xxvii

My Luck

During my leave the battalion went south, and as I got on the return train at Boulogne I knew that I was in for a prodigiously long and cold journey. It ended after an icy age at Péronne, with the famous Somme’s frost-blue streams hurrying by, and old round towers standing firm; but perhaps the extraordinary German strongholds built in concrete under the station and elsewhere looked firmer. There were warning notice-boards outside these, and German bombs and boxes of explosives were still lying about in the entrances of some. Civilian life was as yet inactive in Péronne, nor could I find an estaminet open. This city had been in the same state, perhaps, after Waterloo. From here I went on to Mont St Quentin, and found some of the battalion shivering in bare linen-windowed huts on a bleak hill.

The next month was principally passed in the trenches just south of Gouzeaucourt. At first the whole area was deathly still, as though no war ever happened here. The civilians had not yet attempted to resume their properties and all the farms for miles were only shells of brick. It was truly a devastated area, apart from all question of the cutting down of orchards and the dynamiting of churches or cross-roads. Upon our arrival (in open trucks on a light railway) a heavy hoar-frost was loading the trees and telegraph wires and all projections and points with beards of greyish crystal – a singular sight, and the air’s near whiteness thickened into the impenetrable at a few yards’ distance. Dry weeds stood without a quiver on the fallows wherever one went. This solemn muteness and slumber of nature was not the only cause why the trenches were peaceful here, at our incoming; there was a great space between our line and the Germans, and besides it appeared that both sides were garrisoning their defences with the fewest possible men. The British Army was in process of reorganization and extension southward, and that accounted for the scarcity of immediate reserves. The men in the line were to all appearances the only troops, save for supply and so forth, between the Germans and the Atlantic. But the Americans were coming, and were beginning to be talked of in millions.

Our position was extensive, and included two ‘strong points,’ called Quentin Redoubt and Gauche Wood. The actual front trench east of these was a straggling ill-sited concern. West of them stretched a valley and a railway, parallel with the front, and a ridge, again parallel; under the ridge, in a cutting, battalion headquarters and supporting companies lived; thence, overland, one walked by the duckboards or the tramway back to a group of buildings commanding the support battalion’s positions, called Revelon. The grassy tableland was incised with trenches, some achieved, more inchoate – too many intentions of trenches, perhaps. A little wire made the ‘system’ slightly stronger. This area was all to be involved in the battle of March 21, of which some rumours were already adrift among us, and the battalion was used not only to hold the position but also, simultaneously, to fortify it in every detail. Some argued that there was to be an attack by the British, us, and therefore all the labour, all the working-parties came to pass; but that did not console some others. There is no pleasing your ancient infantryman. Attack him, or cause him to attack, he seems equally disobliging.

Mutual molestation, at first unnoticed, gradually increased, until the ground was liberally shelled in routine. At first battalion headquarters under the ridge lived and laughed in a light hut above ground, but presently they divided their time judiciously between it and a tunnel deep down. Shells clanged down in the sunk lane, and the valley and railway between us and the firing line were transformed into a savage place. There was no trench across; and waterlogged hollows compelled the use of regular tracks, besides which a system of wiring existed only permitting those tracks. At the gaps in the wire one found oneself suddenly in the middle of a bursting salvo, but the ground was luckily soft. A minefield, rumoured to exist at this point, might add a picturesque effect to one’s last appearance.

Here several duties were assigned to me, but especially the control of the signallers and observers. Our observers could see well behind the German lines, but it was surprising how little effective evidence could be picked up. Indeed, daylight movement on the other side was now a rarity. Asked to give the gunners a target, the best that Corporal Sands, Clifford’s old assistant and now, by the hand of death, his successor, could do was to recommend for punishment some harmless sentry smoking his china pipe in a quarry, who promptly went inside as the British shell went some furlongs over. The silence and inertia in the German trenches were a puzzle, and the old remark about ‘holding the line with a man and a boy’ was passed round among us. One might candidly sit, as I did, upon our parapet, and spend several minutes looking at the opposite line and the ruins and expensive cemetery of Villers Guislain, without any disaster. One night, the whole battalion, ‘together with 14th Hants, 13th R. Sussex, Gloucesters and RE’s,’ was ordered to put out wire in No Man’s Land, and although such an order created the usual terrible imaginings, the reality was almost like a practical joke. Conversation went on among the men, the wire was uncoiled with all possible noise, the jangling tin crosses on the ends of the reels were allowed full voice, company commanders bawled for sergeant-majors – No Man’s Land became (to speak comparatively) a parade. Worley was the specialist in charge, and he ran about with his favourite gloves on, putting mistakes right here, and fancy touches on there, and telling me loudly the work was going on well – ‘is the old General about, d’you know, sir?’ At last a machine-gun was turned on us, but the wire was in place, and no harm was done.

The machine-gun seemed to play particularly on a corner of Gauche Wood called Gun Post, over a deep dugout used as battalion headquarters for this extensive wiring operation. I was standing there, taking breath after a little exploration in front of the wire, when the General arrived, and pushed through the waiting men there to the fire-step, which he mounted, to look about. As the bullets had just struck the sandbags at that spot, I ventured to ask him to avoid it, which he did, calling me by name and with great gentleness, adding, ‘I will go down to see Colonel Millward, Blunden.’ This I record, for I think this was the last occasion on which this redoubtable, dry, often tormenting yet meritorious commander spoke to me, and it seemed to me that even in those simple words he expressed in his own quaint fashion a kindly appreciation of my now lengthy period under his command.

Strewn about this sector were relics of the Cambrai fight of the previous November, cavalry lances, guns with crumpled barrels, tanks burnt out, German machine-gun belts and carriers, and a few dead, preserved by the cold weather. The salvage artists had a little headquarters in Heudicourt behind, to which with the aid of the light railway (operated by American engineers, men of splendid but risky ease of mind) they carried tons of miscellanies. Probably it was the principal side-show in the divisional area: for of amusement and the variety of ordinary billets there was nothing here. It was believed that presently there would be motor trips to Amiens. Meanwhile, days came and went, and every available man was holding the trenches, or working in them, or combining the warrior and the workman.

In the effort to provide alternative communications of all sorts, I one evening climbed a tall thin tree in Gauche Wood with a signalling lamp, which I fixed there; and then attempted a test, flashing a few words to battalion headquarters. By ill luck and stupidity the direction was wrong, the Germans opposite could detect the flashes, and a machine-gun began pecking at the wood. I made a lucky jump.

Everyone began to feel the strain of sleeplessness and a relief was expected. One weary private, having to express himself, chose the Brigade-Major on his morning round as the object of his satire: ‘Look at ’im,’ he cried to his embarrassed neighbours. ‘Milintary Cross an’ all – look, chum.’ The Brigade-Major was himself a humorist and saved the satirist from some grim expiation. While relief was still expected, I was shown a Brigade message referring to me, and applying to me the same treatment as had already taken Vidler and others from us – namely, six months’ duty at a training centre in England. This order was, like all my recent movement orders, good and bad, too; but it seemed time I went. Not that my nerves were spent – I felt better than usual in that respect; but I was uneasy in my job, and could not bring myself into the proper relations with my seniors. Besides, the battalion altogether was now strange and disordered. Doctor Crassweller, whose wit and wisdom and Wilsonian aspect had been our delight since he came to the battalion, would hear no sentiment from me on this occasion. He gleamed satisfaction as if he were going into peace and not me; he passed on to me the kindest things he had ever heard said about me; and he warned me on no account to volunteer to return before my time, for by Nature’s ordinance such an action was equal to suicide. I hated to mention to my old friends, such as Sergeant Ashford, that I was departing. I scarcely dared to face my servant Shearing, now wearing his Military Medal for admirable courage in last September’s Menin Road massacre. Poor Ashford stood, delighted for my sake, but not glad that I should go; old hands were now very few; he looked between smiles and tears, tapped with his foot, took my hand, and I think he then divined that it must be his own fate to stay in Flanders. All congratulated me, but I felt I ought to have been in a position to congratulate them.

Some unanalysed notion led me to go round the battalion trenches thoroughly, the last day I was there, and the walk was lively, for most of the crucial points were being ‘registered’ by German guns; the railway valley was now in a poor state, and men did not loiter there. One or two nights had been particularly anxious and bombarded ones, and the future here would evidently be much the same as that of Ypres. It was some comfort to be told that the battalion would be relieved in a night or two; in the belief, which was a delusion, I said good-bye, and went away. The long duckboard track to Revelon Farm was for the moment quiet, and I was thankful, for having made the severance from my surviving friends I was unashamedly eager to reach England. Had a shell come, I thought I should have exemplified in action the mild joke then current:

A. ‘Did you hear that shell just now?’

B. ‘I did. Twice. Once when it passed me, and again when I passed it.’

I passed a night with Maycock, ruddy-faced and buoyant as ever, at the transport lines. Old Swain was actually Adjutant now, grey-headed as he was, so I had already bidden him farewell. Then next day the mess cart took me and my valise to the nearest station; we nearly lost the train; my servant hurled the valise into the horse-truck just in time, and my trench career was over. Let me look out again from the train on the way to England. We travel humbly and happily over battlefields already become historic, bewildering solitudes over which the weeds are waving in the mild moon, houseless regions where still there are lengths of trenches twisting in and out, woods like confused ship-masts where amateur soldiers, so many of them, accepted death in lieu of war-time wages; at last we come to the old villages from which the battle of 1916 was begun, still rising in mutilation and in liberation. Then – not troubling overmuch about those droves of graceless tanks, exercising and racing on the hill-top – we view Albert, pretty well revived, its tall chimneys smoking, its rosy roofs renewed and shining, and all about it the fields tilled, and young crops greening. No need any longer for that old swaggering signboard, TO BAPAUME . The mercy of nature advances. Is it true?

What, says someone, filling a pipe, haven’t you heard? the Haig Line, being dug by labour corps somewhere back here? About time, too, another comments; and I hope it’s not the only one. I wonder why they are concerned, for it is fifty miles behind the British line. A third: Poor old France, hope I never see the damned place again. I fear that I do not take these utterances very seriously, looking out on the tranquillized valley of the Ancre, wishing I might walk along as far as Hamel now and see if the apple trees (it cannot be that those, too, perished) are not still able to put forth their blossoms. But here is Buire-sur-Ancre, where we must change our train, and wait indefinitely for the next; and while we prowl inspectingly in the way of the fighting man round huts and possibly useful stores, the willows and waters in the hollow make up a picture so silvery and unsubstantial that one would spend a lifetime to paint it. Could any countryside be more sweetly at rest, more alluring to naiad and hamadryad, more incapable of dreaming a field-gun? Fortunate it was that at the moment I was filled with this simple joy. I might have known the war by this time, but I was still too young to know its depth of ironic cruelty. No conjecture that, in a few weeks, Buire-sur-Ancre would appear much the same as the cataclysmal railway cutting by Hill 60, came from that innocent greenwood. No destined anguish lifted its snaky head to poison a harmless young shepherd in a soldier’s coat.