +We found one of our despatch-riders with an officer's sword sticking in +him. Our section officer asked the people about it, and they told him +that the despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost his way and +knocked at the door of the house. There were German officers billeted +there. They let him in, and then they stuck him up against a wall and +cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts," he added quietly.</p> + +<p>No one laughed any more. We all crowded round to look at that tragic +cap. "The number looks like one—nought—seven—something," said the +chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor +lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the +men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported +fit for duty.</p> + +<p>The English soldier hides his feelings as though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> he were ashamed of +them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal +twilight, and I sought to disperse it.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed +to leave nothing to be desired.</p> + +<p>But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier +begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable—and not before. He +will bear without repining everything but luxury.</p> + +<p>"One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about +this New Army getting four bob?"</p> + +<p>"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently.</p> + +<p>"Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls +themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And +those shuvvers—they're like fighting cocks."</p> + +<p>"Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I +said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across +trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer +uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam +upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread +and butter, the whole repre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>senting a most interesting geological +formation and producing a startling chromatic effect.</p> + +<p>"Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw +pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat +oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?"</p> + +<p>My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander +affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. +"Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!"</p> + +<p>A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time +to go bye-bye. Parade—hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round +soon. Scoot, my sons."</p> + +<p>They scooted.</p> + +<p>The silvery notes of the bugle died away over the woods. Night was +falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray. +We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures, +his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old. +He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for +the best part of my life," he said simply, "and I had retired on a +pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly, "that it has pleased Him +to extend my days long enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I +know the British soldier and—to know him is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> love him. Do you +understand?" he added, as he nodded in the direction the men had gone.</p> + +<p>As I looked at him, there came into my mind the haunting lines of +Tennyson's "Ulysses."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said, "I understand."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Pale.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Confusing.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Blaze.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Empty.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Smart.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Welsh for a singing meeting.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Mad.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Imbecile.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> A mole.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Trembled.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Screaming.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h3> + +<h3>THE FUGITIVES</h3> + +<p class='center'>"But pray that your flight be not in the winter."</p> + +<p>Some four or five miles north of Bailleul, where the <i>douane</i> posts mark +the marches of the Franco-Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre. +Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills, +through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the +earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies +another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came +upon two lonely wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with +moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of +the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a +few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the +landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of +privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape. Not a living +thing appeared, and the secret<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> promises of spring were so remote as to +seem incredible.</p> + +<p class='tbrk'>The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant class; the man, gnarled +like an old oak, the purple clots in the veins of his wrists betraying +the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap +had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other +end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the +axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart +the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, +a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a +spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen +utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, clanked +together.</p> + +<p>As our car drew up, they stopped, the woman holding her hands to her +side as though to recover breath.</p> + +<p>"Who are you? Where do you come from?" said my companion, a French +officer.</p> + +<p>They stared uncomprehendingly.</p> + +<p>He spoke again, this time in Flemish:</p> + +<p>"<i>Van waar komt gy? Waar gaat gy heen?</i>"</p> + +<p>The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the direction of the Menin +ridge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p> + +<p>There followed a conversation of which I could make but little. But I +noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as +though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves.</p> + +<p>"They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by +the Bosches near the Menin ridge."</p> + +<p>"Are they all alone?" I asked.</p> + +<p>He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the +Germans when they billeted there."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"They don't know. The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock +away. These few sticks are all they have left. Curious, isn't it," he +added meditatively, "that you never see any Flemish fugitives without +their feather-beds?" I had often noticed it. Also I had noticed the +curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save +everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence. +Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become +equally dear when you have to leave them.</p> + +<p>"But where are they going?"</p> + +<p>The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed +vacantly at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The +canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of +sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull +thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and +forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration. +The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the +cart as though seeking support.</p> + +<p>We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the +spasms of his malady.</p> + +<p>"He says he doesn't know," my companion translated. "He's never been +outside his parish before. But he thinks he'll go to Brussels and see +the King of the Belgians. He doesn't know the Germans are in Brussels. +And anyhow he's on the wrong road."</p> + +<p>"But surely," I hazarded, "the <i>maire</i> or the <i>curé</i> could have told him +better."</p> + +<p>"He says the Germans shot the <i>curé</i> and carried off the <i>maire</i>. It's a +way they've got, you know."</p> + +<p>It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted +sea. Their little world was in ruins. The bells that had called them to +the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had +knelt at mass was in ruins; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> parish registers which chronicled the +great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their +hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the +heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields +which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry, +and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This +was the secret of their heavy lethargy.</p> + +<p>My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to +maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul +had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it, +the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of +the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a +time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the +refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom +has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by +parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would +supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we +directed them to go.</p> + +<p>But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still +standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary +humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their +inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h3> + +<h3>A "DUG-OUT"<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></h3> + +<p>Driver George Hawkins, of the ——th Battery (K), was engaged in drying +one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he +felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that +morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy +should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He +performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive +great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical +expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a +sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a +utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering +the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism, +and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not +been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> fetlocks he would +have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back. But being +something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to +the ground, for he suspected corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins found +himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable. +Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder. +Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt. He looked at +Tommy with pained surprise.</p> + +<p>"I feeds yer," he said reproachfully, "I waters yer, I grooms yer, I +stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it? Now I ask +yer?" Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence.</p> + +<p>"What do I get for it?" he repeated argumentatively. "I gets a blooming +kick."</p> + +<p>"Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a +matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive +functions, and cannot be set down here.</p> + +<p>"Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the +Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment. The Major +was trying hard to repress a smile. "Go on with your catechism, +Hawkins," he said. It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral +Education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for +the repression of vice.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Hawkins?" I said unguardedly. But +no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's reply was +disconcerting. "I 'ates 'em, sir," he whispered to me as the Major +turned his back; "I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They gives me +'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache something cruel."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't, though," said the Major, who had overheard this auricular +confidence. We had left the stable. "Our drivers are mighty fond of +their horses—and proud of them too. It's quite an infatuation in its +way. But come and see the O.T.C. We've got them down here for the +weekend, by way of showing them the evolutions of a battery. They've got +their instructor, an N.C.O. who's been dug out for the job, and I've +lent him two of the guns to put them through their paces. He's quite +priceless—a regular chip of the old Army block."</p> + +<p>"Now, sir," the sergeant was saying, "get them into single file." They +were to change from Battery Column to Column of Route.</p> + +<p>"Battery...!" began the cadet in a piping voice.</p> + +<p>"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> expostulation. "You've +got to get it off your chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So!" And he gave a +stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and surprising performance, for +he was fat and scant of breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at +the —— Club, after twenty-one years' service in the Army, had produced +a fatty degeneration which no studious arrangement of an Army belt could +altogether conceal.</p> + +<p>"Battery!" began the cadet, as he threw his head back and took a deep +breath. "Advance in single file from the right. The rest mark time."</p> + +<p>"Rest!" said the sergeant reproachfully. "There ain't no rest in the +British Army. Rear, say, 'Rear,' sir."</p> + +<p>"Rear, mark time!" said the cadet uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>"Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows, "double them back, +sir."</p> + +<p>"Battery, run!" said the cadet brightly.</p> + +<p>"As y' were! How could yer, Mr. ——?" said the sergeant grievously. +"The British Army never runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed at +the aspersion upon the reputation of the British Army into which he had +been betrayed.</p> + +<p>"Double—march!"</p> + +<p>They doubled.</p> + +<p>The sergeant now turned his attention to a party<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> at gun drill. It was a +sub-section, which means a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment +was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd numbers in front, even +numbers behind.</p> + +<p>"Section tell off!"</p> + +<p>"One," from the front row. "Two," from the back. "Three," from the +front. The tale was duly told in voices which ran up and down the scale, +tenor alternating with baritone.</p> + +<p>"Without drag-ropes—prepare to advance!" shouted the sergeant. The odd +numbers shifted to the right of the gun, the evens to the left, but +numbers "4" and "6," being apparently under the impression that it was a +game of "musical chairs," found themselves on the right instead of the +left.</p> + +<p>"Too many odds," shouted the sergeant. "The British Army be used to +'eavy hodds, but not that sort. Nos. 4 and 6 get over to the near side."</p> + +<p>"Halt! Action front!" They unlimbered, and swung the gun round to point +in the direction of an imaginary enemy.</p> + +<p>The detachment were now grouped round the gun, and I drew near to have a +look at it. No neater adaptation of means to end could be devised than +your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a child, and her "bubble" is +as sensitive to a touch as mercury in a barometer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No. 1 add one hundred. Two-nought minutes more left!" shouted the +sergeant, who, with the versatility of a variety artiste, was now +playing another part from his extensive repertoire. He was forward +observing officer.</p> + +<p>One of his pupils turned the ranging gear until the range-drum +registered a further hundred yards, while another traversed the gun +until it pointed twenty minutes more left.</p> + +<p>As we turned away they were performing another delicate and complicated +operation which was not carried through without some plaintive +expostulation from the N.C.O.</p> + +<p>"It reminds me," remarked the Major colloquially, as we strolled away, +"of Falstaff drilling his recruits. So does the texture of the khaki +they serve out to the O.T.C. 'Dowlas, filthy dowlas!' But you've no idea +how soon he'll lick them into shape. These 'dug-outs' are as primitive +as cave-dwellers in their way but they know their job. And what is more, +they like it."</p> + +<p>As we passed the stables I heard ecstatic sounds—a whinny of equine +delight and the blandishments of a human voice. Through the open door I +caught a glimpse of Driver Hawkins with his back turned towards us. His +left arm was round Tommy's neck and the left side of his face rested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> +upon Tommy's head; the fingers of his right hand were delicately +stroking Tommy's nose.</p> + +<p>"I forgives yer," I heard him say with rare magnanimity, "yus, I +forgives yer, old boy. But if yer does it again, yer'll give me the +blooming 'ump."</p> + +<p>I passed hurriedly on. It was not for a stranger to intrude on anything +so intimate.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> On leave in England.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h3> + +<h3>CHRISTMAS EVE</h3> + +<p class='center'>(<i>1914</i>)</p> + +<p>"Halt! Stop, I mean."</p> + +<p>The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool +looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and +painful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in the annexe of a +Base hospital on Christmas Eve, and the sergeant was as hard to please +as if they were recruits doing their first squad drill. They were a +scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning chaplain to the Forces, from +Base "details" and convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their +time erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead and gaining audibly +with each lap despite the desperate spurts of the rest.</p> + +<p>"Opened out his throttle—'e has," whispered an Army driver +professionally to his neighbour; "'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the +speed limit."</p> + +<p>The sergeant glanced magisterially at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> offender, a young Dorset, who +a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who +has lately done enough digging for a whole parish.</p> + +<p>"You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he exclaimed reproachfully; +"you ain't out on patrol, yer know. 'Shun! Now again! 'Christians'."</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn,</div> +<div>Whereon ...</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The familiar melody was shut behind me as I closed the door. Those +West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and, +in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night, +illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a +luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the +window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the +nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered +mazily whether they had brought Father Christmas with them.</p> + +<p>A low cry of pain reached my ears as I opened the door of Surgical Ward +A.I. A nurse was removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought +down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him ready to spray the wound +with peroxide. "Buck up, old chap," cried the patients in the +neighbouring beds who looked on encouragingly at these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> ministries. +Another moan escaped him as the discoloured bandage, with its faint +odour of perchloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed flesh.</p> + +<p>"Next gramophone record, please!" chanted his neighbours. The patient +smiled faintly at the exhortation and set his teeth.</p> + +<p>"That's better, sonny," whispered the nurse with benign approval.</p> + +<p>"It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going to drain off the septic +matter," interjected the surgeon in holland overalls, with sleeves +tucked up to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The dresser handed +him a nickel reed from the sterilising basin.</p> + +<p>With a few light quick movements the wound was sprayed, dressed, +cleansed, and anointed, and the surgeon, like the good Samaritan, passed +on to the next case. Only last night the patient was in the trenches, +moaning with pain, as the stretcher-bearers carried him to the aid-post, +and from the aid-post to the forward dressing station, whence by an +uneasy journey (there were no sumptuous hospital-trains in those days) +he had come hither. But what of the others who were hit outside the +trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas Eve, in that dreadful No +Man's Land swept by the enemy's fire, whither no stretcher-bearer can +go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>—lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping forms, some +quivering in the barbed wire, where dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping +only for a cleanly death from a bullet before their wounds fester and +poison the blood in their veins.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Whereon—the Saviour—of mankind—was—born.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The measured cadence fell on my ear as I left the ward and passed beyond +the annexe. The sergeant had now got his section well in hand. I turned +up the long winding road towards my quarters. It was a cold moonlight +night, and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a +black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as +though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the +Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible—or so it +seemed to me—as Mars in all that starry heraldry.</p> + +<p>"Bon soir, monsieur!" It was the voice of the sentry, and came from +behind a barricade of hurdles, thatched with straw, on the crest of the +road over the downs. His bayonet gleamed like a silver needle in the +moonlight, and he was alone in his vigil. No shepherds watched their +flocks by night, neither did angels sing peace on earth and goodwill +towards men. Only the cold austerity of the stars kept him company. +Perhaps the first Christmas Eve was just such a starry night as this;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> +the same stars may have looked down upon a manger in Bethlehem. But on +the brow of the hill was one of those wayside shrines which symbolise +the anguish of the Cross, and these very stars may have looked down upon +the hill of Calvary.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="AIV" id="AIV"></a>IV</h2> + +<h2>THE FRONT AGAIN</h2> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h3> + +<h3>THE COMING OF THE HUN</h3> + +<p>The <i>maire</i> sat in his parlour at the Hôtel de Ville dictating to his +secretary. He was a stout little man with a firm mouth, an indomitable +chin, and quizzical eyes. His face would at any time have been +remarkable; for a French provincial it was notable in being +clean-shaven. Most Frenchmen of the middle class wear beards of an +Assyrian luxuriance, which to a casual glance suggest stage properties +rather than the work of Nature. The <i>maire</i> was leaning back in his +chair, his elbows resting upon its arms and his hands extended in front +of him, the thumb and finger-tips of one hand poised to meet those of +the other as though he were contemplating the fifth proposition in +Euclid. It was a characteristic attitude; an observer would have said it +indicated a temperament at once patient and precise. He was dictating a +note to the <i>commissaire de police</i>, warning the inhabitants to conduct +themselves "paisiblement" in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> event of a German occupation, an event +which was hourly expected. Much might depend upon that proclamation; a +word too little or too much and Heaven alone knew what innuendo a German +Commandant might discover in it. Perhaps the <i>maire</i> was also not +indifferent to the question of style; he prided himself on his French; +he had in his youth won a prize at the Lycée for composition, and he +contributed occasional papers to the journal of the Société de +l'Histoire de France on the antiquities of his <i>department</i>. Most +Frenchmen are born purists in style, and the <i>maire</i> lingered over his +words.</p> + +<p>"Continuez, Henri," he said with a glance at the clerk. "<i>Le Maire, +assisté de son adjoint et de ses conseillers municipaux et de délégués +de quartier, sera en permanence à l'hôtel de Ville pour assurer</i>—" +There was a kick at the door and a tall loutish man in the uniform of a +German officer entered, followed by two grey-coated soldiers. The +officer neither bowed nor saluted, but merely glared with an +intimidating frown. The <i>maire's</i> clerk sat in an atrophy of fear, +unable to move a muscle. The officer advanced to the desk, pulled out +his revolver from its leather pouch, and laid it with a lethal gesture +on the <i>maire's</i> desk. The <i>maire</i> examined it curiously. "Ah, yes, M. +le Capitaine, thank you; I will examine it in a moment, but I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> seen +better ones—our new service pattern, for example. Ja! Ich verstehe ganz +gut," he continued, answering the officer's reckless French in perfect +German. "Consider yourself under arrest," declaimed the officer, with +increasing violence. "We are in occupation of your town; you will +provide us within the next twenty-four hours with ten thousand kilos of +bread, thirty thousand kilos of hay, forty thousand kilos of oats, five +thousand bottles of wine, one hundred boxes of cigars." ("Mon Dieu! it +is an inventory," said the <i>maire</i> to himself.) "If these are not +forthcoming by twelve noon to-morrow you will be shot," added the +officer in a sudden inspiration of his own.</p> + +<p>The <i>maire</i> was facing the officer, who towered above him. "Ah, yes, +Monsieur le Capitaine, you will not take a seat? No? And your +requisition—you have your commandant's written order and signature, no +doubt?" The officer blustered. "No, no, Monsieur le Capitaine, I am the +head of the civil government in this town; I take no orders except from +the head of the military authority. You have doubtless forgotten Hague +Regulation, Article 52; your Government signed it, you will recollect." +The officer hesitated. The <i>maire</i> looked out on the <i>place</i>; it was +full of armed men, but he did not flinch. "You see, monsieur," he went +on suavely, "there are such things as receipts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> and they have to be +authenticated." The officer turned his back on him, took out his field +note-book, scribbled something on a page, and, having torn it out, +handed it to one of his men with a curt instruction.</p> + +<p>The <i>maire</i> resumed his dictation to the hypnotised clerk, while the +officer sat astride a chair and executed an impatient <i>pas seul</i> with +his heels upon the parquet floor. Once or twice he spat demonstratively, +but the <i>maire</i> took no notice. In a few minutes the soldier returned +with a written order, which the officer threw upon the desk without a +word.</p> + +<p>The <i>maire</i> scrutinised it carefully. "Ten thousand kilos of bread! +Monsieur, we provide five thousand a day for the refugees, and this will +tax us to the uttermost. The bakers of the town are nearly all <i>sous les +drapeaux</i>. Very well, monsieur," he added in reply to an impatient +exclamation from the officer, "we shall do our best. But many a poor +soul in this town will go hungry to-night. And the receipts?" "The +requisitioning officer will go with you and give receipts," retorted the +officer, who had apparently forgotten that he had placed the <i>maire</i> +under arrest.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Subdued lights twinkled like glow-worms in the streets as the <i>maire</i> +returned across the square to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> the Hôtel de Ville. He threaded his way +through groups of infantry, narrowly escaped a collision with three +drunken soldiers, who were singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" with laborious +unction, skirted the park of ammunition waggons, and reached the main +entrance. He had been on his feet for hours visiting the <i>boulangeries</i>, +the <i>pâtisseries</i>, the hay and corn merchants, persuading, +expostulating, beseeching, until at last he had wrung from their +exiguous stores the apportionment of the stupendous tribute. It was a +heavy task, nor were his importunities made appreciably easier by the +receipt-forms tendered, readily enough, by the requisitioning officer +who accompanied him, for the inhabitants seemed to view with terror the +possession of these German documents, suspecting they knew not what. But +the task was done, and the <i>maire</i> wearily mounted the stairs.</p> + +<p>The officer greeted him curtly. The <i>maire</i> now had leisure to study his +appearance more closely. He had high cheek-bones, protruding eyes, and a +large underhung mouth which, when he was pleased, looked sensual, and, +when he was annoyed, merely cruel. The base of his forehead was square, +but it rapidly receded with a convex conformation of head, very closely +shaven as though with a currycomb, and his ears stood out almost at +right angles to his skull. The ferocity that was his by nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> he +seemed to have assiduously cultivated by art, and the points of his +moustaches, upturned in the shape of a cow's horns, accentuated the +truculence of his appearance. In short, he was a typical Prussian +officer. In peace he would have been merely comic. In war he was +terrible, for there was nothing to restrain him.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the officer called for a corporal's guard to place the <i>maire</i> +under arrest. "But you will first sign the following <i>affiche</i>—by the +General's orders," he exclaimed roughly.</p> + +<blockquote><p>Le Maire informe ses concitoyens que le commandant en chef des +troupes allemandes a ordonné que le maire et deux notables soient +pris comme otages pour la raison que des civils aient tiré sur des +patrouilles allemandes. Si un coup de fusil était tiré à nouveau +par des civils, les trois otages seraient fusillés et la ville +serait incendiée immédiatement.</p> + +<p>Si des troupes alliées rentraient le maire rappelle à la population +que tout civil ne doit pas prendre part à la guerre et que si l'un +d'eux venait à y participer le commandant des troupes allemandes +ferait fusilier également les otages.</p></blockquote> + +<p>"One moment," said the <i>maire</i> as he took up a pen, "'<i>les civils</i>'! I +ordered the civil population to deposit their arms at the <i>mairie</i> two +days ago, and the <i>commissaire de police</i> and the gendarmes have +searched every house. We have no armed civilians here."</p> + +<p>"Es macht nichts," said the officer; "we shall add '<i>ou peut-être des +militaires en civil</i>.'"</p> + +<p>The <i>maire</i> shrugged his shoulders at the dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>ingenuous parenthesis. It +was, he knew, useless to protest. For all he knew he might be signing +his own death-warrant. He studied the style a little more attentively. +"Mon Dieu, what French!" he said to himself; "'était,' 'seraient,' +'venait'! What moods! What tenses! Monsieur le Capitaine," he continued +aloud, "if I had used such French in my exercises at the Lycée my +instituteur would have said I deserved to be shot. Pray allow me to make +it a little more graceful." But the Prussian's ignorance of French +syntax was only equalled by his suspicion of it. The <i>maire's</i> irony +merely irritated him and his coolness puzzled him. "I give you thirty +seconds to sign," he said, as he took out his watch and the inevitable +revolver. The <i>maire</i> took up a needle-like pen, dipped it in the ink, +and with a sigh wrote in fragile but firm characters "X—— Y——." The +officer called a corporal's guard, and the <i>maire</i>, who had fasted since +noon, was marched out of the room and thrust into a small closet upon +the door of which were the letters "<i>Cabinet</i>." This, he reflected +grimly, was certainly what in military language is called "close +confinement." The soldiers accompanied him. There was just room for him +to stretch his weary body upon the stone floor; one soldier remained +standing over him with fixed bayonet, the others took up their position +outside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> + +<p>Meanwhile a company of Landwehr had bivouacked in the square, four +machine-guns had been placed so as to command the four avenues of +approach, patrols had been sent out, sentries posted, all lights +extinguished, and all doors ordered to be left open by the householders. +Billeting officers had gone from house to house, chalking upon the doors +such legends as "<i>Drei Männer</i>," "<i>6 Offiziere—Eingang verboten</i>," and, +on rare occasions "<i>Gute Leute hier</i>." The trembling inhabitants had +been forced to wait on their uninvited guests as they clamoured noisily +for wine and liqueurs. All the civilians of military age, and many +beyond it, had been rounded up and taken under guard to the church; +their wives and daughters alone remained, and were the subject of +menacing pleasantries. So much the <i>maire</i> knew before he had returned +from his errand. As he lay in his dark cell he speculated painfully as +to what might be happening in the homes of his fellow-townsmen. He sat +up once or twice to listen, until the toe of the sentry's boot in his +back reminded him of his irregularity. Now and again a woman's cry broke +the silence of the night, but otherwise all was still. He composed +himself to sleep on the floor, reflecting that he must husband his +strength and his nerves for what might lie ahead of him. He was very +tired and slept heavily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> in spite of his cold stone bed. At the hour of +one in the morning he was awakened by a kick, and he found himself +staring at an electric torch which was being held to his face by a tall +figure shrouded in darkness. It was the captain. He sat up and rubbed +his eyes.</p> + +<p>"'<i>Fusillé</i>'! Bien! so I am to be shot! and wherefore, Monsieur le +Capitaine?"</p> + +<p>"Some one has fired upon us," said the officer, "one of your dirty +fellows; you must pay for it."</p> + +<p>"And the order?" asked the <i>maire</i> sleepily; "you have the Commandant's +order?"</p> + +<p>"Never mind about the order," said the officer reassuringly, "the order +will be forthcoming at eight o'clock. Oh yes, we shall shoot you most +authoritatively—never fear."</p> + +<p>The officer knew that nothing could be done until eight o'clock, for he +dared not wake the Commandant, but he did not see why he should deny +himself the pleasure of waking up this pig of a <i>maire</i> to see how he +would take it. The <i>maire</i> divined his thoughts, and without a word +turned over on his side and pretended to go to sleep again. From under +his drooping eyelids he saw the officer gazing at him with a look in +which dislike, disappointment, and pleasurable expectation seemed to be +struggling for mastery. Then with a click he extinguished his torch and +withdrew.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> + +<p>At eight o'clock the <i>maire</i> awoke to learn with mild surprise that he +was not to be shot. Beyond that his guard would tell him nothing. It was +only afterwards he learnt that one of the drunken revellers had been +prowling the streets, and, having given the sentries a bad fright by +letting off his rifle at a lamp-post, had expiated his adventure at the +hands of a firing party in the cemetery outside the town.</p> + +<p>For two days the <i>maire</i> was unmolested. He was allowed to see his +<i>adjoint</i>,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> who came to him with a troubled face.</p> + +<p>"The babies are crying for milk," he said, "the troops have taken it +all. I begged one of the officers to leave a little for the inhabitants, +but he said the men did not like their coffee without plenty of hot +milk." The <i>maire</i> reflected for a moment, and then dictated an <i>avis</i> +to the inhabitants enjoining upon them to be as sparing in their +consumption of milk as possible for the sake of the "mères de famille" +and "les petits enfants."</p> + +<p>"Tell the <i>commissaire de police</i> to have that posted up immediately," +he added. "We can do no more."</p> + +<p>"They have taken the bread out of our mouths," resumed the <i>adjoint</i>, +"and now they are despoiling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> us of our goods. They are like a swarm of +bailiffs let loose upon our homes. Everywhere they levy a distress upon +our chattels. There is an ammunition waggon outside my house; they have +put all the furniture of my <i>salon</i> upon it."</p> + +<p>"You should make a protest to the Commandant," said the <i>maire</i>, but not +very hopefully.</p> + +<p>"It is no use," replied the <i>adjoint</i> despondingly. "I have. He simply +shrugged his shoulders and said, 'C'est la guerre.' It is always so. +They have shot Jules Bonnard."</p> + +<p>"Et pourquoi?" asked the <i>maire</i>.</p> + +<p>"I know not," said the <i>adjoint</i>. "They found four market-gardeners +returning from the fields last night and shot them too—they made them +dig their own graves, and tied their hands behind their backs with their +own scarves. I protested to a Staff officer; he said it was 'verboten' +to dig potatoes. I said they did not know; how could they? He said they +ought to know. Then he abused me, and said if I made any more complaints +he would shoot me too. They have made the <i>civils</i> dig trenches."</p> + +<p>"Ah," said the <i>maire</i>. He knew it was a flagrant violation of the Hague +Regulations, but it was not the tithe of mint and cummin of the law that +troubled him. It was the reflection that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the <i>civil</i> who is forced to +dig trenches is already as good as dead. He knows too much.</p> + +<p>"And the women," continued the <i>adjoint</i>, in a tone of stupefied horror, +"they are crying, many of them, and will not look one in the face. Some +of them have black eyes. And the young girls!"</p> + +<p>The <i>maire</i> brooded in impotent horror. His meditations were interrupted +by the entrance of the captain. "The Commandant wishes to see you <i>tout +de suite</i>," he exclaimed. "March!" He was conducted by a corporal's +guard, preceded by the captain, into the presence of the General, who +had taken up his quarters in the principal mansion looking out upon the +square. The General was a stout, square-headed man, with grey moustaches +and steel-blue eyes, and the <i>maire</i> divined at a glance that here was +no swashbuckler, but a man who had himself under control. "I have +imposed a fine of 300,000 francs upon your town; you will collect it in +twenty-four hours; if it is not forthcoming to the last franc I shall be +regretfully compelled to burn this town to the ground."</p> + +<p>"And why?" exclaimed the <i>maire</i>, whom nothing could now surprise, +though much might perplex.</p> + +<p>The General seemed unprepared for the question. He paused for a moment +and said, "Some one has been giving information to the enemy." +"No!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>—he held up his hand, not impolitely but finally, as the <i>maire</i> +began to expostulate—"I have spoken."</p> + +<p>"But," said the <i>maire</i> desperately, "we shall be ruined. We have not +got it. And all our goods have been taken already."</p> + +<p>"You have our receipts," said the General. "They are as good as gold. +German credit is very high; the Imperial Government has just floated a +loan of several milliards. And you have our stamped <i>Quittungen</i>." He +became at once voluble and persuasive in his cupidity, and forgot +something of his habitual caution. "You surely do not doubt the word of +the German Government?" he said. The <i>maire</i> doubted it very much, but +he discreetly held his tongue. "And our requisitioning officers have not +been niggardly," continued the General; "they have put a substantial +price on the goods we have taken." This was true. It had not escaped the +<i>maire</i> that the receipt-forms had been lavish.</p> + +<p>"I will do my best," said the <i>maire</i> simply.</p> + +<p>He was now released from arrest, and he retired to his house to think +out the new problem that had presented itself. The threat to burn down +the town might or might not be anything but bluff; he himself doubted +whether the German Commandant would burn the roofs over his men's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> +heads, as long as the occupation lasted. The military disadvantages were +too obvious, though what the enemy might do when they left the town was +another matter. They might shoot him, of course; that was more than +probable.</p> + +<p>But how to find the money was an anxious problem and urgent. The +municipal <i>caisse</i> was empty: the managers of the banks had closed their +doors and carried their deposits off to Paris before the Germans had +entered the town; of the wealthier bourgeoisie some had fled, many were +ruined, and the rest were inadequate. The <i>maire</i> pondered long upon +these things, leaning back in his chair with knitted brows in that +pensive attitude which was characteristic. Suddenly he caught sight of a +blue paper with German characters lying upon a walnut table at his +elbow. He took it up, scrutinised it, and studied the signature:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Empfangschein.</div> +<div>Werth 500 fr. erhalten.</div> +<div>Herr Hauptmann von Koepenick.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Then he smiled. He got up, put on his overcoat, took up his hat and +cane, and went forth into the drizzling rain.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Two hours later he was at the headquarters of the Staff and asked to see +the Commandant. He was shown into his presence without delay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> "Well?" +said the Commandant. "Monsieur le Général, I have collected the fine," +said the <i>maire</i>. The General's face relaxed its habitual sternness; he +grew at once pleasant and polite. "Good," he said. The <i>maire</i> opened a +fat leather wallet and placed upon the table under the General's +predatory nose a large pile of blue documents, some (but not all) +stamped with the violet stamp of the German A.Q.M.G. "If the +<i>hochgeehrter</i> General will count them," said the <i>maire</i>, "he will see +they come to 325,000 francs. It is rather more than the fine," he +explained, "but I have made allowance for the fact that they are not +immediately redeemable. They are mostly stamped, and—<i>they are as good +as gold</i>."</p> + +<p>For three minutes there was absolute silence in the room. The gilt clock +in its glass sepulchre on the mantelpiece ticked off the seconds as +loudly as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the night. The +<i>maire</i> speculated with more curiosity than fear as to how many more of +these seconds he had to live. Never had the intervals seemed so long nor +their registration so insistent. The ashes fell with a soft susurrus in +the grate. The Commandant looked at the <i>maire</i>; the <i>maire</i> looked at +the Commandant. Then the Commandant smiled. It was an inscrutable smile; +a smile in which the eyes participated not at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> There was merely a +muscular relaxation of the lips disclosing the teeth; to the <i>maire</i> +there seemed something almost canine in it. At last the General spoke. +"Gut!" he said gutturally; "you may go."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>"You astonish me," I said to the <i>maire</i>, as he concluded his narrative. +We were sitting in his parlour, smoking a cigar together one day in +February in a town not a thousand miles from the German lines. "You +know, Monsieur le Maire, they have shot many a municipal magistrate for +less. I wonder they didn't make up their minds to shoot you." The +<i>maire</i> smiled. "They did," he said quietly. He carefully nicked the ash +off his cigar, as he laid it down upon his desk, and opened the drawer +of his escritoire. He took out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It +was an order in German to shoot the <i>maire</i> on the evacuation of the +town.</p> + +<p>"You see, monsieur," he exclaimed, "your brave soldiers were a little +too quick for them. You made a surprise attack in force early one +morning and drove the enemy out. So surprising was it that the Staff +officers billeted in my house left a box half full of cigars on my +sideboard! You are smoking one of them now—a very good cigar, is it +not?" It was. "And they left a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> good many official papers behind—what +you call 'chits,' is it not?—and this one among them. Please mind your +cigar-ash, monsieur! You see I rather value my own death-warrant."</p> + +<p>Moved by an irresistible impulse I rose from my chair and held out my +hand. The <i>maire</i> took it in mild surprise. "Monsieur," I said frankly, +if crudely, "you are a brave man. And you have endured much."</p> + +<p>"Yes, monsieur," said the <i>maire</i> gravely, as he glanced at a +proclamation on the wall which he has added to his private collection of +antiquities, "that is true. I have often been <i>très fâché</i> to think that +I who won the Michelet prize at the Lycée should have put my name to +that thing over there."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Deputy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> This narrative follows with some fidelity the course of +events as related to the writer by the <i>maire</i> of the town in question. +But for the most obvious of reasons the writer has deemed it his duty to +suppress names, disguise events, and give the narrative something of the +investiture of fiction. It is, however, true "in substance and in +fact."—J. H. M.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h3> + +<h3>THE HILL</h3> + +<p>It was one of those perfect spring days when the whole earth seems to +bare her bosom to the caresses of the sun. The sky was without a cloud +and in the vault overhead, blue as a piece of Delft, a lark was +ascending in transports of exultant song. The hill on which we stood was +covered with young birch saplings bursting into leaf, and the sky itself +was not more blue than the wild hyacinths at our feet. Here and there in +the undergrowth gleamed the pallid anemone. A copper wire ran from pole +to pole down the slope of the hill and glittered in the sun like a +thread of gold. A little to our right two circular mirrors, glancing +obliquely at each other, stood on a tripod, and a graduated sequence of +flashes came and went, under the hands of the signallers, with the +velocity of light itself. A few yards behind us on the crest of the hill +stood a windmill, its great sails motionless as though it were a brig +becalmed and waiting for a wind, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> astride one arm, like a sailor on +a yard, a carpenter was busy, with his mouth full of nails. The tapping +of his hammer and the song of the lark were the only sounds that broke +the warm stillness of the April day. A great plain stretched away at our +feet, and in the fields below women were stooping forward over their +hoes.</p> + +<p>The white towers of Ypres gleamed ghostlike in the distant haze. The +city had the wistful fragility of some beautiful mirage, and looking at +it across the pleasant landscape I thought of the Pilgrim's vision of +the Golden City shining in the sun beyond the Land of Beulah. Two or +three miles away on our right the ground rose gently to a range of low +wooded hills, and on their bare green slopes brown furrows showed up +like a cicatrice. They were the German trenches. On the crest of the +ridge a white house peeped out between the trees. That house seemed an +object of peculiar interest to the battery-major at my side. He was +stooping behind the "Director" with his eye to the sights as though he +was focussing the distant object for a photograph. He fixed the outer +clamp, unscrewed the inner clamp, and having got his sights on the +house, he reversed the process and swung round the sights to bear on a +little copse to our left. "One hundred and five," he said meditatively +as he found the angle. The N.C.O. took up the range-finder and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> measured +the distances first to the house, then to the copse. The major took up +an adjustable triangle, and with a movement of thumb and forefinger +converted it into the figure of an irregular "X." As he read off the +battery angle on the "Plotter" the N.C.O. communicated it and the +elevation to the telephone operator, who in turn communicated it to the +battery in the copse. "Battery angle seventy. Range four thousand." +Gunners are a laconic people, and their language is as economical of +words as a proposition in Euclid; their sentences resemble those +Oriental languages in which the verb is regarded as a superfluous +impertinence. Language is to them a visual and symbolical thing in which +angles and distances are predicated of churches, trees, and four-storied +houses. Now in the copse on our left six field-guns were cunningly +concealed, and even as the telephone operator spoke the dial-sights of +those six guns were being screwed round and the elevating gear adjusted +till they and the range-drum recorded the results of the major's +meditations upon the hill. Then the guns in the copse spoke, and the air +was sibilant with their speech. A little cloud no bigger than a man's +hand arose above the roof of the white house on the ridge. Our battery +had found its mark.</p> + +<p>Somewhere behind that ridge were the enemy's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> batteries and they were +yet to find. But even as we searched the landscape with our +field-glasses an aeroplane rose from behind our own position and made +for the distant ridge, its diaphanous wings displaying red, white, and +blue concentric circles to our glasses like the scales of some huge +magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke made faint +pencillings in the sky behind it. As it hovered above the ridge seven or +eight little white clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared from +nowhere just below it. They were German shrapnel. But the aeroplane +passed imperturbably on, leaving the little feathers to float in the sky +until in time they faded away and disappeared. In no long time the +aeroplane was retracing its flight, and certain little coloured discs +were speaking luminously to the battery, telling it of what the observer +had seen beyond the ridge. Between the aeroplane, the observer, the +telephone, and the guns, there seemed to be some mysterious freemasonry. +And this impression of secret and collusive agencies was heightened by +the vibration of the air above us, in which the shells from the +batteries made furrows that were audible without being visible, as +though the whole firmament were populated with disembodied spirits. The +passivity of the toilers in the field below us, who, absorbed in their +husbandry, regarded not the air above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> them, and the dreaming beauty of +the distant city almost persuaded us that we were the victims of a +gigantic illusion. But even as we gazed the city acquired a desperate +and tragic reality. Voices of thunder awoke behind the ridge, the air +was rent like a garment, and first one cloud and then another and +another rose above the city of Ypres, till the white towers were blotted +out of sight. A black pall floated over the doomed city, and from that +moment the air was never still, as a rhythm of German shells rained upon +it. The storm spread until other villages were involved, and a fierce +red glow appeared above the roofs of Vlamertinge.</p> + +<p>Yet the clouds and flame that rose above the white towers had at that +distance a flagrant beauty of their own, and it was hard to believe that +they stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men. Beyond the +voluminous smoke and darting tongues of fire, our field-glasses could +show us nothing. But we knew—for we had seen but yesterday—that behind +that haze there was being perpetrated a destruction as mournful and +capricious as that which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives overtook +Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one was even now being taken and +the other left; he who was upon the housetop would not come down to take +anything out of his house, neither would he who was in the field return +to take away his clothes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> The great cathedral was crumbling to dust, +and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their +niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal +contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that +while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe +were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men +hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper pans, and stumbling +under the weight of feather-beds, while whimpering children fumbled +among their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies each of the shells, +whose trajectory we heard ever and anon in the skies overhead, were +making in that living stream were to us a subject of poignant +speculation.</p> + +<p>But as I looked immediately around me I found it ever more difficult to +believe that such things were being done upon the earth. The carpenter +went on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade his eyes with his +hand and gaze out over the plain, the peasants in the field continued to +hoe, a woman came out of a cottage with a child clinging to her skirts, +and said, "La guerre, quand finira-t-elle, M'sieu'?" From far above us +the song of the lark, now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated down +upon the drowsy air.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h3> + +<h3>THE DAY'S WORK</h3> + +<p>It was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some dozen of us all +told—the Camp Commandant, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General, the +Assistant-Provost-Marshal, the Assistant-Director of Medical Services, +the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective has nothing to do with his +personal habits), the Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a +<i>padre</i>, and myself. Most of us were known by our initials—our official +initials—for the use of them saves time and avoids pomposity. Our +duties were both extensive and peculiar, as will presently appear, for +we were in the habit of talking shop. There was, indeed, little else to +talk about. When you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with no +amusements and few amenities—neither theatres, nor sport, nor +books—and with little prospect of getting a move on, you can but +chronicle the small beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be +engaging enough at times.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> + +<p>As we sat down to the stew which our orderly had compounded with the +assistance of the ingenious Mr. Maconochie, the Camp Commandant sighed +heavily. "I am a kind of receptacle for the waste products of +everybody's mind," he exclaimed petulantly. "This morning I was rung up +on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian +Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done. +Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier—<i>un soldat +discret</i>—to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant, +who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to +ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as +she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act."</p> + +<p>The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence. +Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to +whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much +may legitimately be expected. "Well, you may think yourself lucky you +haven't my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General at length. +"I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm +like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading +Bradshaw, except that I don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> boast of it and it isn't a +recreation—it's damned hard work. I have to read the Army List for +about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong +there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone +and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd +Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having +died of heart failure on the 22nd inst."</p> + +<p>"Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?" asked the Camp Commandant.</p> + +<p>"He is the regimental goat," replied the D.A.A.G. "I suppose they +thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade +Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a +member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species."</p> + +<p>"Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets," said +the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. "I've been on the +trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the +Downshires are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with +them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that +they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the +trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was +spreading like one of the seven plagues<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> of Egypt. At last I tracked it +down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about five years ago +and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a +carrier."</p> + +<p>"What did you do with him?" said the A.D.M.S.</p> + +<p>"He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a +perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more +honourable than cure," said he whom we know as "Smells," and who has a +nose like a fox-terrier's. "I am the <i>avant-garde</i> of the Staff, and you +fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make +my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue +parties, where would you all be?"</p> + +<p>"We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it," said +the A.P.M. ungratefully.</p> + +<p>"The <i>maire</i> thinks I'm mad, of course," continued 'Smells,' "and I +can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street +are not conducive to health."</p> + +<p>"I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our +phylacteries," said the Assistant Provost Marshal. "Now I'm a sort of +licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and +the <i>estaminet</i> proprietors think I'm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> a Temperance fanatic," he said, +as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. "One of them told me the +other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the +Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm +sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my +loins any day."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the Camp Commandant, "it's our melancholy duty to be +impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I +stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again +at the Base or somewhere else <i>en route</i>; it would relieve me of any +compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the +envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably."</p> + +<p>"I'm something of a handwriting expert myself," said the A.P.M., +ignoring the aspersion. "They have changed the colour of the passes +again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s +signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour +of the pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance," he +murmured dreamily; "I believe I could now forge his signature very +artistically."</p> + +<p>"I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.," said +the A.D.M.S. "I believe I receive more chits than any man on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> +staff." "Chits," it should be explained, are the billets-doux of the +Army wherein officers send tender messages to one another and make +assignations.</p> + +<p>"Did you hear about that chit the Camp Commandant at the Headquarters of +the ——th Corps sent to the A.Q.M.G.?" asked the A.P.M. "No? Well, the +A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to Ferrers asking if they had made use +of any Ammonal and, if so, whether the results were satisfactory. +Ferrers sent it on to the Camp Commandant for report and the Camp +Commandant wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is not +understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used—is it a drug or an +explosive?' Ferrers told him to ask the Medical Officer attached to +Corps headquarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back another chit +to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had informed him that 'Ammonal' was a +compound drug extensively used in America in cases of abnormal neurotic +excitement, and that, so far as he knew, it was not a medical issue to +Corps H.Q. He therefore regretted that he was unable to report results, +but promised that if occasion should arise to administer it to any of +the Corps H.Q. <i>personnel</i> he would faithfully observe the effects and +report the same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he betrayed a quite +abnormal degree of neurotic excitement; in fact, he was quite nasty +about it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What the devil did he mean?" asked the A.D.M.S.</p> + +<p>"Well, that points the moral of your remarks about handwriting," said +the A.P.M. encouragingly. "The Camp Commandant had written what looked +like an 'o' in place of an 'a.' Ammonol is a drug; ammonal is an +explosive."</p> + +<p>"Well, I wish some one would teach the Huns how to write decently." The +speaker was Summersby of the Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence are a +corps of detectives and have to estimate the strength, the location, and +the composition of the enemy's forces. Everything is grist that comes to +their mill and they will perform surprising feats of induction. They can +reconstruct a German Army Corps out of a Landwehr man's bootlace, his +diary, his underclothing, or his shoulder-strap—but the greatest of +these is his diary. "I've been studying the diaries of prisoners until I +feel a Hun myself. They remind me of the diary I used to keep at school, +they are all about eating and drinking. The Hun is a glutton and a +wine-bibber. But I found something to-day—'Keine Gefangene' in an +officer's field note-book."</p> + +<p>"Translate, my Hunnish friend," said the A.P.M.</p> + +<p>"No prisoners," replied Summersby shortly.</p> + +<p>"I hope you handed the swine over to the P.M.," said the Camp +Commandant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well, no," said Summersby. "You see he had a plausible explanation—by +the way, what perfect English those German officers talk; I'll bet that +man has eaten our bread and salt some time. He said it was a Brigade +order to the men not to make the taking of prisoners a pretext for going +back to the rear in large parties but to leave them to the supports when +they came up. The curious thing is that that officer belongs to the +112th and we've our eye on the 112th. One of their men, a fellow named +Schmidt, who surrendered on the 19th of last month, said they'd had an +order to take no prisoners but kill them all. His regiment was the +112th," he added darkly.</p> + +<p>"The filthy swine!" we cried in a chorus, and our talk grew sombre as we +exchanged reminiscences.</p> + +<p>"What pleases me about you fellows," said Ponsonby, who had been +listening with a languid air, and who was formerly in the F.O. where he +composed florid speeches in elegant French for Hague Plenipotentiaries, +"is your habits of speech. In diplomacy we contrive to talk a lot +without saying anything, whereas Army men manage to talk little and say +a great deal. You've got four words in the Army which seem to be a +mighty present help in trouble at H.Q. Their sustaining properties are +remarkable and they seem to tide over very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> anxious moments. When you +are in a hole you say 'Damn all,' and when you are asked for +instructions you cry 'Carry on.' I suppose it's by sitting tight and +using those words with discrimination that you fellows arrive at +greatness and attain Brigadier rank. That seems to be the first thing a +third-grade staff-officer learns."</p> + +<p>"The first thing a third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak +respectfully of his superiors," said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion +at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in +spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him. He turned +to the D.A.A.G. and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten to say grace. For +what we have <i>not</i> received"—he added, with a meaning glance at a +Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.'s wife has sent out from home and which +remained on the sideboard—"the Lord make us truly thankful." This was +an allusion to the D.A.A.G.'s sacerdotal functions. For the +Adjutant-General and his staff, who know the numbers of all the Field +Ambulances, can lay hands—but not in the apostolic sense—upon every +chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and +can admonish, deprive, and suspend.</p> + +<p>The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction. "I think we've fixed it +up with those Red Cross drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s +depart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>ment had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented +by these birds of passage on the lines of communication. "We've decided +that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the +Army Act, and that you 'follow' the British Army from the moment you +accept a pass to H.Q. My chief called some of them together yesterday, +and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under +military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days' +field-punishment to the punishment of death. This was <i>pour encourager +les autres</i>. They looked quite thoughtful."</p> + +<p>"That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby pensively. "Should an Army +follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot? I put it to you," he +added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I want counsel's opinion."</p> + +<p>"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the man of law. "But the +safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards."</p> + +<p>"Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put +you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because +Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously +untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts—that's a legal +expression for fraud, isn't it?—his carrier-pigeons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> into pigeon-pie. +What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?" +Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as <i>Aquila +vulgaris</i>, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of +them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by +an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode. +Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as "missing," and go to +some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return. Ponsonby +glances suspiciously at Slingsby's portly figure.</p> + +<p>But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of +"proceedings," and his departure was the signal for a general +dispersion. "Come and have a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I" man. +"Can't, you slacker," was the reply. "I've got to go and make up an 'I' +summary. 'Notes of an Air Reconnaissance. Distribution of the enemy's +forces. Copy of a German Divisional Circular. Notes on the German system +of signalling from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of thing. +Just now we're trying to discover how many guns they've got in the +batteries of their new formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm. +projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns +have been withdrawn. But it may be only a blind."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> + +<p>As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our +respective offices a supply column rumbled over the <i>pavé</i>, each of the +seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a +fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their +motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the +aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible +from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60 +again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow the casualty returns +will come in. Good God! will it never end?"</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h3> + +<h3>FIAT JUSTITIA</h3> + +<p class='center'>PARQUET<br />du<br />Tribunal de I<sup>ère</sup> Instance<br />d'Ypres</p> + +<p>At last I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking +out the <i>procureur du roi</i>, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to +be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of +mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed +among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city +like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes +strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a +deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a +spectacle at once tragic and whimsical—the brass lectern still stood +upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as +with a gesture of reproof. The sight of those scrambling chairs all +huddled together<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> and fallen headlong upon one another had something +oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts. Ypres is an +uncanny place.</p> + +<p>We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops, +pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until +all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt +for the <i>procureur du roi</i>—who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to +Poperinghe—we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with +French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl +exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely +boy, who regarded A——, the Staff officer accompanying me, with a +hypnotic stare. He peered at him from under drooping eyelids, flanking a +nose without a bridge, and my companion didn't like it. "He is admiring +you," I remarked by way of consolation, as indeed he was. "What do you +call it?" said A—— petulantly to a R.A.M.C. officer who was lunching +with us. The latter looked at the boy with a clinical eye. +"Necrosis—syphilitic," he said dispassionately. "And he's handing us +the cakes!" A—— exclaimed with horror. "Fetch me an ounce of civet." +We declined the cakes, and, having paid our <i>addition</i>, hastily departed +to resume our quest of the <i>procureur</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> + +<p>Eventually we found the legend set out above. It was a placard stuck on +the door of a private house. We entered and found ourselves in a kitchen +with a stone floor; japanned tin boxes, calf-bound volumes, and fat +registers, all stamped with the arms of Belgium, were grouped on the +shelves of the dresser. A courteous gentleman, well-groomed and +debonair, with waxed moustaches, greeted us. It was the <i>procureur du +roi</i>. With him was another civilian—the <i>juge d'instruction</i>. They +politely requested us to take a seat and to excuse a judicial +preoccupation. The <i>juge d'instruction</i> was interrogating an inhabitant +of Poperinghe. The <i>procureur</i> explained to me that the <i>prévenu</i> (the +accused), who was not present but was within the precincts, was charged +with <i>calomnie</i><a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> under Section 444 of the <i>Code Pénal</i>. "But," I +exclaimed in astonishment, "are you still administering justice?" +"Pourquoi non?" he asked in mild surprise. It was true, he admitted, +that his office at Ypres had been destroyed by shell-fire, the <i>maison +d'arrêt</i>—in plain English, the prison—was open to the four winds of +heaven, and warders and gendarmes had been called up to the colours. But +justice must be done and the majesty of the King of the Belgians upheld. +The King's writ still ran, even though its currency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> might be limited to +the few square miles which were all that remained of Belgian territory +in Belgian hands. All this he explained to me with such gravity that I +felt further questions would be futile, if not impertinent. I therefore +held my tongue and determined to follow the proceedings closely, being +not a little curious to observe how the judgment would be enforced.</p> + +<p>The witness took the oath to say the truth and nothing but the truth +("rien que la vérité"), concluding with the solemn invocation, "Ainsi +m'aide Dieu." The parties had elected to have the proceedings taken in +French.</p> + +<p>"Your name?" said the judge, as he studied the procès-verbal prepared by +the <i>procureur</i>.</p> + +<p>"Jules F——."</p> + +<p>"Age?"</p> + +<p>"Cinquante-cinq."</p> + +<p>"Profession?"</p> + +<p>"Cordonnier."</p> + +<p>"Résidence?"</p> + +<p>"Rue d'Ypres 32."</p> + +<p>This preliminary catechism being completed, the prosecutor unfolded his +tale. He had been drinking the health of His Majesty the King of the +Belgians and confusion to his enemies in an <i>estaminet</i> at the crowded +hour of 7 <span class="smcap">p.m</span>. The accused had entered, and in the presence of +many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> of his neighbours had said to him, "Vous êtes un Bosche." "Un +Bosche!" repeated the witness indignantly. "It is a gross defamation." +With difficulty had he been restrained from the shedding of blood. But, +being a law-abiding, peaceful man and the father of a family, he volubly +explained, he had laid this information ("dénonciation") before the +<i>procureur du roi</i>.</p> + +<p>The judge looked grave. But he duly noted down the testimony, after some +perfunctory cross-examination, and, it being read over to the witness, +the judge added "Lecture faite," and the persisting witness signed the +deposition with his own hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other +witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty, came forward and testified +to the same effect. And they also signed their depositions and withdrew.</p> + +<p>The magistrate ordered the usher to bring in the accused, who had been +summoned to appear by a <i>mandat d'amener</i>. He was a stout, dark, +convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of +the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these +proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him +into knots, and reduced him to a state of extreme penitence.</p> + +<p>"Where were you on the 3rd of April at 7 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span>?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> began the +magistrate, making what gunners call a ranging shot. The accused +appeared to have been everywhere in Poperinghe except at the +<i>estaminet</i>. He had been to the butcher's, the baker's, and the +candlestick-maker's.</p> + +<p>"At what hour did you enter the Café à l'Harmonie?"</p> + +<p>The accused tried to look as if he now heard of the Café "À l'Harmonie" +for the first time, but under the searching eye of the magistrate he +failed. He might, he conceded, have looked in there for a thirsty +moment.</p> + +<p>"Do you know Jules F——?" the magistrate persisted. The accused +grudgingly admitted the existence of such a person. "Is he a German?" +asked the magistrate pointedly. The accused pondered. "Would you call +him a Bosche?" persisted the magistrate. "I never <i>meant</i> to call him 'a +Bosche,'" the accused said in an unguarded moment. The magistrate +pounced on him. He had found the range. After that the result was a +foregone conclusion. The duel ended in the accused tearfully admitting +he thought he must have been drunk, and throwing himself on the mercy of +the magistrate.</p> + +<p>"It is a grave offence," said the magistrate severely, as he +contemplated the lachrymose delinquent. "An <i>estaminet</i> is a public +place within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> the meaning of Section 444 of the Code Pénal. Vous avez +méchamment imputé à une personne un fait précis qui est de nature à +porter atteinte à son honneur." "And calculated to provoke a breach of +the peace," he added. "It is punishable with a term of imprisonment not +exceeding one year." The face of the accused grew long. "Or a fine of +200 francs," he pursued. The lips of the accused quivered. "You may have +to go to a <i>maison de correction</i>," continued the magistrate pitilessly. +The accused wept.</p> + +<p>I grew more and more interested. If this was a "correctional" offence, +the magistrate must in the ordinary course of things commit the prisoner +to a <i>chambre de conseil</i>, thereafter to take his trial before a +Tribunal Correctionnel. But chamber and tribunal were scattered to the +four corners of the earth.</p> + +<p>Here, I felt sure, the whole proceedings must collapse and the +magistrate be sadly compelled to admit his impotence. The magistrate, +however, appeared in nowise perturbed, nor did he for a moment relax his +authoritative expression. He was turning over the pages of the <i>Code +d'Instruction Criminelle</i>, glancing occasionally at a now wholly +penitent prisoner trembling before the majesty of the law. At last he +spoke. "I will deal with you," he said with an air of indulgence, "under +Chapter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> VIII. of the Code. You will be bound over to come up for +judgment at the end of the war if called upon. You will deposit a +<i>cautionnement</i> of twenty francs. And now, gentlemen, we are at your +service."</p> + +<p>"Fiat justitia ruat coelum," whispered A—— to me, as the prisoner, +deeply impressed, opened a leather purse and counted out four greasy +five-franc notes.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Defamation. It is a misdemeanour according to Belgian +law.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h3> + +<h3>HIGHER EDUCATION</h3> + +<p>British Headquarters must, I think, be the biggest Military Academy in +the world. It has its Sandhurst and its Woolwich and even its Camberley. +It ought long ago to have been incorporated by Order in Council as a +University with Sir John French as Chancellor. It has more schools in +the Art of War than I can remember, and every School has an Instructor +who deserves to rank as a full-time Professor. To graduate in one of +those schools you must get a fortnight's leave from your trenches or +your battery, at the end of which time you return to do a little +post-graduate work of a very practical kind with the aid of a +machine-gun or a trench-mortar. At the beginning of the war higher +education at G.H.Q. was somewhat neglected, and the company officer who +desired to improve himself in the lethal arts had to be content with +private study. Company officers went in for applied chemistry by making +flares out of a test-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>tube full of water, delicately balanced in a +bully-beef tin containing sodium. The tins were tied to the barbed-wire +entanglements in front of our trenches, and when the stealthy Hun, +creeping on his stomach, bumped against the wire the test-tube +overflowed into the tin and a lurid patch of greenish flame revealed the +clumsy visitor to our look-outs. That was before we were supplied with +calcium flares. Then, too, the sappers went in for experimental research +by making trench-mortars out of old stove-pipes.</p> + +<p>To-day all that is changed. A chemical corps has come out to join the +sappers, and the gunners have received some highly finished +trench-mortars from Vickers's. A trench mortar is a kind of toy howitzer +and very useful when you want to try conclusions with a neighbouring +trench at short range. The mortars are not exactly things to play with, +and so two "schools" of mortars have been instituted to teach R.G.A. men +how to handle them. Every morning at nine o'clock two young subalterns +meet their class of fifty pupils in a château, and explain with the aid +of a diagram on a blackboard the internal economy of the mortar and its +50-lb. bomb, the adjustment of angles of elevation to ranges, and the +respective offices of fuse, charge, and detonator. When the class have +had enough of this they go off to a neighbouring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> field to simulate +trench warfare and hold a demonstration. This is real sport. They have +dug a sector of trenches, duly traversed, and at some two or three +hundred yards distance have dug another sector and decorated it +realistically with barbed-wire entanglements. Thither one afternoon we +conveyed the mortar to the first trenches on an improvised carriage, +placed it behind one of the traverses, and duly clamped it down. The +subaltern took up a periscope and got the thread-line on the target—you +find the range without instruments and by your own intuitions. "Three +hundred, I think," he remarked pensively. A pupil adjusted the range +indicator at 71·30 to get the elevation, and his assistant took up what +looked like a huge jar of preserved ginger. It was the bomb. Having put +the tail to it he inserted the detonator. "Fuse at 27." He set the +indicator with as much care as if he were setting the hands of his +watch. The man took the fuse delicately, put in the test-tube and +attached the lanyard. These operations had been closely followed by the +class, who made a circle round the bomb like a football "scrum." It was +now time to line the trenches, for the "tail" of the bomb is apt to kick +viciously when the thing is fired. As they spread out, the man removed +the two safety-pins in the top of the fuse and pulled the lanyard. There +was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> a voice of thunder and a sheet of flame, followed by what seemed an +interminable pause. We scanned the brown furrows in front of us and +suddenly the earth shot skywards in a fan; a cloud of dirty-black smoke +floated over our target. The whole class leapt the parapet and streamed +away across the furrows like a pack of hounds in full cry, until they +suddenly disappeared below the surface of the earth. We followed and +found them standing in a huge crater whose sides were hollowed out as +neatly as those of a cup. "Done it again," said the subaltern +complacently, "we've never had a blind."</p> + +<p>At the Machine-gun School they do things on a larger scale, and Wren's +could teach them nothing in the art of cramming. The Instructor reckons +to put his class of 200 officers and men through a six months' course in +a fortnight. There is need for it. The Germans started this war with +eleven machine-guns (it is now anything from twenty to forty) to a +battalion. We started with two. For years they have enlisted, trained, +and paid a special class of men to man them. Consequently we had a great +deal of leeway to make up. We are making it up, hand over fist, thanks +to the Instructor, one of the most brilliant and devoted officers I +know, and a man who spends his nights in inventing or perfecting +improvements. He has got a pocket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> edition of a machine-gun made of +tempered steel and weighing only 27 lb., as against our old one, which +is of gun-metal and weighs 58 lb.—a material difference when it is a +question of an advance. The new one, he explains somewhat illogically, +with paternal pride, can be carried into action "like a baby." Having +decided to give it a trial we carried it tenderly to a quarry and +proceeded to "feed" it with a belt of cartridges. The Instructor set up +a small stick against the bank of a gravel quarry and returned and +adjusted the tangent-sight at 100 on the standard. He got the fore-sight +and back-sight in a line on the stick, seized the traversing-handles, +released the safety-catch, and pressed the button with his right thumb +with the persistency of a man who cannot make the waiter answer the +electric bell. "Tap—tap—tap." There was a series of explosions as +though the sparking plug of a motor-bicycle was playing tricks. The +target danced like a thing possessed. It hopped and skipped and curtsied +under that deadly stream of bullets. Then he slowly swept that gravel +bank with the traversing handles till the pebbles jumped like +hailstones. "I think she'll do," he remarked appreciatively as he folded +up the tripod.</p> + +<p>The R.E. is the Army's school of technology. To do a survey or make a +bridge or lay a telephone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> is all in the day's work. But your sapper is +a man of ideas, and is for ever seeking out new inventions. So he has +turned his attention to chemistry, and "R.E." has a chemical corps which +has put aside the blow-pipe and the test-tube at home to come out and +study the applied chemistry of war. Just now they are engaged in +discovering the most effective method of laying noxious gases. Copper +vessels of ammonia in a trench to disperse the gas when it gets there +are all very well, but by that time you may have more pressing +attentions of the enemy to engage you; the thing is to prevent the gas +getting there. Hence ingenious minds are considering how to project with +a spray something upon the advancing fog which will bring it to earth in +the form of an innocuous compound. Spray that something over the +parapet, and if you can spray it far enough and wide enough you may +precipitate the deadly green and brown mists into chlorides or bromides +which will be as harmless as bleaching-powder and not less salubrious.</p> + +<p>Others have turned their attention to automatic flares. You can get a +startling illuminant if you suspend a test-tube containing sulphuric +acid in a vessel of chlorate of potash, and it will be all the better if +you add a little common sugar and salt. You balance your test-tube in +the hollow of a bamboo stick and fill the top knot of the stick with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> +the chlorate of potash; then you plant your sticks, not too securely, +outside your barbed-wire entanglements, and string them together with a +trip-wire. As for the patrolling Hun who bumps against that trip-wire, +it were better for him that a millstone were hung round his neck.</p> + +<p>This is Higher Education and post-graduate research. But elementary +education is not neglected. At the H.Q. of the —th Corps is an O.T.C. +where privates in the H.A.C. and the Artists practise the precepts of +the <i>Infantry Manual</i> and study night operations in the meadows within +sound of the guns.</p> + +<p>Truly it is, in the words of the stout Puritan, a nation not slow and +dull but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, +subtle and sinewy, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that +human capacity can soar to.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h3> + +<h3>THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS</h3> + +<p>The little towns of Flanders and Artois are Aire, Hazebrouck, Bethune, +Armentières, Bailleul, Poperinghe, and Cassel. They are known in the +Army vernacular as Air, Hazybrook, Betoon, Arm-in-tears, Ballyhool +(occasionally Belial), Poperingy, and Kassel. The fairest of these is +Cassel. For Cassel is set upon a hill which rises from the interminable +plain, salient and alluring as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to +the fretful wayfarer, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary, and I will +give you rest." For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, +the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the +wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a +great peace. The motor-lorries avoid the declivities of Cassel, and the +horsemen pass by on the other side. Some twenty windmills—no less and +perhaps more—are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> perched like dovecots on the hill, lifting their +sails to the blue sky. Some day I will seek out a notary at Cassel and +will get him to execute a deed of conveyance assigning to me, with no +restrictive covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for I have +coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to the enchantments of <i>Lettres de +mon moulin</i>. True, Flanders is not Provence, and the croaking of the +frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the willows in the plains +below is a poor exchange for the chant of the <i>cigale</i>. But these mills +look out over a landscape that is now dearer to me than Abana and +Pharpar, for many a gallant friend of mine lies beneath its sod.</p> + +<p>Cassel is approached by a winding road that turns and returns upon +itself like a corkscrew, and is bordered by an avenue of trees. It has a +bandstand—what town in Flanders and Artois has not?—and a church. +Cheek by jowl with the church is a place of convenience, which seems to +me profane in more senses than one. I have never been able to make up my +mind whether such secularisation of a church wall is the expression of +anti-clerical antipathies, or of a clerical common-sense peculiarly +French in its practical and unblushing acceptance of the elementary +facts of life. But about Cassel I am not so sure. The sight of that +shameless annexe is too familiar in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> France to please our fastidious +English tastes—it seems to express a truculent nonconformity, it is too +like a dissenting chapel-of-ease.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Wherever God erects a house of prayer</div> +<div>The devil always builds a chapel there.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>I have never had the courage to solve my uncertainties by buttonholing a +Frenchman and asking him what is the truth of the matter. I am sure +Anatole France could supply me with any number of whimsical +explanations, all of them suggestive, and not one of them true.</p> + +<p>But, except for this sauciness, Cassel is a demure and pleasant place.</p> + +<p>Bailleul is mean in comparison, though it has a notable church tower in +which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither, +perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which +is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and the +<i>châtelaine</i> of which answers your lame and halting French in nimble +English. On the road to Locre it has those Baths and Wash-houses which +have become so justly famous, and whence hosts of British soldiers come +forth like Naaman white as snow, but infinitely more companionable. +Almost any day you may see a bathing-towel unit marching thither or +thence in column of route, their towels held at the slope or the trail +as it pleases their fancy. And in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> field outside Bailleul I have seen +open-air smithies and the glow of hot coals, the air resounding with the +clink of hammers upon the anvil—a cheering spectacle on a wet and +inclement winter's day. But Bailleul has few amenities and no charms. It +is, however, occasionally visited by that amazing troupe of variety +artistes, known as the Army Pierrots, who provide the men in billets +with a most delectable entertainment for 50 centimes, the proceeds being +a "deodand," and appropriated to charitable uses. For all that, Bailleul +stinks in the nostrils of fatigue-parties.</p> + +<p>Bethune is like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land, for it is +the rendezvous of the British Army, and men tramp miles to warm their +hands at its fires of social life. Its <i>pâtisserie</i> has the choicest +cakes, and its hairdresser's the most soothing unguents of any town in +our occupation. It has a great market-place, where the peasants do a +thriving business every Saturday, producing astonished rabbits by the +ears from large sacks, like a conjuror, and holding out live and +plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it +has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of +a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct +unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a spectacle as melancholy as it +is rare, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> of which the less said the better. It has a church with +some lurid glass of indifferent quality, and (if I remember rightly) a +curious dovecote of a tower. The transepts are hemmed in by shops and +warehouses. To the mediaevalist there is nothing strange in such +neighbourliness of the world and the Church. The great French churches +of the Middle Ages—witness Nôtre Dame d'Amiens with its inviting +ambulatory—were places of municipal debate, and their sculpture was, to +borrow the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political "liberty of +speech" at a time when the chisel of the sculptor might say what the pen +of the scrivener dared not, for fear of the common hangman, express. +Bethune is not the only place where I have seen shops coddling churches, +and the conjunction was originally less impertinent than it now seems. +It was not that the Church was profaned, but that the world was +consecrated; honest burgesses trading under the very shadow of the +flying buttresses were reminded that usury was a sin, and that to charge +a "just price" was the beginning of justification by works. But I have +not observed that the shopkeepers of Bethune now entertain any very +mediaeval compunction about charging the British soldier an unjust +price.</p> + +<p>Armentières is on the high road to Lille, but at present there is no +thoroughfare. It's a dispiriting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> town, given over to industrial +pursuits, and approached by rows of mean little cottages such as you may +see on the slopes of the mining valleys of South Wales. Two things stand +out in my memory—one, the spectacle of a corporal being tried for his +life in the Town Hall by a court-martial—there had been a quarrel over +a girl in billets and he had shot his comrade; the other the sight of a +regiment of Canadians ("Princess Pat's," I believe), drawn up in the +square for parade one winter afternoon before they went into the +trenches for the first time. And a very gallant and hefty body of men +they were.</p> + +<p>Poperinghe is a dismal place, and to be avoided.</p> + +<p>Hazebrouck is not without some pretentiousness. It has the largest +<i>place</i> of any of them, with a town-hall of imposing appearance, but +something of a whited sepulchre for all that. I remember calling on a +civilian dignitary there—I forget what he was; he sat in a long narrow +corridor-like room, all the windows were hermetically sealed, a +gas-stove burnt pungently, some fifty people smoked cigarettes, and at +intervals the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffled his foot +over the spot as a concession to public hygiene. Therefore I did not +tarry. The precincts of the railway-station are often crowded by batches +of German prisoners, villainous-looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> rascals, and usually of the +earth earthy. I watched some of them entraining one day; with them was a +surly German officer who looked at his fellow-prisoners with contempt, +the crowd of inhabitants with dislike, and (so it seemed to me) his +guards with hatred. No one spoke to him, and he stood apart in +melancholy insolence. Perhaps he was the German officer of whom the +story is told that, being conducted to the Base in a third-class +carriage in the company of some of his own men, and under the escort of +some British soldiers, he declaimed all the way down against being +condemned to such low society, until one of his guards, getting rather +"fed up" with it all, bluntly cut him short with the admonition: "Stow +it, governor, we'd have hired a blooming Pullman if we'd known we was +going to have the pleasure of your society. Yus, and we'd have had Sir +John French 'ere to meet you. But yer'll have to put up with us low +fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it, +and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his +bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was +impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way +they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed into a thoughtful +silence.</p> + +<p>Hazebrouck has a witty and pleasant <i>procureur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> de la République</i>, who +once confided to me that the English were "irresistible." "In war?" I +asked. "<i>Vraiment</i>," he replied, "but I meant in love."</p> + +<p>But the towns occupied by our Army are monotonously lacking in +distinction. To tell the truth they wear an impoverished look, and are +singularly unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small châteaux +built on grassy mounds surrounded by moats, and the timbered farm-houses +with their red-tiled roofs and barns big enough to billet a whole +company at a pinch. The country is one vast bivouac, and every cottage, +farm, and mansion is a billet. Near the edge of the Front you may see +men who have just come out of action; I remember once meeting a group of +Royal Irish, only forty-seven left out of a Company, who had been in the +attack by the 8th Division at Fleurbaix, and I gazed at them with +something of the respectful consternation with which the Babylonians +must have regarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego after their ordeal in +the fiery furnace. Yet nothing of their demeanour betrayed the brazen +fury they had gone through; they sat by the hedge cleaning their +accoutrements with the utmost nonchalance. They reminded me of the North +Staffords, one of whose officers, whom I know very well, when I asked +him what were his impressions of a battle, replied, after some +reflection: "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> haven't got any; all I can remember of a hot corner we +were in near Oultersteen was that my men, while waiting to advance, were +picking blackberries." It was a man of the North Staffords who, +according to the same unimpeachable authority, was heard shouting out +when half the trench was blown in by a shell, and he had extricated +himself with difficulty: "'Ere, where's my pipe? Some one's pinched my +pipe!"</p> + +<p>But it isn't always quite as comforting as that. The servant of a friend +of mine, a young subaltern in the Black Watch, whom, alas! like so many +other friends, I shall never see again, in describing the church parade +held after the battle of Loos, in which his master was killed by a +shell, wrote that when the chaplain gave out the hymn "Rock of Ages" the +men burst into tears, their voices failed them, and they broke down +utterly. And I remember that on one occasion when some four-fifths of +the officers of a certain battalion had gone down in the advance, and +the shaken remnant fell back upon their trenches, deafened and +distraught, one of the officers—he had been a master in a great public +school before the war—took out of his pocket a copy of the <i>Faerie +Queene</i>, and began in a slow, even voice to read the measured cadences +of one of its cantos, and, having read, handed it to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> subaltern and +asked him to follow suit. The others listened, half in wonder, half in +fear, thinking he had lost his senses, but there was method in his +madness and a true inspiration. The musical rhythm of the words +distracted their terrible memories, and soon acted like a charm upon +their disordered nerves.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,</div> +<div>The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,</div> +<div>For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,</div> +<div>And dead (as living) ever him adored:</div> +<div>Upon his shield the like was also scored,</div> +<div>For sovereign hope, which in his help he had:</div> +<div>Right faithful true he was in deed and word;</div> +<div>But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad:</div> +<div>Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-march to keep them fit; +Indian cavalry jogging along on the footpath with lances in rest; herds +of tethered horses in rest-camps; a string of motor-buses painted a +khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling workshop) with its dynamo humming +like a top and the mechanics busy upon the lathe; an Army Postal van +coming along, like a friend in need, to tow my car, stranded in the mud, +with a long cable; sappers, like Zaccheus, up a tree (but not +metaphorically); despatch-riders whizzing past at sixty miles an +hour—these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they +lend a variety to the monotonous countryside without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> which it would be +dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight +lines—straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less +straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without +their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our occupation, as you +leave G.H.Q. for the Base, you exchange these plains of sticky clay and +stagnant dykes for a pleasant country of undulating downs and noble +beech woods, and one seems to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency.</p> + +<p>It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is +painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. It is merely a heap of +stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are not more desolate.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h3> + +<h3>THE FRONT ONCE MORE</h3> + +<p>A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long +boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear. All men would emphasise +the boredom, and most men would admit the fear. The only soldiers I ever +met who affected to know nothing of the fear were Afridis, and the +Afridi is notoriously a ravisher of truth. But the predominant +feeling—in the winter months at any rate—was the boredom. There was a +time when some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only relieved +once every three weeks, and time hung heavy on their hands. Under these +circumstances they began to take something more than a professional +interest in their neighbours opposite. The curiosity was reciprocated. +Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches +were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse. Curious conventions +grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> +night, there was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour +of 8 to 9 <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> was regarded as consecrated to "private +business," and certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out +of bounds by the snipers on both sides. On many occasions working +parties toiled with pick and shovel within talking distance of one +another, and, although it was, of course, never safe to presume upon +immunity, they usually forbore to interfere with one another. The +Bedfords and the South Staffords worked in broad daylight with their +bodies half exposed above the trenches, raising the parapet as the water +rose. About 200 yards away the Germans were doing the same. Neither side +interfered with the navvy-work of the other, and for the simplest of all +reasons: both were engaged in fighting a common foe—the underground +springs. When two parties are both in danger of being drowned they +haven't time to fight. To speak of drowning is no hyperbole; the mud of +Flanders in winter is in some places like a quicksand, and men have been +sucked under beyond redemption. A common misery begat a mutual +forbearance.</p> + +<p>It was under such circumstances that the following exchange of +pleasantries took place. The men of a certain British regiment heard at +intervals a monologue going on in the trenches opposite, and every time +the speaker stopped his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> discourse shouts of guttural laughter arose, +accompanied by cries of "Bravo, Müller!" "Sehr komisch!" "Noch einmal, +Müller!" Our men listened intently, and an acquaintance with German, so +imperfect as to be almost negligible, could not long disguise from them +the fact that their Saxon neighbours possessed a funny man whose name +was Müller. Their interest in Müller, always audible but never visible, +grew almost painful. At last they could restrain it no longer. At a +given signal they began chanting, like the gallery in a London theatre, +except that their voices came from the pit:</p> + +<blockquote><p>We—want—Müller! We—want—Müller! We—want—Müller!</p></blockquote> + +<p>The refrain grew more and more insistent. At last a head appeared above +the German parapet. It rose gradually, as though the owner were being +hoisted by unseen hands. He rose, as the principal character in a Punch +and Judy show rises, with jerky articulations of his members from the +ventriloquial depths below. The body followed, until a three-quarter +posture was attained. The owner, with his hand upon his heart, bowed +gracefully three times and then disappeared. It was Müller!</p> + +<p>It is some months since I was in the British trenches,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and I often +wonder how our men have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> accommodated themselves to the ever-increasing +multiplication of the apparatus of war. The fire trenches I visited were +about wide enough to allow two men to pass one another—and that was +all. Obviously the wider your trench the greater your exposure to the +effects of shell-fire, and if we go on introducing trench-mortars, and +gas-pumps, and gas-extinguishers, to say nothing of a great store of +bombs, as pleasing in variety and as startling in their effects as +Christmas crackers, our trenches will soon be as full of furniture as a +Welsh miner's parlour. But doubtless the sappers have arranged all that. +Some of these improvements are viewed by company officers without +enthusiasm. The trench-mortar, for example, is distinctly unpopular, for +it draws the enemy's fire, besides being an uncanny thing to handle, +although the handling is done not by the company but by a "battery" of +R.G.A. men, who come down and select a "pitch." I have seen a +trench-mortar in action—it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a +prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It +is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and, +incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a +large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing +cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I +know nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in +the chemical corps of the sappers, and your corporal is, in nine cases +out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one +of considerable distinction. He is usually a lecturer or +Assistant-Professor in Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who +has left his test-tubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting +allurements of the trenches. I sometimes wonder what name the fertile +brain of the British soldier has found for him—probably "the squid." He +has three gases in his repertoire, each more deadly than the other. One +of them is comparatively innocuous—it disables without debilitating; +and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes. The truth is that we +do not take very kindly to the use of this kind of thing. Still, our men +know their business, and our gas, whichever variety it was, played a +very effective part in the capture of the Hohenzollern Redoubt.</p> + +<p>For the greater part of the winter months the "Front" was, to all +appearances above ground, as deserted as the Sahara and almost as +silent. Everybody who had to be there was, for obvious reasons, +invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who found himself between the +lines was in a wilderness whose intimidating silence was occasionally +interrupted by the sound of projectiles coming he knew not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> whence and +going he knew not whither. The effect was inexpressibly depressing. But +a mile or two behind our lines all was animation, for here were +Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked up by a network of field +telephones, which in turn communicated with Divisional Headquarters +farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under the care of a pigeon +fancier, who figures in the Army List as a captain in the R.E., are kept +at these places for use in sudden emergency when the wires get destroyed +by shell-fire. The sappers must, I think, belong to the order of +Arachnidae; they appear to be able to spin telephone wires out of their +entrails at the shortest notice. Moreover, they possess an uncanny +adhesiveness, and a Signal Company man will leg up a tree with a coil of +wire on his arm and hang glutinously, suspended by his finger-tips, +while he enjoys the view. These acrobatic performances are sometimes +exchanged for equestrian feats. He has been known to lay cable for two +miles across country at a gallop with the cable-drum paying out lengths +of wire. The sapper is the "handy man" of the Army.</p> + +<p>The location of these Headquarters on our side of the line is a constant +object of solicitude to the enemy on the other. Very few officers even +on our side know where they all are. I had confided to me, for the +purpose of my official duties, a complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> list of such Headquarters, +and the first thing I did, in pursuance of my instructions, was to +commit it to memory and then burn it. To find out the enemy's H.Q.—with +a view to making them as unhealthy as possible—is almost entirely the +work of aeroplane reconnaissance. To discover the number and composition +of the units whose H.Q. they are is the work of our "Intelligence." Of +our Intelligence work the less said the better—by which I intend no +aspersion but quite the contrary. The work is extraordinarily effective, +but half its effectiveness lies in its secrecy. It is all done by an +elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate to say that the "I" +officers discover the location of the H.Q. of captured Germans by a +geological analysis of the mud on the soles of their boots, in the +classical manner of Sherlock Holmes; but I should be equally indisposed +to deny it. There is nothing too trivial or insignificant to engage the +detective faculties of an "I" man. He has to allow a wide margin for the +probability of error in his calculations; shoulder-straps, for example, +are no longer conclusive data as to the composition of the enemy's +units, for the intelligent Hun has taken of late to forging +shoulder-straps with the same facility as he forges diplomatic +documents. Oral examination of prisoners has to be used with caution. +But there are other resources of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> I shall say nothing. It is not +too much to say, however, that we have now a pretty complete +comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German +brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One +thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence +staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military +authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of +mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to say <i>De minimis +non curatur</i>.</p> + +<p>If "I" stands for the Criminal Investigation Department (and the study +of the Hun may be legitimately regarded as a department of criminology) +the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be described as a kind of +Metropolitan Police. The P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are the <i>Censores Morum</i> +of the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are the <i>Aediles</i>. +It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visit <i>estaminets</i>, +keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences +of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is +more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I +remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had +already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his +particular district daily, I had never once been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> stopped or questioned +by his police. "No," he said quietly, "they reported you the first day +two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions; +we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff, +and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite +a lively time at X——," which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q. +itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for +their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark +doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a +needle than to get into that town—or out of it. As for the "Society +ladies," of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they +were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew +anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be +had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into +G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the +left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a +needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them +takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to assist +you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in +their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for +traces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with +your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the +fifth rib—at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his +right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle, and by that masonic +sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the +conversation.</p> + +<p>Still, holders of authorised passes sometimes lose them, and +unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and "convert" them to +their own unlawful uses. The career of these adventurers is usually as +brief as it is inglorious; when apprehended they are handed over to the +French authorities, and the place that knew them knows them no more. +They are shot into some mysterious <i>oubliette</i>. The rest is silence, or, +as a mediaeval chronicler would say, "Let him have a priest."</p> + +<p>We have taught the inhabitants of Flanders and Artois three things: one, +to sing "Tipperary"; two, to control their street traffic; and three, to +flush their drains. The spectacle of the military police on point duty +agitatedly waving little flags like a semaphore in the middle of narrow +and congested street corners was at first a source of great +entertainment to the inhabitants, who appeared to think it was a kind of +performance thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delectation. +Their applause was quite disconcerting. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> all so affected the mind of +one good lady at H—— that she used to rush out into the street every +time she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth gestures with her +arms and legs, to the no small embarrassment of the supply columns, the +confusion of the military police, and the unconcealed delight of our +soldiers, who regard the latter as their natural enemy. Gentle +remonstrances against such gratuitous assistance were of no avail, and +eventually she was handed over to the French authorities for an inquiry +into the state of her mind.</p> + +<p>Drains are looked after by the Camp Commandant, assisted by the sanitary +section of the R.A.M.C. It is an unlovely duty. I am not sure that the +men in the trenches are not better off in this respect than the +unfortunate members of the Staff who are supposed to live on the fat of +the land in billets. In the trenches there are easy methods of disposing +of "waste products"; along some portion of the French front, where the +lines are very close together, the favourite method, so I have been +told, is to hurl the buckets at the enemy, accompanied by extremely +uncomplimentary remarks. In the towns where we are billeted public +hygiene is a neglected study, and the unfortunate Camp Commandants have +to get sewage pumps from England and vast quantities of chloride of +lime. Fatigue parties do the rest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<p>The C.C. has, however, many other things to do.</p> + +<p>Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a "chit" to the +C.C.:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would +be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be +issued to his office.</p></blockquote> + +<p>A laconic message came back by my servant:</p> + +<table border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' summary='message from Commandant'> + <tr align='center'> + <td align='center'> No. <span class="smcap">105671a</span>. <br />————<br />2</td> + <td align='left'>The Camp Commandant presents his com-<br />pliments to Mr. M., and begs to +inform him<br />that he is not an ironmonger. The correct</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan='2'>procedure is for Mr. M. to direct his servant to purchase a<br /> shovel and to send +in the account to the C.C., by whom it will<br /> be discharged.</td> + </tr> +</table> + +<p>The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his +reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under +the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply +desks and tables—the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them +out at the shortest notice—and he could produce stationery, but he drew +the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings.</p> + +<p>The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the +Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as +"transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a +field-dressing to a toothbrush,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> and from an overcoat to a cake of soap. +And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with +men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, +and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a +battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It +is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of +all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is +made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger +affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one—the +transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong +battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in +England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the +agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are +alive or dead.</p> + +<p>It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is +done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers +and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry +Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves +lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a château used as +the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the +curtilage of farms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the +Front is one vast cemetery—a "God's Acre" hallowed by prayers if +unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has +shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill +has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of +every grave with a view to its preservation.</p> + +<p>The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the +Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of +courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the +Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you +are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting "hearsay." He never +prosecutes—that is always the task of some officer specially assigned +for the purpose—but he may "sum up." Officers are not usually familiar +with the mysteries of the Red Book,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> however much they may know of +the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One +Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious, +instituted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of +Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and +inadmissibility of evidence in the most "unhealthy" places. Speaking +with some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> knowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial +proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things +considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the +enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of +this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the +hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and "went +for" the latter, declaring his intention to "do him in," as he had, he +alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There +was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was +fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification +was, however, not absolutely conclusive—one Prussian guardsman is +strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the +doubt.</p> + +<p>The prisoner gets all the assistance he may require from a "prisoner's +friend" if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a +charge—he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges +of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely, +justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young +subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was +as straightforward as it was brief:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>I had just been ordered up to the Front. So I stood my friends a +dinner; I had a bottle of Burgundy, two liqueurs, and a brandy and +soda, and—I am just nineteen.</p></blockquote> + +<p>This ingenuous plea in confession and avoidance pleased the Court. He +got off with a reprimand.</p> + +<p>The <i>liaison</i> officers deserve a chapter to themselves. Their name alone +is so endearing. Their mission is not, as might be supposed, to promote +<i>mariages de convenance</i> between English Staff officers and French +ladies, but to transmit billets-doux between the two Armies and, +generally, to promote the amenities of military intercourse. As a rule +they are charming fellows, chosen with a very proper eye to their +personal qualities as well as their proficiency in the English language. +Among them I met a Count belonging to one of the oldest families in +France, an Oriental scholar of European reputation, and a Professor of +English literature. The younger ones studied our peculiarities with the +most ingratiating zeal, and one of them, in particular, played and sang +"Tipperary" with masterly technique at an uproarious tea-party in a +<i>pâtisserie</i> at Bethune. Also they smoothed over little +misunderstandings about <i>délits de chasse</i>, gently forbore to smile at +our French, and assisted in the issue of the <i>laisser-passer</i>. Doubtless +they performed many much more weighty and mysterious duties, but I only +speak of what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> I know. To me they were more than kind; they gave me +introductions to their families when I went on official visits to Paris +and to the French lines; zealously assisted me to hunt down evidence, +and sometimes accompanied me on my tour of investigation. Among the many +agreeable memories I cherish of the <i>camaraderie</i> at G.H.Q. the +recollection of their constant kindness and courtesy is not the least.</p> + +<p>One word before I leave the subject of the Staff. There has been of late +a good deal of pestilential gossip by luxurious gentlemen at home about +the Staff and its work. It is, they say, very bad—mostly beer and +skittles. I have already referred to these charges elsewhere; here I +will only add one word. A Staff is known by its chief. He it is who sets +the pace. During the time I was attached to it, the G.H.Q. Staff had two +chiefs in succession. The first was a brilliant soldier of high +intellectual gifts, now chief of the Imperial Staff at home, who, +although embarrassed by indifferent health, worked at great pressure +night and day. His successor at G.H.Q. is a man of stupendous energy, +commanding ability, and great force of character, who has risen from the +ranks to the great position he now holds. By their chiefs ye shall know +them. Under such as these there was and is no room for the "slacker"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> at +G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were very few of that undesirable +species at G.H.Q., and as soon as they were discovered they were sent +home. I sometimes wonder whether one could not trace, if it were worth +while (which it isn't), these ignoble slanders to their origin in the +querulous lamentations of these deported gentlemen, whence they have +percolated into Parliamentary channels. But it really isn't worth while. +The public has, I believe, taken the thing at its true valuation. In +plain speech it is "all rot."</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Note</span>.—The last paragraph was written before the recent +changes at G.H.Q. and at the War Office, but the reader will not +need any assistance in the identification of the two distinguished +Chiefs of Staff here referred to.—J.H.M.</p></blockquote> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> The writer's experience of the trenches is described in +some detail in Chapter VIII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>The Manual of Military Law</i>.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h3> + +<h3>HOME AGAIN</h3> + +<p>Sykes had finished packing my kit and had succeeded with some difficulty +in re-establishing the truth of the axiom that a whole is greater than +its parts. When I contemplated my valise and its original constituents, +it seemed to me that the parts would prove greater than the whole, and I +had in despair abandoned the problem to Sykes. He succeeded, as he +always did. One of the first things that an officer's servant learns is +that, as regards the regulation Field Service allowance of luggage, +nothing succeeds like excess.</p> + +<p>Sykes had not only stowed away my original impedimenta but had also +managed to find room for various articles of <i>vertu</i> which had enriched +my private collection, to wit:</p> + +<blockquote><p>(1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel.</p> + +<p>(2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-looking brass heads.</p> + +<p>(3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets villainously +reversed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> + +<p>(4) A copper loving-cup—<i>i.e.</i>, an empty shell-case presented to +me with a florid speech by Major S—— on behalf of the ——th +Battery of the R.F.A.</p> + +<p>(5) An autograph copy of <i>The Green Curve</i> bestowed on me by my +friend "Ole Luk-Oie" (to whom long life and princely royalties).</p> + +<p>(6) The sodden Field Note-book of a dead Hun given me by Major +C—— of the Intelligence, with a graceful note expressing the hope +that, as a man of letters, I would accept this gift of +<i>belles-lettres</i>.</p> + +<p>(7) A duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of +Ammonal<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> (original very scarce, and believed to be in the +muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting +it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of the Red Cross +Fund).</p> + +<p>(8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on English political +philosophers presented to me by the author, one of the <i>liaison</i> +officers, who in the prehistoric times of peace was a University +professor at Avignon.</p> + +<p>(9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest Britannia metal, +bestowed on me with much ceremony by a Field Ambulance at Bethune, +and prized beyond rubies and fine gold.</p> + +<p>(10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p></blockquote> + +<p>To these Madame<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> had added her visiting-card<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>—it was nearly as big +as the illuminated address presented to me by the electors of a Scottish +constituency which I once wooed and never won—wherewith she reminded me +that my billet at No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson would always be waiting +for me, the night-light burning as for a prodigal son, and steam up in +the hot-water bottle.</p> + +<p>I had said my farewells the night before to the senior officers on the +Staff, in particular that distinguished soldier and gallant gentleman +the A.G., to whose staff I had been attached (in more senses than one), +and who had treated me with a kindness and hospitality I can never +forget. The senior officers had done me the honour of expressing a hope +that I should soon return; their juniors had expressed the same +sentiments less formally and more vociferously by an uproarious song at +their mess overnight.</p> + +<p>The latter had also, with an appearance of great seriousness, laden me +with messages for His Majesty the King, the Prime Minister, Lord +Kitchener, the two Houses of Parliament, and the ministers and clergy of +all denominations: all of which I promised faithfully to remember and to +deliver in person. Sykes, with more modesty, had asked me if I would +send a photograph, when the film was developed of the snapshot I had +taken of him, to his wife and the twins at Norwich.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> + +<p>My car, upon whose carburettor an operation for appendicitis had been +successfully performed by the handy men up at the H.Q. of the Troop +Supply Column, stood at the door. I held out my hand to Sykes, who was +in the act of saluting; he took it with some hesitation, and then gave +me a grip that paralysed it for about a quarter of an hour.</p> + +<p>"If you be coming back again, will you ask for me to be de-tailed to +you, sir? My number is ——. Sergeant Pope at the Infantry Barracks sees +to them things, sir."</p> + +<p>I nodded.</p> + +<p>"Bon voyage, monsieur," cried Madame in a shrill voice.</p> + +<p>"Bon voyage," echoed Jeanne.</p> + +<p>I waved my hand, and the next moment I had seen the last of two noble +women who had never looked upon me except with kindness, and who, from +my rising up till my lying down, had ministered to me with unfailing +solicitude.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>At the Base I boarded the leave-boat. Several officers were already on +board, their boots still bearing the mud of Flanders upon them. It was +squally weather, and as we headed for the open sea I saw a dark object +gambolling upon the waves with the fluency of a porpoise. A sailor +stopped near me and passed the time of day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Had any trouble with German submarines?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Only once, sir. A torpedo missed us by 'bout a hund-erd yards."</p> + +<p>"Only once! How's that?"</p> + +<p>For answer the sailor removed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the +other by a surprisingly alert act of stowage and nodded in the direction +of the dark object whose outlines were now plain and salient. It was +riding the sea like a cork.</p> + +<p>"Them," he said briefly. It was a t.b.d.</p> + +<p>At the port of our arrival the sheep were segregated from the goats. The +unofficial people formed a long queue to go through the smoking-room, +where two quiet men awaited them, one of whom, I believe, always says, +"Take your hat off," looks into the pupil of your eyes, and lingers +lovingly over your pulse; the other, as though anxious to oblige you, +says, "Any letters to post?" But his inquiries are not so disinterested +as they would seem.</p> + +<p>The rest of us, being highly favoured persons, got off without ceremony, +and made for the Pullman. As the train drew out of the station and +gathered speed I looked out upon the countryside as it raced past us. +England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and +orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> spinneys of +beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The +friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed +to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with +garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in +the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked +down the length of the saloon, and everywhere I saw the blithe and eager +faces of England's gallant sons who had fought, and would fight again, +to preserve this heritage from the fire and sword of bloody sacrilege. +Fairer than the cedars of Lebanon were these russet beeches, nobler than +the rivers of Damascus these amber streams; and the France of our new +affections was not more dear.</p> + +<p>Twilight was falling as the guard came round and adjured us to shut out +the prospect by drawing the blinds. As we glided over the Thames I drew +the blind an inch or two aside and caught a vision of the mighty city +steeped in shadows, and the river gleaming dully under the stars like a +wet oilskin. At a word from the attendant I released the blind and shut +out the unfamiliar nocturne. Men rose to their feet, and there was a +chorus of farewells.</p> + +<p>"So long, old chap, see you again at battalion headquarters."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Good-bye, old thing, we meet next week at H.Q."</p> + +<p>"To-morrow night at the Savoy—rather! You must meet my sister."</p> + +<p>As I alighted on the platform I saw a crowd of waiting women. "Hullo, +Mother!" "Oh, darling!" I turned away. I was thinking of that platform +next week when these brief days, snatched from the very jaws of death, +would have run their all too brief career and the greetings of joy would +be exchanged for heart-searching farewells.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I was dining at my club with two friends, one of them a young Dutch +attaché, the other a barrister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well, +and took our cigars into the smoking-room, which was crowded. Some men +in a corner were playing chess; the club bore, decent enough in peace +but positively lethal in war, was demonstrating to a group of impatient +listeners that the Staff work at G.H.Q. was all wrong, when, catching +sight of me, he came up and said, "Hullo, old man, back from the Front? +When will the war end?" I returned the same answer as a certain D.A.A.G. +used to provide for similar otiose questions: "Never!"</p> + +<p>"Never! Hullo, what's that?"</p> + +<p>Every one in the room suddenly rose to their feet, the chess players +rising so suddenly that they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> overturned the board. "Damn it, and it was +my move, I could have taken your queen," said one of them. Outside there +was a noise like the roaring of the lion-house at the Zoo; your +anti-aircraft gun has a growl of its own. "They're here," said some one, +and we all made for the terrace.</p> + +<p>I looked up and saw in the dim altitudes a long silvery object among the +stars. As the searchlights played upon it, it seemed almost diaphanous, +and the body appeared to undulate like a trout seen in a clear stream. +Jupiter shone hard and bright in the southern hemisphere, and suddenly a +number of new planets appeared in the firmament as though certain stars +shot madly from their spheres. Round and about the monster came and went +these exploding satellites. Then another appeared close under her, and +like a frightened fish she swerved sharply and was lost to view among +the Pleiades.</p> + +<p>"Let's go and see what's happened," said one of my friends. "I hear +she's dropped a lot of bombs down——."</p> + +<p>As we went down the street I saw that for about two hundred yards ahead +it was sparkling as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of our boots +"scrunched" something underfoot. I looked down. The ground was covered +with splinters of glass. As we drew nearer we caught sight of a cordon +of police, and behind them a great fire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> springing infernally from the +earth, and behind the fire a group of soldiers, whose figures were +silhouetted against the background. Our way was impeded by curious +crowds, among whom one heard the familiar chant of "Pass along, please!"</p> + +<p>We stopped. Close to us two men were stooping with heads almost knocking +together and searching the ground, while one of them husbanded a lighted +match against the wind.</p> + +<p>"Blimey, Bill," said one to the other, "I've found 'un!"</p> + +<p>"What have you found?" we asked of him.</p> + +<p>"A souvenir, sir!"</p> + +<p>Truly, they know not the stomach of this people.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See <a href="#XXV">Chapter XXV.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> See <a href="#XI">Chapter XI.</a></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <a href="#XI"><i>Ibid.</i></a></p></div> + +<h4>THE END</h4> + +<p class='center'><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. & R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p> +</div> + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="SOME_RECENT_BOOKS" id="SOME_RECENT_BOOKS"></a>SOME RECENT BOOKS</h2> + +<p><b>FRANCE AT WAR.</b> By <span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span>. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>SPECTATOR.</i>—"A picture of France at work which will be an +inspiration to thousands. It is all the more powerful for its +brevity."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING.</b> By <span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span>. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. +net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>PALL MALL GAZETTE.</i>—"A classic in descriptive journalism which no +collector and no patriot will miss."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET.</b> By <span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span>. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. +net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>SPECTATOR.</i>—"We have read, we think, most of what has appeared +about the navy and its subsidiary services during the war, but +nothing we have seen has been comparable with these brief +sketches."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>ORDEAL BY BATTLE.</b> By <span class="smcap">Frederick Scott Oliver</span>. 24th Thousand. +8vo. 6s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>MORNING POST.</i>—"Both for statesmanship and for style (style which +is the shadow of personality) Mr. F.S. Oliver's book on the causes +and conditions of the war is by far the best that has yet +appeared."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>FIGHTING FRANCE.</b> From Dunkerque to Belfort. By <span class="smcap">Edith Wharton</span>. +Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>DAILY NEWS.</i>—"Mrs. Wharton, as was to be expected, has written +one of the most distinguished books on the war from the point of +view of the non-combatant."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY.</b> By <span class="smcap">Owen Wister</span>. Sixth Impression. +Crown 8vo. 2s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>DAILY MAIL</i>.—"One of the wisest and tenderest books on the war that +have come from an American writer. He analyses the German temperament +with perfect insight."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY.</b> By <span class="smcap">R.W. Seton-Watson</span>, D.Litt., <span class="smcap">J. +Dover Wilson</span>, <span class="smcap">Alfred E. Zimmern</span>, and <span class="smcap">Arthur +Greenwood</span>. 23rd Thousand. Crown 8vo. 2s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>THE TIMES</i>.—"The essays are of high quality. They go more fully and +deeply into the underlying problems of the war than most of the +pamphlets and books which have appeared in such profusion."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>LETTERS FROM A FIELD HOSPITAL.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mabel Dearmer</span>. With a Memoir +of the Author by <span class="smcap">Stephen Gwynn</span>. Third Impression. Crown 8vo. +2s. 6d. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>DAILY GRAPHIC</i>.—"A poignant book, yet a book full of inspiration."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>ESSAYS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.</b> A First Guide toward the Study of the War. By +<span class="smcap">Stephen Paget</span>. Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>STANDARD</i>.—"It is well that the boys and girls of to-day—the men and +women of to-morrow—should understand on the threshold of their life the +causes and the probable issues of the Great War which is now in +progress. They could have no better guide than Mr. Stephen Paget."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>AIRCRAFT IN WAR AND PEACE.</b> By <span class="smcap">William A. Robson</span>. Illustrated. +Crown 8vo.</p> + +<p><b>THE MILITARY MAP.</b> By <span class="smcap">Gerald Maxwell</span>. With Diagrams and Maps. +8vo.</p> + +<p><b>ABBAS II. (Ex-Khedive of Egypt).</b> By the <span class="smcap">Earl of Cromer</span>. 8vo. +2s. 6d. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>PALL MALL GAZETTE.</i>—"A monograph which is of supreme value at the +present moment.... It makes an indispensable pendant to the +author's <i>Modern Egypt</i>.... The book is a masterpiece of knowledge +and wisdom, framed on lines of profound and permanent portraiture."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY OF MARY.</b> By <span class="smcap">Stephen Graham</span>. With +Frontispiece in Colour. Third Impression. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>STANDARD.</i>—"Mr. Graham's illuminating pen-pictures of Russian +life and Russian people tell us more about that baffling problem +the Russian Nation than pages of analysis can do."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE FAITH AND THE WAR.</b> A Series of Essays by Members of the Churchmen's +Union and Others on the Religious Difficulties aroused by the Present +Condition of the World. Edited by <span class="smcap">F.J. Foakes-Jackson</span>, D.D. +8vo. 5s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>STANDARD.</i>—"The ten essays are all of a high order. Their tone is +reassuring; they fairly envisage present difficulties. They are +meant to help any whose faith has been disturbed by the fiery trial +of the war. For the large class of persons so troubled no better or +more effective aid could possibly be offered."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>WAR-TIME SERMONS.</b> By Dean <span class="smcap">H. Hensley Henson</span>. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. +net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.</i>—"Beyond all doubt, the Dean of Durham has a +great message for the nation in this time of conflict.... The +sermons deserve a place among the most memorable declarations of +Christian principles which the nation has received in this time of +crisis."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>HOLY GROUND.</b> Sermons Preached in Time of War. By Dean <span class="smcap">J. Armitage +Robinson</span>. Crown 8vo. 1s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>CHALLENGE.</i>—"In <i>Holy Ground</i> Dr. Armitage Robinson's sermons +preached during the South African War are available for a +generation to whom they will come afresh and with a wealth of +spiritual insight that we shall be the richer for."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE CALIPHS' LAST HERITAGE.</b> Travels in the Turkish Empire. By Sir +<span class="smcap">Mark Sykes</span>, Bart., M.P. Illustrated. 8vo. 20s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>THE TIMES.</i>—"Sir Mark Sykes' book is full of first-hand facts and +acute observation.... It is a book of intense interest and present +importance."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>HEART OF EUROPE.</b> By <span class="smcap">Ralph Adams Cram</span>. Illustrated. 8vo. 10s. +6d. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p>This work describes Northern France, Belgium and Flanders, and the +treasures of art and beauty enshrined in that beautiful land before +the devastation of the great war.</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY.</b> By Major <span class="smcap">Robert R. McCormick</span>. +Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>STANDARD.</i>—"In the first year of the war Mr. McCormick was +invited by the Grand Duke Nicholas to visit the field of active +fighting.... He was permitted to examine closely the Russian +military organisation in the field, the training schools, and the +frontier fortresses. In this informative and graphic volume he now +gives a full idea of these unique observations."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE MILITARY UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE UNITED STATES.</b> By <span class="smcap">F.L. +Huidekoper.</span> With Maps. 8vo. 17s. net.</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE.</i>—"This most important book deals +exhaustively with matters of the greatest moment."</p></blockquote> + +<p><b>THE BOOK OF FRANCE.</b> By distinguished French and English Authors and +Artists. Issued in aid of the French Parliamentary Fund for the Relief +of the Invaded Departments. Edited by <span class="smcap">Winifred Stephens</span>, and +published under the auspices of an Honorary Committee presided over by +His Excellency Monsieur <span class="smcap">Paul Cambon</span>. Fcap. 4to. 5s. net.</p> + +<p><b>THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS (LE LIVRE DES SANS-FOYER).</b> Containing original +contributions by Belgian, French, English, Italian, and American +Authors, Artists and Composers. Published for the benefit of the +American Hostels for Refugees and Children of the Flanders Rescue +Committee, and Edited by <span class="smcap">Edith Wharton</span>. With an Introduction by +<span class="smcap">Theodore Roosevelt</span>. 8vo. 21s. net.</p> + +<h4>LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></h4> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Leaves from a Field Note-Book, by J. H. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/17978-h/images/logo.png b/17978-h/images/logo.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec7de7a --- /dev/null +++ b/17978-h/images/logo.png diff --git a/17978.txt b/17978.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08d741f --- /dev/null +++ b/17978.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7263 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leaves from a Field Note-Book, by J. H. Morgan + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Leaves from a Field Note-Book + +Author: J. H. Morgan + +Release Date: March 13, 2006 [EBook #17978] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + +LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO + +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. + +TORONTO + + + + +LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK + +BY + +J.H. MORGAN + +LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE + + + "And my delights were with the sons of men." + + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED + +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON + +1916 + + + + +TO + +LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. + +ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE + + + + +PREFACE + + +This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during +the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as +Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His +official duties during that period involved daily visits to the +headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field, +and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the +trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance +with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So +much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of +the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down. +The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major +E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger, +for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the +chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete +without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D. +Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the +discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the +unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the +pages of the _Nineteenth Century and After_, under the title to which +the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his +obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to +republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of +_Blackwood's Magazine_ for permission to reprint the short story, +"Stokes's Act," and to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_ in whose +hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared--sometimes +anonymously. + +The reader will observe that many of these sketches appear in the form +of what, to borrow a French term, is called the _conte_. The writer has +adopted that form of literary expression as the most efficacious way of +suppressing his own personality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of +"Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether disproportionate and +impertinent in view of the magnitude and poignancy of the great events +amid which it was his privilege to live and move. Moreover, his own +duties were neither spirited nor glorious. But the characters pourtrayed +and the events narrated in these pages are true in substance and in +fact. The writer has not had the will, even if he had had the power, to +"improve" the occasions; the reality was too poignant for that. +"Stokes's Act" and "The Coming of the Hun" are therefore "true" +stories--using truth in the sense of veracity not value--and the facts +came within the writer's own investigation. The investiture of fiction +has been here adopted for the obvious reason that neither of the +principal characters in these two stories would desire his name to be +known. So, too, in the other sketches, although the characters are +"real"--I can only hope that they will be half as real to the reader as +they were and are to me--the names are assumed. + +It is my privilege to inscribe this little book to Lieut.-General Sir +C.F.N. Macready, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., to whose staff I was attached and to +whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality I owe a debt which no +words can discharge. + + J. H. M. + +_January 1916._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I + +THE BASE + PAGE + I. BOBS BAHADUR 3 + II. AT THE BASE DEPOT 11 +III. THE WILTSHIRES 17 + IV. THE BASE 26 + V. A COUNCIL OF INDIA 36 + VI. THE TROOP TRAIN 45 + + +II + +THE FRONT + + VII. THE TWO RICHEBOURGS 59 +VIII. IDOLS OF THE CAVE 65 + IX. STOKES'S ACT 73 + X. THE FRONT 92 + XI. AT G.H.Q. 103 + XII. MORT POUR LA PATRIE 119 +XIII. MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS 128 + XIV. THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS 134 + + +III + +UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES + + XV. A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 143 + XVI. PETER 154 + XVII. THREE TRAVELLERS 166 +XVIII. BARBARA 173 + XIX. AN ARMY COUNCIL 178 + XX. THE FUGITIVES 189 + XXI. A "DUG-OUT" 195 + XXII. CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914 202 + + +IV + +THE FRONT AGAIN + + XXIII. THE COMING OF THE HUN 209 + XXIV. THE HILL 226 + XXV. THE DAY'S WORK 232 + XXVI. FIAT JUSTITIA 244 + XXVII. HIGHER EDUCATION 252 +XXVIII. THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 259 + XXIX. THE "FRONT" ONCE MORE 270 + XXX. HOME AGAIN 288 + + + + +I + +THE BASE + + + + +I + +BOBS BAHADUR + + +It had gone eight bells on the S.S. _G----_. The decks had been +washed down with the hosepipe and the men paraded for the morning's +inspection. The O.C. had scanned them with a roving eye, till catching +sight of an orderly two files from the left he had begged him, almost as +a personal favour, to get his hair cut. To an untutored mind the +orderly's hair was about one-eighth of an inch in length, but the O.C. +was inflexible. He was a colonel in that smartest of all medical +services, the I.M.S., whose members combine the extensive knowledge of +the general practitioner with the peculiar secrets of the Army surgeon, +and he was fastidious. Then he said "Dismiss," and they went their +appointed ways. The Indian cooks were boiling _dhal_ and rice in the +galley; the bakers were squatting on their haunches on the lower deck, +making _chupattis_--they were screened against the inclemency of the +weather by a tarpaulin--and they patted the leathery cakes with +persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided +like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the +sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper +deck and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure with white moustaches and +"imperial"; the eyes were of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad +in a general's field-service uniform, and on his shoulder-straps were +the insignia of a field-marshal. The colonel stared for a moment, then +ran hastily down the ladder and saluted. + + * * * * * + +Together they passed down the companion-ladder. At the foot of it they +encountered a Bengali orderly, who made a profound obeisance. + +"Shiva Lal," said the O.C., "I ordered the portholes to be kept +unfastened and the doors in the bulkheads left open. This morning I +found them shut. Why was this?" + +"Sahib, at eight o'clock I found them open." + +"It was at eight o'clock," said the colonel sternly, "that I found them +shut." + +The Bengali spread out his hands in deprecation. "If the sahib says so +it must be so," he pleaded, adding with truly Oriental irrelevancy, "I +am a poor man and have many children." It is as useless to argue with +an Indian orderly as it is to try conclusions with a woman. + +"Let it not occur again," said the colonel shortly, and with an apology +to his guest they passed on. + +They paused in front of a cabin. Over the door was the legend "Pathans, +No. 1." The door was shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened the +door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic features and bearded +like the pard, stood up and saluted. The colonel made a mental note of +the closed door; he looked at the porthole--it was also closed. The +Pathan loves a good "fug," especially in a European winter, and the +colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation. A kind of +guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect +politeness, had been going on for some days between him and the Pathans. +The Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the atmosphere. At +last he had met them halfway, or, to be precise, he had met them with a +concession of three inches. He had ordered the ship's carpenter to fix a +three-inch hook to the jamb and a staple to the door, the terms of the +truce being that the door should be kept three inches ajar. And now it +was shut. "Why is this?" he expostulated. For answer they pointed to the +hook. "Sahib, the hook will not fasten!" + +The colonel examined it; it was upside down. The contumacious Pathans +had quietly reversed the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was +now useless without being ornamental. With bland ingenuous faces they +stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent +craftsmanship. The Field-Marshal smiled--he knew the Pathan of old; the +colonel mentally registered a black mark against the delinquents. + +"Whence come you?" said the Field-Marshal. + +"From Tirah, Sahib." + +"Ah! we have had some little trouble with your folk at Tirah. But all +that is now past. Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be well with +you." + +"Ah! Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind." + +"And wherefore?" + +"My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and +abducted our women-folk. I would fain have leave to go on furlough and +lie in a nullah at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him. Then would I +return to France." + +"Patience! That can wait. How like you the War?" + +"_Burra Achha Tamasha_,[1] Sahib. But we like not their big guns. We +would fain come at them with the bayonet. Why are we kept back in the +trenches, Sahib?" + +"Peace! It shall come in good time." + +They passed into another cabin reserved for native officers. A tall Sikh +rose to a half-sitting posture and saluted. + +"What is your name?" + +"H---- Sing, Sahib." + +"There was a H---- Sing with me in '78," said the Field-Marshal +meditatively. "With the Kuram Field Force. He was my orderly. He served +me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted to subadar." + +The aquiline features of the Sikh relaxed, his eyes of lustrous jet +gleamed. "Even so, Sahib, he was my father." + +"Good! he was a man. Be worthy of him. And you too are a subadar?" + +"Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King's salt these twelve years." + +"That is well. Have you children?" + +"Yea, Sahib, God has been very good." + +"And your lady mother, is she alive?" + +"The Lord be praised, she liveth." + +"And how is your 'family'?" + +"She is well, Sahib." + +"And how like you this War?" + +"Greatly, Sahib. The _Goora-log_[2] and ourselves fight like brothers +side by side. But we would fain see the fine weather. Then there will be +some _muzza_[3] in it." + +The Field-Marshal smiled and passed on. + +They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were +avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as +snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some +were sitting up--the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the +_kangha_ and the _chakar_, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring, +which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry. The Field-Marshal +stopped to talk to a big _sowar_. As he did so the men in their cots +raised their heads and a sudden whisper ran round the ward. Dogras, +Rajputs, Jats, Baluchis, Garhwalis clutched at the little pulleys over +their cots, pulled themselves up with painful efforts, and saluted. In a +distant corner a Mahratta from the aboriginal plains of the Deccan, his +features dark almost to blackness, looked on uncomprehendingly; Ghurkhas +stared in silence, their broad Mongolian faces betraying little of the +agitation that held them in its spell. From the rest there arose such a +conflict of tongues as has not been heard since the Day of Pentecost. +From bed to bed passed the magic words, "It is he." Every man uttered a +benediction. Many wept tears of joy. A single thought seemed to animate +them, and they voiced it in many tongues. + +"Ah, now we shall smite the _German-log_ exceedingly. We shall fight +even as tigers, for Jarj Panjam.[4] The great Sahib has come to lead us +in the field. Praised be his exalted name." + +The Field-Marshal's eyes shone. + +"No, no," he said, "my time is finished. I am too old." + +"Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on painfully to his pulley, "the +body may be old but the brain is young." + +The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not. He suddenly turned on +his heel and rushed up the companion-ladder. When halfway up he +remembered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears were streaming +down his face. + +"Sir," he said, in a voice the deliberate sternness of which but ill +concealed an overmastering emotion, "your hospital arrangements are +excellent. I have seen none better. I congratulate you. Good-day." The +next moment he was gone. + + * * * * * + +Five days later the colonel was standing on the upper deck; he gripped +the handrail tightly and looked across the harbour basin. Overhead the +Red Cross ensign was at half-mast, and at half-mast hung the Union Jack +at the stern. And so it was with every ship in port. A great silence lay +upon the harbour; even the hydraulic cranes were still, and the winches +of the trawlers had ceased their screaming. Not a sound was to be heard +save the shrill poignant cry of the gulls and the hissing of an exhaust +pipe. As the colonel looked across the still waters of the harbour basin +he saw a bier, covered with a Union Jack, being slowly carried across +the gangway of the leave-boat; a little group of officers followed it. +In a few moments the leave-boat, after a premonitory blast from the +siren which woke the sleeping echoes among the cliffs, cast off her +moorings and slowly gathered way. Soon she had cleared the harbour mouth +and was out upon the open sea. The colonel watched her with straining +eyes till she sank beneath the horizon. Then he turned and went +below.[5] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] A jolly fine show. + +[2] The English soldiers. + +[3] Spice. + +[4] King George the Fifth. + +[5] The writer can vouch for the truth of this narrative. He owes his +knowledge of what passed to the hospitality on board of his friend the +O.C. the Indian hospital ship in question. + + + + +II + +AT THE BASE DEPOT + + Any enunciation by officers responsible for training of principles + other than those contained in this Manual or any practice of + methods not based on those principles is forbidden.--_Infantry + Training Manual._ + + +The officers in charge of details at No. 19 Infantry Base Depot had made +their morning inspections of the lines. They had seen that blankets were +folded and tent flies rolled up, had glanced at rifles, and had +inspected the men's kits with the pensive air of an intending purchaser. +Having done which, they proceeded to take an unsympathetic farewell of +the orderly officer whom they found in the orderly room engaged in +reading character by handwriting with the aid of the office stamp. + +"I never knew there was so much individuality in the British Army," the +orderly officer dolefully exclaimed as he contemplated a pile of letters +waiting to be franked and betraying marked originality in their +penmanship. + +"You're too fond of opening other people's letters," the subaltern +remarked pleasantly. "It's a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go +home you'll never be able to resist it. You'll be unfit for decent +society." + +"Go away, War Baby," retorted the orderly officer, as he turned aside +from the subaltern, who has a beautiful pink and white complexion, and +was at Rugby rather less than a year ago. + +The War Baby smiled wearily. "Let's go and see the men at drill," he +remarked. "We've got a corporal here who's A1 at instruction." As we +passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly across the small of +the butt of his rifle, and, seeing the Major behind us, brought the +rifle to the present. + +We came out on a field sprinkled with little groups of men in charge of +their N.C.O.'s. They were the "details." These were drafts for the +Front, and every regiment of the Division had sent a deputation. Two or +three hundred yards away a platoon was marching with a short quick trot, +carrying their rifles at the trail, and I knew them for Light Infantry, +for such are their prerogatives. Concerning Light Infantry much might be +written that is not to be found in the regimental records. As, for +example, the reason why the whole Army shouts "H.L.I." whenever the ball +is kicked into touch; also why the Oxford L.I. always put out their +tongues when they meet the Durhams. Some day some one will write the +legendary history of the British Army, its myth, custom, and folklore, +and will explain how the Welsh Fusiliers got their black "flash" (with a +digression on the natural history of antimacassars), why the 7th Hussars +are called the "White Shirts," why the old 95th will despitefully use +you if you cry, "Who stole the grog?" and what happens on Albuera day in +the mess of the Die Hards. But that is by the way. + +The drafts at No. 19, having done a route march the day before, had been +turned out this morning to do a little musketry drill by way of keeping +them fit. A platoon lay flat on their stomachs in the long grass, the +burnished nails on the soles of their boots twinkling in the sun like +miniature heliographs. From all quarters of the field sharp words of +command rang out like pistol shots. "Three hundred. Five rounds. Fire." +As the men obeyed the sergeant's word of command, the air resounded with +the clicking of bolts like a chorus of grasshoppers. We pursued a +section of the Royal Fusiliers in command of a corporal until he halted +his men for bayonet exercise. He drew them up in two ranks facing each +other, and began very deliberately with an allocution on the art of the +bayonet. + +"There ain't much drill about the bayonet," he said encouragingly. "What +you've got to do is to get the other fellow, and I don't care how you +get 'im as long as you knock 'im out of time. On guard!" + +The men in each rank brought the butts of their rifles on to their right +hips and pointed with their left feet forward at the breasts of the men +opposite. "Rest!" The rifles were brought to earth between twelve pairs +of feet. "Point! Withdraw! On guard!" They pointed, withdrew, and were +on guard again with the precision of piston-rods. + +"Now watch me, for your life may depend upon it," and the corporal +proceeded to give them the low parry which is useful when you are taking +trenches and find a _chevaux-de-frise_ of the enemy's bayonets +confronting you. Each rank knocked an imaginary bayonet aside and +pointed at invisible feet. The high parry followed. So far the men had +been merely nodding at each other across a space of some twelve yards, +and it was hot work and tedious. The sweat ran down their faces, which +glistened in the sun. "Now I'm going to give you the butt exercises"; +they brightened visibly. + +"I am pointing--so!--and 'ave been parried. I bring the butt round on +'is shoulder, using my weight on it. I bring my left leg behind 'is left +leg. I throw 'im over. Then I give the beggar what for. So!" The words +were hardly out of his mouth before he had thrown himself upon the +nearest private and laid him prostrate. The others smiled faintly as No. +98678 picked himself up and nonchalantly returned to his old position as +if this were a banal compliment. "Now then. First butt exercise." One +rank advanced upon the other, and the two ranks were locked in a close +embrace. They remained thus with muscles strung like bowstrings, +immobile as a group of statuary. + +"That'll do. Now I'll give you the second butt exercise. You bring the +butt round on 'is jaw--so!--and then kick 'im in the guts with your +knee." Perhaps the section, which stood like a wall of masonry, looked +surprised; more probably the surprise was mine. But the corporal +explained. "Don't think you're Tottenham Hotspur in the Cup Final. Never +mind giving 'im a foul. You've got to 'urt 'im or 'e'll 'urt you. Kick +'im anywhere with your knees or your feet. Your ammunition boots will +make 'im feel it. No!"--he turned to a young private whose left hand was +grasping his rifle high up between the fore-sight and the +indicator--"You mustn't do that. Always get your 'and between the +back-sight and the breech. So! The back-sight will protect your fingers +from being cut by the other fellow. Now the third butt exercise." + +As we turned away the Major thoughtfully remarked to me, "There isn't +much of that in the Infantry Manual. But the corporal knows his job. +When you're in a scrap you haven't time to think about the rules of the +game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got +to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or +anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney +is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar, +and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as +mechanical as a vacuum brake, and he's no good in a scrap." + +We returned to the orderly room. The orderly officer had a pile of +letters on his right impressed with a red triangle, and contemplated the +completion of his labours with gloomy satisfaction. "But it's very +interesting--such a revelation of the emotions of battle and all that," +I incautiously remarked. "Oh yes, very revealing," he yawned. "Look at +that"; and he held out a letter. It ran: + + + DEAR MOTHER--I'm reported fit for duty and am going back + to the Front with the new drafts. I forgot to tell you we were in a + bit of a scrap before I came here. We outed a lot of Huns. How is + old Alf?-- + + Your loving son, JIM. + + +The "bit of a scrap" was the battle of Neuve Chapelle. The British +soldier is an artist with the bayonet. But he is no great man with the +pen. Which is as it should be. + + + + +III + +THE WILTSHIRES + + +"You talk to him, sir. He zeed a lot though he be kind o' mazed like +now; he be mortal bad, I do think. But such a cheerful chap he be. I +mind he used to say to us in the trenches: 'It bain't no use grousing. +What mun be, mun be.' Terrible strong he were, too. One of our officers +wur hit in front of the parapet and we coulden get 'n in nohow--'twere +too hot; and Hunt, he unrolled his puttees and made a girt rope of 'em +and threw 'em over the parapet and draw'd en in. Ah! that a did." + +It was in one of the surgical tents of "No. 6 General" at the base. The +middle of the ward was illuminated by an oil-lamp, shaped like an +hour-glass, which shed a circle of yellow radiance upon the faces of the +nurse and the orderly officer, as they stood examining a case-sheet by +the light of its rays. Beyond the penumbra were rows of white beds, and +in the farthest corner lay the subject of our discourse. "Can I talk to +him?" I said to the nurse. "Yes, if you don't stay too long," she +replied briskly, "and don't question him too much. He's in a bad way, +his wounds are very septic." + +He nodded to me as I approached. At the head of the bed hung a +case-sheet and temperature-chart, and I saw at a glance the +superscription-- + + + Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. ---- Wiltshires. + + +I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply upwards on the chart. + +"So you're a Wiltshireman?" I said. "So am I." And I held out my hand. +He drew his own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in an iron +grip. + +"What might be your parts, sir?" + +"W---- B----." + +His eyes lighted up with pleasure. "Why, zur, it be nex' parish; I come +from B----. I be main pleased to zee ye, zur." + +"The pleasure is mine," I said. "When did you join?" + +"I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist." + +"You have been out a long time, then?" + +"Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I han't seen B---- since. I +mind how parson, 'e came to me and axed, 'What! bist gwine to fight for +King and Country, Jarge?' And I zed, 'Yes, sur, that I be--for King and +Country and ould Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two Gloster +men any day though they do call us 'Moon-rakers.' Not but what the +Glosters ain't very good fellers," he added indulgently. "Parson, he be +mortal good to I; 'e gied I his blessing and 'e write and give I all the +news of the parish. He warnt much of a preacher though a did say 'Dearly +beloved' in church in a very taking way as though he were a-courting." + +"What was I a-doin', zur? Oh, I wur with Varmer Twine, head labr'er I +was. Strong? Oh yes, zur, pretty fair. I mind I could throw a zack o' +vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy o' vourteen. Why! I wur stronger +then than I be now. 'Twas India that done me." + +"Is it a large farm?" I asked, seeking to beguile him with homely +thoughts. + +"Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to do, and I could turn me +hands to most things, though I do say it. There weren't a man in the +parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a hackle on a rick, though I +do say it. And I could drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were. +The soil be stiff clay, as ye knows, zur. This Vlemish clay be very +loike it. Lord, what a mint o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to +be sure. And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes." + +"Are your parents alive?" I asked. + +"No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom come. Poor old feyther," he said +after a pause. "I mind 'un now in his white smock all plaited in vront +and mother in her cotton bonnet--you never zee 'em in Wiltshire now. +They brought us all up on nine shillin' a week--ten on us we was." + +"I suppose you sometimes wish you were back in Wiltshire now?" I said. + +"Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. "It'll be about over with lambing +season, now," he added reflectively. "Many's the tiddling lamb I've +a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the may'll soon be out in +blossom. And the childern makin' daisy-chains." + +"Yes," I said. "And think of the woods--the bluebells and anemones! You +remember Folly Wood?" + +He smiled. "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there, +when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up +a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus +very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many a +toime we childern went moochin' in thuck wood--nutting and bird-nesting. +Though I never did hold wi' taking more'n one egg out of a nest, and I +allus did wet my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's nest. They +do say as the little bird 'ull never go back if ye doant." + +His mind went roaming among childhood's memories and his eyes took on a +dreaming look. + +"Mother, she were a good woman--no better woman in the parish, parson +did say. She taught us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in +heaven'--I often used to think on it at night in the trenches. Them +nights--they do make you think a lot. It be mortal queer up there--you +veels as if you were on the edge of the world. I used to look up at the +sky and mind me o' them words in the Bible, 'When I conzider the +heavens, the work o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast made, +what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' One do feel oncommon small in +them trenches at night." + +"I suppose you've had a hot time up there?" + +"Ah that I have. And I zeed some bad things." + +"Bad?" + +"Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur dree weeks come Monday.[6] +We wur in an advance near Wypers--'bout as far as 'tis from our village +to Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a house. We knowed 'twould be +hot work, and Jacob Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e zed, +'if I be took write to my wife and tell 'er it be the Lard's will and +she be not to grieve.' And I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the same +for I.' Our Officer, Capt'n S---- T----, d'you know 'en, sir? No? 'E com +from Devizes way, he wur a grand man, never thinking of hisself but only +of us humble chaps--he said, 'Now for it, lads,' and we advances in +'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a +section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined +the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out +so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there +house--you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a +reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ +Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a +good man, wur Scaplehorn"--he added musingly--"and 'e did good things. +And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs as if they did'n b'long +to 'em. I sort o' saw all that wi'out seeing it, in a manner o' spaking; +'twere only arterwards it did come back to me. There warn't no time to +think. And by the toime we got to thic house there were only 'bout +vifteen on us left. We had to scrouge our way in through the buttry +winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside, sort o' scuffling; 'twere the +Germans makin' for the cellar. And our Capt'n posted some on us at top +of cellar steps and led the rest on us up the stairs to a kind o' tallet +where thuck machine-gun was. And what d'ye think we found, sir?" he +said, raising himself on his elbow. + +"What?" + +"There was a poor girl there--half daft she wur--wi' nothing on but a +man's overcoat. And she rushed out avore us on the landing and began +hammering with her hands against a bedroom door and it wur locked. We +smashed 'en in wi' our rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we found a poor +woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast all bloody an' her +clothes torn. I could'n mak' out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told +us as the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used our field-dressings and +tried to make the poor soul comfortable and Capt'n 'e sent a volunteer +back for stretcher-bearers." + +"And what about the Germans?" I asked. + +"Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to +reckon with those devils down below.' And we went downstairs and he +stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up +out o' that there.' And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear +'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar +steps were main narrow, as narrow as th' opening in that tent over +there. So Capt'n 'e says, 'Fetch me some straw, Hunt.' 'Twere a kind o' +farmhouse and I went out into the backside and vetched some. And Capt'n +and us put a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more vurther +down, using our rifles like pitchforks and then 'e blew on his tinder +and set it alight. 'Stand back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'em +with the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no manner o' use shooting; 'twere too close +in there and our bullets might ha' ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'em +a-coughing. There wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there wur we +a-waiting at top of them stairs for 'em to come up like rats out of a +hole. And two on 'em made a rush for it and we caught 'em just like's we +was terriers by an oat-rick; we had to be main quick. 'Twere like +pitching hay. And then three more, and then more. And none on us uttered +a word. + +"An' when it wur done and we had claned our bay'nets in the straw, +Capt'n 'e said, 'Men, you ha' done your work as you ought to ha' done.'" + +He paused for a moment. "They be bad fellows," he mused. "O Christ! they +be rotten bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good 'ull come to men +what abuses wimmen and childern. But I'm afeard they be nation +strong--there be so many on 'em." + +His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the telling of it had been +too much for him. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it +was time for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind away from the +contemplation of these tragic things. + +"Are you married?" I asked. The eyes brightened in the flushed face. +"Yes, that I be, and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap." + +"And what are you going to make of him?" + +"I'm gwine to bring un up to be a soldjer," he said solemnly. "To fight +them Germans," he added. He saw the great War in an endless perspective +of time; for him it had no end. "You will soon be home in Wiltshire +again," I said encouragingly. He mused. "Reckon the Sweet Williams 'ull +be out in the garden now; they do smell oncommon sweet. And +mother-o'-thousands on the wall. Oh-h-h." A spasm of pain contracted his +face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw my time was up. "My dear +fellow," I said lamely, "I fear you are in great pain." + +"Ah!" he said, "but it wur worth it." + + * * * * * + +The next day I called to have news of him. The bed was empty. He was +dead. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[6] This story is here given as nearly as possible in the exact words of +the narrator.--J.H.M. + + + + +IV + +THE BASE + + +If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart. +For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the +systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of +its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To +and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses, +supplies, and ordnance. + +The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage. +If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and +understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position +on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the +harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at +their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the _patois_ of the +littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the +shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the Military Police are on +point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a +trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an +A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for +the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their +moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships +unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile +up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless +concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here +are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's +brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate +palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of +ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate +supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board +ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond +the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the +grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two +amphibious petty officers darning their socks. + +In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps +officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables, +and indents, what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his +train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more +stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is +_litera scripta manet_--which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant, +instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything +without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one." For an +A.S.C. court of inquiry has as impassioned a preference for written over +oral evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that if your way-bill +testifies: + + + Truck No. Contents + 19414 Jam 36 x 50 + + +and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot of jam is missing on +arrival at rail-head, then, though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your +labels undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Officer unless you +can produce that pot. + +For the feeding of the Army is a delicate business and complicated. It +is not enough to secure that there be sufficient "caloric units" in the +men's rations; there are questions of taste. The Brahmin will not touch +beef; the Mahomedan turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vegetarian; +the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the goat. And every Indian must have his +ginger, garlic, red chilli, and turmeric, and his chupattis of +unleavened bread. One such warehouse we entered and beheld with +stupefaction mountainous boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, rice, +dried apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. Storekeepers in turbans stood +round us, who, being asked whether it was well with the Indian and his +food, answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians, "Yea, the +exalted Government hath done great things and praised be its name." To +which we replied "Victory to the Holy Ganges water." Their lustrous eyes +beamed at the salutation. + +Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies manna in the wilderness, and +like the manna of the Israelites it has never been known to fail. It is +of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in the words of the +prophet, "He hath filled my belly with his delicates." And his caravans +cover the face of the earth. You meet them everywhere, each Supply +Column a self-contained unit like a fleet. It has its O.C., its cooks, +its seventy-two motor lorries, with three men to each, and its "mobiles" +or travelling workshops with dynamo, lathe, drilling machine, and a crew +of skilled artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is put out +of action. I take off my hat to those handy-men; many times have they +helped me out of a tight place and performed delicate operations on the +internal organs of my military car in the inhospitable night. It is a +brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out +between the poplars on the perilously arched _pave_ of the long sinuous +roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and +every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the +tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder +to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it. +It is his caravan. Many a time, on long and lonely journeys from the +Base to the Front, have I been cheered to find a Supply Column drawn up +on the roadside in a wooded valley, on a bare undulating down, or in a +chalk quarry, while the men were making tea over a blue wood fire. If +you love a gipsy life join the A.S.C. + +Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. headquarters at the Base are +some twenty military hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses, +and railway waiting-rooms. For the Base is the great Clearing House for +the sick and wounded, and its register of patients is a kind of +barometer of the state of affairs at the Front. When that register sinks +very low, it means that the atmospheric conditions at the Front are +getting stormy, and that an order has come down to evacuate and prepare +four thousand beds. Then you watch the newspapers, for you know +something is going to happen up there. And in those same hospitals men +are working night and day; the bacteriologists studying "smears" under +microscopes, while the surgeons are classifying, operating, "dressing," +marking temperature-charts, and annotating case-sheets. And in every +hospital there is a faint mysterious incense, compounded not +disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised catgut, which intensifies +the dim religious atmosphere of the shaded wards. If G.H.Q. is the +greatest of military academies, the Base hospitals are indubitably the +wisest of medical schools. Never have the sciences of bacteriology and +surgery been studied with such devotion as under these urgent clinical +impulses. Here are men of European reputation who have left their +laboratories and consulting-rooms at home to wage a never-ending +scientific contest with death and corruption. They have slain +"frostbite" with lanoline, turpentine, and a change of socks; they have +fought septic wounds with chloride of sodium and the ministries of +unlimited oxygen; they have defied "shock" after amputation by +"blocking" the nerves of the limb by spinal injection, as a signalman +blocks traffic. They have called in Nature to the aid of science and +have summoned the oxygen of the air and the lymph of the body to the +self-help of wounds. + +High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp. Here the O.C. has turned +what was a swamp last December into a Garden City, draining, planting, +building, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, disinfectors, laundries, +and shower-baths, constructing turf incinerators and laying down +pavements of brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass sown, and +shrubs and trees put up--all this with the labour of the convalescents. +There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose, +for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or +neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's +reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an +afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained +community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two +neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and +cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache and +temperature he is segregated there, preparatory to being sent down to +No. 14 Stationary to have his spinal fluid examined by the +bacteriologists. Here, in fact, the man and his kit, instead of being +thrown on the scrap-heap, are renewed and made whole, restored in mind, +body, and estate, his clothes disinfected and mended, the "snipers" +treated to a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced. + +For true it is that at the Base they study loving-kindness, and +chaplains and doctors and nurses are busy with delicate ministries +seeking to cure, to assuage, and to console. Alas! on what tragic +errands do so many come and go; parents like Joseph and Mary seeking +their child, and wives their husbands, in hope, in fear, in joy, in +anguish, too often finding that the bright spirit has returned to God +Who gave it, and that nothing is left but to follow him behind the bier +draped with the Union Jack to the little cemetery on the hill.... But +for one that is buried here a thousand lie where they fell. Those +stricken fields of Flanders! nevermore will they be for us the scene of +an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of +prayer. I well remember--I can never forget--a journey I made in the +company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between +Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in +the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and +between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little +tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden +cross. By each cross was a soldier's kepi, and sometimes a coat, +bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as +we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind us +muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of +the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth +will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by +share or sickle. They are holy ground. + +So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead +lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them +for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in +August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose +ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram, +they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of +exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the +drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a +friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price--youth, +health, life--too high to pay for the country of their birth and their +devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet +her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away. + + * * * * * + +The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was +guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping +cinque-foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation +of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw +an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon +was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing +from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively +protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured +lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A +troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south, +their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no +lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with +pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and diastole of the Base. + + + + +V + +A COUNCIL OF INDIA + + +"And I said, 'Nay, I who have eaten the King's salt cannot do this +thing.' And the _German-log_ said to me, 'But we will give you both +money and land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this thing, and +bring sorrow and shame upon my people?'" + +It was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his words were exceeding clear +as Holy Writ. + +"And what did they do then?" + +"They took my _chupattis_, sahib, and offered me of their bread in +return. But I said, 'Nay, I am a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they +said thrice unto me, 'We will give you money and land.' And I thrice +said, 'Nay.' Then said they, 'Thou art a fool. Go to, but if thou comest +against us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my comrades." + +"Yea, to me also they said these things." It was a jemindar of the 129th +who spoke. "Yes, a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, '_Ham dost +hein_--_Hamari pas ao_--_Ham tum Ko Nahn Marenge_.'" Which being +translated is, "We are friends, come to us, we won't kill you." + +"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?" + +The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war, +since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought +Pandu." + +Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard +curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of +the Sikh freemasonry--nay, he had taken the _kangha_ out of his hair and +shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and +had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were +friends. "All wars are but _shikkar_ to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?" +"Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war." + +"Nay, this is a fine war--a hell of a fine war." The speaker was an +Afridi from Tirah, whose strongly marked aquiline features reminded me +of nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in Whitechapel. He lacks every +virtue except courage, and his one regret is that he has missed the +family blood-feud. There have been great doings in his family on the +frontier in his absence--two abductions and one homicide. "If I had not +come home," his brother has written reproachfully to him from Tirah, +"things had gone ill with us. But never mind about all this now. Do your +duty well." And even so has he done. + +"And how like you this war?" + +"Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of a fine war, but for the great guns." + +"And wherefore?" + +"Because we cannot come nigh unto them. But I, I have slain many men." + +"And what is your village?" asks my friend, Major D----, of the I.M.S. + +"Chorah." + +"Why, I was there in the Tirah campaign." + +"Even so, sahib." + +The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at our symposium, their broad +Mongolian faces inscrutable. But Shiva Lal, a Brahmin surgeon, who all +this while has been eager to speak, for he is a pundit, and loves the +sound of his own voice, here thrust forward his quaint countenance, +whose walrus-like moustache conceals a row of teeth projecting like the +spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs his hands and thus he speaks +in English: "Sahib, I had charge of a German sahib--wounded. And I said +unto him, 'How is it that you, who are Christians, treat the Tommies +so? We' (Major D---- looks at me with the hint of a twinkle in his +eye--for has he not told me at mess of that surprising change in the +Indian vernacular whereby their speech is no longer of "Goora-log" and +"Sahib-log" but of "We," which fraternal pronoun is significant of +much)--'we shave you and feed you, we wash you and dress your wounds, +even as one of ourselves, and you kill our wounded Tommies, yea, and do +these things and worse even unto women. Are you not Christians? We' +(there is a return to old habits of speech)--'we are only Indians, but I +have read in your Bible that if one smite on the one cheek'"--here Shiva +Lal, who has now what he loves most in the world, an audience, and is +easily histrionic, smites his face mightily on the right side--"'one +should turn to him the other. Why is this?'" + +"And what said the German officer, Shiva Lal?" + +"Nay, sahib, he said nothing." We also say nothing. For Shiva Lal needs +but little encouragement to talk from sunset to cock-crow. Perhaps the +unfortunate German officer divined as much. But the spell of Shiva Lal's +eloquence is rudely broken by Major D----, who takes me by the arm to go +elsewhere. And the little group squatting on their haunches at their +mid-day meal cease listening and dip their _chupattis_ in the aromatic +_dhal_, in that slow, ruminant, ritualistic way in which the Indian +always eats his food. + +"_Ram, Ram! Tumhi kothun alle?_" said my friend Smith, turning aside to +a lonely figure on my right. A cry of joy escapes a dark-featured +Mahratta who has been looking mournfully on from his bed of pain, +comprehending nothing of these dialogues. We have, indeed, been talking +in every language except Mahrathi. And he, poor soul, has lost both +feet--they were frostbitten--and will never answer the music of the +charge again. But at the sound of his own tongue he raises his body by +the pulley hanging at the head of his cot, and gravely salutes the +sahib. Like Ruth amid the alien corn, his heart is sad with thoughts of +home, and he has been dreaming between these iron walls of the wide, +sunlit spaces of the Deccan. As his feverish brain counts and re-counts +the rivets on the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before his +wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village with its grove of +mangoes and its sacred banyan on the inviolable _otla_; he hears once +again the animated chatter of the wayfarers in the _chowdi_. + +"Where is thy home?" + +"Sahib, it is at Pirgaon." + +"I know it--is not Turkaran Patal the head-man?" + +The dark face gleams with pleasure. "Even so, sahib." + +"Shall I write to thy people?" + +"The sahib is very kind." + +"So will I do, and, perhaps, prepare thy people for thy homecoming. I +will tell them that thou hast lost thy feet with the frostbite, but art +otherwise well." + +"Nay, sahib, tell them everything but that, for if my people hear that +they will neither eat nor drink--nay, nor sleep, for sorrow." + +"Then will I not. But I will tell them that thou art a brave man." + +The Mahratta smiles mournfully. + +"And have you heard from your folk at home?" I ask of the others, +leaving Smith and the Mahratta together. + +"Yea, sahib, the exalted Government is very good to us. We get letters +often." It is a sepoy in the 107th who speaks. "My brother writes even +thus," and he reads with tears in his eyes: "'We miss you terribly, but +such is the will of God. I have been daily to Haji Baba Ziarat' (it is a +famous shrine in India), 'and day and night I pray for you, and am very +distressed. I am writing to tell you to have no anxiety about us at +home, but do your duty cheerfully and say your prayers. Repeat the +beginning with the word "Kor" and breathe forty times on your body. +Your father is well, but is very anxious for you, and weeps day and +night.'" + +"I also have received a letter." The speaker is a Bengali, and, though a +surgeon and non-combatant, must have his say. "My brother writes that I +am to enlight the names of my ancestors, who were tiger-like warriors, +and were called Bahadurs, by performing my duties to utmost +satisfaction." This is truly Babu English. + +"And you will do the same?" + +"Yea, I must do likewise. My brother writes to me, 'If you want to face +this side again, face as Bahadur.' And he saith, 'Long live King George, +and may he rule on the whole world.' And so say we all, sahib." + +"And you?" This to a Shia Mahomedan whose right hand is bandaged. + +"Ah, sahib, my people can write to me, but write to them I cannot. Will +the honourable sahib send a word for me who am thus crippled?" + +"Yea, gladly; what shall the words be?" + +"Say, then, oh sahib, these words: 'Your servant is well and happy here. +You should pray the God of Mercy that the victory may be to our King, +Jarj Panjam. And to my lady mother and my lady the sister of my father, +and to my brother, and to my dear ones the greetings of peace and +prayer. And the sum of fifty rupees which I arranged for my family' (his +wife) 'will be paid to you every month.' The sahib is very kind." + +"The sahib would like to hear a story?" The speaker is a jemadar of the +59th. "So be it. Know then, sahib, that I and twelve men of my company +were cut off by the _German-log_, and I, even I only, am left. It was in +this wise. My comrades advanced too far beyond the trenches, and we lost +our way. And the _German-log_ make signs to us to surrender, but it is +not our way and we still advance. And they open fire with a +machine-gun--so!" The speaker makes sounds as a man who stutters. "And +we are all hit--killed and wounded, and fall like ripe corn to the +sickle. And I am wounded in the leg and I fall. And the German officer, +he come up and hitted me in the buttock to see if I were dead. But I lay +exceeding still and hold my breath. And they pull me by the leg" (can it +be that the jemadar is pulling mine?), "a long way they pull me but +still I am as one dead. And so I escaped." He looks round for approval. + +"That was well done, jemadar." His lustrous eyes flash with pleasure. +"And how is it with your food?" + +"Good" ("_Bahout accha_"), comes a chorus of voices. "The exalted +Government has done great things. We have _ghee_"--a clarified butter +made of buffalo or cow's milk--"and _goor_"--unrefined sugar. "And we +have spices for our _dhal_--ginger and garlic and chilli and turmeric. +Yea, and fruits also--apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What more can +man want?" + +"It is well." But it is time for me to go. Smith is still talking to the +Mahratta, whose eyes never leave his face. "Come on, old man," I say, +"it is time to go." Smith turns reluctantly away. As I looked over my +shoulder the Mahratta was weeping softly. + + + + +VI + +THE TROOP TRAIN + + +We were standing in the lounge of the Hotel M---- at the Base. "I'll +introduce you to young C---- of the Guards when he comes in," the Major +was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the +troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see +he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's +a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother. +He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of +mine. Hulloa, C----, my boy. Allow me to introduce you." + +A youth with the milk and roses complexion of a girl, blue eyes, and +fair hair, well-built, but somewhat under the middle height--such was +C----, and he was good to look upon. + +Introductions being made, we filed into the _salle a manger_. + +"Chambertin, Julie, s'il vous plait," said the Major. "There's nothing +like a good burgundy to warm the cockles of your heart." He had the +radiant eye of an Irishman, and smiled on Julie as he gave the order. + +"So you're leaving your hospital to go up and join a Field Ambulance?" I +said. + +"That's so, old man. There was a chance of my being made A.D.M.S. at the +Base some day if I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front, and +I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with +my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always worrying the O.C.'s. Talking +about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the story of how I pulled the leg +of old Macassey in South Africa?" + +"No," I said, although B---- had a way of telling the same stories twice +over occasionally. The one story he never told, not even once, was how +he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other +men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tell +you that to know B---- and have the privilege of his friendship, is to +be admitted to the largest freemasonry of officers in the British Army. + +"Well, it was like this," continued B----. "The A.D.M.S. was a thorn in +the side of every O.C. at the Base, walking up and down like the very +devil, seeking whose reputation he might devour, and ordering every +O.C. to turn his hospital upside down. He took a positive delight in +breaking men. You know the type, the kind of man who breaks his wife's +heart not because he's bad, but because he's querulous. The nagging +type. Nothing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show, +where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got +accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a +recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very +good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey +with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up, +as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a +devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of +any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban. +However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked +than ever, but I thought I'd have it in black and white; so I saluted +and said, 'Bad memory, sir, my old wound in India, d'you mind writing +the order down?'" + +"My dear B----," I interrupted, "you know you've the memory of a +Recording Angel." + +"So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew that Macassey's memory, +like that of most fussy men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought I'd +catch him out sooner or later. He and I went round the camp, and, after +about half-an-hour of the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught sight +of some double-roofed Indian tents that Simpson had got together with +great difficulty for the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin huts, and +in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Macassey +wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me +have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four, +and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I +said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field +Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who +can say 'No' to B----.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally +I took care of those pages. Next day old Macassey must have remembered +that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me +to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And +he knew that I had first-class documentary evidence, and that I guarded +his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at +Sotheby's. He never troubled us any more." + +"That was unkind of you, Major," I said insincerely. + +"Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been worrying old Simpson, and he +wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! have you never +heard the story of Simpson and the giddy goat?" + +"The goat?" said the sub. + +"Yes, the goat. Useful animal the goat, if a trifle capricious. It was +like this. Old Simpson, who's got a head on his shoulders big enough to +do all the thinking for the Royal College of Physicians, and ditto of +Surgeons, with a good few ideas left over for the R.A.M.C., determined +to get to the bottom of Mediterranean Fever--a nasty complaint, which +had worried the Malta garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do +when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say in the children's +picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to +suspect the goat. Why? Well, because he'd noticed that goat's milk was +drunk in Malta and Egypt. So he began to study the geographical +distribution of the goat with the zeal of an anthropologist localising +dolicocephalic and brachycephalic races. He found eventually that +wherever you could 'place' a goat you would find the fever. Wherefore he +took some goat's milk and cultivated it assiduously in an alluring +medium of Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus." + +"Dot and carry one. Please repeat," I interjected. + +"Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus," repeated the Major. + +"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar-man, +thief," soliloquised the subaltern, who was brightening up. + +"Quite so," said the Major with a benignant glance. "Well, he then got a +culture." + +"A what?" + +"Culture. Poisonous growth; hence German 'Kultur,'" said the Major +etymologically. "To proceed. He then inoculated some guinea-pigs. No! I +don't mean directors in the City, though he might have done worse. And +lo! and behold! he found the fever. You know the four canons of the +bacteriologist? One, 'get'; two, 'cultivate'; three, 'inoculate'; four, +'recover.'" + +"Well done, Simpson," I said. + +"You may say that, my friend. And now there's old Simpson down at the +Base in charge of No. 12 General saving lives by hundreds and thousands. +You know while the bullet slew its thousands, septicaemia has slain its +tens of thousands. How did he stop it? Why, by doing the obvious, which, +you may have observed, no one ever does till a wise man comes along. He +got wounds to heal themselves. He promoted a lymphatic flow from the +rest of the body by putting suppositories of chloride of sodium inside +drainage-tubes in the wound. The heat of the body melts them, you see. +There are three great medical heroes of this war--Almroth Wright, +Martin-Leake, and Simpson." + +I could have named a fourth, but I held my tongue. + +"Time to get on our hind legs," the Major now said monitorily. "Julie, +_l'addition_ s'il vous plait." + +"Bien, monsieur," said Julie, who had been watching the Major admiringly +without comprehending a word of what he said. Women have a way of +falling in love with the Major at first sight. + +We stumbled along between the rails and over the sleepers, led by the +Major, who carried a hurricane lamp, and by the help of its fitful rays +we leapt across the pools of water left in every hollow. We passed some +cattle-trucks. The Major held up the lamp and scrutinised a legend in +white letters-- + + + Hommes 40. Chevaux 12. + + +"Reminds me of the Rule of Three," said the Major meditatively. "If one +Frenchman is equal to three and one-third horses, how many Huns are +equal to one British soldier?" + +"They are never equal to him," said the subaltern brightly. "If it +wasn't for machinery we'd have crumpled them up long ago." + +"True, my son," said the Major, "and well spoken." + +The men were grouped round the cattle-trucks, each man with his kit and +120 rounds of ammunition. They had just been through a kit inspection, +and the O.C. in charge of details had audited and found it correct by +entering up a memorandum to that effect in each man's pay-book. Though +how the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft, and certifies +that nothing from a housewife to thirty pairs of laces per man is +missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to +understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the +opaque integument of a ground-sheet at one glance. Also the Medical +Officer at the Base Depot had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after +scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's naked body, with the +aid of a tallow candle stuck in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of +three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and +bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each +truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the +off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in +command of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very +soon. + +We were now opposite a first-class compartment, and a slim figure loomed +up out of the darkness. + +"Halloa! is that you, C----? I thought you were gone on ahead of us, my +boy." + +"So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing, and I'm sending a +corporal to hunt them up. We're off in a few minutes. I met young T---- +just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident +that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of +cheering other fellows up. "He's feeling rather blue," he continued. +"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know." + +"Oh, that's no good. Tell him I've got a plum-pudding and a bottle of +whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur." + +I looked at B----'s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the +kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable +acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a +darkness which you could almost feel with your hand. + +"I say, B----," I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, "what's +the regulation allowance for an officer's luggage? I forget." + +"One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may laugh, old chap, but I got round +the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can stow it in my billet. +Cheers the other fellows up, you know." + +B----'s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a +ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service +regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing +elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage. He would +gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know. + +"Major," I said, "you are a 'carrier'!" + +"Carter Paterson?" said the Major, with a glance at his luggage. + +"No, I didn't mean that. You are not as quick in the uptake as usual, +especially considering your medical qualifications. What I meant was +that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get +typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they +become immune from them themselves. You're diffusing a gaiety which you +no longer feel." + +It was a bold shot, and if we hadn't been pretty old friends it would +have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me +aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit the +bull's-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don't give me away. +Come into the carriage." + +He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment, +each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of +them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say +were trivial irrelevancies. Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and +showed me a photograph. + +"My wife and Pat--you've never seen Pat, I think? We christened her +Patricia, you know?" + +It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls, +aged, I should say, about two. + +"Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter. +She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field +Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B---- studied it intently +for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly he +leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way. "I say, old chap, write to my +wife!" + +"But, my dear fellow, I've never met her except once. She must have +quite forgotten who I am." + +"I know. But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the +top of my form. Merry and bright, you know." + +We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised. + +There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as +C---- sprang in. I grasped B----'s hand, and jumped on to the footboard +of the moving train. + +"Good-bye, old chap." + +"Good-bye, old man." + +B---- had gone to the front. I never saw him again. + + * * * * * + +Three weeks later I was sitting at _dejeuner_ in the Metropole, when a +ragamuffin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the +leave-boat. I took up the _Times_ and looked, as one always looks +nowadays, at the obituary column. I looked again. In the same column, +one succeeding the other, I read the following: + + + Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur Hamilton C---- + of the ---- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur C. + and of Mrs. C. of the Red House, Little Twickenham, aged 19. + + + Behold! I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke. + + + Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier + under fire, Major Ronald B----, D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical + Corps, aged 42. + + + Greater love hath no man than this. + + + + +II + +THE FRONT + + + + +VII + +THE TWO RICHEBOURGS + + +We had business with the _maire_ of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast. +Any one who looks at a staff map of North-West France will see that +there are two Richebourgs; there is Richebourg St. Vaast, but there is +also Richebourg l'Avoue, and although those two communes are separated +by a bare three or four kilometres there was in point of climate a +considerable difference between the two. In those days we had not yet +taken Neuve Chapelle, and Richebourg l'Avoue, which was in front of our +lines, was considered "unhealthy." Richebourg St. Vaast, on the other +hand, was well behind our lines and was considered by our billeting +officers quite a good residential neighbourhood. + +We had left G.H.Q., and after a journey of two hours or so passed +through Laventie, which had been rather badly mauled by shell-fire, and +began to thread our way through the skein of roads and by-roads that +enmeshes the two Richebourgs. The natural features of the country were +inscrutable, and landmarks there were none. The countryside grew +absolutely deserted and the solitary farms were roofless and untenanted. +Eventually we found our road blocked by a barricade of fallen masonry in +front of a village which was as inhospitable as the Cities of the Plain. + +A vast silence brooded over the landscape, broken now and again by a +noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot. As we took cover behind +a wall of ruined houses we heard a sinister hiss, but whence it came or +what invisible trajectory it traced through the leaden skies overhead +neither of us could tell. Silence again fell like a mist upon the land; +not a bird sang, not a twig moved. The winter sun was sinking in the +west behind a pall of purple cloud in a lacquered sky--the one touch of +colour in the sombre greyness. The land was flat as the palm of one's +hand, its monotony relieved only by lines of pollarded willows on which +some sappers had strung a field telephone. Raindrops hung on the copper +wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was +scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as +if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay +walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed +wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown. The +village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land +between the enemy's lines and our own, and the sodden fields were not +more desolate. + +A tornado of artillery fire had swept over it, and of the houses nothing +was left but indecencies, shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath +which were choked heaps of household furniture, broken beds, battered +lamps, and a wicker-chair overturned as in a drunken brawl. What had +once been the street was now a quarry of broken bricks, with here and +there vast circular craters as though a gigantic oak-tree had been torn +out of the earth by the roots. And now the weird silence was broken by +sounds as of some one playing a lonely tattoo with his fingers upon a +hollow wooden board, but the player was invisible, and as we looked at +each other the sound ceased as suddenly as it began. Our practised ear +told us that somewhere near us a machine-gun was concealed, but these +furtive sounds were so homeless, so impersonal, that they eluded us like +an echo. + +It was this complete absence of visible human agency that impressed us +most disagreeably, as with a sense of being utterly forlorn amid a play +of the elements, like Lear upon the heath. There came into my mind, as +our eyes groped for some human sign in the brooding landscape, the +thought of the prophet upon the mount amid the wind and the earthquake +and the fire seeking the presence of his God and finding it not. And +here too all these assaults upon our senses were fugitive and ghostly, +and we felt ourselves encompassed about as by some great conspiracy. We +walked curiously up the little street until we reached the last house in +the village, and came out beyond the screen of its wall. At the same +instant something sang past my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my +foot caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My companion, +lagging behind and not yet clear of the friendly wall, stopped dead and +cried to me not to stand up. I crawled back among the rubbish to the +cover of the house. We took counsel together. To retreat were perilous, +but to advance might be fatal. We lowered our voices as, cowering behind +walls, and picking our way delicately among the _debris_, we crept back +to our car behind the entrance to the village. The driver started the +engine and we moved forlornly along the narrow causeway, skirting the +unfathomable mud that lay on either side, until we spied a ruined +farmhouse where a company had made its billet and mud-coloured knots of +soldiers stood round braziers of glowing coals. We had some parley with +the company commander, who was of the earth earthy. His words were few +and discouraging. As we crawled on, darkness enveloped us, but we dared +not light our head-lamps. Suddenly the car slipped on the greasy road, +staggered, and lurched over into the morass, hurling us violently upon +our sides. We clambered out and contemplated it solemnly as we saw our +right wheels over the axles in mud. No friendly billet was now in sight, +and as we stood profanely considering our plight the darkness behind us +was split by a long shaft of greenish light, and the whole landscape was +illuminated with a pallid glow, as the German star-shells discharged +themselves over the fan-like tops of the elms silhouetted against the +sky. The jack was useless in the soft mud, it sank like a stone, and as +we shoved and cursed we awaited each fresh discharge of the star-shells +with increasing apprehension, for we presented an obvious target to the +enemy's snipers. On the seat of the car was my despatch-box, and in that +box was a little dossier of papers marked "O.H.M.S. German Atrocities. +Secret and Confidential." "If the Germans catch us there'll be one +atrocity the more," remarked my Staff Officer grimly, "but they'll spare +us the labour of recording it." + +Our futile efforts were interrupted by the sound of feet upon the +causeway as a column of reliefs loomed up out of the darkness. A hurried +altercation in low tones, a subdued word of command, and a dozen men, +their rifles and entrenching tools slung over their shoulders, applied +themselves to the back of our car, and slowly it slithered out of the +mud. The column broke into file to allow us to pass, my companion went +on ahead with a tiny electric torch to show the way, and with infinite +caution we nudged slowly along the rank, the faint light of the torch +bringing face after face out of the darkness into _chiaroscuro_, faces +young and fresh and ruddy. Not a word was spoken save a whispered +command carried down the rank, mouth to ear, "No smoking, no talking +"--"No smoking, no talking "--"No talking, no smoking." Mules, carrying +sections of machine-guns and packs of straw, loomed up out of the +darkness as we passed, until the last of the column was reached and the +frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the night. We drew a +long breath, for we knew now from the colonel of the battalion whose men +had delivered us from that Slough of Despond that we had been within 150 +yards of the German lines. We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoue for +Richebourg St. Vaast. + + + + +VIII + +IDOLS OF THE CAVE + + +Like the Cyclopes they dwelt in hollow caves, and each Colonel uttered +the law to his children and recked not of the others except when the +Brigadier came round. True there were two and a half battalions in their +line of 2700 yards, but all they knew was that the next battalion to +their own was the Highlanders; it was only when the five days were up +and they were marched back to billets that they were able to cultivate +that somewhat exclusive society. Their trenches were like the suburbs, +they were faintly conscious that people lived in the next street, but +they never saw them. Their neighbours were as self-contained and silent +as themselves, except when their look-outs or machine-guns became +loquacious. Then they too became eloquent, and the whole line talked +freely at the Germans 200 yards away. By day the men slept heavily on +straw in hollows under the parapet, supported with crates and sprinkled +with chloride of lime; by night they were out at the listening posts, +in the sap-heads, or behind the parapet, with their eyes glued to the +field of yellow mustard in front of us. They had watched that field for +three months. They knew every blade of grass therein. No experimental +agriculturist ever studied his lucerne and sainfoin as they have studied +the grasses of that field. They have watched it from winter to spring; +they have seen the lesser celandine give way to pink clover and sorrel, +and the grass shoot up from an inch to a foot. They have, indeed, been +studying not botany but ethnology, searching for traces of that species +of primitive man known to anthropologists as the Hun. They have never +found him except once, when one of our look-outs saw something crawling +across that field about midnight and promptly emptied his magazine. In +the morning they saw a grey figure lying out in the open; the days +passed and the long grass sprang up and concealed it till nothing was +left to attest its obscene presence except a little cloud of black +flies. Their horizon is bounded by rows of sand-bags, and their interest +in those sand-bags is only equalled by their interest in the field in +front of them. Occasionally one of our men finds them more than usually +interesting. There is a loud report, the click of a bolt, and the +pungent smell of burnt cordite. Then all is still again. + +The tangent-sight on the standard of their machine-gun is always at 200, +and they have not altered the range for three months. Occasionally at +night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles, and with his thumb on +the button slowly sweeps that range of sand-bags, till the feed-block +sucks up the cartridge-belt like a chaff-cutter and the empty +cartridge-cases lie as thick round the tripod as acorns under an oak. +The Huns reply by taking a flashlight photograph of us with a calcium +flare, and then all is still again. In such excursions and alarms do +they pass the long night. + +Though five-sixths of them slept stertorously in their holes by day, by +night they were as wakeful as owls, and not less predatory. Life in the +trenches is one long struggle for existence, and in the course of it +they developed those acquired characteristics whereby the birds of the +air and the beasts of the field maintain themselves in a world of +carnage. They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their feet as +silently as hares, to see in the dark like foxes, to wriggle like the +creeping things of the field, to lower their voices with the direction +of the wind, to select a background with the moonlight, and to stand +motionless on patrol with muscles rigid like a pointer when the +star-shells dissolved the security of the night. They studied to +dissemble with their lips and to imitate the vocabulary of nature. They +grew more and more chary of human speech, and listening posts talked +with the trenches by pulls on a fishing-reel. They never sheathed their +claws, and working-parties wore their equipment as though it were the +integument of nature. Bayonets were never unfixed unless the moon were +very bright. At night they scraped out their earths like a badger, and, +like the badger's, those earths were exceeding clean. The men were +numbered off by threes from the flank, and one in three watched for two +hours while the other two worked, repairing parapets, strengthening +entanglements, and filling sand-bags. Every half-hour the N.C.O. on duty +crept round to report, or to post and relieve, while now and again a +patrol went out to observe. All this was done stealthily and with an +amazing economy of speech. Night was also the time of their foraging, +when the company's rations were brought up the communication trench and +handed over by the C.Q.M.S. to each platoon sergeant, who passed them on +to the section commander, and he in turn distributed them among his men +in such silence and with such little traffic that it seemed like the +provision of manna in the wilderness. At dawn pick-axe and spade were +laid aside, the rum ration was served out, and all men stood to, for +dawn was the hour of their apprehension. + +Two miles behind them is a battery of our field guns, and they have with +them an observing officer who talks intimately to his battery on the +field telephone in that laconic language of which gunners are so fond, +such as "One hundred. Twenty minutes to the left." Then the shells sing +over their heads with a pretty low trajectory, and the Huns, beginning +to get annoyed, reply with their heavy guns. There is a low whistle up +aloft, a noise like the fluttering of invisible wings, and the next +moment a cloud of black smoke rises over the village of X---- Y----, +behind the trenches. The Smoke Prevention Society ought to turn their +attention to "Jack Johnsons"; their habits are positively filthy. + +These things, however, disturbed them but little and bored them a great +deal. So they set to work to make their particular rabbit-warren into a +Garden City. They held it on a repairing lease, and were constantly +filling sand-bags, but that was merely to prevent depreciation, and +didn't count. They first of all paved their trenches with bricks; there +was no difficulty about the supply, as the "Jack Johnsons" obligingly +acted as house-breakers in the village behind our lines, and bricks +could be had for the fetching. Then the orderly transplanted some +pansies and forget-me-nots from the garden of a ruined house, and made a +border in front of the company commander's dug-out. The communication +trench had been carried across a stream with some planks, and one day a +man with a gift for carpentry fixed up a balustrade out of the arms of +an apple-tree, which had been lopped off by shell, and we had a rustic +bridge. When May came, water anemones opened their star-like petals on +the surface of the clear amber stream, the orchard through which the +communication trench had been cut burst into blossom, the sticky clay +walls of the trench became hard as masonry in the sun, and one morning a +board appeared with the legend "Hyde Park. Keep off the grass." + +With these amenities their manners grew more and more refined. I have +read somewhere, in one of those dull collections of sweeping +generalisations that are called sociology, that each species of the +_genus homo_ has to go through a normal sequence of stages from +barbarism to civilisation, and that we were once what the South Sea +Islanders are now. Which may be very true, but as regards that +particular primitive community I can testify that their social evolution +has in three months gone through all the stages that occupy other +communities three thousand years. They began as cave-dwellers and they +end by occupying suburban villas--the captain's dug-out has a roof of +corrugated iron, a window, a book-shelf, a table, and even chairs, and +his table manners have vastly improved. They have progressed from +candles stuck in bully-beef tins to electric reading-lamps. Three months +ago they were hairy men whose beards did grow beneath their shoulders, +and their puttees were cemented with wet clay; to-day they are +clean-shaven and their Burberrys might be worn in Piccadilly. They slept +with nothing between them and the earth but a ground sheet what time +they were not, like the elephant, sleeping on their feet and propped +against a trench wall. Now they sleep on a bed with a wooden frame. I +have read somewhere that for a thousand years Europe was unwashed. It +may be so, but I know that this particular tribal community progressed +rapidly through all such stages, from a bucket to a shower-bath in +billets, in about six weeks, and you can see their men any day washing +themselves to the waist near the support trenches--men who a month or +two ago had forgotten how to take their clothes off. They are, in fact, +a highly civilised community. Some traces of their aboriginal state they +still retain, and they cherish their totem, which is a bundle of black +ribbons, rather like the flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to +the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night +some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out +on their stomachs with a hand-grenade to get as near as may be to the +enemy's listening posts and taste the joy of killing. But by day they +are as demure and sleepy as the tortoiseshell cat which has taken up its +quarters in the dug-out. + +Such is their life. But they are quietly preparing to get a move on. +Some R.G.A. men have arrived with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and +one fine morning they are going to disturb those sand-bags opposite them +with a battery of trench mortars; our field guns will draw a curtain of +shrapnel in front of the German support trenches, and then they will +satisfy their curiosity as to what is behind those inscrutable +sand-bags. + + + + +IX + +STOKES'S ACT + + An offender when in arrest is not to bear arms except by order of + his C.O. or in an emergency.--_The King's Regulations._ + + +I + +The President of the Court and the Judge-Advocate stood in private +colloquy in one of the deep traverse-like windows of the Hotel de Ville +over-looking the Place. A heavy rain was falling from a sullen sky, and +the deserted square was a dancing sea of agitation as the raindrops +smote the little pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a +multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind swept across, and the +rain rattled against the windows. On the opposite side of the square one +of the houses gaped curiously, with bedroom and parlour exposed to view, +as though some one had snatched away the walls and laid the scene for +one of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters pursue a +complicated domestic intrigue on two floors at once. That house, with +its bed exposed to the rain dripping from the open rafters, was indeed +both farcical and indecent; it stood among its unscathed neighbours like +a pariah. The rain was loud and insistent, but not so loud as to dull +the distant thunder of the guns. The intermittent gusts of wind now and +again interrupted its monotonous theme, but the intervals were as brief +as they were violent, and in this polyphonic composition of rain, wind, +and guns, the hissing of the raindrops came and went as in a fugue and +with an inexpressible mournfulness. + +Inside the room was a table covered with green baize, on which were +methodically arranged in extended order a Bible, an inkstand, a sheaf of +paper, and a copy of the _Manual of Military Law_. Behind the table were +seven chairs, and to the right and left of them stood two others. The +seven chairs were for the members of the court; the chair on the extreme +right was for the "prisoner's friend," that on the left awaited the +Judge-Advocate. About five yards in front of the table, in the centre of +an empty space, stood two more chairs turned towards it. Otherwise the +room was as bare as a guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it a +certain dignity of its own as of a place where nothing was allowed to +distract the mind from the serious business in hand. At the door stood +an orderly with a red armlet bearing the imprint of the letters "M.P." +in black. + +"I have read the summary pretty carefully," the Judge-Advocate was +saying, "and it seems to me a clear case. The charge is fully made out. +And yet the curious thing is, the fellow has an excellent record, I +believe." + +"That proves nothing," said the Colonel; "I've had a fellow in my +battalion found sleeping at his post on sentry-go, a fellow I could have +sworn by. And you know what the punishment for that is. It's these night +attacks; the men must not sleep by night and some of them cannot sleep +by day, and there are limits to human nature. We've no reserves to speak +of as yet, and the men are only relieved once in three weeks. Their feet +are always wet, and their circulation goes all wrong. It's the puttees +perhaps. And if your circulation goes wrong you can't sleep when you +want to, till at last you sleep when you don't want to. Or else your +nerves go wrong. I've seen a man jump like a rabbit when I've come up +behind him." + +"Yes," mused the Judge-Advocate, "I know. But hard cases make bad law." + +"Yes, and bad law makes hard cases. Between you and me, our military law +is a bit prehistoric. You're a lawyer and know more about it than I do. +But isn't there something for civilians called a First Offenders Act? +Bind 'em over to come up for judgment if called on--that kind of thing. +Gives a man another chance. Why not the soldier too?" + +"Yes," replied the Judge-Advocate, "there is. I believe the War Office +have been talking about adopting it for years. But this is not the time +of day to make changes of that kind. Everybody's worked off his head." + +Eight officers had entered the room at intervals, the subalterns a +little ahead of their seniors in point of time, as is the first duty of +a subaltern whether on parade or at a "general," and, having saluted the +President in the window, they stood conversing in low tones. + +The Colonel suddenly glanced at his left wrist, walked to the middle +chair behind the table, and taking his seat said, "Now, gentlemen, carry +on, please!" As they took their places the Colonel, as President of the +Court, ordered the prisoner to be brought in. There was a shuffle of +feet outside, and a soldier without cap or belt or arms, and with a +sergeant's stripes upon his sleeve, was marched in under a sergeant's +escort. His face was not unpleasing--the eyes well apart and direct in +their gaze, the forehead square, and the contours of the mouth firm and +well-cut. The two took their places in front of the chair, and stood to +attention. The prisoner gazed fixedly at the letters "R.F.," which +flanked the arms of the Republic on the wall above the President's +head, and stood as motionless as on parade. A close observer, however, +would have noticed that his thumb and forefinger plucked nervously at +the seam of his trousers, and that his hands, though held at attention, +were never quite still. The escort kept his head covered. + +At the President's order to "bring in the evidence," the soldier on duty +at the door vanished to return with a squad of seven soldiers in charge +of a sergeant, who formed them up in two ranks behind the prisoner and +his escort. And they also stood exceeding still. + +The President read the order convening the court, and, as he recited +each officer's name and regiment, the owner acknowledged it with "Here, +sir." When he came to the prisoner's name he looked up and said, "Is +that your name and number?" The escort nudged the prisoner, who recalled +his attention from the wall with an immense effort and said "Yes, sir." + +"Captain Herbert appears as prosecutor and takes his place." As the +ritual prescribed by the Red Book was religiously gone through, the +prisoner continued to stare at the wall above the President's head, and +the rain rattled against the window-panes with intermittent violence. +Having finished his recital, the President rose, and with him all the +members of the court rose also. He took a Bible in his hand and faced +the Judge-Advocate, who exhorted him that he should "well and truly try +the accused before the court according to the evidence," and that he +would duly administer justice according to the Army Act now in force, +without partiality, favour, or affection.... "So help you God." As the +colonel raised the book to his lips he chanted the antiphon "So help me +God." And the Judge-Advocate proceeded to swear the other members of the +court, individually or collectively, three subalterns who were jointly +and severally sworn holding the book together with a quaint solemnity, +as though they were singing hymns at church out of a common hymn-book. +Then the Judge-Advocate was in turn sworn by the President with his own +peculiar oath of office, and did faithfully and with great earnestness +promise that he would neither divulge the sentence, nor disclose nor +discover any votes or opinions as to the same. Which being done, and the +President having ordered the military policeman to march out the +evidence, the sergeant in charge cried "Left turn. Quick march. Left +wheel," and the little cloud of witnesses vanished through the doorway. + +The President proceeded to read the charge-sheet:-- + + + "_The accused, No. , Sergeant John Stokes, 2nd Battalion + Downshire Regiment, is charged with Misbehaving before the enemy in + such a manner as to show cowardice, in that he at , on + October 3rd, 1914, when on patrol, and when under the enemy's fire, + did run away._" + + +All this time the prisoner had been studying the wall, his eyes +travelling from the right to the left of the frieze, and then from the +left to the right again. It was noticeable that his lips moved slightly +at each stage of this laborious visual journey. "Forty-seven." +"Forty-nine." "Forty-eight." Stokes was immensely interested in that +compelling frieze. He counted and recounted the number of figures in the +Greek fret with painful iteration. Apparently he was satisfied at last, +and then his eyes began to study the inkstand in front of the President. +The President seemed an enormous distance away, but the inkstand very +near and very large, and he found himself wondering why it was round, +why it wasn't square, or hexagonal, or elliptic. Then he speculated +whether the ink was blue or black, or red, and why people never used +green or yellow. His brain had gone through all the colours of the +spectrum when a pull at his sleeve by the escort attracted his +attention. Apparently the Colonel was saying something to him. + +"Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" + +The prisoner stared, but said nothing. The escort again pulled his +sleeve as the Colonel repeated the question. + +Stokes cleared his throat, and looking his interlocutor straight in the +face, said, "Guilty, sir." The members of the court looked at each +other, the Colonel whispered to the Judge-Advocate, the Judge-Advocate +to the Prosecutor. The Judge-Advocate turned to the prisoner, "Do you +realise," he asked, not unkindly, "that if you plead 'Guilty' you will +not be able to call any evidence as to extenuating circumstances?" The +prisoner pondered for a moment; it seemed to him that the +Judge-Advocate's voice was almost persuasive. + +"Well, I'll say 'not guilty,' sir." + +He now saw the President quite close to him; that monstrous inkstand had +diminished to its natural size. Nothing was to be heard beyond the +hissing of the rain but the scratching of the Judge-Advocate's quill, as +he slowly dictated to himself the words "The--prisoner--pleads--'not +guilty.'" But why they had asked him a question which could only admit +of one answer and then persuaded him to give the wrong one, was a thing +that both puzzled and distressed John Stokes. Why all this solemn +ritual, he speculated painfully; he was surely as good as dead already. +He found himself wondering whether the sentence of the Court would be +carried out in the presence of only the firing party, or whether the +whole of his battalion would be paraded. And he fell to wondering +whether he would be reported in the casualty lists as "killed in +action," or would it be "missing"? And would they send his wife his +identity-disc, as they did with those who had fallen honourably on the +field? All these questions both interested and perplexed him, but the +proceedings of the Court he regarded little, or not at all. + +Meanwhile the Prosecutor was unfolding the charge in a clear, even +voice, neither extenuating nor setting down aught in malice. In a +court-martial no Prosecutor ever "presses" the charge; he may even +alleviate it. Which shows that Assizes and Sessions have something to +learn from courts-martial. The case was simple. Prisoner had gone out on +the night of the 3rd with a patrol commanded by a subaltern. An alarm +was raised, and he and the greater part of the patrol had run back to +the trenches, leaving the officer to stand his ground and to return +later with his left arm shattered by a German bullet. + +All this Stokes remembered but too well, though it seemed to have +happened an immense time ago. He remembered how the subaltern had warned +him that the only thing to do when a German flare lit up the night was +to stand quite still. And he had not stood still, for one of the most +difficult things for a man to believe is that to see suddenly is not the +same thing as being seen; he had ducked, and as he moved something +seared his right cheek like red-hot iron, and then--but why recall that +shameful moment? A paradoxical psychologist in a learned essay on "the +Expression of Emotion" has argued gravely that the "expression" precedes +the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is afraid but is afraid +because he runs. Sergeant Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to +this day he believes that it was his first start that was his undoing. +He had begun to run without knowing why, until he knew why he ran--he +was afraid. Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army vernacular, "cold +feet." But why he ran in the first instance he did not know. It was true +he hadn't slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as N.C.O. to +go round every half-hour during the night to watch the men and stare at +that inscrutable field, and to post and relieve, had made him very +jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in his arms the day before +that fatal night--he could see the grey film glistening on his face like +a clouded glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But what had that to +do with the charge? Nothing at all. + +And while the prisoner pondered on these things he was recalled by the +voice of the President. Did he wish to ask the witness any questions? +His company commander had been giving evidence. No; he had no questions +to ask. And as each witness was called, and sworn, and gave evidence, +all of which the Judge-Advocate repeated like a litany and duly wrote +down with his own hand--the prisoner always returned the same answer. + +Now the prisoner's friend, a young officer who had never played that +_role_ before, and who was both nervous and conscientious, had been +studying Rule 40 in the Red Book with furtive concentration. What was he +to do with a prisoner who elected neither to make a statement nor to put +questions to witnesses, and who never gave him any lead? But he had +there read something about calling witnesses as to character, and, +reading, recollected that the company commander had glanced at the +prisoner with genuine commiseration. And so he persuaded Stokes, after +some parley, to call the captain to give evidence as to character. The +captain's words were few and weighty. The prisoner, he testified, was +one of the best N.C.O.'s in his company, and, with the latitude which is +characteristic of court-martial proceedings, the captain went on to tell +of the testimony borne by the dead subaltern to the excellent character +of John Stokes, and how the said John Stokes had been greatly affected +by the death of the subaltern. And for the first time John Stokes hung +his head. But beyond that and the quivering of his eyelashes he made no +sign. + +And it being a clear case the Judge-Advocate, as a Judge-Advocate may +do, elected not to sum up, and the prisoner was taken to the place from +whence he came. And the Court proceeded to consider their finding and +sentence, which finding and sentence, being signed by the President and +the Judge-Advocate, duly went its appointed way to the Confirming +Authority and there remained. For the General in Chief command in the +field was hard pressed with other and weightier matters, having reason +to believe that he would have to meet an attack of three Army Corps on a +front of eight miles with only one Division. Which belief turned out to +be true, and had for Sergeant John Stokes momentous consequences, as you +shall hear. + + +II + +When John Stokes found himself once more in charge of a platoon he was +greatly puzzled. He had been suddenly given back his arms and his belt, +which no prisoner, whether in close or open arrest, is supposed to wear, +and his guard had gone with him. He knew nothing about Paragraph 482 of +the King's Regulations, which contemplates "emergencies"; still less did +he know that an emergency had arisen--such an emergency as will cast +lustre upon British arms to the end of time. But that strange things +were happening ahead he knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly +made up as Falstaff's army: gunners, cooks, and A.S.C. drivers were all +lumped together to make a company. Some carried their rifles at the +slope and some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had not, certain +details from the Rifle Brigade marched with their own quick trot, and +some wore spurs. + +Of one thing he was thankful: his old battalion, wherever they were, +were not there. And the company commander coming along and perceiving +the stripes on his sleeve, had, without further inquiry, put him in +charge of a platoon, and thereafter he lost sight of his guard +altogether. + +He knew nothing of where he was. Few soldiers at the Front ever do: they +will be billeted in a village for a week and not know so much as the +name of it. But that big business was afoot was evident to him, for they +were marching in column of route almost at the double, under a faint +moon and in absolute silence--the word having gone forth that there was +to be no smoking or talking in the ranks. + +Not a sound was to be heard, except the whisper of the poplars and the +tramp of the men's feet upon the _pave_. The road was so greasy with mud +that it might have been beeswaxed, and Stokes's boots, the nails of +which had been worn down, kept slipping as on a parquet floor. As they +passed through the mean little villages not a light was to be seen; even +the _estaminets_ were shut, but now and again a dog barked mournfully at +its chain. Once a whispered command was given at the head of the column, +which halted so suddenly that the men behind almost fell upon the men in +front, and then backed hastily; and these movements were automatically +communicated all down the column, so that the sections of fours lurched +like the trucks of a train which is suddenly pulled up. At that moment +something flashed at the head of the column, and Stokes suddenly caught +a glimpse of the faces of the captain and the subaltern in an aureole of +light lit by the needle-like rays of an electric torch as they studied a +map and compass. + +But in no long time their ears told them they were nearing their +destination, even as a traveller learns that he is nearing the sea. For +they heard the crackle of musketry following upon the altercation of +guns. All this passed as in a dream, and it seemed little more than a +few minutes before Sergeant Stokes, having passed through a curtain of +shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some shallow support trenches to +which the remnants of the regiment whom they were called upon to stiffen +had fallen back. It was a critical moment: our first trenches were in +the hands of the enemy, and the whole line was sagging under the impact +of the German hordes. Somehow that trench had to be recaptured--to be +recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into an +invulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of machine-guns to sweep +with a crossfire the right and left flanks, where our line curved in +like a gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes knew as little +as is usually given to one platoon to know on a front of eight miles. + +As dawn broke and the stars paled, the word came down the line, and, in +a series of short rushes, stooping somewhat in the attitude of a man who +is climbing a very steep hill, they moved forward in extended order +about eight or ten paces apart carrying their rifles with bayonets +fixed. A hail-storm of lead greeted them, and all around him Sergeant +Stokes saw men falling, and as they fell lying in strange attitudes and +uncouth--some stumbling (he had seen a hare shot in the back dragging +its legs in just that way), others lying on their faces and clutching +the earth convulsively as they drummed with their feet, and some very +still. Overhead there was a sobbing and whimpering in the air. A little +ahead to the left of him a machine-gun was tap-tapping like a telegraph +instrument, and as it traversed the field of their advance the men went +down in swathes. + +If only he could get to that gun! On the right a low hedge ran at right +angles to the German trench, and making for it he took such little cover +as it afforded, and ran forward as he had never run before, not even on +that night of baneful memory. His heart was thumping violently, there +was a prodigious "stitch" in his side; and something warm was trickling +down his forehead into his eyes and half blinding him, while in his ears +the bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees. The next moment he +was up against a little knot of grey-coated figures with toy-like +helmets, he heard a word that sounded like "Himmel," and he had emptied +his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing, +parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very +faint.... + +That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For +the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense +distance--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was +coming to after a spell of gas--was saying something to him as he seemed +to be rising, rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable +depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and +then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at +the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent thing in +woman--was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was +impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew--he was in +hospital. + + +III + +"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a +certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field +Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious +case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making +hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up +all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had +been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking. +Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and +not reduced by one stripe." + +"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw +forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day +singing--singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of +course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a +few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that +cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to +breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of +sheer weariness--well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the +scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them, +but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made +us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at +that." + +The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the +table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial." +He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a +Parliamentary draughtsman. "Yes," he said, after some pertinent +emendations, "it'll do. But the title is too long for common use at +G.H.Q." + +"Why!" said the other with a certain paternal sensitiveness, "what do +you suggest?" + +"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pensively,--"I suggest we call it +Stokes's Act." + + * * * * * + +Now this story has one merit--if it has no other. It is true. And as +for the rest of the Act and its preamble, and its sections and its +sub-sections, are they not written in the Statute Book? In the Temple +they call it 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But out there they call it "Stokes's +Act." + + + + +X + +THE FRONT + + +Persons of a rheumatic habit are said to apprehend the approach of damp +weather by certain presentiments in their bones. So people of a nervous +temperament--like the writer--have premonitions of the approach to "the +Front" by a feeling of cold feet. These are usually induced by the +spectacle of large and untimely cavities in the road, but they may be +accentuated, as not infrequently happened, by seeing the process of +excavation itself--and hearing it. The effect on the auditory nerves is +known as "k-r-rump," which is, phonetically speaking, a fairly literal +translation. The best thing to do on such occasions is to obey the +nursery rhyme, and "open your mouth and shut your eyes." The intake of +air will relieve the pressure on your ear-drums. I have been told by one +of our gunners that the gentle German has for years been experimenting +in order to produce as "frightful" and intimidating a sound by the +explosion of his shells as possible. He has succeeded. Cases have been +known of men without a scratch laughing and crying simultaneously after +a too-close acquaintance with the German hymnology of hate. The results +are, however, sometimes disappointing from the German point of view, as +in the case of the soldier who, being spattered with dirt but otherwise +untouched, picked himself up, and remarked with profound contempt, "The +dirty swine!" + +The immediate approach to the trenches is usually marked by what sailors +call a "dodger," which is to say, a series of canvas screens. These do +not conceal your legs, and if you are exceptionally tall, they may not +conceal your head. Your feet don't matter, but if you are wise you duck +your head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate pride in walking +upright, and will laugh at you most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in +the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of +course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I +visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to +admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up +ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as +wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the +approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible, +the latter object being effected by frequent "traversing." To reach the +fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of +them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it +with innumerable junctions and small depots in the shape of dug-outs, +and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering +as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is +complicated by frequent traverses--something after the pattern of a +Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to +prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these +things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb +and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part +of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a +lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the +right and left of you. The delivery of a bomb serves as a very effective +notice of ejectment. The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of +earth commonly known as a parados. My servant, whose vocabulary was +limited, called it a paradox, and was not very wide of the mark. + +Somewhere behind the trenches at varying distances are the batteries. +The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their +guns, and if none are to be found they improvise them. Hop-poles +trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a +delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf +emplacements are constructed for the six guns, and turfed dug-outs house +the telephone-operator and the gunners. The battery officers are +billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farmhouse, whose chief +decorative feature is a midden-heap; in England it would promptly be the +subject of a closing order by any Public Health authority. + +There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun. As a ship answers her +helm or an aeroplane its controls, so does an eighteen-pounder respond +to every turn of her elevating and traversing gear. Watch a gunner +laying his gun on a target he cannot see; observe him switch the gun +round from the aiming point to the target; remark the way in which the +sight clinometer registers the angle of sight and the drum registers the +range; and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship that ever sailed +the high seas could be more docile to a turn of the wheel. With perfect +simplicity did a man in the R.F.A. once say to me, "We feel towards our +gun as a mother feels to her child; we'd sooner lose our lives than our +gun." In that confession of faith you have the whole of the gunner's +creed. + +The heavy guns are generally to be found in splendid isolation; one +such I visited and I marvelled at its appearance; it resembled nothing +so much as the mottled trunk of a decayed plane-tree except for its +girth. "Futurist art," explained the major deprecatingly as I stared at +its daubed surface; "it makes it unrecognisable." It certainly did. +Close by were what looked at a distance like a bed of copper cucumbers. +"More gardening?" I asked. "Yes, market gardening," replied the major; +"if we lay the shells like that with sand-bags between them we prevent +their igniting one another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver +the goods." + +A mile or two from the battery headquarters at X---- Y---- was the +observing station. The battery-major and myself were accompanied thither +by a huge mastiff who in civil life was a dairyman by profession and +turned a churn, but had long since attached himself to the major as +orderly. We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point the +mastiff stopped dead and declined to come any further. I thought this +churlish, and told him so, but he merely wagged his tail. When we +entered the farmyard I understood. It was pitted with shell-holes, and +they were obviously of very recent excavation. As a matter of fact the +Huns suspected that farm, and with good reason, and treated it to +intermittent "Hate." The mastiff therefore always waited for the +battery-major at what it judged, quite erroneously, to be a safe +distance. We clambered up into a loft by means of unreliable ladders. In +the roof of the loft some tiles had been removed, and leaning our arms +on the rafters we looked out. "You see that row of six poplars over +there?" said the Major, pointing to a place behind the German trenches. +I recognised them, for the same six poplars I had seen through a +periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a +house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned +to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft. "Lay No. 2 on the +register! Report when ready!" The operator repeated the words +confidentially to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the receiver +answered "Ready!" "Fire!" I had my eyes glued to the house, yet nothing +seemed to happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously with my +pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed? Even as I speculated there was a +puff of smoke and a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between the +poplars. We had delivered the goods. + +If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the +chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in +billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in +their habits, and change their positions according as they are wanted. +But a field ambulance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a unit +of the R.A.M.C, with a major or a colonel in charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S. +of a division has three field ambulances under him, and when an attack +in force is projected he mobilises these three units at forward dressing +stations in the rear of the trenches. They are a link between the +aid-posts in front and the collecting stations behind. From the +collecting stations the wounded are sent on to the clearing hospitals +and thence to the base. It sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The +most eloquent compliment to its perfection was the dreamy reminiscence +of a soldier I met at the base: "I got hit up at Wipers, sir; something +hit me in the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard somebody +saying 'Drink this,' and I found myself in bed at Boulogne." Every field +ambulance has an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he usually is. +Is the soldier sick, he visits him; penitent, he shrives him; dying, he +comforts him. One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two, and a +mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was often longing for a shot at +the Huns, and as often imposing penances upon himself for such +un-ghostly desires. He found consolation in confessing the Irishmen +before they went into the trenches: "The bhoys fight all the better for +it," he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his flock; the only +doubts he had were about his own. We all loved him. + +There is one great difference between life in billets and life in the +trenches. In billets the soldier "grouses" often, in trenches never. +This may be partly due to a very proper sense of proportion; it may also +be due to the fact that, the necessity for vigilance being relaxed and +the occasions for industry few, life in billets is apt to become a great +bore. The small Flemish and French towns offer few amenities; in our +mess we found our principal recreation in reunions with other +fraternities at the _patisserie_ or in an occasional mount. Of +_patisseries_ that at Bethune is the best; that at Poperinghe the worst. +Besides, the former has a piano and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In the +earlier stages of our occupation some of the officers at G.H.Q. did a +little coursing and shooting, but there was trouble about _delits de +chasse_, and now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big game--namely, +Germans--although I have heard of an irresponsible Irishman in the +trenches who vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more +remarkable, returned with it. Needless to say, his neighbours were +Saxons. As for the men, their opportunities of relaxation are more +circumscribed. Much depends on the house in which they are billeted. If +there is a baby, you can take the part of mother's help; one of the most +engaging sights I saw was a troop of our cavalrymen (they may have been +the A.V.C.) riding through Armentieres, leading a string of remounts, +each remount with a laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can wash. +If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has +the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like +Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a +pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other +with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the +inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think it indecent, or merely +eccentric; perhaps both. But then, as Anatole France has gravely +remarked, a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of chastity. +Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals has reminded us, cleanliness +of body is next to orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you +may, with God's grace, escape one or more of the seven plagues of +Flanders. These seven are lice, flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and +"souvenirs." The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean +cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsmanlike and irritating habits +they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not +entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too +much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from +an impassive man with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room. + +But it may well happen that in spite of babies, and baths, and brass +bands, and footballs, and boxing-gloves, and playing marbles (the +General in command of one of our divisions told me he had seen six +Argyll and Sutherland sergeants playing marbles with shrapnel bullets in +some support trenches), the men get bored. They are often very crowded, +and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate +shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his +neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may +become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander +sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a +good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in +the winter months, when out visiting Divisional Headquarters, did I, in +the shameful luxury of my car, come across a battalion slogging along +ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing with almost reproachful +unction: + + + Last night I s-s-aw you, I s-saw you, you naughty boy! + + +Some one ought to make an anthology (for private circulation only) of +the songs most affected by our men, and also of the topographical +Limericks with which they beguile the long hours in the trenches. And if +the English soldier is addicted to versifying it may be pleaded in his +behalf that, as Mommsen apologetically remarks of Caesar, "they were +weak verses." Not always, however, I have seen some unpublished verses +by a young officer on the staff of the late General Hubert Hamilton, a +man beloved by all who knew him, describing the burial of his dead chief +at night behind the firing-line, which in their sombre and elegiac +beauty are not unworthy to rank with the classical lines on the burial +of Sir John Moore. And there is that magnificent _Hymn before Battle_ by +Captain Julian Grenfell, surely one of the most moving things of its +kind. + +With such diversions do our men beguile the interminable hours. After +all it is the small things that men resent in life, not the big ones. I +once asked a French soldier over a game of cards--in civil life he was a +plumber, whom we shall meet again[7]--whether he could get any sleep in +the trenches amid the infernal din of the guns. "Oh, I slept pretty well +on the whole," he explained nonchalantly, "mais mon voisin, +celui-la"--he pointed reproachfully to a comrade who was imperturbably +shuffling the pack--"il ronflait si fort qu'il finissait par me +degouter." + +FOOTNOTE: + +[7] See Chapter XV. + + + + +XI + +AT G.H.Q.[8] + ++-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +| Billet de Logement. | +| | +| Mme. Bonnard, 131 rue Robert le Frisson, logera les sous-dits, | +| savoir: un officier, un sous officier, deux hommes; fournira le lit, | +| place au feu et a la chandelle, conformement a loi du 3 juillet, 1877.| +| Delivre a la Mairie, | +| le 31me Janvier, 1915. | +| Le Maire ---- | ++-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +The Camp Commandant, who is a keeper of lodging-houses and an Inspector +of Nuisances, had given me a slip of paper on which was inscribed the +address No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson and a printed injunction to the +occupier to know that by these presents she was enjoined to provide me +with bed, fire, and lights. Armed with this billeting-paper and +accompanied by my servant, a private in the Suffolks, who was carrying +my kit, I knocked at the door of No. 131, affecting an indifference to +my reception which I did not feel. It seemed to me that a +rate-collector, presenting a demand note, could have boasted a more +graceful errand. The door opened and an old lady in a black silk gown +inquired, "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, M'sieu'?" I presented my +billeting-paper with a bow. Her waist was girt with a kind of +bombardier's girdle from which hung a small armoury of steel implements +and leather scabbards: scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a +button-hook, and other more or less intimidating things. "Jeanne," she +called in a quavering voice, and as the _bonne_ appeared, tying her +apron-strings, they read the billeting-paper together, the one looking +over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading the words as a child +reads, and as though she were speaking to herself. The paper shook in +her tremulous hands, and I could see that she was very old. It was +obvious that my appearance in that quiet household was as agitating as +it was unexpected. "Et votre ordonnance?" she asked, with a glance at my +servant. "Non, il dort dans la caserne." "Bien!" she said, and with a +smile made me welcome. + + +It was soon evident that, my credentials being once established, I was +to be regarded as a member of the household, and nothing would satisfy +Madame but that I should be assured of this. Having shown me my bedroom, +with its pompous bed draped with a tent of curtains, she took me on a +tour of her _menage_. I was conducted into the kitchen, bright with +copper pans and the _marmite_--it was as sweet and clean as a dairy; the +resources of the still-room were displayed to me, and the confitures and +spices were not more remarkable than the domestic pharmacy in which the +herbs of the field had been distilled by Madame's own hands to yield +their peculiar virtues, rue for liver, calamint for cholera, plantain +for the kidneys, fennel for indigestion, elderberry for sore throat, and +dandelion for affections of the blood. Then I was shown the oak presses +full of linen white as snow and laid up in lavender. This inventory +being concluded, I was presented with a key of the front door to mark my +admission into the freedom of the house, and invited to take a glass of +Burgundy while Sykes was unpacking my kit upstairs. + +Madame, it seemed, was a widow of eighty-five years of age, without +issue, and if her eyes were dim and her natural force abated, her teeth, +as she proudly told me, were her own. She obviously belonged to that +_rentier_ class who spend the evening of their days in the quiet town +which serves as G.H.Q.--a town which has a kind of faded gentility, and +which, behind its inscrutable house-fronts, conceals a good deal of +quiet opulence in the matter of old china, silver, and oak. In her youth +Madame had kept a _pension_ and had had English demoiselles among her +charges. She had never been to England but she had heard of "Hyde Park." +Did I know it? She received my assurance with obvious gratification as +though it established a personal intimacy between us. "Avez-vous tue des +Allemands?" My negative answer left her disappointed but hopeful. + +"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?" interjected the _bonne_, who, I +afterwards found, had a husband at the war. Those interrogatories were +to become very familiar to me. Every evening, when I returned from my +visits to Divisional and Brigade Headquarters, mistress and servant +always put me through the same catechism: + +"Avez-vous tue des Allemands?" + +"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?" + +The immense seriousness, not to say solicitude, with which these +inquiries were addressed to me eventually led me into the most +enterprising mendacities. I killed a German every day, greatly to +Madame's satisfaction, and my total bag when I came away was +sufficiently remarkable to be worth a place in an official _communique_. +I think it gave Madame a feeling of security, and I hoped Jeanne might +consider that it appreciably accelerated the end of the war. But +"Guillaume," as she always called him, was the principal object of +Madame's aversion, and she never mentioned the name of the All-Highest +without a lethal gesture as she drew her tremulous hand across her +throat and uttered the menacing words: "Couper la gorge." She often +uttered these maledictions to Sykes in the kitchen, as she watched him +making the toast for my breakfast, and I have no doubt that the "Oui, +Madame," with which he invariably assented, gave her great satisfaction. +Doubtless it made her feel that the heart of the British Army was sound. +Sykes used to study furtively a small book called _French, and how to +speak it_, but he was very chary of speaking it, and seemed to prefer a +deaf-and-dumb language of his own. But he was naturally a man of few +words, and phlegmatic. He described the first battle of Ypres, in which +he had been "wownded," in exactly twenty-four words, and I could never +get any more out of him, though he became comparatively voluble on the +subject of his wife at Norwich and the twins. He was an East Anglian, +and made four vowels do duty for five, his e's being always pronounced +as a's; he had done his seven years' "sarvice" with the colours, and was +a reservist; he was an admirable servant--steady, cool, and honest. I +imagine he had never acted as servant to any of his regimental officers, +for on the first occasion when he brought up my breakfast I was not a +little amused to observe that the top of the egg had been carefully +removed, the rolls sliced and buttered, and the bread and butter cut +into slender "fingers," presumably for me to dip into the ochreous +interior of the egg; it reminded me of my nursery days. Perhaps he was +in the habit of doing it for the twins. I gently weaned him from this +tender habit. He performed all his duties, such as making my bed, or +handing me a letter, with quick automatic movements as though he were +presenting arms. Also his face, which was usually expressionless as +though his mind were "at ease," had a way of suddenly coming to +"attention" when you spoke to him. He had a curious and recondite +knowledge of the folk-lore of the British Army, and entertained me at +times with stories of "Kruger's Own," "The White Shirts," "The Dirty +Twelfth," "The Holy Boys," "The Saucy Seventh," having names for the +regiments which you will never find in the _Army List_. In short, he was +a survival and in a way a tragic survival. For how many of the old Army +are left? I fear very few, and many traditions may have perished with +them. + +In his solicitude for me Sykes had jealous rivals in Madame and Jeanne. +Madame reserved to herself as her peculiar prerogative the deposit of a +hot-water "bottle" in my bed every night, such a hot-water bottle as I +have never seen elsewhere. It reminded me of nothing so much as the +barrel of one of the newer machine-guns, being a long fluted cylinder of +black steel. This was always borne by Madame every night in ritualistic +procession, Jeanne following with a silver candlestick and a +night-light. The ceremony concluded with a bow and "good-night," two +words of which Madame was inordinately proud. She never attained +"good-morning," but she more than supplied the deficiency of English +speech by the grace of her French manners, always entering my room at 8 +A.M. as I lay in bed, with the greeting, "Bon matin, M'sieu', +avez-vous bien dormi?" Perhaps I looked, as I felt, embarrassed on the +first occasion, for she quickly added in French, "I am old enough to be +your mother"--as indeed she was. She had at once the resignation in +repose and the agitation in action of extreme old age. I have seen her +dozing in her chair in the salon, as I passed through the hall, with her +gnarled hands extended on her knees in just that attitude of quiet +waiting which one associates with the well-known engraving in which +Death is figured as the coming of a friend. But when she was on her feet +she moved about with a kind of aimless activity, opening drawers and +shutting them and reopening them and speaking to herself the while, +until Jeanne, catching my puzzled expression, would whisper loudly in +my ear with a tolerant smile, "Elle est tres VIEILLE." Jeanne had +acquired a habit of raising her voice, owing to Madame's deafness, which +resulted in her whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those +stage asides which, by a curious convention, while audible at the very +back of the dress circle, are quite inaudible to the other characters on +the stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these auricular confidences I +know not. If she did, I doubt if she regarded them, for she was under +the illusion, common to very old people who live in the society of a +younger generation and were mature adults when their companions were +merely adolescent, that Jeanne, who had entered her service as a child, +had never grown up. If Madame seemed "tres vieille" to Jeanne, it was +indisputable that Jeanne continued "tres jeune" to Madame. She was, +indeed, firmly convinced that she was looking after Jeanne, whereas in +truth it was Jeanne who looked after her. For Jeanne was at least +thirty-five, with a husband at the war, in virtue of whom she enjoyed a +separation allowance of one franc a day, and a boy for whom she received +ten sous. Her husband, a _pompier_, got nothing. It never occurred to +her to regard this provision as inadequate. And she was as capable as +she was contented, and sang at her work. + +It was often difficult to believe that this quiet backwater was within +an hour or two of the trenches. G.H.Q. was indeed situated well back +behind "the Front," which, however precise the maps in the newspapers +may affect to make it, is, like the Equator of our school-books, a more +or less "imaginary line drawn across the earth's surface." Imaginary +because if a line be, as we were taught with painful reiteration, length +without breadth, then "the Front" is not a line at all, much less a +straight line in the sense of the shortest distance between two points. +It is not straight, for it curves and sags and has its salients and +re-entrant angles; and it is not a line, for it has breadth as well as +length. Broadly speaking, the Front extends back to the H.Q. of the +armies (to say nothing of the H.Q. of corps, divisions, and brigades), +and thence to G.H.Q. itself, which may be regarded as being "the Back of +the Front," to vary a classical expression of _Punch_. The Front is, +indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened +fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of +communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we +extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just +expand our fan a little more. When we come to make a general advance all +along the periphery, the whole fan will be thrust forward, and the +knuckle with it, for the relative distances of General Headquarters, +and minor Headquarters, from this periphery and from one another are a +more or less constant quantity, being determined by such fixed +considerations as the range of modern guns and the mobility of +transport. + +From G.H.Q., the brain of the Army, the volitional centre of the whole +organism, radiate the sensory and motor nerves by which impressions at +the Front are registered and plans for action transmitted. It is the +home of the Staff, not of the Armies, and contains more "brass hats" +than all the other Headquarters put together. Beyond the "details" in +the barracks it contains few of the rank and file, and its big square +betrays little of the crowded animation of the towns nearer the fighting +line, with their great parks of armoured cars, motor lorries, and +ammunition waggons, their filter-carts, and their little clusters and +eddies of men resting in billets. The Military Police on point-duty have +a comparatively quiet time, although despatch-riders are, of course, for +ever whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the Front. It is as +full of departmental offices as Whitehall itself--some 153 of them to be +exact--each one indicated by a combination of initial letters, for staff +officers are men of few words and cogent, and it saves time to say "O." +when you mean Operations, "I." for Intelligence, "A.G." for +Adjutant-General; a fashion which is faithfully followed at the other +H.Q., for D.A.A.Q.M.G. saves an enormous number of polysyllables. + +Hence the proximity of hostilities has left but little outward and +visible sign upon the ancient town. The tradesmen have, it is true, made +some concessions to our presence, and one remarks the inviting legends +"Top-hole Tea" in the windows of a _patisserie_ and "High life" over the +shop of a tailor. Four of us made a private arrangement with a buxom +housewife, whereby, in return for four francs per head a day and the +pooling of our rations, she undertook to provide us with lunch and +dinner, thereby establishing a "Mess" of our own. Many such fraternities +there were in the absence of a regular regimental mess. But these +arrangements were more private than military, the only obligation on the +ordinary householder being the furnishing of billets. Occasionally the +cobbled streets became the scene of an unwonted animation when young +French recruits celebrated their call to the colours by marching down +the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German +prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which +they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd. One such squad I saw +arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down +to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen +stones, landed heavily in his ammunition boots from a height of about +five feet on the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter winced +and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond that gave no sign; I wondered +whether, had the positions been reversed and the scene laid across the +Rhine, a German guard would have exhibited a similar tolerance. I doubt +it. + +The town itself seemed to be living on its past, for indubitably it had +seen better days. An ancient foundation of the Jesuits now converted +into the Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a church whose huge +nave had been secularised to the uses of motor transport, a museum which +served to incarcerate the German prisoners, all testified to the +vanished greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a +kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double +doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking +of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and +secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no +great effort of the imagination--especially at night when not a light +showed--to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch +which they must have witnessed some centuries before. The very names of +the streets--such as the _Rue d'Arbalete_--held in them something of +romance. To find one's billet at night was like a game of blind man's +buff, and one felt rather than saw one's way. Not a soul was to be seen, +for the whole town was under _droit de siege_, and the civilian +inhabitants had to be within doors by nine o'clock, while all the +entrances and exits to and from the town were guarded by double sentries +night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry, +and my own office boasted a corporal's guard--presumably because the +Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly +medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed +an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every +morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the precincts +were not without a certain beauty, and every side of the town was +approached through an avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the +sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just +that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to +the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De +Vigny's known to literature as _Laurette_. + +Such was the country and such the town in which we were billeted. Now +upon a morning in February it happened that I was smoking a cigarette in +the little garden, bordered by hedges of box, while waiting for my car, +and as I waited I watched Jeanne, with her sleeves rolled up to her +elbows and a clothes-peg in her mouth, busy over the wash-tub. "Vous +etes une blanchisseuse, aujourd'hui?" I remarked. She corrected me. +"Non, m'sieu', une lessiveuse." "Une lessiveuse?" For answer Jeanne +pointed to a linen-bag which was steeping in the tub. The linen-bag +contained the ashes of the beech-tree; it is a way of washing that they +have in some parts of France, and very cleansing. To specialise thus is +_lessiver_. As we talked in this desultory fashion I let fall a word +concerning a journey I was about to undertake to the French lines, a +journey that would take me over the battlefield of the Marne. "La Marne! +Helas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped her eyes with the corner +of her apron. "But it was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes, but +Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the battle of the Marne. She +pulled out of her bosom a frayed letter, bleached, stained, and +perforated with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed it to me. +I could make nothing of it. She handed me another letter. "Son +camarade," she explained, and no longer attempted to hide her tears. +And this was what I read: + + + Le 10 sept., 1914. + + CHERE MADAME--Comme j'etais tres bon camarade avec votre frere Paul + Duval et que le malheur vient de lui arriver, je tient a vous le + faire savoir, car peut-etre vous serai dans l'inquietude de pas + recevoir de ces nouvelles et de ne pas savoir ou il est. Je vous + dirai que je vient de lui donner du papier a lettre et une enveloppe + pour vous ecrire et aussitot la lettre finit il l'a mis dans son + kepi pour vous l'envoye le plus vite possible et malheureusement un + obus est arriver, et il a etait tue. Heureusement nous etions trois + pres de l'un l'autre et il n'y a eut de lui de touche. Je vous envoi + la petite lettre qu'il venait de vous faire, et en meme tant vous + verrez les trous que les eclats d'obus l'on attrapper. Recevez de + moi chere madame mes sinceres salutations. + + JULES COPPEE. + + Tambour au 151e Regiment d'Inf., + 2e Cie 42e Division, Secteur postale 56. + + +Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble +simplicity. "Tres gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and +thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much +circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple +request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne--yes? I +assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and +perhaps if he found it he would take a photograph. "Why, certainly," I +said, little knowing what I promised. But the request was to have a +strange sequel, as you shall hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the +door. As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell, Madame and +Jeanne stood on the doorstep to wish me _bon voyage_. "J'espere que vous +tuerez plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering voice. +"Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried Jeanne wistfully. I waved my +hand, and had soon left rue Robert le Frisson far behind me. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[8] The town described in this sketch is described not as it is, but as +it was some months ago, and nothing is to be inferred from the title as +to its present significance. + + + + +XII + +MORT POUR LA PATRIE + + +Two days later a French staff-officer greeted me in the vestibule of the +Hotel de Crillon at Paris. It was the Comte de G----; he had been +deputed by the Ministry of War to act as my escort on my tour of the +French lines. He proved to be a charming companion. He was a magnificent +figure of a man six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of +dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard, embroidered in gold +with a design of forked lightning, which is the prerogative of the +staff. A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy furs +awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde. It was a sumptuous car, +upholstered in green corded silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying +on its panels the motto _Quand meme_, and the monogram of a famous +actress. It had been requisitioned. The air was cold--there had been +frost overnight--but the sun was brilliant. As we threaded our way +through Paris and its suburbs, a Paris chastened and resolute, I caught +a glimpse of the barges upon the Seine with the women standing on the +convex hatches hanging out clothes to dry--and I thought of Daudet and +_La Belle Nivernaise_. As more and yet more men are called up to the +colours women take their place, until the houses of business are like +nunneries--with a few aged Fathers Superior. Having had business the day +before at the Societe Generale, I had had occasion to reflect on these +things as I stood in the counting-house watching some fifty girl typists +at work, the room resounding with the tap-tap of their machines, as +though fifty thrushes were breaking snails upon a stone. A wizened +little clerk, verging upon superannuation, had beguiled my time of +waiting with talk of the war: how his wife from Picardy had lost fifteen +of her _parents_, while of four painters and paper-hangers who had +started doing up his flat on the 2nd of July only one--disabled--had +returned to finish the job; the rest were dead. Musing on these things +as we drove through the Bois de Vincennes I understood the resolution of +our Allies and the significance of the things my companion pointed out +to me as we drove: here a row of trees felled to provide a field of +fire, there a gun emplacement, and reserve trenches all the way from +Paris to Soissons. They are leaving nothing to chance. + +Our journey was uneventful until we reached Coulommiers, where we had +certain inquiries to make which have nothing to do with this narrative. +We interviewed the _maire_ in his parlour at the Hotel de Ville, a +little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German +occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the +lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of +municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of +deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to +the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the +faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy +also. Doubtless it appeals to their sinister sense of humour, when two +of their own men get drunk and shoot at one another, to execute a French +citizen by way of punishment. It happened that during the German +occupation of Coulommiers the gas supply gave out. The _maire_ was +informed by a choleric commandant that unless gas were forthcoming in +twenty-four hours he would be shot. The little man replied quietly: +"M'eteindre, ce n'est pas allumer le gaz." This illuminating remark +appears to have penetrated the dark places of the commandant's mind, and +although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all +called up to the colours) the _maire_ was not molested. It was here +that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch) +of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in +amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who, +having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a +horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town. As to what became of +him afterwards nothing was known, but the worst was suspected. The Huns +have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders +and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a +cruel death. + +At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La +Ferte-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne, +approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible +for many miles. Here we had lunch at the inn--a dish of perch caught +that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for +which La Ferte is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and +excellent vintage. The landlord's wife waited on us with her own hands, +and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town. +The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much +frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous +losses on the pigs of La Ferte. It reminded me of the satirical +headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great +slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize--"Les +Bosches s'entregorgent!" Madame told us with much spirit how she had +saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far +more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the +Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the +cellar. Her pig is now a local celebrity. People come from afar to see +the pig which escaped the Bosches. For the pigs whom the Bosches love +are apt to die young. But what had impressed her most was the treatment +meted out by a German officer, a certain von Buelow, who was quartered at +the inn, to one of his men. The soldier had been ordered to stick up a +lantern outside the officer's quarters, and had been either slow or +forgetful. Von Buelow knocked him down, and then, as he lay prostrate, +jumped upon him, kicked him, and beat him about the head and face with +sabre and riding-whip. The soldier lay still and uttered not a cry. +Madame shuddered at the recollection, "Epouvantable!" + +We crossed the _place_ and called on a prominent burgess. He received us +hospitably. In the hall of his house was a Uhlan's lance with drooping +pennon which excited our curiosity. How had it come here? He was only +too pleased to explain. He had taken it from a marauding Uhlan with whom +he had engaged in single combat, strangling him with his own hands--so! + + + I took by the throat the circumcised dog + And smote him, thus! + + +He held out a pair of large fat hands of the consistency of clay; he was +of a full habit and there were pouches under his eyes. In England he +would have been a small tradesman, with strong views on total +abstinence, accustomed to a diet of high tea, and honoured as the +life-long superintendent of a Sunday school. I was more astonished than +sceptical, but perhaps, as the Comte suggested in a whisper, the Uhlan +was drunk. Here, too, we heard tales of loot, especially among ladies' +wardrobes. It is a curious fact that there is nothing the Hun loves so +much as women's underclothing. As to what happens when he gets hold of +the _lingerie_ many scandalous stories are told, and none more +scandalous than the one which appeared in the whimsical pages of _La Vie +Parisienne_. But that is, most emphatically, quite another story. + +From La Ferte we drove on to Lizy, where the gendarme, wiping his mouth +as he came hurriedly from the inn, told us a harrowing tale, and then to +Barcy, where the _maire_, though busy with a pitch-fork upon a manure +heap, received us with municipal gravity. We were now nearing the +battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the +trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by +lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral +beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a +team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing +machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an +oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional +passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. As we raced +along, the furrows, running at right angles to the road, seemed to be +eddying away from us in pleats and curves, and this illusion of a +stationary car in a whirling landscape was fortified by the contours of +the countryside, which were those of a great plain, great as any sea, +stretching away to a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly the car slowed +down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound +was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing +machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a +breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked +around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against +small wooden staves. It was the battlefield of the Marne, the scene of +that immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted the sons of France +to conquer or die where they stood. As he had commanded, so had they +done. With an emotion too deep for words we each contemplated these +plaintive memorials of the heroes who lay where they fell. Our orderly +wept and made no effort to hide his tears. I thought of Jeanne's wistful +petition, but my heart sank, for these graves were to be numbered not by +hundreds but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible!" said the +Comte, to whom I had communicated my quest. A sudden cry from the +orderly, who was moving from grave to grave in a close scrutiny of the +inscriptions, arrested us. He was standing by a wooden cross, half +draped by a tattered blue coat and covered with wreaths of withered +myrtle. A kepi pierced with holes lay upon the grave. And sure enough, +by some miracle of coincidence, he had found it. On a wooden slab we +read these words: + + + PAUL DUVAL, + 151e Reg. d'Inf. + 6 sept. 1914 + MORT POUR LA PATRIE. + + +The sun was fast declining over the chalk hills and it grew bitter cold. +I unfolded my camera, stepped back eight paces, and pressed the trigger. +We clambered back into the car and resumed the road to Meaux. As I +looked over my shoulder the last things I saw in the enfolding twilight +were those little flags still fluttering wistfully in the wind. + + + + +XIII + +MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS + + +We lay the night at Meaux. It was a town which breathed the enchantments +of the Middle Ages and had for me the intimacy of a personal +reminiscence. Sixteen years earlier, when reading for a prize essay at +Oxford, I had studied the troubled times of Etienne Marcel in the +treasures of the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, and I knew every +kilometre of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux, Compiegne, +Senlis--they called to my mind dreamy hours in the dim religious light +of muniment-rooms and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart. +Little did I think when I read those belligerent chronicles in the +sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian and the Bibliotheque Nationale, +tracing out the warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the Dauphin +and the Provost of the Merchants, that the day would come when I would +be traversing these very fields engaged in detective enterprises upon +the footprints of contemporary armies. To compare the _variae +lectiones_ of two manuscripts concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish +is good, it has all the excitement of the chase; but to be collating the +field note-book of a living Hun with the _dossier_ of a contemporary +Justice de Paix, this is better. It has all the contact of reality and +the breathless joy of the hue and cry. And, after all, were things so +very different? Generations come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but +the earth endureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and valleys +that have witnessed the devastation of the Hun have also seen the +ravages of the mercenaries and free companies of the Middle Age. As I +lay in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the pages of my pocket +volume of M. Zeller's _Histoire de France racontee par les +contemporains_, and hit on the "Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marches," +ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of widows' houses. And as I +read, it seemed as though I were back in the department _du Contentieux_ +of the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages of a German +officer's field note-book. For thus speaks Aimerigot Marches in the +delectable pages of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern French: + + + There is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of + the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How + blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on a rich + abbe, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from + Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with + the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices + from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours + or was to ransom at our sweet will. Every day we had more money. + The peasants of Auvergne and Limousin provisioned us and brought to + our camp corn and meal, and baked bread, hay for the horses and + straw for their litter, good wines, oxen, and fine fat sheep, + chicken, and poultry. We carried ourselves like kings and were + caparisoned as they, and when we rode forth the whole country + trembled before us. Par ma foi, cette vie etait bonne et belle. + + +Is not that your very Hun? He is a true reversion to type. Only, whereas +among the French he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans he +is a product of the kultured present. And to turn from the field +note-book of the German soldier with its swaggering tale of loot, lust, +and maudlin cups, its memoranda of stolen toys for Felix and of ravished +lingerie for Bertha, all viewed in the rosy light of the writer's +egotism as a laudable enterprise, to the plain depositions of the +Justice de Paix, and see the reverse side of the picture with its tale +of ruined homes and untilled fields, was just such an experience as it +had been to turn from the glittering pages of Froissart to the sombre +story of Jean de Venette,[9] a monk of Compiegne, Little Brother of the +Poor and chronicler of his times, as he pondered on these things in the +scriptorium: + + + In this year 1358, the vines, source of that beneficent liquor + which gladdens the heart of man, were no longer cultivated; the + fields were neither tilled nor sown; the oxen and the sheep went no + longer to the pasture. The churches and houses, falling into decay, + presented everywhere traces of devouring flames or sombre ruins and + smouldering. The eye was no longer gladdened as before with the + sight of green meadows and yellowing harvests, but rather afflicted + by the aspect of briers and thistles, which clustered everywhere. + The church bells no longer rang joyously to call the faithful to + the divine offices, but only to give the alarm to the peasants at + the approach of the enemy and the signal for flight. + + +As it was in the days of Jean de Venette, so it is now. I thought of +that mournful passage as I wandered next day among the ruins of +Choisy-au-Bac, a village not twenty miles from the place where Jean de +Venette was born, and saw old women cowering among the ruins of their +burnt-out homes. + +If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century returned to Meaux to-day +he would have little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for +though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little. +The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of +the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century, +and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window--though +it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the +flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent +adventures when he feels the first chill of age--is stamped with the +characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would +find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for +like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in +procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and +white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty +consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And +it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German +occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese +like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting a +_maire_, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he +fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See. +Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little +house--surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which +there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and +his biretta. + +We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial +mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and, +having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I +applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open +the window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least +responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made +demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite +simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before. +With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hotel +de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning, +and thus also had the aged waiter at the Metropole disposed of a +flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough; +gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and +in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was +purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and +imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after +all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could +hear the thunder of their guns. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[9] Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de +Nangis. See M. Lacabane in the _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_ (1e +serie), t. iii. + + + + +XIV + +THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS + + +We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away +betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a +flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crepy-en-Valois we entered the Forest +of Compiegne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and +grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead +in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a +sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs +and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like +figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when +men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums +beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the +silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the +charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to +certain soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain +in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern +guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough, +as we drove into Compiegne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as +our own, in their mouse-coloured _couvre-casques_ and cavalry cloaks, +though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal +conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood +about the square in front of the exquisite Hotel de Ville, with its +high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many +pinnacles. North and east of Compiegne lie the zones of the respective +armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our +passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass +appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to +the south of us between Compiegne and Paris. + +The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to +the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of +spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made +patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the +blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of +the more distant woodlands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we +neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon +the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer +appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of +trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms--just such an avenue as that +along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbe +Lantaigne--yet not a soul was to be seen upon the _trottoir_. A brooding +silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost +menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which +froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing +perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay +with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose. +And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers, +blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry. +And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise +as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as +porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon +these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out. + +In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was +not until we sought out the house of a captain of dragoons, a friend of +my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. +The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge, +and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as +he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he +were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of +which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the +impact of bullets. And this was his tale. + +One afternoon early in September--it was the second day of the month, he +remembered it because there had been an untimely frost over night--he +heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of the town, and a column +of grey-coated men suddenly appeared in the street. An officer blew a +whistle, and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion, +the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears +and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms +he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the +tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there +panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of +furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. +And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And after that +silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands +and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; +he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of +smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked +and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge +heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid +himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied +with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a +lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry +and sang lustily--the concierge thought they had been drinking; they +sang thus, "_comme ca!_" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a +tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his +life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn: + + + Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott. + + +Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile the _maire_, M. Odent, a good man and +greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hotel de Ville. His secretary +proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the _maire_ tranquilly, +"one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb +of Chammont, the headquarters of von Kluck, and his guards buffeted him +and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death. +He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them--"tres +dignement," the concierge had been told--handed them his papers, and +bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into +a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it +the next day; the feet were protruding. + +All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as +he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he +spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed +to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu +he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our +salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round +towards Compiegne. I shall never see Senlis again. + + + + +III + +UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES + + + + +XV + +A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" + + Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la + guerre. Manier des armes, revetir l'uniforme, monter a cheval ou + marcher au commandement, _etre redoutable sans cesser d'etre + aimable_, depasser le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grace + s'il se peut, defier l'ennemi, connaitre l'aventure, jouer ce qui a + peu dure, ce qui est encore illusion, reve, ambition, ce qui est + encore une beaute, o jeunesse, voila ce que vous aimez! Vous n'etes + pas liee, vous n'etes pas fanee, vous pouvez courir le + monde.--RENE BAZIN, _Recits du temps de la guerre_. + + +Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda--never had I seen such a +multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind +congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them +everywhere--Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage +of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital--orderly, +subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors +and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of +wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights +extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single cafe, +faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which +the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz +and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all +either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the +colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from +the _Mairie_ at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at +street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle, +held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old +woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and +hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so +far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured +motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a +stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their +insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by +rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm +beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything, +accentuated; much was "defendu," and many things which were still lawful +were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones--it was only the +wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were +the picture postcards in the shops--I had forgotten them--nothing more +characteristically _macabre_ have I ever seen. One such I bought one +morning--a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden +horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the +horse--I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai due le +cavalier, foila le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Heros." + + +It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war, +that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The +ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and +it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing +cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had +answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garcon!" in a big Paris hotel, +and was now a _sous-officier_ in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds +received in the thick of the fighting round Muelhausen. He was enjoying +his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he +confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly +satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he +not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your +own job--particularly if he does it badly? The _sous-officier_ nearly +wept with joy when, a moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With +him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner +which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's +vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye +while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a +distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his +chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked +on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the +voluptuous pages of _La Vie Parisienne_. + +The _sous-officier_, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a +histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge +of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and +followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended +his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the +height of the leaping earth. + +"_Quinze metres--comme ca, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!_ And +they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (_sur l'epaule_)--so! +They shoot under the arm (_sous le bras_)--so! And they like to join +hands like children--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the +wood crouching like dogs--one behind the other. They are a bad +lot--_canaille_. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on +church-towers. There was one of our sappers--_diable!_ they tied him to +a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him." + +"But you make them pay for that?" + +He smiled grimly. "_Mais oui!_ When they see us they throw everything +away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, '_Pas +de mal, Alsatien_.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through +them like butter and say, '_Pour vous!_' A little _etrenne_, you know, +monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim +recollection. + +"_Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!_[10] _Ja!_" It was the Alsatian who +was speaking. + +"_Sie sprechen Deutsch!_"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment. + +"_Ja, ich kann nicht anders--um so mehr schade!_"[12] he replied +mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having +deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear +him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way +the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I +interpolated, "it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get +away like yourself." + +"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German +army. They watch us--and they put Prussian _sous-officiers_ over us to +spy. So when we see the _sous-officier_ sneaking about, we raise our +voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when +we are alone--well, then we say what we think." + +And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits--how +they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies, +like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the +knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources +of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied +territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other +such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful +silence and then told a tale. + +"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my +company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good--not +too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"--he bowed +apologetically to me--"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he +talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our +captain noticed something--two things. First, monsieur, the English +officer was very troubled with his eyes--he was always applying a large +white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the +English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was +the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly--the weather +was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground +was too wet. And the German shells--they begin to fall right in the +midst of us--they had been so wide before. So the captain was very +concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very +politely and says he had better see the doctor. A _sous-officier_ and +two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor' +was the _liaison_ officer with our brigade--an English officer. And he +finds that the officer is a spy--a Bosche. He have no more trouble with +his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to +spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that. + +"You like the bayonet?" I asked. + +"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a _bon enfant_," said the +_sous-officier_. "And they can't fence (_escrimer_), the Bosches--they +are too _lourds_. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men +fought like tiger-cats--so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no +one said a word. Nor a sound except the clash of steel." His eyes +flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go +through them--they grunt, _comme un cochon_." Perhaps I shuddered +slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (_ruses +honteuses_). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands +after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave +a snort of contempt. + +"What do they cry?" + +"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German +pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a +minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had +wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any +longer. And so perish all Germans! + +The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards. +"We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispassionately. +"Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many +dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were +leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire--such a +stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been +killed with the bayonet--they are quite black. I suppose it's the +grease." + +"The grease?" + +"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting +rusty." + +He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a +battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The +reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further +recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French +shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans--they had been surprised by a +shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in +their hands, monsieur, just as you see us--and they hadn't got a +scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre." + +"Yes," said the _sous-officier_, "I have seen them like that. I remember +I found a big Bosche--six feet four he must have been--sitting dead in a +house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there +like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff--yes! _comme +une poupee_. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not one! And do you +know what he had on--a woman's chemise! _Ecoutez!_" he added suddenly, +and he held up a monitory hand. + +Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat +of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the +measure--who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a trumpet. The +door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing +a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas +"crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his +heels. + +Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice: + + + Allons! enfants de la Patrie! + + +A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown +down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The +others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The +Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of +his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops, +with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick +child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default +of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage +way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum, +more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant +cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed! +To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying +men with its _viaticum_. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has +exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to +the side of men: + + + Tout est soldat pour vous combattre: + S'ils tombent, nos jeunes heros, + La terre en produit de nouveaux + Contre vous tout prets a se battre. + Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons: + Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. + + +As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor +on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of +joy: + + + Le jour de gloire est arrive! + + +It was the note of the conqueror. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians! + +[11] You speak German! + +[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity! + + + + +XVI + +PETER + + +My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his +sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term +as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly +confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up +their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without +reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of +many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the +cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill +like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one +might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite. +The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional +slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous +stones, was unmistakable. + +"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We +knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel +every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the +silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from +the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we +heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down +and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, +the upturned faces of the men. + +"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French +soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that _vade mecum_ (price +one penny) of the British soldier: _French, and how to speak it_. It was +night, not day, but that didn't matter. + +"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us. + +"Good-night"--"Good-night, old chap"--"Good-night, my son"--the men +shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely +saluted. + +"It's Peter," said T----; "he'll be frightfully bucked up." + +"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the +rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the +bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure +in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window. + +"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The +light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's +shoulder from the window. + +"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They +saluted me! Did _you_ see?" he said, turning to me. + +"I did, Major Peter." + +"You're kidding!" + +"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you +commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future +to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to +salute you too, now." + +This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to +Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always +addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was +ordering him to bed. At such times--there was a nightly contest on the +matter--the paternal authority could not afford to concede any +prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be +reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning. + +"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know +lots of officers up there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly. +Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his +preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and +domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards. +"Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from +his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of +_The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_, _The Cock-House at Fellsgarth_, and +Newbolt's _Pages from Froissart_. Peter was rather eclectic in his +tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents +of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his +father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys' +jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental +inventory of them: + + + (1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers. + + (2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun + requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground. + + (3) A miniature aeroplane--the wings rather crumpled as though the + aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent. + + (4) A knife. + + (5) Several pieces of string. + + (6) A coloured "alley." + + (7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord + Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien. + + (8) A top. + + (9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops. + + +For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was +certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being +included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than +some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber +officers at the Front. + +The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter +piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in +which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and +graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and +proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole +business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated +airman. + +"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the +aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast. + +"It's me, Captain S----," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend +----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He's +attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first +time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather +a personage. + +The Captain and I discussed the merits of the new Lewis machine-gun, +while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and +monoplanes. + +"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in +an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for +Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a +Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views. +He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is +now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the +prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him +that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my +question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was +mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked. + +Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties +which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the +public service--the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian +Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or +Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether +it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of +Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in +the R.F.A., saved a battery at X---- Y----. Another is the chief of the +most mysterious of our public services--a man who speaks little and +listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who +changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a +price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He +neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands +an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this +uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle Dick's got eyes like +gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public +Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know +such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored +expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the +counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of +the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most, +although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to +know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it +_The Man behind the Scenes_. + +Such was Peter's family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he +feared God, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had +promised Peter that he would let him see the new Lewis machine-gun. It +is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the +bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the +back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in +this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of +Peter's private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged +his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded +to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This +interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful. + +"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked. + +"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"--Peter now calls other +boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a +West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as +"niggers"--"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must +send them something." + +He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with +the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That's from Jackson +minor," he said. "Cheek, isn't it?" + +I began reading the letter aloud. + + + DEAR OLD PAN--You must be having a ripping time. I see + your letter is headed "The Front" ... + + +I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably. + + + ... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully + bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's.... + + +"What's Fenner's?" I said to Peter. + +"Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end +of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term. +But we beat them at footer." + + + We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder + Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I + showed him the envelope of your letter with "Passed by the Censor" + on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, + "That's proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll + get the V.C. or something--the Head'll be sure to give us a + half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's + newspaper when he leaves it lying about--you know how he swanks + about it--said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French + kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of + Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion + of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was + rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to + command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of + devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that + legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you + get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you + can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something. + + +"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was +pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky. + +"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round. +He was very red. + +"I didn't mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says +at the end." + +I read on--this time in silence: + + + I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to + tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at + center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod--we + hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never + saw one. We've given up German this term--beastly language; it's + just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never + know what he's driving at. + + +Then followed a sentence heavily underlined: + + + _By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last + term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on + it, German blood I mean_.--Yours to a cinder, + + ARTHUR JACKSON. + + +I handed this priceless missive back to Peter. + +"Cheek, isn't it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a +bayonet!" + +"But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you +can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know." + +Peter blushed. + +"Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the Front, and the fellows +wouldn't think anything of me if I hadn't been _near_ the Front," he +said, apologetically. "Hullo, they're going up!" + +An aeroplane was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across +the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by +pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she +gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She +took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and +gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he +promised to take me up some day," he said sadly. + +"Yes, some day, Peter," I said encouragingly. "But it's time we were +getting back. You know you've got to catch the leave-boat at four +o'clock this afternoon." + + * * * * * + +Peter's father and I stood on the quay, having taken farewell of Peter. +There was an eminent Staff Officer going home on leave--a very great man +at G.H.Q., a lieutenant-general, who inspired no less fear than respect +among us all. He knew Peter's father in his distant way, and had not +only returned his salute, but had even condescended to ask, in his +laconic style, "Who is the boy?"--whereupon Peter's father had, with +some nervousness, introduced him. All the other officers going home on +leave, from a Brigadier down to the subalterns, stood at a respectful +distance, glancing furtively at the hawk-like profile of the great man, +and lowering their voices. It was a tribute not only to rank but to +power. As the ship gathered way and moved slowly out of the harbour I +pulled the sleeve of Peter's father. "Look!" I said. The +Lieutenant-General and Peter were engaged in an animated conversation on +the deck, and the great man, usually as silent as the sphinx and not +less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some warmth and great +interest, as though hard put to keep his end up, some point of debate +propounded to him by Peter. + +"T----, old chap," I said, "Peter'll be a great man some day." + +Peter's father said nothing, but his eyes grew misty. Perhaps he was +thinking of that lonely grave in the distant plains of the Deccan where +Peter's mother sleeps. + + + + +XVII + +THREE TRAVELLERS + +(_October 1914_) + + +My train left Paris at 1.52 in the afternoon. It was due at Calais at +eight o'clock the same evening. But it soon became apparent that +something was amiss with our journey--we crawled along at a pace which +barely exceeded six miles an hour. At every culvert, guarded by its +solitary sentry, we seemed to pause to take breath. As we approached +Amiens, barely halfway on our journey, somewhere about 9.30 P.M., we +passed on the opposite line of rails a Red Cross train, stationary, and +throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of +an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor. +It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, +and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far +behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out +of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape +were a Japanese print. Through the open door of the horse-box I saw a +soldier stretched upon his straw, with a red gaping wound in his +half-naked body. Over him stooped a nurse, improvising with delicate +ministries a hasty dressing. In the next carriage the black face of a +wounded Senegalese looked out, unearthly in the moonlight. Ahead of us +an interminable line of trains (some seventy of them I was told) had +passed, conveying fresh troops. Then I knew. The Germans, hovering like +a dark cloud some twenty miles away, had been reinforced, and a fierce +battle was in progress. The news of it had travelled by some mysterious +telepathy to every village along the line, and at every crossing groups +of pale-faced women, silent and intent, kept a restless vigil. They +looked like ghosts in the moonlight; no cheer escaped them as we passed, +no hand waved an exuberant greeting. In the twilight we had already seen +red-trousered soldiers, vivid as poppies against the grass, digging +trenches along the line, and at one point a group of sappers improvising +a wire footbridge across the river. The contagion of suspense was in the +air,--you seemed to catch it in the faint susurrus of the poplars. + +"Shall we get to Calais?" I asked. + +"Bon Dieu! I know not," was the reply of the harassed guard. + +We pursued our stealthy journey, reached Abbeville somewhere about +midnight, and Boulogne in the small hours. 4 A.M. Calais at last! I +joyfully exclaimed. But between Calais Ville and Calais Maritime a group +of officers boarded our train and, for some mysterious reason, we were +headed off to Dunkirk. It grew colder and more cold, and I had had no +food since noon of yesterday. But my thoughts were with our men, the men +whom I had lately come to know, now lying out on the bare earth in the +moonlit trenches, keeping their everlasting vigil and blowing on their +fingers numbed with cold. We reached Dunkirk at 6 A.M. No explanation +why the train had played truant at Calais was vouchsafed me, nor was any +hope held out of a return. In those days I was travelling as a private +person, and was not yet endowed with the prerogatives by which, in the +name of a Secretary of State, I could requisition cars and impress men +to do my bidding. + +At a hopeless moment I had the good fortune to fall in with a King's +Messenger, carrying despatches, who was in the next carriage. He +produced his special passports, and the prestige of "Courrier du Roi," +Knight of the Order of the Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every +one was at our service. We were escorted to the military headquarters +of Dunkirk--through streets already echoing with the march of French +infantry, each carrying a big baton of bread and munching as he kept +step, to an office in which the courteous commandant was just completing +his toilet. The Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of the +English officers was rung up, and thither we went through an ambuscade +of motor-cars in the courtyard. + +A lieutenant of the Naval Flying Squadron was ready for us with his +powerful Rolls-Royce, and we were soon on the high road to Calais. +Everywhere were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of barbed-wire +entanglements in the distant fields, deep trenches, earthworks six feet +thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were +stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the +shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the +steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy +of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and +presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive +cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a little group of French +soldiers, their cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sunk in deep +black hollows by their eternal vigil. "Officier Anglais!" "Courrier du +Roi!" we exclaimed, and were sped on our way with a weary smile and +"Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men were already toiling in the +fields, stooping like the figures in Millet's "Gleaners," as we raced +through an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed inns, past +depopulated farms, past wooden windmills, perched high upon wooden +platforms like gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre word was +exchanged about Antwerp--again that strange telepathy of peril. Calais +at last! and a great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger. + + * * * * * + +He was a London wine-merchant of repute, who had got here at last from +Rheims, whither he had gone to pay his yearly inspection of the +champagne vintage, only to find the red wine-press of war. Three weeks +he had lived like primitive man in the wine-cellars of Rheims, with the +shells screaming overhead--screaming, he says, just like the long-drawn +sobbing whistle of an express train as it leaves a tunnel. Never has he +lived such days before; never, he fervently prays, will he live them +again. From his narrative I got a glimpse of a subterranean existence, +as tenebrous and fearful as the deepest circle of Dante's _Inferno_, +with a river of tears falling always in the darkness of the vaults. A +great wine-cellar--there are ten miles of them at Rheims--crowded with +four thousand people, lighted only by candles, and swarming with huge +rats; the blanched faces of women, the crying of children, the wail of +babies at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling masonry--the men had +armed themselves with big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the +vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one long threnody of +anguish. Outside, the conscious stone of the great monument of mediaeval +aspiration was being battered to pieces, and the glorious company of the +apostles, the goodly fellowship of the martyrs, suffered another and a +less resurgent martyrdom. After days of this crepuscular existence he +emerged to find the cathedral less disfigured than he had feared. One +masterpiece of the mediaeval craftsmen's chisel is, however, +irremediably destroyed--the figure of the devil. We hope it is a +portent. + + * * * * * + +The King's Messenger had posted from a distant country, and his way +through Dijon had been truly a Via Dolorosa. Thirty-six people standing +in the corridor, and in his own crowded compartment--he had surrendered +his royal prerogative of exclusion--was a woman on the verge of +hysteria, finding relief not in tears but in an endless recital of her +sorrow. She and her husband had a son--the only son of his mother--gone +to the front, reported badly wounded, and for days, like Joseph and +Mary, the anxious parents had sought him, only to find him on the +threshold of death, with a bullet in his liver. Again and again she +beguiled her anguish by chronicles of his miraculous childhood--his +precocious intelligence at five, his prescience at six, his unfathomable +wisdom at seven. The silent company of wayfarers listened in patience to +the twice-told tale. No one could say her nay as she repeated her litany +of pain. She was, indeed, the only passenger in that compartment whose +eyes were dry. _Stabat Mater Dolorosa._ + + + + +XVIII + +BARBARA + + +It was the Duchess of X.'s Hospital at a certain _plage_ on the coast. I +had motored thither through undulating country dotted with round beehive +ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the +distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we +neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, +fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of +broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate +existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held +up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave +of the sky. The bare needle-like branches of the broom and fir stood out +blackly against the biscuit-coloured sand with the sharp outlines of an +etching. + +I had taken a hospitable cup of tea with the Duchess in the Matron's +room. She was clothed in fine linen but without her purple; she wore +the ordinary and serviceable slate-coloured dress of a nurse. It was +here I had the honour of being introduced to Barbara. She was nursing a +doll with great tenderness, and had been asking the Duchess why she did +not wear her "cowonet." + +"This is Barbara--our little Egyptian," said the matron. + +Barbara repudiated the description hotly. + +"She was born in Egypt," explained the matron. + +"Ah," I said, "that wasn't your fault, Barbara, was it? But it was +Egypt's good fortune." + +Barbara ignored the compliment with the simplicity of childhood, and +proceeded to explain with great seriousness: "You see, Mummy was +travelling, and she comed to Egypt. She didn't know I was going to +happen," she added as if to clear Mummy of any imputation of +thoughtlessness. + +"And your birthday, Barbara?" + +Barbara and I discovered that both of us have birthdays in March--only +six days apart. This put us at once on a footing of intimacy--we must +have been born under the same star. Barbara proceeded to inform me that +she rather liked birthdays--except the one which happened in Egypt. I +had half a mind to execute a deed of conveyance on the spot, assigning +to her all my own birthdays as an estate _pour autre vie_, with all +_profits a prendre_ and presents arising therefrom, for I am +thirty-eight and have no further use for them. + +"I am afraid there are more than six years between us, Barbara," I said +pensively. + +Barbara regarded me closely with large round eyes. + +"About ten, I fink. I'm seven, you know." + +"How nice of you to say that, Barbara. Then I'm only seventeen." + +Barbara regarded me still more closely. + +"A little more, p'waps--ten monfs." + +"Thank you, Barbara. I'll remind you of that some day." After all, ten +years is no obstacle to the course of true love. "But what is the matter +with the doll?" Despite a rosy flush the doll has a field-dressing round +her auburn locks, and one leg is immensely stout owing to a tourniquet. + +Barbara looked at me rather less favourably than before. It was evident +that she now thought poorly of my intelligence, and that I had made a +_faux pas_. + +"I'm a nurse," Barbara explained, loftily, showing an armlet bearing the +ensign of the Red Cross. I was about to remind her of 1 & 2 Geo. V. cap. +20, which threatens the penalties of a misdemeanour against all who wear +the Red Cross without the authority of Army Council, but I thought +better of it. Instead of anything so foolish, I exhibit a delicate +solicitude about the health of the patient. I put myself right by +referring to it as "he." A less intelligent observer might pronounce it +to be decidedly of the female sex. Still, I reflected, women have +enlisted in the Army before now. I proceeded to inspect the injured limb +with professional gravity. "A compound fracture, I think, Barbara. He +will require careful nursing." + +Barbara liked this--no one in the matron's room had ever exhibited such +a clinical interest in the case before, and she thinks "fwacture" rather +imposing. + +"Let me feel his pulse," I said. I held a waxen arm between my thumb and +forefinger, and looked at my wrist-watch for some seconds, Barbara +gazing at me intently. + +"Hum! hum! I think we had better take his temperature," I said, as I +held a clinical thermometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the +rosebud lips of the patient. "103, I think." + +"Will you wite a pwescwiption?" asked Barbara anxiously. + +"Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara. Let me see, will this do, +do you think?" I scribbled on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and +handed it to Barbara. + + + Brom. Potass. 3 grs. + Hydrochl. 5 quarts. + Quin. Sulph. 1 pt. + + +She scrutinised it closely. It puzzled her, though her bewilderment was +nothing to the astonishment which that prescription would have excited +in a member of the medical profession. + +"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who +tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo +of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a +respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying. + +I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a +tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung +on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature--Pwomise?" + +I promised. + + + + +XIX + +AN ARMY COUNCIL + +(_October 1914_) + + +All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy +between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches. The country had the +delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the skies were of that +unforgettable blue which is the secret of France. The end of my journey +found me at No. ---- General Hospital. The chaplain, an old C.F. +attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the +war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore +the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's +overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with +red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone +betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every +regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect from +John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk was of the great retreat. + +"Hell it was--fire and brimstone," said a R.F.A. man. "We limbered up, +our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were +more like a blooming ambulance than a battery. We had our limbers and +waggons chock full o' details--fellers who'd been wounded or crocked up. +And reservists wi' sore feet--out o' training, I reckon," he added +magisterially. + +"Never you mind about resarvists, my son," interjected a man in the +Suffolks. "We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for +miles. We ain't no chickens." + +"No, that we bain't," said a West-countryman. "I reckon we can teach +them young fellers zummat. Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish[13] when +they was under foire the fust time. Though they were middlin' steady, +arterwards," he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his +regiment. + +"'Twere all a duddering[14] mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it +afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry; we +could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried some o' the little +'uns. And girt fires a-burnin' at night loike ricks--a terrible +blissey[15] on the hills. And 'twere that dusty and hot oi did get +mortal drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my water-bottle; +I'd gied it all to the childer." + +"What about rations?" said the chaplain. + +"Oh I were bit leery[16] i' my innerds at toimes, but oi had my +emargency ration, and them A.S.C. chaps were pretty sprack;[17] they kep +up wi' us most times. 'Twere just loike a circus procession--lorries and +guns and we soldjers all a-mixed up. And some of the harses went cruel +lame and had to be left behind." + +"That they did," said a small man in the 19th Hussars who was obviously +a Londoner. He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the deliberate +gait of the cavalryman on his feet. "Me 'orse got the blooming 'ump with +corns." + +"Ah! and what do you think of the Uhlans?" + +He sniffed. "Rotten, sir! They never gives us a chawnce. They ain't no +good except for lootin'. Regular 'ooligans. We charged 'em up near Mons, +our orficer goin' ahead 'bout eight yards, and when we got up to 'em 'e +drops back into our line. We charges in a single line, you know, knee to +knee, as close together as us can get, riding low so as to present as +small a target as we can." + +"And you got home with the Uhlans?" I asked. + +"Once. Their lances ain't much good except for lightin' street-lamps." + +"Street-lamps?" said the chaplain literally. + +"Yuss. They're too long. The blighters 'ave no grip on them. We just +parry and then thrust with the point; we've giv' up cutting exercises. +If the thrust misses, you uses the pommel--so!" He executed an +intimidating gesture with his stick. + +"Well, ah've had ma bit o' fun," interjected a small H.L.I. man +irrelevantly, feeling, apparently, it was his turn in the symposium, as +he thrust a red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones into the +group. "Ah ken verra weel ah got 'im. It was at a railway stashon where +we surprised 'em. Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer--I thocht he were +drunk--and he fired three times aht me with a ree-vol-ver. But ah got +'im. Yes, ah've had ma bit o' fun," he said complacently as he cherished +an arm in a sling. + +With him was a comrade belonging to the "Lilywhites," the old 82nd, now +known as the first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the H.L.I. +have an ancient friendship. The South Lancs have also their +antipathies--the King's Liverpools among them--but that is neither here +nor there. + +"It were just like a coop-tie crowd was the retreat," he drawled in the +broad Lancashire dialect. "A fair mix-up, it were." + +"What do you think of the Germans?" + +There was a chorus of voices. "Not much"--"Blighters"--"Swine." + +"Their 'coal-boxes' don't come off half the time," said the R.F.A. man +professionally. "And their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours has. +Ours is a treat--like sugar-loaf." The German gunnery has become deadly +enough since then. + +"Their coal-boxes do stink though," said a Hoxton man in the Royal +Fusiliers. "Reminds me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War; they used +to let off a lot of stuff that turned yellow. I've seen Boers--hairy +men, you know, sir--with their beards turned all yellow by them. Regular +hair-restorers, they was." + +"I remember up on the Aisne," continued the Hoxton man, who had an +ingenuous countenance, "one of our chaps shouted 'Waiter,' and about +fifty on 'em stuck their heads up above the trenches and said, 'Coming, +sir.'" + +There was a shout of laughter. The chaplain looked incredulous. "Don't +mind him, he's pulling your leg, sir," said his neighbour. It is a +pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately fond. + +"They can't shoot for nuts, that's a fact," said a Rifleman. "They +couldn't hit a house if they was in it. We can give them five rounds +rapid while they're getting ready to fire one. Fire from the hips, they +do. I never seen the likes of it." It was the professional criticism of +the most perfectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and we +listened with respect. "But they've got some tidy snipers," he added +candidly. + +"They was singing like an Eisteddfod," said a man in the South Wales +Borderers, "when they advanced. Yess, they was singing splendid. Like a +_cymanfa ganu_,[18] it wass. Fair play." + +"And what do you boys do?" asked the chaplain. "Do you sing too?" + +"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters, "I used every name but a +saint's name." The speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was Church +of England, or he might have been less candid. + +"There was a mon in oor company," said the red-headed one, feeling it +was his turn again, "that killed seven Jerrmans--he shot six and +baynitted anither. And he wur fair fou[19] afterwards. He grat like a +bairn." + +"Aye, mon," said a ruddy man of the Yorks L.I., "ah knaw'd ah felt mysen +dafflin[20] when ah saw me pal knocked over. He comed fra oor toon, and +he tellt me hissen the neet afore: 'Jock,' 'e said, 'tha'll write to me +wife, woan't tha?' And ah said, 'Doan't be a fule, Ben, tha'll be all +right.' 'Noa, Jock,' he tellt me, 'ah knaw'd afore ah left heeam ah +should be killt. Ah saw a mouldiwarp[21] dead afore oor door; me wife +fair dithered[22] when she saw't.'" + +The chaplain and myself looked puzzled. "It's a kind o' sign among the +fouk in our parts, sir," he proceeded, enlightening our ignorance. "And +'e asked me to take his brass for the wife. But ah thowt nowt of it. And +we lost oor connectin' files and were nobbut two platoons, and we got it +somethin' cruel; the shells were a-skirling[23] like peewits ower our +heids. And Ben were knocked over and 'e never said a ward. And then ah +got fair daft." + +There was silence for a moment. + +"I found this," suddenly interrupted a despatch-rider. He was a +fair-spoken youth, obviously of some education. He explained, in reply +to our interrogatories, that he was a despatch-rider attached to a +Signal Company of the R.E. He produced a cap, apparently from nowhere, +by mere sleight of hand. It was greasy, weather-stained, and in no +respect different from a thousand such Army caps. It bore the badge and +superscription of the R.E. We looked at it indifferently as he held it +out with an eleemosynary gesture. + +"A collection will now be taken," said the Hoxton man with a grin. + +But the despatch-rider did not laugh. "I found this cap," he said +gravely, "on Monday, September 7th, in a house near La Ferte. We stopped +there for four hours while the artillery were in action. We saw a broken +motor bicycle outside a house to which the people pointed. We went in. +We found one of our despatch-riders with an officer's sword sticking in +him. Our section officer asked the people about it, and they told him +that the despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost his way and +knocked at the door of the house. There were German officers billeted +there. They let him in, and then they stuck him up against a wall and +cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts," he added quietly. + +No one laughed any more. We all crowded round to look at that tragic +cap. "The number looks like one--nought--seven--something," said the +chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor +lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the +men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported +fit for duty. + +The English soldier hides his feelings as though he were ashamed of +them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal +twilight, and I sought to disperse it. + +"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed +to leave nothing to be desired. + +But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier +begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable--and not before. He +will bear without repining everything but luxury. + +"One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about +this New Army getting four bob?" + +"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently. + +"Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls +themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And +those shuvvers--they're like fighting cocks." + +"Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I +said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across +trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer +uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam +upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread +and butter, the whole representing a most interesting geological +formation and producing a startling chromatic effect. + +"Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw +pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat +oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?" + +My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander +affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. +"Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!" + +A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time +to go bye-bye. Parade--hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round +soon. Scoot, my sons." + +They scooted. + +The silvery notes of the bugle died away over the woods. Night was +falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray. +We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures, +his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old. +He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for +the best part of my life," he said simply, "and I had retired on a +pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly, "that it has pleased Him +to extend my days long enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I +know the British soldier and--to know him is to love him. Do you +understand?" he added, as he nodded in the direction the men had gone. + +As I looked at him, there came into my mind the haunting lines of +Tennyson's "Ulysses." + +"Yes," I said, "I understand." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] Pale. + +[14] Confusing. + +[15] Blaze. + +[16] Empty. + +[17] Smart. + +[18] Welsh for a singing meeting. + +[19] Mad. + +[20] Imbecile. + +[21] A mole. + +[22] Trembled. + +[23] Screaming. + + + + +XX + +THE FUGITIVES + + "But pray that your flight be not in the winter." + + +Some four or five miles north of Bailleul, where the _douane_ posts mark +the marches of the Franco-Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre. +Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills, +through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the +earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies +another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came +upon two lonely wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with +moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of +the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a +few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the +landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of +privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape. Not a living +thing appeared, and the secret promises of spring were so remote as to +seem incredible. + + +The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant class; the man, gnarled +like an old oak, the purple clots in the veins of his wrists betraying +the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap +had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other +end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the +axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart +the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, +a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a +spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen +utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, clanked +together. + +As our car drew up, they stopped, the woman holding her hands to her +side as though to recover breath. + +"Who are you? Where do you come from?" said my companion, a French +officer. + +They stared uncomprehendingly. + +He spoke again, this time in Flemish: + +"_Van waar komt gy? Waar gaat gy heen?_" + +The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the direction of the Menin +ridge. + +There followed a conversation of which I could make but little. But I +noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as +though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves. + +"They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by +the Bosches near the Menin ridge." + +"Are they all alone?" I asked. + +He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the +Germans when they billeted there." + +"Why?" + +"They don't know. The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock +away. These few sticks are all they have left. Curious, isn't it," he +added meditatively, "that you never see any Flemish fugitives without +their feather-beds?" I had often noticed it. Also I had noticed the +curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save +everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence. +Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become +equally dear when you have to leave them. + +"But where are they going?" + +The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed +vacantly at the lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The +canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of +sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull +thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and +forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration. +The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the +cart as though seeking support. + +We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the +spasms of his malady. + +"He says he doesn't know," my companion translated. "He's never been +outside his parish before. But he thinks he'll go to Brussels and see +the King of the Belgians. He doesn't know the Germans are in Brussels. +And anyhow he's on the wrong road." + +"But surely," I hazarded, "the _maire_ or the _cure_ could have told him +better." + +"He says the Germans shot the _cure_ and carried off the _maire_. It's a +way they've got, you know." + +It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted +sea. Their little world was in ruins. The bells that had called them to +the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had +knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the +great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their +hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the +heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields +which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry, +and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This +was the secret of their heavy lethargy. + +My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to +maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul +had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it, +the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of +the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a +time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the +refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom +has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by +parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would +supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we +directed them to go. + +But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still +standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man +gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary +humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their +inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair. + + + + +XXI + +A "DUG-OUT"[24] + + +Driver George Hawkins, of the ----th Battery (K), was engaged in drying +one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he +felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that +morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy +should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He +performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive +great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical +expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a +sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a +utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering +the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism, +and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not +been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's fetlocks he would +have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back. But being +something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to +the ground, for he suspected corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins found +himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable. +Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder. +Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt. He looked at +Tommy with pained surprise. + +"I feeds yer," he said reproachfully, "I waters yer, I grooms yer, I +stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it? Now I ask +yer?" Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence. + +"What do I get for it?" he repeated argumentatively. "I gets a blooming +kick." + +"Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a +matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive +functions, and cannot be set down here. + +"Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the +Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment. The Major +was trying hard to repress a smile. "Go on with your catechism, +Hawkins," he said. It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral +Education League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for +the repression of vice. + +"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Hawkins?" I said unguardedly. But +no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's reply was +disconcerting. "I 'ates 'em, sir," he whispered to me as the Major +turned his back; "I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They gives me +'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache something cruel." + +"He doesn't, though," said the Major, who had overheard this auricular +confidence. We had left the stable. "Our drivers are mighty fond of +their horses--and proud of them too. It's quite an infatuation in its +way. But come and see the O.T.C. We've got them down here for the +weekend, by way of showing them the evolutions of a battery. They've got +their instructor, an N.C.O. who's been dug out for the job, and I've +lent him two of the guns to put them through their paces. He's quite +priceless--a regular chip of the old Army block." + +"Now, sir," the sergeant was saying, "get them into single file." They +were to change from Battery Column to Column of Route. + +"Battery...!" began the cadet in a piping voice. + +"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mild expostulation. "You've +got to get it off your chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So!" And he gave a +stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and surprising performance, for +he was fat and scant of breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at +the ---- Club, after twenty-one years' service in the Army, had produced +a fatty degeneration which no studious arrangement of an Army belt could +altogether conceal. + +"Battery!" began the cadet, as he threw his head back and took a deep +breath. "Advance in single file from the right. The rest mark time." + +"Rest!" said the sergeant reproachfully. "There ain't no rest in the +British Army. Rear, say, 'Rear,' sir." + +"Rear, mark time!" said the cadet uncomfortably. + +"Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows, "double them back, +sir." + +"Battery, run!" said the cadet brightly. + +"As y' were! How could yer, Mr. ----?" said the sergeant grievously. +"The British Army never runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed at +the aspersion upon the reputation of the British Army into which he had +been betrayed. + +"Double--march!" + +They doubled. + +The sergeant now turned his attention to a party at gun drill. It was a +sub-section, which means a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment +was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd numbers in front, even +numbers behind. + +"Section tell off!" + +"One," from the front row. "Two," from the back. "Three," from the +front. The tale was duly told in voices which ran up and down the scale, +tenor alternating with baritone. + +"Without drag-ropes--prepare to advance!" shouted the sergeant. The odd +numbers shifted to the right of the gun, the evens to the left, but +numbers "4" and "6," being apparently under the impression that it was a +game of "musical chairs," found themselves on the right instead of the +left. + +"Too many odds," shouted the sergeant. "The British Army be used to +'eavy hodds, but not that sort. Nos. 4 and 6 get over to the near side." + +"Halt! Action front!" They unlimbered, and swung the gun round to point +in the direction of an imaginary enemy. + +The detachment were now grouped round the gun, and I drew near to have a +look at it. No neater adaptation of means to end could be devised than +your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a child, and her "bubble" is +as sensitive to a touch as mercury in a barometer. + +"No. 1 add one hundred. Two-nought minutes more left!" shouted the +sergeant, who, with the versatility of a variety artiste, was now +playing another part from his extensive repertoire. He was forward +observing officer. + +One of his pupils turned the ranging gear until the range-drum +registered a further hundred yards, while another traversed the gun +until it pointed twenty minutes more left. + +As we turned away they were performing another delicate and complicated +operation which was not carried through without some plaintive +expostulation from the N.C.O. + +"It reminds me," remarked the Major colloquially, as we strolled away, +"of Falstaff drilling his recruits. So does the texture of the khaki +they serve out to the O.T.C. 'Dowlas, filthy dowlas!' But you've no idea +how soon he'll lick them into shape. These 'dug-outs' are as primitive +as cave-dwellers in their way but they know their job. And what is more, +they like it." + +As we passed the stables I heard ecstatic sounds--a whinny of equine +delight and the blandishments of a human voice. Through the open door I +caught a glimpse of Driver Hawkins with his back turned towards us. His +left arm was round Tommy's neck and the left side of his face rested +upon Tommy's head; the fingers of his right hand were delicately +stroking Tommy's nose. + +"I forgives yer," I heard him say with rare magnanimity, "yus, I +forgives yer, old boy. But if yer does it again, yer'll give me the +blooming 'ump." + +I passed hurriedly on. It was not for a stranger to intrude on anything +so intimate. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[24] On leave in England. + + + + +XXII + +CHRISTMAS EVE + +(_1914_) + + +"Halt! Stop, I mean." + +The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool +looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and +painful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in the annexe of a +Base hospital on Christmas Eve, and the sergeant was as hard to please +as if they were recruits doing their first squad drill. They were a +scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning chaplain to the Forces, from +Base "details" and convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their +time erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead and gaining audibly +with each lap despite the desperate spurts of the rest. + +"Opened out his throttle--'e has," whispered an Army driver +professionally to his neighbour; "'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the +speed limit." + +The sergeant glanced magisterially at the offender, a young Dorset, who +a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who +has lately done enough digging for a whole parish. + +"You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he exclaimed reproachfully; +"you ain't out on patrol, yer know. 'Shun! Now again! 'Christians'." + + + Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn, + Whereon ... + + +The familiar melody was shut behind me as I closed the door. Those +West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and, +in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night, +illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a +luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the +window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the +nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered +mazily whether they had brought Father Christmas with them. + +A low cry of pain reached my ears as I opened the door of Surgical Ward +A.I. A nurse was removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought +down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him ready to spray the wound +with peroxide. "Buck up, old chap," cried the patients in the +neighbouring beds who looked on encouragingly at these ministries. +Another moan escaped him as the discoloured bandage, with its faint +odour of perchloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed flesh. + +"Next gramophone record, please!" chanted his neighbours. The patient +smiled faintly at the exhortation and set his teeth. + +"That's better, sonny," whispered the nurse with benign approval. + +"It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going to drain off the septic +matter," interjected the surgeon in holland overalls, with sleeves +tucked up to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The dresser handed +him a nickel reed from the sterilising basin. + +With a few light quick movements the wound was sprayed, dressed, +cleansed, and anointed, and the surgeon, like the good Samaritan, passed +on to the next case. Only last night the patient was in the trenches, +moaning with pain, as the stretcher-bearers carried him to the aid-post, +and from the aid-post to the forward dressing station, whence by an +uneasy journey (there were no sumptuous hospital-trains in those days) +he had come hither. But what of the others who were hit outside the +trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas Eve, in that dreadful No +Man's Land swept by the enemy's fire, whither no stretcher-bearer can +go--lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping forms, some +quivering in the barbed wire, where dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping +only for a cleanly death from a bullet before their wounds fester and +poison the blood in their veins. + + + Whereon--the Saviour--of mankind--was--born. + + +The measured cadence fell on my ear as I left the ward and passed beyond +the annexe. The sergeant had now got his section well in hand. I turned +up the long winding road towards my quarters. It was a cold moonlight +night, and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a +black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as +though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the +Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible--or so it +seemed to me--as Mars in all that starry heraldry. + +"Bon soir, monsieur!" It was the voice of the sentry, and came from +behind a barricade of hurdles, thatched with straw, on the crest of the +road over the downs. His bayonet gleamed like a silver needle in the +moonlight, and he was alone in his vigil. No shepherds watched their +flocks by night, neither did angels sing peace on earth and goodwill +towards men. Only the cold austerity of the stars kept him company. +Perhaps the first Christmas Eve was just such a starry night as this; +the same stars may have looked down upon a manger in Bethlehem. But on +the brow of the hill was one of those wayside shrines which symbolise +the anguish of the Cross, and these very stars may have looked down upon +the hill of Calvary. + + + + +IV + +THE FRONT AGAIN + + + + +XXIII + +THE COMING OF THE HUN + + +The _maire_ sat in his parlour at the Hotel de Ville dictating to his +secretary. He was a stout little man with a firm mouth, an indomitable +chin, and quizzical eyes. His face would at any time have been +remarkable; for a French provincial it was notable in being +clean-shaven. Most Frenchmen of the middle class wear beards of an +Assyrian luxuriance, which to a casual glance suggest stage properties +rather than the work of Nature. The _maire_ was leaning back in his +chair, his elbows resting upon its arms and his hands extended in front +of him, the thumb and finger-tips of one hand poised to meet those of +the other as though he were contemplating the fifth proposition in +Euclid. It was a characteristic attitude; an observer would have said it +indicated a temperament at once patient and precise. He was dictating a +note to the _commissaire de police_, warning the inhabitants to conduct +themselves "paisiblement" in the event of a German occupation, an event +which was hourly expected. Much might depend upon that proclamation; a +word too little or too much and Heaven alone knew what innuendo a German +Commandant might discover in it. Perhaps the _maire_ was also not +indifferent to the question of style; he prided himself on his French; +he had in his youth won a prize at the Lycee for composition, and he +contributed occasional papers to the journal of the Societe de +l'Histoire de France on the antiquities of his _department_. Most +Frenchmen are born purists in style, and the _maire_ lingered over his +words. + +"Continuez, Henri," he said with a glance at the clerk. "_Le Maire, +assiste de son adjoint et de ses conseillers municipaux et de delegues +de quartier, sera en permanence a l'hotel de Ville pour assurer_--" +There was a kick at the door and a tall loutish man in the uniform of a +German officer entered, followed by two grey-coated soldiers. The +officer neither bowed nor saluted, but merely glared with an +intimidating frown. The _maire's_ clerk sat in an atrophy of fear, +unable to move a muscle. The officer advanced to the desk, pulled out +his revolver from its leather pouch, and laid it with a lethal gesture +on the _maire's_ desk. The _maire_ examined it curiously. "Ah, yes, M. +le Capitaine, thank you; I will examine it in a moment, but I have seen +better ones--our new service pattern, for example. Ja! Ich verstehe ganz +gut," he continued, answering the officer's reckless French in perfect +German. "Consider yourself under arrest," declaimed the officer, with +increasing violence. "We are in occupation of your town; you will +provide us within the next twenty-four hours with ten thousand kilos of +bread, thirty thousand kilos of hay, forty thousand kilos of oats, five +thousand bottles of wine, one hundred boxes of cigars." ("Mon Dieu! it +is an inventory," said the _maire_ to himself.) "If these are not +forthcoming by twelve noon to-morrow you will be shot," added the +officer in a sudden inspiration of his own. + +The _maire_ was facing the officer, who towered above him. "Ah, yes, +Monsieur le Capitaine, you will not take a seat? No? And your +requisition--you have your commandant's written order and signature, no +doubt?" The officer blustered. "No, no, Monsieur le Capitaine, I am the +head of the civil government in this town; I take no orders except from +the head of the military authority. You have doubtless forgotten Hague +Regulation, Article 52; your Government signed it, you will recollect." +The officer hesitated. The _maire_ looked out on the _place_; it was +full of armed men, but he did not flinch. "You see, monsieur," he went +on suavely, "there are such things as receipts, and they have to be +authenticated." The officer turned his back on him, took out his field +note-book, scribbled something on a page, and, having torn it out, +handed it to one of his men with a curt instruction. + +The _maire_ resumed his dictation to the hypnotised clerk, while the +officer sat astride a chair and executed an impatient _pas seul_ with +his heels upon the parquet floor. Once or twice he spat demonstratively, +but the _maire_ took no notice. In a few minutes the soldier returned +with a written order, which the officer threw upon the desk without a +word. + +The _maire_ scrutinised it carefully. "Ten thousand kilos of bread! +Monsieur, we provide five thousand a day for the refugees, and this will +tax us to the uttermost. The bakers of the town are nearly all _sous les +drapeaux_. Very well, monsieur," he added in reply to an impatient +exclamation from the officer, "we shall do our best. But many a poor +soul in this town will go hungry to-night. And the receipts?" "The +requisitioning officer will go with you and give receipts," retorted the +officer, who had apparently forgotten that he had placed the _maire_ +under arrest. + + * * * * * + +Subdued lights twinkled like glow-worms in the streets as the _maire_ +returned across the square to the Hotel de Ville. He threaded his way +through groups of infantry, narrowly escaped a collision with three +drunken soldiers, who were singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" with laborious +unction, skirted the park of ammunition waggons, and reached the main +entrance. He had been on his feet for hours visiting the _boulangeries_, +the _patisseries_, the hay and corn merchants, persuading, +expostulating, beseeching, until at last he had wrung from their +exiguous stores the apportionment of the stupendous tribute. It was a +heavy task, nor were his importunities made appreciably easier by the +receipt-forms tendered, readily enough, by the requisitioning officer +who accompanied him, for the inhabitants seemed to view with terror the +possession of these German documents, suspecting they knew not what. But +the task was done, and the _maire_ wearily mounted the stairs. + +The officer greeted him curtly. The _maire_ now had leisure to study his +appearance more closely. He had high cheek-bones, protruding eyes, and a +large underhung mouth which, when he was pleased, looked sensual, and, +when he was annoyed, merely cruel. The base of his forehead was square, +but it rapidly receded with a convex conformation of head, very closely +shaven as though with a currycomb, and his ears stood out almost at +right angles to his skull. The ferocity that was his by nature he +seemed to have assiduously cultivated by art, and the points of his +moustaches, upturned in the shape of a cow's horns, accentuated the +truculence of his appearance. In short, he was a typical Prussian +officer. In peace he would have been merely comic. In war he was +terrible, for there was nothing to restrain him. + +Meanwhile the officer called for a corporal's guard to place the _maire_ +under arrest. "But you will first sign the following _affiche_--by the +General's orders," he exclaimed roughly. + + + Le Maire informe ses concitoyens que le commandant en chef des + troupes allemandes a ordonne que le maire et deux notables soient + pris comme otages pour la raison que des civils aient tire sur des + patrouilles allemandes. Si un coup de fusil etait tire a nouveau + par des civils, les trois otages seraient fusilles et la ville + serait incendiee immediatement. + + Si des troupes alliees rentraient le maire rappelle a la population + que tout civil ne doit pas prendre part a la guerre et que si l'un + d'eux venait a y participer le commandant des troupes allemandes + ferait fusilier egalement les otages. + + +"One moment," said the _maire_ as he took up a pen, "'_les civils_'! I +ordered the civil population to deposit their arms at the _mairie_ two +days ago, and the _commissaire de police_ and the gendarmes have +searched every house. We have no armed civilians here." + +"Es macht nichts," said the officer; "we shall add '_ou peut-etre des +militaires en civil_.'" + +The _maire_ shrugged his shoulders at the disingenuous parenthesis. It +was, he knew, useless to protest. For all he knew he might be signing +his own death-warrant. He studied the style a little more attentively. +"Mon Dieu, what French!" he said to himself; "'etait,' 'seraient,' +'venait'! What moods! What tenses! Monsieur le Capitaine," he continued +aloud, "if I had used such French in my exercises at the Lycee my +instituteur would have said I deserved to be shot. Pray allow me to make +it a little more graceful." But the Prussian's ignorance of French +syntax was only equalled by his suspicion of it. The _maire's_ irony +merely irritated him and his coolness puzzled him. "I give you thirty +seconds to sign," he said, as he took out his watch and the inevitable +revolver. The _maire_ took up a needle-like pen, dipped it in the ink, +and with a sigh wrote in fragile but firm characters "X---- Y----." The +officer called a corporal's guard, and the _maire_, who had fasted since +noon, was marched out of the room and thrust into a small closet upon +the door of which were the letters "_Cabinet_." This, he reflected +grimly, was certainly what in military language is called "close +confinement." The soldiers accompanied him. There was just room for him +to stretch his weary body upon the stone floor; one soldier remained +standing over him with fixed bayonet, the others took up their position +outside. + +Meanwhile a company of Landwehr had bivouacked in the square, four +machine-guns had been placed so as to command the four avenues of +approach, patrols had been sent out, sentries posted, all lights +extinguished, and all doors ordered to be left open by the householders. +Billeting officers had gone from house to house, chalking upon the doors +such legends as "_Drei Maenner_," "_6 Offiziere--Eingang verboten_," and, +on rare occasions "_Gute Leute hier_." The trembling inhabitants had +been forced to wait on their uninvited guests as they clamoured noisily +for wine and liqueurs. All the civilians of military age, and many +beyond it, had been rounded up and taken under guard to the church; +their wives and daughters alone remained, and were the subject of +menacing pleasantries. So much the _maire_ knew before he had returned +from his errand. As he lay in his dark cell he speculated painfully as +to what might be happening in the homes of his fellow-townsmen. He sat +up once or twice to listen, until the toe of the sentry's boot in his +back reminded him of his irregularity. Now and again a woman's cry broke +the silence of the night, but otherwise all was still. He composed +himself to sleep on the floor, reflecting that he must husband his +strength and his nerves for what might lie ahead of him. He was very +tired and slept heavily in spite of his cold stone bed. At the hour of +one in the morning he was awakened by a kick, and he found himself +staring at an electric torch which was being held to his face by a tall +figure shrouded in darkness. It was the captain. He sat up and rubbed +his eyes. + +"'_Fusille_'! Bien! so I am to be shot! and wherefore, Monsieur le +Capitaine?" + +"Some one has fired upon us," said the officer, "one of your dirty +fellows; you must pay for it." + +"And the order?" asked the _maire_ sleepily; "you have the Commandant's +order?" + +"Never mind about the order," said the officer reassuringly, "the order +will be forthcoming at eight o'clock. Oh yes, we shall shoot you most +authoritatively--never fear." + +The officer knew that nothing could be done until eight o'clock, for he +dared not wake the Commandant, but he did not see why he should deny +himself the pleasure of waking up this pig of a _maire_ to see how he +would take it. The _maire_ divined his thoughts, and without a word +turned over on his side and pretended to go to sleep again. From under +his drooping eyelids he saw the officer gazing at him with a look in +which dislike, disappointment, and pleasurable expectation seemed to be +struggling for mastery. Then with a click he extinguished his torch and +withdrew. + +At eight o'clock the _maire_ awoke to learn with mild surprise that he +was not to be shot. Beyond that his guard would tell him nothing. It was +only afterwards he learnt that one of the drunken revellers had been +prowling the streets, and, having given the sentries a bad fright by +letting off his rifle at a lamp-post, had expiated his adventure at the +hands of a firing party in the cemetery outside the town. + +For two days the _maire_ was unmolested. He was allowed to see his +_adjoint_,[25] who came to him with a troubled face. + +"The babies are crying for milk," he said, "the troops have taken it +all. I begged one of the officers to leave a little for the inhabitants, +but he said the men did not like their coffee without plenty of hot +milk." The _maire_ reflected for a moment, and then dictated an _avis_ +to the inhabitants enjoining upon them to be as sparing in their +consumption of milk as possible for the sake of the "meres de famille" +and "les petits enfants." + +"Tell the _commissaire de police_ to have that posted up immediately," +he added. "We can do no more." + +"They have taken the bread out of our mouths," resumed the _adjoint_, +"and now they are despoiling us of our goods. They are like a swarm of +bailiffs let loose upon our homes. Everywhere they levy a distress upon +our chattels. There is an ammunition waggon outside my house; they have +put all the furniture of my _salon_ upon it." + +"You should make a protest to the Commandant," said the _maire_, but not +very hopefully. + +"It is no use," replied the _adjoint_ despondingly. "I have. He simply +shrugged his shoulders and said, 'C'est la guerre.' It is always so. +They have shot Jules Bonnard." + +"Et pourquoi?" asked the _maire_. + +"I know not," said the _adjoint_. "They found four market-gardeners +returning from the fields last night and shot them too--they made them +dig their own graves, and tied their hands behind their backs with their +own scarves. I protested to a Staff officer; he said it was 'verboten' +to dig potatoes. I said they did not know; how could they? He said they +ought to know. Then he abused me, and said if I made any more complaints +he would shoot me too. They have made the _civils_ dig trenches." + +"Ah," said the _maire_. He knew it was a flagrant violation of the Hague +Regulations, but it was not the tithe of mint and cummin of the law that +troubled him. It was the reflection that the _civil_ who is forced to +dig trenches is already as good as dead. He knows too much. + +"And the women," continued the _adjoint_, in a tone of stupefied horror, +"they are crying, many of them, and will not look one in the face. Some +of them have black eyes. And the young girls!" + +The _maire_ brooded in impotent horror. His meditations were interrupted +by the entrance of the captain. "The Commandant wishes to see you _tout +de suite_," he exclaimed. "March!" He was conducted by a corporal's +guard, preceded by the captain, into the presence of the General, who +had taken up his quarters in the principal mansion looking out upon the +square. The General was a stout, square-headed man, with grey moustaches +and steel-blue eyes, and the _maire_ divined at a glance that here was +no swashbuckler, but a man who had himself under control. "I have +imposed a fine of 300,000 francs upon your town; you will collect it in +twenty-four hours; if it is not forthcoming to the last franc I shall be +regretfully compelled to burn this town to the ground." + +"And why?" exclaimed the _maire_, whom nothing could now surprise, +though much might perplex. + +The General seemed unprepared for the question. He paused for a moment +and said, "Some one has been giving information to the enemy." +"No!"--he held up his hand, not impolitely but finally, as the _maire_ +began to expostulate--"I have spoken." + +"But," said the _maire_ desperately, "we shall be ruined. We have not +got it. And all our goods have been taken already." + +"You have our receipts," said the General. "They are as good as gold. +German credit is very high; the Imperial Government has just floated a +loan of several milliards. And you have our stamped _Quittungen_." He +became at once voluble and persuasive in his cupidity, and forgot +something of his habitual caution. "You surely do not doubt the word of +the German Government?" he said. The _maire_ doubted it very much, but +he discreetly held his tongue. "And our requisitioning officers have not +been niggardly," continued the General; "they have put a substantial +price on the goods we have taken." This was true. It had not escaped the +_maire_ that the receipt-forms had been lavish. + +"I will do my best," said the _maire_ simply. + +He was now released from arrest, and he retired to his house to think +out the new problem that had presented itself. The threat to burn down +the town might or might not be anything but bluff; he himself doubted +whether the German Commandant would burn the roofs over his men's +heads, as long as the occupation lasted. The military disadvantages were +too obvious, though what the enemy might do when they left the town was +another matter. They might shoot him, of course; that was more than +probable. + +But how to find the money was an anxious problem and urgent. The +municipal _caisse_ was empty: the managers of the banks had closed their +doors and carried their deposits off to Paris before the Germans had +entered the town; of the wealthier bourgeoisie some had fled, many were +ruined, and the rest were inadequate. The _maire_ pondered long upon +these things, leaning back in his chair with knitted brows in that +pensive attitude which was characteristic. Suddenly he caught sight of a +blue paper with German characters lying upon a walnut table at his +elbow. He took it up, scrutinised it, and studied the signature: + + + Empfangschein. + Werth 500 fr. erhalten. + Herr Hauptmann von Koepenick. + + +Then he smiled. He got up, put on his overcoat, took up his hat and +cane, and went forth into the drizzling rain. + + * * * * * + +Two hours later he was at the headquarters of the Staff and asked to see +the Commandant. He was shown into his presence without delay. "Well?" +said the Commandant. "Monsieur le General, I have collected the fine," +said the _maire_. The General's face relaxed its habitual sternness; he +grew at once pleasant and polite. "Good," he said. The _maire_ opened a +fat leather wallet and placed upon the table under the General's +predatory nose a large pile of blue documents, some (but not all) +stamped with the violet stamp of the German A.Q.M.G. "If the +_hochgeehrter_ General will count them," said the _maire_, "he will see +they come to 325,000 francs. It is rather more than the fine," he +explained, "but I have made allowance for the fact that they are not +immediately redeemable. They are mostly stamped, and--_they are as good +as gold_." + +For three minutes there was absolute silence in the room. The gilt clock +in its glass sepulchre on the mantelpiece ticked off the seconds as +loudly as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the night. The +_maire_ speculated with more curiosity than fear as to how many more of +these seconds he had to live. Never had the intervals seemed so long nor +their registration so insistent. The ashes fell with a soft susurrus in +the grate. The Commandant looked at the _maire_; the _maire_ looked at +the Commandant. Then the Commandant smiled. It was an inscrutable smile; +a smile in which the eyes participated not at all. There was merely a +muscular relaxation of the lips disclosing the teeth; to the _maire_ +there seemed something almost canine in it. At last the General spoke. +"Gut!" he said gutturally; "you may go." + + * * * * * + +"You astonish me," I said to the _maire_, as he concluded his narrative. +We were sitting in his parlour, smoking a cigar together one day in +February in a town not a thousand miles from the German lines. "You +know, Monsieur le Maire, they have shot many a municipal magistrate for +less. I wonder they didn't make up their minds to shoot you." The +_maire_ smiled. "They did," he said quietly. He carefully nicked the ash +off his cigar, as he laid it down upon his desk, and opened the drawer +of his escritoire. He took out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It +was an order in German to shoot the _maire_ on the evacuation of the +town. + +"You see, monsieur," he exclaimed, "your brave soldiers were a little +too quick for them. You made a surprise attack in force early one +morning and drove the enemy out. So surprising was it that the Staff +officers billeted in my house left a box half full of cigars on my +sideboard! You are smoking one of them now--a very good cigar, is it +not?" It was. "And they left a good many official papers behind--what +you call 'chits,' is it not?--and this one among them. Please mind your +cigar-ash, monsieur! You see I rather value my own death-warrant." + +Moved by an irresistible impulse I rose from my chair and held out my +hand. The _maire_ took it in mild surprise. "Monsieur," I said frankly, +if crudely, "you are a brave man. And you have endured much." + +"Yes, monsieur," said the _maire_ gravely, as he glanced at a +proclamation on the wall which he has added to his private collection of +antiquities, "that is true. I have often been _tres fache_ to think that +I who won the Michelet prize at the Lycee should have put my name to +that thing over there."[26] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[25] Deputy. + +[26] This narrative follows with some fidelity the course of events as +related to the writer by the _maire_ of the town in question. But for +the most obvious of reasons the writer has deemed it his duty to +suppress names, disguise events, and give the narrative something of the +investiture of fiction. It is, however, true "in substance and in +fact."--J.H.M. + + + + +XXIV + +THE HILL + + +It was one of those perfect spring days when the whole earth seems to +bare her bosom to the caresses of the sun. The sky was without a cloud +and in the vault overhead, blue as a piece of Delft, a lark was +ascending in transports of exultant song. The hill on which we stood was +covered with young birch saplings bursting into leaf, and the sky itself +was not more blue than the wild hyacinths at our feet. Here and there in +the undergrowth gleamed the pallid anemone. A copper wire ran from pole +to pole down the slope of the hill and glittered in the sun like a +thread of gold. A little to our right two circular mirrors, glancing +obliquely at each other, stood on a tripod, and a graduated sequence of +flashes came and went, under the hands of the signallers, with the +velocity of light itself. A few yards behind us on the crest of the hill +stood a windmill, its great sails motionless as though it were a brig +becalmed and waiting for a wind, and astride one arm, like a sailor on +a yard, a carpenter was busy, with his mouth full of nails. The tapping +of his hammer and the song of the lark were the only sounds that broke +the warm stillness of the April day. A great plain stretched away at our +feet, and in the fields below women were stooping forward over their +hoes. + +The white towers of Ypres gleamed ghostlike in the distant haze. The +city had the wistful fragility of some beautiful mirage, and looking at +it across the pleasant landscape I thought of the Pilgrim's vision of +the Golden City shining in the sun beyond the Land of Beulah. Two or +three miles away on our right the ground rose gently to a range of low +wooded hills, and on their bare green slopes brown furrows showed up +like a cicatrice. They were the German trenches. On the crest of the +ridge a white house peeped out between the trees. That house seemed an +object of peculiar interest to the battery-major at my side. He was +stooping behind the "Director" with his eye to the sights as though he +was focussing the distant object for a photograph. He fixed the outer +clamp, unscrewed the inner clamp, and having got his sights on the +house, he reversed the process and swung round the sights to bear on a +little copse to our left. "One hundred and five," he said meditatively +as he found the angle. The N.C.O. took up the range-finder and measured +the distances first to the house, then to the copse. The major took up +an adjustable triangle, and with a movement of thumb and forefinger +converted it into the figure of an irregular "X." As he read off the +battery angle on the "Plotter" the N.C.O. communicated it and the +elevation to the telephone operator, who in turn communicated it to the +battery in the copse. "Battery angle seventy. Range four thousand." +Gunners are a laconic people, and their language is as economical of +words as a proposition in Euclid; their sentences resemble those +Oriental languages in which the verb is regarded as a superfluous +impertinence. Language is to them a visual and symbolical thing in which +angles and distances are predicated of churches, trees, and four-storied +houses. Now in the copse on our left six field-guns were cunningly +concealed, and even as the telephone operator spoke the dial-sights of +those six guns were being screwed round and the elevating gear adjusted +till they and the range-drum recorded the results of the major's +meditations upon the hill. Then the guns in the copse spoke, and the air +was sibilant with their speech. A little cloud no bigger than a man's +hand arose above the roof of the white house on the ridge. Our battery +had found its mark. + +Somewhere behind that ridge were the enemy's batteries and they were +yet to find. But even as we searched the landscape with our +field-glasses an aeroplane rose from behind our own position and made +for the distant ridge, its diaphanous wings displaying red, white, and +blue concentric circles to our glasses like the scales of some huge +magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke made faint +pencillings in the sky behind it. As it hovered above the ridge seven or +eight little white clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared from +nowhere just below it. They were German shrapnel. But the aeroplane +passed imperturbably on, leaving the little feathers to float in the sky +until in time they faded away and disappeared. In no long time the +aeroplane was retracing its flight, and certain little coloured discs +were speaking luminously to the battery, telling it of what the observer +had seen beyond the ridge. Between the aeroplane, the observer, the +telephone, and the guns, there seemed to be some mysterious freemasonry. +And this impression of secret and collusive agencies was heightened by +the vibration of the air above us, in which the shells from the +batteries made furrows that were audible without being visible, as +though the whole firmament were populated with disembodied spirits. The +passivity of the toilers in the field below us, who, absorbed in their +husbandry, regarded not the air above them, and the dreaming beauty of +the distant city almost persuaded us that we were the victims of a +gigantic illusion. But even as we gazed the city acquired a desperate +and tragic reality. Voices of thunder awoke behind the ridge, the air +was rent like a garment, and first one cloud and then another and +another rose above the city of Ypres, till the white towers were blotted +out of sight. A black pall floated over the doomed city, and from that +moment the air was never still, as a rhythm of German shells rained upon +it. The storm spread until other villages were involved, and a fierce +red glow appeared above the roofs of Vlamertinge. + +Yet the clouds and flame that rose above the white towers had at that +distance a flagrant beauty of their own, and it was hard to believe that +they stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men. Beyond the +voluminous smoke and darting tongues of fire, our field-glasses could +show us nothing. But we knew--for we had seen but yesterday--that behind +that haze there was being perpetrated a destruction as mournful and +capricious as that which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives overtook +Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one was even now being taken and +the other left; he who was upon the housetop would not come down to take +anything out of his house, neither would he who was in the field return +to take away his clothes. The great cathedral was crumbling to dust, +and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their +niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal +contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that +while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe +were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men +hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper pans, and stumbling +under the weight of feather-beds, while whimpering children fumbled +among their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies each of the shells, +whose trajectory we heard ever and anon in the skies overhead, were +making in that living stream were to us a subject of poignant +speculation. + +But as I looked immediately around me I found it ever more difficult to +believe that such things were being done upon the earth. The carpenter +went on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade his eyes with his +hand and gaze out over the plain, the peasants in the field continued to +hoe, a woman came out of a cottage with a child clinging to her skirts, +and said, "La guerre, quand finira-t-elle, M'sieu'?" From far above us +the song of the lark, now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated down +upon the drowsy air. + + + + +XXV + +THE DAY'S WORK + + +It was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some dozen of us all +told--the Camp Commandant, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General, the +Assistant-Provost-Marshal, the Assistant-Director of Medical Services, +the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective has nothing to do with his +personal habits), the Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a +_padre_, and myself. Most of us were known by our initials--our official +initials--for the use of them saves time and avoids pomposity. Our +duties were both extensive and peculiar, as will presently appear, for +we were in the habit of talking shop. There was, indeed, little else to +talk about. When you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with no +amusements and few amenities--neither theatres, nor sport, nor +books--and with little prospect of getting a move on, you can but +chronicle the small beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be +engaging enough at times. + +As we sat down to the stew which our orderly had compounded with the +assistance of the ingenious Mr. Maconochie, the Camp Commandant sighed +heavily. "I am a kind of receptacle for the waste products of +everybody's mind," he exclaimed petulantly. "This morning I was rung up +on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian +Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done. +Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier--_un soldat +discret_--to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant, +who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to +ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as +she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act." + +The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence. +Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to +whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much +may legitimately be expected. "Well, you may think yourself lucky you +haven't my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General at length. +"I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm +like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading +Bradshaw, except that I don't boast of it and it isn't a +recreation--it's damned hard work. I have to read the Army List for +about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong +there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone +and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd +Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having +died of heart failure on the 22nd inst." + +"Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?" asked the Camp Commandant. + +"He is the regimental goat," replied the D.A.A.G. "I suppose they +thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade +Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a +member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species." + +"Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets," said +the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. "I've been on the +trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the +Downshires are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with +them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that +they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the +trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was +spreading like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. At last I tracked it +down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about five years ago +and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a +carrier." + +"What did you do with him?" said the A.D.M.S. + +"He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a +perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy." + +"Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more +honourable than cure," said he whom we know as "Smells," and who has a +nose like a fox-terrier's. "I am the _avant-garde_ of the Staff, and you +fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make +my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue +parties, where would you all be?" + +"We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it," said +the A.P.M. ungratefully. + +"The _maire_ thinks I'm mad, of course," continued 'Smells,' "and I +can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street +are not conducive to health." + +"I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our +phylacteries," said the Assistant Provost Marshal. "Now I'm a sort of +licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and +the _estaminet_ proprietors think I'm a Temperance fanatic," he said, +as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. "One of them told me the +other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the +Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm +sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my +loins any day." + +"Yes," said the Camp Commandant, "it's our melancholy duty to be +impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I +stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again +at the Base or somewhere else _en route_; it would relieve me of any +compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the +envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably." + +"I'm something of a handwriting expert myself," said the A.P.M., +ignoring the aspersion. "They have changed the colour of the passes +again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s +signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour +of the pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance," he +murmured dreamily; "I believe I could now forge his signature very +artistically." + +"I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.," said +the A.D.M.S. "I believe I receive more chits than any man on the +staff." "Chits," it should be explained, are the billets-doux of the +Army wherein officers send tender messages to one another and make +assignations. + +"Did you hear about that chit the Camp Commandant at the Headquarters of +the ----th Corps sent to the A.Q.M.G.?" asked the A.P.M. "No? Well, the +A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to Ferrers asking if they had made use +of any Ammonal and, if so, whether the results were satisfactory. +Ferrers sent it on to the Camp Commandant for report and the Camp +Commandant wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is not +understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used--is it a drug or an +explosive?' Ferrers told him to ask the Medical Officer attached to +Corps headquarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back another chit +to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had informed him that 'Ammonal' was a +compound drug extensively used in America in cases of abnormal neurotic +excitement, and that, so far as he knew, it was not a medical issue to +Corps H.Q. He therefore regretted that he was unable to report results, +but promised that if occasion should arise to administer it to any of +the Corps H.Q. _personnel_ he would faithfully observe the effects and +report the same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he betrayed a quite +abnormal degree of neurotic excitement; in fact, he was quite nasty +about it." + +"What the devil did he mean?" asked the A.D.M.S. + +"Well, that points the moral of your remarks about handwriting," said +the A.P.M. encouragingly. "The Camp Commandant had written what looked +like an 'o' in place of an 'a.' Ammonol is a drug; ammonal is an +explosive." + +"Well, I wish some one would teach the Huns how to write decently." The +speaker was Summersby of the Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence are a +corps of detectives and have to estimate the strength, the location, and +the composition of the enemy's forces. Everything is grist that comes to +their mill and they will perform surprising feats of induction. They can +reconstruct a German Army Corps out of a Landwehr man's bootlace, his +diary, his underclothing, or his shoulder-strap--but the greatest of +these is his diary. "I've been studying the diaries of prisoners until I +feel a Hun myself. They remind me of the diary I used to keep at school, +they are all about eating and drinking. The Hun is a glutton and a +wine-bibber. But I found something to-day--'Keine Gefangene' in an +officer's field note-book." + +"Translate, my Hunnish friend," said the A.P.M. + +"No prisoners," replied Summersby shortly. + +"I hope you handed the swine over to the P.M.," said the Camp +Commandant. + +"Well, no," said Summersby. "You see he had a plausible explanation--by +the way, what perfect English those German officers talk; I'll bet that +man has eaten our bread and salt some time. He said it was a Brigade +order to the men not to make the taking of prisoners a pretext for going +back to the rear in large parties but to leave them to the supports when +they came up. The curious thing is that that officer belongs to the +112th and we've our eye on the 112th. One of their men, a fellow named +Schmidt, who surrendered on the 19th of last month, said they'd had an +order to take no prisoners but kill them all. His regiment was the +112th," he added darkly. + +"The filthy swine!" we cried in a chorus, and our talk grew sombre as we +exchanged reminiscences. + +"What pleases me about you fellows," said Ponsonby, who had been +listening with a languid air, and who was formerly in the F.O. where he +composed florid speeches in elegant French for Hague Plenipotentiaries, +"is your habits of speech. In diplomacy we contrive to talk a lot +without saying anything, whereas Army men manage to talk little and say +a great deal. You've got four words in the Army which seem to be a +mighty present help in trouble at H.Q. Their sustaining properties are +remarkable and they seem to tide over very anxious moments. When you +are in a hole you say 'Damn all,' and when you are asked for +instructions you cry 'Carry on.' I suppose it's by sitting tight and +using those words with discrimination that you fellows arrive at +greatness and attain Brigadier rank. That seems to be the first thing a +third-grade staff-officer learns." + +"The first thing a third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak +respectfully of his superiors," said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion +at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in +spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him. He turned +to the D.A.A.G. and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten to say grace. For +what we have _not_ received"--he added, with a meaning glance at a +Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.'s wife has sent out from home and which +remained on the sideboard--"the Lord make us truly thankful." This was +an allusion to the D.A.A.G.'s sacerdotal functions. For the +Adjutant-General and his staff, who know the numbers of all the Field +Ambulances, can lay hands--but not in the apostolic sense--upon every +chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and +can admonish, deprive, and suspend. + +The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction. "I think we've fixed it +up with those Red Cross drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s +department had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented +by these birds of passage on the lines of communication. "We've decided +that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the +Army Act, and that you 'follow' the British Army from the moment you +accept a pass to H.Q. My chief called some of them together yesterday, +and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under +military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days' +field-punishment to the punishment of death. This was _pour encourager +les autres_. They looked quite thoughtful." + +"That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby pensively. "Should an Army +follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot? I put it to you," he +added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I want counsel's opinion." + +"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the man of law. "But the +safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards." + +"Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put +you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because +Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously +untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts--that's a legal +expression for fraud, isn't it?--his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie. +What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?" +Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as _Aquila +vulgaris_, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of +them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by +an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode. +Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as "missing," and go to +some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return. Ponsonby +glances suspiciously at Slingsby's portly figure. + +But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of +"proceedings," and his departure was the signal for a general +dispersion. "Come and have a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I" man. +"Can't, you slacker," was the reply. "I've got to go and make up an 'I' +summary. 'Notes of an Air Reconnaissance. Distribution of the enemy's +forces. Copy of a German Divisional Circular. Notes on the German system +of signalling from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of thing. +Just now we're trying to discover how many guns they've got in the +batteries of their new formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm. +projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns +have been withdrawn. But it may be only a blind." + +As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our +respective offices a supply column rumbled over the _pave_, each of the +seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a +fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their +motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the +aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible +from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60 +again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow the casualty returns +will come in. Good God! will it never end?" + + + + +XXVI + +FIAT JUSTITIA + + PARQUET + du + Tribunal de Iere Instance + d'Ypres + + +At last I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking +out the _procureur du roi_, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to +be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of +mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed +among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city +like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes +strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a +deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a +spectacle at once tragic and whimsical--the brass lectern still stood +upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as +with a gesture of reproof. The sight of those scrambling chairs all +huddled together and fallen headlong upon one another had something +oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts. Ypres is an +uncanny place. + +We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops, +pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until +all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt +for the _procureur du roi_--who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to +Poperinghe--we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with +French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl +exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely +boy, who regarded A----, the Staff officer accompanying me, with a +hypnotic stare. He peered at him from under drooping eyelids, flanking a +nose without a bridge, and my companion didn't like it. "He is admiring +you," I remarked by way of consolation, as indeed he was. "What do you +call it?" said A---- petulantly to a R.A.M.C. officer who was lunching +with us. The latter looked at the boy with a clinical eye. +"Necrosis--syphilitic," he said dispassionately. "And he's handing us +the cakes!" A---- exclaimed with horror. "Fetch me an ounce of civet." +We declined the cakes, and, having paid our _addition_, hastily departed +to resume our quest of the _procureur_. + +Eventually we found the legend set out above. It was a placard stuck on +the door of a private house. We entered and found ourselves in a kitchen +with a stone floor; japanned tin boxes, calf-bound volumes, and fat +registers, all stamped with the arms of Belgium, were grouped on the +shelves of the dresser. A courteous gentleman, well-groomed and +debonair, with waxed moustaches, greeted us. It was the _procureur du +roi_. With him was another civilian--the _juge d'instruction_. They +politely requested us to take a seat and to excuse a judicial +preoccupation. The _juge d'instruction_ was interrogating an inhabitant +of Poperinghe. The _procureur_ explained to me that the _prevenu_ (the +accused), who was not present but was within the precincts, was charged +with _calomnie_[27] under Section 444 of the _Code Penal_. "But," I +exclaimed in astonishment, "are you still administering justice?" +"Pourquoi non?" he asked in mild surprise. It was true, he admitted, +that his office at Ypres had been destroyed by shell-fire, the _maison +d'arret_--in plain English, the prison--was open to the four winds of +heaven, and warders and gendarmes had been called up to the colours. But +justice must be done and the majesty of the King of the Belgians upheld. +The King's writ still ran, even though its currency might be limited to +the few square miles which were all that remained of Belgian territory +in Belgian hands. All this he explained to me with such gravity that I +felt further questions would be futile, if not impertinent. I therefore +held my tongue and determined to follow the proceedings closely, being +not a little curious to observe how the judgment would be enforced. + +The witness took the oath to say the truth and nothing but the truth +("rien que la verite"), concluding with the solemn invocation, "Ainsi +m'aide Dieu." The parties had elected to have the proceedings taken in +French. + +"Your name?" said the judge, as he studied the proces-verbal prepared by +the _procureur_. + +"Jules F----." + +"Age?" + +"Cinquante-cinq." + +"Profession?" + +"Cordonnier." + +"Residence?" + +"Rue d'Ypres 32." + +This preliminary catechism being completed, the prosecutor unfolded his +tale. He had been drinking the health of His Majesty the King of the +Belgians and confusion to his enemies in an _estaminet_ at the crowded +hour of 7 P.M. The accused had entered, and in the presence of many of +his neighbours had said to him, "Vous etes un Bosche." "Un Bosche!" +repeated the witness indignantly. "It is a gross defamation." With +difficulty had he been restrained from the shedding of blood. But, being +a law-abiding, peaceful man and the father of a family, he volubly +explained, he had laid this information ("denonciation") before the +_procureur du roi_. + +The judge looked grave. But he duly noted down the testimony, after some +perfunctory cross-examination, and, it being read over to the witness, +the judge added "Lecture faite," and the persisting witness signed the +deposition with his own hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other +witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty, came forward and testified +to the same effect. And they also signed their depositions and withdrew. + +The magistrate ordered the usher to bring in the accused, who had been +summoned to appear by a _mandat d'amener_. He was a stout, dark, +convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of +the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these +proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him +into knots, and reduced him to a state of extreme penitence. + +"Where were you on the 3rd of April at 7 P.M.?" began the magistrate, +making what gunners call a ranging shot. The accused appeared to have +been everywhere in Poperinghe except at the _estaminet_. He had been to +the butcher's, the baker's, and the candlestick-maker's. + +"At what hour did you enter the Cafe a l'Harmonie?" + +The accused tried to look as if he now heard of the Cafe "A l'Harmonie" +for the first time, but under the searching eye of the magistrate he +failed. He might, he conceded, have looked in there for a thirsty +moment. + +"Do you know Jules F----?" the magistrate persisted. The accused +grudgingly admitted the existence of such a person. "Is he a German?" +asked the magistrate pointedly. The accused pondered. "Would you call +him a Bosche?" persisted the magistrate. "I never _meant_ to call him 'a +Bosche,'" the accused said in an unguarded moment. The magistrate +pounced on him. He had found the range. After that the result was a +foregone conclusion. The duel ended in the accused tearfully admitting +he thought he must have been drunk, and throwing himself on the mercy of +the magistrate. + +"It is a grave offence," said the magistrate severely, as he +contemplated the lachrymose delinquent. "An _estaminet_ is a public +place within the meaning of Section 444 of the Code Penal. Vous avez +mechamment impute a une personne un fait precis qui est de nature a +porter atteinte a son honneur." "And calculated to provoke a breach of +the peace," he added. "It is punishable with a term of imprisonment not +exceeding one year." The face of the accused grew long. "Or a fine of +200 francs," he pursued. The lips of the accused quivered. "You may have +to go to a _maison de correction_," continued the magistrate pitilessly. +The accused wept. + +I grew more and more interested. If this was a "correctional" offence, +the magistrate must in the ordinary course of things commit the prisoner +to a _chambre de conseil_, thereafter to take his trial before a +Tribunal Correctionnel. But chamber and tribunal were scattered to the +four corners of the earth. + +Here, I felt sure, the whole proceedings must collapse and the +magistrate be sadly compelled to admit his impotence. The magistrate, +however, appeared in nowise perturbed, nor did he for a moment relax his +authoritative expression. He was turning over the pages of the _Code +d'Instruction Criminelle_, glancing occasionally at a now wholly +penitent prisoner trembling before the majesty of the law. At last he +spoke. "I will deal with you," he said with an air of indulgence, "under +Chapter VIII. of the Code. You will be bound over to come up for +judgment at the end of the war if called upon. You will deposit a +_cautionnement_ of twenty francs. And now, gentlemen, we are at your +service." + +"Fiat justitia ruat coelum," whispered A---- to me, as the prisoner, +deeply impressed, opened a leather purse and counted out four greasy +five-franc notes. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[27] Defamation. It is a misdemeanour according to Belgian law. + + + + +XXVII + +HIGHER EDUCATION + + +British Headquarters must, I think, be the biggest Military Academy in +the world. It has its Sandhurst and its Woolwich and even its Camberley. +It ought long ago to have been incorporated by Order in Council as a +University with Sir John French as Chancellor. It has more schools in +the Art of War than I can remember, and every School has an Instructor +who deserves to rank as a full-time Professor. To graduate in one of +those schools you must get a fortnight's leave from your trenches or +your battery, at the end of which time you return to do a little +post-graduate work of a very practical kind with the aid of a +machine-gun or a trench-mortar. At the beginning of the war higher +education at G.H.Q. was somewhat neglected, and the company officer who +desired to improve himself in the lethal arts had to be content with +private study. Company officers went in for applied chemistry by making +flares out of a test-tube full of water, delicately balanced in a +bully-beef tin containing sodium. The tins were tied to the barbed-wire +entanglements in front of our trenches, and when the stealthy Hun, +creeping on his stomach, bumped against the wire the test-tube +overflowed into the tin and a lurid patch of greenish flame revealed the +clumsy visitor to our look-outs. That was before we were supplied with +calcium flares. Then, too, the sappers went in for experimental research +by making trench-mortars out of old stove-pipes. + +To-day all that is changed. A chemical corps has come out to join the +sappers, and the gunners have received some highly finished +trench-mortars from Vickers's. A trench mortar is a kind of toy howitzer +and very useful when you want to try conclusions with a neighbouring +trench at short range. The mortars are not exactly things to play with, +and so two "schools" of mortars have been instituted to teach R.G.A. men +how to handle them. Every morning at nine o'clock two young subalterns +meet their class of fifty pupils in a chateau, and explain with the aid +of a diagram on a blackboard the internal economy of the mortar and its +50-lb. bomb, the adjustment of angles of elevation to ranges, and the +respective offices of fuse, charge, and detonator. When the class have +had enough of this they go off to a neighbouring field to simulate +trench warfare and hold a demonstration. This is real sport. They have +dug a sector of trenches, duly traversed, and at some two or three +hundred yards distance have dug another sector and decorated it +realistically with barbed-wire entanglements. Thither one afternoon we +conveyed the mortar to the first trenches on an improvised carriage, +placed it behind one of the traverses, and duly clamped it down. The +subaltern took up a periscope and got the thread-line on the target--you +find the range without instruments and by your own intuitions. "Three +hundred, I think," he remarked pensively. A pupil adjusted the range +indicator at 71.30 to get the elevation, and his assistant took up what +looked like a huge jar of preserved ginger. It was the bomb. Having put +the tail to it he inserted the detonator. "Fuse at 27." He set the +indicator with as much care as if he were setting the hands of his +watch. The man took the fuse delicately, put in the test-tube and +attached the lanyard. These operations had been closely followed by the +class, who made a circle round the bomb like a football "scrum." It was +now time to line the trenches, for the "tail" of the bomb is apt to kick +viciously when the thing is fired. As they spread out, the man removed +the two safety-pins in the top of the fuse and pulled the lanyard. There +was a voice of thunder and a sheet of flame, followed by what seemed an +interminable pause. We scanned the brown furrows in front of us and +suddenly the earth shot skywards in a fan; a cloud of dirty-black smoke +floated over our target. The whole class leapt the parapet and streamed +away across the furrows like a pack of hounds in full cry, until they +suddenly disappeared below the surface of the earth. We followed and +found them standing in a huge crater whose sides were hollowed out as +neatly as those of a cup. "Done it again," said the subaltern +complacently, "we've never had a blind." + +At the Machine-gun School they do things on a larger scale, and Wren's +could teach them nothing in the art of cramming. The Instructor reckons +to put his class of 200 officers and men through a six months' course in +a fortnight. There is need for it. The Germans started this war with +eleven machine-guns (it is now anything from twenty to forty) to a +battalion. We started with two. For years they have enlisted, trained, +and paid a special class of men to man them. Consequently we had a great +deal of leeway to make up. We are making it up, hand over fist, thanks +to the Instructor, one of the most brilliant and devoted officers I +know, and a man who spends his nights in inventing or perfecting +improvements. He has got a pocket edition of a machine-gun made of +tempered steel and weighing only 27 lb., as against our old one, which +is of gun-metal and weighs 58 lb.--a material difference when it is a +question of an advance. The new one, he explains somewhat illogically, +with paternal pride, can be carried into action "like a baby." Having +decided to give it a trial we carried it tenderly to a quarry and +proceeded to "feed" it with a belt of cartridges. The Instructor set up +a small stick against the bank of a gravel quarry and returned and +adjusted the tangent-sight at 100 on the standard. He got the fore-sight +and back-sight in a line on the stick, seized the traversing-handles, +released the safety-catch, and pressed the button with his right thumb +with the persistency of a man who cannot make the waiter answer the +electric bell. "Tap--tap--tap." There was a series of explosions as +though the sparking plug of a motor-bicycle was playing tricks. The +target danced like a thing possessed. It hopped and skipped and curtsied +under that deadly stream of bullets. Then he slowly swept that gravel +bank with the traversing handles till the pebbles jumped like +hailstones. "I think she'll do," he remarked appreciatively as he folded +up the tripod. + +The R.E. is the Army's school of technology. To do a survey or make a +bridge or lay a telephone is all in the day's work. But your sapper is +a man of ideas, and is for ever seeking out new inventions. So he has +turned his attention to chemistry, and "R.E." has a chemical corps which +has put aside the blow-pipe and the test-tube at home to come out and +study the applied chemistry of war. Just now they are engaged in +discovering the most effective method of laying noxious gases. Copper +vessels of ammonia in a trench to disperse the gas when it gets there +are all very well, but by that time you may have more pressing +attentions of the enemy to engage you; the thing is to prevent the gas +getting there. Hence ingenious minds are considering how to project with +a spray something upon the advancing fog which will bring it to earth in +the form of an innocuous compound. Spray that something over the +parapet, and if you can spray it far enough and wide enough you may +precipitate the deadly green and brown mists into chlorides or bromides +which will be as harmless as bleaching-powder and not less salubrious. + +Others have turned their attention to automatic flares. You can get a +startling illuminant if you suspend a test-tube containing sulphuric +acid in a vessel of chlorate of potash, and it will be all the better if +you add a little common sugar and salt. You balance your test-tube in +the hollow of a bamboo stick and fill the top knot of the stick with +the chlorate of potash; then you plant your sticks, not too securely, +outside your barbed-wire entanglements, and string them together with a +trip-wire. As for the patrolling Hun who bumps against that trip-wire, +it were better for him that a millstone were hung round his neck. + +This is Higher Education and post-graduate research. But elementary +education is not neglected. At the H.Q. of the --th Corps is an O.T.C. +where privates in the H.A.C. and the Artists practise the precepts of +the _Infantry Manual_ and study night operations in the meadows within +sound of the guns. + +Truly it is, in the words of the stout Puritan, a nation not slow and +dull but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, +subtle and sinewy, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that +human capacity can soar to. + + + + +XXVIII + +THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS + + +The little towns of Flanders and Artois are Aire, Hazebrouck, Bethune, +Armentieres, Bailleul, Poperinghe, and Cassel. They are known in the +Army vernacular as Air, Hazybrook, Betoon, Arm-in-tears, Ballyhool +(occasionally Belial), Poperingy, and Kassel. The fairest of these is +Cassel. For Cassel is set upon a hill which rises from the interminable +plain, salient and alluring as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to +the fretful wayfarer, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary, and I will +give you rest." For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, +the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the +wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a +great peace. The motor-lorries avoid the declivities of Cassel, and the +horsemen pass by on the other side. Some twenty windmills--no less and +perhaps more--are perched like dovecots on the hill, lifting their +sails to the blue sky. Some day I will seek out a notary at Cassel and +will get him to execute a deed of conveyance assigning to me, with no +restrictive covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for I have +coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to the enchantments of _Lettres de +mon moulin_. True, Flanders is not Provence, and the croaking of the +frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the willows in the plains +below is a poor exchange for the chant of the _cigale_. But these mills +look out over a landscape that is now dearer to me than Abana and +Pharpar, for many a gallant friend of mine lies beneath its sod. + +Cassel is approached by a winding road that turns and returns upon +itself like a corkscrew, and is bordered by an avenue of trees. It has a +bandstand--what town in Flanders and Artois has not?--and a church. +Cheek by jowl with the church is a place of convenience, which seems to +me profane in more senses than one. I have never been able to make up my +mind whether such secularisation of a church wall is the expression of +anti-clerical antipathies, or of a clerical common-sense peculiarly +French in its practical and unblushing acceptance of the elementary +facts of life. But about Cassel I am not so sure. The sight of that +shameless annexe is too familiar in France to please our fastidious +English tastes--it seems to express a truculent nonconformity, it is too +like a dissenting chapel-of-ease. + + + Wherever God erects a house of prayer + The devil always builds a chapel there. + + +I have never had the courage to solve my uncertainties by buttonholing a +Frenchman and asking him what is the truth of the matter. I am sure +Anatole France could supply me with any number of whimsical +explanations, all of them suggestive, and not one of them true. + +But, except for this sauciness, Cassel is a demure and pleasant place. + +Bailleul is mean in comparison, though it has a notable church tower in +which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither, +perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which +is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and the +_chatelaine_ of which answers your lame and halting French in nimble +English. On the road to Locre it has those Baths and Wash-houses which +have become so justly famous, and whence hosts of British soldiers come +forth like Naaman white as snow, but infinitely more companionable. +Almost any day you may see a bathing-towel unit marching thither or +thence in column of route, their towels held at the slope or the trail +as it pleases their fancy. And in a field outside Bailleul I have seen +open-air smithies and the glow of hot coals, the air resounding with the +clink of hammers upon the anvil--a cheering spectacle on a wet and +inclement winter's day. But Bailleul has few amenities and no charms. It +is, however, occasionally visited by that amazing troupe of variety +artistes, known as the Army Pierrots, who provide the men in billets +with a most delectable entertainment for 50 centimes, the proceeds being +a "deodand," and appropriated to charitable uses. For all that, Bailleul +stinks in the nostrils of fatigue-parties. + +Bethune is like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land, for it is +the rendezvous of the British Army, and men tramp miles to warm their +hands at its fires of social life. Its _patisserie_ has the choicest +cakes, and its hairdresser's the most soothing unguents of any town in +our occupation. It has a great market-place, where the peasants do a +thriving business every Saturday, producing astonished rabbits by the +ears from large sacks, like a conjuror, and holding out live and +plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it +has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of +a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct +unbecoming an officer and a gentleman--a spectacle as melancholy as it +is rare, and of which the less said the better. It has a church with +some lurid glass of indifferent quality, and (if I remember rightly) a +curious dovecote of a tower. The transepts are hemmed in by shops and +warehouses. To the mediaevalist there is nothing strange in such +neighbourliness of the world and the Church. The great French churches +of the Middle Ages--witness Notre Dame d'Amiens with its inviting +ambulatory--were places of municipal debate, and their sculpture was, to +borrow the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political "liberty of +speech" at a time when the chisel of the sculptor might say what the pen +of the scrivener dared not, for fear of the common hangman, express. +Bethune is not the only place where I have seen shops coddling churches, +and the conjunction was originally less impertinent than it now seems. +It was not that the Church was profaned, but that the world was +consecrated; honest burgesses trading under the very shadow of the +flying buttresses were reminded that usury was a sin, and that to charge +a "just price" was the beginning of justification by works. But I have +not observed that the shopkeepers of Bethune now entertain any very +mediaeval compunction about charging the British soldier an unjust +price. + +Armentieres is on the high road to Lille, but at present there is no +thoroughfare. It's a dispiriting town, given over to industrial +pursuits, and approached by rows of mean little cottages such as you may +see on the slopes of the mining valleys of South Wales. Two things stand +out in my memory--one, the spectacle of a corporal being tried for his +life in the Town Hall by a court-martial--there had been a quarrel over +a girl in billets and he had shot his comrade; the other the sight of a +regiment of Canadians ("Princess Pat's," I believe), drawn up in the +square for parade one winter afternoon before they went into the +trenches for the first time. And a very gallant and hefty body of men +they were. + +Poperinghe is a dismal place, and to be avoided. + +Hazebrouck is not without some pretentiousness. It has the largest +_place_ of any of them, with a town-hall of imposing appearance, but +something of a whited sepulchre for all that. I remember calling on a +civilian dignitary there--I forget what he was; he sat in a long narrow +corridor-like room, all the windows were hermetically sealed, a +gas-stove burnt pungently, some fifty people smoked cigarettes, and at +intervals the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffled his foot +over the spot as a concession to public hygiene. Therefore I did not +tarry. The precincts of the railway-station are often crowded by batches +of German prisoners, villainous-looking rascals, and usually of the +earth earthy. I watched some of them entraining one day; with them was a +surly German officer who looked at his fellow-prisoners with contempt, +the crowd of inhabitants with dislike, and (so it seemed to me) his +guards with hatred. No one spoke to him, and he stood apart in +melancholy insolence. Perhaps he was the German officer of whom the +story is told that, being conducted to the Base in a third-class +carriage in the company of some of his own men, and under the escort of +some British soldiers, he declaimed all the way down against being +condemned to such low society, until one of his guards, getting rather +"fed up" with it all, bluntly cut him short with the admonition: "Stow +it, governor, we'd have hired a blooming Pullman if we'd known we was +going to have the pleasure of your society. Yus, and we'd have had Sir +John French 'ere to meet you. But yer'll have to put up with us low +fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it, +and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his +bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was +impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way +they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed into a thoughtful +silence. + +Hazebrouck has a witty and pleasant _procureur de la Republique_, who +once confided to me that the English were "irresistible." "In war?" I +asked. "_Vraiment_," he replied, "but I meant in love." + +But the towns occupied by our Army are monotonously lacking in +distinction. To tell the truth they wear an impoverished look, and are +singularly unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small chateaux +built on grassy mounds surrounded by moats, and the timbered farm-houses +with their red-tiled roofs and barns big enough to billet a whole +company at a pinch. The country is one vast bivouac, and every cottage, +farm, and mansion is a billet. Near the edge of the Front you may see +men who have just come out of action; I remember once meeting a group of +Royal Irish, only forty-seven left out of a Company, who had been in the +attack by the 8th Division at Fleurbaix, and I gazed at them with +something of the respectful consternation with which the Babylonians +must have regarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego after their ordeal in +the fiery furnace. Yet nothing of their demeanour betrayed the brazen +fury they had gone through; they sat by the hedge cleaning their +accoutrements with the utmost nonchalance. They reminded me of the North +Staffords, one of whose officers, whom I know very well, when I asked +him what were his impressions of a battle, replied, after some +reflection: "I haven't got any; all I can remember of a hot corner we +were in near Oultersteen was that my men, while waiting to advance, were +picking blackberries." It was a man of the North Staffords who, +according to the same unimpeachable authority, was heard shouting out +when half the trench was blown in by a shell, and he had extricated +himself with difficulty: "'Ere, where's my pipe? Some one's pinched my +pipe!" + +But it isn't always quite as comforting as that. The servant of a friend +of mine, a young subaltern in the Black Watch, whom, alas! like so many +other friends, I shall never see again, in describing the church parade +held after the battle of Loos, in which his master was killed by a +shell, wrote that when the chaplain gave out the hymn "Rock of Ages" the +men burst into tears, their voices failed them, and they broke down +utterly. And I remember that on one occasion when some four-fifths of +the officers of a certain battalion had gone down in the advance, and +the shaken remnant fell back upon their trenches, deafened and +distraught, one of the officers--he had been a master in a great public +school before the war--took out of his pocket a copy of the _Faerie +Queene_, and began in a slow, even voice to read the measured cadences +of one of its cantos, and, having read, handed it to a subaltern and +asked him to follow suit. The others listened, half in wonder, half in +fear, thinking he had lost his senses, but there was method in his +madness and a true inspiration. The musical rhythm of the words +distracted their terrible memories, and soon acted like a charm upon +their disordered nerves. + + + And on his breast a bloody cross he bore, + The dear remembrance of his dying Lord, + For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, + And dead (as living) ever him adored: + Upon his shield the like was also scored, + For sovereign hope, which in his help he had: + Right faithful true he was in deed and word; + But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad: + Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad. + + +Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-march to keep them fit; +Indian cavalry jogging along on the footpath with lances in rest; herds +of tethered horses in rest-camps; a string of motor-buses painted a +khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling workshop) with its dynamo humming +like a top and the mechanics busy upon the lathe; an Army Postal van +coming along, like a friend in need, to tow my car, stranded in the mud, +with a long cable; sappers, like Zaccheus, up a tree (but not +metaphorically); despatch-riders whizzing past at sixty miles an +hour--these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they +lend a variety to the monotonous countryside without which it would be +dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight +lines--straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less +straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without +their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our occupation, as you +leave G.H.Q. for the Base, you exchange these plains of sticky clay and +stagnant dykes for a pleasant country of undulating downs and noble +beech woods, and one seems to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency. + +It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is +painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. It is merely a heap of +stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are not more desolate. + + + + +XXIX + +THE FRONT ONCE MORE + + +A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long +boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear. All men would emphasise +the boredom, and most men would admit the fear. The only soldiers I ever +met who affected to know nothing of the fear were Afridis, and the +Afridi is notoriously a ravisher of truth. But the predominant +feeling--in the winter months at any rate--was the boredom. There was a +time when some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only relieved +once every three weeks, and time hung heavy on their hands. Under these +circumstances they began to take something more than a professional +interest in their neighbours opposite. The curiosity was reciprocated. +Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches +were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse. Curious conventions +grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the +night, there was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour +of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded as consecrated to "private business," and +certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of bounds by the +snipers on both sides. On many occasions working parties toiled with +pick and shovel within talking distance of one another, and, although it +was, of course, never safe to presume upon immunity, they usually +forbore to interfere with one another. The Bedfords and the South +Staffords worked in broad daylight with their bodies half exposed above +the trenches, raising the parapet as the water rose. About 200 yards +away the Germans were doing the same. Neither side interfered with the +navvy-work of the other, and for the simplest of all reasons: both were +engaged in fighting a common foe--the underground springs. When two +parties are both in danger of being drowned they haven't time to fight. +To speak of drowning is no hyperbole; the mud of Flanders in winter is +in some places like a quicksand, and men have been sucked under beyond +redemption. A common misery begat a mutual forbearance. + +It was under such circumstances that the following exchange of +pleasantries took place. The men of a certain British regiment heard at +intervals a monologue going on in the trenches opposite, and every time +the speaker stopped his discourse shouts of guttural laughter arose, +accompanied by cries of "Bravo, Mueller!" "Sehr komisch!" "Noch einmal, +Mueller!" Our men listened intently, and an acquaintance with German, so +imperfect as to be almost negligible, could not long disguise from them +the fact that their Saxon neighbours possessed a funny man whose name +was Mueller. Their interest in Mueller, always audible but never visible, +grew almost painful. At last they could restrain it no longer. At a +given signal they began chanting, like the gallery in a London theatre, +except that their voices came from the pit: + + + We--want--Mueller! We--want--Mueller! We--want--Mueller! + + +The refrain grew more and more insistent. At last a head appeared above +the German parapet. It rose gradually, as though the owner were being +hoisted by unseen hands. He rose, as the principal character in a Punch +and Judy show rises, with jerky articulations of his members from the +ventriloquial depths below. The body followed, until a three-quarter +posture was attained. The owner, with his hand upon his heart, bowed +gracefully three times and then disappeared. It was Mueller! + +It is some months since I was in the British trenches,[28] and I often +wonder how our men have accommodated themselves to the ever-increasing +multiplication of the apparatus of war. The fire trenches I visited were +about wide enough to allow two men to pass one another--and that was +all. Obviously the wider your trench the greater your exposure to the +effects of shell-fire, and if we go on introducing trench-mortars, and +gas-pumps, and gas-extinguishers, to say nothing of a great store of +bombs, as pleasing in variety and as startling in their effects as +Christmas crackers, our trenches will soon be as full of furniture as a +Welsh miner's parlour. But doubtless the sappers have arranged all that. +Some of these improvements are viewed by company officers without +enthusiasm. The trench-mortar, for example, is distinctly unpopular, for +it draws the enemy's fire, besides being an uncanny thing to handle, +although the handling is done not by the company but by a "battery" of +R.G.A. men, who come down and select a "pitch." I have seen a +trench-mortar in action--it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a +prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It +is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and, +incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a +large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing +cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I +know nothing except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in +the chemical corps of the sappers, and your corporal is, in nine cases +out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one +of considerable distinction. He is usually a lecturer or +Assistant-Professor in Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who +has left his test-tubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting +allurements of the trenches. I sometimes wonder what name the fertile +brain of the British soldier has found for him--probably "the squid." He +has three gases in his repertoire, each more deadly than the other. One +of them is comparatively innocuous--it disables without debilitating; +and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes. The truth is that we +do not take very kindly to the use of this kind of thing. Still, our men +know their business, and our gas, whichever variety it was, played a +very effective part in the capture of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. + +For the greater part of the winter months the "Front" was, to all +appearances above ground, as deserted as the Sahara and almost as +silent. Everybody who had to be there was, for obvious reasons, +invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who found himself between the +lines was in a wilderness whose intimidating silence was occasionally +interrupted by the sound of projectiles coming he knew not whence and +going he knew not whither. The effect was inexpressibly depressing. But +a mile or two behind our lines all was animation, for here were +Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked up by a network of field +telephones, which in turn communicated with Divisional Headquarters +farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under the care of a pigeon +fancier, who figures in the Army List as a captain in the R.E., are kept +at these places for use in sudden emergency when the wires get destroyed +by shell-fire. The sappers must, I think, belong to the order of +Arachnidae; they appear to be able to spin telephone wires out of their +entrails at the shortest notice. Moreover, they possess an uncanny +adhesiveness, and a Signal Company man will leg up a tree with a coil of +wire on his arm and hang glutinously, suspended by his finger-tips, +while he enjoys the view. These acrobatic performances are sometimes +exchanged for equestrian feats. He has been known to lay cable for two +miles across country at a gallop with the cable-drum paying out lengths +of wire. The sapper is the "handy man" of the Army. + +The location of these Headquarters on our side of the line is a constant +object of solicitude to the enemy on the other. Very few officers even +on our side know where they all are. I had confided to me, for the +purpose of my official duties, a complete list of such Headquarters, +and the first thing I did, in pursuance of my instructions, was to +commit it to memory and then burn it. To find out the enemy's H.Q.--with +a view to making them as unhealthy as possible--is almost entirely the +work of aeroplane reconnaissance. To discover the number and composition +of the units whose H.Q. they are is the work of our "Intelligence." Of +our Intelligence work the less said the better--by which I intend no +aspersion but quite the contrary. The work is extraordinarily effective, +but half its effectiveness lies in its secrecy. It is all done by an +elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate to say that the "I" +officers discover the location of the H.Q. of captured Germans by a +geological analysis of the mud on the soles of their boots, in the +classical manner of Sherlock Holmes; but I should be equally indisposed +to deny it. There is nothing too trivial or insignificant to engage the +detective faculties of an "I" man. He has to allow a wide margin for the +probability of error in his calculations; shoulder-straps, for example, +are no longer conclusive data as to the composition of the enemy's +units, for the intelligent Hun has taken of late to forging +shoulder-straps with the same facility as he forges diplomatic +documents. Oral examination of prisoners has to be used with caution. +But there are other resources of which I shall say nothing. It is not +too much to say, however, that we have now a pretty complete +comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German +brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One +thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence +staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military +authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of +mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to say _De minimis +non curatur_. + +If "I" stands for the Criminal Investigation Department (and the study +of the Hun may be legitimately regarded as a department of criminology) +the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be described as a kind of +Metropolitan Police. The P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are the _Censores Morum_ +of the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are the _Aediles_. +It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visit _estaminets_, +keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences +of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is +more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I +remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had +already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his +particular district daily, I had never once been stopped or questioned +by his police. "No," he said quietly, "they reported you the first day +two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions; +we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff, +and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite +a lively time at X----," which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q. +itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for +their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark +doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a +needle than to get into that town--or out of it. As for the "Society +ladies," of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they +were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew +anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be +had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into +G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the +left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a +needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them +takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to assist +you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in +their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for +traces of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with +your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the +fifth rib--at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his +right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle, and by that masonic +sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the +conversation. + +Still, holders of authorised passes sometimes lose them, and +unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and "convert" them to +their own unlawful uses. The career of these adventurers is usually as +brief as it is inglorious; when apprehended they are handed over to the +French authorities, and the place that knew them knows them no more. +They are shot into some mysterious _oubliette_. The rest is silence, or, +as a mediaeval chronicler would say, "Let him have a priest." + +We have taught the inhabitants of Flanders and Artois three things: one, +to sing "Tipperary"; two, to control their street traffic; and three, to +flush their drains. The spectacle of the military police on point duty +agitatedly waving little flags like a semaphore in the middle of narrow +and congested street corners was at first a source of great +entertainment to the inhabitants, who appeared to think it was a kind of +performance thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delectation. +Their applause was quite disconcerting. It all so affected the mind of +one good lady at H---- that she used to rush out into the street every +time she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth gestures with her +arms and legs, to the no small embarrassment of the supply columns, the +confusion of the military police, and the unconcealed delight of our +soldiers, who regard the latter as their natural enemy. Gentle +remonstrances against such gratuitous assistance were of no avail, and +eventually she was handed over to the French authorities for an inquiry +into the state of her mind. + +Drains are looked after by the Camp Commandant, assisted by the sanitary +section of the R.A.M.C. It is an unlovely duty. I am not sure that the +men in the trenches are not better off in this respect than the +unfortunate members of the Staff who are supposed to live on the fat of +the land in billets. In the trenches there are easy methods of disposing +of "waste products"; along some portion of the French front, where the +lines are very close together, the favourite method, so I have been +told, is to hurl the buckets at the enemy, accompanied by extremely +uncomplimentary remarks. In the towns where we are billeted public +hygiene is a neglected study, and the unfortunate Camp Commandants have +to get sewage pumps from England and vast quantities of chloride of +lime. Fatigue parties do the rest. + +The C.C. has, however, many other things to do. + +Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a "chit" to the +C.C.: + + + Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would + be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be + issued to his office. + + +A laconic message came back by my servant: + + + No. 105671A. The Camp Commandant presents his compliments to + --------- Mr. M., and begs to inform him that he is not an + 2 ironmonger. The correct procedure is for Mr. M. + to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to send in the + account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged. + + +The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his +reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under +the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply +desks and tables--the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them +out at the shortest notice--and he could produce stationery, but he drew +the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings. + +The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the +Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as +"transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a +field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap. +And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with +men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, +and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a +battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It +is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of +all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is +made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger +affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one--the +transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong +battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in +England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the +agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are +alive or dead. + +It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is +done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers +and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry +Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves +lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a chateau used as +the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the +curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the +Front is one vast cemetery--a "God's Acre" hallowed by prayers if +unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has +shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill +has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of +every grave with a view to its preservation. + +The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the +Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of +courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the +Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you +are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting "hearsay." He never +prosecutes--that is always the task of some officer specially assigned +for the purpose--but he may "sum up." Officers are not usually familiar +with the mysteries of the Red Book,[29] however much they may know of +the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One +Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious, +instituted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of +Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and +inadmissibility of evidence in the most "unhealthy" places. Speaking +with some knowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial +proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things +considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the +enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of +this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the +hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and "went +for" the latter, declaring his intention to "do him in," as he had, he +alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There +was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was +fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification +was, however, not absolutely conclusive--one Prussian guardsman is +strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the +doubt. + +The prisoner gets all the assistance he may require from a "prisoner's +friend" if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a +charge--he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges +of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely, +justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young +subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was +as straightforward as it was brief: + + + I had just been ordered up to the Front. So I stood my friends a + dinner; I had a bottle of Burgundy, two liqueurs, and a brandy and + soda, and--I am just nineteen. + + +This ingenuous plea in confession and avoidance pleased the Court. He +got off with a reprimand. + +The _liaison_ officers deserve a chapter to themselves. Their name alone +is so endearing. Their mission is not, as might be supposed, to promote +_mariages de convenance_ between English Staff officers and French +ladies, but to transmit billets-doux between the two Armies and, +generally, to promote the amenities of military intercourse. As a rule +they are charming fellows, chosen with a very proper eye to their +personal qualities as well as their proficiency in the English language. +Among them I met a Count belonging to one of the oldest families in +France, an Oriental scholar of European reputation, and a Professor of +English literature. The younger ones studied our peculiarities with the +most ingratiating zeal, and one of them, in particular, played and sang +"Tipperary" with masterly technique at an uproarious tea-party in a +_patisserie_ at Bethune. Also they smoothed over little +misunderstandings about _delits de chasse_, gently forbore to smile at +our French, and assisted in the issue of the _laisser-passer_. Doubtless +they performed many much more weighty and mysterious duties, but I only +speak of what I know. To me they were more than kind; they gave me +introductions to their families when I went on official visits to Paris +and to the French lines; zealously assisted me to hunt down evidence, +and sometimes accompanied me on my tour of investigation. Among the many +agreeable memories I cherish of the _camaraderie_ at G.H.Q. the +recollection of their constant kindness and courtesy is not the least. + +One word before I leave the subject of the Staff. There has been of late +a good deal of pestilential gossip by luxurious gentlemen at home about +the Staff and its work. It is, they say, very bad--mostly beer and +skittles. I have already referred to these charges elsewhere; here I +will only add one word. A Staff is known by its chief. He it is who sets +the pace. During the time I was attached to it, the G.H.Q. Staff had two +chiefs in succession. The first was a brilliant soldier of high +intellectual gifts, now chief of the Imperial Staff at home, who, +although embarrassed by indifferent health, worked at great pressure +night and day. His successor at G.H.Q. is a man of stupendous energy, +commanding ability, and great force of character, who has risen from the +ranks to the great position he now holds. By their chiefs ye shall know +them. Under such as these there was and is no room for the "slacker" at +G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were very few of that undesirable +species at G.H.Q., and as soon as they were discovered they were sent +home. I sometimes wonder whether one could not trace, if it were worth +while (which it isn't), these ignoble slanders to their origin in the +querulous lamentations of these deported gentlemen, whence they have +percolated into Parliamentary channels. But it really isn't worth while. +The public has, I believe, taken the thing at its true valuation. In +plain speech it is "all rot." + + + NOTE.--The last paragraph was written before the recent changes at + G.H.Q. and at the War Office, but the reader will not need any + assistance in the identification of the two distinguished Chiefs of + Staff here referred to.--J.H.M. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[28] The writer's experience of the trenches is described in some detail +in Chapter VIII. + +[29] _The Manual of Military Law_. + + + + +XXX + +HOME AGAIN + + +Sykes had finished packing my kit and had succeeded with some difficulty +in re-establishing the truth of the axiom that a whole is greater than +its parts. When I contemplated my valise and its original constituents, +it seemed to me that the parts would prove greater than the whole, and I +had in despair abandoned the problem to Sykes. He succeeded, as he +always did. One of the first things that an officer's servant learns is +that, as regards the regulation Field Service allowance of luggage, +nothing succeeds like excess. + +Sykes had not only stowed away my original impedimenta but had also +managed to find room for various articles of _vertu_ which had enriched +my private collection, to wit: + + + (1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel. + + (2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-looking brass heads. + + (3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets villainously + reversed. + + (4) A copper loving-cup--_i.e._, an empty shell-case presented to + me with a florid speech by Major S---- on behalf of the ----th + Battery of the R.F.A. + + (5) An autograph copy of _The Green Curve_ bestowed on me by my + friend "Ole Luk-Oie" (to whom long life and princely royalties). + + (6) The sodden Field Note-book of a dead Hun given me by Major + C---- of the Intelligence, with a graceful note expressing the hope + that, as a man of letters, I would accept this gift of + _belles-lettres_. + + (7) A duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of + Ammonal[30] (original very scarce, and believed to be in the + muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting + it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of the Red Cross + Fund). + + (8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on English political + philosophers presented to me by the author, one of the _liaison_ + officers, who in the prehistoric times of peace was a University + professor at Avignon. + + (9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest Britannia metal, + bestowed on me with much ceremony by a Field Ambulance at Bethune, + and prized beyond rubies and fine gold. + + (10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne.[31] + + +To these Madame[32] had added her visiting-card--it was nearly as big +as the illuminated address presented to me by the electors of a Scottish +constituency which I once wooed and never won--wherewith she reminded me +that my billet at No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson would always be waiting +for me, the night-light burning as for a prodigal son, and steam up in +the hot-water bottle. + +I had said my farewells the night before to the senior officers on the +Staff, in particular that distinguished soldier and gallant gentleman +the A.G., to whose staff I had been attached (in more senses than one), +and who had treated me with a kindness and hospitality I can never +forget. The senior officers had done me the honour of expressing a hope +that I should soon return; their juniors had expressed the same +sentiments less formally and more vociferously by an uproarious song at +their mess overnight. + +The latter had also, with an appearance of great seriousness, laden me +with messages for His Majesty the King, the Prime Minister, Lord +Kitchener, the two Houses of Parliament, and the ministers and clergy of +all denominations: all of which I promised faithfully to remember and to +deliver in person. Sykes, with more modesty, had asked me if I would +send a photograph, when the film was developed of the snapshot I had +taken of him, to his wife and the twins at Norwich. + +My car, upon whose carburettor an operation for appendicitis had been +successfully performed by the handy men up at the H.Q. of the Troop +Supply Column, stood at the door. I held out my hand to Sykes, who was +in the act of saluting; he took it with some hesitation, and then gave +me a grip that paralysed it for about a quarter of an hour. + +"If you be coming back again, will you ask for me to be de-tailed to +you, sir? My number is ----. Sergeant Pope at the Infantry Barracks sees +to them things, sir." + +I nodded. + +"Bon voyage, monsieur," cried Madame in a shrill voice. + +"Bon voyage," echoed Jeanne. + +I waved my hand, and the next moment I had seen the last of two noble +women who had never looked upon me except with kindness, and who, from +my rising up till my lying down, had ministered to me with unfailing +solicitude. + + * * * * * + +At the Base I boarded the leave-boat. Several officers were already on +board, their boots still bearing the mud of Flanders upon them. It was +squally weather, and as we headed for the open sea I saw a dark object +gambolling upon the waves with the fluency of a porpoise. A sailor +stopped near me and passed the time of day. + +"Had any trouble with German submarines?" I asked. + +"Only once, sir. A torpedo missed us by 'bout a hund-erd yards." + +"Only once! How's that?" + +For answer the sailor removed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the +other by a surprisingly alert act of stowage and nodded in the direction +of the dark object whose outlines were now plain and salient. It was +riding the sea like a cork. + +"Them," he said briefly. It was a t.b.d. + +At the port of our arrival the sheep were segregated from the goats. The +unofficial people formed a long queue to go through the smoking-room, +where two quiet men awaited them, one of whom, I believe, always says, +"Take your hat off," looks into the pupil of your eyes, and lingers +lovingly over your pulse; the other, as though anxious to oblige you, +says, "Any letters to post?" But his inquiries are not so disinterested +as they would seem. + +The rest of us, being highly favoured persons, got off without ceremony, +and made for the Pullman. As the train drew out of the station and +gathered speed I looked out upon the countryside as it raced past us. +England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and +orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its spinneys of +beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The +friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed +to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with +garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in +the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked +down the length of the saloon, and everywhere I saw the blithe and eager +faces of England's gallant sons who had fought, and would fight again, +to preserve this heritage from the fire and sword of bloody sacrilege. +Fairer than the cedars of Lebanon were these russet beeches, nobler than +the rivers of Damascus these amber streams; and the France of our new +affections was not more dear. + +Twilight was falling as the guard came round and adjured us to shut out +the prospect by drawing the blinds. As we glided over the Thames I drew +the blind an inch or two aside and caught a vision of the mighty city +steeped in shadows, and the river gleaming dully under the stars like a +wet oilskin. At a word from the attendant I released the blind and shut +out the unfamiliar nocturne. Men rose to their feet, and there was a +chorus of farewells. + +"So long, old chap, see you again at battalion headquarters." + +"Good-bye, old thing, we meet next week at H.Q." + +"To-morrow night at the Savoy--rather! You must meet my sister." + +As I alighted on the platform I saw a crowd of waiting women. "Hullo, +Mother!" "Oh, darling!" I turned away. I was thinking of that platform +next week when these brief days, snatched from the very jaws of death, +would have run their all too brief career and the greetings of joy would +be exchanged for heart-searching farewells. + + * * * * * + +I was dining at my club with two friends, one of them a young Dutch +attache, the other a barrister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well, +and took our cigars into the smoking-room, which was crowded. Some men +in a corner were playing chess; the club bore, decent enough in peace +but positively lethal in war, was demonstrating to a group of impatient +listeners that the Staff work at G.H.Q. was all wrong, when, catching +sight of me, he came up and said, "Hullo, old man, back from the Front? +When will the war end?" I returned the same answer as a certain D.A.A.G. +used to provide for similar otiose questions: "Never!" + +"Never! Hullo, what's that?" + +Every one in the room suddenly rose to their feet, the chess players +rising so suddenly that they overturned the board. "Damn it, and it was +my move, I could have taken your queen," said one of them. Outside there +was a noise like the roaring of the lion-house at the Zoo; your +anti-aircraft gun has a growl of its own. "They're here," said some one, +and we all made for the terrace. + +I looked up and saw in the dim altitudes a long silvery object among the +stars. As the searchlights played upon it, it seemed almost diaphanous, +and the body appeared to undulate like a trout seen in a clear stream. +Jupiter shone hard and bright in the southern hemisphere, and suddenly a +number of new planets appeared in the firmament as though certain stars +shot madly from their spheres. Round and about the monster came and went +these exploding satellites. Then another appeared close under her, and +like a frightened fish she swerved sharply and was lost to view among +the Pleiades. + +"Let's go and see what's happened," said one of my friends. "I hear +she's dropped a lot of bombs down----." + +As we went down the street I saw that for about two hundred yards ahead +it was sparkling as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of our boots +"scrunched" something underfoot. I looked down. The ground was covered +with splinters of glass. As we drew nearer we caught sight of a cordon +of police, and behind them a great fire springing infernally from the +earth, and behind the fire a group of soldiers, whose figures were +silhouetted against the background. Our way was impeded by curious +crowds, among whom one heard the familiar chant of "Pass along, please!" + +We stopped. Close to us two men were stooping with heads almost knocking +together and searching the ground, while one of them husbanded a lighted +match against the wind. + +"Blimey, Bill," said one to the other, "I've found 'un!" + +"What have you found?" we asked of him. + +"A souvenir, sir!" + +Truly, they know not the stomach of this people. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[30] See Chapter XXV. + +[31] See Chapter XI. + +[32] _Ibid._ + +THE END + +_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. + + +SOME RECENT BOOKS + +FRANCE AT WAR. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net. + + _SPECTATOR._--"A picture of France at work which will be an + inspiration to thousands. It is all the more powerful for its + brevity." + + +THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net. + + _PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"A classic in descriptive journalism which no + collector and no patriot will miss." + + +THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net. + + _SPECTATOR._--"We have read, we think, most of what has appeared + about the navy and its subsidiary services during the war, but + nothing we have seen has been comparable with these brief + sketches." + + +ORDEAL BY BATTLE. By FREDERICK SCOTT OLIVER. 24th Thousand. +8vo. 6s. net. + + _MORNING POST._--"Both for statesmanship and for style (style which + is the shadow of personality) Mr. F.S. Oliver's book on the causes + and conditions of the war is by far the best that has yet + appeared." + + +FIGHTING FRANCE. From Dunkerque to Belfort. By EDITH WHARTON. +Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. + + _DAILY NEWS._--"Mrs. Wharton, as was to be expected, has written + one of the most distinguished books on the war from the point of + view of the non-combatant." + + +THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY. By OWEN WISTER. Sixth Impression. +Crown 8vo. 2s. net. + + _DAILY MAIL_.--"One of the wisest and tenderest books on the war that + have come from an American writer. He analyses the German temperament + with perfect insight." + + +THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY. By R.W. SETON-WATSON, D.Litt., J. DOVER WILSON, +ALFRED E. ZIMMERN, and ARTHUR GREENWOOD. 23rd Thousand. +Crown 8vo. 2s. net. + + _THE TIMES_.--"The essays are of high quality. They go more fully and + deeply into the underlying problems of the war than most of the + pamphlets and books which have appeared in such profusion." + + +LETTERS FROM A FIELD HOSPITAL. By MABEL DEARMER. With a Memoir of the +Author by STEPHEN GWYNN. Third Impression. 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By Dean H. HENSLEY HENSON. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. + + _WESTMINSTER GAZETTE._--"Beyond all doubt, the Dean of Durham has a + great message for the nation in this time of conflict.... The + sermons deserve a place among the most memorable declarations of + Christian principles which the nation has received in this time of + crisis." + + +HOLY GROUND. Sermons Preached in Time of War. By Dean J. ARMITAGE +ROBINSON. Crown 8vo. 1s. net. + + _CHALLENGE._--"In _Holy Ground_ Dr. Armitage Robinson's sermons + preached during the South African War are available for a + generation to whom they will come afresh and with a wealth of + spiritual insight that we shall be the richer for." + + +THE CALIPHS' LAST HERITAGE. Travels in the Turkish Empire. By Sir +MARK SYKES, Bart., M.P. Illustrated. 8vo. 20s. net. + + _THE TIMES._--"Sir Mark Sykes' book is full of first-hand facts and + acute observation.... It is a book of intense interest and present + importance." + + +HEART OF EUROPE. 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