Chapter II: Book III: Into the Blue (2)

I watched the effect of all this on Heming. The Major watched hun. Perhaps most closely of all the signallers watched him. When a new officer joins any unit, the men are overwhelmingly eager to find out whether he has guts. They know that the day is always coming when their chance of life may depend on his judgment and courage.

Heming’s face was the face of a dreamer. He never was nor could have been a man of action. He imagined too far ahead. He visualized and fought the horror which lurked behind each traverse before he came to it. A thousand times that morning he must have seen himself mutilated and dead. His expression was tense and excited, but an amused smile played about the edges of his mouth. His eyes beneath his steel-helmet were brilliant and forward-looking. He seemed to contemplate his inward struggle against terror with the unimpassioned aloofness of a spectator.

Trenches were becoming shallower. It was some time since we had passed any sentries or working-parties. A horrible, brooding silence was over everything, broken only by the secret dripping of rain and the scuttling of rats among corpses. The Major became more frequent in the examining of his map. At last he ordered us to crouch down while he stealthily peered over the lip of the trench in an effort to get his bearings. It began to dawn on us that we had come too far and were lost in No Man’s Land.

While we waited, behind the mist we heard talking. The mist parted and we saw, not fifty yards away, the smoke-gray uniforms and red-cross armlets of a party of Hun stretcher-bearers. The Major was standing up. The Huns dropped the stretcher they were carrying; at the same instant a rifle rang out. The Major toppled backward, tearing at his breast.

Then we learnt once and for all whether Heming had guts. His face leapt together—these are the only words in which to describe his sudden change of expression. The entire man became knit in one purpose, to out-daunt the challenge of the danger His eyes were merry when he turned to me. “There are just enough of you to carry the Major out. He may live if you get him to a dressing-station. Work your way back down this trench; you’ll strike our front-line somewhere in that direction.”

“But what about you, sir?” I asked.

He was examining his revolver to see whether it was clean and ready. “I’m going forward,” he answered. “If I can get in a few pot-shots, I’ll divert their attention and help you to make good your getaway.”

It was the damnedest bit of folly—one man with a revolver, going forward to stir up an unknown number of the enemy He was an officer, so we had to obey him; besides, there were only just enough of us to carry out the Major. Just as we had started, Heming came crawling back to me on his hands and knees.

“Corporal,” he said hurriedly, “if anything should happen to me, just drop a line to this address and let her know that I wasn’t yellow. I don’t suppose she’ll care, so you don’t need to be sentimental. Just state the fact, and say that I did everything that she might feel proud of—of our friendship.”

The address which he slipped into my hand bore the name of a married woman. I recognized her name, for I had seen her portrait often in the London Illustrateds. I wondered whether it was true what he had said, that she would not care.

There wasn’t much time for wondering; the mist was lifting. It was easy to see one’s direction now and easy to be seen by the enemy. The trench was shallow; it was exhausting work, crouching to take advantage of every bit of cover and dragging at the body of the wounded man. We hadn’t been gone ten minutes before a barrage came down on the spot where we had been discovered, setting up a wall of fire between ourselves and Heming. In the brief silences between the falling of the shells, I could hear the ping of rifle-bullets. They were passing far over to our left; I could picture how Heming was exposing himself to draw the fire away from us.

It took us two hours to get the Major back to our lines. The last part of the way we grew reckless and carried him overland. Our infantry saw us and came out with a stretcher to help. At the dressing-station the M. O. who attended to the wound broke the news abruptly, “He hasn’t an earthly.”

The Major’s eyes opened. He repeated the words, “Not an earthly.” And then, “Tell Heming he’s all right, and say—say I’m sorry I doubted.”

The Major went west one hour after that and we returned to the guns to report to Brigade what had happened. The report went in across the wire, but the Colonel at once sent for me to give him the details in person. When I had ended, he sat twisting his moustaches thoughtfully. Then, “That fool painter,” he said, talking more to himself than to me, “I suppose he knew I thought he was afraid.” And then to me, “But he’s all white, Corporal, and it’s up to us to get him out. D’you think you could find the way back?”

I told him I could by following the wire which we had laid to that point.

When we again reached Kay Dump and Tom’s Cut, which was the main trench leading to the frontline, we found that the usual morning “hate” was in progress. The wounded of the night before were being carried out; as the bearers, carrying the stretchers on their shoulders, reached the high ground, the Huns caught sight of them and started to mow them down with enfilade fire. Our guns opened up in retaliation; by the tine the strafe had died down the morning had become too clear for anyone to approach No Man’s Land without being observed. It was in the first dusk of evening that Heming came back. We were in the front-line waiting for him, when the Hun snipers opened up. We saw him come running in zig-zags through the rusty wire and shell-holes. When he jumped into the trench beside us, he was laughing. “I’ve had a simply ripping time, Corporal,” he commenced. Then, seeing the Colonel, he stood stiffly to attention and saluted.

“What doing?” the Colonel asked.

“Making landscapes,” said Heming, with a twinkle, “and letting daylight into Huns.”

So that was how our Captain proved that he had guts; he’s done nothing but add to the reputation which he then earned. It was on the way down to the battery that he asked me to give him back the address. “And you must never mention her name, Corporal. Promise me that.”

Today I am an officer with Heming in the same battery, and we have never referred to the matter. I am sure he is in love with her and I believe he was in love with her before she married. Why he missed her or what are their present relations, I cannot guess; all I know is that he is out here to die and that she is the inspiration of all his reckless courage. Now he knows that the counter-stroke is to be struck and that the big chance of death has come, his heart will be singing. The men as they go about their packing up will be following him with their eyes and whispering, “The Captain’s mighty cheerio. He’s all for it.” In watching him they will feel a thrill of excitement; they, too, will become “all for it.” They will go with him anywhere—if need be, to hell.

Mighty cheerio and all fur it! That’s the way the entire Canadian Corps must be feeling at this moment. All through the sunny days of spring and summer we have had to sit tight and watch while other men marched out to meet their death. Thank God, our turn to sacrifice has come. The indignity of not dying is at last removed from us.

VI

IT was growing dusk before the observing-officer of the relieving battery returned from his reconnaissance of the Front to take over from me. The Hun planes had already come out like monstrous bats from their hiding-places, and were dipping their wings in the aquamarine and saffron of the fading sky. Our machine-gunners and riflemen for miles round were busy taking pot-shots at them, trying to drive them back so that they should not detect the unusual movement of troops behind our lines.

One may say what he likes about war, but it has moments which possess a surpassing and enthralling beauty. One such moment came this evening as I watched what is likely to prove to be my last sunset over the Vimy plain. I know it all—every charred tree, every hollow, every shattered ruin. I ought to know it for it has made me suffer; Death, mounted on his black stallion, has waited for me behind almost every bit of cover within sight. I have felt him when I could not see him; there have been times when across the distance I have caught the gleam of his shrouded eyes. Because of these things, because of the friends who have died here, because of the risks we have taken and shared, because of the ice-cold nights, the poker-games, the brief escapes into cleaner country, the letters from a certain girl and the home-sick dreams which have wiled away tedious hours in dug-outs—because of all these things, in an obstinate kind of way I love the scarred, forsaken horror of this country. “For the last time,” I told myself as I watched the sunset glow grow fainter upon the enemy domes and spires of Douai.

If I live through the war I may come back to this ridge which has been my home for over a year; but, if I come back, it will not look the same. All the challenge to one’s daring will have vanished. There will be no gassing, no shelling; one will be able to expose himself as much as he likes. Everything will be desperately and conventionally safe. Curious how one learns to admire danger!

While I watched and the light faded, men became symbols and shadows. They crept along the trenches, going up to die, as men have gone up to die through the ages. Even in peace times we were soldiers for one cause or another, and none of us were immune from dying. We are fighting from the day we draw breath till the day when our bodies, like beggars’ rags, drop from us and our spirits in their swift lean whiteness escape. Death! What is it but just that, the casting aside of tattered clothing!—and how tattered one’s body can become in the front-line!

The dance of destruction commenced as darkness settled. Like ropes of pearls flung up, the luminous tracer-bullets of machine-guns darted towards the sky. From somewhere in the clouds the Hun planes replied, flinging down similar ropes of ruin, Against the horizon, like lilies floating, Hun flares soared and swayed. While they lasted, Gavrelle sprang ghostly into sight and the contorted skeleton of what once was Oppy. The flares sink and die, everything is again swallowed up in obscurity. Down the sunken road to my left go the anonymous feet of marching men. Other feet have, trampled that mud, and they now are silent. There are feet among those who march tonight which will not make the return journey.

The phone rings sharply. “You’re wanted, sir.” The message is shouted up from the depths of the dug-out. I press the button of my flash-lamp and hurriedly slither down the innumerable greasy stairs. As I take the receiver, I tell the signaller to light another candle as there may be a message to pencil. He lights the candle and sticks it against the planked wall in the orthodox way, by warming the wall with the flame so that the heat may melt the wax.

“Hulloa! Hulloa!... Oh, it’s you sir!” It’s my Major.

“No, the friend who came to see me, this morning has not returned; he went somewhere.... Yes, I know; he ought to have taken over from me... O, here he is.... You’ll have horses for... all my party. Yes, sir, I understand. I won’t waste any time.”

I turn round to the officer who is to relieve me, “You took your time, old thing, I must say. I hope the dinner at battalion headquarters was a wet one. But you’ve rather crowded me; my battery hits the trail tonight.”

He starts a lengthy explanation, but I’m in a hurry to be gone. While I hand over to him my fighting maps, my linesmen are loading themselves with reels of wire and instruments.

“Well, so long,” I say.

“Good luck,” he replies.

How often I have spoken such words in this cramped death-trap; now I’m speaking them for the last time. I take a final look round; there’s the frame-work bunk, with the chicken-wire nailed over it, on which I have spent so many restless nights; there’s the ground-sheet tacked over the second exit through which the draught was so persistent in coming; there’s the penciled message on the wall to his sweetheart in the Argonne from the captured French soldier who slaved for the Hun—a message of deathless love, which I forwarded to her as directed. This place was a home of sorts, and now it is another’s.

We scramble up the steep, clammy stairs into the trench. The night air is soft and warm; stars are coming out. Round the traverse where the thirteen-pounder lies concealed, the gun-detachment is waiting for me. I raise the camouflage to take one last look at the brave little piece; then I’m tempted to enter and to place my hand upon the smooth cold breech-block, which shines like silver.

“We never got our chance to fire you, old girl,” is my thought: “but we’d have done our bit, if the Hun tanks had come, you and I. If the chance does come, you’ll have to play the game with some other chap now.”

We’re in the sunken road, climbing the ridge where the chalk gleams white as snow in the darkness. Some runners go past us, smoking cigarettes. They belong to the relieving troops; none of our men would do that. A cigarette shows up like a lamp from this point of vantage. I halt the men and order them to put out their cigarettes.

We’re on the crest now, where a sentry challenges. To the right and left shells are falling with a sullen crash. Our faces are turned towards the west, where the horizon is still faintly flame-coloured and evening has not yet sunk into night. To our right the splinted tower of Mount St. Eloi points a martyred finger at the clouds. Beneath our feet runs the Concrete Road, built at such sacrifice across the torn battlefield. All our transport comes up along this route, as the Hun knows well; he makes it the special target of his harassing fire. We note the new hits which the enemy has scored on it since last we made the journey. The ground is ploughed with shells on either side; here and there one finds black pools of blood, dead horses and broken limbers. From craters and places of concealment our forward guns belch fire. Their flash is hidden from the enemy by the ridge; but he has guessed their approximate locations, and searches and sweeps day and night in an effort to find and destroy them. Now and then, like the blast of a furnace, a torrent of flame shoots up where he has exploded an ammunition dump. Against the swift and momentary illumination one sees the shadowy figures of men running and dropping into shell-holes. The spectacle of death fails to move us. We have become too used to dying.

As we plod along under our heavy loads of instruments, kit, revolvers and reels of wire, we spread out so that one shell may not get the lot of us. My men are singing; from the words I gather an idea of what is happening in their minds:

I said “Good-bye” to the flowers

And “Good-bye” to the trees,

And the little church which sleeps so quietly,

I said “Good-bye” to on my knees;

I said “Good-bye” to my sister

And my dear old mammy, too;

But my heart was almost breaking

When I said “Good-bye” to you.

They’re conscious of something different and devastating approaching, and are singing their farewell to security.

Foch’s Pets! The hammer-head of the counterattack! If that’s the game, there won’t be many of us left to celebrate peace. It’s August now; how many of us will be above ground by Christmas?

VII

WE found our horses waiting for us with the grooms and horse-holders in a trench about fifty yards off the road. They had had to take cover there on account of enemy shelling attracted by an anti-aircraft battery. The anti-aircraft battery being mounted on motor-lorries, had made a swift get-away the moment the retaliation, which they had called down, had started. Our boys couldn’t get away; they had received explicit orders to wait for me and my party with their horses at one specific point on the Concrete Road. Three horses had been slightly wounded and one of the men had been killed. A splinter of shell had cut his throat as completely as if a knife had been drawn across it.

Kneeling beside the body, I drew back the saddle-blanket which had been thrown over if and scanned the face with my flash-lamp. My groom touched me on the shoulder, “You won’t recognise him, sir; he’s a remount—only came to the Front for the first time yesterday evening.”

It was a young face, with scarcely any beard on it. Nineteen, at most. The eyes were blue, and filmed, and wide. They had a sudden expression of surprise and protest. Death doesn’t often disturb me now-a-days, but I couldn’t tear that scarlet mark across the throat.—One day at the wagon-lines being chaffed for having come into the army late—the next night dead! Poor laddie! I don’t know who you are or where you came from. If I could have prevented it, things shouldn’t have happened this way. They ought to have given you a better run for your money. I’m sorry.

The horses are snorting and jumping back against the reins, so I switch off my flashlight and cover up the face.

“Have any arrangements been made?” I ask.

They tell me “None”—the accident only happened within the last half-hour.

“Then one of you will have to mount it in front of you. Hand it over to the Captain of the relieving battery. He’ll have to see to its burial: we march within the next three hours.... Where’s the Major?”

I learn that he’s still at the guns, so I tell my groom to lead on down the road to the battery-position and I order the rest of the party to get mounted. As I turn to take a short-cut through the rusty wire of old defenses and the water-logged craters of unrecorded fights, I glance back to catch the silhouettes of the horsemen as they ride towards the red lip of the horizon, with the drooping body hanging sack-like in front of the last rider’s saddle. An inconspicuous ending to one lad’s dreams of glory! He won’t be here for the counter-stroke. Letters from home will arrive full of anxiety and affection. They’ll have to be returned unread and unopened. The old, sad story! And yet, who knows! Perhaps he’s lucky.

Ahead of me in the misty vagueness of the chalk lies a ray of light like a golden dagger. I slide down into a trench, which was the Hun front-line. Poppies and cornflowers grow in tufts along its sides. Beneath my feet I feel the slats of duckboard. Dug back into the wall is a six-foot square room, with anti-gas blankets hung before it. The curtain which they form has not been properly adjusted; from between its edges light escapes. I lift the curtain and enter.

About a trench-made table a group of officers are seated. All of them are strangers to me except my Major; they’re the new chaps who are taking over from us. On the table there are two whiskey bottles, one empty and one just broached There’s a tin jug of water, a medley of glasses, piles of matches which are bring used as poker-chips and a dealt-out hand of cards.

My Major’s face, which is usually pale, is flushed tonight. His eyes are wrinkled and red about the edges; but the eyes themselves are like two blue pools of fire. As he catches sight of me, he raises his glass, “We don’t know where we’re going, Chris. Everything’s secret. All we know is that we march tonight and that they’ve get a labour battalion digging graves for us somewhere behind the line. Oh yes, and a special lorry of Victoria Crosses has arrived at Corps. We’re storm-troops, my boy, and going to be in it right up to the neck. Wherever we march and whenever we fight, here’s the old toast, ‘Success to crime.’.rdquo;

I manage to let him know that our horses are outside and hint that it’s about time we were going.

“Time! There’s heaps of time,” he says. “We pulled our guns out early this evening. The battery is all packed and back at the wagon-lines. Heming will have it standing to when we arrive. Sit down and take a hand. God knows when we’ll get a chance of a round of poker again.”

My mind is not on the game. I’m losing steadily, but I don’t worry. The candles drip away in wax; others take their places. I scarcely see the cards; I watch only one face through the wreaths of tobacco-smoke—my gallant little Major’s. I would never have known him in peace life; neither of us would have considered the other quite his sort. He looks like a cross between a clown and an ostler. He’s very small and slight; his legs are bowed with too much riding. If one were to see him in civilian dress, it would seem right that he should be chewing a straw. His face is white as death and terribly worn. His hair is sandy and thin in places. His teeth are filled with chunks of gold and not very regular. His uniforms are never smart; after he’s had them a week, they’re always torn and stained. He’s like a bantam cock; he makes up in spirit what he misses in height. He says “Good-bye” to his temper on the first provocation and is always most handsomely sorry afterwards. He’s adored and dreaded by his men. He’s the best field-gunner for open warfare in the whole Canadian Corps. His superior officers twit and admire him. He has an extraordinary talent for collaring affection. One trusts his judgment absolutely and yet follows him with a feeling that he must be protected. Life hasn’t been very good to him; he’s not particular as to whether or no he survives the fighting! There used to be a girl in the background—Well, there’s no harm in telling. He would write ten letters to every one that he received from her. He was fearfully humble about her. “You wouldn’t expect a girl,” he used to say “to write very often to such an ugly pup as I am.” When he spoke like that he would grin self-derisively and purposely show all his gold stoppings. He went home on leave to England six months ago determined to make sure of her and to bring matters to a crisis. She met him with the news that she was going to be married to an officer whom we all knew to be a quitter. She begged him to be present at the wedding so that people might not talk. He went to the wedding and returned to the Front six days ahead of time. Since then he’s seemed to be more white and small and bow-legged than ever.

I’m the only man who knows what lies behind his life. We’re the best of friends and, when we’re in the line, we always sleep in the same dug-out—which occasions a certain amount of jealousy among the other officers. When we’re on the march, he has to follow the routine etiquette and share his billets with the Captain. I hate to see him go up front for fear he should die. He shares the same fear for me, and is continually inventing excuses for getting me on the wire when I’m forward. God created him a caricature—the potter’s thumb slipped in the moulding of his clay; but to make amends God gave him the heart of a lion. You love him, protect him, declare him “quaint,” but never for a moment do you cease to admire him with a strangely simple and passionate loyalty. He’s as straight as John the Baptist; it would be impossible to tell him a lie.

We have a race-horse in our battery which the Major uses as his charger—a dainty, fine-boned aristocrat of a fellow, red and lean as a rusty sword. When our little Major rides him, leading his battery down the long white roads of France, strangers halt to gaze at the almost childish figure with the short bowed legs, wondering how he ever contrived to climb up so high. At the head of his battery, where he ought to appear most imposing, he looks more like a jockey than a field-officer. It doesn’t matter what strangers wonder or what he looks like, now that we’re bound on a death and glory adventure there’s no man to whom we would sooner entrust or for whom we would sooner lay down our lives. We forget the carelessness of the putter’s thumb and remember only the stoutness of heart which the feeble body hides. His name is Wraith—Charlie Wraith; and his age—. I should guess him to be thirty, though three and a half years of war have so battered his body that he looks forty-five.

At last the game ends. It’s eleven o’clock; we march at midnight and can just reach the wagonlines by short-cuts and hard riding. The Major has been in luck; he’s pocketing all the winnings. The glasses are filled for a final toast. The new Major who is taking over from us, raises his glass, “Here’s to Hell with the Kaiser and, if you’ve got to die, may you all die smiling.”

We laugh as we make a no heeler of it; dying might be the merriest of sports. But to me—I can’t help thinking of that laddie, a single day at the Front, lying beneath a saddle-blanket with his throat cut and that amazed expression of protest in his staring eyes.

We’ve climbed out of the trench and stand looking down at the faces clustered in the angle formed by the lifted curtain. A few paces to my left a cross shows plainly, upon which is written, “Here lies an Unknown British Soldier.” Unknown! A hundred years from now we shall all be unknown. We shall be massed together in an anonymous glory as “the heroes who stormed the Vimy Ridge.” It won’t mean any more to be remembered as John Smith than merely as “An Unknown British Soldier” who did his duty faithfully.

“Good-luck,” the faces in the candle-light cry.

“Cheerio,” we answer. But the words which are in all our minds are, “Those about to die, salute thee.”

Waving our hands, we turn away. The old racehorse, Fury, from a hundred yards has recognised his master’s voice and whinnies. With a pat on the neck and some coaxing words we get mounted, and walk carefully through the pit-falls of craters till we strike the road, when we grip with our knees and set off at the gallop.

Beneath the moonlight the chalk of the shell-ploughed battlefield creates the illusion of a country under snow, spreading beneath the velvet darkness for miles. The horses are impatient and refuse to be reined in. They need no guiding. With Fury in the lead, they leap trenches and take short-cuts where we would hesitate.

Ahead of us through the shadows we discover the battery drawn up in line, not a light or so much as a cigarette showing for fear our doings should be betrayed to the enemy planes. Heming rides out as we approach. He salutes the Major smartly. “Just in the nick of time, sir; our battery leads and we march as a brigade. There are no route orders. Everything’s secret. The Colonel alone knows where we’re going; even he doesn’t know beyond tonight.”

The adjutant gallops up and reins in importantly. “The Colonel’s compliments, and he’s waiting for you, sir. He wants to know what’s the delay.”

“No delay,” says the Major curtly, and wheels about to face the battery.

“Stand to your horses,” he orders. “Gunners and drivers prepare to mount.... Mount.” There’s a jingling of stirrups and the sound of men leaping to their places. As they sit to attention on the limbers and in the saddles, all grows silent.

“Column of route from the right. Walk. March,” the Major commands.

The horses of A Sub-section gun-team throw their weight into the collars. There’s a commotion of prancing in the darkness and the merciless sound of the cracking of whips: then through the shadows the big bays of A Sub strain forward and take shape; the B. C. party gallops to the head of the column and we’re off on our mysterious march in pursuit of the greatest of high adventures.