The Soul of the War Part 23

The character of the fighting in this part of Flanders entered into the monotone of the winter campaign and, though the censors.h.i.+p was blamed for scarcity of news, there was really nothing to conceal in the way of heroic charges by cavalry, das.h.i.+ng bayonet attacks, or rapid counter-movements by infantry in ma.s.s. Such things for which public imagination craved were not happening.

What did happen was a howling gale shrieking across the dunes, and swirling up the sands into blinding clouds, and tearing across the flat marshlands as though all the invisible G.o.ds of the old ghost world were racing in their chariots.

In the trenches along the Yser men crouched down close to the moist mud to shelter themselves from a wind which was harder to dodge than shrapnel sh.e.l.ls. It lashed them with a fierce cruelty. In spite of all the woollen comforters and knitted vests made by women's hands at home, the wind found its way through to the bones and marrow of the soldiers so that they were numbed. At night it was an agony of cold, preventing sleep, even if men could sleep while sh.e.l.ls were searching for them with a cry of death.

The gunners dug pits for themselves, and when they ceased fire for a time crawled to shelter, smoking through little outlets in the damp blankets in which they had wrapped their heads and shoulders. They tied bundles of straw round their legs to keep out the cold and packed old newspapers inside their chests as breast-plates, and tried to keep themselves warm, at least in imagination.

There was no battlefield in the old idea of the world. How often must one say this to people at home who think that a modern army is encamped in the fields with bivouac fires and bell tents? The battle was spread over a wide area of villages and broken towns and shattered farmhouses, and neat little homesteads yet untouched by fire or sh.e.l.l. The open roads were merely highways between these points of shelter, in which great bodies of troops were huddled--the internal lines of communication connecting various parts of the fighting machine.

It was rather hot, as well as cold, at Oudecapelle and Nieucapelle, and along the line to Styvekenskerke and Lom-bardtzyde. The enemy's batteries were hard at work again belching out an inexhaustible supply of sh.e.l.ls. Over there, the darkness was stabbed by red flashes, and the sky was zigzagged by waves of vivid splendour, which shone for a moment upon the blanched faces of men who waited for death.

Through the darkness, along the roads, infantry tramped towards the lines of trenches, to relieve other regiments who had endured a spell in them. They bent their heads low, thrusting forward into the heart of the gale, which tore at the blue coats of these Frenchmen and plucked at their red trousers, and slashed in their faces with cruel whips. Their side-arms jingled against the teeth of the wind, which tried to s.n.a.t.c.h at their bayonets and to drag the rifles out of their grip.

They never raised their heads to glance at the Red Cross carts coming back.

Some of the French officers, tramping by the side of their men, shouted through the swish of the gale:

"Courage, mes pet.i.ts!"

"II fait mauvais temps pour les sales Boches!"

In cottage parlours near the fighting lines--that is to say in the zone of fire, which covered many villages and farmsteads, French doctors, b.u.t.toned up to the chin in leather coats, bent over the newest batches of wounded.

"Shut that door! Sacred name of a dog; keep the door shut! Do you want the gale to blow us up the chimney?"

But it was necessary to open the door to bring in another stretcher where a man lay still.

"Pardon, mon capitaine," said one of the stretcher-bearers, as the door banged to, with a frightful clap.

Yesterday the enemy reoccupied Dixmude.

So said the official bulletin, with its incomparable brevity of eloquence.

26

For a time, during this last month in the first year of the war, I made my headquarters at Dunkirk, where without stirring from the town there was always a little excitement to be had. Almost every day, for instance, a German aeroplane--one of the famous Taube flock-- would come and drop bombs by the Town Hall or the harbour, killing a woman or two and a child, or breaking many panes of gla.s.s, but never destroying anything of military importance (for women and children are of no importance in time of war), although down by the docks there were rich stores of ammunition, petrol, and material of every kind. These birds of death came so regularly in the afternoon that the Dunquerquoises, who love a jest, even though it is a b.l.o.o.d.y one, instead of saying "Trois heures et demie," used to say, "Taube et demie" and know the time.

There was a window in Dunkirk which looked upon the chief square.

In the centre of the square is the statue of Jean-Bart, the famous captain and pirate of the seventeenth century, standing in his sea- boots (as he once strode into the presence of the Sun-King) and with his sword raised above his great plumed hat. I stood in the balcony of the window looking down at the colour and movement of the life below, and thinking at odd moments--the thought always thrust beneath the surface of one's musings--of the unceasing slaughter of the war not very far away across the Belgian frontier. All these people here in the square were in some way busy with the business of death.

They were crossing these flagged stones on the way to the shambles, or coming back from the sh.e.l.l-stricken towns, la bas, as the place of blood is called, or taking out new loads of food for guns and men, or bringing in reports to admirals and the staff, or going to churches to pray for men who have done these jobs before, and now, perhaps, lie still, out of it.

This square in Dunkirk contained many of the elements which go to make up the actions and reactions of this war. It seemed to me that a clever stage manager desiring to present to his audience the typical characters of this military drama--leaving out the beastliness, of course--would probably select the very people and groups upon whom I was now looking down from the window. Motor-cars came whirling up with French staff officers in dandy uniforms (the stains of blood and mud would only be omitted by Mr. Willie Clarkson). In the centre, just below the statue of Jean-Bart, was an armoured-car which a Belgian soldier, with a white rag round his head, was explaining to a French cuira.s.sier whose long horse-hair queue fell almost to his waist from his linen-covered helm. Small boys mounted the step and peered into the wonder-box, into the mysteries of this neat death-machine, and poked grubby fingers into bullet-holes which had scored the armour-plates. Other soldiers--Cha.s.seurs Alpins in sky-blue coats, French artillery men in their dark-blue jackets, Belgian soldiers wearing s.h.i.+ny top-hats with eye-shades, or d.i.n.ky caps with gold or scarlet ta.s.sels, and English Tommies in mud-coloured khaki-- strolled about the car, and nodded their heads towards it as though to say, "That has killed off a few Germans, by the look of it. Better sport than trench digging."

The noise of men's voices and laughter--they laugh a good deal in war time, outside the range of sh.e.l.ls--came up to the open window; overpowered now and then by the gurgles and squawks of motor- horns, like beasts giving their death-cries. With a long disintegrating screech there came up a slate-grey box on wheels. It made a semicircular sweep, scattering a group of people, and two young gentlemen of the Royal Naval Air Service sprang down and shouted "What-ho!" very cheerily to two other young gentlemen in naval uniforms who shouted back "Cheer-o!" from the table under my balcony.

I knew all of them, especially one of the naval airmen who flies what he calls a motor-bus and drops bombs with sea curses upon the heads of any German troops he can find on a morning's reconnaissance. He rubs his hand at the thought that he has "done in" quite a number of the "German blighters." With a little luck he hopes to n.o.bble a few more this afternoon. A good day's work like this bucks him up wonderfully, he says, except when he comes down an awful whop in the darned old motor-bus, which is all right while she keeps going but no bloomin' use at all when she spreads her skirts in a ploughed field and smashes her new set of stays. Oh, a bad old vixen, that seaplane of his! Wants a lot of coaxin'.

A battery of French artillery rattled over the cobblestones. The wheels were caked with clay, and the guns were covered with a grey dust.

They were going up Dixmude way, or along to Ramscapelle. The men sat their horses as though they were glued to the saddles. One of them had a loose sleeve pinned across his chest, but a strong grip on his bridle with his left hand. The last wheels rattled round the corner, and a little pageant, more richly coloured, came across the stage. A number of Algerian Arabs strode through the square, with a long swinging gait. They were wearing blue turbans above the flowing white "haik" which fell back upon their shoulders, and the white burnous which reached to their ankles. They were dark, bearded men; one of them at least with the n.o.ble air of Oth.e.l.lo, the Moor, and with his fine dignity.

They stared up at the statue of Jean-Bart, and asked a few questions of a French officer who walked with a shorter step beside them. It seemed to impress their imagination, and they turned to look back at that figure with the raised sword and the plumed hat. Three small boys ran by their side and held out grubby little hands, which the Arabs shook, with smiles that softened the hard outlines of their faces.

Behind them a cavalcade rode in. They were Arab chiefs, on little Algerian horses, with beautifully neat and clean limbs, moving with the grace of fallow deer across the flagged stones of Dunkirk. The bridles glistened and tinkled with silver plates. The saddles were covered with embroidered cloths. The East came riding to the West.

These Mohammedans make a religion of fighting. It has its ritual and its ceremony--even though shrapnel makes such a nasty mess of men.

So I stood looking down on these living pictures of a city in the war zone. But now and again I glanced back into the room behind the window, and listened to the sc.r.a.ps of talk which came from the lounge and the scattered chairs. There was a queer collection of people in this room. They, too, had some kind of business in the job of war, either to kill or to cure. Among them was a young Belgian lieutenant who used to make a "bag" of the Germans he killed eaeh day with his mitrailleuse until the numbers bored him and he lost count. Near him were three or four nurses discussing wounds and dying wishes and the tiresome hours of a night when a thousand wounded streamed in suddenly, just as they were hoping for a quiet cup of coffee. A young surgeon spoke some words which I heard as I turned my head from the window.

"It's the frightful senselessness of all this waste of life which makes one sick with horror..."

Another doctor came in with a tale from Ypres, where he had taken his ambulances under sh.e.l.l-fire.

"It's monstrous," he said, "all the red tape! Because I belong to a volunteer ambulance the officers wanted to know by what infernal impudence I dared to touch the wounded. I had to drive forty miles to get official permission, and could not get it then... And the wounded were lying about everywhere, and it was utterly impossible to cope with the numbers of them... They stand on etiquette when men are crying out in agony! The Prussian caste isn't worse than that."

I turned and looked out of the window again. But I saw nothing of the crowd below. I saw only a great tide of blood rising higher and higher, and I heard, not the squawking of motor-horns, but the moans of men in innumerable sheds, where they lie on straw waiting for the surgeon's knife and crying out for morphia. I saw and heard, because I had seen and heard these things before in France and Belgium.

In the room there was the touch of quiet fingers on a piano not too bad. It was the music of deep, soft chords. A woman's voice spoke quickly, excitedly.

"Oh! Some one can play. Ask him to play! It seems a thousand years since I heard some music. I'm thirsty for it!"

A friend of mine who had struck the chords while standing before the piano, sat down, and smiled a little over the notes.

"What shall it be?" he asked, and then, without waiting for the answer, played. It was a reverie by Chopin, I think, and somehow it seemed to cleanse our souls a little of things seen and smelt. It was so pitiful that something broke inside my heart a moment. I thought of the last time I had heard some music. It was in a Flemish cottage, where a young lieutenant, a little drunk, sang a love-song among his comrades, while a little way off men were being maimed and killed by bursting sh.e.l.ls.

The music stopped with a slur of notes. Somebody asked, "What was that?"

There was the echo of a dull explosion and the noise of breaking gla.s.s. I looked out into the square again from the open window, and saw people running in all directions.

Presently a man came into the room and spoke to one of the doctors, without excitement.

"Another Taube. Three bombs, as usual, and several people wounded. You'd better come. It's only round the corner."

It was always round the corner, this sudden death. Just a step or two from any window of war.

27

Halfway through my stay at Dunkirk I made a trip to England and back, getting a free pa.s.sage in the Government s.h.i.+p Invicta, which left by night to dodge the enemy's submarines, risking their floating mines. It gave me one picture of war which is unforgettable. We were a death-s.h.i.+p that night, for we carried the body of a naval officer who had been killed on one of the monitors which I had seen in action several times off Nieuport. With the corpse came also several seamen, wounded by the same sh.e.l.l. I did not see any of them until the Invicla lay alongside the Prince of Wales pier. Then a party of marines brought up the officer's body on a stretcher. They bungled the job horribly, jamming the stretcher poles in the rails of the gangway, and, fancying myself an expert in stretcher work, for I had had a little practice, I gave them a hand and helped to carry the corpse to the landing-stage. It was sewn up tightly in canvas, exactly like a piece of meat destined for Smithfield market, and was treated with no more ceremony than such a parcel by the porters who received it.

"Where are you going to put that, d.i.c.k?"

"Oh, stow it over there, Bill!"

That was how a British hero made his home-coming.

But I had a more horrible shock, although I had been accustomed to ugly sights. It was when the wounded seamen came up from below.