The Black Sheep
No one could have called Herbert Jones brilliant: his best friend – if he possessed such a thing – would not have predicted a great future for him. Into the manner of his living during the first twenty years of his life it would be well not to inquire too closely. Herbert Jones – more generally known to his inmates as ’Erb – was a dweller in dark places; one of the human flotsam who emerge like rats from their holes at night and spend in the nearest gin palace the few pence they have nefariously earned during the day. He was just a product of the gutter; from the gutter he came and to the gutter he returned in the fullness of time. And this was the way of it.
Personally I never made the acquaintance of Herbert Jones: such information as I possess of his disreputable history was told me one night at a dreary crossroads three or four miles east of Ypres, with the greenish flares lighting the sky all around us and the stench of dead horses in our nostrils. My informant was one of my drivers who had lived in the same street with him in London.
What it was that had caused a temporary ebullition of decent feeling in such an unpromising subject I was unable to find out. It was something to do with a lady called Lizzie Green, too much gin, and a picture palace which displayed a film of the Royal Horse Artillery galloping into action. In view of the fact that ninety per cent of Herbert’s income was derived from making himself a public pest at jobbing stables, he quite naturally posed as a horsey youth, and that fact, coupled with Lizzie, the gin, and the film, apparently produced this one ebullition of decent feeling of which I have spoken. He enlisted. The very next day he presented his unprepossessing personality at a recruiting office – and his slum knew him no more. The Royal Regiment swallowed him up, gave him a uniform, decent food, and prepared to make a man of him.
It failed – hopelessly, dismally. The revilings of officers, the cursings of sergeants, the blasphemy of bombardiers alike failed to produce the slightest effect. His conduct sheet rapidly assumed the appearance of a full-sized novel; but there he was and there he remained – a driver in the Field Artillery, and the black sheep of his battery.
A year later found him at Havre. From there he drifted to Rouen – reviled by everyone who had the misfortune to have anything to do with him. At last, like a bad penny, he turned up again at his old battery, to the horror of all concerned, who thought they had effectually got rid of him at the beginning of the war. But the ways of record officers are wonderful – passing the ways of women. So when the news was broken to the major, and he had recovered, he ordered him to be put with the ammunition limbers, whose job it is to take ammunition to the battery nightly when they are in action and then return for more. And the captain, whose job is largely ammunition supply, heard his history from the sergeant whose job is entirely ammunition supply, and their remarks would be unprintable. Two nights later the battery was in action in the salient somewhere east of Ypres, and the reserves of ammunition were away back somewhere to the west, and Herbert Jones was with the reserves.
In the official communiqués it was known as a time of artillery activity in the neighbourhood of Ypres: in the communiqués of the battery it was known as a time of hell let loose; but especially was it so known among the ammunition limbers who nightly passed from west to east with full limbers and returned from east to west with empty ones. For, as may be seen by anyone who takes the trouble to procure an ordnance map, all roads from the west converge on Ypres, and having passed through the neck of the bottle diverge again to the east; which fact is not unknown to the Germans. So the limbers do not linger on the journey, but, at an interval of ten yards or so, they travel as fast as straining horseflesh and sweating drivers can make them. In many places a map is not necessary – even to a stranger. The road is clearly marked by what has been left at its side – the toll of previous journeys of limbers, who went out six in number and returned only four. And, should the stranger be blind, another of his senses will lead him unfailingly along the right road, for these derelict limbers and their horses have been there some time.
The Germans were searching the road leading to Ypres from the crossroads where I sat waiting for an infantry working party that had gone astray, on the first of the two occasions on which I saw ’Erb: that is to say, they were plastering a bit of the road with shells in the hope of bagging anything living on that bit. In the distance the rumble of wagons up the road was becoming louder every minute. All around us – for it was a salient – green flares lit up the sky, showing where the front trenches lay, and occasional rolls of musketry, swelling to a crescendo and then dying fitfully away, came at intervals from different parts of the line. A few spent bullets pinged viciously overhead, and almost without cessation came the angry roar of high-explosive shrapnel bursting along the road or over the desolate plough on each side. Close to me, at the crossroads itself, stood the remnants of a village – perhaps ten houses in all. The flares shone through the ruined walls – the place stank of death. Save for the noise it was a Dead World – a no-man’s land. In the little village two motor-ambulances balanced themselves like drunken derelicts. Dead horses lay stiff and distended across the road, and a few over-turned wagons completed the scene of desolation.
Then, suddenly, over a slight rise swung the ammunition limbers – grunting, cursing, bumping into shell holes and out again. I watched them pass and swing away right-handed. In the rear came six pairs of horses, spare – in case. And as the last one went by a man beside me said, “Hallo! there’s ’Erb.” It was then I got his history.
An hour later I was back at that same place, having caught my wandering infantry party and placed them on a line with instructions to dig and continue digging till their arms dropped off. But when I got there I found it had changed a little in appearance, that dreary crossroads. Just opposite the bank where I had sat were two horses lying in the road and the legs of a man stuck out from underneath them, and they had not been there an hour before. The horses’ heads were turned towards Ypres, and it seemed to me that there was something familiar in the markings of one of them.
With the help of my drivers we pulled out the man. It was no good – but one never knows.
And the same voice said, “Why, it’s ’Erb.”
Crashing back on the return journey, the limbers empty, ’Erb again bringing up the rear with the spares, one blinding flash, and–
We laid him in the gutter.
Did I not say that he came from the gutter? And to the gutter he returned in the fullness of time.