Adventures of a Despatch Rider Part 8

The Company came up, and we found that in Chouy the Germans had overlooked a telephone--great news for the cable detachment. After a glance at the church, a gorgeous bit of Gothic that we had sh.e.l.led, we pushed on in the rain to Billy-sur-Ourcq. I was just looking after a convenient loft when I was sent back to Chouy to find the Captain's watch. A storm was raging down the valley. The road at any time was covered with tired foot sloggers. I had to curse them, for they wouldn't get out of the way. Soon I warmed and cursed them crudely and glibly in four languages. On my return I found some looted boiled eggs and captured German Goulasch hot for me. I fed and turned in.

This day my kit was left behind with other unnecessary "tackle," to lighten the horses' load. I wish I had known it.

The remaining eggs for breakfast--delicious.

Huggie and I were sent off just before dawn on a message that took us to St Remy, a fine church, and Hartennes, where we were given hot tea by that great man, Sergeant Croucher of the Divisional Cyclists. I rode back to Rozet St Albin, a pleasant name, along a road punctuated with dead and very evil-smelling horses. Except for the smell it was a good run of about ten miles. I picked up the Division again on the sandy road above Chacrise.

Sick of column riding I turned off the main road up a steep hill into Ambrief, a desolate black-and-white village totally deserted. It came on to pour, but there was a shrine handy. There I stopped until I was pulled out by an ancient captain of cuira.s.siers, who had never seen an Englishman before and wanted to hear all about us.

On into Acy, where I decided to head off the Division at Ciry, instead of crossing the Aisne and riding straight to Vailly, our proposed H.Q.

for that night. The decision saved my life, or at least my liberty. I rode to Sermoise, a bright little village where the people were actually making bread. At the station there was a solitary cavalry man. In Ciry itself there was no one. Half-way up the Ciry hill, a sort of dry watercourse, I ran into some cavalry and learnt that the Germans were holding the Aisne in unexpected strength. I had all but ridden round and in front of our own cavalry outposts.

Two miles farther back I found Huggie and one of our brigades. We had a bit of bully and biscuit under cover of a haystack, then we borrowed some gla.s.ses and watched bodies of Germans on the hills the other side of the Aisne. It was raining very fast. There was no decent cover, so we sat on the leeward side of a mound of sand.

When we awoke the sun was setting gorgeously. Away to the west in the direction of Soissons there was a tremendous cannonade. On the hills opposite little points of flame showed that the Germans were replying.

On our right some infantry were slowly advancing in extended order through a dripping turnip-field.

The Battle of the Aisne had begun.

We were wondering what to do when we were commandeered to take a message down that precipitous hill of Ciry to some cavalry. It was now quite dark and still raining. We had no carbide, and my carburetter had jibbed, so we decided to stop at Ciry for the night. At the inn we found many drinks--particularly some wonderful cherry brandy--and a friendly motor-cyclist who told us of a billet that an officer was probably going to leave. We went there. Our host was an old soldier, so, after his wife had hung up what clothes we dared take off to dry by a red-hot stove, he gave us some supper of stewed game and red wine, then made us cunning beds with straw, pillows, and blankets. Too tired to thank him we dropped asleep.

That, though we did not know it then, was the last night of our little Odyssey. We had been advancing or retiring without a break since my tragic farewell to Nadine. We had been riding all day and often all night. But those were heroic days, and now as I write this in our comfortable slack winter quarters, I must confess--I would give anything to have them all over again. Now we motor-cyclists are middle-aged warriors. Adventures are work. Experiences are a routine. Then, let's be sentimental, we were young.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AISNE (SOISSONS _TO_ VAILLY)]

CHAPTER VII.

THE BATTLE OF THE AISNE.

I'm going to start by giving you an account of what we thought of the military situation during the great marches and the battle of the Aisne--for my own use. What happened we shall be able to look up afterwards in some lumbersome old history, should we forget, but, unless I get down quickly what we thought, it will disappear in after-knowledge.

You will remember how the night we arrived on the Aisne Huggie and I stretched ourselves on a sand-heap at the side of the road--just above Ciry--and watched dim columns of Germans crawling like grey worms up the slopes the other side of the valley. We were certain that the old Division was still in hot cry on the heels of a rapidly retreating foe.

News came--I don't know how: you never do--that our transport and ammunition were being delayed by the fearsome and lamentable state of the roads. But the cavalry was pus.h.i.+ng on ahead, and tired infantry were stumbling in extended order through the soaked fields on either side of us. There was hard gunnery well into the red dusk. Right down the valley came the thunder of it, and we began to realise that divisions, perhaps even corps, had come up on either flank.

The ancient captain of cuira.s.siers, who had hauled me out of my shrine into the rain that afternoon, made me understand there was a great and unknown number of French on our left. From the Order before the Marne I had learnt that a French Army had turned the German right, but the first news I had had of French on our own right was when one staff-officer said in front of me that the French away to the east had been held up.

That was at Doue.

Our retreat had been solitary. The French, everybody thought, had left us in the lurch at Mons and again at Le Cateau, when the cavalry we knew to be there refused to help us. For all we knew the French Army had been swept off the face of the earth. We were just retiring, and retiring before three or four times our own numbers. We were not even supported by the 1st Corps on our right. It was smashed, and had all it could do to get itself away. We might have been the Ten Thousand.

But the isolation of our desperate retreat dismayed n.o.body, for we all had an unconquerable belief in the future. There must be some French somewhere, and in spite--as we thought then--of our better judgments, we stuck to the story that was ever being circulated: "We are luring the Germans into a trap." It was impressed upon us, too, by "the Div." that both at Mons and Le Cateau we were strategically victorious. We had given the Germans so hard a knock that they could not pursue us at once; we had covered the retirement of the 1st Corps; we had got away successfully ourselves. We were sullen and tired victors, never defeated. If we retreated, it was for a purpose. If we advanced, the Germans were being crushed.

The Germans thought we were beaten, because they didn't realise we knew we were victorious the whole time.

I do not say that we were always monotonously cheerful. The night after Le Cateau we all thought the game was up,--until the morning, when cheerfulness came with the sun. Then we sighed with relief and remembered a little bitterly that we were "luring the Germans on."

Many a time I have come across isolated units in hot corners who did not see a way out. Yet if a battery or a battalion were hard hit, the realisation of local defeat was always accompanied by a fervent faith that "the old Fifth" was doing well. Le Cateau is a victory in the soldier's calendar.

Le Cateau and La Ba.s.see, It jolly well serves them right.

We had been ten days or more on the Aisne before we grasped that the force opposite us was not merely a dogged, well-entrenched rearguard, but a section of the German line.

Soon after we arrived a French cavalry officer had ridden into D.H.Q., and after his departure it was freely rumoured that he had ridden right round the German position. News began to trickle in from either flank.

Our own attacks ceased, and we took up a defensive position. It was the beginning of trench-warfare, though owing to the nature of the country there were few trenches. Then we heard vaguely that the famous series of enveloping movements had begun, but by this time the Division was tired to death, and the men were craving for a rest.

Strategy in the ranks--it was elementary stuff pieced vaguely together.

But perhaps it will interest you at home to know what we thought out here on this great little stage. What we did you have heard. Still, here is the play as we acted in it.

Along the Aisne the line of our Division stretched from Venizel to the bridge of Conde. You must not think of the river as running through a gorge or as meandering along the foot of slopes rising directly from the river bank. On the southern side lie the Heights of Champagne, practically a tableland. From the river this tableland looks like a series of ridges approaching the valley at an angle. Between the foothills and the river runs the Soissons-Rheims road, good _pave_, and for the most part covered by trees. To the north there is a distance of two miles or so from the river to the hills.

Perhaps I shall make this clearer if I take the three main points about the position.

_First._ If you are going to put troops on the farther side of the river you must have the means of crossing it, and you must keep those means intact. The bridges running from left to right of our line were at Venizel, Missy, Sermoise, and Conde. The first three were blown up.

Venizel bridge was repaired sufficiently to allow of light traffic to cross, and fifty yards farther down a pontoon-bridge was built fit for heavy traffic. Missy was too hot: we managed an occasional ferry. I do not think we ever had a bridge at Sermoise. Once when in search of the C.R.E. I watched a company of the K.O.S.B. being ferried across under heavy rifle fire. The raft was made of ground-sheets stuffed, I think, with straw. Conde bridge the Germans always held, or rather neither of us held it, but the Germans were very close to it and allowed n.o.body to cross. Just on our side of the bridge was a car containing two dead officers. No one could reach them. There they sat until we left, ghastly sentinels, and for all I know they sit there still.

Now all communication with troops on the north bank of the river had to pa.s.s over these bridges, of which Venizel alone was comparatively safe.

If ever these bridges should be destroyed, the troops on the north bank would be irrevocably cut off from supplies of every sort and from orders. I often used to wonder what would have happened if the Germans had registered accurately upon the bridges, or if the river had risen and swept the bridges away.

_Second._ There was an open belt between the river and the villages which we occupied--Bucy-le-Long, St Marguerite, Missy. The road that wound through this belt was without the veriest trace of cover--so much so, that for a considerable time all communication across it was carried on by despatch riders, for a cable could never be laid. So if our across-the-river brigades had ever been forced to retire in daylight they would have been compelled, first to retire two miles over absolutely open country, and then to cross bridges of which the positions were known with tolerable accuracy to the Germans.

_Third._ On the northern bank four or five spurs came down into the plain, parallel with each other and literally at right angles to the river. The key to these was a spur known as the Chivres hill or plateau.

This we found impregnable to the attack of two brigades. It was steep and thickly wooded. Its a.s.sailants, too, could be heavily enfiladed from either flank.

Now you have the position roughly. The tactics of our Division were simple. In the early days, when we thought that we had merely a determined rearguard in front of us, we attacked. Bridges--you will remember the tale--were most heroically built. Two brigades (14th and 15th) crossed the river and halted at the very foot of the hills, where they were almost under cover from alien fire. The third brigade was on their right in a position I will describe later.

Well, the two brigades attacked, and attacked with artillery support, but they could not advance. That was the first phase. Then orders came that we were to act on the defensive, and finally of our three brigades, one was on the right, one across the river, and one in a second line of trenches on the southern bank of the river acted as divisional reserve.

That for us was the battle of the Aisne. It was hard fighting all through.[13]

Under these conditions there was plentiful work for despatch riders. I am going to try and describe it for you.

When D.H.Q. are stationary, the work of despatch riders is of two kinds.

First of all you have to find the positions of the units to which you are sent. Often the Signal Office gives you the most exiguous information. "The 105th Brigade is somewhere near Ciry," or "The Div.

Train is at a farm just off the Paris-Bordeaux" road. Starting out with these explicit instructions, it is very necessary to remember that they may be wrong and are probably misleading. That is not the fault of the Signal Office. A Unit changes ground, say from a farm on the road to a farm off the road. These two farms are so near each other that there is no need to inform the Div. just at present of this change of residence.

The experienced despatch rider knows that, if he is told the 105th Brigade is at 1904 Farm, the Brigade is probably at 1894 Farm, half a mile away.

Again, a despatch rider is often sent out after a unit has moved and before the message announcing the move has "come through" to the Division.

When the Division is advancing or retiring this exploration-work is the only work. To find a given brigade, take the place at which it was last reported at the Signal Office and a.s.sume it was never there. Prefer the information you get from your fellow despatch riders. Then find out the road along which the brigade is said to be moving. If the brigade may be in action, take a road that will bring you to the rear of the brigade.

If there are troops in front of the brigade, strike for the head of it.

It is always quicker to ride from van to rear of a brigade than from rear to van.