The Challenge of the Dead Part 2

"You must dig up a fair number of Germans. What do you do with them?"

"Leave them where they are. We notifies the authorities, that's all. Of course Jerry buried most of his own, and I'll give him credit for that, he gave every man his eight feet. You don't so easy come across a man the Germans buried, but some of ours----"

The weather-beaten Tommy, in old flannel s.h.i.+rt and sagging breeches, waved his hand and grinned with mirth at our British ways.

"'S a funny thing though--the British dead keep much longer than the Germans. If I put a spade through something and it's soft, I know it's a Jerry."

"They say the body of a drunkard keeps fresh longest of all because of the spirit in it."

"Yes, that's true. And if buried in an oilskin it makes a heap of difference. But it's queer what you find. We came on a fellow the other day with a bayonet through his jaw. He'd been buried that way. No one could get the bayonet out----"

"Aren't the Germans doing anything to keep their dead? The Belgians would look after them if they got a hint from Berlin that it would be worth while."

"Oh, we'd bury them like Christians if they'd give us another half-crown on our wages. We ain't got nothing agin 'em--specially the dead."

"Do you sleep out here on this battlefield?"

"We bin 'ere six months now."

"No ghosts?"

The man smiled. He saw none. He felt the presence of none. Imagination did not pull his heart-strings. If it did, he would go mad.

Lying in an old trench behold a skull! It is clean and polished--a soldier's head, low and broad at the brows, high at the back. There is a frayed hole in an otherwise perfect cranium. The simplest way to pick it up would be to put a finger in an eye-hole and lift it. You must put both hands together and raise it fearfully if it be the first skull you have ever found.... Friend or foe? Hm--there are no identification marks on this. Thinking anything about it all? No, nothing--long since ceased to think. Friends living? Probably, somewhere. The more you look at the skull the more angry does it seem--it has an intense eternal grievance.

This one does not grin, for the mouth has been destroyed. It is just blind and senseless for ever and ever.

Such is the Golgotha of Zandwoorde. Gheluvelt, the other end of the line, has now a diminutive yellow tower of new wood from an improvised church. Kruisseecke is a rusty-roofed, ramshackle, salvage-built settlement on the site of complete ruin. You see the yellow tower of Gheluvelt from all around, and like a livid finger the monument at Polygon Wood is seen far o'er the battlefields pointing to heaven.

In the whole complex story of the battle of Ypres, where so many regiments were engaged in such diverse parts of the field, with all their varying calamities and triumphs, it is only possible to realise the story in glimpses and apercus. A thousand dramas were being enacted simultaneously in a clamour so great that no neighbour understood what was happening to his neighbour. Tragedy was accomplished, swiftly and as it were privately. A dreadful way of speaking was begotten afterwards, and men said "He got _his_ at Polygon Wood," or "he got _his_ at the Chateau," or "_his_ at Kruisseecke."

Our gallant marchers, with the confetti as it were still sticking to them, have seen a great deal of Belgium, have been greatly excited, have reached Ypres with numbers intact, have taken their stand four feet deep in the clay of the fields of Zandwoorde and have taken a look round.

They have been sh.e.l.led. The sh.e.l.ls have been falling irrelevantly--far from them. The first man to perish is a colour-sergeant, who, taking a stroll, gets shot by accident by an over-hasty sentry. The colour-sergeant did not quite realise the war till then. Others also did not realise the silent symbol of the fact that in fighting others you start by killing yourselves. Next to die is a drummer-boy, killed by a sh.e.l.l on the way to a hamlet called America, a kilometre beyond Kruisseecke. With what pathos was that dead boy considered! For he was a child of the Army. Drummer-boys are nearly always orphans, or boys without homes, brought up in barracks, taught in the Army school, with the Army for father and mother, the Army for G.o.d, the Army for nurse.

Little drummer-boy dead on the way to America--the first to go West! It is a matter for pause, for a sad thought. If, however, the dead meet one another in the other world, as so many now believe, the boy will soon be comforted, for within the week scores of friends, hundreds of acquaintances, will join him. See a reconnaissance at Polygon Wood and Eskernest! Out of a whole company, only twenty-five come back. Its commander killed. Another company half destroyed--its commander killed also. Two captains buried side by side near a much-sh.e.l.led house--rudimentary wooden crosses put o'er their resting-place. They were eager impetuous captains who had chafed to wait in England all August and September. Their minds were full of what the war really meant. But so soon are they sped! For four years the agony of Ypres beginning in these days will roll impotently on whilst they lie there, and the war with its gossip, its articles and speeches, its new inventions and new bitternesses will go on. G.o.d loved them and removed them betimes from the scene.

Yet if they see, if they can hear and know from other realms, what a spectacle, what an intense interest is theirs. To see the remains of their own poor companies of soldiers march back to Zandwoorde--the "not the six hundred," to see the ever-encroaching German and the more and more intimate and terrible strife proceed. The grand emotions of pity and fear thrill the air as the tumultuous battle goes on....

The sh.e.l.l-fire ceases to be irrelevant and finds its mark, turns whole brigades out of their trenches; reinforcements move with the acceleration of a moving ant-heap which has been kicked over. False news comes and confounds true news. The Borders are said to have given way.

Guards and Gordons go to their support. Weak points change to strong points, strong to weak. Columns of a.s.sault are launched by the enemy, first on one point, then on another. A column breaks through at Kruisseecke at nightfall. The madness of the murder-excitement enters the trenches, and it is bayonet to bayonet; the rain streams down to mingle with blood, it is intensely dark, many have lost their clearness of mind and balance of nerve. But there is a counter-attack. Gallant Major F----, leading, is shot down; there is a dreadful melee and then silence. The enemy is winning his way. Nevertheless patrols in Kruisseecke round up a large number and take them prisoner. There is a dispute as to who is to have the merit of having taken the prisoners.

But what does that matter? Round about this village is confusion worse confounded. Germans appear dressed up as Gordon Highlanders, then Gordons are thought to be Germans in disguise. Strange ma.s.ses roll up through the rain looking not at all like Germans and crying "We are French."--"We are Allies"--"Don't shoot"--"Where is Captain P----?" "We surrender," and things of that kind. The survivors of a Staffords.h.i.+re regiment devoid of officers, officers all down and out, come pelting through the lines having thrown their rifles away. German yells of victory break out.... It is a terrible night, one night, one little corner of the ground outside the city. Dawn comes, and Kruisseecke is with the enemy. It remains with the enemy. And there for many the march from Zeebruges ends and a personal war history is concluded. The torch of war has been carried thus far, to the battle of Ypres. The spent runner gives it to another who carries it in turn--

Back then to Ypres! It is an exposed moorland way. No woods, no houses stop the even progress of the wind. The trees are stumps no higher than Venetian masts. Instead of crops in the fields--crosses, an enormous harvest. Along the Menin road a steam tram rolls. At the entrance to Ypres is the communal cemetery of the city. Here, around the pre-war Belgian dead, lie Hussars, Lancers, Dragoon Guards, Scots Guards, all officers, all of the 1914 fighting. There they were lowered into graves with the flag about them--there they remain. In this acre of death the high wooden crucifix still stands, with its riven agonised Lord looking down. Of the hundreds of thousands of sh.e.l.ls which fell in Ypres all spared Him--all but one which came direct and actually hit the Cross.

That one did not explode but instead, half-buried itself in the wood and remains stuck in the upright to this day--an accidental symbol of the power of the Cross.

Ypres is terribly empty. Hundreds of thousands of eyes would look on it but there are few people who come to look at it--just ones and twos who stand diminutively in front of the great ruins and peer at them like the conventional figures in an old print. This absence of the living intensifies the strange atmosphere. It is said that the city will build itself up again, but it is possible to feel some doubt on that point.

Perhaps Ypres will never be built again. At present it has some hundred and fifty places where they sell beer to two where they sell anything else. Its string of wooden hotels with cubicle bedrooms do not pay. The curious come for an hour or so from Ostende but do not spend the night.

There is a sense of emptiness and tragedy which cannot be dispelled.

Some sort of unit of British troops does duty instead of police and is posted to various guards, the sentries being however without rifles. The soldiers in their "sixth year" impart a certain liveliness. A party of them at night coming down the middle of the street singing

One word of thine, Tell the world you are mine, And the world will be dearer to me,

in a full-throated chorus wakens echoes from dark corners of the ruins.

There is music and dancing in favoured taverns. The returned Belgians do not perhaps belong naturally to the atmosphere of the sublime. They love beer and sociality. They will make their money by some means--they are not too particular how. Civilised ethics do not rule in these places where war has worked its will.

Strolling along at dusk past the Cloth Hall tower a bright-eyed Belgian wolf asks you who you are. "_C'est triste, n'est ce pas?_" says he, pointing to the ruins. _Triste_ is what they are not. The Belgian is from Poperinghe. It is very dull there now. _Tous les soldats sont partis._ Also the mamzelles. Pas de jig-a-jig.

"Like a gla.s.s of beer?" asks the Belgian.

A spare woman of thirty serves two gla.s.ses of ale at a table outside a hotel. She seems to speak English for preference.

"You want someone to sleep with?" asks the man from Poperinghe.

"No, I sleep with no man."

"Not married?"

"No, and plenty time yet, and I shan't marry an English when I do. The English are all false."

The man from Poperinghe seems taken aback. At a further table a curious scene is being enacted. Here are sitting a pioneer corporal and a sergeant, both wearing the 1914 ribbon. They have their beer, and between them is an effervescent loose-mouthed Alsatian. The latter, like the man from Poperinghe, stands treat.

"I vill take you, one minit, I vill take you," says the Alsatian, kissing the tips of his fingers, "just vait, not ten minits from 'ere."

"Oh you go on, you bloomin' well shut up. I b'lieve you're agent for the girl or something," says the sergeant.

"No, listen, I'll tell you vot it is.... C'est de gateau, got that, gateau; naw need to drink any coffee, just ten minits, you see for yourself."

The sergeant makes a mocking show of biffing him in the eye, and grins all over his weak sun-burnt face. The shoeing corporal sips at his beer and smirks. The Alsatian on the tips of his toes, leaning forward on his chair which is tilted toward the table, gesticulates and s...o...b..rs--

"You wait till you see her, you'll felicitation yourself...."

And the sergeant is persuaded against his will and goes with him.

Meanwhile dusk has grown to dark, and the ruined Cloth Hall tower on the other side of the way seems more gloomy, more moody and threatening, as if the war were not yet over.

This Ypres is a terrible place still. There is no life when night comes on but tavern life. Those who live and work here have lost their sense of proportion. They are out of focus somehow. "You lookin' for dead soldiers," says a Flemish woman to you with a glaring stare, wondering if you are one of the exhumers. Death and the ruins completely outweigh the living. One is tilted out of time by the huge weight on the other end of the plank, and it would be easy to imagine someone who had no insoluble ties killing himself here, drawn by the lodestone of death.

There is a pull from the other world, a drag on the heart and spirit.

One is ashamed to be alive. You try to sleep in a little bed in a cubicle with tiny doll's house window. You listen to a drunken company down below singing, "Mademoiselle, have you got any rum?" A French couple enter the room next door, smacking one another's hips and confounding one another with coa.r.s.e violent laughter--that is the light end of the plank. Then night ensues, the real night, breathless and sepulchral, the night which belongs to all lost hopes and ended lives and wearinesses.

You lie listless, sleepless, with Ypres on the heart, and then suddenly a grand tumult of explosion, a sound as of the tumbling of heavy masonry. You go to the little window, behold, the whole sky is crimson once more, and living streamers of flame ascend to the stars. An old dump has gone up at Langhemarcq. Everyone in Ypres looks out and then returns to sleep--without excitement. The lurid glare dies down; stertorous night resumes her sway o'er the living and the dead. For a moment it was as if the old war had started again.