Chapter XII

“’Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble....”

--_The Slaying of the Jabberwock._

“Did ye hear what that man O’Flanagan was sayin’, him I mane as come up with the wather party las’ night?”

The speaker was a red-haired Irish Guardsman--what they would call in Ireland a “foxy man”--who was cleaning his rifle and chatting the while with a grizzled comrade, who was composedly scraping the mud off his puttees with a piece of stick preparatory to going on parade for rifle inspection. Our Ensign, standing in the open watching a British aeroplane having a thrilling time in and out of Hun shrapnel puffs, overheard the men talking in the trench behind him.

The elder man, busy with his scraping, only grunted contemptuously.

“Didn’t he see them with his own eyes,” the foxy man continued, tugging at his pull-through, “leppin’ the ditch and off across the open the same as they might be a lot of young horses? ‘The Lord save us!’ sez th’ officer, him as was with the wather party, ‘’tis the cateypillars!’ ‘Cateypillars?’ sez O’Flanagan, the chap as was tellin’ us about it--‘cateypillars is ut?’ sez he. ‘Begob,’ sez he, ‘’tis the first time ever I see cateypillars lep a ditch!’”

The other flung away his piece of stick, rubbed his hands together to get rid of the mud, and cast a leisurely glance over his person.

“Some of you young lads,” he said, “do be believin’ all you hears!”

“Amn’t I after tellin’ yez that O’Flanagan see thim himself?” answered the foxy man heatedly, applying his eye to the barrel of his rifle. “Like great crockeydiles they are, sez he, with a crew of thirty men in their inside and machine-guns and bombs and God knows what else, sez he, and little windies to give the lads inside a blasht of fresh air. Is ut tellin’ us lies the man was?”

“I wouldn’t be sayin’ that,” the old soldier replied cautiously; “but some of you young lads has no sinse.”

And with that he stumped off to rifle inspection.

Now you know what our Ensign and his orderly were talking about so earnestly as they trudged up the ridge in the last chapter. They spoke of the Tanks, or, as they were then called, the Hush-hushes, which everybody had heard about and nobody had seen--the mysterious engines which were to lead the Guards into battle on a date not appointed.

Naturally it was Apollo who saw them first in the flesh, or should one say more correctly, in the steel plating? He blew into the officers’ dug-out after rifle inspection that morning and said in a tone of decision--

“I’ve seen ’em!”

“Who?” said our Ensign.

“What?” said Roderick more grammatically.

“Where?” said The Beak, whose forensic mind had already divined to what Apollo referred.

“Just off the road, about 300 yards from here, ... the Tanks ... a squadron of them ... charming fellow in charge ... showed me all round ... amazing, wonderful ... come along and I’ll take you down there!”

So they all trooped off behind him down the road, and presently in a wayside field came upon those monstrously grotesque and ungainly “ingins,” which everybody has seen in the photographs in the papers, and which nobody is allowed to describe. A small and rotund Commodore ... or whatever a Tank squadron commander is called, ... who confessed to having been out of bed for two nights, did the honours very charmingly, ... but let us tread softly, for we are on censored ground. Let it suffice to say that a captain, a subaltern, and three ensigns returned to the officers’ dug-out, and swanked insufferably to their less fortunate comrades-in-arms who had not been among the first to see the Tanks, and that MacFinnigan and another orderly, who had been taken with the party, had the morning of their lives, the centre of an enthralled group of Guardsmen, all panting for information about “the crocodiles.”

And for the moment everybody’s mind was taken off the future.

But that afternoon--it was September 14th--the Commanding Officer came up, and the officers were bidden into the dug-out for a final conference, at which, among many other equally, but to at least one of them, less important details, they were informed that they would attack at 6.20 A.M. in the morning, and that they would move up into position at 9 o’clock that night.

That afternoon the men sat about in the trenches ... those of them that were not otherwise employed ... and talked and smoked and read the curious provincial papers sent out to them from home. Only a bare handful of letters came in to the dug-out to be censored that afternoon. The British soldier prefers to do his work first and write about it afterwards. The men seemed bored by the waiting about. They yawned, and cocked an eye at the sky, and discussed the weather prospects for the next day, and argued unendingly about “the crocodiles,” and the surprise they would be to “Fritz.”

In the course of the afternoon The Don turned up, in full battle array, beaming with delight. After all, he was to “go over” with the company. It had been decided that another officer should remain behind in his place. That officer was one of the party in the dug-out in the copse ... a spirit more ardent for battle never breathed in mortal man ... and he was stricken dumb, beaten to the ground, with the force of his disappointment. Our Ensign, seeing the utter abasement of his grief, reflected on the strange ways that Providence adopts to reveal the pure metal that gleams in men of the British Army.

While it was still light, some of them went out to have a look at the positions which they were to take up that evening, and from which they were to attack in the morning. Night marching across the open, even when you know the ground, is no joke; but when your direction leads you across wide trenches running at every imaginable angle, through tangles of barbed wire and over country that is nothing more or less than an infinite number of holes connected together by a little loose earth, why then, much forethought and preparation are required if you wish to avoid disaster. So the officers who went out reconnoitring took with them one man per platoon to mark the way and act as guides when they should go up that evening. To mark the route the guides stuck a few landmarks about in the shape of rusty rifles, picked up off the battlefield, inserted in the earth by the bayonet and decorated with a German helmet or a haversack--anything to catch the eye at night when seen against the skyline.

The officers dined together in the dug-out at 7.30 that evening, a very friendly and very business-like party of men. The table-talk was pure unadulterated shop, the discussion of small details of company organisation with occasional desultory snatches of debate upon that fertile theme--the Tanks. But the greater issues of the morrow were avoided by tacit consent, and a stranger suddenly bidden to that dinner-table could hardly have supposed (our Ensign says) that his hosts were preparing for anything more serious than a field-day on a large scale.

Our Ensign has often since looked back upon that last dinner of Nos. 1 and 2 Company Mess--the last supper of the Girondins somebody called it,--the long table (cunningly contrived out of trench-boards) covered with the famous white American cloth cover, the candles stuck in bottles, the white enamel mess crockery, the familiar faces all round the board, the background of raincoats and glasses and revolvers and belts hung on nails hammered into the tree-trunks forming the walls of the dug-out; and in the chiaroscuro of the upper part of the room the dimly-seen features of the Mess servants as they passed to and fro.

Some one had stored up a bottle of champagne for this special occasion; needless to say it had been forgotten, and the Girondins raved at the thought that their comrades back at the Transport were in all probability even now toasting them in the goblet that should have foamed at _their_ lips. So the double-company Mess had to fall back upon a very moderate supply of a somewhat anæmic claret. They would have undoubtedly pledged one another in this rare old wine (vintage, Félix Potin, Amiens), only this formality was unfortunately overlooked in a furious discussion which arose in the matter of fixing the responsibilities in the affair of the forgotten bottle of champagne.

All through dinner messages kept arriving, company sergeant-majors or orderlies bulking large in the low entrance to the dug-out. Here an officer scribbled a note or an acknowledgment in his notebook laid flat beside his plate: there a couple of ensigns, amid the stewed pears in soup-plates, the glasses, the candles in their bottles, and the white mugs of steaming coffee, pored over their maps for the hundredth time to fix in their memories a mental picture of the morrow’s line of advance. Servants crept in with flasks or water-bottles filled, or with sandwiches wrapped in paper. Many were the beverages recommended as sovereign for battle by the veterans. One urged rum-and-water, another neat whisky, a third cold tea, a fourth tea mixed with brandy. The last recipe appeared to command most suffrages, and our Ensign accordingly decided for it.

As the hour of departure drew near, one by one, gradually, the officers rose from the sandbag divan on which they had sat at meat and started to array themselves for battle, girding on their belts hung with a manifold collection of apparatus. One by one they clapped their helmets on their heads and stumped up the little stair into the night.

Thus, imperceptibly, the double-company Mess broke up, and the partnership of the summer months was dissolved for ever.

It was a cold, clear, starlit night, but still darkish, for the moon had not yet risen. Once outside the dug-out, our Ensign heard the low murmur of voices, the clatter of accoutrements from the open space in front of the trenches where the company was assembling. On the road in front he could see dim figures slowly advancing up the ridge: he guessed these to be the other two companies, who had bivouacked in the other part of the wood, moving up to their positions for the attack.

No smoking or talking was allowed; and it was in the most complete silence that at length the two companies moved away, a platoon at a time, each behind its guide. The air was dry and cold, with a touch of frost: it would be cold sleeping out in the open, but anything was better than rain.

The guides picked up their landmarks and led the men without trouble into the segment of trench allotted to them. The trench was crumbling from the autumn rains that had eaten into its shell-scored sides. In parts it had a foot of water. There were many corpses in it. There was no shelling. The night was very still. Only on the horizon, beyond the ridge which on the morrow the Guards would cross, the star-shells soared into a brief span of brilliant life, flickered, and died. Quietly the men slipped into their places in the trench, or, where it was water-logged, into shell-holes behind.

Now the moon, waning from full, began to rise and to shed its silver radiance on the muffled forms asleep in shell-hole and in trench amid the unburied dead. In the cold white light the ruined farm behind the sleeping figures looked like a bleached skeleton, and the devastation surrounding them stood out hard and clear. In the distance the star-shells less brilliant than their wont in the effulgence of the moon, seemed to beckon....