SHORT LEAVE TO PARIS
SHORT LEAVE TO Paris ought to bequeath a main impression of swift transition from the dirt, danger, and comfortlessness of the trenches to broad pavements, shop windows, well-dressed women, smooth courtliness, and restaurant luxuries; to fresh incisive talks on politics and the Arts, to meetings with old friends and visits to wellremembered haunts of the Paris one knew before August 1914. Instead, the wearing discomforts of the journey are likely to retain chief hold upon the memory. Can I ever forget how we waited seven hours for a train due at 9.25 P.M. at a station that possessed no forms to sit upon, so that some of the men lay at full length and slept on the asphalt platform? And is there not a corner of my memory for the crawling fusty leavetrain that had bare planks nailed across the door spaces of some of the “officers’” compartments; a train so packed that we three officers took turns on the one spare seat in an “other ranks” carriage? And then about 8 A.M. we landed at a well-known “all-change” siding, a spot of such vivid recollections that some one had pencilled in the ablution-house, “If the Huns ever take —— Camp and have to hold it they’ll give up the war in disgust.”
But in the queue of officers waiting at the Y.M.C.A. hut for tea and boiled eggs was the brigade-major of a celebrated Divisional Artillery. He stood in front of me looking bored and dejected. I happened to pass him a cup of tea. As he thanked me he asked, “Aren’t you fed up with this journey? Let’s see the R.T.O. and inquire about a civilian train!” “If you’ll take me under your wing, sir,” I responded quickly. So we entered Paris by a fast train, - as did my two companions of the night before, who had followed my tip of doing what I did without letting outsiders see that there was collusion.
The brigade-major’s wife was awaiting him in Paris, and I dined with them at the Ritz and took them to lunch next day at Henry’s, where the frogs’ legs were delicious and the chicken a recompense for that nightmare of a train journey. Viel’s was another restaurant which retained a proper touch of the Paris before the war - perfect cooking, courtly waiting, and prices not too high. I have pleasant recollections also of Fouquet’s in the Champs Elysées, and of an almost divine meal at the Tour d’Argent, on the other side of the river, where Frederic of the Ibsen whiskers used once to reign: the delicacy of the soufflée of turbot! the succulent tenderness of the caneton à la presse! the seductive flavour of the raspberries and whipped cream!
The French Government apparently realise that the famous restaurants of Paris are a national asset. There was no shortage of waiters; and, though the choice of dishes was much more limited than it used to be, the real curtailment extended only to cheese, sugar, and butter. Our bread-tickets brought us as much bread as we could reasonably expect.
One day, in the Rue de la Paix, I met a well-known English producer of plays, and he piloted me to the Café de Paris, which seemed to have lost nothing of its special atmosphere of smartness and costliness. Louis the Rotund, who in the early days of the war went off to guard bridges and gasometers, was playing his more accustomed rôle of maître d’hôtel, explaining with suave gravity the unpreventable altitude of prices. And for at least the tenth time he told me how in his young-man soldiering days he came upon the spring whose waters have since become world-famous.
Another night I ascended Montmartre, and dined under the volatile guidance of Paul, who used to be a pillar of the Abbaye Thélème. Paul came once to London, in the halcyon days of the Four Hundred Club, when nothing disturbed him more than open windows and doors. “Keep the guests dancing and the windows tight-closed, and you sell your champagne,” was his business motto. However, he was pleased to see me again, and insisted on showing me his own particular way of serving Cantelupe melon. Before scooping out each mouthful you inserted the prongs of your fork into a lemon, and this lent the slightest of lemon flavouring to the luscious sweetness of the melon.
America seemed to be in full possession of the restaurant and boulevard life of Paris during those August days. Young American officers, with plenty of money to spend, were everywhere. “You see,” a Parisienne explained, “before the war the Americans we had seen had been mostly rich, middle-aged, business men. But when the American officers came, Paris found that they were many, that many of them were young as well as well-off, and that many of them were well-off, young, and good-looking. It is quite chic to lunch or dine with an American officer.”
The Americans carried out their propaganda in their usual thorough, enthusiastic fashion. I was taken to the Elysée Palace Hotel, where I found experienced publicists and numbers of charming well-bred women busy preparing information for the newspapers, and arranging public entertainments and sight-seeing tours for American troops in Paris, all with the idea of emphasising that Americans were now pouring into France in thousands. One night a smiling grey-haired lady stopped before a table where four of us, all British officers, were dining, and said, “You’re English, aren’t you? Well, have you been with any of ‘our boys’?… Have you seen them in action?… They’re fine, aren’t they?” We were surprised, a little taken aback at first, but we showed sympathetic understanding of the American lady’s enthusiasm, and responded in a manner that left her pleased as ever.
Before returning to the Front I got in a day’s golf at La Boulie, and also made a train journey to a village the other side of Fontainebleau, where an old friend, invalided from the French army, had settled on a considerable estate, and thought of nothing but the fruits and vegetables and dairy produce he was striving to improve and increase. I did not visit many theatres; it struck me that the Paris stage, like that of London, was undergoing a war phase - unsophisticated, ready-to-be-pleased audiences bringing prosperity to very mediocre plays.
My journey back to the line included a stay at a depot where officers were speedily reminded that they had left the smooth luxuriousness of Paris behind them. The mess regulations opened with “Try to treat the mess as a mess and not as a public-house,” and contained such additional instructions as, “Do not place glasses on the floor,” and “Officers will always see that they are in possession of sufficient cash to pay mess bills.”
I found the brigade three and a half miles in advance of where I had left them. There had been a lot of stiff fighting, and on our front the British forces had not gone so far forward as the corps immediately south of us had done. Big things were afoot, however, and that very night batteries and Brigade Headquarters moved up another three thousand yards. A snack of bully beef and bread and cheese at 7 P.M., and the colonel and a monocled Irish major, who was working under the colonel as “learner” for command of a brigade, went off to see the batteries. The adjutant and myself, bound for the new Headquarters, followed ten minutes later.
“You know that poor old Lamswell has gone,” he said, as we crossed a grassy stretch, taking a ruined aerodrome as our guiding mark. “Poor chap, he was wounded at the battery position the day after you left. Only a slight wound in the leg from a gas-shell, and every one thought he had got a comfortable ‘Blighty.’ But gangrene set in, and he was dead in three days. Beastly things those gas-shells!… Kent, too, got one through the shoulder from a sniper, and he’s gone to England. The colonel was with him at the O.P., and tried to get the sniper afterwards with a rifle.”
“How is the colonel?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s going very strong; active as ever. Colonel —— is back from leave and doing C.R.A. now. We’re under the ——th Division at the moment.”
“You remember Colonel —— who got the V.C. in the Retreat,” he went on; “he was killed on August 8th - went out to clear up a machine-gun pocket…. Damned nice fellow, wasn’t he?”
We reached a narrow road, crowded with battery ammunition waggons going up to the new positions. Darkness had descended, and when you got off the road to avoid returning vehicles it was necessary to walk warily to escape tumbling into shell-holes. “The blighters have got a new way of worrying us now,” went on the adjutant. “They’ve planted land-mines all over the place, particularly near tracks. Lead-horses are always liable to put a foot against the wire that connects with the mine, and when the thing goes off some one is nearly always hurt. D Battery had a nasty experience this afternoon. Kelly tried to take a section forward, and the Boche spotted them and shelled them to blazes. As they came back to get away from observation one of the teams disturbed a land-mine. The limber was blown up, and one driver and two horses were killed…. Look here, if we move off in this direction we ought to save time; the railway must be over there and the place for our Headquarters is not far from it, in a trench where the O.P. used to be.”
We found ourselves on some shell-torn ground that was cut up also by short spans of trenches. One part of it looked exactly like another, and after ten minutes or so we decided that we were wandering to no purpose. “There are some old German gun-pits close by,” panted the adjutant in further explanation of the place we were seeking. All at once I saw a thin shaft of light, and blundered my way towards it. It proved to be a battery mess, made in a recess of a trench, with a stout tarpaulin drawn tight over the entrance. I hailed the occupants through the tarpaulin, and on their invitation scrambled a passage inside. A young captain and two subalterns listened to what I had to say, and gave me map co-ordinates of the spot on which we now were. When I mentioned German gun-pits the captain responded with more helpful suggestions. “It’s difficult finding your way across country, because the trenches wind about so, but follow this trench as it curves to the right, and when you come to an old British dug-out blown right in, go due north across country; then you’ll come to the railway,” he said.
We thanked him, plodded on, reached a point on the railway quite half a mile beyond the spot we wanted, and then out of the darkness heard the voice of Henry of C Battery. We drew near, and found him in the mood of a man ready to fight the whole world. “Dam fools,” he grumbled: “there’s a sergeant of A Battery who’s taken a wrong turning and gone into the blue, and half a dozen of my waggons have followed him…. And B Battery have a waggon tipped over on the railway line, just where we all cross, and that’s holding everything else up.”
As we could be of no assistance to the distressful Henry we continued our own search, and, by hailing all within call, eventually reached our trench, where we found the colonel, always in good mood when something practical wanted doing, superintending Headquarters’ occupation of the place. “Major Mallaby-Kelby, the doctor, the adjutant, and myself can fix up under here,” he said, pointing to a large tarpaulin fastened across the trench. “The signallers have got the mined dug-out round the corner, and you,” he went on, referring to me, “had better start fixing Wilde and yourself up. We’ll make that gun-pit with the camouflaged roofing into a mess to-morrow.”
With the aid of the servants I gathered six long two-inch planks, and placed them across the part of the trench that seemed best protected from enemy shells. A spare trench cover pulled full stretch on top of these planks lent additional immunity from rain. A little shovelling to level the bottom of the trench, and Wilde’s servant and mine laid out our valises. A heap of German wicker ammunition-carriers, sorted out on the ground, served as a rough kind of mattress for the colonel. The doctor had fastened upon a spare stretcher. In half an hour we were all seeking sleep.
Zero hour was at 1 A.M., a most unusual time for the infantry to launch an attack. But this would increase the element of surprise, and the state of the moon favoured the enterprise. When hundreds of guns started their thunder I got up to see, and found the doctor on the top of the trench also. Bursts of flame leapt up all around, and for miles to right and left of us. The noise was deafening. When one has viewed scores of modern artillery barrages one’s impressions become routine impressions, so to speak; but the night, and the hundreds and hundreds of vivid jumping flashes, made this 1 A.M. barrage seem the most tremendous, most violently terrible of my experience. The doctor, looking a bit chilled, gazed long and solemnly at the spectacle, and for once his national gift of expressing his feelings failed him.
When news of the results of the operation came to us it was of a surprising character. The infantry had moved forward under cover of the barrage, had reached their first objective, and continued their advance two miles without encountering opposition. The Boche had stolen away before our guns loosed off their fury. I only saw three prisoners brought in, and some one tried to calculate the thousands of pounds worth of ammunition wasted on the “barrage.” A message came that we were to hold ourselves in readiness to rejoin our own Divisional Artillery; our companion Field Artillery Brigade, the ——rd, would march also. At 6.30 P.M. the orders arrived. We were to trek northwards, about four thousand yards as the crow flies, and be in touch with our C.R.A. early next morning.
That night rain fell in torrents. When we had dined, and all the kit had been packed up, we sheltered in the gun-pit, awaiting our horses and the baggage-waggons. As the rain found fresh ways of coming through the leaky roof, we shifted the boxes on which we sat; all of us except the colonel, who, allowing his chin to sink upon his breast, slept peacefully for three-quarters of an hour. It was pitch-dark outside, and the trench had become a glissade of slimy mud. It was certain that the drivers would miss their way, and two of the signallers who had gone out to guide them along the greasy track from the railway crossing had come back after an hour’s wait. After a time we ceased trying to stem the rivulets that poured into the gun-pit; we ceased talking also, and gave ourselves up to settled gloom, all except the colonel, who had picked upon the one dry spot and still slept.
But things mostly come right in the end. The rain stopped, a misty moon appeared; the vehicles came along, and by 10.30 P.M. the colonel was on his mare, picking a way for our little column around shell-holes, across water-logged country, until we struck a track leading direct to Meaulte, where the Brigade had been billeted during 1915. It was a strangely silent march. There was a rumbling of guns a long way to north of us, and that was all. The Boche had undoubtedly stolen away. For a long time the only sound was the warning shout, passed from front to rear, that told of shell-holes in the roadway.
On the outskirts of the village we saw signs of the Hun evacuation: deserted huts and stables, a couple of abandoned motor-lorries. The village itself was a wreck, a dust-heap, not a wall left whole after our terrific bombardments. Not a soul in the streets, not a single house habitable even for troops. Of the mill that had been Brigade Headquarters three years before, one tiny fragment of a red-brick wall was left. The bridge in front of it had been scattered to the winds; and such deep shell-craters pitted the ground and received the running water, that the very riverbed had dried up. On the other side of the village batteries of our own and of our companion brigade moved slowly along. It was 2 A.M. when we encamped in a wide meadow off the road. When the horses had been tethered and fed and the men had erected their bivouacs, the colonel, Major Mallaby-Kelby, and we five remaining officers turned into one tent, pulled off boots and leggings, and slept the heavy dreamless sleep of healthily tired men.
At 7 A.M. the colonel announced that he and myself would ride up to Bécourt Chateau to visit the C.R.A. We touched the southern edge of Albert, familiar to thousands of British soldiers. The last time I had been there was on my return from leave in January 1917, when I dined and slept at the newly-opened officers’ club. Since the Boche swoop last March it had become a target for British gunners, and seemed in as bad a plight as the village we had come through the night before. We had no time to visit it that morning, and trotted on along a road lined with unburied German dead, scattered ammunition, and broken German vehicles. The road dipped into a wood, and the colonel showed me the first battery position he occupied in France, when he commanded a 4·5 how. battery. Bécourt Chateau was so much a chateau now that Divisional Headquarters were living in tents outside. Four motor-cars stood in the courtyard; some thirty chargers were tied to the long high railings; motor despatch-riders kept coming and going. R.A. were on the far side of the chateau, and when our grooms had taken our horses we leapt a couple of trenches and made our way to the brigade-major’s tent. The brigade-major was frankly pleased with the situation. “We are going right over the old ground, sir,” he told the colonel, “and the Boche has not yet made a proper stand. Our Divisional Infantry are in the line again, and the latest report, timed 6 A.M., comes from Montauban, and says that they are approaching Trones Wood. We shall be supporting them to-morrow morning, and the C.R.A. is anxious for positions to be reconnoitred in X 10 and X 11. The C.R.A. has gone up that way in the car this morning.”
I looked into an adjoining tent and found the liaison officer from the heavies busy on the telephone. “A 5·9 battery shooting from the direction of Ginchy. Right! You can’t give me a more definite map-spotting? Right-o! We’ll attend to it! Give me counter-batteries, will you?”
“Heavies doing good work to-day?” I asked.
“Rather,” he returned happily. “Why, we’ve got a couple of 8-inch hows. as far up as Fricourt. That’s more forward than most of the field-guns.”
As I stepped out there came the swift screaming rush of three high-velocity shells. They exploded with an echoing crash in the wood below, near where my horse and the colonel’s had been taken to water. A team came up the incline toward the chateau at the trot, and I looked rather anxiously for our grooms. They rode up within two minutes, collectedly, but each with a strained look. “Did those come anywhere near you?” I inquired. “We just missed ’em, sir,” replied Laneridge. “One of them dropped right among the horses at one trough.”
By the colonel’s orders I rode back to the waggon lines soon afterwards, bearing instructions to the battery commanders to join the colonel at half-past one. The Brigade might expect to move up that evening.
The battery commanders came back by tea-time with plans for that evening’s move-up completed. The waggon lines during the afternoon were full of sleeping gunners; a sensible course, as it proved, for at 6.45 P.M. an orderly brought the adjutant a pencilled message from the colonel who was still with the C.R.A. It ran -
Warn batteries that they must have gun limbers and firing battery waggons within 1000 yards of their positions by 3.30 A.M., as we shall probably move at dawn. Headquarters will be ready to start after an early dinner. I am returning by car.
“Hallo! they’re expecting a big advance to-morrow,” said the adjutant. The note also decided a discussion in which the adjutant, the signalling officer, and the cook had joined as to whether we should dine early and pack up ready to go, or pack up and have dinner when we got to the new position behind Mametz Wood.
It was a dark night again; other brigades of artillery were taking the same route as ourselves, and, apart from the congestion, our own guns had shelled this part so consistently since August 8 that the going was heavy and hazardous. We passed one team with two horses down; at another point an 18-pdr. had slipped into a shell-hole, and the air rang with staccato shouts of “Heave!” while two lines of men strained on the drag-ropes. We reached a damp valley that lay west of a stretch of tree-stumps and scrubby undergrowth - remnants of what was a thick leafy wood before the hurricane bombardments of July 1916. D Battery had pulled their six hows. into the valley; the three 18-pdr. batteries were taking up positions on top of the eastern slope. Before long it became clear that the Boche 5·9 gunners had marked the place down.
“I’m going farther along to X 30 A.M. as zero hour, and I circulated the news to the batteries. Some time later the telephone bell aroused me, and the adjutant said he wanted to give me the time. Some one had knocked over my stub of candle, and after vainly groping for it on the floor, I kicked Wilde, and succeeded in making him understand that if he would light a candle and check his watch, I would hang on to the telephone. Dazed with sleep, Wilde clambered to his feet, trod once or twice on the doctor, and lighted a candle.
“Are you ready?” asked the voice at the other end of the telephone. “Ready, Wilde?” said I in my turn.
“I’ll give it you when it’s four minutes to one… thirty seconds to go,” went on the adjutant.
Now Wilde always says that the first thing he heard was my calling “thirty seconds to go!” and that I did not give him the “four minutes to one” part of the ceremony. I always tell him he must have been half asleep, and didn’t hear me. At any rate, the dialogue continued like this -
Adjutant (over the telephone to me): “Twenty seconds to go.”
Me (to Wilde): “Twenty seconds to go.”
Wilde: “Twenty seconds.”
Adjutant: “Ten seconds to go.”
Me: “Ten seconds.”
Wilde: “Ten seconds.”
Adjutant: “Five seconds.”
Me: “Five.”
Wilde: “Five.”
Adjutant: “Now! Four minutes to one.”
Me: “NOW! Four minutes to one.”
Wilde (blankly): “But you didn’t tell me what time it was going to be.”
It was useless arguing, and I had to ring up the adjutant again. As a matter of fact it was the colonel who answered, and supplied me with the “five seconds to go” information; so there was no doubt about the correctness of the time-taking on this occasion, and after I had gone out and roused an officer of each battery, and made him check his watch, I turned in again and sought sleep.