1917 in Fading Light
Towards midnight we were withdrawn – a small and dazed contingent – as gas-shells began to take charge of Bodmin Copse, and guided by some instinct rather than conscious sense, we assembled at Bus House, Saint Eloi, before morning. Once this had been a storm-centre of the British Front Line. Lorries arrived, we saw the chilly light of daybreak on the still shapely buildings and cottage shutters of Kemmel, and at length went into tents in a farmyard and its home-fields near Mont Kokereele, a noble highland. There we stayed several days – baths, lectures, football, Divisional General, musketry, and ‘Fancy You Fancying Me.’ Worley and myself constructed a revolver range of which we were intensely proud, and it would have been still finer but for the weather, which was once more insistently cheerless and wet. A rifle range elsewhere kept us in training, and gave us occasional scenery of tall gilded trees and terraced valleys into the bargain; thence, what was the greatest moment of any rest in Flanders for some of us, a sudden break in the clouds one morning revealed as in some marvellous lens a vast extent of the country southwards, towered cities and silver rivers, master-highways, blue church-spires, a broad and calm plain, until pyramidal shapes in the extreme distance were identifiable as the great slag-heaps in the Lens and Béthune coalfield, and some thought the wisps of whiteness floating across them were the usual signs of bombardment. Our minds receded with actual joy to the 1916 war, and particularly that season when we were within the kindly influence of Béthune. When had we heard the words ‘a bon time’ since? How few there were left even to understand what hopes had then borne the battalion on singing towards the Somme! When we left this camp of disastered 1917, to be merged again in the slow amputation of Passchendaele, there was no singing. I think there were tears on some cheeks.
It was even a pleasure here to see Williams, the Divisional Gas Officer, and his same old sergeant, at their kindly, deadly work again. I forget what type of gas it was that Williams discharged upon us, leaving it to us to get our helmets on or pass out. However, I believe it was not at full strength, for some hens poking about in the stubble did not suffer. Perhaps God tempers the gas to the Ypres hen.
At this camp Colonel Millward told me that he had recommended my promotion to a captaincy, but the General would not hear of it, declaring that I was too young. My offences against propriety of speech and demeanour were in any case sufficient to spoil my chances. Yet the next time that the battalion went into the trenches, I was in charge of B Company. Before that I had had a special duty to do. It was to act as ‘Tunnel Major’ in Hedge Street Tunnels – to regulate the very limited and fiercely coveted accommodation there, and the traffic in and out. This appointment took me back to the accursed area again, and even while I made my way there the evil nature of the place displayed itself – apart from the instant exchange of farms in autumn for a dead sea of mud. Going up by way of Zillebeke, I was obliged to stop. I sat down in a trench corner near our old terror, Valley Cottages. An ‘area shoot,’ a solid German bombardment lasting an hour on a measured space, was flattening several battery positions. This shelling was so concentrated and geometrical that, leaning against the side of our old trench just beyond its limit, we were in safety. But the area covered was treated as with a titanic roller and harrow. About half an hour after this shoot began, from the very middle of the furnace two artillerymen suddenly emerged, running like demons, but unwounded.
At the door of the large dugout which I was to supervise, a quartermaster-sergeant’s body was lying. Men were afraid to pause even a few seconds at this point, and bodies were not quickly buried. A battalion of pioneers, the dear Divisional pioneers, were attempting to lay down wooden trolley-lines, but they could scarcely outpace the destruction of their work by shells. I found the tunnels crammed with soldiers on business and otherwise. The Colonel and Adjutant of the RF’s, who had taken our place in the Tower Hamlets sector a fortnight or so before, were here, occupying a new and half-finished dugout; they used me very hospitably. The Colonel remarked, pouring me out a drink, ‘We no longer exist.’ I asked how; he explained that their casualties had been over 400. Our experience had been only the prelude to their full symphony. We talked on, the subject changing; presently it came to German character and morals, whereon the Colonel spoke of a recently discovered letter in which the limit of obscenity had apparently been reached by some enemy paterfamilias. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, throwing a crumpled paper at the adjutant, ‘we’ll be off. There’s a great hole on top, young man; I had it partly filled up, but it’s not the only one … We no longer exist.’ He had it by heart, he said it lightly, but I interpreted him. ‘Good luck to you,’ he said, ‘let’s look at the war, Charlie,’ and he and the Adjutant, all neat and soldierly, went out into the darkness.
For a week, I think, I patrolled this dirty but precious underworld, and fancied I improved the conditions. Not the actual state of the works. It was the business of the tunnellers to pump out the canals of foul water which stand along the passages, the light of the electric lamps falling on it doubtfully through the black lattice of flies which hung to the warm bulbs, swarming and droning round the head of the passer-by. The holes on top I did indeed cause to be filled. But I was of more use in finding out who ought to be in the tunnel, who not, and in acting accordingly. The space available became hourly more important. Once a machine-gun Major threatened to destroy my labours, which had cleared a chamber or two for some officially incoming troops, by sending his men in and telling me to go to hell. I had to call for aid to General Hornby, who was in Canada Street Tunnels, and returned to eject my pirate with a signed paper proclaiming that ‘In the Tunnels, the word of the Tunnel Major is law.’ Whether this action or the paper gave me a certain notoriety in those dismal parts I don’t know; but soon afterwards an artillery Major with a couple of gunners appeared and very mildly requested my sympathetic treatment, at the same time producing a bottle of burgundy and a poetry-book. I was sorry (but not more sorry than he was) when he departed. I did not hurry him.
The worst of the place was that one only had to go to the doorway to see at one view (between the crashes) as brutal a landscape as ever was, and a placid distance of grey-blue hills gently regretting that one more harvest was done.
Upon the arrival of the 11th Royal Sussex in the dungeons, I was inflicted upon B Company, and we were soon threading our way behind a dubious guide, through darkness crimsoning into unholy flames, towards the front line. We went with great apprehension, for the sector was a little distance from that of our last tenancy, but on the way up we did well, escaping casualties and keeping contact, despite the usual shoal of angry and maledictory Jocks coming down. The mounds and holes looked savage enough in the passing glare of German lights, the channel of the Bassevillebeek resembled a gulf of mud with four-inch planks across, but all went tolerably well; we entered Bass Wood, and manned a decently dry trench in sandy soil along a prominent ridge. I took over from Andrews, the remarkable young officer already referred to, and before he would leave the line he spent an hour or two with me creeping about on the left of ‘our bit,’ endeavouring to make sure where the nearest post of the next battalion was. But we could not place it, and the German lights seemed to be fired at some distance from us in that direction, though close enough ahead. These lights were in any case misleading, for they would be fired from a support or reserve position as well as the foremost shell holes.
We three company commanders and our subalterns occupied a concrete dugout in the little wood, called Bass Wood, three or four hundred yards back. The company sergeant-majors and others were in a trench at the rear of the place. They were not in truth worse off for being in the open; inside, the pillbox was nearly a foot deep in water, which was full of noxious and rancid matters, metamorphoses, God knows what – scire nefas. There were a table, floating boxes, and beds of the usual type. In this ‘Hunwater Dugout’ Vidler and Amon played cards and damned everybody, especially me in my nervous desire to arrive at an agreement on some urgent point. A ‘lucky shell’ (so our laconic fatalism termed a direct hit!) would have wiped out all the control of the line, for battalion headquarters in a pillbox behind could not show their noses outside in daylight. Their dugout was visited, we heard, by the new Divisional Commander, who stood on top of it, pointing out various ‘features’ with his stick; shortly after which indiscreet and even licentious action the place was barraged. An aeroplane even came to bomb it. I heard our artillery observation officer, presently, who had to attend during the episode, describing it in just language. ‘I was pursuing my profession at the usual hour,’ he began, ‘when I was accosted by a Major-General’ – but this book is for publication.
That formerly our coppice was regarded by the Germans as beyond danger, the shattered timber of wooden huts among the tree-stumps told us. Hunwater Dugout must have been a reserve headquarters, its weed-grown roof and the coppice branches rendering it quite secret. Now it was no secret! It was not shelled much while we were there – four days, generally quite calm. At dawn it was impossible to avoid a gnawing anxiety, but no trouble befell us. Among the oddments fired at our trench, there was one previously unknown to me – a gas container, which burst with a huge report, and scattered a sharp gust of poison on the damp shades. Millward went round the line at night, trying to make his long body less long; Vidler followed him, stopping because of short sight; and I came last, with other shadowy spectators, admiring these imitations of great age. Meanwhile, we had found our way over to the adjacent battalion (‘establishing contact’) and regularly met our neighbours with hearty esteem.
Vidler’s old liking for No Man’s Land now returned to him and we went out together to discover all we could on the night which brought our relief. It was black and heavy. A curious tree like a clumsy cross just gave us a direction. We nevertheless turned here and there quite nimbly, and identified a farm track and a flattened ruin. Here we picked up a ploughshare, which Vidler thought the Intelligence Staff should be thankful for. Regretting the dearth of incident, and skirting a pillbox crowded with corpses, we at length returned. The incoming battalion two or three hours later were troubled by a light machine-gun from that patch of ground where we had been, and, sending out one or two stout fellows, brought in two very youthful Germans, who said they had been there with their guns for many hours. This barbed news reached Vid. and myself all too soon, and considerably perplexed us, not to use our expressions of the time.
But as yet we are not relieved. The most dangerous moment of the tour is to come. Upon the arrival of the ‘guides,’ there was the usual process of sorting one another out near company headquarters, and some mistake led to a certain amount of noise. The moment was when my company was halting in the open, near Hunwater Dugout. At once the Germans fired so many illuminants that the ground with its pools was like a jeweller’s shop; I shouted to my anxious men to stand fast, but one or two were new or nervous, and ducked or moved on; then the enemy’s machine-guns played; the informing white lights multiplied, were repeated farther off; red lights bursting into two like cherries on a stalk went up by the dozen. There seemed now no doubt that a box barrage of the latest quality would come down on us, and my skin felt in the act of ‘shrivelling like a parchèd scroll.’ To our amazement, the German guns held their peace; the streaming bullets raced over a little longer – fifteen minutes in all – then slackened, and we went with sober minds on our way. It seemed a long way, as all night journeys in the Salient did, but we knew we had been lucky this time, and as we picked our way between the bellowing batteries and the greasy roadside wreckage, we rejoiced. Finally a phantom of short leafy trees in the mist showed that we were on the borders of life again; it was Voormezeele, and our camp was at hand – Boys Camp. A hot meal awaited all, and I suppose the surviving officers still reckon that night’s roast pork particularly notable among Quartermaster Swain’s many capital performances. ‘The Daily Prevaricator,’ said Swain, ‘won’t give you a Christmas dinner like this, my boy.’ It made us forget the wind darting through the torn canvas of the marquee.
We lay in bivouacs, and found them poor comfort; there was water on the field floor of many of them, and it was late in the year for canvas in that district. To warm and freshen the men next day, and to give them a view of the vicinity of once famous Dickebusch, I took them for a route march, which was not popular. My quest for customs and antiquities did not mend the state of their feet. Yet there may have been one or two who noticed the many singular relics of earlier fighting from the Brasserie to Scottish Wood, and some were destined to fight and drop not many months later on that very ground. It was strange to pass freely beside buildings which had been familiar and dangerous to hundreds and thousands of our predecessors, and parts of which survived. It was also the pathetic evidence of a warfare which, in comparison with the present fury, was almost Arcadian. There are many degrees of mutilation. Here at least were the walls of a white château, the brickwork of a culvert, a well, the cellars and gate of a farm; the Hic iacet was just permitted, and some evidence of the individuality of the departed.