G. B. and his platoon went up to relieve Gurney in the line, and back in billets the uneventful, boring life went on. Groucher, Hubbard, Dodd, and Adams of the M.M.G. spent every spare moment in the mess dealing cards and passing piles of coppers to one another; but since Melford believed that the Devil finds work for idle hands, the number of their spare moments was limited. Every morning we had parades and tactical schemes, every afternoon football or more parades and schemes, and every night we sent up a fatigue party of two officers and a hundred other ranks to dig cable trenches across a hillside near Fricourt; and this duty, which for us officers came every other night and exempted one from duty on the following morning, I welcomed as a break in the endless parades and schemes.
It was usually very quiet on that open hillside where we laboured all night beneath the stars. Below us the Verey lights from the front line rose and fell in solemn ghostly majesty; here and there among the dim bent figures of the men a spark showed where a descending shovel had struck a flint; at our feet the white tape line glimmered faintly. Occasionally a random round whimpered by us in the darkness, or there came a flicker of lightning, followed by the sudden pom… pom… pom… pom of a field battery night firing. The mist crept up the valleys, and the chill breeze wafted to our ears the distant nimble of German transport bringing up rations.
Sometimes the harsh clack-clack-clack-clack of a traversing machine gun ripped the silence, and the vicious smack of bullets in the turf sent us crouching in the shallow trench. Then the front would doze again till some sleepy German gunners left their warm dug-out to fire a round or two. Then without warning the lash of a giant’s whip whistled viciously through the night, cracked deafeningly, and the door of a furnace was opened and closed swiftly on the bare hillside near one. Then silence. And then again out of the night that vicious lash, ear-splitting crack, and brief bright glow. And then silence again except for the crunch of shovels biting into chalk and the murmur of voices near the ground.
Digging there hour after hour one seemed to become part of the night. The hill-slope on which we toiled was the grand circle of a theatre; the lights were turned down; the play was ready to begin. Below us the Verey lights rose and fell, the footlights on a league-long stage. At any moment the orchestra of guns might strike up and the curtain rise on a bloody melodrama.
And then back in the dim dawn-light through the clean morning air we would come, blear-eyed and drunken with sleep, to our snug billets and a hot breakfast.
The missing map had not been found; but the matter did not reach the ears of Divisional Headquarters. Melford, no doubt, borrowed the Lancers’ map and made a copy.
One more arrow of outrageous fortune, as Pagan would have said. It was he who handed me a copy of a daily paper one morning when I came into the mess late after an all-night digging fatigue. He pointed to the back page. On it were some half-dozen pictures, and among them was that of an officer seated at a table outside a French café. I read the legend beneath: “After the line, a glass of wine.”
“And after the trenches, a couple of wenches,” murmured Pagan. “But the photo—well?”
“G. B.!” I exclaimed.
“Full marks!” said Pagan promptly. “And it is the café at Ruilly.”
I nodded. “And who’s the fool that sent it to the paper?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Ay, there’s the rub!”
“There will be some hair-pulling over this,” I remarked.
Pagan nodded. “Sure. It’s G. B. plain enough; and if we can recognize him, so can Headquarters.”
“That will please him immensely,” I said grimly. “Anyway, he will know who the fool was.”
“But that’s just it; he doesn’t. Melford sent Groucher up to ask him unofficially, and he says he knows nothing about it—who took it or who sent it to the paper.”
“But, hang it all, he must know who took it,” I protested.
Pagan shrugged his shoulders. “Says he doesn’t. Probably Groucher rubbed him up the wrong way and he wouldn’t tell him. But somebody took it, and three or four of us have cameras.”
Later on Groucher came in. He spoke as he held his glass to the siphon. “Look here, you chaps, about this cursed photo. The C.O. knows nothing about it officially, of course; but he gave me a hint that in case Headquarters ask any questions it would be as well if he could say that none of his officers has a camera—savvy?”
“Bury the darned things in the back garden, eh?” said Harding.
“Or chuck ’em in the river—yes, that’s the idea,” said Groucher. He poked his cap back on his head and held his glass to his lips.
“That may pacify H.Q. if they are not out for blood, but supposing they are?” objected Pagan.
“Well then, the square-pushing fool that sent the photo to the papers will have to own up.” Groucher mopped his heavy moustache with the back of his great hand. “And there can’t be much doubt who he is,” he added in a stage-whisper with his red face thrust forward and his bushy eyebrows raised. Then he smiled on us benignly, picked up the absurd knobbed ash walking-stick he had bought on his last leave, and went.
On the following day Melford received a chit from Divisional Headquarters drawing his attention to the photograph in the paper and requesting an explanation.
He had us all up in the company office, read the chit to us, and asked if any of us had sent the photograph to the paper. We denied having done so. He then asked if any of us had a camera. We had acted upon Groucher’s hint and were able to say truthfully that we had not. Then Melford concocted a reply to Headquarters in which he stated that none of his officers knew anything about the photograph and that he was able to assert from personal knowledge that none of them was in possession of a camera. He also tactfully suggested that although the photograph in question was remarkably like G. B., there were several thousands of officers in France and it was not unlikely that some of them had doubles.
We awaited the result with interest. It all depended upon whether H.Q. were out for blood or not. If the A.A. and Q.M.G. had sent the chit just to justify his existence, he would accept Melford’s reply as satisfactory, and there the matter would end; but, on the other hand, if this was to be made a point of discipline, further questions would follow. There would be a court of inquiry and possibly a court-martial.
The matter did not rest there. Melford was called up to Divisional Headquarters. The A.A. and Q.M.G. was polite but firm.
“Look here, Melford,” he said, “you know as well as I do that the fellow in that photograph is your subaltern, Bretherton. I daresay this is not the first time that photographs have been taken out here contrary to army orders, and this is quite a harmless one as it happens; but orders are orders, and when a man is fool enough to send a photograph to the papers for everybody to see and recognize, he is asking for trouble—and he is going to get it. We have to tolerate a number of fools in the army nowadays, but we won’t tolerate damned fools. So you have got to find out who it is. The photograph was taken outside the officers’ café here at Ruilly. Bretherton must know who took it, even if he does not know who sent it up, and he will have to say. You will send in a full report.”
Melford broke the news to us that evening at mess as soon as the waiters had retired. G. B. had been recalled temporarily from the line to be present.
“Headquarters are out for blood,” Melford announced. “I have tried ’em with the soft answer that turneth away wrath, but it won’t work; and now the only thing is for the fellow that sent the photograph to own up. We don’t want a court of inquiry and all that business. Whoever did it is an unspeakable fool, but I will do my best for him at Headquarters. We are in their good books fortunately, and if I speak up for him it will probably mean a reprimand only.” He fingered his close-cropped moustache. “Who was it, now?”
There was a dead silence. Melford’s face grew red, and there was an ominous tightening of his jaw. This affair coming on top of the missing map had upset his usual good-humour.
“We are all here,” he continued. “One of you must know something about it. Nobody has been on leave lately, so that photograph must have gone through the post; therefore none of the men could have sent it without your knowledge—that is if you do your censoring of letters properly.”
Still there was silence. We looked at one another and especially at G. B.
“G. B.,” said Melford at last, “you must know who took that photograph.”
G. B., at the end of the long trestle-table, his solemn face lit up by the candle stuck in a bottle before him, shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“We appreciate that you don’t like giving another fellow away and all that,” went on Melford, “but you cannot shield him now. We shall find out who he is, and if he hasn’t the guts to own up, it is your duty to speak up for the good of the company.”
G. B. crumbled his bread in silence for a moment. “I know neither who took it nor who sent it to the paper,” he repeated without looking up.
Melford shrugged his shoulders. “Well, we will drop the subject now. I shall hold an inquiry to-morrow.”
We sat in silence, and then Pagan wound up the gramophone and put on a rag-time tune.
Melford held an inquiry, but made no progress towards clearing up the mystery. G. B. stuck to his assertion that he knew nothing about the matter, and neither by threats nor by appeals for the good of the company could he be prevailed upon to add to what he had said.
“I’m fed-up with you, G. B.,” said Melford afterwards. “I used to regard you as the best officer in the company, and here you are wrecking the company’s good name and our high standing at Headquarters. Good lord, man, you must have known the photograph was being taken. You’re not a fool!”
“He’s a knave,” murmured Groucher injudiciously. And Melford, whose patience was quite exhausted, turned on him swiftly. “Which is more than you have the wit to be,” he growled. Whereat we all purred happily.
G. B. returned to the line, and Melford sent in his report to Headquarters.
The general opinion was that G. B. must know something about it, but that for some obscure reason he was holding his peace. It did not seem possible that the photograph could have been taken without his knowledge; and even if it had been, surely no one would have played such a low-down trick as to send it to the papers without his consent.
“G. B. is a stand-offish old buster,” said Hubbard. “And he may be doing it out of pique; he may even have sent the photo himself. You never know.”
“He is a queer cuss, but he isn’t a carmine fool,” was Harding’s comment on this.
Pagan thought it was rotten of G. B. to let the company down in that way, and he had no right to do it—not even to shield his own grandmother. Dodd said that he had not been with us long enough to give an opinion, but on the face of it G. B. did not seem to be playing the game. Groucher was not in the least surprised; it was just the sort of thing G. B. would do—exemplified his lack of esprit de corps and general unsoldierliness. To this Pagan retorted hotly: “Oh yes, we know you are an old soldier, Groucher, a very old soldier—got the Crécy ribbon up, and all that; but you don’t know everything—blast you!” Gurney thought that G. B. was either a practical joker in bad taste or was himself the victim of one. For my part I gave it up.
The reply which came back from Divisional Headquarters was brief and to the point. It directed that when Lieutenant Bretherton returned from the line he was to be placed under arrest.
Groucher was unashamedly jubilant at this turn of events. Harding, who was the only one of us of whom G. B. had made a real friend, remarked curtly, “If you lose this war it will serve you right.” And Melford, to relieve his feelings, had us all out on parade and put us through two gruelling hours of company drill.
It was my turn for the line, and I rode out of the village at the head of my platoon just before dusk. We climbed the long hill to the Bray-Corbie road where the trees stood fretted against the pearly sky, and the low hills around us, swathed in the rising mists of the Somme, loomed like dark islands on a grey sea. Then we dropped down into Bray and parked our cycles in a barn by the huge, buttressed old church. Night had come when we marched out of the village and up the slope eastward.
Here and there the aiming light of a battery twinkled in the darkness, and the hummocks of the gun-pits showed dimly against the sky. The smack of a gun smote our ears, and instantly the road, the bare hill-slope, the rank grass, the gun itself beneath its canopy of netting sprinkled with leaves, leapt out of the dark, vivid in every detail, and was gone again. A long-range shell rose out of the distance, waddled lazily across the night sky, and died away. And then a dull, distant crunch told that it had landed far back behind our lines. Faintly from some hidden burrow came the screech of a gramophone.
We halted below the crest, clear of the batteries, in that lonely belt of country that lies between where cultivation ends and the communicating trenches begin. The men lay upon the rank grass and weeds that flourished over all that desert area, and I sat with my back to a ragged tree that jutted stark against the sky. The night was very dark, but every now and then the hill-crest was outlined darkly against the bluey-greenish glow of a Verey light, and occasionally a light itself rose above the crest like a new and splendid planet, sank slowly, and expired.
Presently the night breeze brought intermittently to our ears strains of music and the sound of men’s voices singing; and the next Verey light silhouetted for a moment a dark, crawling mass on the hill-crest. The tramp of feet reached our ears, and the tune became recognizable: it was “Tipperary,” played on a couple of mouth-organs, and some of the men were singing. And then they passed, a short, dark, slowly jogging column on the opposite side of the road; and heads and shoulders showed dimly against the sky, the long peaked cap of the officer in front and then the men with slung rifles jutting vertically behind their heads, like figures on a frieze.
“That’s Mr. Bretherton’s platoon coming out,” said my sergeant.
“Cheerio, G. B.!” I called.
And a voice came back from the darkness: “Hullo, Baron! I have left a guide at Piccadilly Redoubt. All serene and wind sou-sou-west.”
And cries of “What cheer, Number Five!” “Poor old Number Three, you’re for it!” were exchanged between the two parties.
Then they were gone, and we heard only the receding tramp of feet and the distant wail of mouth-organs. And I lay thinking of poor old G. B. under arrest and that platoon of his that would follow him to Hades; till a whizz-bang descended screaming out of the night, bloomed like a red flower in the darkness, and spattered us with earth.
My little column fell in again on the road, and whistling “Who’s your lady friend?” moved off over the crest.
One night there came up with the rations a note from Pagan giving me the news. Headquarters had been unable to prove any charges against G. B. He had been summoned before the General, suitably cursed, and released from arrest; but the heavy cloud of the General’s displeasure still hung over both him and the company. Also there was a note from Melford to say that a second platoon was coming into the line; that it was Hubbard’s turn, but he was sick, and G. B., having volunteered to take his place, would join me with Hubbard’s platoon the following night.
On the following night, therefore, G. B. arrived with Hubbard’s platoon. I could well understand his desire to get away from the Mess, where Groucher would be openly offensive to him and the other members, no doubt, considered him responsible for their eclipse in favour at Headquarters. I congratulated him on his release from arrest, but he was so obviously disinclined to talk about it that I dropped the subject and never reopened it.
Our little party of two platoons was too small to hold a complete sector of the line, and we were in consequence attached to an infantry battalion. When this battalion became due for relief, G. B. reported at the orderly-room dug-out for orders. They had none for us, they said, but presumed that we were staying in, and they asked us if we would finish a job of wiring that they had been unable to do themselves through press of other work.
G. B. agreed to do this, though personally I disliked the prospect of being out in no-man’s-land during the relief, for the incoming battalion, new to the sector, might, I thought, mistake us for an enemy patrol. Furthermore, in the sector on our left a mine was to be blown at eleven forty-five, and a party of bombers, bayonet men, and a machine gun were to rush into the crater and fortify the far side. Adams of the M.M.G. was providing the machine gun and gunners. We should of course get our wiring party back into the trench before the mine was due to blow; but, if the Bosche had got wind of what was intended, he was sure to plaster us heavily all the evening.
We climbed over the parapet soon after dark. I went first with my covering party, whose duty was to lie out beyond the wire and intercept any enemy patrols that might be prowling in the neighbourhood. Behind us came G. B. and his wiring party loaded with iron screw pickets, reels of barbed wire, wire cutters and wiring gloves. We reached our position and began our long vigil, whilst behind us G. B.’s party spread out and began work.
The night was very quiet and dark except for the soundless gun-flashes in the French area far south and the lazy rise and fall of Verey lights. These moving lights cast running shadows on the ground, and anyone lying out in no-man’s-land at night and having imagination will see more than is actually there. But although they give a fairly brilliant light, it is very difficult to pick out an object unless it moves. In spite of my knowledge of this fact, however, a light soaring up near me always made me feel as though I were lying naked in Piccadilly Circus.
After ten o’clock I glanced rather often at my luminous wrist-watch; for although the mine was not timed to blow till eleven forty-five, the hour of these shows was sometimes advanced at the last moment, and I had no wish to witness the spectacle from the middle of no-man’s-land, since the first big crash was sure to be the signal for bedlam to break loose. At last I heard the signal warning me that the wiring party had returned to the trench and, with a sigh of thankfulness, I passed the order to move back.
Just outside our own wire I was going on all-fours and had raised an elbow to crawl over what I took to be a low ridge of earth, when a bursting light showed me that the supposed ridge was a dead Bosche. But my weight was already too far over for me to draw back, and my forearm came down on the faded grey cloth. Down it went, but not against resistance; it clove through a damp sticky substance like rotten pears to the earth beneath, and I snatched it away covered with green frothy slime, having raised a stench that is indescribable.
The relief was just complete when we got back to the trench, and we had time to drink a mug of hot tea before standing-to for the mine. At the moment the activity was if anything a little below normal: an occasional shell bursting flower-like in the darkness, the mournful whimper of a stray round passing down the valley, and the periodical stutter of a machine gun; and I could plainly hear the rumble of transport behind the German trenches.
Then suddenly the night lifted as though a curtain had been tom down. The earth shook. The clouds overhead glowed blood red; and away on the left a vast sheet of flame shot up to the apex of the sky. Then came a crashing roar that stunned the senses and gradually subsided in lesser rumblings encircling the horizon. Immediately countless lightning-like flashes outlined the dark irregular line of the slope behind us as with a sound like the beating of side-drums our field guns opened fire; and the passage of their shells through the night was like a covey of partridges passing over.
The alarmed Germans signalled to their gunners. Tiny points of fire traced vertical patterns against the night, burst with a faint pop, and glittering balls of red, green, and white floated downwards; Verey lights soared up like sparks from a furnace. A sudden crackle of rifle fire broke out, followed a few minutes later by the steady tat-tat-tat-tat of a machine gun that I recognized as one of our own. That was Fanny Adams in action on the far lip of the crater. Then the German gunners got to work and made our neat and nicely revetted trench look like a ditch that had been trampled by elephants.
Then suddenly the night lifted as though a curtain had been torn down.
It was about half past one when I turned in, and at about half past two G. B., who was still on duty, came and roused me. “Turn out, Baron,” he said. “I want you to take over for a few minutes. The Colonel wants me at Battalion H.Q. Sorry, old bird, and all that.”
When G. B. returned some fifteen minutes later he said, “Somebody has made a mess of it again. We should have gone out with the K.L.I. This battalion has no orders about us, and so they rung up Brigade to ask. We are to go out at once; and the K.L.I. will give us billets in Morlancourt.”
“Bit rough on the men just as they are getting a spot of rest,” I grumbled. “However…”
We paraded the men and filed back along the communicating trench. We trailed slowly through the narrow trench, over the hill, and down into the dark valley where the Verey lights were obscured by the slope behind us. Those who have not taken a column of tired men through a long communicating trench at night cannot appreciate the exasperation of the task, but those who have done so will understand and sympathize. At length we filed out on to the pale ribbon of road in the little dark valley and formed up.
“It’s a hell of a march through Bray to Morlancourt,” I said to G. B.
“I know,” he said. “But I’m going to cut across country.”
“Pretty risky in the dark without a compass, isn’t it?” I asked.
“A little,” he admitted. “But it’s worth it. I know this country pretty well. We go straight up over the hill till we strike the Bray-Albert road; there are three trees together almost in a straight line from here, and from them we leave the road at right-angles and go straight down into Morlancourt.”
“If we are lucky,” I said doubtfully. “It’s a good seven miles, and plenty of latitude to go astray in.”
We had one cycle with us that had been left at the end of the communicating trench. G. B. called up his servant and gave him the cycle.
“Take off your equipment,” he said. “I’ll carry that. Ride into Morlancourt; find the Quartermaster of the K.L.I. and tell him I want billets for sixty men. And try to get something hot to drink, if possible.”
The man saluted and rode off into the darkness. G. B. looked about him once or twice to get his bearings, and then led the way off the road towards the dark hill-slope.
“You keep a look-out ahead for shell-holes,” he said. “I will do the navigating.”
The men were inclined to grumble. They were dog-tired and had been deprived of their overdue rest by a careless mistake, and Hubbard’s platoon was not as well disciplined as my own. I staggered along half asleep through the darkness and found the shell-holes only by falling into them. G. B., who had had no rest whatever, must have been even more tired than I was, but presently he began to whistle. He whistled the chorus of “You Beautiful Doll” three times without result, but as he began the fourth repetition, shame triumphed over fatigue, and I pulled myself together and joined in. By the end of the sixth repetition my sergeant and two of the men had joined in, and at last someone produced a mouth-organ. Presently we could feel the party pull together and get into something of a swing behind us. G. B. stopped whistling with a sigh and turned his whole attention to guiding us.
After tramping for what seemed to be ages in a dream with the fitful wail of the mouth-organ in my ears, I spied three tall trees standing up dark against the sky less than twenty yards to my right. G. B. gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“Pretty good without a compass, G. B.,” I said admiringly.
“Not bad,” he admitted.
We crossed the road by the trees, and the men’s feet rang out sharply and suddenly as they left the soggy ground for the few paces of hard surface. Then we tramped on and on through an interminable darkness towards a dim, ever-receding skyline. Hours later, it seemed, we were descending a hill into darkness.
“Scout out to the right and see if you can find a track, will you?” said G. B.
Thirty yards away I came upon a narrow rutted track converging upon our line of march. I shouted to G. B., and he led our little column towards it. Presently a barn loomed upon the right, and then another upon the left, and then we were in a dark narrow tunnel between cottages.
“Morlancourt,” said G. B.
In the silent cross-roads a dark figure rose up and saluted G. B. It was his servant.
“The billets are in a barn, sir, over there,” he said. “I had a little difficulty in getting them. The Quarter-master was in bed and did not want to be disturbed. He said we might use the cookhouse. I found the remains of a fire and made it up. I also made love to the cooks and borrowed some tea. A couple of dixies will be ready in a few minutes.”
“Good man,” said G. B. “Lead the way to the barn.”
Whilst G. B. had been talking to his servant, I had been speaking to my sergeant, and I spoke loudly so that the men, and especially Hubbard’s platoon, might hear. “Mr. Bretherton has saved us three or four miles by bringing us across country,” I said. “A very difficult thing to do on a cloudy night without a compass.”
G. B. halted the party outside the barn and, in spite of their fatigue, pulled them to attention with his sharp word of command as though on C.O.’s parade.
“When you dismiss and go to your billets,” he cautioned them, “don’t make a row. Troops are asleep in this village. There will be two dixies of tea ready in a minute or two. Two men from each platoon will go with my servant to fetch it. Fall out, Mr. Baron.”
I saluted and fell out. G. B. continued: “Party—’shun. Dis—miss!” The men turned to the right, smacked their butts, and stumbled into the barn. G. B. and I found a comparatively undraughty corner, and I was asleep even before G. B.’s admirable servant had brought his master a jug of hot tea.