FRANCE, September 1916. The hot sun beat down on a shallow valley north of Bray-sur-Somme. A few months ago it had been a pleasant green, secluded valley, but now it was a dusty, noisy town. The level stretch of parched earth between the slopes was bare of grass and scored with wheel-ruts; and where it broadened out into an amphitheatre, rows of posts and been driven into the earth, and, tethered to the ropes between them, two hundred horses shook their heads and twitched their glossy hides in ceaseless efforts to dislodge the persecuting flies.
In one of the flanking slopes a line of dug-outs had been constructed, and their tunnelled entrances, flanked with flattened sandbags of the shape and colour of stone blocks, resembled the mortarless passages of an Aztec temple. On the slopes themselves a motley town had sprung up. Bell-tents, Stevenson huts, canvas-screened latrines, shacks of empty ammunition boxes, bivouacs and tarpaulins spilled from the crests to the dry, rutted track between. A thick barbed-wire fence ten feet high enclosed a large rectangle on a roughly level platform half-way up the southern slope. A similar but smaller enclosure stood near by. A hundred or more prisoners, all with the same close-cropped pale hair, faded grey uniforms, and dirty, calf-high boots, slept, sat, smoked, or stood sullenly within the larger enclosure; some half-dozen officers wearing rakish caps and long grey tight-waisted overcoats with gay-coloured facings occupied the smaller. A couple of bored British Tommies in steel helmets and with bayoneted rifles slung over one shoulder were on guard, and a number of loiterers in shirt-sleeves were watching through the wire a newly arrived prisoner with arms raised above his head being searched by a sergeant.
Men came and went in the mushroom town. A man in shirtsleeves sitting on an upturned bucket peeled potatoes into a large iron dixie and whistled a slow, lugubrious tune. Two men in shirt-sleeves and steel helmets were fusing a box of Mills grenades. A kilted piper marched to and fro like an automaton playing some skirling pibroch of the Highlands; and near his beat sat a sunburnt man, naked to the waist, plying needle and thread on a grey army shirt and proclaiming in song that the lady of his affection had an eye of glass but a heart of gold.
High overhead flew a German plane, a white fleecy-looking object against the hazy blue sky, and an invisible anti-aircraft battery behind the hill was “archying” it. Bang-bang, bangbang went the guns; and then pop-pop, pop-pop sounded far overhead. The tiny plane glided out from four white puffs of cotton-wool, banked steeply, and shot swiftly back eastwards.
Outside a long brown tarpaulin shack an officer in shirt-sleeves and light khaki drill shorts lounged in a canvas chair. A copy of La Vie Parisienne rested upon his bare sunburnt knees. Another officer, clothed also in shorts but with the three stars of a captain upon his tunic-cuff, came from under the tarpaulin and halted by the chair.
“My leave has come through, Baron,” he said, stroking his close-clipped moustache with the stem of his pipe.
The officer in the chair looked up and tilted forward his cap to shade his eyes from the sun.
“Good for you, G. B.,” he said. “But I thought there was no leave going.”
Bang-bang, bang-bang went the guns again, and pop-pop, pop-pop came the answering shell bursts high up in the sky.
The other took off his khaki cap and stroked his short crisp hair. “Well, there isn’t really,” he answered. “Except for the gilded staff. Corps H.Q. got a twinge of conscience apparently and bunged along this vacancy to us; and the C.O. sent it to me. But for some damn silly reason or another I have to report at Domart before six pip emma, and some antediluvian vehicle takes us to Abbeville. It means lorry-jumping from here to Domart, I suppose.”
“Domart! That’s t’other side of Amiens, isn’t it? A bit north though. There’s a lorry route from Albert to Acheux, I know,” said Baron. “And there’s another from there to Candas. I believe. That’s not far from Domart.”
“Anyway, I shan’t have too much time,” answered Bretherton. “Brewster! Brewster!”
A private soldier in grey shirt-sleeves came running at the call.
“Brewster, I’m off on leave toute suite. Clean the buttons on my best tunic and give my belt a rub, will you?”
The man took the belt and disappeared beneath the tarpaulin.
“You are in charge of the shop, Baron. All the bumph is in the company office, but you have seen most of it; there’s nothing needs explaining.”
Bretherton strode off and entered his tent a few yards away. He washed in a canvas bucket and changed his shorts for riding-breeches and field-boots. Then he packed into a leather-seamed haversack pyjamas, khaki collars and socks, shaving and washing kit, a pair of khaki slacks, and a pair of brown shoes. Before the packing was finished, Brewster, the soldier-servant, came in with the belt and tunic over his arm. Bretherton put on the tunic with its glittering buttons and buckled the glossy belt round his waist. He slung the haversack over his shoulder, put the yellow leave warrant into a breast pocket, and picked up a trench-coat.
“Cheerio, Brewster,” he said. “Mr. Baron will let you know when I’m coming back. If we move meantime, hand my kit in to the Q.M.S.”
Outside the tent an officer with a very fresh boyish face was talking to Baron.
“Hear you are off to Blighty, G. B.,” he said as Bretherton emerged. “Lucky dog! I have a little souvenir for the mater. I wonder if you would deliver it for me—or post it if it’s too much of a bore. But my people would be jolly glad to see you—and put you up if you care to. Half an hour or thereabouts from Piccadilly. I have put the address on it.”
Bretherton put the parcel into the pocket of his trench-coat.
“Right-oh, Gurney,” he said. “Be very glad to look them up—and tell them all about their little David—what! Cheerio, you fellows. Don’t finish the war before I get back.”
“Give my love to dear old Piccadilly,” said Baron.
“Marble Arch, Bond Street, Oxford Circus—change for Piccadilly,” chanted Gurney, and added wistfully: “Lucky devil!”
Bretherton hurried off between the motley collection of huts down to the dusty valley-track and climbed the opposite slope. A short distance farther on, he reached the Albert road; and presently saw the town itself below him, a medley of roofs and chimneys buttressing the devastated square where broken houses gaped roofless to the sky and the Hanging Virgin of Albert upon the lofty battered brick church tower hung golden in the sunlight. He passed through the narrow streets of the town and crossed the shell-pocked, brick-littered square to the Doullens road.
Three hours later he climbed stiffly from a lorry at the crossroads in Candas. He beat the white dust from his uniform and set off to walk the few remaining miles. He was glad to breathe air untainted by petrol fumes and the smell of warm oil. It was real country here: not the kind of country just behind the line, where every village was filled with troops and every plot of uncultivated ground exuded huts, horse-lines, canteens, or latrines. There was not a hut in sight; only peaceful fields and green woods dozing in the afternoon sunlight. A car gave him a lift, and he was carried swiftly along the sunny country road and down the steep hill into the clean, broad, quiet street of Domart, where white-washed cottages snuggled against the hills and the flag of a reserve Army Corps hung above the door of the Hôtel de Ville.
At dusk a lorry loaded up in the village street. Bretherton sat in front with the driver and a sergeant; the dozen men in the body of the lorry with their packs and steel helmets piled in a corner were happy and sang their mournful, sentimental songs. They rolled out of the village and on through the quiet country roads. Darkness settled upon the fields, and from the front seat nothing was visible except the illuminated, uneven surface of the road ahead and the white wall of a cottage or barn as it sprang up suddenly in the glare of the headlights. From behind came fitfully the chorus of song timed to the rumble of the lorry.
Bretherton found the darkness, the cool air, the singing, and the rumble of the wheels soothing, and he dozed throughout the journey. Presently they were bumping over cobbles, and he opened his eyes to find that they were passing through the narrow streets of Abbeville. Outside the station the lorry stopped; the men clumped down to the road, passed out packs, rifles, and steel helmets, and trooped into the station.
It was past midnight when he reached Boulogne. He went to the Officers’ Club for a bed, but all were taken. He tried the Meurice, the Folkestone, and several other hotels without success. A military police-sergeant he met in the deserted Rue Thiers suggested a small hotel on the other side of the harbour. He tramped back to the dark open space and chill wind that was the harbour, found the hotel, and was told that there was no room free, but that he could share one if he cared to do so. He closed with this offer, and was shown up a narrow flight of stairs to a small room at the top of the house. By the dim light of one candle he perceived a sam-brown belt and tunic with one star on the cuff hanging over the back of a chair; a pair of field-boots and riding-breeches lay on the floor. In one of the two beds a fresh-faced boy with tousled fair hair lay asleep in his khaki shirt. Bretherton undressed quietly, blew out the candle, and crept into the other bed.
Bretherton strode happily along the quay in the morning sunlight. The leave-boat lay moored between two cargo-boats. She was painted black from stem to stern, and a few white whisps of salt encrusted on her funnels told of a recent dirty crossing. He handed half of his yellow leave-warrant to the sergeant-major at the gangway and went aboard. A tip to a deck-hand secured a chair on the boat deck. He put his lifebelt underneath the chair, and filled in his embarkation card with indelible pencil. Two boats moved slowly out of the harbour, and then the gangways were drawn in, and the leave-boat slid into the fairway. It slipped swiftly between the piers at the harbour mouth and began to rise and fall to the motion of the sea.
A mile or more from the shore two destroyers steamed restlessly to and fro, and then took position on either beam of the little convoy of three ships. Lifebelts were put on, and half a dozen men with rifles were posted along the decks to fire at prowling periscopes.
The long, low destroyers buried themselves in the green seas, rose again, and shook themselves free from water like dogs. Cape Gris-Nez fell slowly astern. The two cargo-ships ahead wallowed drunkenly in the seas and trailed two long black plumes of smoke across the sky. Far away to port an observation balloon, towed by a destroyer, was hunting for submarines or mines. A blimp hove out of the distance and circled above the convoy; and an airman in leather coat and crash helmet waved his hand from the cockpit.
Bretherton went below in search of the Pullman man. The saloon was full of officers drinking and smoking and talking in high spirits; nearly everybody had met some acquaintance and was swopping experiences or discussing what shows one ought to see in London.
England was in sight when he returned to the deck; the white cliffs showed faintly across the heaving waste of grey-flecked water. Smudges of smoke showed where the ships of the coastwise traffic passed at the regulation number per hour. Three miles from Folkestone the two destroyers circled the convoy and went bucking back towards the French coast. The blimp had gone to roost somewhere on the cliffs above the harbour. One of the two cargo-boats steamed off up the coast in the direction of Dover; the other passed behind the breakwater. The leave-boat followed her in and berthed beside the train that stood waiting on the quay. The troops shouldered pack or haversack and streamed down the gangways.
Bretherton found his seat in the Pullman and studied the menu with leisurely enjoyment. The train moved slowly from the harbour through the streets of the town. Children climbed upon the gates of level-crossings and shouted shrilly as it went by; carters waved their whips and shouted unintelligible witticisms; women leaned from open windows and waved handkerchiefs. The leave-train from the front was passing by.