Now It Can Be Told Part 16

That particular crowd did not get through the next sc.r.a.p. But the padre's authority was good. They had peace long before the armistice.

It was worst of all for boys of sensitive minds who were lucky enough to get a "cus.h.i.+e" wound, and so went on and on, or who were patched up again quickly after one, two, or three wounds, and came back again. It was a boy like that who revealed his bitterness to me one day as we stood together in the salient.

"It's the length of the war," he said, "which does one down. At first it seemed like a big adventure, and the excitement of it, horrible though it was, kept one going. Even the first time I went over the top wasn't so bad as I thought it would be. I was dazed and drunk with all sorts of emotions, including fear, that were worse before going over. I had what we call `the needle.' They all have it. Afterward one didn't know what one was doing-even the killing part of the business-until one reached the objective and lay down and had time to think and to count the dead about... Now the excitement has gone out of it, and the war looks as though it would go on forever. At first we all searched the papers for some hope that the end was near. We don't do that now. We know that whenever the war ends, this year or next, this little crowd will be mostly wiped out. Bound to be. And why are we going to die? That's what all of us want to know. What's it all about? Oh yes, I know the usual answers: 'In defense of liberty,' 'To save the Empire.' But we've all lost our liberty. We're slaves under sh.e.l.l-fire. And as for the Empire-I don't give a curse for it. I'm thinking only of my little home at Streatham Hill. The horrible Hun? I've no quarrel with the poor blighters over there by Hooge. They are in the same b.l.o.o.d.y mess as we are. They hate it just as much. We're all under a spell together, which some devils have put on us. I wonder if there's a G.o.d anywhere."

This sense of being under a black spell I found expressed by other men, and by German prisoners who used the same phrase. I remember one of them in the battles of the Somme, who said, in good English: "This war was not made in any sense by mankind. We are under a spell." This belief was due, I think, to the impersonal character of modern warfare, in which gun-fire is at so long a range that sh.e.l.l-fire has the quality of natural and elemental powers of death-like thunderbolts-and men killed twenty miles behind the lines while walking over sunny fields or in busy villages had no thought of a human enemy desiring their individual death.

G.o.d and Christianity raised perplexities in the minds of simple lads desiring life and not death. They could not reconcile the Christian precepts of the chaplain with the bayoneting of Germans and the shambles of the battlefields. All this blood and mangled flesh in the fields of France and Flanders seemed to them-to many of them, I know-a certain proof that G.o.d did not exist, or if He did exist was not, as they were told, a G.o.d of Love, but a monster glad of the agonies of men. That at least was the thought expressed to me by some London lads who argued the matter with me one day, and that was the thought which our army chaplains had to meet from men who would not be put off by conventional words. It was not good enough to tell them that the Germans were guilty of all this crime and that unless the Germans were beaten the world would lose its liberty and life. "Yes, we know all that," they said, "but why did G.o.d allow the Germans, or the statesmen who arranged the world by force, or the clergy who christened British wars.h.i.+ps? And how is it that both sides pray to the same G.o.d for victory? There must be something wrong somewhere."

It was not often men talked like that, except to some chaplain who was a human, comradely soul, some Catholic "padre" who devoted himself fearlessly to their bodily and spiritual needs, risking his life with them, or to some Presbyterian minister who brought them hot cocoa under sh.e.l.l-fire, with a cheery word or two, as I once heard, of "Keep your hearts up, my lads, and your heads down."

Most of the men became fatalists, with odd superst.i.tions in the place of faith. "It's no good worrying," they said.

"If your name is written on a German sh.e.l.l you can't escape it, and if it isn't written, nothing can touch you."

Officers as well as men had this fatalistic belief and superst.i.tions which amused them and helped them. "Have the Huns found you out yet?" I asked some gunner officers in a ruined farmhouse near Kemmel Hill. "Not yet," said one of them, and then they all left the table at which we were at lunch and, making a rush for some oak beams, embraced them ardently. They were touching wood.

"Take this with you," said an Irish officer on a night I went to Ypres. "It will help you as it has helped me. It's my lucky charm." He gave me a little bit of coal which he carried in his tunic, and he was so earnest about it that I took it without a smile and felt the safer for it.

Once in a while the men went home on seven days' leave, or four, and then came back again, gloomily, with a curious kind of hatred of England because the people there seemed so callous to their suffering, so utterly without understanding, so "d.a.m.ned cheerful." They hated the smiling women in the streets. They loathed the old men who said, "If I had six sons I would sacrifice them all in the Sacred Cause." They desired that profiteers should die by poison-gas. They prayed G.o.d to get the Germans to send Zeppelins to England-to make the people know what war meant. Their leave had done them no good at all.

From a week-end at home I stood among a number of soldiers who were going back to the front, after one of those leaves. The boat warped away from the pier, the M. T. O. and a small group of officers, detectives, and Red Cross men disappeared behind an empty train, and the "revenants" on deck stared back at the cliffs of England across a widening strip of sea.

"Back to the b.l.o.o.d.y old trenches," said a voice, and the words ended with a hard laugh. They were spoken by a young officer of the Guards, whom I had seen on the platform of Victoria saying good-by to a pretty woman, who had put her hand on his shoulder for a moment, and said, "Do be careful, Desmond, for my sake!" Afterward he had sat in the corner of his carriage, staring with a fixed gaze at the rus.h.i.+ng countryside, but seeing nothing of it, perhaps, as his thoughts traveled backward. (A few days later he was blown to bits by a bomb-an accident of war.)

A little man on deck came up to me and said, in a melancholy way, "You know who I am, don't you, sir?"

I hadn't the least idea who he was-this little ginger-haired soldier with a wizened and wistful face. But I saw that he wore the claret-colored ribbon of the V. C. on his khaki tunic. He gave me his name, and said the papers had "done him proud," and that they had made a lot of him at home-presentations, receptions, speeches, Lord Mayor's addresses, cheering crowds, and all that. He was one of our Heroes, though one couldn't tell it by the look of him.

"Now I'm going back to the trenches," he said, gloomily. "Same old business and one of the crowd again." He was suffering from the reaction of popular idolatry. He felt hipped because no one made a fuss of him now or bothered about his claret-colored ribbon. The staff-officers, chaplains, brigade majors, regimental officers, and army nurses were more interested in an airs.h.i.+p, a silver fish with s.h.i.+ning gills and a humming song in its stomach.

France... and the beginning of what the little V. C. had called "the same old business." There was the long fleet of motor-ambulances as a reminder of the ultimate business of all those young men in khaki whom I had seen drilling in the Embankment gardens and shouldering their way down the Strand.

Some stretchers were being carried to the lift which goes down to the deck of the hospital-s.h.i.+p, on which an officer was ticking off each wounded body after a glance at the label tied to the man's tunic. Several young officers lay under the blankets on those stretchers and one of them caught my eye and smiled as I looked down upon him. The same old business and the same old pluck.

I motored down the long, straight roads of France eastward, toward that network of lines which are the end of all journeys after a few days' leave, home and back again. The same old sights and sounds and smells which, as long as memory lasts, to men who had the luck to live through the war, will haunt them for the rest of life, and speak of Flanders.

The harvest was nearly gathered in, and where, a week or two before, there had been fields of high, bronzed corn there were now long stretches of stubbled ground waiting for the plow. The wheat-sheaves had been piled into stacks or, from many great fields, carted away to the red-roofed barns below the black old windmills whose sails were motionless because no breath of air stirred on this September afternoon. The smell of Flemish villages-a mingled odor of sun-baked thatch and bakeries and manure heaps and cows and ancient vapors stored up through the centuries-was overborne by a new and more pungent aroma which crept over the fields with the evening haze.

It was a sad, melancholy smell, telling of corruption and death. It was the first breath of autumn, and I s.h.i.+vered a little. Must there be another winter of war? The old misery of darkness and dampness was creeping up through the splendor of September suns.h.i.+ne.

Those soldiers did not seem to smell it, or, if their nostrils were keen, to mind its menace-those soldiers who came marching down the road, with tanned faces. How fine they looked, and how hard, and how cheerful, with their lot! Speak to them separately and every man would "grouse" at the duration of the war and swear that he was "fed up" with it. Homesickness a.s.sailed them at times with a deadly nostalgia. The hammering of sh.e.l.l-fire, which takes its daily toll, spoiled their temper and shook their nerves, as far as a British soldier had any nerves, which I used to sometimes doubt, until I saw again the sh.e.l.l-shock cases.

But again I heard their laughter and an old song whistled vilely out of tune, but cheerful to the tramp of their feet. They were going back to the trenches after a spell in a rest-camp, to the same old business of whizz-bangs and pip-squeaks, and dugouts, and the smell of wet clay and chloride of lime, and the life of earth-men who once belonged to a civilization which had pa.s.sed. And they went whistling on their way, because it was the very best thing to do.

One picked up the old landmarks again, and got back into the "feel" of the war zone. There were the five old windmills of Ca.s.sel that wave their arms up the hill road, and the estaminets by which one found one's way down country lanes-"The Veritable Cuckoo" and "The Lost Corner" and "The Flower of the Fields"-and the first smashed roofs and broken barns which led to the area of constant sh.e.l.l-fire. Ugh!

So it was still going on, this b.l.o.o.d.y murder! There were some more cottages down in the village, where we had tea a month before. And in the market-place of a sleepy old town the windows were mostly broken and some shops had gone into dust and ashes. That was new since we last pa.s.sed this way.

London was only seven hours away, but the hours on leave there seemed a year ago already. The men who had come back, after sleeping in civilization with a blessed sense of safety, had a few minutes of queer surprise that, after all, this business of war was something more real than a fantastic nightmare, and then put on their moral cloaks against the chill and grim reality, for another long spell of it. Very quickly the familiarity of it all came back to them and became the normal instead of the abnormal. They were back again to the settled state of war, as boys go back to public schools after the wrench from home, and find that the holiday is only the incident and school the more enduring experience.

There were no new impressions, only the repet.i.tion of old impressions. So I found when I heard the guns again and watched the sh.e.l.ls bursting about Ypres and over Kemmel Ridge and Messines church tower.

Two German airplanes pa.s.sed overhead, and the hum of their engines was loud in my ears as I lay in the gra.s.s. Our shrapnel burst about them, but did not touch their wings. All around there was the slamming of great guns, and I sat chewing a bit of straw by the side of a sh.e.l.l-hole, thinking in the same old way of the utter senselessness of all this noise and hate and sudden death which encircled me for miles. No amount of meditation would screw a new meaning out of it all. It was just the commonplace of life out here.

The routine of it went on. The officer who came back from home stepped into his old place, and after the first greeting of, "Hullo, old man! Had a good time?" found his old job waiting for him. So there was a new brigadier-general? Quick promotion, by Jove!

Four men had got knocked out that morning at D4, and it was rotten bad luck that the sergeant-major should have been among them. A real good fellow. However, there's that court martial for this afternoon, and, by the by, when is that timber coming up? Can't build the new dugout if there's no decent wood to be got by stealing or otherwise. You heard how the men got strafed in their billets the other day? Dirty work!

The man who had come back went into the trenches and had a word or two with the N.C.O.'s. Then he went into his own dugout. The mice had been getting at his papers. Oh yes, that's where he left his pipe! It was lying under the trestle-table, just where he dropped it before going on leave. The clay walls were a bit wet after the rains. He stood with a chilled feeling in this little hole of his, staring at every familiar thing in it.

Tacked to the wall was the portrait of a woman. He said good-by to her at Victoria Station. How long ago? Surely more than seven hours, or seven years... Outside there were the old noises. The guns were at it again. That was a trench-mortar. The enemy's eight-inch howitzers were plugging away. What a beastly row that machine-gun was making! Playing on the same old spot. Why couldn't they leave it alone, the a.s.ses?... Anyhow, there was no doubt about it-he had come back again. Back to the trenches and the same old business.

There was a mine to be blown up that night and it would make a pretty mess in the enemy's lines. The colonel was very cheerful about it, and explained that a good deal of sapping had been done. "We've got the bulge on 'em," he said, referring to the enemy's failures in this cla.s.s of work. In the mess all the officers were carrying on as usual, making the same old jokes.

The man who had come back got back also the spirit of the thing with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity. That other life of his, away there in old London, was shut up in the cupboard of his heart.

So it went on and on until the torture of its boredom was broken by the crash of big battles, and the New Armies, which had been learning lessons in the School of Courage, went forward to the great test, and pa.s.sed, with honor.

PART THREE. THE NATURE OF A BATTLE

I

In September of 1915 the Commander-in-Chief and his staff were busy with preparations for a battle, in conjunction with the French, which had ambitious objects. These have never been stated because they were not gained (and it was the habit of our High Command to conceal its objectives and minimize their importance if their hopes were unfulfilled), but beyond doubt the purpose of the battle was to gain possession of Lens and its coal-fields, and by striking through Hulluch and Haisnes to menace the German occupation of Lille. On the British front the key of the enemy's position was Hill 70, to the north of Lens, beyond the village of Loos, and the capture of that village and that hill was the first essential of success.

The a.s.sault on these positions was to be made by two New Army divisions of the 4th Corps: the 47th (London) Division, and the 15th (Scottish) Division. They were to be supported by the 11th Corps, consisting of the Guards and two new and untried divisions, the 21st and the 24th. The Cavalry Corps (less the 3d Cavalry Division under General Fanshawe) was in reserve far back at St.-Pol and Pernes; and the Indian Cavalry Corps under General Remington was at Doullens; "to be in readiness," wrote Sir John French, "to co-operate with the French cavalry in exploiting any success which might be attained by the French and British forces."... Oh, wonderful optimism! In that Black Country of France, scattered with mining villages in which every house was a machine-gun fort, with slag heaps and pit-heads which were formidable redoubts, with trenches and barbed wire and brick-stacks, and quarries, organized for defense in siege-warfare, cavalry might as well have ridden through h.e.l.l with hope of "exploiting" success... "Plans for effective co-operation were fully arranged between the cavalry commanders of both armies," wrote our Commander-in-Chief in his despatch. I can imagine those gallant old gentlemen devising their plans, with grave courtesy, over large maps, and A. D. C.'s clicking heels in attendance, and an air of immense wisdom and most cheerful a.s.surance governing the proceedings in the salon of a French chateau. .. The 3d Cavalry Division, less one brigade, was a.s.signed to the First Army as a reserve, and moved into the area of the 4th Corps on the 2lst and 22d of September.

II

The movements of troops and the preparations for big events revealed to every British soldier in France the "secret" of the coming battle. Casualty clearing-stations were ordered to make ready for big numbers of wounded. That was always one of the first signs of approaching ma.s.sacre. Vast quant.i.ties of sh.e.l.ls were being brought up to the rail-heads and stacked in the "dumps." They were the first-fruit of the speeding up of munition-factories at home after the public outcry against sh.e.l.l shortage and the lack of high explosives. Well, at last the guns would not be starved. There was enough high-explosive force available to blast the German trenches off the map. So it seemed to our innocence-though years afterward we knew that no bombardment would destroy all earthworks such as Germans made, and that always machine-guns would slash our infantry advancing over the chaos of mangled ground.

Behind our lines in France, in scores of villages where our men were quartered, there was a sense of impending fate. Soldiers of the New Army knew that in a little while the lessons they had learned in the School of Courage would be put to a more frightful test than that of holding trenches in stationary warfare. Their boredom, the intolerable monotony of that routine life, would be broken by more sensational drama, and some of them were glad of that, and said: "Let's get on with it. Anything rather than that deadly stagnation." And others, who guessed they were chosen for the coming battle, and had a clear vision of what kind of things would happen (they knew something about the losses at Neuve Chapelle and Festubert), became more thoughtful than usual, deeply introspective, wondering how many days of life they had left to them.

Life was good out of the line in that September of '15. The land of France was full of beauty, with bronzed corn-stooks in the fields, and scarlet poppies in the gra.s.s, and a golden sunlight on old barns and on little white churches and in orchards heavy with fruit. It was good to go into the garden of a French chateau and pluck a rose and smell its sweetness, and think back to England, where other roses were blooming. England!... And in a few days-who could say?-perhaps eternal sleep somewhere near Lens.

Some officers of the Guards came into the garden of the little house where I lived at that time with other onlookers. It was an untidy garden, with a stretch of gra.s.s-plot too rough to be called a lawn, but with pleasant shade under the trees, and a potager with raspberries and currants on the bushes, and flower-beds where red and white roses dropped their petals.