Men, Women and Guns Part 27

Behind it, like the wake of a steamer, little dabs of white plastered the blue sky. English shrapnel bursting from other anti-aircraft guns.

Jim's gunner friend seemed to know most of them by name, as old pals whom he had watched for many a week on the same errand; and from him Jim gathered that the moment approached for the appearance of Panting Lizzie. Lizzie, apparently, was a fast armoured German biplane which came over his gun every fine evening about the same hour. For days and weeks had he fired at it, so far without any success, but he still had hopes. The gun was ready, c.o.c.ked wickedly upon its motor mounting, covered with branches and daubed with strange blotches of paint to make it less conspicuous. Round the motor itself the detachment consumed tea, a terrier sat up and begged, a goat of fearsome aspect looked pensive.

In front, in a chair, his eye glued to a telescope on a tripod, sat the look-out man.

It was just as Jim and his pal were getting down to a whisky and soda that Lizzie hove in sight. The terrier ceased to beg, the goat departed hurriedly, the officer spoke rapidly in a language incomprehensible to Jim, and the fun began. There are few things so trying to listen to as an Archie, owing to the rapidity with which it fires; the gun pumps up and down with a series of sharp cracks, every two or three shots being followed by more incomprehensible language from the officer. Adjustment after each shot is impossible owing to the fact that three or four sh.e.l.ls have left the gun and are on their way before the first one explodes. It was while Jim, with his fingers in his ears, was watching the sh.e.l.ls bursting round the aeroplane and marvelling that nothing seemed to happen, that he suddenly realised that the gun had stopped firing. Looking at the detachment, he saw them all gazing upwards. From high up, sounding strangely faint in the air, came the zipping of a Maxim.

"By Gad!" muttered the gunner officer; "this is going to be some fight."

Bearing down on Panting Lizzie came a British armoured 'plane, and from it the Maxim was spitting. And now there started a very pretty air duel.

I am no airman, to tell of spirals, and glides, and the multifarious twistings and turnings. At times the German's Maxim got going as well; at times both were silent, manoeuvring for position. The Archies were not firing--the machines were too close together. Once the German seemed to drop like a stone for a thousand feet or so. "Got him!" shouted Jim--but the gunner shook his head.

"A common trick," he answered. "He found it getting a bit warm, and that upsets one's range. You'll find he'll be off now."

Sure enough he was--with his nose for home he turned tail and fled. The gunner shouted an order, and they opened fire again, while the British 'plane pursued, its Maxim going continuously. Generally honour is satisfied without the shedding of blood; each, having consistently missed the other and resisted the temptations of flying low over his opponents' guns, returns home to dinner. But in this case--well, whether it was Archie or whether it was the Maxim is really immaterial. Suddenly a great sheet of flame seemed to leap from the German machine and a puff of black smoke: it staggered like a shot bird and then, without warning, it fell--a streak of light, like some giant shooting star rus.h.i.+ng to the earth. The Maxim stopped firing, and after circling round a couple of times the British machine buzzed contentedly back to bed. And in a field--somewhere behind our lines--there lay for many a day, deep embedded in a hole in the ground, the battered remnants of Panting Lizzie, with its great black cross stuck out of the earth for all to see. Somewhere in the debris, crushed and mangled beyond recognition, could have been found the remnants of two German airmen. Which might be called the black and white of the overworld.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: 92" Howitzer.]

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE STAFF

But now rumour was getting busy in earnest--things were in the air.

There were talks of a great offensive--and although there be rumour in England, though bucolic stationmasters have brushed the snow from the steppes of Russia out of railway carriages, I have no hesitation in saying that for quality and quant.i.ty the rumours that float round the army in France have de Rougemont beat to a frazzle. In this case expectations were fulfilled, and two or three days after the decease of Panting Lizzie, Jim and his battalion shook the dust of the Ypres district from their feet and moved away south.

It was then that our hero raised his third star. Shades of Wellington! A captain in a year. But I make no comment. A sense of humour, invaluable at all times, is indispensable in this war, if one wishes to preserve an unimpaired digestion.

But another thing happened to him, too, about this time, for, owing to the sudden sickness of a member of his General's Staff, he found himself attached temporarily for duty. No longer did he flat foot it, but in a large and commodious motor-car he viewed life from a different standpoint. And, solely owing to this temporary appointment, he was able to see the launching of the attack near Loos at the end of September. He saw the wall of gas and smoke roll slowly forward towards the German trenches over the wide s.p.a.ce that separated the trenches in that part of the line. Great belching explosions seemed to shatter the vapour periodically, as German sh.e.l.ls exploded in it, causing it to rise in swirling eddies, as from some monstrous cauldron, only to sink sullenly back and roll on. And behind it came the a.s.saulting battalions, lines of black pigmies charging forward.

And later he heard of the Scotsmen who chased the flying Huns like terriers after rats, grunting, cursing, swearing, down the gentle slope past Loos and up the other side; on to Hill 70, where they swayed backwards and forwards over the top, while some with the l.u.s.t of killing on them fought their way into the town beyond--and did not return. He heard of the battery that blazed over open sights at the Germans during the morning, till, running out of ammunition, the guns ceased fire, a mark to every German rifle. The battery remained there during the day, for there was not cover for a terrier, let alone a team of horses, and between the guns were many strange tableaux as Death claimed his toll.

They got them away that night, but not before the gunners had taken back the breech-blocks--in case; for it was touch and go.

But this attack has already been described too often, and so I will say no more. I would rather write of those things which happened to Jim Denver himself, before he left the Land of Topsy Turvy for the second time. Only I venture to think that when the full story comes to be written--if ever--of that last week in September, or the surging forward past Loos and the Lone Tree to Hulluch and the top of 70, of the cavalry who waited for the chance that never came, and the German machine-guns hidden in the slag-heaps, the reading will be interesting. What happened would fill a book; what might have happened--a library.

It was a couple of days afterwards that he saw his first big batch of German prisoners. Five or six miles behind the firing-line in a great gra.s.s field, fenced in on all sides by barbed wire, was a batch of some seven hundred--almost all of them Prussians and Jagers. Munching food contentedly, they sat in rows on the ground; their dirty grey uniforms coated with dust and mud--unwashed, unshaven, and--well, if you are contemplating German prisoners, get "up wind." All around the field Tommies stood and gazed, now and again offering them cigarettes. A few prisoners who could speak English got up and talked.

It struck Jim Denver then that he viewed these men with no antipathy; he merely gazed at them curiously as one gazes at animals in a "Zoo." And as we English are ever p.r.o.ne to such views, and as the Hymn of Hate and like effusions are regarded, and rightly so, as occasions for mirth, it was perhaps as well for Jim to realise the other point of view. There are two sides to every question, and the Germans believe in their hate just as we believe in our laughter. But when it is over, it will be unfortunate if we forget the hate too quickly.

"What a nation we are!" said a voice beside Jim. He turned round and found a doctor watching the scene with a peculiar look in his eyes.

"Suppose it had been the other way round! Suppose those were our men while the Germans were the captors! Do you think the scene would be like this?" His face twisted into a bitter smile. "There would have been armed soldiers walking up and down the ranks, kicking men in the stomach, hitting them on the head with rifle b.u.t.ts, tearing bandages off wounds--just for the fun of the thing. Sharing food!"--he laughed contemptuously--"why, they'd have been starving. Giving 'em cigarettes!--why, they'd have taken away what they had already."

He turned and looked up the road. Walking down it were thirty or so German officers. From the b.u.t.ton in the centre of their jackets hung in nearly every case the ribbon of the Iron Cross. Laughing, talking--one or two sneering--they came along and halted by the gate into the field.

They had been questioned, and were waiting to be marched off with the men. A hundred yards or so away the cavalry escort was forming up.

"Man," cried the doctor, suddenly gripping Jim's arm in a vice, "it's wicked!" In his eyes there was an ugly look. "Look at those swine--all toddling off to Donington Hall--happy as you like. And think of the other side of the picture. Stuck with bayonets, hit, brutally treated, half-starved, thrown into cattle trucks. Good Heaven! it's horrible."

"We're not the sort to go in for retribution," said Jim, after a moment.

"After all--oh! I don't know--but it's not quite cricket, is it? Just because they're swine...?"

"Cricket!" the other snorted. "You make me tired. I tell you I'm sick to death of our kid-glove methods. No retribution! I suppose if a buck n.i.g.g.e.r hit your pal over the head with a club you'd give him a tract on charity and meekness. What would our ranting pedagogues say if their own sons had been crucified by the Germans as some of our wounded have been? You think I'm bitter?" He looked at Jim. "I am. You see, I was a prisoner myself until a few weeks ago." He turned and strolled away down the road....

And now the escort was ready. An order shouted in the field, and the men got up, falling in in some semblance of fours. Slowly they filed through the gate and, with their own officers in front, the cortege started. Led by an English cavalry subaltern, with troopers at four or five horses'

lengths alongside--some with swords drawn, the others with rifles--the procession moved sullenly off. A throng of English soldiers gazed curiously at them as they pa.s.sed by; small urchins ran in impudently making faces at them. And in the doors of the houses dark-haired, grim-faced women watched them pa.s.s with lowering brows....

A mixture, those prisoners--a strange mixture. Some with the faces of educated men, some with the faces of beasts; some men in the prime of life, some mere boys; slouching, squelching through the mud with the vacant eyes that the Prussian military system seems to give to its soldiers. The look of a man who has no vestige of imagination or initiative; the look of a stoical automaton; callous, boorish, sottish as befits a man who willingly or unwillingly has sold himself body and soul to a system.

And as they wind through the mining villages on their way to a railhead, these same grim-faced French women watch them as they go by. They do not see the offspring of a system; they only see a group of beast-men--the men whose brothers have killed their husbands. After all, has not Madame got in her house a refugee--her cousin--whose screams even now ring out at night...?

For a few days more Jim stayed on with the general. Their feeding-place was a little cafe on the main road to Lens. There each morning might our hero have been found, in a filthy little back room, drinking coffee out of a thick mug, with an omelette cooked to perfection on his plate.

Never was there such dirt in any room; never a household so prolific of children. Every window was smashed; the back garden one huge sh.e.l.l hole; but, absolutely unperturbed by such trifles, that stout, good-hearted Frenchwoman pursued her st.u.r.dy way. She had had the Boches there--"mais oui"--but what matter? They did not stay long. "Une omelette, monsieur; du cafe? Certainement, monsieur. Toute de suite."

It might have been in a different world from Ypres and Poperinghe--instead of only twenty miles to the south. Gone were the flat, cultivated fields; great slag-heaps and smoking chimneys were everywhere. And in spite of the fact that active operations were in progress, there seemed to be no more gunning than the normal daily contribution at Lizerne, Boesinge, and Jim's old friend and first love, Hooge. Aeroplanes, too, seemed scarcer. True, one morning, standing in the road outside the cafe, he saw for the first time a fleet of 'planes starting out on a raid. Now one and then another would disappear behind a fleecy white cloud, only to reappear a few moments later glinting in the rays of the morning sun, until at length the whole fleet, in dressing and order like a flight of geese, their wings tipped with fire, moved over the blue vault of heaven. The drone of their engines came faintly from a great height, until, as if at some spoken word from the leader, the whole swung half-right and vanished into a bank of clouds.

CHAPTER IX

NO ANSWER

But the grey period for Jim was drawing to a close. To-day it's the man over the road that tops the bill; to-morrow it's you, as I said before: and a change of caste was imminent in our friend's performance. One does not seek these things--they occur; and then they're over, and one waits for the next. There is no programme laid down, no book of the words printed. Things just happen--sometimes they lead to a near acquaintance with iodine, and a kind woman in a grey dress who takes your temperature and washes your face; and at others to a dinner with much good wine where the laughter is merry and the revelry great. Of course there are many other alternatives: you may never reach the hospital--you may never get the dinner; you may get a cold in the nose, and go to the Riviera--or you may get a bad corn and get blood-poisoning from using a rusty jack knife to operate. The caprice of the spirit of Topsy Turvy is quite wonderful.

For instance, on the very morning that the Staff Officer came back to his job, and Jim returned to his battalion, his company commander asked him to go to a general bomb store in a house just up the road, and see that the men who were working there were getting on all right. The regiment was for the support trenches that night, and preparing bombs was the order of the day.

Just as he started to go, a message arrived that the C.O. wished to see him. So the company commander went instead; and entered the building just as a German sh.e.l.l came in by another door. By all known laws a man going over Niagara in an open tub would not willingly have changed places with him; an 8-inch sh.e.l.l exploding in the same room with you is apt to be a decisive moment in your career.

But long after the noise and the building had subsided, and from high up in the air had come a fusillade of small explosions and little puffs of smoke, where the bombs hurled up from the cellar went off in turn--Jim perceived his captain coming down the road. He had been hurled through the wall as it came down, across the road, and had landed intact on a manure heap. And it was only when he hit the colonel a stunning blow over the head with a French loaf at lunch time that they found out he was temporarily as mad as a hatter. So they got him away in an ambulance and Jim took over the company. As I say--things just happen.

That night they moved up into support trenches--up that dirty, muddy road with the cryptic notices posted at various places: "Do not loiter here," "This cross-road is dangerous," "Sh.e.l.led frequently," etc. And at length they came to the rise which overlooks Loos and found they were to live in the original German front line--now our support trench. They were for the front line in the near future--but at present their job was work on this support trench and clearing up the battlefield near them.

Now this war is an impersonal sort of thing taking it all the way round.

Those who stand in front trenches and blaze away at advancing Huns are not, I think, actuated by personal fury against the men they kill. You may pick out a fat one perhaps with a red beard and feel a little satisfaction when you kill him because his face offends you, but you don't really feel any individual animosity towards him. One gets so used to death on a large scale that it almost ceases to affect one. An isolated man lying dead and twisted by the road, where one doesn't expect to find him, moves one infinitely more than a wholesale slaughter. The thing is too vast, too overpowering for a man's brain to realise.

But of all the things which one may be called on to do, the clearing of a battlefield after an advance brings home most poignantly the tragedy of war. You see the individual then, not the ma.s.s. Every silent figure lying sprawled in fantastic att.i.tude, every huddled group, every distorted face tells a story.

Here is an R.A.M.C. orderly crouching over a man lying on a stretcher.