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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of "Contemptible", by "Casualty"
+
+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: "Contemptible"
+
+Author: "Casualty"
+
+Release Date: April 2, 2006 [EBook #18103]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "CONTEMPTIBLE" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Graeme Mackreth, Bill Tozier
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"CONTEMPTIBLE"
+
+
+
+
+SOLDIERS' TALES OF THE GREAT WAR
+
+Each volume cr. 8vo, cloth.
+
+I. WITH MY REGIMENT. By "Platoon Commander."
+
+II. DIXMUDE. The Epic of the French Marines. Oct.-Nov. 1914. By
+Charles le Goffic. _Illustrated_
+
+III. IN THE FIELD (1914-15). The Impressions of an Officer of Light
+Cavalry.
+
+IV. UNCENSORED LETTERS FROM THE DARDANELLES. Notes of a French Army
+Doctor. _Illustrated_
+
+V. PRISONER OF WAR. By Andre Warnod. _Illustrated_
+
+VI. "CONTEMPTIBLE." By "Casualty."
+
+VII. ON THE ANZAC TRAIL. By "Anzac."
+
+Philadelphia J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY London: WILLIAM
+HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+"CONTEMPTIBLE"
+
+BY
+
+"CASUALTY"
+
+Philadelphia: J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+
+London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+MCMXVI
+
+
+
+
+_Printed in Great Britain._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+          CHAP.                              PAGE
+
+          I LEAVING ENGLAND                     1
+
+          II CALM BEFORE THE STORM             10
+
+          III THE ADVANCE TO MONS              14
+
+          IV MONS                              21
+
+          V THE BEGINNING OF THE RETREAT       27
+
+          VI DARKNESS                          34
+
+          VII VENEROLLES                       39
+
+          VIII ST. QUENTIN AND LA FERE         44
+
+          IX SIR JOHN FRENCH                   51
+
+          X A PAUSE, AND MORE MARCHING         55
+
+          XI A REAR-GUARD ACTION               62
+
+          XII VILLIERS-COTTERETS               66
+
+          XIII  HEAT AND DUST                  74
+
+          XIV THE OCCUPATION OF VILLIERS       78
+
+          XV THE LAST LAP                      86
+
+          XVI THE TURN OF THE TIDE             95
+
+          XVII THE ADVANCE BEGINS              98
+
+          XVIII THE CROSSING OF THE MARNE     104
+
+          XIX AN ADVANCED-GUARD ACTION        109
+
+          XX DEFENCE                          117
+
+          XXI THE DEFENCE OF THE BRANDY       122
+
+          XXII STRATEGY AS YOU LIKE IT        126
+
+          XXIII THE LAST ADVANCE              133
+
+          XXIV SATURDAY NIGHT                 141
+
+          XXV THE CROSSING OF THE AISNE       151
+
+          XXVI THE CELLARS OF POUSSEY         161
+
+          XXVII THE FIRST TRENCHES            168
+
+          XXVIII IN RESERVE AT SOUVIR         177
+
+          XXIX TO STRAIGHTEN THE LINE         186
+
+          XXX THE JAWS OF DEATH               193
+
+          XXXI THE FIELD HOSPITAL             204
+
+          XXXII OPERATION                     213
+
+          XXXIII ST. NAZAIRE                  219
+
+          XXXIV SOMEWHERE IN MAYFAIR          221
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+LEAVING ENGLAND
+
+
+No cheers, no handkerchiefs, no bands. Nothing that even suggested the
+time-honoured scene of soldiers leaving home to fight the Empire's
+battles. Parade was at midnight. Except for the lighted windows of the
+barracks, and the rush of hurrying feet, all was dark and quiet. It was
+more like ordinary night operations than the dramatic departure of a
+Unit of the First British Expeditionary Force to France.
+
+As the Battalion swung into the road, the Subaltern could not help
+thinking that this was indeed a queer send-off. A few sergeants' wives,
+standing at the corner of the Parade ground, were saying good-bye to
+their friends as they passed. "Good-bye, Bill;" "Good luck, Sam!" Not a
+hint of emotion in their voices. One might have thought that husbands
+and fathers went away to risk their lives in war every day of the week.
+And if the men were at all moved at leaving what had served for their
+home, they hid it remarkably well. Songs were soon breaking out from all
+parts of the column of route. As the Club House, and then the Golf Club,
+stole silently up and disappeared behind him, the Subaltern wondered
+whether he would ever see them again. But he refused to let his
+thoughts drift in this channel. Meanwhile, the weight of the
+mobilisation kit was almost intolerable.
+
+In an hour the station was reached. An engine was shunting up and down,
+piecing the troop trains together, and in twenty minutes the Battalion
+was shuffling down the platform, the empty trains on either side. Two
+companies were to go to each train, twelve men to a third-class
+compartment, N.C.O.s second class, Officers first. As soon as the men
+were in their seats, the Subaltern made his way to the seat he had
+"bagged," and prepared to go to sleep. Another fellow pushed his head
+through the window and wondered what had become of the regimental
+transport. Somebody else said he didn't know or care; his valise was
+always lost, he said; they always made a point of it.
+
+Soon after, they were all asleep, and the train pulled slowly out of the
+station.
+
+When the Subaltern awoke it was early morning, and they were moving
+through Hampshire fields at a rather sober pace. He was assailed with a
+poignant feeling of annoyance and resentment that this war should be
+forced upon them. England looked so good in the morning sunshine, and
+the comforts of English civilisation were so hard to leave. The sinister
+uncertainty of the Future brooded over them like a thunder cloud.
+
+Isolated houses thickened into clusters, streets sprang up, and soon
+they were in Southampton.
+
+The train pulled up at the Embarkation Station, quite close to the wharf
+to which some half-dozen steamers were moored. There was little or no
+delay. The Battalion fell straight into "massed formation," and began
+immediately to move on to one of the ships. The Colonel stood by the
+gangway talking to an Embarkation Officer. Everything was in perfect
+readiness, and the Subaltern was soon able to secure a berth.
+
+There was plenty of excitement on deck while the horses of the
+regimental transport were being shipped into the hold.
+
+To induce "Light Draft," "Heavy Draft" horses and "Officers'
+Chargers"--in all some sixty animals--to trust themselves to be lowered
+into a dark and evil-smelling cavern, was no easy matter. Some shied
+from the gangway, neighing; other walked peaceably on to it, and, with a
+"thus far and no farther" expression in every line of their bodies, took
+up a firm stand, and had to be pushed into the hold with the combined
+weight of many men. Several of the transport section narrowly escaped
+death and mutilation at the hands, or rather hoofs, of the Officers'
+Chargers. Meanwhile a sentry, with fixed bayonet, was observed watching
+some Lascars, who were engaged in getting the transport on board. It
+appeared that the wretched fellows, thinking that they were to be taken
+to France and forced to fight the Germans, had deserted to a man on the
+previous night, and had had to be routed out of their hiding-places in
+Southampton.
+
+Not that such a small thing as that could upset for one moment the
+steady progress of the Embarkation of the Army. It was like a huge,
+slow-moving machine; there was a hint of the inexorable in its
+exactitude. Nothing had been forgotten--not even eggs for the Officers'
+breakfast in the Captain's cabin.
+
+Meanwhile the other ships were filling up. By midday they began to slide
+down the Solent, and guesses were being freely exchanged about the
+destination of the little flotilla. Some said Boulogne, others Calais;
+but the general opinion was Havre, though nobody knew for certain, for
+the Captain of the ship had not yet opened his sealed orders. The
+transports crept slowly along the coast of the Isle of Wight, but it was
+not until evening that the business of crossing the Channel was begun in
+earnest.
+
+The day had been lovely, and Officers and men had spent it mostly in
+sleeping and smoking upon the deck. Spirits had risen as the day grew
+older. For at dawn the cheeriest optimist is a pessimist, while at
+midday pessimists become optimists. In the early morning the German Army
+had been invincible. At lunch the Battalion was going to Berlin, on the
+biggest holiday of its long life!
+
+The Subaltern, still suffering from the after-effects of inoculation
+against enteric, which had been unfortunately augmented by a premature
+indulgence in fruit, and by the inability to rest during the rush of
+mobilisation, did not spend a very happy night. The men fared even
+worse, for the smell of hot, cramped horses, steaming up from the lower
+deck, was almost unbearable. But their troubles were soon over, for by
+seven o'clock the boat was gliding through the crowded docks of Havre.
+
+Naturally most of the Mess had been in France before, but to Tommy it
+was a world undiscovered. The first impression made on the men was
+created by a huge negro working on the docks. He was greeted with roars
+of laughter, and cries of, "Hallo, Jack Johnson!" The red trousers of
+the French sentries, too, created a tremendous sensation. At length the
+right landing-stage was reached. Equipments were thrown on, and the
+Battalion was paraded on the dock.
+
+The march through the cobbled streets of Havre rapidly developed into a
+fiasco. This was one of the first, if not the very first, landing of
+British Troops in France, and to the French it was a novelty, calling
+for a tremendous display of open-armed welcome. Children rushed from the
+houses, and fell upon the men crying for "souvenirs." Ladies pursued
+them with basins full of wine and what they were pleased to call beer.
+Men were literally carried from the ranks, under the eyes of their
+Officers, and borne in triumph into houses and inns. What with the heat
+of the day and the heaviness of the equipment and the after-effects of
+the noisome deck, the men could scarcely be blamed for availing
+themselves of such hospitality, though to drink intoxicants on the march
+is suicidal. Men "fell out," first by ones and twos, then by whole
+half-dozens and dozens. The Subaltern himself was scarcely strong enough
+to stagger up the long hills at the back of the town, let alone worrying
+about his men. The Colonel was aghast, and very furious. He couldn't
+understand it. (He was riding.)
+
+The camp was prepared for the troops in a wonderfully complete
+fashion--not the least thing seemed to have been forgotten. The men,
+stripped of their boots, coats and equipments, were resting in the shade
+of the tents. A caterer from Havre had come up to supply the Mess, and
+the Subaltern was able to procure from him a bottle of rather heady
+claret, which, as he was thirsty and exhausted, he consumed too rapidly,
+and found himself hopelessly inebriate. Luckily there was nothing to do,
+so he slept for many hours.
+
+Waking up in the cool of the evening he heard the voices of another
+Second-Lieutenant and a reservist Subaltern talking about some people he
+knew near his home. It was good to forget about wars and soldiers, and
+everything that filled so amply the present and future, and to lose
+himself in pleasant talk of pleasant things at home.... The dinner
+provided by the French caterer was very French, and altogether the last
+sort of meal that a young gentleman suffering from anti-enteric
+inoculation ought to have indulged in. Everything conspired to make him
+worse, and what with the heat and the malady, he spent a very miserable
+time.
+
+After about two days' stay, the Battalion moved away from the rest
+camp, and, setting out before dawn, marched back through those fatal
+streets of Havre, this time deserted in the moonlight, to a sort of
+shed, called by the French authorities a troop station. Here as usual
+the train was waiting, and the men had but to be put in. The carriages
+could not be called luxurious; to be frank, they were cattle-trucks. But
+it takes more than that to damp the spirits of Mr. Thomas Atkins. Cries
+imitating the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep broke out from
+the trucks!
+
+The train moved out of the depot, and wended its way in the most casual
+manner through the streets of Havre. This so amused Tommy that he roared
+with laughter. The people who rushed to give the train a send-off, with
+many cries of "Vive les Anglais," "A bas les Bosches," were greeted with
+more bleatings and brayings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The journey through France was quite uneventful. Sleeping or reading the
+whole day through, the Subaltern only remembered Rouen, passed at about
+midday, and Amiens later in the evening. The train had paused at
+numerous villages on its way, and in every case there had been violent
+demonstrations of enthusiasm. In one case a young lady of prepossessing
+appearance had thrust her face through the window, and talked very
+excitedly and quite incomprehensibly, until one of the fellows in the
+carriage grasped the situation, leant forward, and did honour to the
+occasion. The damsel retired blushing.
+
+At Amiens various rumours were afloat. Somebody had heard the Colonel
+say the magic word "Liege." Pictures of battles to be fought that very
+night thrilled some of them not a little.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dawn found the Battalion hungry, shivering and miserable, paraded by the
+side of the track, at a little wayside station called Wassigne. The
+train shunted away, leaving the Battalion with a positive feeling of
+desolation. A Staff Officer, rubbing sleep from his eyes, emerged from a
+little "estaminet" and gave the Colonel the necessary orders. During the
+march that ensued the Battalion passed through villages where the three
+other regiments in the Brigade were billeted. At length a village called
+Iron was reached, and their various billets were allotted to each
+Company.
+
+The Subaltern's Company settled down in a huge water-mill; its Officers
+being quartered in the miller's private house.
+
+A wash, a shave and a meal worked wonders.
+
+And so the journey was finished, and the Battalion found itself at
+length in the theatre of operations.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have tried in this chapter to give some idea of the ease and
+smoothness with which this delicate operation of transportation was
+carried out. The Battalions which composed the First Expeditionary Force
+had been spread in small groups over the whole length and breadth of
+Britain. They had been mobilised, embarked, piloted across the Channel
+in the face of an undefeated enemy fleet, rested, and trained to their
+various areas of concentration, to take their place by the side of their
+French Allies.
+
+All this was accomplished without a single hitch, and with a speed that
+was astonishing. When the time comes for the inner history of the war to
+be written, no doubt proper praise for these preliminary arrangements
+will be given to those who so eminently deserve it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CALM BEFORE THE STORM
+
+
+Peace reigned for the next five days, the last taste of careless days
+that so many of those poor fellows were to have.
+
+A route march generally occupied the mornings, and a musketry parade the
+evenings. Meanwhile, the men were rapidly accustoming themselves to the
+new conditions. The Officers occupied themselves with polishing up their
+French, and getting a hold upon the reservists who had joined the
+Battalion on mobilisation.
+
+The French did everything in their power to make the Battalion at home.
+Cider was given to the men in buckets. The Officers were treated like
+the best friends of the families with whom they were billeted. The
+fatted calf was not spared, and this in a land where there were not too
+many fatted calves.
+
+The Company "struck a particularly soft spot." The miller had gone to
+the war leaving behind him his wife, his mother and two children.
+Nothing they could do for the five officers of the Company was too much
+trouble. Madame Mere resigned her bedroom to the Major and his second in
+command, while Madame herself slew the fattest of her chickens and
+rabbits for the meals of her hungry Officers.
+
+The talk that was indulged in must have been interesting, even though
+the French was halting and ungrammatical. Of all the companies' Messes,
+this one took the most serious view of the future, and earned for itself
+the nickname of "Les Miserables." The Senior Subaltern said openly that
+this calm preceded a storm. The papers they got--_Le Petit Parisian_ and
+such like--talked vaguely of a successful offensive on the extreme
+right: Muelhouse, it was said, had been taken. But of the left, of
+Belgium, there was silence. Such ideas as the Subaltern himself had on
+the strategical situation were but crude. The line of battle, he
+fancied, would stretch north and south, from Muelhouse to Liege. If it
+were true that Liege had fallen, he thought the left would rest
+successfully on Namur. The English Army, he imagined, was acting as
+"general reserve," behind the French line, and would not be employed
+until the time had arrived to hurl the last reserve into the melee, at
+the most critical point.
+
+And all the while, never a sound of firing, never a sight of the red and
+blue of the French uniforms. The war might have been two hundred miles
+away!
+
+Meanwhile Tommy on his marches was discovering things. Wonder of
+wonders, this curious people called "baccy" tabac! "And if yer wants a
+bit of bread yer awsks for pain, strewth!" He loved to hear the French
+gabble to him in their excited way; he never thought that reciprocally
+his talk was just as funny. The French matches earned unprintable names.
+But on the whole he admired sunny France with its squares of golden corn
+and vegetables, and when he passed a painted Crucifix with its cluster
+of flowering graves, he would say: "Golly, Bill, ain't it pretty? We
+oughter 'ave them at 'ome, yer know." And of course he kept on saying
+what he was going to do with "Kayser Bill."
+
+One night after the evening meal, the men of the Company gave a little
+concert outside the mill. The flower-scented twilight was fragrantly
+beautiful, and the mill stream gurgled a lullaby accompaniment as it
+swept past the trailing grass. Nor was there any lack of talent. One
+reservist, a miner since he had left the army, roared out several songs
+concerning the feminine element at the sea-side, or voicing an inquiry
+as to a gentleman's companion on the previous night. Then, with an
+entire lack of appropriateness, another got up and recited "The Wreck of
+the _Titanic_" in a most touching and dramatic manner. Followed a song
+with a much appreciated chorus--
+
+          "Though your heart may ache awhile,
+                              Never mind!
+          Though your face may lose its smile,
+                              Never mind!
+          For there's sunshine after rain,
+          And then gladness follows pain,
+          You'll be happy once again,
+                              Never mind!"
+
+The ditty deals with broken vows, and faithless hearts, and blighted
+lives; just the sort of song that Tommy loves to warble after a good
+meal in the evening. It conjured to the Subaltern's eyes the picture of
+the dainty little star who had sung it on the boards of the Coliseum.
+And to conclude, Madame's voice, French, and sonorously metallic, was
+heard in the dining-room striking up the "Marseillaise." Tommy did not
+know a word of it, but he yelled "March on" (a very good translation of
+"Marchons") and sang "lar lar" to the rest of the tune.
+
+Thus passed peacefully enough those five days--the calm before the
+storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ADVANCE TO MONS
+
+
+The Battalion had arrived at Iron on a Sunday morning. It had rested
+there, while the remainder of the British Army was being concentrated,
+until Friday morning. On Thursday night the Battalion Orders made it
+clear that a start was to be made. Parade was to be earlier than usual,
+and nothing was to be left behind. Every one was very sorry to be
+leaving their French friends, and there were great doings that night.
+Champagne was produced, and a horrible sort of liquor called "alcahol"
+was introduced into the coffee. Such was the generosity of the miller's
+people that it was only with the greatest difficulty that the Captain
+induced Madame to accept any payment for her kindness. And so in the
+chill of that Friday morning the Battalion marched away, not without
+many handshakings and blessings from the simple villagers. The Subaltern
+often wonders what became of Mesdames, and that excitable son Raoul, and
+charming Therese, whom the Subalterns had all insisted on kissing before
+they left. A very different sort of folk occupy that village now. He
+only hopes that his friends escaped them.
+
+The Battalion joined its Brigade, and the Brigade its Division, and
+before the sun was very high in the sky they were swinging along the
+"route nationale," due northwards. The day was very hot, and the
+Battalion was hurried, with as short halts as possible, towards
+Landrecies. As, however, this march was easily surpassed in
+"frightfulness" by many others, it will be enough to say that Landrecies
+was reached in the afternoon.
+
+Having seen his men as comfortable as possible in the schools where they
+were billeted for the night, the Subaltern threw off his equipment, and
+having bought as much chocolate as he and a friend could lay their hands
+on, retired to his room and lay down.
+
+At about seven o'clock in the evening the three Subalterns made their
+way to the largest hotel in the town, where they found the rest of the
+Mess already assembled at dinner. He often remembered this meal
+afterwards, for it was the last that he had properly served for some
+time. In the middle of it the Colonel was summoned hastily away by an
+urgent message, and before they dispersed to their billets, the
+unwelcome news was received that Battalion parade was to be at three
+o'clock next morning.
+
+"This," said he, "is the real beginning of the show. Henceforth,
+horribleness."
+
+A hunk of bread eaten during the first stage of the march was all the
+breakfast he could find. Maroilles, a suburb of Landrecies, was passed,
+and an hour later a big railway junction. The march seemed to be
+directed on Mauberge, but a digression was made to the north-west, and
+finally a halt was called at a tiny village called Harignes. The
+Subaltern's men were billeted in a large barn opening on to an orchard.
+
+After a scrap meal, he pulled out some maps to study the country which
+lay before them, and what should meet his eye but the field of Waterloo,
+with all its familiar names: Charleroi, Ligny, Quatrebras, Genappes, the
+names which he had studied a year ago at Sandhurst. Surely these names
+of the victory of ninety-nine years ago were a good omen!
+
+"You've only left Sandhurst a year, you ought to know all about this
+country," some one told him.
+
+A horrible rumour went about that another move was to be made at five
+o'clock the same evening, but this hour was subsequently altered to two
+o'clock the next morning. That night a five-franc postal order was given
+to every man as part of his pay.
+
+Even in the height of summer there is always a feeling of ghostliness
+about nocturnal parades. The darkness was intense. As might be expected,
+the men had not by any means recovered from the heat and exertion of the
+previous day, and were not in the best of tempers. The Subaltern himself
+was so tired that he had to lie down on the cold road at each hourly
+halt of ten minutes, and, with his cap for a pillow, sleep soundly for
+at least eight of those minutes. Then whistles were sounded ahead, the
+men would rise wearily, and shuffle on their equipment with the single
+effort that is the hall-mark of a well-trained soldier. The Captain,
+passing along the Company, called his attention to the village they were
+passing. It was Malplaquet. The grey light of dawn revealed large open
+fields. "I expect this is where they fought it out," said the Captain.
+
+Keeping a close eye upon the map, he could tell almost to a hundred
+yards where the boundary of Belgium crossed the road. A few miles
+further, a halt for breakfast was ordered, as it was about eight
+o'clock. The Colonel called for Company Commanders, and while they were
+away Sir John French, followed by Sir Archibald Murray and a few members
+of the General Staff, passed by in motors.
+
+Amongst the hundred-and-one pictures that the Subaltern will always
+carry in his mind of the opening stages of the campaign, this one stands
+out most vividly. The sun was shining, but it was still cool. On the
+right of the road was a thick forest of young firs; on the left, a row
+of essentially suburban villas were being built, curiously out of place
+in that agricultural district. The men were sitting on the banks of the
+road, or clustered round the "Cookers," drawing their breakfast rations
+of bread and cold bacon. Then the Major came back. There was an
+expression on his face that showed he was well aware of the dramatic
+part he was about to play. Imagine him standing by the wayside,
+surrounded by his Officers, two Sergeant-Majors, and some half-dozen
+senior Sergeants, all with pencils ready poised to write his orders in
+their Field Service Note-books. There was a pause of several seconds.
+The Major seemed to be at a loss quite how to begin. "There's a lot that
+I needn't mention, but this is what concerns this Company," he said with
+a jerk. "When we reach" (here he mentioned a name which the Subaltern
+has long since forgotten) "we have to deploy to the left, and search the
+village of Harmigne to drive the enemy from it, and take up a
+position...."
+
+It was a blow. Officers were frowning over their note-books as if afraid
+they had not heard correctly. The enemy here, in the western corner of
+Belgium? The Major's orders petered out. They saluted, and returned to
+their platoons, feeling puzzled and a little shaken.
+
+The Subaltern had come to this campaign with such fresh hopes of
+victory. This was not to have been a repetition of '70! France would not
+have gone to war unless she had been strong and ready. Inspired with the
+spirit of the First Republic, the French Armies, they had told
+themselves, would surge forward in a wave of victory and beat
+successfully against the crumbling sands of the Kaiser's military
+monarchy--Victory, drenching Germany with the blood of her sons, and
+adding a lustre to the Sun of Peace that should never be dimmed by the
+black clouds of Militarism! And all this was not to be? He had never
+even heard that Liege had fallen, let alone Brussels, and here were the
+Germans apparently right round the Allied flank. It was astounding,
+irritating. In a vague way he felt deceived and staggered. It was a
+disillusionment! If the Germans were across the Sambre, the French could
+scarcely launch their victorious attack on the Rhine.
+
+The excitement dispelled his fatigue, but the men were openly
+incredulous. "The ruddy 'Oolans 'ere a'ready! They're only tellin' us
+that, to make us march!"
+
+The first fight! How would it turn out? How would the men shape? Could
+the ammunition supply be depended upon? But above all, what would he be
+like? Would he feel afraid? If so, would he be able to hide it? Would
+his men follow him well? Perhaps he might be wounded (parts of him
+shrank from the thought), or killed. No, somehow he felt it was
+impossible that he would be killed. These and a thousand more such
+questions flashed through his brain as the march continued northwards.
+
+The hourly halts were decreased from ten to about three minutes. The
+excitement of the future dissolved the accumulating fatigue of the three
+days. The very weight of his sword and haversack was forgotten.
+
+It was Sunday morning. The bells of the village churches were ringing,
+and the women and children, decked in their Sunday best, were going
+calmly to church, just as if the greatest battle that, up to then,
+history had ever seen were not about to be fought around their very
+homesteads.
+
+A waterworks was passed, and at last the crossroads were reached. There
+was a wait while the Battalion in front of them deployed. Officers were
+loading their revolvers, the men charging their magazines. One Company
+left as advanced guard, and very soon the Battalion was on its way to
+its appointed sector of the battlefield.
+
+They threw aside a hastily improvised barricade of ploughshares, and
+hurried on to the little village which was to be their especial care in
+the impending battle, known rather inadequately as "Mons."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MONS
+
+
+Then came the village of Harmigne--just a few cottages on either side of
+the road, and soon the companies debouched from the village to take up
+the positions allotted to them.
+
+In war it is well known that he who sees most is likely to take least
+away. It was not the soldier's duty to gaze about him to see what was
+happening. He must enlarge his bit of trench, and be ready to meet the
+enemy when he himself is attacked. Therefore, if you ask a veteran of
+Mons about the battle, all he will be able to tell you as likely as not
+is, "Marching, and digging, and then marching mostly, sir."
+
+The Company on the left was astride a railway embankment in front of a
+large mine. The Subaltern's Company was directly in front of the village
+itself; another Company to the right, the fourth in local reserve. The
+work of entrenchment began immediately. There was not time to construct
+a trench, as laid down in the Manual of Field Engineering. Each man had
+to scrape with his entrenching tool as big a hole as he could before the
+enemy came upon him.
+
+The Subaltern had many things to arrange. The "field of fire" had to be
+"cleared," any refuge behind which the enemy might lurk within two
+hundred yards of the trenches had to be, if possible, cut down. Sheaves
+of corn standing upright presented the first problem for the defence.
+Should he burn as many of them as he could, or overturn them, or beat
+them down? No, sheaves were not bullet-proof. A man could be shot behind
+them just as easily as in the open. Moreover, they would serve to hide
+from the enemy artillery the exact lie of his lines. The position of his
+trenches, or rather holes, was about a hundred yards in front of the
+village, as it would be the first thing that the German artillery would
+"search." The Range-taker took the ranges from the trenches to all
+prominent objects in front, with an instrument called the "Barr and
+Stroud." He then made these figures known to the four section commanders
+of the platoon, who in turn communicated them to their men.
+
+Then he had to get in touch with the commanders on either side, and to
+send off a small party to improve what natural obstacles--in this case
+wire fences--lay in front. He next went to arrange for the methods of
+effecting a retirement, if it should be necessary, breaking through one
+or two fences so that this could be effected in perfect order. As some
+of the houses were still occupied, he went to the owners, and not
+knowing the French for pick and shovel, said: "Monsieur, voulez vous me
+preter des choses pour faire des troux dans la terre?" illustrating it
+with pantomime. "Ah, oui, Monsieur, des pioches!" As many of these as
+possible were sent forward to the men, together with many pounds of
+biscuits which he brought from a shop, and buckets of water for the
+wounded.
+
+So busy had he been that he had almost been unable to interest himself
+in the battle which was already beginning to develop on the left. While
+he was in the village a stretcher was carried through. The body on it
+was covered with a mackintosh sheet, but the man's face was visible, and
+if he had not been so busily occupied, the ashen face might have upset
+him a little. It was absolutely calm, and its expression was contorted
+neither by pain nor hate nor fear--the face of one who was indifferent,
+and very, very weak.
+
+With that he returned to the trenches. "'Ere yer are, sir, I've started
+this 'un for yer," one man shouted. He threw off his equipment, and
+began to dig as he had never dug before. Each spadeful was safety for
+another inch of his body. It was fighting against time for protection of
+life and limb. The work was engrossing, exhilarating. Some of the men
+were too tired, too apathetic, too lazy to dig trenches as deep as they
+might have done. They had to be urged, cajoled, enticed, ordered.
+
+The day was beautiful, hotter a great deal than those the men were
+accustomed to. The Senior Subaltern had been occupying a small hut as an
+advanced post. The enemy came within his range in some force, but having
+the presence of mind to restrain his men from firing, he managed to
+withdraw without loss. All the while the cavalry were being rapidly
+driven in.
+
+This was about three o'clock, and the sound of a terrific bombardment
+could be heard from some miles to the left. This puzzled them, as it was
+naturally expected that the battle would develop from the north-east.
+The regiment on the right had been occupying a small copse; this was set
+alight to the rear of them, and they were forced to draw back through
+it, which must have been a terrible operation.
+
+Fresh meat, in the form of a stew, was brought out to the trenches at
+about three o'clock. The bombardment on the left, like a terrific
+thunderstorm, rolled on till dusk. A few aeroplanes flew overhead,
+looking like huge birds in the blue sky. As yet the troops found it very
+hard to distinguish the Germans from the English, although several
+pamphlets had been issued on the subject.
+
+As evening drew on, the trenches began to assume a more workmanlike
+aspect, although when one got down deeper than three feet the ground was
+like chalk and very difficult to cut.
+
+Thus ended that memorable Sunday, when the English line, the last hope
+of the French, was pierced at Mons, when the appearance of a huge force,
+above all strong in cavalry, appeared on the left of the English line,
+and rendered the whole strategic position of the Allies so dangerous,
+that there was nothing for it but to fall back in order to avert a
+terrible catastrophe.
+
+To ensure against surprise, he posted three sentry groups to his front.
+They had not been out more than half-an-hour before a huge fusillade
+broke out along the whole line. The groups had the greatest difficulty
+in crawling back to the trenches without being shot down in mistake for
+the enemy. He saw that this "peace method" would have to be given up;
+sentries in future would have to remain in the trenches.
+
+Intermittently throughout the whole night firing continued. A
+searchlight had been played continually on the lines, and if anything,
+the artillery duel began before it was light.
+
+This was his first opportunity to watch shell fire. The shells sailed
+overhead so slowly that he half expected to see them in their flight.
+The noise they made was very difficult to describe. They hurtled, they
+whizzed, they shrieked, they sang. He could imagine the thing spinning
+in its flight, creating a noise something like steam escaping jerkily
+from an engine.
+
+An English battery was firing from somewhere unseen on the right, to
+meet an attack apparently launched on the left. Furious messages were
+passed up the line that the artillery were firing on their own men, and
+whether this was true or not, soon afterwards the attack ceased.
+
+At about seven o'clock the Major gave orders to withdraw his Platoon
+when the Company on his right should retire. This surprised him; for,
+knowing nothing of the general situation, he had felt that they would
+hang on, and fight the battle out then and there, to the last gasp. He
+gave orders to his section commanders, and then lay down to await the
+development of events.
+
+At about nine o'clock a general retirement seemed to be taking place on
+the right. It is a very difficult thing to pick upon exactly the right
+moment to retire. If you retire too early, you allow the enemy to
+advance without having inflicted sufficient loss, i.e. you allow him
+to succeed too cheaply, to say nothing of rendering the position of
+units on your flanks precarious. On the other hand, if you hang on to
+your position too long, you become committed to a close fight, from
+which it is almost impossible to withdraw without the most serious
+losses.
+
+There are no hedges in Belgium; the ground was perfectly open, and the
+Subaltern could easily see what was happening on the right. It seemed to
+him that some unit delayed too long, for the rest of the line showed
+signs of envelopment. Eventually, however, the retirement to the village
+was effected quietly, and without loss. He led his Platoon to a second
+defensive position about a mile behind the village, but already shells
+were beginning to drop around, and even beyond it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BEGINNING OF THE RETREAT
+
+
+It was from this point that the great "Retreat from Mons" really began.
+The road in front of the Battalion was hit by one or two shells.
+Apparently it was being "searched," and so the Battalion was hastily
+moved into the open fields, assuming what is known as "Artillery
+Formation," i.e. small collections of troops, moving on the same
+objective, with "irregular distances and depths." By this means many
+lives must have been saved. After about a mile of very hurried marching,
+through turnip fields and stubble, the road was again reached, and the
+Battalion was apparently out of the enemy's range.
+
+The heat was beginning to be intense. The men had marched for the last
+three days almost incessantly, and without sufficient sleep. Sunday
+night in the firing-line had been full of excitement of battle, and all
+Monday morning had been spent at digging trenches. Imagine the state of
+the men! Dirty from digging, with a four days' growth of beard, bathed
+in sweat, eyes half closed with want of sleep, "packs" missing, lurching
+with the drunken torpor of fatigue, their own mothers would not have
+known them! There was no time to rest and sleep, when rest and sleep
+were the most desirable things on earth. Those men assuredly knew all
+the agonies of a temptation to sell for a few moments' sleep their
+liberty and lives.
+
+During a halt the Subaltern threw himself so heavily in a cabbage patch,
+that his revolver became unhitched from his belt, and when the halt was
+over he lurched to his feet and on, without noticing its loss. Careless?
+Perhaps, but one of his men lost his rifle and never noticed it, because
+he was carrying a spade!
+
+There was, however, one consolation. The Germans had for the time been
+shaken off; although the noise of battle could still be heard
+uncomfortably near on the left. But if one waits long enough, the
+hottest sun must go to rest, and drag its horrible day with it. About
+six o'clock the Battalion at last came up with its "Cookers" and
+transport. Glory of glories, rest had at last been achieved! Never had
+bacon been so welcome, never tea so desirable, so stimulating, so
+wonderful.
+
+The Quartermaster-Sergeant had some terrifying tales for the Company
+Mess about disasters on less fortunate parts of the line; but there was
+no time to go into the matter, for the Battalion was ordered to parade
+immediately. This was the last straw! The men had been looking forward
+to, and longing for a good sleep that night. Every aching limb of their
+bodies cried out for rest, and here they were going to be put on outpost
+duty for yet another night. Imagine their state of mind! Is there a
+word to cope with the situation? Assuredly not, though great efforts
+were made! Darkness fell so swiftly that the Officers had scarcely time
+to "site" the position of their trenches. Then the weary business of
+entrenching began again. Have you ever heard the tinkering, tapping,
+thudding sounds made by entrenching implements or spades? None of the
+men who heard it that night will ever forget it. It will give them a
+memory of energy, promoted by the desire for safety, clogged by heat and
+fatigue.
+
+At about eleven or twelve at night a fair cover had been made, and the
+long-sought rest became possible at last--not, however, the sleep that
+the Subaltern had been longing for all day, not complete oblivion to
+body and mind, for the fear of surprise was upon him even in his sleep,
+and he knew that if his precautions should prove insufficient, he would
+have to answer for sixty good lives. In addition there was the cold of
+the cloudless night, and the clinging wetness of the dew. These things
+would not have allowed him to sleep, even if he could.
+
+A fresh day began very similar to the last. There were no signs of the
+enemy to the immediate front, so the work of entrenching continued. A
+"fatigue party" went to draw rations, which were distributed at about
+seven o'clock. This was their first introduction to "bully" beef and
+hard biscuits. Also, wonder of wonders, a "mail" was distributed.
+
+He was lying in the corn just beginning to eat a biscuit and read a
+letter, when the voice of the Senior Subaltern called him from somewhere
+up the line. Thinking that he had got another letter, or something of
+that sort, he did not wait to put letters and rations in his haversack,
+but went straight to his Senior. "A party of Uhlans, about 100 strong,
+have broken through the line further up. We have got to prevent them
+from taking us by surprise on this flank. So you had better take a
+couple of sections to keep them off." Commands on the battlefield must
+never be didactic and narrow. Tell a man what to do, give him his
+mission, and how he will carry it out, the methods he will employ, are
+for himself to determine.
+
+He hurriedly collected his men and took up a position astride a road
+that ran behind, parallel to the lines. In peace-time manoeuvres one
+had generally been told the direction from which to expect the enemy,
+hours before he actually came; now, when the great game was being played
+in real earnest, he found that he had to guess. The Uhlans might have
+come unsuspecting along the road, in which case the game would be his;
+or they might come blundering along from somewhere in the rear and
+enfilade him, in which case the game would most assuredly be theirs.
+Fortunately, the Uhlans did not come at all.
+
+Meanwhile a very rare and lucky circumstance was beginning to be
+apparent. The enemy were actually attacking from the direction they
+were expected! But this was only to be a rear-guard action, so he never
+saw his rations or letters again, after all.
+
+The Senior Subaltern was left to "hold out" in a small cottage in the
+firing-line until the rest had "got away." With characteristic
+forethought and presence of mind he not only got his men away without
+loss, but seized all luxuries in the place!
+
+As on the day before, in getting clear away from the enemy, the Company
+had to pass a large stretch of ground which was being literally peppered
+with shrapnel. The noise was louder than it had seemed on the previous
+day. Thunder seemed muffled beside it. Moreover, thunder rolled--seemed
+to spread itself into space--but not so with bursting shells. The clap
+of sound caused by one is more confined, more localised, more intense.
+The earth seems to quiver under it. It suggests splitting, a terrible
+splitting. Only the nerves of the young and healthy can stand it. It
+would not be so bad if one could see the thing whistling through the
+air, or even when it bursts; but one cannot. After the crash a man may
+scream or moan, totter and fall, but for all one can see he might have
+been struck down by the wrath of God.
+
+The road safely reached, the retreat was continued, but under very
+trying circumstances for the Company. The Brigadier in charge of the
+rear-guard action, not having sufficient cavalry at his disposal,
+ordered the Company to take up the role of flank-guard to the retreating
+column. The Company, extended over a long front, had to move across
+rough country, intersected with all sorts of obstacles, at the same rate
+as the infantry on the road, "which," as Euclid says, "is impossible."
+In war, however, the logically "impossible" is not impossible really,
+only very fatiguing.
+
+Things grew from bad to worse. The men could no longer keep their places
+in the ranks. If one had seen them and not known the spirit of the
+British Army, one would have thought that they were a dispirited,
+defeated rabble. Yet, in their own minds, the Officers and men had no
+doubts about what was going to happen: they were going to fight even
+though they might not sleep; and their determination was shaken not one
+whit.
+
+There was a very welcome halt for an hour in the town, for the men to
+fill their water-bottles and rest.
+
+The men's feet were beginning to suffer terribly, for the road along
+which they were marching had been cobbled--cobbles, not as we know them
+in England, but rounded on the surface--cobbles that turned one's
+ankles, cobbles that the nails of one's boots slipped on, that were
+metallic, that "gave" not the fraction of a millimetre. The hob-nails in
+the Subaltern's boots began to press through the soles. To put his feet
+to the ground was an agony, and they swelled with the pain and heat. The
+bones of them ached with bearing his weight. They longed for air, to be
+dangling in some cool, babbling stream. The mental strain of the
+morning's action was as nothing compared to the physical pain of the
+afternoon. The Colonel, seeing his plight, offered to lend him his
+horse, but he thanked him and declined, as there is a sort of grim pride
+in "sticking it." The men, too, took an unreasonable objection to seeing
+their Officers avail themselves of these lifts. Then the heavens were
+kind, and it rained; they turned faces to the clouds and let the drops
+fall on their features, unshaven, glazed with the sun, and clammy with
+sweat. They took off their hats and extended the palms of their hands.
+It was refreshing, invigorating, a tonic.
+
+Somebody had heard the General say that they should have a rest, a real
+rest, that night. High hopes filled weary hearts. It got about that they
+were to be billeted in that suburb of Landrecies through which they had
+passed, Maroilles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DARKNESS
+
+
+At about five o'clock on that aching day, Maroilles was reached. All
+through the streets there were halts and delays, intolerable to those in
+whom the want of rest had become a positive passion. At last the members
+of the billeting party were sighted--here at last was rest and sleep....
+
+Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip! The General, followed by the
+Brigade-Major and an orderly, came trotting down the road. A few hasty
+commands were thrown at the Adjutant, accompanied by gesticulations
+towards the road leading out of the town. Assuredly some fresh devilment
+was rife, and for the moment, anyway, the cup had slipped. An attack on
+the town was expected by a large detachment of cavalry. The wretched men
+had to be hurried out, to line a row of hedges to the west of the town.
+They waited about half-an-hour, but saw not a sign of the famous
+square-crested Uhlan helmet. It appeared that the enemy had been content
+with destroying the canal bridge, which formed the communication between
+Maroilles and Landrecies, and had then withdrawn. There was a whole
+brigade in Maroilles, which was therefore cut off from the rest of the
+division, and from its natural line of retreat. That, however, did not
+greatly upset the rank and file, and billets were at last achieved.
+
+The Subaltern found that he was billeted in the same house as the
+Headquarters of the Battalion--Colonel, Second in Command, Adjutant,
+etc. His servant brought him his valise from the Regimental Transport,
+and he began to change the offending boots for a fresh pair, without
+nails.
+
+Some one procured a footbath, and ablutions began.
+
+The Medical Officer came in to say that the Colonel seemed to be very
+ill. The Subaltern was glad he had declined the offer of his horse. He
+then began to shave and wash. Just as he was in the middle of this, with
+his boots and puttees off, his Captain came in to say that his Platoon
+was being sent off as infantry escort to a battery of artillery. By the
+time he had redressed himself, the Battery and his Platoon had both
+gone. The streets were filled by French peasants, as usual excited and
+garrulous, and by men settling down to their billets. The Subaltern
+failed absolutely to discover what route his Platoon had taken, but
+pursuing the road along which they had come, he soon left the town.
+
+It was raining and blowing most fiercely; the darkness was intense,
+otherwise absolute silence reigned. Suddenly, excitedly, a voice,
+saturated with fear, cried out from the darkness, "Who goes there?" A
+face, with a bayonet in front of it, loomed up from the side of the
+road. "Friend!" this tersely. "Sentry, have you seen a battery of
+artillery and a platoon of ----shires pass here?"
+
+"No, sir; you're nearly in the outpost line. There's only Royal
+Blankshires in front, sir."
+
+So they had evidently not come this way. Where next? They must be found.
+He felt that to lose his men would be a sort of dishonour. Even while he
+was thinking, a shout was wafted on the wind out of the darkness and
+chasing it, overtaking it almost, a rifle shot. It was as if a match had
+been applied to the whole line. With the rapidity of wind the crackling
+spread to either side.
+
+Soon the whole line in front was blazing away into the darkness. Should
+the Subaltern stop and try to lend assistance where he was, or hurry
+back to his own unit? Before long a couple of men rushed along the road
+crying out for Stretcher Bearers, and he learnt from one of them that in
+the darkness and confusion of the retreat, British had been fighting
+with British. The pitch darkness shrouded every action with a ghastly
+uncertainty.
+
+Then news came through that another bridge had been captured. A fresh
+company arrived in reinforcement. There was nothing for it but to effect
+a retreat before the morning light could betray their weakness to the
+Germans. Apparently, however, the capture of the bridge had only been a
+precautionary measure, for the enemy did not press his attack home.
+
+The Subaltern saw that the best thing he could do would be to return to
+the remainder of his Battalion at Maroilles. If he were to grope about
+the countryside in the dark, looking for "that battery," he would most
+likely be shot down for a spy; moreover, in a little over two hours the
+morning would dawn. So he trudged back to Maroilles.
+
+He felt that he ought to have been on the verge of exhaustion from lack
+of food and from fatigue, and he vaguely wondered why he was not. The
+truth was that the excitement of the attack, coupled with the chill of
+the night, had restored him in mind and body, although he had marched
+over twenty miles on the previous day, had had no sleep that night, and
+no meal since the evening of the battle of Mons.
+
+The Battalion was taking its rest as well as it could on the pavement of
+the street, so as to be ready to move at a minute's notice. The
+Subaltern found his Major, and reported that he had failed to find his
+Platoon. The Major was too sleepy to be annoyed. "I expect they'll turn
+up," he said. "We got some food in that house there; I should go and see
+if there is any left, if I were you."
+
+Followed a couple of hours or so of interrupted sleep, disturbed by the
+cold. Then came dawn, and with it the shells whizzing and bursting over
+the town.
+
+The retreat of the Brigade had been cut off by the breaking of the canal
+bridge the previous evening, so the Battalion had to retire to the east,
+and not to the west. As the Subaltern marched along he reflected with
+grim amusement on the ease with which the most confirmed Sybarite can
+get accustomed to hardships. At home, if he did anything early on an
+empty stomach, he very soon felt faint and tired. Now, this was taken as
+a matter of course; one was only too glad to restore the circulation to
+the limbs, cramped with the cold and damp of dawn.
+
+An hour or so later they ran into a French Battalion, apparently
+preparing to occupy an outpost position along the bank of the road. This
+was a cheering sight. Tommy, who had expected to fight mixed up in some
+weird way with "le petit Piou-Piou," had not yet seen a Frenchman in
+action. In a vague way he fancied that "the Frenchies" had "let him
+down." He knew nothing of the battles of Charleroi and Namur, nor of the
+defence of Verdun, and the French were getting dreadfully unpopular with
+him. Things were thrown at any one who ventured to sing the
+"Marseillaise."
+
+"Oh, '_ere_ they are; so they '_ave_ come. Well, that's somethink."
+
+The "Marseillaise" broke out once again.
+
+"Look 'ere, Bill, there's too much of this ruddy 'Marslasie' abaht this
+'ere show."
+
+"'Ow d'you mean, Sam?"
+
+"Why, it's all 'March on, March on.' I'm ruddy sick of it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+VENEROLLES
+
+
+At this point the Battalion turned in a south-westerly direction,
+passing through a village in which the French and English Headquarters
+were quartered in "estaminets" on either side of the road. No doubt both
+were prosecuting their work equally successfully, but the Subaltern
+could not help remarking the quietness of the one, and the excitement,
+volubility, and apparent confusion of the other. Still, he thought,
+different people have different ways of doing things.
+
+Apparently to compensate for having no breakfast, the Battalion was
+halted in an orchard. The men filled their haversacks with apples and
+pears, and consumed scarcely ripe plums with an avidity that made the
+Officers fear that at least half of the Battalion would be in the grip
+of colic before the night.
+
+Because it was a cloudy day, or perhaps because one reaches a second
+heat in physical and mental fatigue, the Subaltern did not feel so bad
+that day. The men, too, recovered their spirits. He began to think it
+was good to march on an empty stomach. The sight of French cavalry with
+their holland-covered helmets and curved sabres, suggested ample
+support. This would mean at least a rest before the next fight, he told
+himself.
+
+These "dragons" seemed exceedingly intelligent and superior men. They
+were quite preoccupied, like men who are going to do something. There
+was none of that inane shouting "A bas les Bosches." Later on, some
+transport columns were passed, and the men descended from their wagons
+and distributed bread to the English.
+
+All day long the sound of guns rolled along to the right. The sound
+seemed to move parallel to them, otherwise the day's march was
+uneventful. At about half-past five in the evening the Battalion
+suddenly struck the "route nationale," along which they had advanced
+north of Etreux. There had been a feeling, once again, that the enemy
+had been successfully shaken off by the rapidity of the retreat.
+
+Once again came disillusionment, for here were the Guards' Brigade
+entrenching themselves for the night. Apparently there had been very
+severe fighting around Etreux, which had resulted in a check to the
+enemy, for the moment, at any rate. The Regiment, however, passed
+through Etreux, and was eventually ordered to occupy a defensive
+position around the village of Venerolles. Darkness fell so suddenly
+that the Company Commanders had the greatest difficulty in selecting
+good positions. Eventually the Subaltern's Platoon was placed astride a
+sunken lane, along the edge of an orchard. The position was a happy
+one, and since the hedge that stretched along its front was thick and
+about ten feet high, it seemed safe from surprise.
+
+It was now quite dark, and the men had not had a meal since the few
+biscuits which had been given out in the early morning. At last,
+however, the Regimental Transport was heard creaking up the small lane
+which led to the position. Then the trouble began. The road was dark,
+deeply rutted and narrow, and crossed by a little stream. A nervous
+horse took fright at the running water, dashed up one of the banks, and
+firmly embedded the water-cart, which he was pulling, in the other, thus
+effectively blocking the way.
+
+When the Subaltern, having seen everything safe for the night, was
+returning to report to the Major, he found something akin to confusion
+in the Transport. Horses were neighing, backing, plunging, making things
+worse, as only horses can. If the Regiment had been attacked that night,
+and forced to retire, the way was so completely obstructed that it would
+probably have been annihilated, as the Transport did not get safely away
+until just before dawn.
+
+He had had no proper food or drink for twenty-four hours, so one can
+easily imagine how pleased he was to see the Major and the Captain
+seated around a table in a little hovel of a cottage, just about to
+demolish some tea and bread and marmalade.
+
+The air was charged with electricity caused by four men nervously
+awaiting the boiling of the kettle, and trying to conceal their
+impatience.
+
+"Poor old ---- must have lost himself," said the Major, referring to the
+Senior Subaltern, "or he'd be here by now; he has a wonderful nose for
+food."
+
+However, half-way through the meal he came in, admitting that he had
+lost himself, and wandered into another Regiment's lines.
+
+After the meal they returned to their Platoons, and spent the usual
+miserable night in their usual miserable way, cramped by the usual
+miserable damp. Next morning the Regiment was moved further out, to the
+top of the ridge, to protect the retreat of the remaining two Brigades
+and their Transport Columns. Luckily the enemy was not in sufficient
+force to drive this covering party in.
+
+When the Division had got clear away, the Brigade resumed the column of
+route formation, and the retreat was continued. Once again during the
+morning a German Taube flew overhead. A violent fusillade broke out from
+the road, from which the aeroplane suffered less than the men, as they
+were in too close formation to fire properly. A vast quantity of
+ammunition was wasted, and the position and strength of the column was
+thus demonstrated to the airman. It was decided in future to hide as
+completely as possible, whenever an enemy aeroplane hove in sight, and
+not on any account to fire at it.
+
+Later on a German patrol menaced the column, but, having forced it to
+deploy in some measure, withdrew. The rest of the march passed
+uneventfully, but the country became less flat than hitherto--an
+addition to their trials!
+
+He tried his French on the Battalion's interpreter, who in peace time
+had been an Avocat in Paris, and who told him many things of the French
+Army. He spoke of its dauntless patriotism, its passionate longing for
+revenge, fostered for many long years of national subservience; the
+determination to avenge the humiliations of Delcasse, of Agadir, of the
+Coronation at Versailles. As vivacious and eloquent as only one of his
+nation and calling can be, he praised the confidence of the French Army
+and its "Generalissime." He repeated the great names of the army--De
+Castlenau, Percin, Sarrail, and many more unknown to the Subaltern. He
+spoke with deep feeling. A spark of the fire that, in her hours of need,
+never fails his country, had descended upon him, and, in the eyes of the
+stolid British soldiers around, transformed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ST. QUENTIN AND LA FERE
+
+
+In the afternoon a large town was reached, probably St. Quentin, through
+which long trains of Motor Transport were rumbling. A halt was made some
+miles to the south of this town. While they were taking their evening
+meal the ever-pursuing sound of artillery fire was heard from over the
+ridge. Two of the companies were hastily fallen in, and marched away to
+this scene of activities, to undergo probably yet another rear-guard
+action. The remaining companies were then set to dig themselves in,
+astride the road.
+
+As you have seen from these rough descriptions of the first three days
+of the battle in Belgium, the most that is seen of the enemy is but a
+passing glimpse. If the Higher Command decide that to give battle in any
+determined measure would be to expose their force to unnecessary chances
+of defeat, and to endanger the ultimate success of the campaign, it is
+very unlikely that the infantry soldier will see his enemy at a distance
+of less than five or six hundred yards. There is always the danger, if
+the enemy are allowed to come to close quarters, that the defenders will
+find themselves so pinned to their ground that it is impossible to
+extricate themselves from their position without losses of greater
+magnitude than would be warranted by the success obtained. So far this
+Division, at any rate, had succeeded in their mission of delaying the
+enemy by forcing him to deploy, at the same time taking the greatest
+care to refuse open battle.
+
+Most of the younger Subalterns had very primitive ideas on the general
+strategy of the campaign. There would be a wait, they thought, as the
+English Army would probably be used as general reserve; then there would
+be "the devil of a battle," ending in Victory or Defeat, and followed by
+a glorious life (or death), and that would be the end of the matter. It
+would be over by Christmas, "easy." The actual course of events was very
+different. The English had encountered the enemy in the first onslaught
+of battle, and there had been neither Victory nor Defeat--nothing but
+retreat, retreat, retreat, over twenty miles a day, in the blazing heat
+of sunny France, with the fear of capture for those who lagged
+behind....
+
+The fighting was not like those battles on Laffans Plain, where you
+fought quickly and decisively, and where, "win, draw, or lose," you were
+home in time for tea. You were told all about it beforehand by the
+Colonel, or Brigadier, and sometimes the "show" approached interest.
+Here everything was different. This was the real thing. Yet there seemed
+less reality in it than in the mock battles of Aldershot, with their
+mock situations, tired charges and rattling bolts. Here you knew
+nothing, you were barely told where to move. There were none of those
+charming little papers headed: "_General Idea, White Army moving on_,
+etc...." and: "_Special Idea, the nth Infantry Brigade, commanded by_,
+etc. etc...." The "General Idea" of this campaign remained absolute
+darkness; and already pessimists began to fear that Christmas would not
+see them back at home.
+
+As far as eagerness to meet the enemy was concerned the "morale" was as
+high as ever, but nevertheless the temper of the troops was beginning to
+be badly shaken. They did not understand the necessity for retreat; for
+not a word had been whispered of other set-backs. They had a ridiculous,
+but nevertheless firmly lodged, impression that this prolonged retreat
+was just another of those needless "fatigues" to which they were so
+often put, and vaguely they resented it, distrusted the necessity for
+it. Mr. Thomas Atkins found it difficult to believe in the existence of
+Germans whom he could not see. In a word, he was beginning to be "fed
+up"; especially the reservists, oldish men who had been called from
+their homes, bundled once more into uniforms, hurried to a foreign land
+of which they knew nothing, and pushed into a battle which showed great
+promise of becoming a "debacle."
+
+But you must not blame the men for this. You must remember that they had
+left England before the spirit of patriotism had been re-kindled. They
+felt, and before reams of paper had been scattered broadcast to prove
+the contrary the feeling was very prevalent, that great diplomatic
+blunders must have been made for the situation to have reached such an
+impasse. Germany had been out for war before: witness Agadir and similar
+disturbances in the diplomatic world which occurred with almost
+monotonous regularity every August. Previously war had simply been
+denied to Germany. Why not once again? And so on, and so forth. Probably
+they did not really believe or mean half they said. They were thirsty,
+hungry, and very, very tired.
+
+The soldier at Malplaquet shook the powder from his wig, and grumbled as
+only a soldier and a Britain can.
+
+His descendant at Mons did just the same thing. And after he had got his
+"grouse" off his chest, fought all the better for it.
+
+Although an alarming rumour reached them that the enemy, crowded into
+motor buses, had already reached St. Quentin, nothing disturbed their
+rest during the night, and by dawn the column was swinging along the
+road to La Fere. The men were always depressed and weary in the early
+morning. Their spirits never began to rise until eight or nine o'clock.
+Then songs would break out. "Who were you with last night?" "Hold your
+hand out, naughty boy!" and the inevitable "Tipperary," were the
+favourites. They would often whistle the "Marseillaise." A certain
+"swing" entered into the marching; there was less changing step, less
+shuffling. Even their weary faces brightened. Jokes became positively
+prolific, and the wit of the barrack-room, considered as wit, is far
+funnier than the humour of the Mess. Perhaps it is founded on a deeper
+knowledge of life.
+
+Towards midday, almost imperceptibly, the gist of the songs changed to
+the sentimental, and before very long the heat and fatigue gradually
+overcame the men, and songs ceased altogether. As a general rule, after
+two o'clock the mental attitude of the troops might be described as
+black, distinctly black.
+
+The rumour ran down the column that La Fere was to be the termination of
+that day's march, and as La Fere was only a matter of ten miles away, it
+was felt that at last an "easy" day had arrived. The road led through
+very pleasant places along a river valley, the opposite slope of which
+was wooded. That morning, too, there was no suspicion of artillery fire.
+It seemed that, for the moment at any rate, they had escaped the
+inconvenience of battle. Somebody said that La Fere was fortified.
+Behind its works they would doubtless stand, rest, and then perhaps
+fight. (Even yet they had not learnt the futility of speculation.)
+
+Those ten miles were long ones. It almost seemed to their tantalised
+nerves that La Fere was not a town, but a mirage. And so it was, or at
+least their thoughts of rest and water and food remained "in nebulis."
+
+Outside the town was a road-crossing. One way led to the main street of
+the town, and the other way to the south. To the consternation and
+amazement of everybody, the khaki ribbon crept, not towards the houses,
+but seemed for a dreadful moment to hesitate, to wobble, then turned its
+head slowly and irrevocably away from the town. The men swore. They felt
+that they were a scale on the skin of a long, sombre, khaki serpent,
+whose head had acted contrary to the wishes of its belly. And the body
+of the serpent quivered with indignation. The Subaltern himself felt
+that he had been cheated, lured on by false pretences, and generally
+treated shamefully. He knew perfectly well that these ideas were
+groundless and absurd. He knew that the halt at La Fere was only rumour;
+he knew long marches were the only thing to save them, but in spite of
+this knowledge he was angry, enraged. The blood flew still more to his
+burning cheeks, his teeth snapped together. If he could, he would have
+flown to the head of the column, drawn his revolver, and emptied it in
+the face of that General. He positively enjoyed picturing the results of
+such a crime. He chortled over the idea of the plump figure falling from
+the comfortable saddle to the hard, hot road. He imagined the neat red
+cap lying in the grey dust. And his boots, he knew what they would be
+like--glossy mahogany! Why should any one have shining boots, when his
+own were dull and bursting? Why should any one be clean and shaven when
+his own face was smeared with dirt and stubble? He exulted inwardly at
+the thought of the death and mutilation of some one who had never done
+him the slightest harm, and whose efficiency had probably saved his
+life.
+
+Such is human nature!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SIR JOHN FRENCH
+
+
+A few miles south of La Fere, the Brigade was halted in an orchard for
+its midday rest. Taking from his pockets the various parts of his safety
+razor, the Subaltern screwed them together, and with the help of a bit
+of soap, from which the biscuit crumbs and chocolate dust of his
+haversack had first to be carefully scraped, he shaved. As he was
+returning, lovingly fingering his once more smooth cheeks, he saw three
+large Daimler limousines draw up opposite the lines, and recognised them
+immediately as the authorised pattern of car for the use of the higher
+British Generals in the field.
+
+An Officer hurriedly got out, and held open the door with great
+deference, while a second alighted. The Subaltern easily recognised
+both. The first was the Chief of the General Staff--Sir Archibald
+Murray. He was a figure of middle height, with a slight stoop, and slow
+movements. His face was kindly, mobile--not at all the conventional
+military face. The mouth was tight shut, as if to suppress all the
+little humours and witticisms that teemed in the quick blue eyes.
+
+The other figure, short and dapper in build, quick and nervous in
+motion, need not be described. The blue eyes, the pink skin and white
+hair of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief are known wherever our
+language is spoken.
+
+Two of the Colonels came forward and saluted as only a senior officer
+can. A private salutes like a machine; a subaltern is awkward, but a
+senior officer manages somehow to insinuate into this simple movement
+deference and admiration, backed, as it were, with determination and
+self-reliance.
+
+It is as if he were to say: "I have the greatest esteem for you as a
+great man. I admire your brain and breeding, and will execute your
+commands with the precision and promptitude that they deserve. But in a
+lesser sort of way I am just the same, a great man; do not forget it!"
+
+And in response the salute of the great man seems to say: "I heartily
+appreciate the deference which you have shown me, and honour it the more
+as it comes from such a man as you." Like the bow of a Versailles
+courtier, it has its finer points, and is not to be learnt either soon
+or easily.
+
+The men were called round without any formality, and Sir John French
+began immediately to address them. It was not the first time that the
+Subaltern had heard him speak. As Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
+he used to inspect and address the Cadets of the Royal Military College,
+Sandhurst, at the end of each term. And he did it well. The Subaltern
+remembered the sight of the long parade--"three sides of a square" the
+formation was called--and the Generals with the skirts of their "frock"
+coats and the feathers in their hats blowing in the wind. But in spite
+of the absence of red coats, and the stiffness of parade, this was a
+more moving harangue than any he had heard on the parade ground at
+Sandhurst.
+
+The Field-Marshal said that the greatest battle that had ever been
+fought was just over. It had rolled with the fury of a cyclone from
+Belfort to Mons. Nearly two million men had been engaged, and the
+British Army had emerged from the contest covered with glory, having for
+three days maintained an unbroken front in the face of an overwhelming
+superiority in numbers. Never had he been more proud to be a British
+soldier than he was that day. The Regiment had added yet another branch
+to its laurel wreath. It had more than sustained its ancient traditions
+for endurance and courage. He was proud of it.
+
+The enemy had been nearly five to one, and yet had been unable to
+inflict defeat upon them. If they had been "broken," the whole of the
+French left would have assuredly perished. Thanks to their endurance and
+obedience in the face of great provocation and privation, the Allied
+armies were now free from the dangers that had threatened them. No one
+knew better than he did that they would continue to be as brave, as
+reliable, and as soldierly in the future, as they had been in the past,
+until final victory had been fully accomplished!....
+
+How they cheered him as he made his way to his car!
+
+At first the Tommies had not realised what was happening. There had been
+disturbing cries of "What's all this abart?" "Oo's the 'ole bloke?" But
+they had soon ceased, and in a few seconds the men were crowding round
+with eager faces, hanging on the words of their leader. He commiserated
+with them upon their losses; he understood what they had been through.
+In a word, he appreciated them, and in the Army appreciation is a "rare
+and refreshing fruit." Although they would have died rather than own it,
+there was a feeling of tears behind the eyes of a good many of those
+tough old warriors. The personality of the Field-Marshal, and his
+heartening words, had brightened many a grim face, and lightened many a
+heavy load.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A PAUSE, AND MORE MARCHING
+
+
+A village called Amigny was reached at about six o'clock in the evening,
+and here the Battalion, in its usual evening state of prostration, was
+billeted.
+
+The Company settled down in the chief "estaminet" of the place. The
+decision was a faulty one. The old woman who was hostess gave way to
+hysterics at the thought of having to provide for five large, hungry and
+nervous officers. She was a horrid old woman--mean, dirty, and if the
+Captain's word could be taken as strict truth, immoral. Still, a roof to
+cover their heads was an unusual blessing, and it was not long before
+they were all sound asleep.
+
+Next morning there was no parade in the grey of dawn. As the first
+chilly beam of light crept into the room the Subaltern turned in his
+sleep, and smiled at the complete luxury of prolonged rest. They did not
+get up till eight, and having dressed, washed, and even shaved, they had
+what the "hostess" called breakfast. And still nothing happened, no
+breathless orderly delivered the usual order. What had happened?
+
+The Senior Subaltern, who was suspected of leanings towards matrimony,
+began to write a letter.
+
+The Captain, who was energetic, began to play billiards on the miniature
+pocketless table. Later on the Colonel came in. It was not an official
+visit, only to warn them to be ready to move at any moment. Having
+thanked the old woman, he left in a singularly peaceful frame of mind.
+
+At half-past twelve they moved on to a small hill just outside the
+village, which they proceeded to put into a state of defence. They heard
+that afternoon of a large counter-attack launched in the neighbourhood
+of Guise, which had been successful in temporarily relieving the
+pressure on the British Front. Here it was that they first heard rumours
+of the affair off Heligoland, which had become inflated into a
+tremendous victory for the British Fleet. Apparently half the German
+Fleet had been sent to the bottom of the sea, and you can imagine the
+state of enthusiasm that was caused by this news. They felt that, no
+matter what might happen to them on the battlefields of France, their
+homes at any rate were freed from the menace of the German. To add to
+their jubilation, instead of having to spend the night in the trenches
+they had dug, they were marched back, for some inexplicable reason, to
+their billets in the village.
+
+Next morning they paraded as soon as it was light, and the retreat was
+continued throughout the day.
+
+There was a very marked change in the country. The open cornfields were
+replaced by woods of such a dense nature that any operations would have
+been impossible. Curious as it may seem, the Subaltern had in some way
+been upset by the previous day's break in the usual marching routine.
+The heat seemed more intense than ever; his haversack and equipment more
+cumbersome. But the roads were now avenues, and the overhanging branches
+provided very welcome shade.
+
+They emerged from the woods, once more to strike out in the glaring
+sunlight. Soon a hill was seen in the distance, surmounted by a quaint
+and squat tower, very reminiscent of Windsor. The houses which clustered
+beneath it formed the little town of Coucy-le-Chateau. They camped out
+in an open field beneath the hill, and by stripping a couple of
+haystacks made themselves fairly comfortable. They must have very
+effectually shaken off the enemy, for the General did not think it
+necessary to put out outposts.
+
+The next morning, this time well before dawn, the retreat was continued,
+apparently on Soissons. Precisely the same thing happened on this day as
+on the march to La Fere. Soissons was no great distance from Coucy, only
+some eight or ten miles, and just when they reached the northern heights
+of the Aisne, and the whole town was visible, the Brigade sheered off to
+the right, and clung to the river bank.
+
+Soissons looked so particularly inviting, the whites and greys and
+primroses of its walls flashing in the sun. The sight of a French town
+(in the distance) is very pleasing to any one used to the terra-cotta
+reds of England. The cobbles give the streets such a medieval air, the
+green shutters seem so queer, and there is such a disdain of geometry.
+But when one gets right into the town, a violent change comes over the
+scene. The cobbles that were so pleasantly medieval in the distance
+become, under one's feet, nothing but an ankle-turning plague. The
+stuccoed walls look very clean in the distance, but near to, the filth
+of the streets modifies one's admiration. A small French town generally
+reminds one of the outhouses and styes of a farm. The air is diffuse
+with the scent of manure. England, with all thy drainage system, I love
+thee still!
+
+The road now clung to the river, which was not actually crossed until
+two or three o'clock in the afternoon. The bridge was a large and
+substantial structure, and a section of Engineers were preparing to blow
+it up. Before the hour's halt was over, the inevitable alarm occurred,
+and two companies were detached to fight the usual rear-guard action,
+under the Major, who was now second-in-command.
+
+The remainder of the Battalion continued the march, this time along the
+south bank of the river.
+
+The heat was as usual intense, and to-day they missed the shady trees
+that had so well protected them the day before. A couple of hours later
+they turned abruptly to the left, that is to say, southwards, and the
+Aisne disappeared in a cleft of the hills. Winding tortuously at the
+feet of more or less steep slopes--for the country was quite
+changed--progress was not as easy as it had been. At last, close on
+seven o'clock, a halt was made on a hillside.
+
+Men fell to the ground with a grunt, thanking God that another of those
+Hell-days was over. Too tired to move, even if the position was an
+uncomfortable one; too tired to pray for rest; too tired to think!
+
+The average man is, I am sure, quite ignorant of the effect which
+extreme exhaustion has on the brain. As the weary hours drag by, it
+seems as if a deadness, a sort of paralysis, creeps up the limbs,
+upwards towards the head. The bones of the feet ache with a very
+positive pain. It needs a concentration of mind that a stupefied brain
+can ill afford to give to force the knees to keep from doubling under
+the weight of the body. The hands feel as if they were swelling until
+the boiling blood would ooze from the finger-tips. The lungs seem too
+exhausted to expand; the neck too weary to support the heavy head. The
+shoulders ache under the galling weight of sword and haversack, and
+every inch of clammy skin on the body seems ten times as sensitive as it
+normally is. The nerves in the face and hands feel like swelled veins
+that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails. The tongue and eyes
+seem to expand to twice their usual size. Sound itself loses its sharp
+conciseness, and reaches the brain only as a blurred and indistinct
+impression.
+
+But perhaps the reader may say that he has once done twenty-five or
+thirty miles in a day, and did not feel half as bad as that. He must
+remember, however, that these men had been doing over twenty-five miles
+every day for the last ten days, and that, in addition to the physical
+fatigue, they had suffered the mental fatigue caused by fighting. Their
+few hours of halting were generally occupied by trench digging. They
+were not having a fifth of the sleep that such a life requires. They
+were protected neither from the heat of noon nor from the chill of dawn.
+The food they got was not fresh food, and their equipment weighed ninety
+pounds! Lesser men would have died; men imbued with a feebler
+determination would have fainted. As it was, the transport was crowded
+with men whose feet had failed them, and many must have fallen behind,
+to be killed or made prisoner. The majority "stuck it" manfully, and
+faced every fresh effort with a cool, gruff determination that was
+wonderful. This spirit saved the Allies from the first frenzied blow of
+Germany, in just the same way that it had saved England from the Armada
+and from Napoleon.
+
+The Subaltern realised the value of his men; indeed, he felt a wholesome
+trust and faith in them that individual outbursts of bad temper or lack
+of discipline could not shake. They occupied, more than they had ever
+done before, the greater part of his thoughts and attention. He made
+their safety and comfort his first care, and protected them from
+ridiculous orders and unnecessary fatigue. He found himself watching and
+playing upon their moods. He tried very hard and earnestly to make them
+a good officer. He thought that they were the salt of the earth, that
+there never had been men like them, nor would be again.
+
+No sooner had a scanty meal been rammed down their throats than they
+were paraded once more, and hurried away to the crest of another ridge.
+One of the Aisne bridges had been left standing, and apparently the
+enemy was across it, and already threatening to envelop their position.
+Having reached higher ground they stopped for what was left of the
+night, since it was impossible for the enemy cavalry to attack them in
+that country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A REAR-GUARD ACTION
+
+
+In a couple of hours' time the march was continued in the darkness. The
+men lurched from side to side, with brains too fagged to control their
+feet. The Company was sent out to act as flank-guard on the top of the
+crest beneath which the column was moving. This movement was very
+tiresome, as they had to move over broken country in an _extended_
+formation, and to keep up with the column which was moving in _close_
+formation along the road. To compensate for this they were able to fill
+their haversacks with a peculiarly sweet kind of apple.
+
+Later in the morning they emerged from the close country into the
+typical open plains of France, covered with corn and vegetables. About
+five or six miles of this, and then the darker greens of pine and fir
+forests appeared in view.
+
+The General Staff had selected this as the site of yet another
+rear-guard action. One of the other Brigades in the Division was already
+busily engaged in constructing a line of trenches not more than a
+hundred yards in front of the woods. To their front the view was
+uninterrupted, offering a field of fire unbroken by the least suspicion
+of cover from view or fire.
+
+The artillery was no doubt concealed in the woods behind. The men were
+doing their work with a quick, noiseless efficiency that would have made
+you very proud if you could have seen them.
+
+Soon after the Column had passed into the woods, the noise of the guns
+was heard. The Subaltern could imagine the whole scene as vividly as if
+he could see it: the van-guard of the German Advanced Guard suddenly
+"held up" by the bursting of the British shells; the hasty deployment of
+the German cavalry; the further "holding up" of the main-guard of the
+Advanced Guard while a reconnaissance was being carried out with the
+help, perhaps, of a "Taube." Remember that the Germans must have been
+daily, almost hourly, expecting the Allies to make a determined attempt
+to check their continued advance, and must have been very nervous of
+walking into some trap. Therefore the Commander of the German Advanced
+Guard would have to discover very exactly the nature of the resistance
+in front of him before the Officer commanding the main body--some miles
+behind, of course--could decide what force it would be necessary to
+deploy in order to dislodge the enemy from his position.
+
+This is no easy matter. What the retreating army is fighting for is
+time--time to get clean away. Consequently, if the Officer commanding
+the advancing army deploys a larger force than is necessary, he grants
+his opponent the very thing that he wants--time, since the deployment
+of, say, a Division is a very lengthy operation, occupying at least
+three hours. On the other hand, if he details too small a force for the
+work, his attack is held in check, and more time than ever is wasted in
+reinforcing it in a measure sufficient to press home the attack.
+
+The Subaltern imagined the long wait while the shells shrieked over the
+heads of the infantry towards an enemy as yet unseen. Then the enemy
+shells would begin to feel their way to the thin brown line of trenches,
+and under cover of their fire the infantry, now deployed into fighting
+formations, would "advance." Then our men would begin firing, firing
+with cool precision. The landscape would soon be dotted with grey ants.
+Machine-guns would cut down whole lines of grey ants with their
+"plop-plop-plop." Shrapnel would burst about whole clouds of grey ants,
+burying them in brown clouds of dust. Finally, the directing brain would
+decide that it was time to cut and run. The artillery fire would be
+increased tenfold, and under cover of it the brown ants would scamper
+from the trenches and disappear into the green depths of the woods. Soon
+the firing would cease. The retreating party would have got safely,
+cleanly away, having gained many precious hours for the main body, and
+having incidentally inflicted severe losses on the enemy. The latter,
+have nothing left to do but to re-form (thus losing still more time),
+would then continue his pursuit weaker and further from his opponent
+than he had been before.
+
+At last, striking a clearing, the town of Villiers Cotterets was
+reached. There was nothing to distinguish it from a score of other small
+agricultural centres through which the Column had passed. The only thing
+the Subaltern remembers about this town is that he handed a French
+peasant woman there a couple of francs on the odd chance that she would
+bring back some chocolate. She did not.
+
+On the further side of the town the Brigade Transport, with steaming
+cookers, was massed ready to give the troops a midday meal. This was an
+innovation greatly appreciated. Such a thing as a meal in the middle of
+the day had not occurred since the days of Iron.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+VILLIERS-COTTERETS
+
+
+Twenty minutes later the Column was again on the move, but this time not
+for long. Having reached the edge of another forest, a fresh halt was
+made while the Transport was hauled past them into the wood. The
+Transport, known technically as "second line" of a Brigade, is a very
+large, cumbersome, and slow-moving affair, and it must be protected at
+all costs, for without it the Brigade is lost.
+
+A swift deployment was then made, and the edge of the wood was held
+astride of the road. After everything had been arranged, there was a
+wait of thirty to forty minutes. Nothing could be seen, as the position
+was on the "reverse slope" of the incline, but the field of fire was
+absolutely clear for at least two hundred yards in front. It is the most
+trying time of all, this waiting for the approach of an enemy you cannot
+see, and it tells on the most phlegmatic disposition. The men occupy the
+heavy moments by working the bolts of their rifles, and seeing that they
+work easily. The success or failure of the defence depends mainly on the
+speed and accuracy with which the defenders "get their rounds off." The
+Officers pace about, making sure of "keeping touch" with the units on
+their flank, discovering the best way to retire, and so on. There is at
+such moments an odd desire to give way to the temptation of saying to
+oneself, "Where shall I be in an hour's time?" One gazes with a subtle
+feeling of affection on one's limbs, and wonders, "Where shall I get
+it?" Subconsciously one is amused and a little ashamed of such
+concessions to sentimentality. The best thing to do under the
+circumstances is to go and check the range-finders' figures, or prepare
+the headlines of a message or two.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Taube, like some huge insect with a buzz of whirring wings, flew
+overhead, dropping multi-coloured stars from its tail. Then our guns
+"opened the ball."
+
+There was something blatant and repulsive about that first burst of
+sound. The ferns of the forest shivered, as if awakened from a sunny
+dream to face terrible calamities. The trees seemed to shake with a
+delicate fear of what was in store for them. The enemy's fire burst upon
+them with a startling intensity.
+
+There was no point in holding the advanced edge of the wood under such a
+bombardment until the actual appearance of the enemy infantry made it
+necessary, so the whole line was retired some fifty yards into the wood.
+By this manoeuvre the Colonel lost no advantage, and must have saved
+many lives.
+
+Although artillery fire had been a pretty frequent occurrence, this was
+the heaviest the men had yet experienced. The noise was ear-splitting;
+the explosions filled the quivering air; the ground seemed to shudder
+beneath them. Branches fell crashing to the ground; it seemed as if a
+god was flogging the tree-tops with a huge scourge. The din was awful,
+petrifying, numbing.
+
+And in the middle of all this inferno, with the sight of men with ashen
+faces limping, crawling, or being dragged to the rear, with the leaves
+on the ground smoking from the hot, jagged shell-casings buried among
+them, the Subaltern suddenly discovered that he was not afraid. The
+discovery struck him as curious. He argued with himself that he had
+every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to
+himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever
+stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the
+deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to
+be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are
+looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the
+roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ought to feel pains in the pit of
+your stomach, and you're not. Devil a bit! You know, you're missing all
+the sensations that the writers told you about. You're not playing the
+game. Come, buck up, fall down and grovel on the ground!" But he did
+not. He did not want to. He felt absolutely normal.
+
+A man sheltering behind the same tree suddenly spun round, and, grasping
+his left arm, fell with a thud to the ground. He reeled over, with knees
+raised and rounded back, and staggered immediately to his feet. "Oh, my
+arm, my arm!" he moaned plaintively, and turned away towards the rear,
+whimpering a little as he went, and tenderly holding the wet,
+dark-stained sleeve as he went. The Subaltern felt that he ought to have
+winced with horror at the mutilation of the poor stricken thing, but
+beyond a slight sinking sensation between the lungs and the stomach, the
+incident left him with no emotion. He picked up the man's rifle, leant
+it against the tree, and continued to scan the skyline with his glasses,
+feeling all the while a bit of a brute.
+
+At the same time he experienced a sensation of pleasure at the immunity
+from mental sufferings that are generally supposed to afflict men under
+these conditions. He felt like a man who unexpectedly finds a five-pound
+note, the very existence of which he had forgotten, hidden away in some
+unusual pocket. It was something of the same sensation that he used to
+have at school, when by chance he saw other boys working at impositions
+which he had himself escaped.
+
+The time came when it was no longer expedient to remain in the wood, so
+they advanced, flitting from tree to tree, back to the edge of the
+forest. The view was rather restricted from where the Subaltern was,
+apparently on the right of where the full force of the attack was
+breaking.
+
+"Plop-plop-plop," the machine-gun spluttered with an amazing air of
+detached insistence. The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of
+their own. Shells, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an
+impression of passion, of untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant
+in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard
+in the "tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp" of its crescendos and
+diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes a
+higher note, and can be heard above the roar of the bursting shells. It
+is mechanical, there is nothing about it of human passion; it is a
+machine, and a most deadly one at that.
+
+The Colonel dashed out into the open and dragged a wounded gunner into
+the comparative shelter of the wood. Many more acts scarcely less heroic
+were performed.
+
+At last the moment came to retire. The guns had already rattled through
+the line, and the companies drew away from the edge of the wood,
+re-formed with great speed, and were soon marching once more in column
+of route along the road.
+
+The Subaltern felt exhausted in a way that he had never felt so badly
+before. The withdrawal from the actual scene of battle seemed to leave a
+gulf in his inside that positively yawned. It was not only the apparent
+uselessness of trying to stem the German tide that depressed him. There
+was something more than that. He felt like a man who wakes after a
+heavy, drug-induced slumber. The sudden cessation of the intense
+excitement of battles leaves the brain empty and weary. At such moments
+the hopelessness of the whole thing appalled and depressed him. The
+uncertainty of the future hurt him. Nor was he alone in this state of
+mind. Not a voice was raised to break the throbbing monotony of the
+march. Heads were bent low.
+
+On they went. Night came down upon them and seemed to crush the spirit
+out of them. As they emerged from the wood, the moon rose and flooded
+the broad plain with weird, phosphorescent light. They struggled on,
+swaying with sleep, past the ghostly outlines of poplars and hayricks,
+past quiet, deserted cottages and empty stables. There was something
+almost unearthly about that march in the moonlight. The accumulated
+fatigue of a long and hot day, the want of food and the repressing
+influence of a summer night, all these things joined in producing a
+state of mental listlessness that destroyed the impression of reality
+which things have in the daytime. They were drifting down a slow-moving
+stream; the scenery glided by, but the sensation was by no means
+pleasant. The brain was constantly at war with the lazy feet, striving
+to keep them from stumbling and the eyelids from closing. Sound was
+peculiarly muffled, as if darkness repressed and shut it in. The brain
+was not commanding the limbs with the instantaneous co-ordination of the
+daytime. The sensation that this produced--it is very difficult to give
+any definite idea of it--was an impression of physical and mental
+incompetence and uncertainty. And all the time every ounce of the body
+was crying out to the mind to let it lie down and rest.
+
+That night many men were lost.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not until ten o'clock that they arrived at a village where they
+found the "cookers" and regimental transport. The Subaltern could not
+help admiring the skill which was constantly being shown by the Staff
+not only in the strategical dispositions of the retreat, but in
+comparatively minute details such as this. The Brigade transport had
+been guided and collected to a spot where it could safely be of service
+to the battalions. Moreover, when the men arrived they found tea waiting
+for them already brewed. Apparently the hour of the men's arrival had
+been timed to such a nicety that the meal was just ready for them.
+Assuming the truth of Napoleon's maxim about an army marching on its
+belly, one can easily see from these pages that if Staff work had in any
+way failed, or if the Army Service Corps had broken down, the Great
+Retreat would have ended in disaster. It was these faultless
+arrangements of the Army Service Corps that served to keep the sorely
+tried army at any rate on its legs.
+
+A fire had been lighted, and, grateful for its warmth, the five Officers
+of the Company were soon clustering round it, sipping out of their mess
+tins filled with strong, sweet tea, without milk but very strongly
+flavoured with rum. Soon the worries and painful memories of the day
+were dispelled. A feeling almost of contentment stole over them. There
+is something so particularly adventurous and at the same time soothing
+about a camp fire. They had all read books at school full of camp fires
+and fighting and prairies, and they had all more or less envied such a
+life. Here it was. But the adventure part of it was so minute, and the
+drudgery and nerve strain so great that the most adventurous soul among
+them had long since admitted that "if _this_ was Active Service, it was
+not the life for him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HEAT AND DUST
+
+
+The Subaltern did not get to sleep until twelve, and the Regiment made
+another start as early as half-past two. It seemed to him that when
+necessity drives there is no limit to the nerve force that we have in
+us! They marched some miles in a westerly direction before they rejoined
+the main road southwards.
+
+To describe in detail the sufferings of that day would be to repeat
+almost word for word some of the preceding paragraphs. It was just as
+hot as usual, just as dusty as usual. An order had come from somewhere
+that there was to be no looting. Men were to be forbidden to snatch an
+apple from a fruit-strewn orchard, or an egg from a deserted barn! The
+owners had already fled from their homes, and here Mr. Thomas Atkins was
+solemnly asked to go hungry and thirsty and to relieve the enemy of one
+of his greatest difficulties--feeding himself. The Platoon having halted
+for the usual hourly halt outside an orchard, some of the men broke into
+it and began to throw apples over the hedge to the others. Seeing the
+Colonel approaching, the Subaltern realised that something must be done
+instantly to avert disaster. "What the deuce are you men doing? Come out
+of it!" he cried. The men came, looking very dejected. The Colonel,
+pacified, passed by. A second later, the glad work of refreshing the
+troops was being carried on by a fresh couple of men.
+
+It must have been a very similar situation that gave birth to a story
+that has already become famous. A Tommy was caught by a "brass hat" in
+the very act of strangling a chicken. Tommy looked up. Was he abashed?
+Not a bit of it! He did what Mr. Thomas Atkins generally does in a tight
+corner. He kept his head: he rose magnificently to the occasion. He did
+not loose the chicken and endeavour to stammer an apology. On the
+contrary, he continued to strangle it. He took no notice of the "brass
+hat." As he gave a final twist to the bird's throat he said menacingly,
+"So you'd try to bite me, would you, you little brute!"
+
+Towards the end of the afternoon the men were so obviously exhausted,
+and the number forced to fall out was so great, that a halt had to be
+ordered in spite of previous plans. The men threw themselves utterly
+exhausted on the ground on their backs, and lay like so many corpses
+until the march was continued, in the cool of the evening.
+
+The Subaltern, consulting a fresh map--for they had been walking across
+the ground covered by one map every day--learnt to his surprise that
+they were within a few miles of Paris. And so also, he thought, were the
+Germans! It rather looked as if they were heading straight towards the
+city, and that would mean a siege. It was no use worrying about things,
+but that depressing idea was in the minds of most of the Officers that
+evening. Not that the Subaltern cared much at the time--it would mean a
+stop to this everlasting marching, and perhaps the forts of Paris could
+stand it; anyhow the German Fleet had been rounded up. (That wicked
+rumour spread by the sensational section of the Press had not yet been
+denied.)
+
+While he was thinking of these things, they were moving through a
+country far more thickly populated. Villages began to crowd upon each
+other's heels, and all the villages--cheering sight--were full of
+British soldiers settling down to their billets for the night. This was
+the first they had seen of any other Division except their own, and the
+sight rather dispelled the illusion that, for all these days, they had
+been alone and unaided in a land of "frightfulness."
+
+More marching in the darkness!
+
+At last, at about nine o'clock, they reached their billets, but the word
+scarcely conveys a correct impression of the palatial chateau in which
+they were quartered. There was considerable delay in settling the men
+(which must, of course, be done before an officer thinks of his own
+comfort) and in detailing the quarters. At length the officers of the
+company found themselves in a little bedroom overlooking a river which
+they supposed to be the Seine. The Captain, who had been sent on in
+front of the Battalion to allot billets, produced with pride some
+chocolate, sardines, and bottled mushrooms.
+
+The Second Lieutenants went in search of the "Company Cookers" to "draw"
+their tea (in a washing jug), while the Senior Subaltern effected a
+felonious entry into the room allotted to the General, and purloined all
+the drinking glasses he could lay hands on, making his departure just as
+that worthy Officer was coming up the stairs.
+
+The house was evidently of the "nouveau riche" type. If there was in it
+nothing that could actually offend the eye, there was certainly nothing
+to satisfy it. There was a profusion of gilt mirrors, and an aching lack
+of pictures: the lighting was too new and glaring: the upholstery too
+flimsy. But there were baths and soap! It was too late for the baths,
+but the soap quickly disappeared.
+
+Just when they were settling themselves drowsily to enjoy a real sleep,
+free from the fear of a morning attack, protected from the damp of dawn,
+and with quilts of down to cover them, who should come in but the
+Colonel!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE OCCUPATION OF VILLIERS
+
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "but we've got to parade at two in the morning."
+
+As soon as the door had closed behind him a perfect volley of abuse was
+heard. They could not dismiss from their minds the thought that all this
+sort of thing was unnecessary. And this was very natural, as no one had
+had sufficient courage to tell the regimental officer how serious the
+position was.
+
+Even two hours' sleep, however, is better than none.
+
+As soon as it became light the Subaltern saw that they were
+counter-marching along the same road on which they had travelled the
+previous night. What did this mean? Was a stand going to be made at
+last? Apparently not, for the resting-place of last afternoon was
+passed, and they continued to move eastwards. On consulting the map, he
+judged that they were marching on Meaux on the Aisne. He had often read
+of Meaux; was it not the Bishopric of Bossuet, the stately orator of
+Louis XIV? The interest he felt in the question helped to take the
+weight from his weary limbs.
+
+At last they crossed the bridge. Sappers had been at work on it for some
+time, and the preparations to blow it up after they had passed were
+almost complete. The first sight of interest was the railway station,
+which was filled with what appeared to the Subaltern to be double-decked
+trains. Evidently a French army had detrained here.
+
+The Column swung suddenly round a corner and they were almost staggered
+with the sight of the cathedral towering above them. To an eye used
+exclusively to the sight of the dour British edifice, there is something
+very fascinating about a foreign cathedral such as this. There is
+something more daring about the style of architecture, something more
+flamboyant, and yet more solid. The cathedral seemed vaguely indicative
+of the past grandeur of the Catholic Church. Bathed in the early morning
+sunlight it appeared to exult over the mean smallness of the houses that
+clustered at its feet.
+
+Beyond the cathedral there is nothing at all extraordinary about Meaux.
+Many months afterwards one of his nurses told him in hospital that she
+had spent a long time in that very street. She had been with her father,
+the erstwhile Colonel of a line regiment, and a specialist in strategy,
+who for the pure love of the thing had laboriously gained permission to
+stay at Meaux and visit the famous battlefields of the Marne. She said
+they had been in the very room where General Joffre met Field-Marshal
+French, and had bought the very teapot in which their tea was brewed.
+She rather wondered how many more of these "very" teapots had been sold
+at fancy prices!
+
+If Von Kluck made a forward thrust at Paris before his sidelong movement
+to the south-east, it was undoubtedly made at Meaux, which was the scene
+of some terrific combats.
+
+Emerging from the town, the Column branched off in a south-easterly
+direction, and ascended the sides of a very steep plateau. Having
+reached the flat ground at the top, a midday halt was made in the
+pleasant grounds of yet another chateau.
+
+This fresh move was discussed a great deal as the men lay at full length
+in the shade of the trees. Evidently there was to be no siege of Paris.
+They were marching directly away from Paris. What did it mean? They
+would get to Marseilles in a fortnight at this rate, and then the only
+thing to do would be to wire for the Fleet, and be taken safely home to
+their mammas!
+
+The march went on through the stifling heat of the afternoon, and the
+Subaltern knew that he, and most of the men as well, were feeling about
+as bad as it is possible to feel without fainting. They marched through
+a very dense wood, and then out once more into the open. Even the
+longest day has its ending, and at last they found themselves halted in
+the usual lines of companies in the usual stubble field. A Taube flew
+overhead and all sorts of fire were concentrated on it.
+
+It was already sunset. After the edge, as it were, had been taken off
+his exhaustion, the Subaltern extracted the before-mentioned piece of
+soap, and having, as usual, scraped it ready for action, washed his feet
+in a little stream. He did it under the impression that marching for
+that day was over. It is very comfortable to wash your hot, tired feet
+in a cool stream provided there is no necessity to put your boots on
+again. If something happens that forces you to do this, you are in for a
+hard and painful job. You would not believe it possible for feet to
+swell like yours have swelled. They do not seem like your own feet at
+all. They have expanded past recognition, and their tenderness surpasses
+thought.
+
+The Subaltern was sitting by the stream edge gazing at the flush of
+golden light in the west, when he was awakened by the Major.
+
+"Well, young feller, I've been looking everywhere for you. You've got to
+take your Platoon out to this village, Villiers, and occupy it till
+further orders--a sort of outpost position--you will be too far from the
+main body to establish touch; you have really just to block the roads,
+and if you are rushed, retire here the best way you can."
+
+Having made sure of the position on the map, and asked for a couple of
+cyclists to accompany him, the Subaltern began to put on his boots. But
+they would not go on. It was like trying to get a baby's boots on to a
+giant's feet, and the more he tugged the more it hurt. The precious
+moments of daylight would soon be gone, and in the dark it would be ten
+times more difficult to find the village and block the roads. There was
+nothing for it but to cut the boots, so, unwrapping a fresh Gillette
+blade, he made a large V-shaped gash in the top part of each. It was
+annoying to have to spoil good boots, and in addition his feet would get
+wet far sooner than hitherto.
+
+All superfluous articles of weight had long since been thrown away, and
+consequently he had nothing except matches with which to read his map in
+the dark and windy night. The difficulty was increased by the fact that
+the way lay across small tracks which were almost impossible to
+distinguish, but eventually, more by luck than judgment, he brought his
+men into a village. Was it Villiers? It took him some time to find out.
+There were plenty of people in the village street, but the Subaltern
+could not get coherent speech out of any one of them. Fear makes an
+uneducated Englishman suspicious, quickwitted and surly. It drives the
+French peasant absolutely mad. That village street seemed to have less
+sense, less fortitude, less coolness than a duck-run invaded by a
+terrier. The Subaltern caught a man by the arm and pushed him into a
+doorway.
+
+"Qu'est-ce que c'est, le nom de cette village?" he said, with as much
+insistence and coolness as he could muster. The poor fellow broke into a
+tirade in which his desire to cut German throats, his peculiarly
+unfortunate circumstances, and his wish to get away literally tripped
+over each other.
+
+"Qu'est-ce que c'est, le nom de cette village?" Followed a flood of
+words apparently about the village. A third time. "Qu'est-ce que c'est,
+le nom de cette village?" At last: "Ah, M'sieur, Villiers," with an air
+of surprise, as if he thought the Subaltern had known all the time, and
+had asked merely to start a polite conversation.
+
+He let the man go, and turned his attention to the village street, which
+presented a terrible spectacle of panic. It was obviously unwise to
+allow this mob to leave the village, as they seemed to wish, and
+disperse, shouting and shrieking, over the countryside. Very possibly
+there were spies amongst them, who would bring the enemy about his ears
+in half an hour. More likely still, the whole excited crowd would wander
+straight into the arms of the Germans, and be treated with the
+well-known restraint of Huns towards the unprotected. So he hurriedly
+placed guards at the chief outlets of the village, with orders, in
+addition to the usual duties towards the enemy, to prevent the French
+from leaving it.
+
+He then returned and tried to pacify the inhabitants. But his kind,
+soothing words in execrable French did not succeed in dispelling the
+panic and fear. He had to draw his sword (for the purpose of
+intimidation only) and literally to thrust them into houses. And he had
+to get three men with fixed bayonets to help him. He did his best to
+make it generally understood that any one who came out of his house and
+made a noise would be summarily disposed of. Any sounds of confusion
+would inevitably have drawn the fatal attentions of the enemy.
+
+He then made a hurried survey of the roads leading out of the village,
+placed sentry groups at various places of advantage, and established the
+picket in the centre of the village in a large barn. This done, he sent
+the cyclist orderly to try and get into touch with the village on the
+right, which, he had been told, was to be occupied by a platoon from
+another regiment. The cyclist returned to report that the village was
+deserted by the French, and that there was no sign of the Blankshires.
+Evidently the O.C. Platoon had not been so fortunate in finding his way
+in the dark.
+
+Dawn broke, and the expected order to retire did not come. The men slept
+on, intent on snatching as many moments of precious sleep as possible.
+
+Still no orders came. At about eight o'clock the Subaltern finally
+awoke, and went the rounds of his groups. There was nothing to report,
+all had been quiet.
+
+When he got back he found that the men had collected quite a good number
+of eggs from abandoned farmyards, had lighted a fire, and were busy
+making a sort of stew out of bully beef and swedes, and (he strongly
+suspected) a stolen chicken. As no orders came still, when he had
+finished his breakfast, he lay down in the shade of an apple tree and
+continued his sleep. He woke up later, at about midday, and ate the
+remainder of his rations, and then fell asleep once more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was awakened by the Major. It was about four o'clock, and the
+remainder of the Brigade was already on the move. The posts guarding the
+roads were hastily drawn in, and his Platoon took its place in the
+Company as the Battalion marched by.
+
+He felt extremely pleased with the whole adventure of Villiers. It was
+the first and only time that he had had a completely detached command.
+He had felt the intoxication of undisputed authority; there had been a
+subtle pleasure in the thought that, as far as help or supervision were
+concerned, he was absolutely alone and that the responsibility for
+anything that might happen hung exclusively on his shoulders. The whole
+day had seemed like a Sunday to him--the first real Sunday since ages
+and ages ago he had left England, the easy land of peace.
+
+There had been an air of quietness about that afternoon which is
+peculiar to Sundays, and he congratulated himself on the hours of sleep
+that he had been able to put in.
+
+From his own point of view the whole war began to seem like an organised
+campaign of things in general to hustle him about in the heat until he
+died from want of sleep!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE LAST LAP
+
+
+On every side the results of long marches were only too plain. Spirits
+were damped. There were fewer songs, and no jokes. The men were not by
+any means "downhearted," and would rather have died than admit that they
+were depressed, but the brightness was all rubbed off, and a moroseness,
+a dense, too-tired-to-worry taciturnity had set in that was almost
+bullet-proof.
+
+Although the familiar sounds of artillery boomed away quite close to
+them they were not deployed, and when it was dark they bivouacked along
+the side of the road.
+
+That night the Colonel addressed the Officers at some length. "The old
+man" always had an impressive way of speaking, and darkness and
+overwrought nerves doubtless magnified this. He spoke in subdued tones,
+as if awed by the intense silence of the night.
+
+We all could tell where we were, he said--a few miles east, or even
+south-east by east of the French Capital. Our base, Havre, lay to the
+north-west, with the enemy in between. It was unnecessary to say
+anything further. The facts spoke for themselves. The British Army was
+up against it, none could tell what would happen next. One duty,
+however, was self-evident, and that was to watch the food-supply.
+
+Things were going to be serious. Henceforward the army was to be on half
+rations, and he knew what that meant. He had been on "half rations" in
+the South African War, and he had seen a man give a franc for a dirty
+biscuit, and he knew what it was for soldiers on active service to be
+hungry. He ordered us, he begged and prayed them, to spare no energy in
+stopping waste of any description, and making their men realise the
+gravity of the position. No Officer was in future to draw any rations
+from the Company Cookers, and the Mess Sergeant had somehow procured and
+victualed a mess-cart.
+
+That night must have been the most fateful night in the history of
+France. All the world was watching with bated breath, watching to see
+whether France was really a "back number"--whether the Prussian was
+truly the salt of the earth. If Paris fell, the French Armies in the
+field were cut off from their base; defeat was certain, and the national
+history of France, or, at any rate, the glory of it, would be stamped
+out for ever under the Kaiser's heel. The fate of France was in the
+balance, and also the fate of the Russian Armies. If Paris fell, Europe
+might be as much the slave of Prussia as it had been a century ago of
+Napoleon. As for England, if her Fleet could master the German, well
+and good. But, if not....
+
+It looked as if the enemy were within an ace of victory. He had flooded
+Belgium and Luxembourg with his armies, and, at the first clash of arms,
+had hurled everything before him in a manner which to the civilian must
+have appeared terrible in its completeness. Several times had the
+defenders apparently attempted to stand, and as many times had they been
+hurled with even greater violence southwards. And now, before the
+campaign was a month old, the enemy were within an ace of the most
+complete victory of modern times. Many men will never forget that
+night--men on either side with high commands.
+
+How the Kaiser must have chuckled when the French Cabinet left for
+Bordeaux! Bombastic phrases were perchance chasing themselves through
+his perverted mind. How fine he would look at Versailles, strutting
+about the Hall of Victories. He would sleep in the bed of the "Grand
+Monarque"--and in Les Invalides how he would smile at the tomb of
+Napoleon! Perhaps his statesmen were that very night drafting the terms
+of peace that a crushed adversary would be only too thankful to accept.
+His day had come at last! Henceforward how he would laugh at Democracy
+and Socialism. He would show them that he was master. The best weapon in
+all the world was sudden, bloody war. He would show his people that he
+was their Master, their Salvation, their War Lord. He was the greatest
+man in history, so he thought that night.
+
+There may come a time when he will realise that, after all, he was only
+the most contemptible and pitiable. But that is by the way.
+
+His Generals could not have been so sure. They must have seen the
+exhaustion of their men. Von Kluck must have already felt the weight of
+the army, rushed out of Paris by General Gallieni, that threatened to
+envelop his right flank. Von Heeringen must have realised that the
+offensive was being wrenched from his grasp. And the Crown Prince was
+throwing himself in vain upon the forts of Verdun and Nancy.
+
+That night, too, somewhere behind the French lines, a man of very
+different stamp from the Kaiser was putting the final touches to the
+preparations of the greatest counter-attack in History. He knew that the
+enemy had literally overstepped his lines of communications, was
+exhausted, and nervous of failure so far from his bases. He knew that as
+long as de Castelnau clung on to the heights around Verdun, his centre
+and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he
+could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now
+completely mobilised reinforcements. Moreover, the army that had hurried
+pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance
+that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely
+established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by
+the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be outnumbered on his front and
+very seriously menaced on his right, and disaster would be certain.
+
+Not that the Subaltern knew or cared much for these things. He and his
+men were past caring. Continuous retreat had first evoked surprise, then
+resentment, then, as fatigue began to grip them like a vice, a kind of
+dull apathy. He felt he would not have cared whatever happened. The
+finer emotions of sorrow or hope or happiness were drugged to
+insensibility. With the exception of odd moments when, absolutely
+causelessly, wild anger and ungovernable rage took possession of him and
+seemed to make his blood boil and seethe, he seemed to be degenerating
+into the state of mind commonly attributed to the dumb beasts of the
+field--indifferent to everything in the wide world except food and
+sleep.
+
+That night a draft commanded by one Subaltern arrived to fill up the
+gaps.
+
+The next day the retreat continued. The men's nerves were tried to
+breaking-point, and a little detail, small and of no consequence in
+itself, opened the lock, as it were, to a perfect river of growing anger
+and discontent.
+
+This was how it happened. The Colonel had repeated the previous night
+the order about looting, and the men were under the impression that if
+any of them took so much as a green apple he would be liable to "death
+or some such less punishment as the Act shall provide." They talk about
+it and grumble, and then suddenly, without any warning except a
+clucking and scratching, the Mess Sergeant is seen by the greater part
+of the Battalion to issue triumphantly from a farm gate with two or
+three fat hens under his arms. Smiling broadly, totally ignorant of the
+enormity of his conduct, he deposits his load in the mess-cart drawn up
+to receive the loot!
+
+The men did not let the opportunity slip by without giving vent to a lot
+of criticism.
+
+The Subaltern's ears tingled at the remarks that he heard. Never in his
+life had he felt so ridiculous.
+
+Luckily, another similar incident relieved the situation, shortly
+afterwards. During a few minutes' halt, a cow near the road stood
+gazing, with that apathetic interest peculiar to cows, at the thirsty
+men. It was not for nothing, as the French say, that one of the
+reservists had been a farm hand. He went up to the cow, unfastening his
+empty water-bottle as he went, and calmly leant down and began to milk
+the neglected animal until his bottle was full. It was not in itself a
+funny proceeding, but there was something about the calmness of both the
+cow and the man, and something about the queerness of the occasion, that
+appealed to the sense of humour of the dourest old Puritan of them all.
+They laughed, they roared, they shouted, in a way that reminded the
+Subaltern of the last "soccer" season.
+
+The noise must have mystified the pursuing Uhlans not a little.
+
+But the laugh did not last long on their lips. Directly afterwards they
+swung into a road already occupied by a train of refugees. After the
+sight of a good strong man struck down in his strength, this, perhaps,
+was the saddest sight of the whole war. How miserable they were, these
+helpless, hopeless people, trailing sadly along the road, the majority
+with all they had saved from the wreckage of their homes tied in a
+sheet, and carried on their backs. Some were leading a cow, others
+riding a horse, a few were in oxen-driven wagons. They looked as if they
+had lost faith in everything, even in God. They had the air of people
+calmly trying to realise the magnitude of the calamity which had
+befallen them, and failing.
+
+Here and there the Subaltern thought he saw a gleam of reproach in their
+faces. It hurt him not a little. Only a few days ago the British had
+been advancing, as they thought, to certain victory. All had been
+sunshine, or at any rate hope. How the villagers had shouted and cheered
+them! How the women had wept with sheer joy, and shy young girls had
+thrust flowers into their buttonholes! What heroes they had felt
+swinging forward to meet the enemy, to defend the homes of their friends
+and Allies, and avenge their wrongs!
+
+The role had been melodramatic, superb! But here they were, skirting the
+very gates of Paris, apparently fleeing before the enemy, and this
+without having made any very determined effort at resistance. Poor
+protectors they must have looked! Those simple peasants would not
+understand the efficacy, the necessity even, of running away "to live
+and fight another day," with a greater chance of success.
+
+The Subaltern often used to wonder what the poor wretches thought of
+troops, which, though in possession of arms and ammunition, still
+retreated--always retreated. They could not understand.
+
+The march came to an end about one o'clock. A halt of half-an-hour for
+dinner was ordered in the shade of some huge trees in a park. The
+mess-cart and Cookers arrived, and a meal was soon in progress. The
+Regimental Officer of what is now referred to as the "Old Army" was
+perhaps the best-mannered man one could possibly meet. His training in
+the Mess made him so. He was the sort of man who would not have done
+anything which so much as even suggested rudeness or greed. He was as
+scrupulous of his Mess Rules as a Roman Catholic Priest is of his
+conduct at High Mass. To the newly-joined Subaltern, Guest Night
+conveyed the holy impression of a religious rite. But here was a comic
+demonstration of the fact that the strictest training is only, after
+all, a veneer. Two Senior Officers were actually squabbling about a
+quarter-pound tin of marmalade! The Subaltern could not help smiling.
+The incident merely showed how raw and jagged the Great Retreat had left
+the nerves of those who survived it.
+
+An hour's halt passed only too soon, and its later moments were made
+uneasy by the instinctive aversion which every one felt for the sound of
+the whistles that would mark the end of it. The Battalion, however, had
+no sooner swung into the road, than the Colonel, who had been reading a
+message with an expression of surprise, held up his hand to signal the
+halt. The moment was historic. Although none knew, it was the end of the
+Great Retreat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE TURN OF THE TIDE
+
+
+The next day the Battalion linked up with the Brigade, and instead of
+proceeding in the usual direction--southwards--they turned to the north.
+
+There was a great deal of subdued excitement. They were not going to
+move off for a precious hour or so, and, as "battle seemed imminent,"
+the Subaltern did his best to make up the "deficiencies" in his
+equipment.
+
+Another Subaltern lay stricken with dysentery in one of the regimental
+wagons, and he "borrowed" his revolver and ammunition. Apart from the
+fact that the poor fellow was in too great pain to dispute the robbery,
+he declared with embellishments that he never wanted to see the ----
+thing again. "Take it, and be ---- to it!" he said.
+
+Curiously enough, the Subaltern was able to stick to the loan through
+all the troubles that followed, and was eventually able to return it to
+its owner, met casually in the London Hippodrome, months later.
+
+Soon afterwards, when they were marching through a village called
+Chaumes, he learnt that in the forthcoming battle they were to be in
+General Reserve, and this relieved the nervous tension for the moment.
+There was a feeling that a great chance of distinguished service was
+lost, but as the General Reserves are usually flung into the fight
+towards its concluding stages, he did not worry on that score.
+
+The four Regiments of the Brigade were massed in very close formation in
+a large orchard, ready to move at a moment's notice. There they lay all
+day, sleeping with their rifles in their hands, or lying flat on their
+backs gazing at the intense blue of the sky overhead.
+
+The heat, although they were in the first week in September, was greater
+than ever. The blue atmosphere seemed to quiver with the shock of guns.
+
+General Headquarters had been established in a house near by, a
+middle-class, flamboyant, jerry-built affair. How its owner would have
+gasped if he could have seen the Field-Marshal conducting the British
+share of the great battle in his immodest "salle a manger!"
+
+Aeroplanes were continually ascending from and descending to a ploughed
+field adjacent to the orchard. Motors were ceaselessly dashing up and
+down. Assuredly they were near to the heart of things.
+
+That afternoon some one procured a page of the _Daily Mirror_, which
+printed the first casualty list of the war. Perhaps you can remember
+reading it. One was not used to the sensation. One felt that "it brought
+things home to one." Not that this was by any means necessary at that
+time and place. Still it was very depressing to think that in God's
+beautiful sunlight, brave, strong men were being maimed and laid low for
+ever. One had a vague feeling that it was blasphemous, and ought to be
+stopped.
+
+It was not until dusk that a start was made, and the Regiment halted
+again about a mile further on and settled down for the night in a
+stubble field opposite a very imposing chateau.
+
+Evidently the fight had gone well, for they passed at least two lines of
+hasty trenches quite deserted.
+
+The Germans had at last been driven back!
+
+Any joy that this discovery might have occasioned was sobered and
+tempered by the sight of small bodies of men bent double over their work
+in the purple twilight. They were burying-parties. Two twigs tied
+together and stuck in the brown mounds of earth was all the evidence
+there was of each little tragedy. During the retreat the Subaltern had
+naturally had little opportunity to realise this most pitiable side of
+war, the cold Aftermath of Battle.
+
+I will tell you of the inglorious way in which one man spent this
+momentous day, the wonderful hours in which the tide turned, and a
+Continent was saved--in chasing chickens! He was the Mess Sergeant, and
+it was his duty. Anyway, the Mess dined gloriously off the chickens he
+caught, and as a couple of hayricks had been dismantled and distributed,
+everybody spent a tolerably comfortable night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ADVANCE BEGINS
+
+
+Although they stood to arms at the first flush of daylight on the
+following day, they did not march off until nearly eleven o'clock. The
+men were moved into the leafy grounds of the chateau to keep them out of
+the sun, and beyond the observation of hostile aircraft.
+
+The regimental butchers slew one or two sheep during the wait; but the
+meat subsequently proved to be abominably tough, and the fat collected
+to oil the bolts of the men's rifles only served to make them stiffer
+than ever.
+
+The Subaltern had entertained fond hopes that owing to his recent
+unusually long hours of sleep he would not be attacked by the same
+nauseating sensations of fatigue; but his hopes were vain. The sleep
+seemed to have made things worse. A little rest had developed an
+overwhelming desire for more, and he felt worse than ever.
+
+He longed as he had never longed before for long cool drinks and clean
+white sheets. He imagined himself at home. What would he do? He pictured
+himself in the bathroom eagerly peeling off his puttees as the water
+splashed into the pale blue bath. How he would wallow in it! He could
+feel how the water would caress his body, tepid and soothing.
+
+On the table in the dining-room, green and cool with its view of the
+sombre pine wood, stood a long cold drink of what? Cider, perhaps, or
+lime-juice and soda, something you could drink and drink and drink. Last
+of all--culminating pleasure of heaven--his red bedroom, with the sheets
+ready turned down for him, soft and white and alluring. That would have
+been heaven.
+
+But this heaven of his was very far away from the hard dusty road and
+the eternal poplars! With a painful jolt his thoughts would return to
+the realities of life; he would feel dazed and annoyed, and in his heart
+of hearts he wanted to cry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Archibald Murray passed in a car, holding an animated conversation
+with a much-beribboned and distinguished-looking French General. He
+looked very pleased with himself, as well he might, for the greatest
+work of his career had begun the day before with astounding success.
+
+The Subaltern must have felt very tired and dissatisfied that afternoon.
+Having exhausted the painful thoughts of home, he began to tell himself
+what an awful life Active Service was. It never occurred to him to be
+thankful that a youth so young should have the luck to play his part in
+such tremendous events. He did not at the time realise that there were
+thousands of adventurous souls at home who would have given an arm to
+have been where he had been.
+
+He did not realise that in after days the memory of every weary hour of
+trudging, of every bullet that had hummed by, and of every shell that
+had burst, would be a joy for ever. The thought had never struck any of
+them, unsentimental souls!
+
+At this point his memory confessedly breaks down. He remembers perfectly
+a certain "ten minutes' halt" spent in the shade of a sheaf of corn. He
+remembers plunging into a pine forest; but thenceforward there is a
+blank. His memory snaps. He cannot recollect passing through that wood,
+much less passing out of it. A link in the chain of his memory must have
+snapped.
+
+When next he recollects anything clearly it may have been that night,
+the next night, or the night after that. Anyway, it was very dark, and
+the Battalion was eventually halted in an open field. Somehow or other,
+straw was procured for the rest, but his own Platoon was sent forward to
+hold an outpost position along the banks of a small stream.
+
+Although in the daytime the sun shone with undiminished fervour, the
+nights were getting certainly far more chilly than they had been in
+August. But when one has to get up at daybreak, having never had more
+than four hours sleep, one does not notice it much.
+
+During the night a fresh draft arrived.
+
+The next morning they very soon encountered an entirely new sight, a
+French village hastily evacuated by the enemy. At least half of the
+houses had been broken into, and all the shops and inns. The Germans had
+dragged chairs and tables to the roadside, and they must have been
+sitting there drinking and smoking when the news of the British advance,
+and orders to retire had come upon them. Everything seemed to show that
+the enemy had left at the shortest notice. He had not had time to
+perpetrate any of his well-known barbarities on the few inhabitants who
+had remained in their houses, and no attempt had apparently been made
+even to burn the village!
+
+A little further on, the abstemious Hun had obviously made a halt. The
+litter of bottles was appalling. There was a perfect wall of them for
+about a quarter of a mile. The proportion of bottles to the number of
+men estimated to occupy four hundred yards (1000) was alarming. There
+must have been enough drink to upset a British Army Corps. Most
+certainly the Germans in front must have been out of hand, and very
+drunk. The men were vastly amused.
+
+The day dragged on very wearily, and no deployment was made. Apparently
+the enemy had taken about as much as he could comfortably endure on the
+previous two days. He was not waiting to be pushed back; he was speeding
+north-east as fast as his legs could carry him.
+
+In the afternoon a heavy shower rather damped the excitement evoked by
+the enemy's dramatic failure to hold his own. Sounds of a fierce
+encounter were heard in front, and the Brigade was hurried down a steep
+and wooded decline to the scene of action. They arrived too late to
+share in the actual infliction of defeat upon the enemy, but they were
+immediately sent in pursuit, as the other Brigade was very tired and
+rather shaken.
+
+A man told the Subaltern that some unfortunate company, marching in
+fours up a village street, had been fired upon by a machine-gun
+controlled by a few men left behind by the enemy to inflict the greatest
+possible damage before discovery and capture. They had done their work
+well, for, concealed in the roof of a house, they had swept the street
+at point-blank range and literally mown down a whole company before they
+had been located, and "put out of action." Still they must have been
+brave men, for the personal result of such an exploit is certain death.
+
+The state of that street had better not be described. The Aftermath of
+Battle! It is depressing, cold and passionless, dirty and bloody; the
+electricity of life has gone from the air, and the wine of life-blood is
+spilt, it seems, so needlessly upon the ground. Perhaps the spirits of
+the dead linger over it. Their presence is instinctively felt. As,
+overpowered with the sorrow of it, you pass by, the thought steals into
+your mind, "When will my turn come?" This Aftermath of Battle is
+assuredly the most awful thing in war.
+
+As soon as the men began to scale the steep incline opposite, they saw
+that the costs had not been paid by the British alone. Figures, covered
+in most cases by their own grey overcoats, lay out upon the ground.
+Leaning up against a wall a body was still lolling. It was a sight that
+no one who saw it will ever forget. There was no head; it had been shorn
+oft as cleanly as if the man had been guillotined. An unburst shell had
+probably swept the man's head from his shoulders as he looked over the
+wall, and the aimless-looking trunk was still leaning against the wall
+as if "waiting for further orders."
+
+The pursuit was continued until it was quite dark. The Companies wheeled
+into the fields, and slept where they stood. The Colonel delivered a
+short address, which showed that all was not as well as it looked. But
+what really _did_ worry them was lack of straw. The Colonel was of the
+opinion that the enemy would take his stand on the opposite bank of the
+Marne, which, he told them, was only half a mile ahead. To-morrow there
+would be a fight, the like of which neither they nor any one else had
+seen before.
+
+They were disturbed that night, not indeed by the fear of what to-morrow
+might hold in store, but by a small stampede of escaped horses, who
+careered madly over the sleeping lines, injuring one man very severely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE CROSSING OF THE MARNE
+
+
+As soon as dawn broke--a dawn exceptionally cold and cheerless--the
+cavalry pushed forward to effect some sort of reconnaissance. Meanwhile
+the infantry had nothing better to do than to conceal themselves behind
+the copses that covered the slope, and await their turn. In about an
+hour's time they were deployed and moved cautiously forward to the
+attack, the Batteries being already placed in readiness for the
+beginning of the "show."
+
+No army in the world can execute this movement as scientifically or as
+safely as the British Army. Memories of South Africa and Indian frontier
+fights have left us undoubtedly the finest scouting army in Europe. We
+were, of course, hopelessly outmatched in artillery and numbers. But
+artillery being equal, there was not a Brigade in any army in the world
+that could have held its own against a British Brigade. That, however,
+is by the way.
+
+They pressed steadily forward, and, having breasted the slope, the
+valley of the Marne burst suddenly upon their view. It was at least
+three miles in breadth, and the opposite heights were screened by
+woods. A small town marked the bridge. The country was "open"--painfully
+open; there was not an atom of real cover between them and the heights
+opposite.
+
+But no shells came whistling towards them. No doubt the enemy was
+holding his fire until they were within closer range. (Not a pleasant
+thought, this, by any means.) But no, they went on scrambling down the
+deep slope, and still no sound of firing disturbed the morning silence.
+As each moment fled by the Subaltern thought to himself, "Not yet! Well,
+the next minute will bring things about our heads!" But the next minute
+kept on passing as uneventfully as its predecessors.
+
+At last they reached the bridge and found it absolutely undamaged. Even
+then the Subaltern could not repress the thought that all this was only
+a trick, and that they were being lured on to destruction. But his
+sanguinary forebodings were not justified, and the opposite heights were
+scaled without opposition.
+
+He afterwards learnt, that, however much the Germans might have wanted
+to hold this magnificent line, the strategical situation had become so
+pressing that on this sector nothing could save them from disaster
+except a complete and hurried retreat. They were all but outflanked on
+their right, which was already very seriously bent back; while in the
+centre General Foch had driven in a wedge which bade fair to crumple up
+the whole line.
+
+There was nothing in any way remarkable about the little town on the
+other side of the river. It had the air of a neglected gutter-child,
+dirty and disconsolate. There were the usual signs of German
+occupation--broken windows, ravaged shops, and, of course, the
+inevitable bottles.
+
+Here it was that the Subaltern noticed for the first time that the Huns
+had a distinctive smell of their own. It was a curious smell, completely
+baffling description. If it is true that certain odours suggest certain
+colours, one would have described this as a brown smell, preferably a
+reddish-brown smell. Certain it was that the enemy left it behind him
+wherever he had been, as sure a clue to his passing as broken
+wine-bottles!
+
+The Subaltern always associates the climbing of the opposite slope with
+pangs of a thirst so intense that he almost forgot to wonder why the
+Germans had evacuated so excellent a position without firing a single
+shot. But Headquarters were evidently not going to allow them to push
+forward into some previously arranged trap. Having by three o'clock in
+the afternoon firmly established themselves on the wooded crests of the
+slope, they were "pulled up" while a further reconnaissance was being
+made. Meanwhile, a sort of outpost position was taken up.
+
+The Subaltern's Platoon was to guard the back edge of a wood, and as he
+established his supports in a farm, most of his men were able to fill
+their water-bottles, have a wash and brush up, and generally prepare
+themselves for whatever the next move might be. The farmer and his
+wife, who had remained in their home, did everything that was required
+of them; but he could not help noticing that the old couple did not seem
+as pleased at their Allies' success as one would have naturally
+expected. The reason was soon forthcoming. Following his usual plan of
+getting as much information as possible out of the French, he heard the
+old man, who seemed unaccountably shy and diffident, mutter casually--
+
+"J'ai pense que vous etiez tous partis hier soir."
+
+"Comment?" said he, "tous partis? Mais, Monsieur, nous sommes les
+premiers Anglais qui sont arrives ici."
+
+"Mais, Monsieur! Anglais? Ce n'est pas possible!"
+
+"C'est vrai, assurement."
+
+"Mais, L'Armee Anglaise porte toujours les habits rouges!"
+
+The Subaltern laughed outright. This simple fellow actually believed
+that the English fought in scarlet. Even now he was not thoroughly
+convinced that they really were English. Ignorance goes hand in hand
+with obstinacy, and these simple old peasant folk defended their
+stupidity with a veritable wall of impenetrable incredulity.
+
+The Subaltern was still laboriously engaged in explaining matters to the
+man, when part of the Headquarter's Staff trotted up the road with a
+clatter and a swing and scurry that looked as if they were wanted very
+urgently on the left. It was the first time during the campaign that he
+had seen the Corps Commander and the Chief of the General Staff on
+horseback.
+
+It must have been about five o'clock when he received a message to
+concentrate on the main road. On the way he was accosted by a woman
+perfectly distraught with grief, who explained that two days ago her
+little son had disappeared into "ce bois la" never to come out again.
+
+"Si votre fils vive encore, il reviendra, bien sur, Madame. S'il est
+mort, moi, je ne peux pas vous aider." Terrible to relate, the sight of
+such grief annoyed rather than saddened him.
+
+The advance was continued until it was quite dark, when the Battalion
+denuded the usual hayrick, and "dossed down" in the usual stubble
+field.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN ADVANCED-GUARD ACTION
+
+
+At about eleven o'clock the next morning his Company Commander--the
+Captain was leading as the Major was now second in command of the
+Battalion--told the Subaltern to ride back to the transport wagons and
+get some fresh maps and some chocolate which he had left in one of the
+carts. It was pleasant to get a ride, and to rest one's feet for awhile,
+so he took his time in getting back to the transport.
+
+No sooner had he reached the wagons than a gun boomed. He thought
+nothing of that, however. Guns were always going off, at the oddest
+times, and without any apparent reason. Four seconds later another
+rolled out, followed closely by a third, fourth and fifth. Soon a
+regular cannonade broke out. There was obviously mischief in the air, so
+he crammed the maps hastily into his haversack and the chocolate into
+his pocket and regained the Battalion as soon as he could on the
+exhausted animal. Even as he was pressing forward, he heard the crackle
+of musketry somewhere out of sight on the left.
+
+Of course, the very thing that he had feared had happened. His Company
+had been rapidly deployed and had already disappeared over the crest. He
+explained matters to the Major who was in command of the remainder
+during the Colonel's absence; dismounted, and set off on foot towards
+the sounds of the firing. He ran against the Company Sergeant-Major in
+charge of the ammunition, who told him where his Platoon was.
+
+The next thing was to cross the fire-swept crest. Now, crossing
+fire-swept crests is manifestly unpleasant--especially if you are alone.
+If you are leading fifty men at least one and half times as old as you
+are, who look to you for guidance and control, it is not so bad. Bravery
+is very closely allied to "conspicuous gallantry," and "conspicuous
+gallantry" in the field is almost impossible when there is no one to
+look on. But he was too tired to worry much whether he was hit or not,
+and his Platoon had to be reached as soon as possible.
+
+He found them lined up behind a small bank, waiting for orders to
+reinforce the first line. Taking his glasses out of their case, he
+crawled forward to have a look at the position for himself. The Platoon
+in front was established behind a mud bank, firing occasional shots at
+the enemy, who appeared to have dug himself in behind a railway cutting
+at least five hundred yards distant. Although bullets were humming
+pretty thickly through the air, the casualties on the British side so
+far were only two or three men slightly wounded. They had orders to
+"hang on" to that position until the centre and right should be
+sufficiently strengthened for the main attack to materialise, when they
+were to push on as best they might. Having learnt this, the Subaltern
+crawled back, and sent out three men "to establish touch" with the front
+Platoon.
+
+An hour passed before anything further happened. During that time the
+Platoon Sergeant told him of the great difficulty they had had in
+reaching this advanced position at all, as they had been shelled from
+the front by the enemy, and from the left by their own batteries.
+Accidents such as this often happened, and the artillery were not really
+as culpable as would at first sight appear. Advanced-guard actions
+materialised so suddenly, and situations changed so quickly, that it was
+not always possible to circulate precise orders. The gunners' ideas of
+the relative positions seemed to be, during the opening stages of the
+attack, rather hazy--a fact that was very much resented by the men. "We
+ain't come out 'ere to be targets to them ruddy gunners," one fellow
+grumbled.
+
+Soon, however, things straightened out, and in an hour's time the
+various movements preparatory to the attack had been completed. The
+enemy, seeing that he was almost surrounded, and that it would be
+impossible to extricate the greater part of his command from the battle,
+resolved at least to save his guns, which were accordingly withdrawn.
+
+When at length the Subaltern's Platoon pushed forward in the wake of
+the leading Platoon, no less a personage appeared unaccountably on the
+scene than the Colonel. He had thrown off the worried look that had been
+growing on him of late. Some of the officers, too junior to understand
+how uneasy lies the head that is crowned with the responsibility for
+many lives, had been heard to say that the Colonel's manner and general
+outlook upon the campaign was tinged with unnecessary anxiety, and that
+he had no right to allow the Germans to disturb his peace of mind. If
+this were so, the presence of actual and tangible danger completely
+obliterated all traces of nerves. He stood up in the firing-line. He
+drew himself up to the full of his height, and seemed to inhale with
+pleasure the dangerous air. All the time bullets were humming overhead
+like swift and malignant insects, or striking the ground with a spatter
+of brown earth.
+
+The Adjutant, following him, suddenly bent double as if he had been
+struck below the belt; but the Colonel merely straightened himself, and
+not a nerve in his phlegmatic face twitched.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Only a bullet struck my revolver hilt, sir," replied the Adjutant. It
+had splintered the woodwork and been deflected between his arm and ribs.
+
+Near by a man rose on his knees to get a better shot at the enemy.
+
+"What's that man doing? Get down there this moment!" roared the Colonel.
+
+Then, as he recognised an old soldier of the regiment, "Atkins, how
+dare you expose yourself unnecessarily? Your wife used to do my washing
+in Tidshot. Me? Oh, I'm only an old bachelor. It doesn't matter about
+me. There's nobody to care what happens to me." And, well pleased with
+his joke, the Colonel passed down the line, proud of his magnificent
+bravery.
+
+There is something about the rough-and-tumble of battle that lifts one
+above one's self. One's legs and arms are not the same listless limbs
+that were crying for rest only a short hour ago. One is envigoured; the
+excitement stimulates. One feels great, magnanimous, superb. The
+difficulty lies not in forcing oneself to be brave, but in curbing
+ridiculous impulses, and in forcing the brain to work slowly and
+smoothly. The smallest natures rise to great heights. An ordinary
+self-centred creature performs acts of dazzling generosity towards
+fellows he does not even know--with everything to lose and nothing to
+gain. He will rescue a wounded man under heavy fire, to whom an hour
+previously he would have refused to lend sixpence.
+
+Why is it?
+
+If the enemy were a roaring brazen beast, such as the knights of the
+fairy tales used to fight, one could understand it. But he is not. You
+cannot even see him. Three-quarters of a mile ahead there is a dark
+brown line, and that is all. Whence comes the love of battle? Is it
+roused by the little messengers of death that whizz invisibly by? No one
+can say; the whole feeling is most probably the result of imagination
+and desire to do great things.
+
+On they swept. The leading Platoon was now covering the ground at such a
+pace that it was impossible to catch up with them. As the ground was
+open the whole line could be seen sweeping forward to engulf the enemy.
+The long dotted lines of brown advanced steadily and inexorably. Line
+upon line of them breasted the crest, and followed in the wake of the
+leading wave. It was scarcely a spectacular sight, yet it was the
+vindication of the British methods of attack.
+
+The wild firing of the Germans had little effect. Curiously enough, the
+line that suffered least was the first, and even in the others the
+casualties were negligible. And all the time they were nearing the
+railway bank.
+
+But the end was in sight, and the enemy realised that further resistance
+would be useless. They were caught. About half a dozen men sprang on to
+the railway bank and began furiously to wag white sheets of paper or
+rag--anything white. They must have been brave men to do such a thing.
+The British gunners either did not see their signs, or perhaps refused
+to accept them on account of various "jokes" that the enemy had at other
+times played with the white flag. Anyway the firing continued with
+unabated fury. They stood there to the end without flinching, and when
+they fell other men took their places. It is mean and untruthful to say
+that the Germans are cowards. Certain it was that their pathetic
+bravery--there is always something sad about bravery--so touched the
+British that they accepted the surrender without reserve or suspicion.
+Even the artillery ceased fire.
+
+At this point the leading Platoon broke clean away. They could not be
+held in. The orderly advance degenerated into a wild dash. Men bent
+double and rushed. Determination was written on each flushed face. The
+Germans must have been terrified; it looked as if they were to be
+bayoneted as they stood, with their arms raised in surrender. It must
+have been a very trying moment for them, indeed, as the British raced
+towards them up the incline. The leading men were soon clambering up the
+embankment. What would happen? Was a disgraceful and bloody massacre
+about to begin? The excitement was intense. The Subaltern ran on harder
+than ever, with some vague idea of "stopping a scene," but he need not
+have bothered. The men were not out for blood or scalps. All they wanted
+was souvenirs or helmets! They got them with such success that there was
+little left for the other platoons.
+
+When the Subaltern came up the "show" was over. There were a great many
+dead Germans lying, as they had died, behind the embankment. The thought
+of taking something which they had worn never occurred to him. If it had
+been he would have dismissed it on the grounds that there was no means
+of sending such things home, while to add to the weight and worry of his
+kit by carrying a "Pickelhaube" about, indefinitely, for the rest of
+the campaign, was, of course, unthinkable.
+
+Then the "rally" sounded, and the companies that had taken part in the
+attack began to re-form. There was a considerable delay before two of
+the platoons appeared at the rallying point. The men did not come in a
+body but by driblets. He began to get nervous about the other two
+Subalterns, and in a few minutes went to see what had happened to them.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, 'e's all right," said a man in answer to the
+Subaltern's inquiry. "We wouldn't let no harm come to '_im_." The man
+who spoke was an old soldier whom he knew well, tall, wiry,
+commanding--the sort of man that a young officer leans upon, and who,
+reciprocally, relies on his officer. In the old Peace days, if any
+special job that required intelligence or reliance were going, he always
+saw that this man got it. He had made a sort of pet of him; and now he
+was openly, frankly displaying a state of mind akin to worship towards
+another officer. It was defection, rank desertion. A ridiculous feeling
+of jealousy surged up in the Subaltern's mind, as he turned back towards
+the Company.
+
+As he regained the road, many stretchers passed. They were no longer
+things of tragedy, to be passed by with a shudder and averted eyes--he
+was getting used to horror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+DEFENCE
+
+
+It was now midday, and the Officers of the two companies that had been
+deployed gathered round the mess-cart. The remaining companies, who had
+been kept in local reserve during the fight, were sent out to bury the
+dead. The rain began to fall in torrents, and somehow the memory of
+crouching under the mess-cart to get shelter has left a far more
+definite and indelible impression upon the Subaltern's mind than the
+actual moments of danger and excitement.
+
+A large band of prisoners had been captured by our troops that day.
+Small detachments had from time to time been captured ever since the
+turn at Chaumes, but this was different. There were long lines of them,
+standing bolt upright, and weaponless. The Subaltern looked at them
+curiously. They struck him as on the whole taller than the English, and
+their faces were not brown, but grey. He admired their coats, there was
+a martial air in the long sweep of them. And he confessed that one
+looked far more of a soldier in a helmet. There is a ferocity about the
+things, a grimness well suited to a soldier.... Not that clothes make
+the man.
+
+He sternly refused himself the pleasure of going to get a closer sight
+of them. He wanted very badly to see them, perhaps to talk French with
+them, but a feeling that it was perhaps _infra dignitatem_ debarred him.
+The men, however, had no such scruples. They crowded round their
+captives, and slowly and silently surveyed them. They looked at them
+with the same sort of interest that one displays towards an animal in
+the Zoo, and the Germans paid just as much attention to their regard as
+Zoo animals do. Considering that only a short hour ago they had been
+trying to take each other's lives, there seemed to be an appalling lack
+of emotion in either party. Fully half an hour the Tommies inspected
+them thus. Then, with infinite deliberation, one man produced a packet
+of "Caporal" cigarettes and offered one, with an impassive countenance,
+to a German. As far as the Subaltern could see, not a single word was
+exchanged nor a gesture made. They did not move away until it was time
+to fall in.
+
+The advance was continued until it was dark, and intermittent firing was
+heard throughout the afternoon on either flank. The German retreat,
+which had in its first stages been conducted with such masterly skill,
+was rapidly developing into a hurried and ill-conducted movement, that
+bade fair to lead to disaster. Reports of large quantities of prisoners
+were coming in more frequently than ever.
+
+It was at this time that the Subaltern first heard the now notorious
+story of the German who had been at the Savoy, and who gave himself up
+to the Officer whom he recognised as an old habitue. One of the Officers
+in the Regiment said that this had happened to him, and was
+believed--for the moment. Later on, Officers out of every corps solemnly
+related similar experiences, with occasional variations in the name of
+the hotel. Usually it was the Savoy or the Ritz; less often the Carlton,
+or even the Cecil, but the "Pic" or the "Troc" were absolutely barred.
+The story multiplied so exceedingly that one began to suspect that the
+entire German corps in front was exclusively composed of ex-waiters of
+smart London hotels.
+
+Another sign that the Germans were beginning to be thrust back more
+quickly than they liked was the frequent abandonment of transport. Whole
+trains of motor lorries that had been hastily burned and left by the
+roadside, and all sorts of vehicles with broken wheels, were constantly
+being passed. The Subaltern remembers seeing a governess cart, and
+wondering what use the Germans had found for it. Perhaps a German
+colonel had been driven gravely in it, at the head of his men. He
+wondered whether the solemn Huns would have been capable of seeing the
+humour of such a situation.
+
+Horses, too, seemed to have been slaughtered by the score. They looked
+like toy horses, nursery things of wood. Their faces were so unreal,
+their expressions so glassy. They lay in such odd postures, with their
+hoofs sticking so stiffly in the air. It seemed as if they were toys,
+and were lying just as children had upset them. Even their dimensions
+seemed absurd. Their bodies had swollen to tremendous sizes, destroying
+the symmetry of life, confirming the illusion of unreality.
+
+The sight of these carcases burning in the sun, with buzzing myriads of
+flies scintillating duskily over their unshod hides, excited a pity that
+was almost as deep as his pity for slain human beings. After all, men
+came to the war with few illusions, and a very complete knowledge of the
+price to be paid. They knew why they were there, what they were doing,
+and what they might expect. They could be buoyed up by victory, downcast
+by defeat. Above all, they had a Cause, something to fight for, and if
+Fate should so decree, something to die for. But these horses were
+different; they could neither know nor understand these things. Poor,
+dumb animals, a few weeks ago they had been drawing their carts, eating
+their oats, and grazing contentedly in their fields. And then suddenly
+they were seized by masters they did not know, raced away to places
+foreign to them, made to draw loads too great for them, tended
+irregularly, or not at all, and when their strength failed, and they
+could no longer do their work, a bullet through the brain ended their
+misery. Their lot was almost worse than the soldiers'!
+
+To the Subaltern it seemed an added indictment of war that these
+wretched animals should be flung into that vortex of slaughter. He
+pitied them intensely, the sight of them hurt him; and the smell of them
+nauseated him. Every memory of the whole advance is saturated with that
+odour. It was pungent, vigorous, demoralising. It filled the air, and
+one's lungs shrank before it. Once, when a man drove his pick through
+the crisp, inflated side, a gas spurted out that was positively
+asphyxiating and intolerable.
+
+However much transport the Germans abandoned, however severe the losses
+they sustained, they always found time to break open every estaminet
+they passed, and drain it dry. Wretched inns and broken bottles proved
+to be just as reliable a clue to their passing as the smell of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE DEFENCE OF THE BRANDY
+
+
+The next morning two companies were detached from the Battalion as
+escort to a brigade of artillery. The other two companies, who had
+returned during the night, did not seem to be greatly upset by their
+gruesome task of burying the dead.
+
+They did not come in contact with the enemy, and no outstanding incident
+impressed itself upon the Subaltern's mind. The heat had abated with
+dramatic swiftness. A wind that was almost chilly swept the plains,
+driving grey clouds continually across the sun. The summer was over.
+That day they joined battle with the outposts of a foe that was to prove
+more hateful and persistent than the German winter.
+
+The name of a village known as Suchy-le-Chateau figured on many of the
+signposts that they passed, but they never arrived there, and, branching
+off east of Braisne, they came upon the remainder of the Battalion,
+drawn up in a stubble field.
+
+A driving rain had begun to fall early in the afternoon, and when at
+length the march was finished their condition was deplorable. Though
+tired out with a long day's march, they dared not rest, because to lie
+down in the sodden straw was to court sickness. Their boots, worn and
+unsoled, offered no resistance whatever to the damp. Very soon they
+could hear their sodden socks squelching with water as they walked. A
+night of veritable horror lay in front of them; they were appalled with
+the prospect of it. The rain seemed to mock at the completeness of their
+misery.
+
+However, the Fates were kind, for the General, happening to pass, took
+pity on them and allowed them to be billeted in the outhouses of a farm
+near by. The sense of relief which this move gave to the Subaltern was
+too huge to describe. Contentment took possession of him utterly. The
+tension of his nerves and muscles relaxed: he thought that the worries
+and hardships of that day, at least, were over.
+
+But he was wrong.
+
+No sooner had his Platoon wearily thrown their rifles and equipment into
+the musty barn that was allotted to them, than the Colonel told him that
+he would have to sleep with his men, the reason being that the owner of
+the farm, on the approach of the Germans, had hidden a large stock of
+brandy beneath the straw in the very barn that his men had entered. The
+farmer had asked the Colonel to save his liquor from the troops, and the
+Colonel, with horrible visions of a regiment unmanageable and madly
+intoxicated before his eyes, replied that most assuredly he would see
+that the men did not get hold of the brandy. The Subaltern told his
+sergeant, but otherwise the proximity of bliss was kept a strict secret
+from the men.
+
+Throughout the whole of that long day the Subaltern had been looking
+forward to, longing for, and idealising the rest which was to follow
+after the labours of the day. And now that it had at last been achieved,
+it proved to be a very poor imitation of the ideal rest and slumber that
+he had been yearning for. To begin with, the delays before quarters were
+settled upon were interminable. And then this news about the brandy. The
+evening meal was delayed almost a couple of hours, and every minute of
+the delay annoyed him, because it was so much precious time for sleep
+lost. Even when the meal arrived, it proved to be insufficient, and he
+was still hungry, cold and damp, when at last he hobbled across the yard
+to the barn.
+
+The place had no ventilation. The air was foul with the smell of damp
+grain, and men, and wet boots. He hesitated at the door; he would rather
+have slept in the open air, but the yard was inches deep in mud and
+manure. He groped forward, and at every inch that he penetrated further
+into the place, the air seemed to become thicker, more humid, more foul.
+In the thick darkness his foot stumbled on the sleeping form of a man,
+who rolled over and swore drowsily. At last, after interminable feeling
+in the darkness, and balancing himself on sacks of grain, he attained
+the corner where the bottles lay buried, and threw himself down to
+sleep.
+
+But sleep was impossible. In spite of the insupportable atmosphere he
+remained cold. Every second some one was moving! One instant a man would
+shuffle and cough in one corner, then some one would grunt and groan as
+he turned restlessly in his sleep, and the happier few who had achieved
+slumber would snore laboriously. Now and then a man would rise shakily
+to his feet and thread his way unsteadily to the door, kicking up
+against recumbent forms as he went, and evoking language as murky as the
+atmosphere. The Subaltern felt a savage joy in the recriminations and
+expletives that filled the air. Like lightning, they relieved the
+thunder-pressure of the air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+STRATEGY AS YOU LIKE IT
+
+
+Dawn found them already paraded in the farmyard, shivering, and not much
+better rested than when they had entered the barn of dreadful memory the
+night before. Each day the accumulation of fatigue and nerve-strain
+became greater; each day it grew harder to drag the weary body to its
+feet, and trudge onwards. Though the tide of victory had turned, though
+every yard they covered was precious ground re-won, they longed very
+intensely for a lull. The Subaltern felt in a dim way that the point
+beyond which flesh and blood could not endure was not very far ahead. As
+it was, he marvelled at himself.
+
+During the course of the morning the Captain returned to the Company,
+with a little map, and a great deal of information concerning the
+strategy of the war, about which everybody knew so little.
+
+To begin at the beginning, he said that the Allies had begun the
+campaign under two great disadvantages. The first was their very serious
+numerical inferiority in forces that could be immediately used. If
+numbers alone counted, the Germans were bound to win until the French
+were fully mobilised.
+
+The other disadvantage was the pre-conceived notion that the German
+Government would keep its word with regard to the violation of Belgian
+neutrality. If this had been observed, it would have been almost a
+strategical impossibility to turn the Allied left flank. The attack in
+force was expected to be made in the Lorraine area. Consequently, when
+it became evident that the main German effort was to be launched through
+Belgium, all pre-conceived plans of French concentration had either to
+be abandoned, or, at any rate, greatly modified in order to meet the
+enemy offensive from an unexpected quarter.
+
+After their unexpected set-back at Liege, the invaders met with little
+resistance from the Belgian army, which was, of course, hopelessly
+outnumbered, and their armies were rapidly forming up on a line north of
+the Sambre, which roughly extended south-east by east to north-west by
+west. Meanwhile, the initial French offensive which had been launched in
+the region of the Vosges had resulted in the temporary capture of
+Muelhouse, and had then been abandoned in order to face the threatening
+disaster from the north.
+
+It was thought advisable to wait until the concentration of the English
+Army was completed, then, to comply with an obvious rule of strategy
+which says, "Always close with your enemy when and wherever he shows
+himself, in order to discover and hold him to his dispositions," a
+general advance was made along the whole centre and left of the Allied
+line. The line swung forward, and perhaps some day one of the handful
+of men who know will tell exactly what was the object of this movement.
+Was it meant to join battle in all seriousness with the enemy, and to
+drive him from Belgium, or was it just a precautionary measure to hold
+and delay him? Probably the latter. The Allied Generalissimo had
+probably made up his mind to the fact that the first battle--the battle
+in Belgium--was already lost by the Allies' lateness in concentration.
+Regarded in this light the battle in Belgium was undoubtedly the
+greatest rear-guard action in History.
+
+On account of a possible under-estimation of the enemy's strength, and
+of the completeness of his dispositions, the Allies found themselves,
+when the lines first clashed, in a more serious position than they
+probably anticipated. The enemy gained two initial successes that
+decided, past doubt, the fate of the battle which was now raging along
+the whole front from Mons to Muelhouse. Namur, the fortress which had
+enjoyed a reputation as the Port Arthur of Europe, fell before the
+weight of the German siege howitzer in a few days. The magnitude of the
+disaster appalled the whole world, for indirectly the piercing of these
+forts laid open the road to Paris. Nor was this all. The enemy forced
+the passage of the Sambre at Charleroi, and threatened to cut the Allied
+centre from the left. The British Army, on the extreme left, found
+itself confronted by a numerical superiority of nearly three to one,
+while its left flank and lines of communication with Havre were
+seriously menaced by a huge body of Uhlan cavalry. In a word, the
+positions taken up by the whole of the Allied centre and left were no
+longer tenable. To hang on would have been to court disaster. There was
+nothing for it but to cut and go.
+
+But the Allies did not meet with the same ill luck along the whole line.
+The small successes gained on the right, in Alsace, had apparently been
+consolidated. The German tide through Luxembourg was stemmed, and, even
+though the Kaiser himself witnessed its bombardment, Nancy held out. But
+the trump card in the Allies' hand was Verdun. De Castlenau clung
+resolutely to the chain of forts crowning the heights in front of the
+town, and his successful defence saved Paris. Whatever might happen to
+the centre and left, the right, at any rate, seemed safe.
+
+The Allied Generalissimo was forced to give way before the fury of the
+German onslaught in Belgium. He withdrew his armies while there was yet
+time, thus averting irrevocable disaster. According to all the rules of
+the game, he should have retired his whole line southwards, in order to
+ensure the safety of Paris. But he did not throw his highest trump: he
+clung to Verdun, and left Paris exposed. His armies retreated, not on
+the Capital, but in a sweeping movement that was hinged upon Verdun. He
+realised that the fate of Paris depended not upon its being covered by
+the Allies, but upon the fate of the second great battle of the war.
+
+Meanwhile, the great retreat--this hinging movement--continued, very
+slowly near Verdun, very, very swiftly on the left. Days passed; no
+attempt was made to check the enemy's advance, and the passing of each
+day left Paris more exposed. The world gasped at the breathless
+swiftness with which disaster seemed to be swooping down upon the
+Capital. But every day de Castlenau was consolidating his defence of
+Verdun, in face of tremendous odds; and every day the ferocity of the
+German onrush waned. The line continued to swing resolutely back, until
+such time as a completed mobilisation should allow the Allies to turn
+upon the enemy in greater force, in their own time, and on chosen
+ground. A premature effort would have spoiled all. They had to wait for
+their chance.
+
+Meanwhile, rapid concentrations of reserves were taking place behind the
+line, the most famous instance of which was the Reserve Army moved out
+of Paris by General Gallieni in taxis, fiacres, and any vehicle the
+authorities could commandeer to ensure that the Army should be in its
+place in time. It was in its place. Just as the world was beginning to
+say that the war was over, General Joffre decided that the iron was hot,
+that the time to strike had arrived. "The moment has come," he wrote,
+"to die where you stand, rather than give way."
+
+The outlook changed from black to rose with the completeness and ease of
+a pantomime transformation scene. The Verdun heights remained
+impregnable. The whole line turned and fought where it stood. The
+enemy, worn out by his exertions, stretched his line of communications
+to breaking-point, and it was said that his supplies of food and
+munitions had come temporarily very near to collapse. The Allies checked
+him. He could not even hold his own. In two days he was moving back,
+away from Paris.
+
+The economic reasons were not the only factors in his downfall. He was
+beaten by the Allied morale, and also by the Allied strategy. Von Kluck,
+the Commander of the German right, hurrying on in an abortive pursuit of
+the British Army, found that he was outflanked by the army of Gallieni,
+which, stronger than his own, threatened his line of communications. To
+press on towards Paris would have been suicidal. To linger in his
+present position would have been to court capture. He, therefore, began
+the famous march across the French front, by which he hoped to gain
+touch with the army on his left, and as he turned, the British and
+French fell upon him simultaneously, as in a vice. For a day the line
+wavered irresolutely, then Von Kluck realised that the pendulum of
+success was beginning to swing the other way. He had to retire or face
+irretrievable disaster.
+
+Thus Paris was saved. The tremendous blow aimed at it was parried, and
+it seemed as if the striker tottered, as if he had overreached his
+strength. The treachery with which the Germans had inaugurated the
+movement, the brutality and cruelty with which they had carried it
+through, were brought to nothing before the superior morale of the
+Allied troops, and the matchless strategy of their Commander.
+
+The enemy was checked along the whole line, but the Allies were not
+satisfied with that. The French flung themselves upon the invader with a
+ferocity and heroism that was positively reminiscent of the Napoleonic
+legends. General Foch, in command of the General Reserve, achieved the
+culminating success in this victory, known as the Battle of the Marne.
+He broke the enemy's line: he thrust into the gap a wedge so powerful
+that the enemy was forced to give way on either side of it, because his
+centre was broken. The victory of the Marne was assured.
+
+Slowly at first, latterly with increasing speed, the Allies were hurling
+the enemy northwards. He was becoming more demoralised every day. A
+victory even greater than the Marne was in sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And that," said the Captain, "is where we are at present."
+
+"They'll turn on us in a day or two, and then there'll be the devil of a
+fight," said the Senior Subaltern.
+
+Everybody laughed at him, but they had an uneasy feeling that he would
+be right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE LAST ADVANCE
+
+
+While he was dreaming, the time slipped by almost unnoticed. It was not
+until eleven o'clock that a halt was made. He could just discern in the
+darkness the dim outlines of what appeared to be a large farm-house,
+surrounded by barns and outhouses. Some transport had got jammed in the
+yard. He could hear the creak of wheels, the stamping of hoofs, and
+shouts. There was not a light anywhere, and they waited for half-an-hour
+that seemed interminable, for they were drenched through, and tired, and
+were longing for any cover out of the wet. Sounds of shuffling were
+heard in front, and at last they found themselves on the move again.
+Another fifty yards, as far as a gate in a wall, and then they stuck
+again. More weary, exasperating minutes; then at last the bedraggled
+figure of the Captain loomed out of the darkness.
+
+"Is that you?" he asked.
+
+"All right, lead round here!"
+
+He led them to a large barn, and they turned in to sleep just as they
+were. No supper, not a fire to dry their sodden clothes, not a blanket
+to cover their chilled bodies.
+
+As usual, they got to sleep somehow, and as usual dawn came about thirty
+hours before they were ready for it.
+
+They moved out immediately, and continued the course of the march. The
+rain-laden clouds had rolled completely away. The sky looked hard and
+was scarcely blue; the country was swept by a strong nipping wind, for
+which they were very thankful, since it served to dry their clothes.
+
+The Machine-gun Officer, passing down the Battalion, walked with them
+while he told them two wonderful stories. It may have been crude, but in
+another way it was almost as satisfying as breakfast.
+
+He solemnly explained to them that the war was nearly over. The Germans,
+lured into making this tremendous and unnecessary effort to capture
+Paris, had left their eastern front dangerously weak. The Russians were
+pouring into Germany in their millions. The Cossacks were already around
+Posen. Nobody quite knew where Posen was, but it sounded deliciously
+like Potsdam. Anyway, they would be there in a month.
+
+A few surplus millions, who, presumably on account of the crush, could
+not burst into Germany by the quickest route, had been despatched, _via_
+Archangel, to the northern coast of Scotland. Their progress
+thenceforwards is, of course, notorious. By now they had safely landed
+at Antwerp, and had pursued a career that must have bored them as
+monotonously victorious. Namur, "and all those places" had been
+captured, and at that moment Maubeuge was being relieved. The Germans
+were being sandwiched between the victorious Russian, French and British
+Arms. They could only escape as through the neck of a bottle. And the
+end of the war was so near, and so definite, that it almost lacked
+interest.
+
+The Subaltern was elated. He refused to question the likelihood of such
+tales. He was hungry for just such cheering stories of success. And when
+he got them, he devoured them with avidity, without ever looking at
+them. The effect on him was bracing. It was glorious, he told himself,
+to have taken part in such happenings. The only cloud on his horizon was
+the fact that the chance to do distinguished acts had never come to him.
+The Regimental Colours never required saving under heavy fire, for the
+simple reason that they reposed safely at the depot. Neither did the
+Colonel, a most profitable person to rescue, ever get wounded in the
+open, and give an opportunity for gallant rescue work. He had never had
+a chance to "stick a Bosch." He had never drawn his sword in a
+triumphant charge, never blazed his revolver in a face, never twisted a
+bayonet on a body. It would require courage, he told himself, to admit
+these things when he was back again at home.
+
+You must not laugh at the stories of the Machine-Gunner. He believed
+what he wanted to believe. Remember, too, that the Allies were then at
+the zenith of the greatest victory that was achieved in the first
+eighteen months of the war. The strategical ideas of the Machine-Gunner
+may have been faulty, but he has saved more lives with his guns than any
+doctor in the land.
+
+At about eight o'clock in the morning, the Subaltern saw the Company in
+front twisting off the road, and forming up in "mass" in the open field.
+They were then in the centre of a large plateau, which offered an
+uninterrupted view of miles of flat country on every side. A rough
+"outpost" disposition, with which he was fortunately not sent, was
+detailed, and the news was spread that there was to be a halt of several
+hours.
+
+The business of drying clothes, and cleaning up, instantly began.
+Ingrained soldierly cleanliness of the men was displayed. Without any
+order, and in spite of their weariness, whenever they were halted over
+an hour in the daylight--which had very seldom happened--they would
+immediately set about shaving, and cleaning themselves and their rifles.
+They shaved with the cold water, poured from their water-bottles into
+the lids of their canteens. There was a vast rubbing of bolts, and
+"pulling through" of barrels. An erstwhile barber in the Senior
+Subaltern's Platoon did tremendous business with a pair of scissors and
+a comb, his patrons being seated on an upturned ammunition-case.
+
+They had not halted long before a "mail" came in. The Subaltern was not
+among the lucky few who received letters or small parcels. Not that he
+minded much. From whomever the letter might come, or in whatever vein it
+had been written, he admitted to himself that he would feel savage with
+it, and would have dismissed it as "hot air" if it were sympathetic, or
+as "hard-hearted" if it were anything else.
+
+He wrote home on the now famous postcards that inform the addressee
+that, on such and such a date, the sender was alive and well. He felt
+very relieved that at last he had an opportunity to relieve the anxiety
+of the people at home.
+
+The best part of the two hours was spent in "franking"--that is
+censoring--his men's letters. It was a very unwelcome task, and although
+he thoroughly appreciated the military necessity, he cordially hated
+being forced, as it were, to pry into their private affairs.
+
+Meanwhile the wind had dried them, and the sun was high in the heavens.
+Rations arrived, and were distributed. The sun and the tea warmed them,
+and in the afternoon a little sleep was possible.
+
+The Subaltern was aroused at about four o'clock, and the march was
+continued. The Senior Subaltern had received a box of Abdullas in the
+post, which he kindly shared with his two juniors. The cigarettes seemed
+enormously fat, and the tobacco extraordinarily pale. They had smoked
+nothing but the little "Caporal" French cigarettes--and not many of
+them--since their own supply had given out. They had said all along how
+much they longed for "decent English" cigarettes, and now they had got
+them they were not at all so sure that they liked them.
+
+There was a Lance-Corporal in the Company who was not as generous to
+his fellows as the Senior Subaltern had been. He smoked the cigarettes
+he had been sent, persistently, and with obvious enjoyment. The men
+around him were hungry for a "whiff"; the sight of him calmly lighting a
+fresh "fag" at the stump of the old maddened them beyond endurance. At
+length one man could bear it no longer.
+
+"Look at '_im_, a'eatin' of 'em. Lor! give a thought to yer ruddy
+comrades, can't yer?"
+
+They seemed to miss tobacco more poignantly than any other luxury.
+
+A little later, sounds of great artillery bombardments rose up in front
+of them and on each side, but they could not yet see any signs of a
+fight, as they had not yet reached the edge of the plateau.
+
+Further on, the road descended slightly, and a very little way ahead the
+Subaltern saw, for the first time, a Battery of heavy artillery at work.
+The whole affair seemed to him to be singularly peaceful. The men went
+to work in the same efficient and rapid way that they would have done in
+a machine-room. Their targets were, of course, invisible, and there was
+no attempt to cover the guns from sight, nor to protect them from
+hostile shells. He was surprised to see how comparatively slowly the gun
+recoiled after discharge. The noise was ear-splitting, terrific.
+
+"There'll be some fun when the Transport comes along," said the Senior
+Subaltern, with unholy glee.
+
+He was right: there probably would be a great deal of "fun." The
+Battery was not more than fifty yards from the road on the left, while
+on the right there was a drop, at an angle of at least sixty degrees, of
+twenty yards. He imagined the frightened horses careering madly down the
+slope, the carts and wagons bumping and crashing down upon them--the
+kicking, struggling heap below!
+
+Then, just as it was growing dark, they reached the edge of the plateau,
+and the huge rolling valley of the Aisne swam before them in the purple
+twilight. The further heights were already wrapt up in darkness; and the
+ground, glowing green at their feet, merged in the distance to rich
+velvet patches of purple and brown. The river itself was hidden by the
+trees clustering round its banks, but they could guess its course,
+winding away for a score or so of miles to the east.
+
+"What a beautiful scene," he said reverently.
+
+The Senior Subaltern may, or may not, have appreciated the beauty of the
+scene. His eye was on the further heights.
+
+"This is where they will try to stand," he said.
+
+And, as usual, he was right.
+
+They looked across to where the dark heights opposite were thrown out
+clearly against the pale sky, faintly yellow with the reflected glory of
+the sunset at their backs. Lights momentarily twinkled, now here, now
+there, intermittently along the whole line, as far as they could see. It
+was just as if matches were being struck, and instantly blown out again.
+But all the time the low, booming noise floated across to them. It was
+the German heavy artillery, slinging over heavier projectiles than, so
+far, it had been their bad fortune to meet.
+
+Just as they were entering a little village, nestling half-way down the
+slope, a tremendous explosion happened. There was a thunder-clap of
+noise, and a perfect cloud of earth and stones and wood was thrown high
+into the air. It was their introduction to the famous "Jack Johnson."
+
+But, "Jack Johnson" or no "Jack Johnson," they marched on into the
+village, and were allotted billets for the night. The men of the Company
+were very comfortably accommodated in a barn half filled with dry hay,
+which, of course, is a great deal more pleasant to sleep upon than
+straw. The Officers went into a little cottage by the barn, and, having
+intimated to the owner of it that they were willing to buy anything she
+could sell them to eat or drink, flung off their equipment and went out
+into the little farmyard.
+
+The air was rosy with the sunset light; even the rising dust was golden.
+The sky overhead was the palest of dusky whites. It was not a sky: it
+was just Eternity. Out of it, infinitely far, yet comparatively close, a
+few stars were beginning to wink.
+
+The men in the yard were cooking their evening meal over a few little
+fires, squatting over them, eyeing anxiously the brewing tea or
+frizzling bacon. It was impossible to feel nervous or discontented. The
+very atmosphere was benign. It seemed as if "God was in His Heaven," and
+all was well with the World.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+SATURDAY NIGHT
+
+
+Every picture wakened in the mind of the reader by the preceding
+chapters should be bathed in the brightest of sunshine, under the bluest
+of skies, and the horizons should quiver with the blue heat. From now
+onwards he must imagine grey skies, often streaming rain, and always
+muddy roads and sodden grass.
+
+That day saw the inauguration of a new kind of misery for our troops.
+Dust, heat and thirst, their previous tormentors, retired in favour of
+mud, chill and an unappeasable hunger. Their overstrained nerves and
+worn bodies rendered them very susceptible even to the first breath of
+autumn.
+
+The Subaltern had lost all his underwear except his shirt, and part of
+his socks. His breeches were torn at the knee, and he felt the chill of
+the wind very acutely. He could feel the damp mud through the flapping
+toes of his boot.
+
+Then it began to rain--no mere light summer shower, that cooled one's
+face and clothes, and delightfully wet one's hands, but a real autumnal
+downpour. Hastily he undid the straps which tied his Burberry, and
+shuffled into it, as he marched along. It was caked with mud, and smelt
+of the earth that he had so often grovelled in, but as he fastened the
+hooks beneath his chin, he felt profoundly glad of it, elated that he
+had something to keep off the chill and wet. He buttoned it down to his
+knees and experienced the faint sensation of comfort that one feels when
+drawing one's blinds to shut out a stormy night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the guns began to rattle by; always an ominous sign, for it meant
+that battle was imminent. It was a remarkable thing that neither
+infantry nor artillery took much notice of each other as they met. The
+guns and carriages would thunder and bump and clatter over the pave, the
+thickset horses straining at their harness, the drivers urging them on.
+But the infantry would plod along just the same, regardless of the noise
+and bustle. The men would not even raise their eyes from the boots of
+the preceding four.
+
+Very soon after the last gun-carriage had rattled past, sounds of a
+bombardment would be heard--the bangs and whizz of shells. The Column
+would probably be halted, while a reconnaissance was made to ascertain
+in what force the enemy was holding his position. As a rule, deployments
+were not necessary, for the artillery generally succeeded in dislodging
+the enemy off their own bat. Such affairs as this happened no less than
+three times before it was dark, and in each case the Germans had had to
+leave their dead and wounded behind them.
+
+One poor fellow lay with his head propped up against a heap of stones
+by the wayside. His chin and mouth had been torn from his face, and the
+ragged flesh hung in tatters, red and bleeding, as it had been torn.
+Almost before their eyes the man was passing away. It was awful.
+
+"Poor devil, all this 'ere wasn't 'is fault, yer know," a man muttered.
+
+As far as the Subaltern could hear, no one answered him. Perhaps some of
+them were wondering where that dying man's soul was going to. One was a
+Christian, of course, but one wanted to know more. One wanted, very
+badly, a little precise, definite knowledge of What Happens--after. At
+that moment he hated _Hamlet_. Yet the words kept surging through his
+brain: "To die ... to sleep ... in that sleep of death, what dreams may
+come?... puzzles the will ... makes us rather bear the ills we have,
+than fly to others that we know not of!"
+
+Not that conscience had "made a coward" of him, nor of any other man or
+boy he had ever seen, a great deal nearer to death and vital, elementary
+things than Shakespeare had ever been. He felt a little foolish for it,
+but all the same he was thrilled by a sensation of triumphant
+superiority to the Bard of Avon.
+
+All the time the rain was streaming down, and all the time their clothes
+grew wetter and wetter. Just before dusk a halt was made by the
+roadside, and at last the booming of the guns died down to a silence
+that was only broken by the incessant patter of the rain upon the sodden
+earth.
+
+There was not much to eat, only biscuits, whose freshness and crispness
+had been lost in moist pockets. Nobody was thirsty: there was too much
+water externally!
+
+It was quite dark when they moved on. Somehow the darkness used to come
+to them as a tremendous relief, as an armistice. They felt, in a subtle
+way, more at home in it, for it shut out from their eyes the strange
+sights and horrors of a land quite foreign to them. After the wearing
+day, it brought a freshness that was exhilarating, a refreshing coolness
+to the cheeks and hands that was gratifying and soothing. In spite of
+everything their spirits rose.
+
+As they passed over a little railway station, innocent, as usual, of any
+suspicion of a platform, with a box set up as waiting-room, one of the
+men in the section of fours behind him stumbled heavily over the single
+lines.
+
+"Nah then, Bill, wotcher doing to New Street Station?" New Street
+Station, with its smoke, and hurrying crowds, and shrieking steam to be
+compared to this clean, open, deserted spot! The daring of such a
+comparison was stupendous. It appealed instantly to the men's sense of
+the ridiculous. They roared with laughter.
+
+The rain fell with depressing regularity, the wind blew gustily, but the
+ice had been broken, an example had been set, and they all vied with
+each other in forgetting their troubles in laughter.
+
+"Blessed if it ain't Saturday night!" said one. It was impossible to say
+offhand what day it was, but after a slight argument they arrived at
+the astounding discovery that it was indeed Saturday. The discovery was
+astounding, because it was almost incredible to them that such misery
+could happen on a Saturday night--_the_ night of the week--the night of
+marketing, of toothsome dishes, of melodrama and music halls.
+
+"If my missus could see me now," roared a Reservist, "wouldn't her
+laff!" He was, perhaps, a great deal more amused than she would have
+been, poor woman.
+
+"I ain't agoing to Church to-morrer," said another, with assumed
+languor. "I'll lay a'bed, an' smoke me baccy, an' read me Sunday papers"
+(derisive groans).
+
+"Me and Sam's goin' on 'Midnight Pass' ter-night, ain't we, Sam?"
+inquired a young "timeserving" fellow. "Who's on at the Hipper-drome?"
+
+"Oh! Mah-rie Lloyd."
+
+"Get urt, you'm too young to see our Mah-rie." Roars of laughter, that
+almost shut out the wind with their heartiness!
+
+The Subaltern could tell very accurately how their thoughts were flying
+homewards, and he could see the very same pictures in front of their
+eyes, because he lived near to where most of them lived, and knew the
+sights that most of them knew. Their homes on Saturday night! The warm
+red tiles of their kitchen floors; the "scrap" mats (laboriously hand
+sewn) in front of the bright fires in their "grates." The walls of
+their "parlours," bedecked with gorgeous lithographs, calendars and
+framed texts!
+
+All the things they loved so much to do on Saturday nights. The humming
+market street, entirely blocked with its double rows of booths. How
+pleasant it must have seemed to them! At the top of the street the
+church stared impassively into space; at the bottom, the trams clanged
+and grinded as they rounded the corner and swung triumphantly into the
+square. The stalls, brightly lit by flaring gas-jets, laden with meat,
+fish, fruit, sweets, music, flowers, all that the Soul could long for
+throughout a restful Sunday day. Their womenfolk, with their heads
+covered in the ubiquitous shawl of many colours, buzzing busily from
+booth to booth, with a purse clutched in one hand, and an open "string"
+bag, filled with bulky newspaper-covered parcels, in the other. The men
+looking on with hands in pockets, English-wise, indefinably
+self-conscious in the face of the delicate business of shopping. Then
+perhaps an hour or two's excitement in a shag-scented picture palace, or
+a crowded music hall with some big star at the top of the bill, a small
+one at the bottom, and the between turns lamentable. And, of course, a
+visit to some busy "saloon bar" redolent of "beer and 'baccy." Then home
+on the electric tram.
+
+The thought of it all did not, as might be expected, make them sad. In
+fact, the home memories seemed to warm their hearts, and the humour of
+this "Saturday night," which might have left more delicately cultured
+natures untouched, appealed to them irresistibly.
+
+That night the Subaltern, too, had his dreams. They did not fly
+homewards: he would have hated to have been surrounded and overwhelmed
+by his family: he shrank at the thought of congratulations: he shuddered
+at the idea of explanations. To-night he would have wished to be quite
+alone. And in London!
+
+First of all would come a hot bath at the hotel--a tremendous scrubbing,
+and a "rub down," with a big towel--haircuttings, and shaving, and nail
+cleanings! Then he would get into mufti. He chose, after a careful
+review, a lounge suit of a grey-blue colour that had been fashionable
+that summer. It was light, and he had always liked the feel of it on his
+shoulders. He chose the shirt, collar and tie to go with it. He imagined
+himself completely dressed, and he looked with pleasure down at the
+straight creases in his trousers, at his neat patent leather boots with
+their suede tops. It pleased him tremendously to imagine himself once
+more properly "clothed and in his right mind."
+
+The next thing would be a feed. He reminded himself of his hunger, and
+argued that he did not want anything "fancy." He would go to a grill and
+order just what he liked, and a lot of it. The "Trocerdilli" was just
+the place. First of all would come a "short one"--not that he needed an
+appetiser! He imagined himself seated at a table, the cloth startlingly
+white, the cutlery and glasses reflecting a thousand points of light.
+He could hear the band, above the whirr of conversation, playing
+something he knew. He was glancing down the menu card, and the waiter
+was at his side. A soup that was succulent, thick and hot--his mouth
+watered! Whitebait, perhaps. He saw their round little eyes and stiff
+tails as he squeezed his slice of lemon over them. He felt the
+wafer-slice of brown bread and butter in his fingers. A whisky-and-soda,
+and a double one at that, to drink--he was tired of these French wines.
+_A steak_ "from the grill"--undoubtedly a steak--tender, juicy, red,
+with "chipped" potatoes, lying in long gold-and-brown fingers around it.
+His teeth clashed at the thought of it! What would he have "to follow"?
+Something rich and cold! A _meringue glacee_ was not good enough for the
+occasion. A cream _bombe glacee_, or, better still, a _Peche Melba_. He
+saw the red syrup stuff in the little glass plate that it would be
+served on. And the peach--like the cheeks of a lovely child! At last, if
+he could manage it--which he did not at the moment doubt--something in
+the savoury omelette line. And to finish up with, the Egyptian should
+bring him some coffee. He saw the Egyptian very clearly, with his little
+red cap and his dusky cheeks. Then, last of all, the man with the cigars
+and liqueurs wheeled his tray. A good cigar from the top tray, clipped
+and lit by the man's lamp. Then to choose from the half score of bottles
+on the lower tray. Chartreuse, Benedictine, better still, Grand
+Marmier.
+
+That really was all. Nothing to do now but lean back in his chair, and
+between his sips gaze contentedly through his cigar smoke at the lights,
+the mirrors, the palms, and whirring electric fans and the happy,
+flushed diners, with that curious, strained, puzzled and amused look
+that creeps into the backs of people's eyes at such times.
+
+Then he pictured himself leaving the restaurant, climbing the stairs.
+The glass door was thrown open for him to pass through, with a gesture
+that was positively grandiloquent.
+
+The cold air of the street was fanning his heated cheek. People were
+sweeping by him as he walked down Coventry Street. Ships that passed in
+the night! Passionate eyes stabbed him. Strange scents momentarily swept
+over him....
+
+There was a completeness of detail in all these pictures that wrung from
+him a very grim smile. Would he remember the war as vividly as he then
+remembered all that?
+
+He saw himself pause in the gutter of Wardour Street while a taxi slid
+by. He saw himself survive the lure of the Empire, saw himself deciding
+not to cross the road, and go down to the Alhambra.
+
+Eventually he reached a music hall. He was going in now. He was taking
+his place that moment in the plush stall. On the stage a little pseudo
+nigger was joking privately with the conductor. He laughed at one of the
+jokes he remembered. Then a woman came on. She was tragic, stately. He
+was thrilled by her slimness, her weirdness, her vitality. The whole
+atmosphere of the theatre was electrified by her personality. She was
+singing a song in a way that he had never heard before. He remembered it
+still. It was a Tango song. "His Tango girl!" His thoughts flew off at a
+tangent....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE CROSSING OF THE AISNE
+
+
+They spent a delectable night, with their boots off, between real
+blankets, after a real wash. Very early, before it was really light,
+they joined on to the Battalion, and slid down the hill.
+
+The Subaltern had a few moments' talk with a friend who had commanded
+the "Divisional Guard" during the night.
+
+"Scarcely got any sleep," he said. "But I took a peep at their room. It
+was laid out for a pucca breakfast. Jove, I could have done with some!"
+
+At the door of the house he had been guarding, quite alone, and leaning
+heavily on his thick stick, stood the Divisional Commander. No doubt he
+knew of the struggle that lay before them, and was taking the
+opportunity of reviewing his battalions as they went in to battle. His
+face was red, his hair was iron grey, and rather long. He was a fine big
+man, there was a presence to him, a rugged and determined look.
+
+A few minutes later they had plunged into the depths of a thick morning
+mist, that rolled like a lake between the heights. The steep road led
+them at length to the banks of the Aisne. The Germans had naturally
+blown up the bridge behind them, but the Sappers had erected a temporary
+structure by the side of the ruined one. It quivered under their weight,
+and as the Subaltern looked at the water swirling so swiftly beneath, he
+wondered what would happen if one of those huge shells were to blow it
+sky high....
+
+Running parallel to the river, and about thirty yards away, was a canal.
+This was likewise successfully passed, and so the Aisne was crossed
+without a shot being fired.
+
+The Battalion was concentrated while the rest of the Brigade crossed the
+river. And all the time the sun was chasing away the light clouds of
+river vapour. Soon the enemy would see them, and they would be caught in
+this difficult and dangerous movement, and the results would be
+disastrous.
+
+But the minutes passed, and the mist melted almost entirely away, and
+still the guns were silent. At last they moved off, and began to ascend
+the slope. They were only just clear of the place when there was a
+whistle, a shriek, a bang and a roar. The explosion was two or three
+times greater than anything they had heard before. The very noise was
+intimidating, paralysing, and before they had had time to rally their
+nerves and collect themselves, before the awakened echoes had died away
+in the woods above, a second shell, as mighty as the first, sailed over
+their heads and exploded as titanically as it had done. This was the
+first occasion on which the British Armies had been brought face to
+face with the German super-heavy artillery. Naturally the result was a
+little disconcerting.
+
+Tons of death-dealing metal and explosive were being hurled through the
+air as if Atlas were hurling stars about. There was something elemental,
+and superhuman about such colossal force. One felt like a pygmy in a
+Battle of the Gods.
+
+They were profoundly ignorant of anything that was happening. Everything
+was normal, except the roar of guns. There was not even a sign of the
+cavalry being driven in. The only thing to do was to keep on until an
+order came, or something definite happened.
+
+The road had turned into a village called Moussy, and was now running
+parallel to the river, along the side of the slope. An order was passed
+along to "keep down under cover of the right bank," so they advanced,
+half crouching, about half a mile.
+
+Then, with a suddenness that amazed him, the Subaltern saw the Platoon
+in front begin to scramble hastily over the bank, and run off directly
+up the hill. No order was given, he could see no explanation for such a
+move. He hesitated for a second, wondering whether it would not be
+better to find out what was happening before he moved his Platoon. But
+battles are sometimes lost by just such pauses, so he waved his arm,
+signalling to deploy and extend to the right. A second or so later his
+men were in line with the other Platoon, advancing over a green field
+towards a bank. Their rifles were loaded, bayonets fixed, bodies bent
+forward--ready for anything.
+
+They did not have long to wait.
+
+Another "Jack Johnson" landed in front of them. They could see the earth
+as it flew upwards the other side of the hedge. Was it a chance shot, or
+would the Germans land a direct "hit" next time? That was the question
+that worried the Subaltern as he advanced to the hedge. He was also
+puzzled as to what was really happening, or what he was expected to do.
+Not another Officer was in sight.
+
+In a few seconds the bank was reached. Here he made a temporary halt for
+the men to recover their breath. Men cannot be expected to shoot well if
+they cannot breathe.
+
+Half a minute passed, and he began to consider the advisability of
+sending out several scouts to reconnoitre, as the whole responsibility
+of command in that part seemed to rest with him.
+
+"'Ere's the Captain a-comin' up," said a man.
+
+Sure enough, there he was, coming up behind the bank. The Subaltern
+heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"D'you know what this is all about, sir?"
+
+"No," said the Captain, as much as to say "How should I?"
+
+"We had better hold on here, and wait and see what is to be done," he
+added.
+
+Arm-chair strategists may not know it, but a man who has not learned how
+to "wait and see" is not much use in tactical warfare. War is not, as
+some people seem to think, an excuse for a perfect orgy of recklessness.
+But that is by the way.
+
+"It would not be a bad idea if you went forward to see what is
+happening. I think I can see some people coming up between the trees on
+the left there."
+
+The Subaltern set out, without loss of time. Yes, there certainly were
+"people" advancing cautiously up the hill, from round the corner, but
+there were not many of them. Still crouching, he began once more to
+mount the hill. As he neared the top, he dropped on his hands and knees
+in the long grass, as he feared that he might unwittingly appear over
+the enemy's skyline, and be shot down where he stood.
+
+He peered cautiously about him. The summit of the hill was round and
+smooth. Not a particle of cover was offered, but about twenty yards down
+the other side he saw the edge of a dense wood, which appeared to roll,
+uninterrupted, half-way up the further slope. The top of this slope
+formed the skyline, and seemed to be about three-quarters of a mile
+away. Except for the men working their way up on his left, whom he had
+already noticed, there was not a man in sight; but the shells were still
+sailing overhead.
+
+At length the party came up, and amongst them was the Colonel of one of
+the Battalions in the Brigade. The Subaltern immediately asked him for
+orders.
+
+"As far as I can see," said the Colonel, "this hill is a sort of
+salient in our line. The enemy are probably holding that ridge along
+there," pointing to the skyline. "Anyway, we will hold on to this hill
+until I have orders for a general attack."
+
+The Subaltern walked down the hill to report what he had found out.
+
+"All right," said the Captain; "you had better take your Platoon and all
+these men round about here, and help to hold on to the hill."
+
+He called for his Section Commanders, explained what was to be done, and
+set off once more. As they were just about to cross the crest, he
+signalled to them to "get down," and at length they took up a sort of
+position along the edge of the wood on the other side.
+
+The enemy had evidently not "spotted" them, and they were left in peace
+for an hour. Then their troubles began.
+
+It seemed as though the hill suddenly became a place of vast importance.
+The Colonel arrived upon the scene, with reinforcements of over a
+hundred men, and they immediately set to work putting the hill into a
+state of defence. Then a battery of field guns were drawn up into
+position on the "safe" side of the hill, and began without delay to
+shell the enemy. Their arrival, however, was decidedly a mixed blessing.
+So far, the troops had held the hill quite successfully, and had been
+undisturbed by hostile artillery, for the simple reason that the enemy
+was unaware of their positions. Now the artillery had come and "given
+the whole show away," and no sooner did the enemy discover that the
+hill was held, than he began forthwith to bombard them.
+
+It was obviously impossible to continue "digging in." The only thing to
+do was to squeeze one's self into the ground, and pray. It seemed as if
+the titanic thunderbolts, that had hitherto been hurled aimlessly about,
+were suddenly concentrated on that one spot. It seemed as if all the
+gods in Olympus were hurling their rage upon it, determined to
+obliterate it from the face of the earth. The most gigantic guns that
+had ever been used in war were concentrating their fire upon it, and the
+result was awful. Nothing they had experienced before was comparable to
+it. It seemed as if the ground were being thrashed with whips of a
+thousand leaden-loaded thongs. The smell of the lyddite was nauseating,
+the uproar stupefying. Dust rose in the air; trees crashed to the
+ground.
+
+Hell was let loose: Hell and Death were dashing around, converting that
+normal sky and that sane earth into a Pandemonium. The wonder was that a
+human life was spared. The Subaltern had a fleeting feeling that every
+one except himself must be dead. When the storm seemed for a moment to
+have abated, he looked around him and was surprised to see that very
+little damage had been done to the men. An inexperienced eye would
+possibly not have detected any casualties at all. From a Kipling point
+of view, the scene was an artistic failure. Not a man was shrieking; not
+a man "clawing up the ground." Here and there men had rolled over on
+their sides, and were groaning quite softly to themselves. Here and
+there a purple patch in the dusty khaki....
+
+The instinct of men, like animals, is to crawl quietly away from their
+fellows, and die in solitude.
+
+The Colonel, very little perturbed by the bombardment, had sat
+throughout with his back resting against a tree, writing messages, or
+glaring at the map. Once, a large piece of shell casing had buried
+itself in the ground a few inches from his leg. The jagged piece was hot
+and heavy.
+
+"Good Heavens," he said to himself, "what curious things Chance and Fate
+are. If I had stretched my leg out! Why didn't I?" He smiled.
+
+At length a few Stretcher Bearers began to arrive, and the worst cases
+were carried off by them. Many of the less seriously wounded had to
+hobble, or even crawl down the hill, as best they could. It was a
+pitiable sight.
+
+The Subaltern looked up, and caught the eye of an Officer being carried
+off on a stretcher. His mutilated leg was covered by his Burberry. He
+instantly recognised him as an Officer who had "brought out" a "draft"
+some time previously.
+
+If he were suffering great pain, he did not show it. He seemed annoyed,
+and a little ashamed.
+
+"Just the look," thought the Subaltern, "that a fellow wears when he's
+out at Cricket--walking back to the Pavilion."
+
+The comparison, though not happy, was apt. It was just like Cricket.
+Some missed their catches; some never had any sent to them; and others
+did brilliant things. A few had long innings, and compiled glorious
+scores, but the majority "got out" pretty soon.
+
+He pulled from his pocket a "Caporal" cigarette, and placed it in his
+mouth, partly to show every one around how cool this inferno had left
+him, and partly to steady his nerves. But just as he was striking the
+match, a violent desire to laugh assailed him. He suppressed this
+tendency towards hysterics, but he shook so much that it was impossible
+to light the cigarette, and in the end he threw it away in disgust.
+
+And so the day dragged on. They were shelled with varying ferocity all
+the time. Once they attempted to launch an attack, but it failed, almost
+before it had started. The enemy artillery observation seemed too acute,
+the weight of his shells too heavy, and the wood in front too thick.
+
+About three o'clock in the afternoon the General must have decided that
+the holding of the hill was too costly a business. He therefore ordered
+it to be evacuated, and the troops to retire on the village of Poussey.
+Every one, from the Colonel down, was privately relieved by this order,
+for every one felt that, if they had stayed there, by the end of the
+next day there would have been no regiment left.
+
+The behaviour of the men had been superb. They had entered into this new
+phase of the war with that strange combination of recklessness and
+reliability which had made our "contemptible little army" what it was.
+Not a complaint had been uttered. They had joked all day--and there is
+an especial relish to jokes that are made between the thunderclaps--but
+they were worn out, not only by the terrors of that day, but by the
+accumulated loss of sleep and lack of food.
+
+A further advance was impossible. The Germans had checked the onrush by
+the weight of their artillery. The victory of the Marne was over. The
+phase of the deadlock had begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CELLARS OF POUSSEY
+
+
+The Subaltern was too dazed to realise the significance of the day's
+fighting, but he brought his men back to the village without mishap, and
+behind the shelter of its walls they lay down to sleep just as they
+were.
+
+In a little time the whole Battalion was rallied in the village, and
+fresh reinforcements were sent forward to hold a line nearer the
+village.
+
+The night that followed was cold and windy. In spite of a fire that his
+men lit in a little side street, and various sacks that they "lifted"
+from barns, the cold caused extreme discomfort, and it was with a great
+sigh of relief that at length dawn broke upon them.
+
+The Subaltern stumbled to his feet before it was fully light, shook the
+miserable sacks from his feet, and set out to explore the village.
+
+Like most of its kind, it had only one central street, which was steep
+and winding. Underfoot were the usual cobbles, and the walls had a queer
+look of leaning inwards over the road with a protective air. He had not
+gone many yards before he came upon the little village square. Half of
+it was shut in by a huge, castle-like structure, which with its carved
+stone fountain gave the place almost a medieval air.
+
+The gate in the wall was unlocked, and through the aperture he caught a
+glimpse of a trim garden and a comfortable-looking house.
+
+"This," said the Subaltern to himself, "is just the sort of place that
+the Captain would choose for his headquarters."
+
+He slipped into the garden and peeped through one of the windows. Sure
+enough, there were the Captain, the Senior Subaltern and the Doctor.
+They had already risen and were trying to boil a kettle on the ashes of
+last night's fire. It was not an inviting scene, by any means, but he
+pushed open the door, and started in the search for food.
+
+The room in which he found them was a typical French kitchen, with a
+dirty grey ceiling, walls, and stone floor. The furniture consisted of a
+table, a couple of forms, and a chair or two. Otherwise there was
+absolutely no attempt at either comfort or adornment. Ransacking a dirty
+cupboard, the Subaltern drew forth in triumph a promising-looking
+bottle, and having pulled the cork, smelt at the contents with caution.
+It contained a curious sort of liquor, apparently home made, which saved
+their lives that morning. Then the Doctor, after many amusing efforts to
+clean himself in a bucket, went off to the improvised hospital that had
+been set up in the village.
+
+The early part of the morning passed peacefully enough; but the
+bombardment was renewed at about seven o'clock, and was followed by a
+hasty evacuation of the village to reinforce the front line. The
+Captain's Company, however, and one other, were ordered to stand by in
+reserve, but to be prepared to move at a moment's notice. The
+bombardment rolled on as usual for about an hour. Then came a tremendous
+crash, which made every wall and roof tremble, and gave warning that
+something worse than ordinary had happened.
+
+Everybody rushed into the street, but there was no longer a square. One
+of the "Jack Johnsons" had alighted in the centre of it. The first
+glance at the scene disclosed the fact that the fountain had been blown
+sky high, and the cobbles torn up like pebbles, but it was not until
+afterwards that one realised that there had been men in that square.
+None was left alive in it now. One poor fellow had been struck by a
+piece of shell and had died before his head had crashed against the
+ground. The colour of the dead face reminded the Subaltern hauntingly of
+the grey walls of the kitchen. Fortunately, the eyes were closed, but
+the horror of the thing--the shattered skull, the protruding,
+blood-smeared brains, bit into the Subaltern's soul. He gazed at it for
+a moment, spellbound, and then turned in towards the kitchen, feeling
+broken and humiliated.
+
+"We must get them into better shelter than this," said the Captain.
+"That might happen again."
+
+The owners of the house came out to meet them. The old man and his wife
+seemed strangely unperturbed by the noise and the sights around them.
+He was a fine old man, with a yellow skin, long, flowing beard, and a
+bald head. He explained that he was the local Mayor, and there was more
+natural dignity about him than many a Lord Mayor of a huge city. He told
+them that underneath his house was a cellar large enough to hide the
+whole Company, and led the Captain away to see it.
+
+In a few moments they returned.
+
+"Just the very place," said the Captain; "we'll get the Company down
+there right away, before the next big one comes over."
+
+He led them down a flight of steps, opened a door, and stepped gingerly
+into pitch darkness. When their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, it
+was just possible to make out the dimensions of the place, and very
+gradually the men filed in, and lay down wherever they could. By the
+time the last man had pushed his way in, there was scarcely an
+unoccupied foot of room in the whole cellar.
+
+After a time the talk died down, and sounds of slumber filled the
+darkness. Probably the only men in the whole Company who did not spend
+the rest of that day in sleep were the "look-out" men, one posted in the
+road to intercept messages, and the other at the head of the steps to
+give warning.
+
+As soon as it was dark they could leave the cellar with perfect
+safety--a thing they were glad to do, for the atmosphere was not as
+fresh as it might have been, and the place was very crowded. Only about
+half of the men, however, availed themselves of the opportunity. The
+others were too tired and just went on sleeping.
+
+Some time in the middle of the night they were awakened by the Mess
+Sergeant, who had successfully arrived with rations. The only possible
+way, it seemed, was to get supplies over the bridges under cover of
+darkness, as the enemy had got their range to a yard. He left their
+share of food, and then hurriedly left.
+
+"If I don't get well over by the morning, I don't get over at all," he
+explained.
+
+The next day was in every way similar to the previous one. No order to
+move was received, and sleep was the most popular occupation. Now and
+then, in intervals between the artillery duels, they would dash up the
+steps and air themselves as best as they could. In one of his rambles
+the Subaltern alighted upon a peach tree, which was greatly appreciated.
+When the familiar sounds began again, they would troop once more down
+the steps and fall asleep in the cellar, until peace was restored.
+
+On one occasion, following his men after he had seen them all safely
+down, a piece of high explosive shell-dust bounced from the wall, and
+embedded itself in the skin of his temple.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, when he was safely in the cellar; "this is all very
+well, but if a big one did happen to drop on this house above here, we
+shouldn't stand the ghost of a chance. It would be better to be out in
+the open. We might be buried by the falling bricks."
+
+Fate was kind. But once, on regaining the open, some one noticed that a
+weathercock had been struck off one of the gables.
+
+"It just wanted to be twenty feet lower," said some one speculatively.
+
+The Subaltern enjoyed very much his short stay in Poussey. The old Mayor
+and his wife were a charming couple, and as usual did everything in
+their power to make their Allies comfortable. On the other hand, it must
+be admitted that the British Officers, with their unfailing politeness
+and good spirits, made no small impression on them. The Subaltern once
+heard the old lady say to her husband--
+
+"Eh! Mon vieux, quelle difference! Ils sont si gentils, si polis ... et
+les autres.... Ach! Les cochons!"
+
+"What an impertinence," he thought, "to compare us!"
+
+His coat was badly rent in the back, and once, while he was asleep, the
+old lady took it, and mended it with thick red twine.
+
+Of course they had the inevitable sons or nephews at the front, and they
+had received no news of them. One had to listen with great attention,
+and an air of solicitude, and murmur some little consolations.
+
+One morning, the Subaltern forgets whether it was the first or second
+day of their stay, the old man took him into his library. It was a long,
+low room, fragrant with the smell of old books, and it looked out upon
+the leafy orchard. All the volumes were beautifully bound and nearly
+all were standard classics. He was surprised at the culture of this
+little spot, tucked away in the intellectual desert of rural France, and
+at the refinement of this man, who had been a farmer all his life. All
+the while a great battle was being fought outside; one could not be sure
+of life for a consecutive hour; at such a time it was amazing to be
+fingering fine old books, in the quiet, sombre library, by the side of
+an old man in a black velvet skullcap.
+
+Eventually the Subaltern picked out a volume by Segur, not because he
+wanted to read about war, but because he feared that the Voltaires, the
+Rousseaux, and the Hugos would be too difficult for him. Segur was easy:
+one could skip whole phrases without losing his gist: one was not
+worried by the words one did not know. He read of Napoleon's retreat on
+Paris--in its time accounted the most scientific retreat in history.
+Soissons! Montmirail! Why, they had almost passed into both these
+places! How everything that had ever happened would shrink before
+this--which was going on now, half a mile away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FIRST TRENCHES
+
+
+Whether it was the second or third day of their stay in Poussey that the
+march began again the Subaltern does not know. The only thing he
+remembers is being awakened from a peaceful afternoon nap, hurrying
+rather confusedly on parade, and marching off, out of the village.
+Turning sharply to the left, the troops descended the hill, and at
+length crossed the canal, which had evidently parted company with the
+Aisne. All was quiet, and he was making his way drowsily along the dusty
+road, when a whizz and a whistle brought him sharply to his senses.
+There could be no mistake about it, the shell was coming right at them.
+
+"Oh, damn," he said; "we've been spotted."
+
+The shell burst short of them.
+
+There was a space of about two hundred yards that would obviously be
+shell swept, and the road offered not the slightest cover. Two hundred
+yards ahead there appeared to be a good stout bank, which would shield
+them very effectually. The only thing to be done was to rush on as fast
+as they could, and thus suffer as few casualties as possible.
+
+The men, however, did not quite realise the situation. By long training
+and a great deal of actual experience they had learned that the best
+thing to do when you are under fire is to tear for the nearest cover,
+and, failing that, flop down on your faces where you stand, and take
+your chance. As a general rule this proved sound enough, but in this
+especial case it was obvious to the Officers that the longer they
+delayed, the heavier would be the casualty list, a fact which the men
+did not understand. The British soldier is a sportsman, and understands
+the game as well as his Officer. He only wants to be led; and in battle,
+scarcely that. Driving is an Art absolutely unknown in the British Army.
+
+In the stress of the tense moments that followed, the Subaltern owned to
+himself that as a driver he was not much good. The German artillery had
+got their range to a yard, and it was very trying to have to stand up in
+the open and spend precious seconds in urging on men who ought to have
+known better. He was strongly tempted to run for it, but a sense of duty
+prevailed, and he stayed there dashing about in a futile effort to speed
+matters up. He shouted, he shrieked, he swore, he has a dim recollection
+of even kicking at his men in the effort to get on out of the terrible
+danger zone. But perhaps to his overwrought nerves the delay seemed
+longer than perhaps it really was, or perhaps force of numbers from
+behind succeeded where he had failed; anyhow, he got his Platoon into
+safety, and only sustained the loss of five or six men.
+
+His Platoon Sergeant behaved with an intrepid bravery that gave him a
+moral right to the Victoria Cross. He stayed in the fire-swept area to
+carry two wounded men into safety, and tended several others as they
+lay. He received no recognition--but those who were near him will never
+forget.
+
+The bank reached, safety was achieved for the moment, at any rate. They
+pushed on for another half-mile or so, and were then halted under cover
+of the bank. They had not long to wait before the purpose of the whole
+manoeuvre was revealed to them. In their capacity of Local Reserve
+they had been hurried to the point of the line where the next attack in
+force was expected.
+
+The whole thing was ridiculous in its mechanical exactitude. In about
+five minutes the artillery bombardment died down. Hard upon its heels
+arose a most lively rifle-fire, which showed clearly enough that the
+preparatory bombardment was over, and the real attack about to begin.
+Higher and higher rose the note struck by the rifle-fire, as the contest
+thickened. Never had they heard such intensity of concentration before.
+Now up, now down, it rocked on in one sweeping, continuous note for
+nearly half-an-hour. Then it died down, almost to silence. The attack
+had failed, and the Local Reserve would not be needed.
+
+It does not require much imagination to picture the state of mind of the
+men in reserve--cowering behind the bank. They could almost see the
+whole thing--the grey dots crawling over the crest of the hill, the
+shots that announced their detection, the uprising of them in a solid
+mass, sweeping towards the trenches; the withering fire, reaping in its
+victims like a scythe. They were wondering every second of the time,
+"How far have the Germans got? Have they pushed us out?" But no order
+came to advance to re-capture the trenches, so they presumed all was
+well.
+
+As the crossing of the open ground had been so rough, they were allowed
+to postpone their return journey until it was dark. But even then they
+were not safe.
+
+The Colonel led the Battalion a clear two hundred yards away from the
+road. The darkness was so intense that they could not be seen, but in
+the silence of the night they were sure to be heard, and, on hearing
+them, the Germans would certainly plaster the road with shells in the
+hope of "getting" them as they returned.
+
+The Colonel was right. The German observation-posts must have heard
+them, for the old, familiar whizz came whistling through the darkness.
+The first shells seemed incredibly long in the air. One's heart was in
+one's mouth, as one listened to hear if they were going "to fall short,"
+or "go over." Then the crash came, in front, on the road, and they knew
+that the Colonel had saved them once more. Even as it was, their Company
+Quartermaster-Sergeant was hit in the foot.
+
+The shelling in the darkness must have affected the nerves of the
+leading Company. They struck out at a tremendous pace. The Subaltern
+was dropping further and further behind. He could not keep up, and the
+prospect of losing touch in the darkness was extremely serious.
+
+At last the canal bridge was reached and the bombardment ceased, but
+instead of being allowed to turn in towards Poussey, they were told to
+relieve the other two companies in the trenches.
+
+They found the line, and "took over" the trenches without mishap. Of
+course, in those days trenches were not built as they were later. To
+begin with, the men had no tools, except their "entrenching implements,"
+so naturally the work could not be very elaborate. Moreover, the thought
+that such works would be wanted for longer than a day or two never
+entered their heads. Each man dug a shelter for himself, according to
+his skill, ingenuity and perseverance. There was little or no attempt at
+digging a long, consecutive trench. A series of holes had been dug, that
+was all.
+
+The monotony of the night was broken by the arrival and distribution of
+rations. An hour or so after this had been accomplished the east began
+to grow grey, and they were soon able to take stock of their
+surroundings.
+
+The trenches, or rather holes, were dug on the side of the road. Behind
+them the ground sloped straight down to the canal. They could not
+actually see the enemy trenches; and there was no attempt made by either
+side to "snipe."
+
+The first day of trench life--if such it could be called--was not a
+very trying experience. There was nothing to do except a little
+improvement of the shelters. Their only duty was to "wait and see." It
+was not cold, and they had their rations. The Subaltern dug, and slept,
+and ate, and then dug again, and thus the day passed. Indeed, he even
+began to write a long letter home in his notebook, but he lost the pages
+almost as soon as they were written.
+
+They were shelled twice during the day, but all one had to do was to lie
+comfortably in one's "funk hole" and wait for the "hate" to die down.
+After many experiences in the open, without a particle of cover, being
+shelled in deep holes had few terrors.
+
+"Of course," he said to himself, "if they get a direct hit on this hole
+I'm done for, but otherwise I'm pretty safe."
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of the holes, several men were carried away.
+
+The greatest inconvenience to the place was the stench of decaying
+horses. About twenty yards down the hill the horses belonging to a whole
+Battery had been struck by a shell. About a dozen of them lay dead where
+they had been standing. The story had been told of how one of the
+Subalterns of the other Company had left his hole, rifle in hand, in the
+middle of a bombardment, to put the wounded animals out of their agony.
+He had succeeded in shooting them all, but on his way back had been
+struck in the foot with a piece of shell casing. It was an heroic,
+kindly act, typical of the brave man who did it. But it seemed a
+pity....
+
+It was, of course, impossible to bury the dead animals, and to drag them
+further away was out of the question in the daylight. There was nothing
+else to do but to sit tight and endure in silence.
+
+Their second night in the trenches was merely a repetition of the first.
+After a lively sunset fusillade had died down, the Germans lay quiet
+until dawn. The German artillery were so regular in their habits that it
+almost seemed as though they must be working by a printed programme,
+which directed that at six o'clock precisely in the morning, every
+battery was to fire off a certain number of rounds, absolutely
+regardless of whatever targets they might have been offered, and, having
+fired the requisite number of rounds, the battery was to lie quiet
+until, say, eleven o'clock. Of course, the thing was ludicrous, but it
+seemed to be the only explanation.
+
+A mail was included in the rations. He himself drew blank, but the
+Senior Subaltern was sent a box of chocolates. The sight of them, on
+Active Service, was a farce. They were not the usual sort of chocolates
+that one saw--"plain," useful, nourishing chocolates. They were frankly
+fancy chocolates, creams with sugared tops, filled with nuts, marzipan,
+or jellies, inseparable from a drawing-room, and therefore ten times
+more acceptable and delightful.
+
+He got not a single letter from home, not from any one. Not that he
+minded much, at that time. Home, parents--any softness of any
+description--would have seemed unreal.
+
+The happiness of the following day was very much impaired by rain, which
+fell intermittently throughout the whole day. After the first shower he
+got up and began to look about him for some sort of protection. Rather
+than have nothing, he picked up a waterproof sheet that had belonged to
+a wounded man. It was covered with blood, but the next shower soon
+washed all trace of it off, and it kept him dry.
+
+The next night, just after rations had been distributed, an order came
+to march off. Haste, it seemed, was imperative. And so, leaving behind
+as few things as possible, he paraded his men, without knowing where
+they were to go, and saw them set off behind the front Platoon. Just as
+he was about to set off himself, he slipped down the side of one of the
+holes, and as he fled, his sword slid from its scabbard, and vanished.
+He knew the chances of returning to that particular spot were five to
+one against, and he was determined to "hang on" to his sword, come what
+might, so he let his Platoon go on, while he groped about in the
+darkness for it. It seemed incredible that a sword could hide itself so
+completely. He kicked about in the pitch-dark for what seemed to be
+endless minutes before his foot knocked against it. He "pushed it home"
+hurriedly, and started off in pursuit of the men.
+
+But the darkness had swallowed them up. He followed the road right into
+Poussey, but still there was no sign of them. No troops, he learned, had
+passed through since the previous morning. Evidently they had not gone
+that way. The only alternative was the "awkward" road over the canal
+bridge which led into the next village on the line--Souvir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+IN RESERVE AT SOUVIR
+
+
+He hurried on, for morning would break in half-an-hour, and he did not
+wish to be caught in that unwholesome hundred yards the other side of
+the canal bridge. He overtook his men sooner than he expected, and the
+open space was passed without any resistance.
+
+"They're probably expecting a big attack at dawn, and they've brought us
+up in reserve again," some one said.
+
+Sure enough, the attack took place, but, like its predecessor, it
+failed, and they naturally expected to be sent back to the trenches at
+Poussey. In this, however, they were disappointed. Dawn having broken,
+it was apparently thought to be needlessly imprudent to make the
+Battalion run the gauntlet once again. So they were allowed to stay
+where they were, with the caution that they were to be ready to move
+within five minutes of the Colonel's receipt of the order. It may sound
+a long time, but only a smart and efficient Battalion can do it. The
+Adjutant has to open and acquaint the C.O. of the order. He has to rap
+out his own orders. Sleeping men have to be roused, equipment thrown
+on, arms taken up. The men have to "fall in" in their right sections;
+have to be numbered, have to form fours. If there is any muddle
+whatever, a Battalion cannot move off in five minutes.
+
+They slept propped up against the bank for some hours; then they were
+moved further up the road into the little village of Souvir. It appeared
+that their new role was to act as Local Reserve, and that they could
+amuse themselves how they liked as long as they were prepared "to move
+off at fifteen minutes' notice."
+
+The men broke into two big barns and made themselves tolerably
+comfortable. They lit little fires in the road and began to cook their
+breakfasts. The Officers of the Company billeted themselves on the hovel
+nearest the barns and set about the same object.
+
+"I think," mused the Senior Subaltern, "that it would be an excellent
+idea if some of us went on a foraging expedition. I should not be at all
+surprised if we did not have to stop here for weeks. And there may be
+one or two things to be picked up--before the others."
+
+So two of them went off on a tour of inspection. Noticing bee-hives
+outside the house of the village priest, they went in and bought two
+large jars of liquid honey. An estaminet yielded a couple of bottles of
+Medoc, and a patisserie, most unexpectedly, some bread.
+
+Having successfully settled their business, there was time to look
+around. Souvir was a bigger village than Poussey, and seemed to be
+teeming with troops, who looked as if they had been used to the place
+for years, and were likely to remain in it longer. The first object of
+interest was the church, which had been turned into a hospital for
+Germans, many of whom were sitting about on benches in the stone-flagged
+courtyard. The two Officers went in to have a closer look at them. The
+majority were so greyish pale, their hair such unlovely stubble, their
+temples so shrunken that the Subaltern pitied them in their morose
+dejection and slow-witted taciturnity.
+
+"I don't think we'd better go into the church," he said. "They'd
+probably throw us out."
+
+They passed through an archway in a huge medieval wall into the
+graveyard, and thence, by a sudden and complete transformation in time,
+colour and atmosphere, into a most delightful garden of magnificent
+proportions, with smooth lawns and sweeping drives. The chateau itself
+was scarcely in keeping with this stateliness. The impression it gave
+one came as an anti-climax. The Subaltern was beginning to develop a
+fine taste in French chateaux, but somehow this one did not rank with
+the others, although his brain reeled at the thought of the cost of it
+all. Probably that is why it failed as a work of art and beauty: it made
+one wonder how much it must have cost.
+
+A passer-by told them that it belonged to a certain woman whose name had
+been on everybody's lips, just before the war, and the information
+stimulated their interest. They wandered around, past silent fountains
+and over velvet lawns, stone terraces and gravel drives. On their way
+back they passed one of the big bay windows on the ground floor of the
+chateau. It was open, and they caught the faint but distinctive aroma of
+disinfectant. The erstwhile billiard-room had obviously been converted
+into a hospital dressing-room. The place was deserted, and they turned
+away without the intuition entering into either of their heads that they
+themselves would before long be carried into that very room.
+
+Souvir was apparently their headquarters for the time being, for if they
+moved away by day or night, they always marched back into it. And as,
+day by day, they saw the same sights and did the same things, the
+passage of time did not leave such exact impressions on his mind as the
+changing sights and actions of the moving battles had done.
+
+Compared with the days that had gone before they were divinely
+comfortable. Unless there was an alarm, they could sleep as long as they
+liked. There was not sufficient accommodation in the little hut, so the
+Officers commandeered a little shed at the side of it. Here there was
+plenty of straw, and for several mornings they lay dozing until eight or
+nine o'clock.
+
+The men were quite happy in their barns, and would not begin to stir
+before seven o'clock. Then they would hear in their sleep confused
+sounds of tramping feet and shouts in the road outside.
+
+The voice of the Quartermaster-Sergeant, distributing the rations, was
+always the most insistent.
+
+"'_Ere_, who's 'ad that there tea?"
+
+"Fourty-two Smith took it down the street, Cooler Sawgint."
+
+(When there is more than one man of the same name in a Battalion, the
+last two figures of his regimental number, are, as it were, hyphenated
+on to it. Brown's number was, say, 1965, so to prevent mistakes he was
+always '65 Brown, to distinguish him from all the other Browns.)
+
+"Where's the Orderly Cor'pril of No. 5 Platoon?"
+
+"Comin', Cooler Sawgint!"
+
+Then another voice raised in pained expostulation--
+
+"'_Ere_, look at '_im_--a hackin' up the bacon. Who d'ju think's comin'
+after you?"
+
+"Go and see why there ain't no rum, Watkins!"
+
+"There ain't '_arf_ enough sugar for all them!"
+
+"'And over my firewood, will ye, or I'll ...!"
+
+And so on, and so forth. It was the tune to which they finally awoke
+every morning.
+
+When it was impossible to maintain the pretence of being asleep any
+longer, they would get up and shake themselves. They had passed the
+stage of wanting to take clothes off. Their uprising in the morning was
+as easy and simple as a dog's. Then, aided, perhaps, by one of their
+servants, they would set about getting their breakfast ready in the
+front room. The Subaltern discovered what a tremendous amount of trouble
+is entailed in the preparation of even the simplest meals. Tables to be
+moved, kettles to be filled, bread cut, jam and bully beef tins opened!
+But each would have his own particular job, and they would soon be
+seated round the dirty table, drinking their tea out of cups, or their
+own mugs, and munching biscuits or bread.
+
+Now that they were getting their rations each night with the regularity
+of clockwork, they were beginning to appreciate properly the excellence
+of their fare. "Seeing," as the Senior Subaltern would say, "that we are
+on Active Service, I think the rations is an extraordinarily well
+managed show."
+
+The quality was good, and there was plenty of it. Personally, the
+Subaltern never succeeded in getting on very good terms with the "bully
+beef." He decided that it was "a bit too strong" for him; but the others
+devoured large quantities, and seemed all the better for it.
+
+The jam, at that time, and in that particular sector of the line, was
+good and, moreover, varied. The Subaltern does not ever remember
+suffering from the now notorious "plum and apple." There was even
+marmalade.
+
+He openly delighted in the biscuits, and would go about his work all day
+munching them. The bacon, too, as some one said, was "better than what
+we have in the Mess, sometimes." None of them posed as connoisseurs of
+rum, but a Sergeant, who looked as if he knew what he was talking about,
+praised it heartily; and, taken in hot tea, it banished all sorts of
+cares....
+
+Tea (without rum) and bacon, to be followed by ration bread and
+marmalade (if possible) was the staple fare at breakfast. They would sit
+around the fire and smoke--there was a tobacco allowance included in the
+rations. The Subaltern, however, had lost his pipe, and attempts at
+cigarette rolling were not particularly successful.
+
+Every other day there used to be a mail, and with it, generally, papers
+from home. This was the first definite news they had had from "home"
+since leaving in mid-August. There was an enthralling interest in seeing
+how the people at home "were taking things."
+
+To be perfectly candid, before the war, the Army had placed very little
+reliance upon the patriotism or integrity of the country. The Army was a
+thing apart--detached from the swirl of conflicting ideas, and the
+eddies of political strife. The Army was, so to speak, on the bank, and
+it looked with stern disapproval at the river sweeping so swiftly by. It
+neither understood the forces that were hurrying the waters along, nor
+did it realise the goal that they were striving to reach. Perhaps it did
+not take the trouble, perhaps it could not.
+
+Then, when the war clouds began to blacken the horizon, the Army, having
+so little sympathy with the vast and complex civilisation which it was
+to defend, felt convinced that the national feelings and political sense
+of the nation would be slumbering so soundly that no call of honour
+could awaken it to the realisation of either its duty or its danger. But
+the horse which all the expert trainers had dismissed as a
+"non-starter" for the next great race, suddenly gathered his haunches
+under him, and shot out on the long track to victory. The Army, with the
+rest of the world, realised that, after all, the heart of the nation was
+in the right place. Nevertheless, the tremendous wave of patriotism that
+had swept so splendidly over Britain caused, at first, not a little
+suspense.
+
+"Good Heavens! he's asking for a million men," gasped the Subaltern.
+
+"Well, if he doesn't get them, this Company will go over and fight for
+Germany," said the Captain. "The country isn't worth fighting for if it
+can't raise a million men."
+
+"The Government seem to be doing jolly well," some one volunteered.
+
+"And so they darn well ought," said the Senior Subaltern. "But you wait
+and see. If something wonderful does not happen in about six months'
+time, all sorts of fools will be up on their hind legs, shouting out how
+the show, as they would do it, should be run."
+
+As events turned out, the Senior Subaltern was not far wrong.
+
+At this time, too, the country was thrilled with its first feeling of
+pride in the Army since Waterloo. The dramatic rush of events--Mons, the
+Retreat, the dramatic rally when all seemed lost, and the splendid
+victory of the Marne, the continued advance, the deadlock on the
+Aisne--people were gasping at the magnificence of the success. They
+realised that the swift and sudden victory which Germany had counted on
+had been frustrated, and that owing to the French and the "contemptible
+little Army" eventual victory had been assured.
+
+Every one who had the ear of the "public" was raining praise upon this
+contemptible little Army, and the contemptible little Army was
+surprised; but although they classified the eloquent speeches and
+dashing articles under the sweeping phrase of "hot air," these things
+pleased them a good deal, although they never have admitted it. The
+country, it appeared, had learned to appreciate them--a little late, it
+is true; still, in the volatile imagination of the public, they had
+arrived. They were quietly pleased, and awoke to the realisation of what
+fine fellows they were.
+
+"No more of the 'expensive, idle loafer' talk," said some one.
+
+It was the vindication of the British Army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+TO STRAIGHTEN THE LINE
+
+
+Later in the morning there would probably be an inspection of arms. They
+had always to be very careful that the rifles were in proper working
+order. A few stiff bolts at a critical moment might make all the
+difference.
+
+The next function would be dinner. This generally consisted of bully
+beef made into a sort of stew, and some potatoes, stolen from a field
+near by. It must be confessed that the stews were not a great success,
+and the Subaltern conceived a violent dislike to them. The sudden change
+from "the move" to "reserve" perhaps upset his system. He confessed to
+not "feeling very fit." The others, however, all seemed to have
+insatiable appetites for food and sleep. Instead of marching twenty
+miles a day on one or two meals, they now had their rations regularly
+and got very little exercise. They slept as if sleeping sickness was
+laying its hold upon them, and when not sleeping they were eating.
+
+The wine store had not yet been exhausted in the village, and very often
+they had a bottle with their suppers. The honey in the two jars seemed
+inexhaustible--indeed, everybody grew tired of it in time; and in the
+end the remnants were presented to another Company. The patisserie
+continued to yield new bread, and they ate such quantities of it, still
+hot from the oven, that many of them got "livers." They were notoriously
+the first Company when it came to "looking after themselves." "Which,"
+as the Senior Subaltern said, "shows sense."
+
+Once, when they had just finished their midday meal, the usual order "to
+stand to arms" came through, and they were hurried along the road that
+ran parallel to the river, towards Soissons. The march was longer than
+usual, and they were just beginning to entertain hopes that the deadlock
+had been broken and that they were once more on the advance, when an
+abrupt halt was called, and they were ordered to throw themselves
+hastily behind the bank along the roadside.
+
+They could see nothing, neither friend nor foe. The only sound of firing
+was miles and miles down the line, in the direction of Poussey. The
+Subaltern's Platoon happened to be the second in the leading Company.
+Already there was movement in front, and, crawling forward to the end of
+the line, he climbed up the bank to take stock of the position. To the
+north was a little copse, the intervening ground a vegetable field.
+Further off, to the east, there was a big hill, crowned with a
+dense-looking forest which, as far as he could see, was deserted.
+
+The Colonel, who was not to be deceived by a new appearance of quietude,
+had somehow made his way to the little copse, and was examining the
+hill with his glasses. The Adjutant, who had followed him, presently
+rose to his feet.
+
+"Bring ... your ... men ... over ... carefully ... in ... extended ...
+order!"
+
+The words floated across on the wind.
+
+Feeling that he would like to see his men all safely across before he
+left any of them, the Subaltern motioned to the Sergeant to lead them,
+and they set off in a long, dotted and irregular line towards the
+thicket.
+
+"Hurry ... them ... up. Hurry!" shouted the Adjutant.
+
+And just as the last man had left the bank, and he had started himself,
+he realised what the Adjutant meant.
+
+"Phwhizz ... phwizz ... phwizz."
+
+Like malignant wasps the bullets hummed past him. There was a regularity
+in the discharge and a similarity in the aim that left him no chance to
+doubt that a machine-gun had been turned on them.
+
+"I was a bit of a fool not to have gone first," he said to himself.
+
+But the bullets hummed harmlessly by his head and shoulders, and the
+thought that struck him most forcibly, as he plunged through the
+cabbages, was the impossibility of realising the consequences if any one
+of them had been a few inches nearer his head. It momentarily occurred
+to him to lie down and crawl through the cabbages, trusting to luck that
+the machine-gun would lose him; but, of course, the only thing was to
+run for it, and so he ploughed along. Whether the journey occupied more
+than a minute or not he is unable to say, but it seemed an incredible
+lapse of time before he reached the copse--and safety.
+
+"We shall have some artillery turned on to us in a minute," said the
+Colonel; "we had better get on with the operation."
+
+They debouched from the copse in open order, and advanced in the usual
+lines of platoons, to attack the hill.
+
+The Subaltern loosened his sword in his scabbard, so that when the time
+came he could draw it more easily. He had already picked up a rifle from
+some unfortunate.
+
+There seemed to be a certainty of a hand-to-hand fight. He did not feel
+at all eager to kill; on the other hand, he scarcely felt afraid. He
+just felt as if he grudged the passing of the yards under his feet which
+separated him from the edge of the wood. The idea of being "stuck"
+himself never occurred to him.
+
+The bullets flew about rather thickly for the first few minutes, but no
+harm was done, and then the enemy's resistance seemed to die down. There
+was complete silence for several minutes as our men plodded steadily on.
+Then, away on the right, the Colonel's whistle sounded, and a halt was
+called.
+
+The enemy had taken fright and had retired, machine-guns and all, before
+their advance.
+
+This little affair, although too small to figure in the communiques at
+home, was a great personal triumph for the Colonel. The enemy, having
+broken through the line and pushed his way almost to the banks of the
+river, had been driven back and the line straightened out, without, as
+far as the Subaltern could see, any loss whatever.
+
+They were not allowed to follow up this easy success, and consequently
+the enemy was still left in possession of a small salient. The
+Subaltern's own Company was then sent to prolong the right of the
+Battalion, and to get in touch with the "people" on the right.
+
+This was eventually done; the "people" proving to be a regiment of
+cavalry, employed as infantry.
+
+In this particular part of the line the situation was, to say the least
+of it, a little muddled. The cavalry did not seem to be altogether at
+home in their new role. Their trenches seemed too small and detached.
+The front was covered with copses, which were continually changing
+hands. The whole line seemed to be dangerously weak, and the facilities
+for communication too precarious. The Subaltern regarded the whole
+affair as a sort of nightmare, and prayed fervently that they would not
+be made to stop permanently in that quarter.
+
+It appeared that they had been told off to hold in check the side of the
+salient. They took up their position along the edge of a wood, three or
+four yards in it.
+
+"We'll be shelled in about twenty minutes, so dig all you know," said
+the Captain.
+
+How they dug can be easily understood. They had only their entrenching
+implements, but in ten minutes most of them had very fair "lying down"
+cover. Ten minutes was all they were allowed. There was no artillery
+fire by the end of that time, but the bullets began to whizz past, or
+flatten themselves in the tree trunks. It was rather hard to see
+precisely what was happening. Black dots emerged from the wood, and
+quickly flitted back again. The enemy seemed rather half-hearted.
+
+When the attack, if attack it could really be called, had subsided, a
+Sergeant got up from somewhere down the line, and continued work on his
+hole. There was a whizz overhead, and he dropped back abruptly. The
+Subaltern thought that he had realised the danger and had naturally
+bobbed down for safety, but word was passed up "to keep down, as
+Sergeant Simkins had been shot dead--through the heart." He never
+uttered a sound, and must have met his death instantly.
+
+Work was continued, but with the utmost caution. Meanwhile the afternoon
+was drawing rapidly to a close, and the prospect of holding such a
+position appalled the Subaltern when he thought of it. The Sergeant had
+been killed by enfilade fire. It was quite obvious that their line was
+thrown out, as it were, between the two general lines. Consequently they
+were enfiladed by the enemy, threatened very seriously on their front,
+on account of the proximity of the copses, and if forced to retire there
+was absolute certainty of being mown down by their own cavalry. The
+Senior Subaltern succeeded in clearing one copse, after firing a few
+shots and making a bold advance, but had not sufficient men to retain
+it. Then, just as darkness was closing down on the hopeless tangle, a
+message was passed up to "close on the road."
+
+The relief at this order was impossible to describe. Their spirits rose
+meteorically. They scarcely succeeded in hiding their joy from the
+cavalry who were to be left in their trenches, and when they set off
+towards Poussey there was a wonderful swing in their step.
+
+In an hour's time they were back in their old billets, and the Officers
+opened a bottle of wine, on the strength, as some one said, of getting
+out of an "extraordinarily awkward position."
+
+"Well," said the Captain, with a half-full tumbler in his hand, "here's
+hoping that our wonderful luck keeps in."
+
+They drank in silence, and soon after adjourned to the outhouse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE JAWS OF DEATH
+
+
+The next morning they learned that their turn of duty as Local Reserve
+was over, and that they were "to take over" a line of trenches that
+evening. The Captain went alone to be shown round in the morning.
+
+They wrote letters all morning, had an early dinner, and retired early
+to the outhouse to put in a few hours sound sleep in anticipation of
+several "trying" nights.
+
+At about five o'clock they awoke, and found that the Captain had
+returned in the meantime. He explained the position to them as they
+drank their tea.
+
+"The trenches are just in the edge of a wood," he said. "It is
+extraordinarily thick. It would be absolutely impossible to retire. The
+field of fire is perfect. The skyline is only two hundred yards away,
+and there wouldn't be an inch of cover for them, except a few dead
+cows."
+
+"I shouldn't think dead cows were bullet-proof, should you?" asked the
+Senior Subaltern.
+
+"There's one thing you will have to watch. There are any amount of spies
+about, and they let the Germans know, somehow, when the reliefs are
+coming up the road, and then the road gets searched. They don't know
+exactly where you are, you see. They have the road on the map, and
+plaster it on the off chance. If you see a shell burst on the road, the
+only thing to do is to get clear of it. Give it about forty yards'
+grace, and you will be safe enough."
+
+Soon after they set out along a road that they had never travelled
+before, leading directly up the hill in front of Souvir. About half-way
+up, they almost stumbled into the holes that the German shells had eaten
+deep into the road. Evidently, however, the spies in Souvir had not
+succeeded in informing the enemy of their approach. There was perfect
+quietness.
+
+It was a stiff hill to climb, and they halted alongside of a battery of
+artillery to take breath. There was a deep cave in the rock, which the
+gunners had turned into a very comfortable "dug-out." The Subaltern
+envied them very sincerely. He felt he would have given anything to have
+been a "gunner." They had such comfortable dug-outs--horses to
+ride--carriages to keep coats and things in. Above all, there could not
+be that terrible strain of waiting--waiting.
+
+The road curled sharply round the rock precipice, and plunged into a
+thick forest. A guide had met them, and absolute silence was ordered.
+They had breasted the rise, and were nearing the trenches. The road had
+ceased abruptly, and the paths that they had laboured along were
+nothing but narrow canals of mud. Here and there a few broken trees and
+mangled branches showed where a shell had burst.
+
+Hands were held up silently in front. A halt was ordered for a few
+minutes, while the leading Platoon moved along into its allotted
+trenches. They had arrived.
+
+Nothing warned the Subaltern, when at length he was shown the line for
+his own Platoon, that this night was to be any different from any of the
+other nights he had spent in the face of the enemy.
+
+It was not, strictly speaking, a line of trenches at all. As usual, each
+man had dug a hole by himself, and each man was his own architect. Very
+few holes had been connected by a rough sort of trench at the back. The
+Captain had described the topography of the situation very exactly. The
+holes were dug on the borders of the forest, but were concealed from
+enemy artillery observation by the trees. The field of fire was
+absolutely open. It stretched to the top of the hill, which formed their
+horizon, a distance of rather less than two hundred yards. It was smooth
+grass, and it struck the Subaltern as being exceptionally green. A few
+dead cows, in the usual grotesque attitudes of animals in death, were
+scattered over the green grass.
+
+He selected his hole, and then began to take careful stock of his
+surroundings. The fact that he could see no sign of the opposite
+trenches perhaps lulled him into a sense of false security. Anyway,
+after having disposed of his haversack, and the sacks he had brought up
+with him, he got up from his hole, and began to walk along behind the
+holes. On the extreme left he found his Sergeant.
+
+"Well, this looks a pretty safe position," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir. I've just had a shot at a man's head that I thought I saw out
+there. I can't say whether or no I shot him. He disappeared quick
+enough. I should put the range at two hundred and fifty, sir."
+
+"I wonder what is on our left, here?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know, sir. I haven't had time to look."
+
+"I think I had better go and find out for myself."
+
+He set off, pursuing his way through the thick undergrowth and trees. It
+was longer than he thought. But all was still quiet, so the thought of
+being "spotted" in the open did not occur to him.
+
+He found the edge of the next trench. It was thrown forward in front of
+the wood. After making the usual arrangements that are vaguely called
+"establishing touch," he turned back out of the shelter of the parapet,
+over the dangerous ground.
+
+Twilight was deepening every second. He did not run; and he only
+hurried, because he wanted to get really established in his "funk hole"
+before it grew too dark to see what he was doing.
+
+Then, almost simultaneously, the enemy and the regiment in the trenches
+opened fire. He stopped short, and turned round to watch. He could see
+nothing but thin red spurts of fire in the grey twilight. He turned
+quickly on his heel, meaning to reach his own men before the attack
+should develop on their front, where, as yet, all was quiet.
+
+He almost reached the end of his trenches....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a crisp crash, a blinding light flew up like a circular sunset
+around him, a dreadful twinge, as of hair and skin and skull being
+jerked from his head with the strength of a giant! For the millionth
+part of a second he was at a loss to understand what had happened. Then,
+with sickening horror, he realised that he had been shot in the head.
+
+It is impossible to convey with what speed impressions rushed through
+his mind.
+
+The flaring horizon tilted suddenly from horizontal nearly to
+perpendicular. His head rushed through half a world of black,
+fury-space. His toes and finger-tips were infinite miles behind. A sound
+of rushing waters filled his ears, like deathly waterfalls stamping the
+life from his bursting head. Black blurred figures, nebulous and
+meaningless, loomed up before his face.
+
+"Hit in the head--you're done for."
+
+"Hit in the head--you're done for."
+
+The inadequate thought chased through his brain.
+
+"What a pity, what a shame; you might have been so happy, later on."
+
+"What a pity, what a shame; you might have been so happy later on."
+
+He was conscious that it was a foolishly futile thought at a supreme
+moment.
+
+His life seemed pouring out of his head, his vitality was running down
+as a motor engine, suddenly cut off. He felt death descending upon him
+with appalling swiftness. Where would the world go to? And what next?
+
+He was afraid.
+
+Then, with a tremendous effort he turned his thoughts on God, and waited
+for death.
+
+He was swimming in that black fury-sea that was neither wet nor
+clinging. He was made of lead in a universe that weighed nothing. He was
+sinking, sinking. In vain he struggled. The dark, dry waters closed over
+him....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still the waterfalls pounded in his ears, and still the dry waves reeled
+before his eyes, and under his head a pool, sticky and warm.
+
+What was that? This time surely something tangible and real moving
+towards him. With a supreme effort he tried to jerk his body into
+moving. His left leg moved. It moved wearily; but still it moved. His
+left arm too.
+
+What was this?
+
+The right arm and leg were gone, gone.
+
+The rest of him was flabbergasted at the horror of the discovery.
+
+No, not gone! They were there. But they would not move. He could not
+even _try_ to move them. He could not so much as _feel_ them.
+
+Then he awoke to the horror of the thing.
+
+His right side was dead!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The shape was really alive. It resolved itself into a man crawling in
+the darkness to his rescue.
+
+"You need not bother about me, I'm done for. Get back into the trench."
+
+He had a feeling that though he meant his lips to frame these words, he
+was in reality saying something quite different. It was an exhausting
+effort to speak.
+
+The form asked him questions in a fierce whisper. He had not the
+strength to understand or answer.
+
+Very slowly and cautiously he was dragged over the few yards of ground
+that separated him from the first hole.
+
+It was awful. His brain conceived the thought: "For God's sake let me
+die in peace." But his lips were all twisted, and refused to move at the
+bidding of his brain. He could only groan.
+
+With wonderful gentleness the man placed his Officer's broken head over
+the hole, and with the help of another man lowered him into it.
+
+His next thought was: "Well, they can only hit my feet, now!" There had
+not been room in the hole for all of him, so his feet had been left
+protruding out of it. The thought fanned some smouldering ember of
+humour in him. A moment later he discovered with a thrill--
+
+"I'm going to live, I'm going to live. I _will_ live!"
+
+The discovery, and the resolution which followed, by no means excited
+him. He arrived quite quietly at the conclusion. And set his mind to
+await the development of the next event.
+
+The man who had dragged him in now tied the "first field dressing" over
+his head, and fastened the strings beneath his chin. Interminable ages
+passed slowly by, and yet the Doctor did not come. He regarded the
+arrival of the Doctor, like the coming of the Last Day, as the end of
+all difficulties, and the solution of many mysteries.
+
+Needless to say he was disappointed. The Doctor could naturally do
+little or nothing for him. With the aid of a match or two he "had a
+look," replaced the dressing by some bandages, and moved him about a
+little to ease his position. To carry him away that night, said the
+Doctor, was absolutely impossible. And with that he went away.
+
+The Senior Subaltern, who had come up with him, stayed a little longer,
+and earned his eternal gratitude. He made further efforts to straighten
+him out, assured him that the effects of the shock would wear off by
+morning, and that he would once more be able to move. He collected a few
+extra blankets and coats and spread them over him, for he was growing
+terribly cold. Then with cheery words on his lips he left him.
+
+Left alone in the silence of the night, the Subaltern felt the horror of
+the situation take hold of him. He was alone with his pain and his
+paralysis. There was no hope of alleviation until morning. What time was
+it then? he asked himself. Seven, at the latest. That meant eight long
+hours of agony, before anything _happened_! That is what the wounded
+love and long for--something to happen--something to distract the
+attention from the slow, insistent pain--something to liven drooping
+spirits, and raise falling hopes.
+
+Slowly and surely he began to take stock of the situation. First of all
+came his head. The pain of the wound was an ache, a dull ache that
+sharpened into shooting pains if he moved. Still, he told himself that
+it might be worse. There was much worse pain in the world. It could not
+be called unbearable or excruciating.
+
+His spine seemed in some way twisted. It ached with an insistence and
+annoyance only second to the wound. All his most determined efforts to
+wriggle it straight failed lamentably. Indeed, he almost fancied that
+they made matters worse.
+
+As for the paralysed limbs, theirs was a negative trouble. He did not
+know where his right hand was. He had to grope about with his left hand
+under coats to find it. And when found, it was as if he had grasped
+somebody else's hand. The situation was weird, and in an uncanny way it
+amused and pleased him to take hold of the inert fingers. They were so
+soft and cold. The hand of a dead man, heavy, heavy--impossible to
+describe the dragging, inert weight of it.
+
+But what frightened him more than anything was his face. One side was
+drawn up, and was as impossible to move as the arm. The lower jaw seemed
+clamped to the upper, and it, too, ached. A horrible fear crept into his
+head.
+
+"Tetanus!"
+
+He recalled tales of the terrible end of those who were marked down by
+this terrible disease. How they died in awful agony, the spine bent
+backwards like a bridge!
+
+In spite of the coats, the cold seemed to eat into his very heart.
+
+He started the night bravely enough, and fought against his troubles
+until his nerve collapsed hopelessly. The night was too long: it was too
+much to bear. He groaned aloud in his agony, and discovered that it was
+an immense relief.
+
+The men near him began to open fire. If it were really an attack, it was
+soon beaten down, and he began to shriek at them for wasting precious
+ammunition that they might want when it was too late. He used words that
+he never even knew that he knew. Great bursts of anger, he found,
+distracted his attention from the pain, if only for a few moments. To
+this end he worked himself into such a transport that the bleeding
+re-commenced, and he was forced to cease, exhausted. In another hour
+his nervous downfall was completed. He began to cry.
+
+Each second of the interminable night dragged slowly by, as if it
+gloated over his pain. In the end it became too much for him and he
+fainted away, peacefully and thankfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE FIELD HOSPITAL
+
+
+When he came to, it was daylight, and two Stretcher Bearers were tugging
+at his feet. The weight of him seemed terrific, but eventually they
+hoisted him on to the stretcher.
+
+Some of his men gathered round, and told him that "they'd soon put him
+straight at the hospital."
+
+He smiled, rather wryly, but still he smiled, and mumbled: "Well, good
+luck, No. 5 Platoon."
+
+And so they carried him away, feet foremost.
+
+They plunged along the muddy paths. He was convulsed with fear that they
+would overturn him. And the jolting sent red-hot pains through his head,
+and twisted his back terribly.
+
+A Company came straggling up the path, led by no other than the Major,
+who had been his Company Commander at the beginning of the war.
+
+"Well, young feller, how are you? You'll be all right in a day or two."
+
+Reply was impossible for him, and the Major hurried on.
+
+The men who followed seemed shy of him. They looked at him covertly, and
+then turned their eyes quickly away, as if he were some horrible
+object. It annoyed him not a little.
+
+That journey was the most painful thing that happened to him. But each
+sickening jolt had the compensation of landing him a yard nearer the
+hospital, and the hope of easing his pains buoyed him up somehow.
+
+When they arrived at the Gunner's Cave, the Stretcher Bearers put him
+resolutely down, and intimated that it was not "up to them" to take him
+any further. The Ambulance, they said, ought to be there to "take over"
+from them. But there was no sign of an Ambulance, and meantime he was
+literally thirsting for the attentions and comforts of a hospital. His
+natural reserve broke completely down. He begged, and entreated, and
+prayed them to take him on.
+
+After a little hesitation, they set out once more with a little
+excusable cursing and grumbling.
+
+It was about seven o'clock when at last they laid him down in the hall
+of the hospital, and departed with unfeigned gladness.
+
+Two Hospital Orderlies carried him along a passage and into the
+identical billiard-room that he had seen from the garden.
+
+A Doctor undid the soiled bandages with quick, strong fingers, and bent
+down to examine the wound with an expression of concentrated ferocity on
+his face. An Orderly brought a bowl, and the Doctor began to wash the
+place.
+
+It was a painful business, but nothing to be compared to the pain
+produced by the "prober." They even tried to shave the hair from the
+affected spot. He bore it as long as he could. But it was too much. His
+left side shook and trembled. It was too terrible to begin to describe.
+
+"It's no good," he said, "it's more than you can expect any one to put
+up with. You'll have to stop it."
+
+So they tied his head up once more, and he was carried upstairs into a
+bedroom. They lifted him on to the bed, managed at length to divest him
+of his jacket, turned some clothes over him, and left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an hour a raging fever had taken hold of him.
+
+Only intermittently, during the next three or four days, did he so much
+as touch the world of realities. The only improvement was his face,
+which had to a great extent relaxed. Otherwise the pain and the
+paralysis were the same, and all the time the fever raged within him.
+
+Somehow, when he awoke from his horrible dreams it was always dark. And
+the remarkable thing was that the same nightmares seemed to haunt him
+with persistent regularity. Always he lay down upon a hillside--nebulous
+black, and furry. Always too, he had been "left," and the enemy was
+swooping quickly down upon him. He would wake up to find himself once
+more inert upon the bed, would curse himself for a fool, and vow that
+never again would he allow his mind to drift towards that terrible
+thought again.
+
+J.O. double F.R.E? What was it? A Name? Whose? When and Why? He would
+catch himself worrying about this many times. He would awake with a
+start, and realise that the solution was a perfectly easy matter. Then
+he would straightway fall asleep, to worry once again.
+
+There was a big vase on a table near the bedside. He took an implacable
+dislike to it, and longed to shatter it into atoms. "Horrible
+pretentious affair," he would mutter.
+
+When he awoke from his fever, he would always make frantic efforts to
+hang on to consciousness. To this end he would always call the Orderly,
+ask the time, demand water or Bovril--anything to keep him a little
+longer in touch with the world.
+
+Sometimes he would see bleared faces looking down upon him out of the
+dizzy greyness. He remembers being told that "the Colonel" was coming to
+see him. He never knew whether it was his own Colonel or some A.D.M.S.
+
+The thought did indeed come to him that he was going mad. But he had not
+the power to worry about the discovery, and insensibility would claim
+him once more before he could realise the terrors of insanity.
+
+All this time he lay on his back. It was impossible to move him, but he
+longed to lie comfortably on his side, as he had always been accustomed
+to do. He was sure he could sleep then--ordinary sound sleep, free from
+worry, phantomless, refreshing. How he longed for it!
+
+One evening a Doctor came to him and told him that they were going to
+move him away. The news was by no means a relief. He did not feel equal
+to the exertion of being carried about. He wanted to be allowed just to
+lie quietly where he was, and live or die, just as Fate decreed. For
+anything more, he had no energy; and the prospect of another journey
+appalled him.
+
+In the dead of night four silent Orderlies heaved him on to a stretcher,
+carried him downstairs, and out of the chateau. His stretcher was then
+slid into an ambulance, and he awaited impatiently the filling of the
+others.
+
+Another stretcher was slipped in by his side. It was too dark to see the
+man upon it, but he was apparently suffering from the last stages of
+thirst. He had been shot through the roof of the mouth and the throat,
+and could not swallow. He was dying of thirst and hunger. He begged and
+entreated them for water. He pleaded with them, tried to bribe them,
+tried to order them, tried to bully them. It was pitiable to hear a
+strong man brought so low. And if they gave him a drop of water in a
+teaspoon, he would cough and choke to such a degree that it was obvious
+that too frequent doses would be the end of him. He would gurgle, and
+moan, and pine. It was awful.
+
+They were journeying to the Clearing Hospital. The road, bad at the best
+of times, was now pitted with shell holes, and was truly abominable. "Is
+a country," he said to himself, "that will not allow its wounded
+pneumatic tyres to ride upon, worth fighting for?"
+
+They jolted on through the remaining part of the night. At dawn they
+were disembarked, and put to rest in a little farm-house, where they
+gave them soup and milk. But there were only mattresses thrown on a
+stone floor, and the pain in his spine was so acute that he almost
+forgot about his head.
+
+His companion on the journey was placed in the same room. At the
+beginning of the night he had pitied the poor fellow immensely. But his
+prayers and entreaties were too pitiful to bear. What he must have been
+suffering! It added an extra weight to his own burden. Thank God, he had
+never been very thirsty!
+
+"Just a little water! Just a drop. I won't swallow it. I won't! I swear
+before Heaven I won't! Just a teaspoonful! Please!... Oh! I'm dying of
+thirst.... Only a drop.... I won't swallow it this time.... There's five
+pounds in my pocket." He would gurgle and groan pitifully for a moment.
+Then in a voice, astoundingly loud, but thick with blood, he would
+shout, quaveringly: "Orderly, blast you, you ----, give me some water, or
+I'll--"
+
+Sad to say, there came a time when the Subaltern could bear it no
+longer. His own troubles and the entreaties of the other unnerved him.
+
+"Give him water! Chuck it at him! In a bucket!" he shouted in a frenzy.
+"Let the poor wretch die happy, anyway."
+
+The Corporal in charge came over to him.
+
+"You might get me some milk, Corporal," he said.
+
+"For you, sir?"
+
+"Oh no! You ----, to water the plants with, of course!"
+
+"I was only asking, sir."
+
+"All right, Corp'ral. Can't you see I'm a little upset this morning?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They carried him on to the Clearing Hospital in a motor Ambulance, and
+deposited him in the hall of a little estaminet that had been turned
+into an Officer's Hospital.
+
+A Doctor and Sister were conversing in low tones outside a closed door.
+
+"I'm afraid there are all the symptoms of enteric," she was saying.
+
+Neither of them took the slightest notice of him. But he was getting
+used to being carried about and never spoken to, like a piece of
+furniture. And the Sister entranced him. The Clearing Hospitals were the
+nearest places to the fighting-line that women could aspire to. He had
+not seen an English lady since leaving England. And her waist pleased
+him. Such few French peasant women had any waists at all. And her voice
+was higher-pitched; more intellectual, if less poetic.
+
+When the two of them had quite finished discussing their "case" she
+called for an Orderly, and without so much as looking at him, said,
+"Put that one in there," indicating another door. Another Orderly was
+fetched, and the painful business of hauling him off the stretcher on to
+a bed began once more.
+
+The novelty of his surroundings occupied his mind. The bed was soft, and
+his spine ceased to ache. A feeling almost akin to contentment stole
+over him, as they left him in the clean, cool bed. His companion without
+the throat had been put in another room. There was only one more bed in
+this one, and the occupant was sleeping peacefully.
+
+About four o'clock in the afternoon he heard the faint ring of spurred
+boots in the hall.
+
+"This is an Officer's Ward, sir," a voice was saying.
+
+The Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, followed by another Officer only
+less distinguished than himself, came slowly in.
+
+"Poor boys!" he said. "How are you getting on?"
+
+"All right, thank you, sir," he answered, smiling with pride.
+
+"Here's the latest news from England," added the great man, as he
+dropped a paper on the bed. The Subaltern's left hand almost shot out of
+bed to grasp it. He looked up just in time to see them disappearing
+through the doorway.
+
+He tried to read the paper, but the effort brought the very worst pains
+back again to his head, so he concealed it under the coverlet of the
+bed. He was determined to keep that paper. It was already growing dark,
+when the young Doctor of the Ward came to his bedside, smiling.
+
+"We are going to operate on you at eight o'clock," he said. "It will be
+all right. We'll soon put you straight."
+
+"Straight?" he echoed. "Yes, I dare say you will!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+OPERATION
+
+
+The news came as a distinct shock to him. He had not even entertained
+the possibility of undergoing an operation. Years ago he had had his
+adenoids removed, and the memory was by no means pleasant. All along he
+had told himself he would recover in time--that was all he wanted. To
+have an operation was, he thought, to run another and unnecessary risk.
+
+Later in the evening the Sister came in with a large phial, and injected
+the contents into his arm.
+
+"Morphine," she explained.
+
+In a moment or so he felt that he did not care what happened. The
+morphine made him gloriously drunk.
+
+"Sister," he confided. "I'm drunk. It isn't fair to go and kill a fellow
+when he's drunk, you know. It isn't playing the game. You ought to
+suspend hostilities till I'm sober!"
+
+He felt ridiculously proud of himself for these inanities.
+
+"I know you," he strutted with laughter. "After it's all over, you'll
+write home to my people and say, 'The operation was successfully
+performed, but the patient died soon afterwards!'"
+
+By this time they had stripped him of all but his shirt.
+
+"Where's my bier? Where's my bier? Is a gentleman to be kept waiting all
+night for his bier?" he exclaimed, with mock impatience.
+
+They lifted him on to a stretcher, and began to push it through the open
+window into the street.
+
+"Farewell, Ophelia!" he cried to the Sister, as his head disappeared.
+
+He was too drunk to feel afraid.
+
+They carried him into the room that had been turned into a theatre. He
+found that the same young Doctor was to operate on him. He was alarmed
+at his youth.
+
+"I like a fellow to have white hair if he's to operate on me," he said
+to himself.
+
+Another Doctor began to adjust the ether apparatus.
+
+"Look here," he mumbled, "how do you know my heart's strong enough for
+this sort of thing?"
+
+"Don't be a fool; it's your only chance."
+
+"Oh, all right. Have it your own way, only don't say I did not warn
+you!" he replied.
+
+"Rather a character," said one of the Doctors, as he placed the sodden
+wool firmly over his nose and mouth.
+
+"Yes," replied the Sister; "he said just now that the operation would be
+unsuccessful and that he would die!"
+
+Drat the woman, she had spoiled his last joke!
+
+He strove to explain. But the fumes were clutching at his senses, and he
+could not. The white walls of the room swam and bounced before his eyes.
+Rivers were pouring into his ears. Everything was grey and vibrating. He
+made a frantic effort to turn his thoughts towards God and home, "in
+case." But he failed to think of anything.
+
+With a jerk his senses left him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he recovered his senses it was still dark, but he realised that he
+was in another room.
+
+And in that room he stayed for nearly a fortnight before the Doctor
+would allow him to proceed to the Base.
+
+As regards the paralysis, there was little or no improvement, although
+he thought at one time that he was succeeding in wagging his big toe.
+The Doctor would come in and say with mock petulance, "Surely you can
+move that finger now. Pull yourself together! Make an effort!"
+
+He used to make tremendous efforts. Even his left hand used to twitch
+with the effort of trying to move the right.
+
+"No, not your left; the right," the Doctor would say.
+
+Then he would laugh, and go away saying that it would be all right in
+time.
+
+His chief difficulty, not counting, of course, the perpetual headache,
+was his inability to sleep. The nights seemed interminable, and he
+dreaded them. The days were only less so because of the excitement of
+meals and being talked to by the Sister. They became fast friends, and
+she would tell him all about her work, her troubles with the Doctors and
+with refractory Orderlies. They used to laugh together over the short
+temper of a patient below, whom she used to call "Old Fiddlesticks," and
+who seemed to be the most impatient of patients. Then she would wander
+on about her home, how she nursed half the year, and spent the remainder
+with her married sister in Fondborough Manor.
+
+One day one of the Orderlies shaved him, and every one was surprised "to
+see how much better he looked!"
+
+They used to give him aspirin, and though it generally failed to bring
+sleep, his pains would be relieved almost instantly, and his spirits
+would rise to tremendous heights. The only time he was able to sleep
+seemed to be between six and ten. He was nearly always awakened by the
+lusty voice of a peasant entering the room beneath. He complained to the
+Orderly, with the result that the next night the lusty voice was
+suddenly silenced.
+
+"Shut yer mouth, or I'll knock yer blinking face in!" And Lusty Voice
+understood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the Doctor gave his consent for removal to the Base Hospital,
+and the Subaltern found himself being once more hauled on to a stretcher
+and heaved into the Ambulance.
+
+They dragged him out at the station, and he saw the long train, each
+carriage brilliantly lit. The sight seemed so civilised that it cheered
+him not a little.
+
+The carriage was an ordinary "wagon-lit" converted with considerable
+ingenuity into a Hospital Train. He shared his compartment with a young
+Guardee, "a sitting case."
+
+He had no sooner settled down than a voice was heard calling for
+"Second-Lieutenant Hackett."
+
+"Here," replied the Guardee, without any enthusiasm.
+
+A dapper Staff Officer, so tall that he had to stoop to enter the
+compartment, drew a paper from his pocket.
+
+"You?" he asked. "Well, Hackett, this is a great evening in your life,
+and I congratulate you." He shook the Guardee's left hand. "You have
+been given the D.S.O.," he added hurriedly, for the train had already
+begun to move. With that he disappeared.
+
+It was not until the following morning that the Sister came in to dress
+his wound.
+
+"What strong teeth you've got, boy!" she said.
+
+Nobody knew better than he did that his teeth were large and tended to
+protrude, but it is always annoying to have one's defects admired.
+
+The Orderly was, in his way, an artist. He was light-handed, quick,
+deferential, and soothing--a prince among Orderlies. He produced
+wonderful tit-bits--amongst other things tinned chicken, sardines,
+chocolate, and, for the Guardee, stout! Three minutes after the Sister
+had strictly forbidden him to read, the Orderly smuggled into his hand
+the Paris _Daily Mail_ of the day before. Von Moltke had been dismissed.
+"The first of the great failures," he said to himself. But the Sister
+was right; it was too painful to read.
+
+"What are we stopping here for?" the Guardee asked once.
+
+"To unload the dead, sir," replied the Orderly, with serious suavity.
+
+The journey took over two days. They touched at Versailles and Le Mans,
+the Advanced Base, swept slowly down the broad valley of the Loire, past
+the busy town of Nantes, followed by the side of the estuary, oddly
+mixed up with the shipping, and eventually came to rest in the town of
+St. Nazaire, at that time the Base of the British Army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+ST. NAZAIRE
+
+
+His next home was a comfortable little bed in a white-painted cubicle of
+a boys' school that had been turned into a Base Hospital. When at length
+he found himself at rest in his new bed, he sighed with contentment.
+Everything was so quiet, and clean, and orderly. After the dirty
+estaminet, and the feverish hurry of the Clearing Hospital, this was
+indeed Peace. They gave him real broth to drink and real chicken to eat.
+And that night, as he sank almost for the first time into real sleep, he
+felt that heaven had been achieved.
+
+Life began to creep slowly into his paralysed limbs. With infinite
+labour he could force his first finger and thumb to meet and separate
+again. His toes wagged freely. The only fly in the ointment was that the
+"stuff they did their dressings with" was of a fiercer nature and hurt
+more than the previous ones. Also, the dressings became more frequent.
+
+He made great friends with the Doctor and the Sisters. One of them used
+to talk of an old Major in his Regiment with a tenderness that led him
+to suspect a veiled romance. He was now growing better daily, and was
+assailed with the insatiable hunger that follows fever. No sooner had he
+bolted down one meal than he counted the hours to the next.
+
+One day they left a meal-tray on his chest, and apparently forgot it. At
+the end of half-an-hour his patience abandoned him. He deliberately
+reached out and threw everything upon the floor. The Sister came running
+up to see what was the matter. He maintained a haughty silence. She
+picked up the aluminium plates and cups. Her starched dress crinkled.
+
+"Oh, you naughty boy!" she said, smiling entrancingly.
+
+There was nothing for it: he burst out laughing.
+
+Soon afterwards it occurred to him that, as all he had got to do was to
+lie in bed and wait, this could be done just as easily in a London
+hospital.
+
+"As soon as you are well enough to travel, you shall go to England. Your
+case can be better treated there," the Doctor promised him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+SOMEWHERE IN MAYFAIR
+
+
+The speed of the train astounded him. Such tremendous things had
+happened to him since he had last travelled in an express train. He
+loved every English field as it passed, every hedge and tree.
+
+He was at peace with the world. The only blemish was that the awful war
+was still dragging on its awful course--still exacting its awful toll.
+He was rushing Londonwards--towards his "people" and everything he
+wanted. The pains had gone from his head, except for occasional
+headaches. And, wonder of wonders, he could move his whole leg and arm!
+Contentment stole over him. He was on perfectly good terms with himself
+and the world in general. Life, after all, was delightful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The voyage had been wonderful. Not for one moment of the forty-eight
+hours that it took to reach Southampton did the wavelets upset the
+equilibrium of the vessel. Only the faintest vibration showed him that
+she was moving at all. The food had been good and plentiful, the
+attendance matchless. All things seemed to be "working together for
+good."
+
+While engrossed in this reverie, he awoke to the fact that well-known
+landscapes were rolling past his window.
+
+Tidshot! There was the familiar landmark--the tree-crested hill and the
+church. The station flashed by, and then the well-known training areas.
+
+"Just as if I were going up to town for the week-end!" he told himself.
+
+The familiar suburbs whizzed past. Clapham Junction, Vauxhall, the
+grinding of brakes, and the train was gliding quietly along Waterloo
+platform.
+
+An Officer boarded the train, and, in spite of a great deal of
+discussion and requests, succeeded in thrusting scraps of paper into
+every one's hand.
+
+"The Something Hospital, Chester Square," some one read.
+
+"What? Oh, I thought you said 'The Empire Hospital, Leicester Square!'"
+yelled half-a-dozen wits almost simultaneously.
+
+He was carried out on his stretcher, slid into a St. John Ambulance, and
+driven to the address on the piece of paper, which was "not a hundred
+miles from Berkeley Square," as the Gossip writers put it.
+
+The Ambulance Stretcher Bearers carried him into the hall of what was
+evidently a private house "turned" into a hospital. A great many ladies
+were standing about, all in Red Cross uniform. A man was there, too.
+Curiously enough, he was wearing just the coat and hat that his father
+would wear. Could it be possible? He turned round; lo and behold, it
+_was_ his father!
+
+"Hallo, Father!" he said.
+
+The man came up.
+
+Both of them seemed at a loss for words. It was neither emotion nor
+sentimentality; it was just the lack of something to say. Taking
+advantage of the pause, the crowd bore down upon him, and by reason of
+their superior numbers drove him away, offering promises about "the day
+after to-morrow."
+
+They carried the Subaltern upstairs, and placed him in a room where two
+other Officers who had arrived on the same boat were already
+established.
+
+The Hospital was "run" by the Hon. Mrs. Blank, who was placing her
+entire house at the disposal of the War Office. She did everything
+herself: the feeding, equipping, providing the staff. The expense must
+have been huge. She worked night and day as general manageress of the
+establishment. There ought to be some special honour and knighthood for
+such women on this earth, and a special heaven in the next. The
+Subaltern used to feel positively ashamed of himself when he thought of
+the money, kindness and care that she was lavishing upon them.
+
+The whole Hospital was a glorious, pulsating, human organisation. What
+was wanted was done, not what was "laid down" in some schedule. Indeed,
+their wishes were gratified before they had time to form in the mind. It
+was a fairyland, and of course the fairies were the nurses. The
+Subaltern and his two companions held a conference on their respective
+merits.
+
+"I like the little pale brown one; she's like a mouse."
+
+"There's no comparison. Ours is the star turn."
+
+"Which _is_ ours?"
+
+"The one who dashes about?"
+
+"The one who upset the dinner-trays?"
+
+"Yes. Wasn't it funny? I thought I should have died!"
+
+The Doctors, this time civilians, used to come to him twice a day. They
+were quiet, reserved men, positively glowing with efficiency.
+
+They dressed his wound, tested the reflex actions of his nerves, gazed
+through holes in bright mirrors at his eyes, and made him watch
+perpendicular pencils moving horizontally across his line of vision.
+
+But life was racing back into his limbs. Hourly his strength was
+returning. He no longer lay staring listlessly in the bottom of the bed.
+He liked now to work himself up, to lose nothing of what was going on
+around, to share in the talk, and, until the next headache came, to
+_live_.
+
+He wallowed in the joy of reaching harbour.
+
+Such rapid progress did he make that they began, in a few days, to treat
+him as a rational human being. They allowed him meat, and once, owing
+to a mistake on the part of the young Hurrier, a whisky-and-soda. They
+allowed him to smoke a restricted number of cigarettes, and to read as
+often as he liked. But aspirin they barred.
+
+He had not many friends in London, so during visiting hours he was left
+in comparative peace.
+
+One morning his mother came. As the door opened and she hurried into the
+room with her quick, bird-like grace, he felt that she was a stranger to
+him. Somehow their old intimacy seemed dissolved, and would have, piece
+by piece, to be built up again. Her round, appealing eyes of palest
+brown stirred him as no other eyes--even her own--had ever done before.
+
+Her slim shoulders delighted him.
+
+"Waddles!" he said; "you're priceless!"
+
+He loved to call her "Waddles."
+
+They asked the Doctor when he would be likely to be able to go home.
+
+"As soon as the wound is covered over," he replied, "there is no reason
+why he should not go home. Providing he could get massage and proper
+treatment."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gas darkly illuminated the sombre red of the walls and glimmered on
+the polished mahogany. The fire, too, glowed red. Outside, the wind was
+sighing softly in the pine-trees.
+
+The bed seemed huge and its capacity for comfort enormous. The cool
+sheets seemed to caress his legs. His whole nervous system was
+delightfully wearied with the achievement of reaching home.
+
+The local Doctor had promised that he could treat him perfectly well,
+and he had been allowed to leave the Hospital.
+
+He could hear the paws of his spaniel padding softly on the carpet in
+the landing. He could hear the voices of his father and sister in the
+hall....
+
+Peace after the storm! The harbour reached at last.
+
+"It seems to be impossible to believe it's true," he murmured to
+himself.
+
+"Are you quite ready?" asked his mother.
+
+She was standing beneath the gas-bracket, one hand raised to the handle.
+The light silhouetted her impertinent little nose and glimmered in her
+dusky hair.
+
+Then with a jerk she turned out the light.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED
+BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: There are numerous typographical errors and
+spelling inconsistencies in the original text which have not been
+corrected, e.g., etiez for etiez, Grand Marmier for Marnier,
+Castelnau/Castlenau, Villiers-Cotterets/Villiers Cotterets, fourty
+for forty, etc.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of "Contemptible", by "Casualty"
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