Thou Shalt Not Kill
The shelling abated somewhat as we ventured into the no man’s land that lay beyond our battered line. The officer was nervous and plunged through the mud so blindly that he lost his direction and it took me some time to get him convinced of his mistake. Then we swung and went forward and whizz bangs began dropping quite near. The officer jumped at each explosion, and yelled something at me. I paid no attention for I had just located the old stub we were to use as a guide. As I made the tape fast to it I looked up and saw my man racing away like a wild thing. Fear had mastered him. He had hurled the tape from him and was gone before I could do anything, leaving me there alone in the dark and the shelling, and with the company moving up in a few minutes. I snatched up my rifle and fired at him, forgetting in my rage that I might shoot some of my own fellows, forgetting everything, but before I could press the trigger a second time a quiet voice spoke to me so clearly that I could hear it above the din. I jumped around and there was the captain.
He had come out there alone and he calmly helped me with the tape as though it were his usual work. We had it in place as the men arrived and he did not threaten me nor reprimand me for what I had done. We dug in as swiftly as we could but there were wild cries in the dark and I rushed out with Tommy to find Christensen over a wounded man trying to bind his hurts. The fellow had become frenzied and would not lie still and we had to hold him by force until he was bandaged, then tie him on the stretcher. All the while Christensen never hurried or ducked as bullets snapped by. I never saw him flinch from a shell. He was the only real fatalist I knew. “When my time comes I’ll go,” was his creed, and he lived up to it. He had been shipwrecked twice and almost drowned, and several times he had had narrow escapes from shells. But he never showed fear. I have seen sergeants order him to stay in the trench as he passed to another part of the sector, and several times he had walked overland. He never ducked or hurried in exposed places, claiming that it was of no use. “My time is set,” he would say. “When it comes I’ll get mine wherever I am, and until that time I won’t be hit.”
A runner came through the murk and said we were to go with the battalion beside us in an attack on a pillbox. Corporal Hughes was at a place farther along and when I found him he knew nothing of such orders. Then we saw men advancing near us. There was no time to look further for verification and so Tommy and Mickey, Gordon and Sambro and I scrambled out of our trench and followed them. Three more men came after us. The rest did not come. We had heard names mentioned, Virtue Farm and Vocation, but did not know our front at all and so simply followed the others. All at once the strong point loomed through the murk and a Lewis gun hammered its rat-tat-tat-tat. Others joined in and cries of “kamerad” were shrill above the noise.
We plunged through the mud excitedly and found that a relief was on. The first attackers had reached the spot just as all the old garrison was outside their concrete fort, and before the new garrison could get in. Both garrisons were laden with full packs and practically helpless, and in five minutes those not killed had surrendered and we were in possession. The new Germans had thermos bottles filled with hot coffee and never did a warm drink taste as good as it. Tommy and I each got a bottle. No one seemed to know where we were to go and so we went back to our trench. Tommy and I were flanked on one side by a tall lad called Murray and his chum, Babson; on the other side were Bunty and Mickey. Farther to the right was a Lewis gun post, and Hughes and Gordon were beyond it. Then there was a stretch of twenty yards without a person in it, a short trench with men of another platoon, Sambro with them, and a small ruin with a roof over one end. On the left there was no one for fifty yards, and then another Lewis gun post. Barney, a big man, was in charge and his crew were “Red,” who was red-haired; McPhee, a cheerful, always-grinning lad and an eighteen-year-old Newfoundland boy named Russell. On the other side of them was another gap in the line, then a battalion of Camerons.
At daylight a thick, clinging mist obscured everything. Not an officer had come near us and we had no orders. The only sergeant in the trench did not know any more than we did, and we had had no rations and were ravenous. I peered around and made out a hillocky sea of mud in the rear, and crawled out among the mounds and hollows, finding a number of dead South Wales Borderers in full pack. I looked into their mess-tins until I found a tin of MacConachie rations, a tin of jam, and, in a pack, a loaf of bread. It was green with mold but we cut away the outside and ate the centre. We had “tommy cookers” with us and boiled tea and heated the meat rations. While we did so Babson saw, in front of the trench, a dead officer who had on high boots of splendid workmanship. He went out to get them and Bunty begged him not to, saying that robbing the dead would bring disaster. Babson went and tugged the corpse about in the mud until the boots were released; then he calmly stripped his own feet and put them on.
When our meal was ready Murray and Babson and I sat together on the firestep I had made. We were just finishing our tea when I heard the unmistakable report of a high velocity gun. An instant later the world seemed to come to an end. There had not been a sound of shell but I was hurled against the back of the trench and buried under an avalanche of mud and debris. In that heartbeat all sound of gunfire was deadened and all I could sense was a vague thumping. Then I heard voices. I had been pitched so that my head was beside our rifles, which had been together leaning against the trench wall. They formed a sort of vent up through the piled earth and I could get air. I heard Bunty’s voice, high-pitched, telling the sergeant that he had to help get me out, and I wondered why he did not mention Babson or Murray.
Then came sounds of digging, spades thrust frantically, and I suffered an agony of apprehension, fearful that a shovel would slice my jugular as my head was twisted around. Fortunately for him, Murray was buried least of any, and he was soon uncovered. He was shell-shocked by the concussion and was sent down the line, never to return. While getting him out they saw my legs and unearthed me without doing damage. I had been buried four feet deep but was not hurt beyond a severe shaking-up. When they reached Babson it was too late. He was buried deepest of any. Bunty looked at the long boots on his legs and shook his head. “Just what I told him,” he croaked.
Another of those high velocity shells came and wiped out the Lewis gun crew to the right, and also shattered the gun. The mist cleared and showed us how thinly our line was held. Gordon saw the ruin and declared he was going to have a sleep in it. Water had seeped in where he had dug so that he had no place to lie down or even sit. Tommy and Hughes took the machine gun post, pulling the dead men to one side, and Bunty and Mickey and I remained in the centre of our trench. More shells came, and more of our trench was blown in. A wounded man on the right, blinded by blood and crazed by his hurts, got out of his place into the open and German snipers began shooting at him. Tommy and Hughes squirmed overland to get him, but were forced to take cover and the fellow was shot in the head.
Gordon had got in the ruin and possibly had lain down when there came another of the high velocity missiles. It exploded inside the wrecked building. Gordon would never know what happened. All the rest of day we sat there with the dead men beside us, the dead officer in front of us, and dead men lying in the mud at the rear. In my head was a queer little singing noise that the din of the shelling augmented. But I minded most the stench that dominated everything. It seemed to penetrate one’s inmost being, that awful stench of death, a foul thing, a filthy thing, its reek was sickening. Mickey became ill and we persuaded him to work his way to the right and to try and reach some shelter where he could sleep.
As the dark came, early and foreboding, only Bunty and I remained in that bit of line that fourteen platoon had held. All at once I roused. I had seen something moving directly in front of where we were. We watched and made out a German patrol of ten or twelve men. They would remain a considerable time in one place and when they moved seemed uncertain of direction. We examined our rifles, and they were clogged with mud so that we could not use them. Every bomb had been buried. We could depend only on our bayonets.
For an hour Bunty and I watched them and then as they crawled far over on the left Barney’s Lewis gun chattered and they came back our way. I looked about, standing up in the wrecked part, and could not see any of our men, then spotted a file of blurred figures coming in from behind us, over the boggy ground where the dead Welshmen were sprawled. They came directly to us and the officer in the lead was a young fellow. I told him of the Germans crawling towards us and he gave quick order to his men, telling them to get into the trench. Bunty dragged himself away towards the right. He was too all in to want to linger.
The officer told me he belonged to the Black Watch and that they were to relieve the Camerons. I pointed the way he should go but he asked me to go with him and help rout the Germans. It was a weird mix-up. The Huns seemed bewildered, apparently thinking that we were their own men for they did not start up until we were almost beside them. Then they fought sullenly. The mud was deep and the Scots could not rush them very well, though four or five men seemed very anxious to get at them with bayonets. The officer shouted to the Germans, telling them to surrender, and he shot their leader with his revolver. Two bombs changed the situation, though only one German fell, and then I made my first and only kill with cold steel.
It had been all like a bad dream to me. I was too sick of the mud and dead men and lack of sleep hardly to realize what I was doing, and I had kept with the officer. He, seemingly, expected the Germans to put up their hands when he spoke, and when one lunged for him he was taken off guard and only escaped the thrust by falling to one side. Between his assailant and myself was the body of the feld-webel killed by the pistol shot, and as, half-dazed by the bomb explosions, I flourished my bayonet, intending only to bluff the German into surrender – for I had always a dread of such fighting – the fellow drove headlong at me. He tripped over his comrade as he came, but I seemed paralyzed. I could not move to avoid him. I tried to ward his weapon and then instead of tearing steel in my own flesh I felt my bayonet steady as if guided, and was jolted as it brought up on solid bone. My grip tightened as my rifle was twisted by a sudden squirming, as if I had speared a huge fish. Then I tugged it free and saw that the other men had killed two more Germans and the rest had surrendered.
I was weak with the shock of excitement, and could hardly answer the officer as he asked me questions. I had pointed out to him the gap that would exist if we left and he told me he would look after it, but wanted my name and regimental number. He seemed to think that I had saved his life and said that he would recommend me for a D.C.M. It meant nothing to me then, I was so utterly weary that I only wanted to get away. I had not meant to kill the German, had not wanted to do anything, and I was glad when I got over on the company front and saw that our relieving battalion was arriving.
I did not stop there as all the rest were leaving, but went with Mickey and Hughes, whom I found back of the ruin. Mickey was ghastly white, and the corporal was tired. We floundered through mud to a pillbox that served as a dressing station, and I saw Bunty there, sitting on two dead men covered with a rubber sheet. He told me that he was not going to hurry and that he wanted a shot of rum before he went on. Out on the road we met incoming men going to other points, and as we stumbled and waded past each other there came a deluge of shell fire. In an instant all was confusion. Men blundered into each other, knocked each other down. There were stunning, smashing explosions, gusts of concussion, terrible cries. Wounded men fell in the mud and were tramped down to join the old dead. The others in their panic stepped on them, did anything but stop. It was death to do so.
I had Hughes by the arm and fairly dragged him through the mire. Twice I slipped on dead bodies, and then came to a ruin where a man sat a fragment of wall. I went to him and asked if he had water. Both Mickey and Hughes were begging for a drink. The man did not answer. He was not dead, or even wounded, but so absolutely all in that he did not nod or speak, and I took his water bottle from his equipment, took it to Mickey and Hughes in turn, and brought it back and replaced it. I thanked the fellow then, and still he never changed expression. We went on down the road and there came another salvo. As the last of the crashing, soul-tearing smashes rang in my ears I saw Mickey spin and fall. I let go of Hughes and jumped to him. He had been hit in several places and could not possibly live.
“Mickey – Mickey!” I called his name and raised him up and he nestled to me like a child, his white face upturned to mine.
“At last,” he murmured, “I’m through.” Then his whisper was shrill and harsh. “I never had a white tunic or a red one,” he said. “I didn’t want – to kill people. I hate war – and everything. Why did they do it – why – did – they?”
He seemed delirious and I tried to soothe him, but he would not listen. He talked about what we had read in my little guide book, the way boys trained for fighting, the soldiers killed in France and Belgium, the other wars that had been fought, the futility of the endless repetition. “And we just go on and on,” he finished. “Doing things because – because – ”
His voice sank so low I could not hear but his lips still moved. Little white-faced Mickey! I held him there, held him tight, and tried to comfort him as he grew weaker and weaker. Then he twisted, strained in my arms, “… and we go on – on – on – on,” he shrilled, and stiffened.
I laid him there by the roadside with his rifle upright at his head, and took his belongings from his pockets. Hughes stood all the time, wavering, watching, yet never stepping from where I had left him and I suddenly knew he was in a worse condition than I had supposed, for he had thought the world of Mickey. “Come on,” I said roughly, and led him away and he never spoke.
We reached the long duckwalk and all around us were flashes and glows of fire, the great Salient’s maw, a huge death-trap, with shells whining and rushing through the air. There were red and yellow flashes, and streaking sparks of fire, and flares, ghostly, looping, falling, unreal, now and then silhouetting a straggling line of steel helmets and hunched shoulders; bewildered men in the dark, bone-weary, shell-dazed, treading on old dead and new dead, and slipping in the foulness of slimy ditches.
Somehow I kept going. Hughes had become querulous, resisting. He hung back, whispered that he wanted to sit down. I had taken his rifle and equipment, and I urged him on, knowing the fate of so many exhausted men who had stopped to rest in that ghoulish area. I took out my entrenching tool handle and menaced him with it as one would a child, making him go on and on and on, until at long last, in that blurry darkness just before dawn we reached tents that were to shelter us. The quartermaster was there to meet us. He took Hughes from me, led him away to give him hot drink and put him to bed. I staggered on, headed for the nearest tent – and pitched head foremost into a crater filled with stagnant water. Both rifles I carried were embedded in the clay and I left them and Hughes’ equipment under the water. I was shaking with cold, shaking so that I could hardly speak, drenched, blinded with filth. Tommy came – he had got in ahead, and led me into a tent. There I stripped naked and lay on a pile of blankets while he heaped others over me, a dozen of them. We had plenty of room, plenty of blankets – so many did not need them – and the quartermaster came with his rum and gave me a great mug-full. When I woke it was the next afternoon.
We went in buses to Bourecq and there we were billeted in a barn. The entire company did not muster the strength of a platoon and we sat around, unshaved, unwashed, staring at nothing. At night I sat up and looked around. I was bathed in perspiration, though the night was cold, for I had been feeling again live flesh sliding over my bayonet, seeing again Mickey’s white face close to mine, while his blood seeped from him and warmed my knees.
The men were muttering in their sleep, turning, twisting, straining. Tommy lay with his hands gripped, huddled, whimpering, all the terrors that he had fought back during consciousness flooding over his soul when the barrier of his will was lowered. Courage, in the heat of battle, is an animal instinct. There’s a certain gregariousness in it, the instinct of the herd, the eyes of the other fellow on you; but the courage that kept a man in his place in those terrible late November days at Passchendale was the straining of the soul, the last limit of human pluck. Twice I woke and found a man on his hands and knees, gazing about him, wakened by the horrors of his own mind, unable to comprehend that at last the Salient stench had left his nostrils.
The first few days in Bourecq were easy ones. The captain was kind to us. He came on the ground as we formed up the first time, our pitiful ranks, and gazed at us without speaking, and I saw in his eyes things of which no man speaks – the things that words would kill. We had little drill, but rested, and slept and had good food and finally were more like human beings than we had been, but every man who had endured Passchendale would never be the same again, was more or less a stranger to himself.
A draft arrived and Earle was in it. I was glad to see him, more glad than I could say, for there were few of the old boys with us, only Christensen and Tommy and Sambro and Eddie: Earle had heard in England that I had been killed, and the rumour reached Canada. Those with me the first night, when I had been knocked out with the Stokes, had reported me killed, and again when I had been buried the story had gone. We went for a feed together. When we were returning we heard high voices in an estaminet and went in. Red was there confronting one of the “originals.” “Red” had been with the 73rd, and was a good man in the line. The “original” had been on jobs back in safe areas but had got in wrong with authorities and had been sent back to the battalion. He had had a few drinks and now was declaring that Passchendale was nothing, that all the real fighting had taken place before the blasted “umpty-umps” came over. “Red” grinned at him, and said he was not trying to belittle those mighty warriors, the “originals,” and dodged a swing at his chin. Plunk! The “original” went down for a long count, and when he recovered his friends took him outside.
There were few new men in the draft. Almost all had been wounded at Vimy or the Somme and had belonged to the 73rd or 42nd. I made friends with many of them. Sykes, a dark-haired fellow who read books whenever he could and who could make good rissoles of bully, onion and hardtack; Boland, a neat-built boy; Thornton, slightly deaf, always humming songs; Lockerbie, a tall, well-built man; Williams, another of fine physique. We had a new officer, a man new to France, and he had difficulties. We numbered in French the first morning he paraded us, and he flushed and scolded in a manner that delighted the mischievous. Battalion orders carried the information that the 42nd were now privileged to wear the red hackle; it seemed to be some sort of battle honour. Tommy snorted. “Red Hackles,” he said. “What are they to us! What about Mickey and the Professor and Melville and all the boys? Red hackles, bah!”
I said nothing to him. Everyone’s nerves carried too fine an edge to permit argument. A team of the rifle grenadiers was organized and entered in the divisional shoot for the Lipsett shield, and no one seemed surprised when it came to us. Suddenly my leave came through. Leave! I had not thought of it in the last hectic weeks, though “Old Bill” and a few others had mercifully escaped the second trip to Passchendale by having theirs come due.
Leave – I could see Phyilis! I caught a lorry and went to Boulogne and saw the leave boat in the harbour. It had left five minutes before. Those with me swore furiously but I had a stroll around the streets and, after looking up the history of the place, was quite entertained. Then I ran foul of one of those creatures I had always avoided, one of the peacock variety of nincompoops in shiny Sam Browne and cream-coloured breeches.
I had been reading that Mark Twain said France had neither summer nor winter nor morals, that Napoleon’s monument outside of Boulogne had been erected to celebrate his triumphant invasion of England, and was walking slowly as I read. My lordship was walking by several feet from where I stood and I never saw him until his rasping voice requested me to “Drop that damn book and salute an officer.”
The book was thrust into my tunic pocket and I gave my snappiest salute. It was not good enough. There had been an appreciative twitter from the blonde charmer at his elbow.
“As you were,” came the rasping voice. “Three paces backward, march. Now then, try again. What regiment? Oh, the Black Watch, quite a lad aren’t you? As you were, three paces backward, march. Try again, cut your hand away, my man, don’t let it fall beside you.”
My man! My blood boiled. Four times I had to pace backward, advance and salute that smirking monkey, a weak-chinned lieutenant, and then he dismissed me with the sharp warning to look out when I next met him. And he a Canadian, at least he wore Canadian badges!
That night I slept with the leave crowd in a big barrack-like room, and talked till midnight with men from the Second Division, lads who had been at Hill 70, who had indulged in raiding parties. The chatter was interesting. There were bitter denunciations of the folly of Passchendale, and one lad confided to me that he had a scheme he was going to work out while in Blighty. “I’m through holding bloody ditches for King George and Art Currie,” he said. “I’ll be in the States in three weeks’ time.”
Others talked of their officers and to my surprise I found myself telling what “good heads” we had in the 42nd. One surly-looking fellow of the Sixth Brigade said that he never set eyes on a good officer, he hated them all, and sergeants as well. His own words gave us his status. I thought of the officers with whom I had come in contact and decided that they were exactly the same as the men, good, bad and indifferent, with very little, if any, difference in the average. Their actions when we were out of the line declared their mentality, and in the line they had the advantage of the men. The weak-kneed ones used S.R.D. to fortify them in shaky hours, the soldier had not the opportunity. I had met our adjutant and found him a gentleman, emphatic in his praise of our draft. Everyone liked our colonel, and our regimental sergeant-major, McFarlane, was one of the finest men I met.
As a rule the average officer did not see more than a third as much of raw, undiluted war as did the men under him. The men stayed on post, six on, six off, and saw relays of officers, one at a time, doing two hours out of twenty-four, and that a hurried tour of the trench. The men carried rations, barbed wire and ammunition from dump to front line, in all weathers, under all conditions, and the officer that led them usually had the job once during that trip in the line; the soldier went each night. The men would stay on post and endure all kinds of strafing, dig out dead and wounded comrades from blown-in places, stick it and carry on, and their officer would not be seen while it lasted. During the two worst days at Passchendale I never saw an officer except Grafftey. Perhaps they were in as dangerous positions as we were. I do not know. Yet, given the same chance, many of the men, probably the majority, would do just the same as they. Officers were simply men in uniforms designed to make them look better than the privates, and they had responsibilities that we did not realize. I never envied them, hated them, nor regarded them any differently than any of the other men. Some were of much finer intellect than mine, most of them had come from finer homes – at least those in the 42nd had – and still there were some I regarded as my inferiors. The general opinion seemed that none of the “brass hats” were better than pole cats with the exception of McDonnell, Lipsett and Byng.
Victoria! Leave men thronging everywhere, hungry for a change of food, for girls who spoke their own tongue, for the welcome of their homes and a clean bed. Men straight from the trenches, lousy, mud-crusted, with the echo of guns in their ears and the smell of dugouts in their nostrils. I pushed through the milling crowd and checked my Lee-Enfield and equipment, then got into the street. Two hours later I had a complete uniform, clean underwear, soft boots, Fox puttees, Bedford cord breeches, a well-cut tunic, a Glengarry and an officer’s British warm. I found a fairly clean place on Vauxhall Bridge Road and there I had a hot bath, luxuriated in it, and put on all my clean clothes. Then, after the barber shop, I went to a good restaurant and ordered a meal I had long pictured, and ate it leisurely.
I went back to my room and got ready for bed. It had been so long since I slept on anything but hard boards, trench mud or chicken-wire bunks. Yet something urged me to go out into the murky streets, to walk down the Strand again, one look about before I retired. I refused to go. Clean sheets and a soft bed were mine and I was going to enjoy them. Even then I could not fall asleep and I made plans for the next day. After a good breakfast I would get a taxi and drive through that English part of England and see Phyllis. I remembered her smile as I had left, the last glimpse I had of her face.
When I did doze someone came thundering at my door and I heard sirens. “The Zepps are over,” the fellow shouted.
Zeppelins! After Passchendale! “Go away and leave me alone,” I said. “What’s a zeppelin.” It seemed all a joke to me, that panic over a few air ships. I watched a moment, long fingers of light in the sky, seeking the raiders, and listened to the rattling crashes of the anti-aircraft guns, then went to sleep again.
In the morning I had a delicious breakfast and heard that two Gothas had been brought down and that a number of civilians had been killed. It seemed a very minor affair to me. I was feeling like living again; there had been no dreams of a Boche on my bayonet, no others near to mutter in their sleep little sobs and moans and incoherent profanity.
I hired a car and went out along the same route that the officer had taken me more than a year before. It was not such pleasant weather and winter rain had made the country drab, but it looked lovely to my eyes. I lolled back in the seat, thinking how lucky I had been. It seemed only two hours since I had been trying to keep myself alive till the next day.
We rolled into the little village and when we reached the Inn I paid the driver and sent him back to London. I didn’t want to have any link connecting me with sordid things that seemed so remote from “The Black Boar.” The Innkeeper recognized me, and the fact was a thrill in itself. I was given my same room and then went to the little cottage where Phyllis lived. She had only written a few times and I had not let her know I was coming.
An old man opened the door, the uncle, and his wrinkled face was grooved with grief. “Come in,” he said gently. “Her said ’ee might be too late.”
“Too late!” I exclaimed, startled. “What do you mean? Where is Phyllis?”
He shook his head. “I’ll tell ’ee,” he said in his gentle way, and related how Phyllis had told him that I was coming back to England and that she would go down to London to see me. I interrupted to tell him I had not written her, but he shook his head again and said, in an almost reverent way, and said that Phyllis had “gifts,” had no need of letters, she knew by some mysterious sixth sense. I had found that out when I met her, and I grew impatient.
“Where is she at now?” I broke in. “I’ll look her up in London.”
Again the slow shake of the head. “’Ee be too late,” he said, and thrust me a crumpled paper. It was a wire from London. Phyllis had been killed by a bomb dropped by the German raiders.
Killed by a bomb! I remembered the urge I had had to go out in the streets. If I had gone I would have seen her … The old man rambled on, talking about her, her little ways that he knew so well, how she hated war, would not read the papers or listen to him talk about it. Then he startled me, chilled me. He invited me to take dinner with him – and he called me “Steve.”
The word shocked me. “I’m not Steve,” I said, sharply. “I’m his brother.”
He peered at me, and I could see that he could not grasp what I said. “Steve – that’s the name,” he muttered. “She went to meet Steve – her said it.”
We sat at his humble table, the old man and I, silent at times, now and then speaking about the war. “’Ee have been in battle?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Passchendale.”
“Aye, I have heard it were a fearful fight, he said, admiringly. “’Ee have lived a great day.”
“I don’t think so, “I said bitterly. “This war is wrong.”
“Aye, the Kaiser have something to answer for.” The old man nodded vigorous assent. “But ‘ee have a chance to do a bit for England, for England. He raised his old bent figure from his chair and pointed out the window at the countryside. “’Ee have something to store, to tell ’ee children.”
I was silent. “’Course there be parts for forgetting,” he went on, “but the rest do make up for it. ’Ee have lived in a great day.”
We talked awhile about Phyllis, then when I was leaving he gripped my hand with his horny one and said gravely. “Lad, ’ee have much to be thankful for. Mine isn’t for complaint, but to be young now would be the nearest thing to Heaven I knows of.”
All the while he called me “Steve,” and when I got outside I was glad I had not told him different. It seemed to please him that I had come and I knew that Phyllis had never told him that my brother had been killed. But – she had gone to meet Steve!
It was a lovely afternoon and as I went by the old church I saw that people were gathering for a service, and I went in. It was unforgettable. Through the stained glass windows of the old Norman church the sun’s rays fell on altar and choir stalls, flooding the place with a riot of colour. The vicar, in white surplice and crimson stole, had an appealing voice and in his prayer seemed pleading with a God whom he actually confronted. The reverent people, the dignified service, the sunlight on the oak carvings, all touched me curiously. I felt that I was a rank outsider.
At the Inn I asked what the service was for and learned that a series of special meetings had been held for more than a month, intercessions for aid to British arms on the western front. They were asking God to make England and her Allies victorious, pleading that right should conquer, that the German and the devil be defeated. And in my haversack was a belt buckle I had taken off a dead German. Its inscription was “Gott Mitt Uns.”
I went back to London and from there took train to Retford, in Nottinghamshire. The girl I left in Canada had been born in that district and I was going to visit her people. They made me welcome and I had a wonderful time exploring the villages, especially Gainsborough and Lincoln. The old Roman wall in Lincoln, and the cathedral, were marvellous to me. When I went back to London I went down to Bramshott and saw my brother, who had been in England as a musketry instructor. Stanley, the big, broad-shouldered brother of my fiancee, was there at the depot of the 85th Highlanders. He had been seriously wounded at Vimy and was anxious to get back to France.
They asked me what it had been like at Passchendale and I said “Not too bad,” and changed the subject. That which I noticed in others had come to me. No soldier who had been in that fighting would talk about it at all.
When I went back to the battalion it was still at Bourecq and I traded my finery to the quartermaster for a regular issue. He cut a dashing figure in my British warm. A dozen times I had been saluted while up in Nottinghamshire and when other lads at Bramshott donned my rigout to have a picture taken I realized that if we all were given the same uniform many officers would be in the background
A few days after my return we moved to Lieven and relieved the 16th Battalion there. One experienced an inexplicable thrill in being back again in dark, smelly confines and frost-bound trenches where only Death was sure of his billet. We were to do carrying parties up Cow Trench, that long crooked trail known to so many Canadians. Soon we were as lousy as ever and having a hard time to keep warm. The new officer proved conscientious and when I asked that “Old Bill” be allowed my rum ration the favour was refused. We made several trips each night, laden with barbed wire, “A” frames, corrugated iron, anything the engineers could load us with, while they walked along and gave orders. Tommy got a particularly evil burden the third night, some frame work an engineer was using to build an O-pip, and he expressed himself in no uncertain terms when we reached our destination. “The front line soldier,” he orated, “does more work than any man in the labour battalions, gets less food than any soldier, does three-quarters of the engineers’ work, is used like a mule, bedded and freighted like a horse, and officered by asses.” Hughes had a hard time quieting him.
On Christmas eve a few of us were in a cellar under a ruin. Our bunks were a mass of broken wire and foul sandbags. We had no fire and the rations were very slim, and it was so cold we could not sleep. Tommy set a candle on a long board and each man produced the biggest, most active louse he could locate on his person, and we raced them, three heats, the length of the board, the winner to take all the prize, three dirty paper francs. After that sporting affair was over we shivered and huddled around until in desperation we tore down the bunks and made one common bed on the floor, piling all the bags on it. There the six of us lay as close as we could pack, our greatcoats over us, and slept, warmed by the heat of each other’s body. Shortly after day-light there were steps on the narrow stairs, then flashlight beams. We sat up, expectant. Rum or rations? It was the officer. “Merry Christmas, boys,” he chirped. “Aw, go to Germany,” said Tommy. The rest of us never spoke.
We stayed in the line, relieving the 49th. I went out with an officer of one of the other platoons, under barbed wire furred with frost, and got acquainted with the no man’s land of that sector. The next night we were in the brick cellar used by the cooks, waiting for a mug of tea, when there was a shout of “gas.” We rushed out and found that gas shells were dropping everywhere, long slim containers that simply broke as they fell. The officer wheeled. “Follow me,” he snapped, “and put on your mask, man.”
I put on my respirator and followed him as well as I could, but it was fairly dark and I could not see well through the goggles. Before we had reached the last company post he was away from me. He waited there, and said something. I pulled off my mask to hear. “Can’t you keep up with me?” he repeated. I looked at him. He had not had his mask on at all.
“Not with such a handicap, sir,” I said. “Give me equal chances and I can stay with you anywhere, anytime.” Perhaps I said it sharply. At any rate he was nettled. “Is that so?” he sneered.
“It is,” I answered. “You ordered me to put on my mask and left your own in the carrier, then expected me to follow you. That,” I said, “is unreasonable.”
“And so,” he sneered again, “you’re as good a man as I am?”
“Absolutely,” I shot back, “mentally or physically, and only too happy to prove it any way you like.”
“If you say anything more I’ll have you arrested,” he rasped, and turned away. He never talked to me again. I never understood what had made him so ugly that night. He was a good man in the line, better than ordinary, but at times he seemed to carry a grouch. If it had been some of the other company officers I would have been in trouble.
I spent New Year’s eve on a listening post, cold and hungry, watching the Very lights trace their patterns in the sky, wondering what 1918 would bring, and whether or not I would see another New Year. The battalion moved back to Souchez when relieved, into miserable huts half the regular size, with vents to admit the cold wind, without stoves. With me was Pete, a 73rd chap who had been up to Passchendale. He had been an athlete, was a splendidly-proportioned man, but had lain too long in the water and slime. He was racked with fits of coughing, was too weak to go on parades, and finally they sent him down to hospital.
On the second night in the huts Tommy and I got up. We could not sleep. We went along the old Vimy shelters and searched, over a mile away, until we were rewarded by finding a small stove and enough pipe to do. We carried it back to the hut and the rest turned out and helped us demolish a wooden shelter at the head of the camp. Then, in turn we kept the fire going and were able to sleep warmly. On parade we were told that a Christmas dinner was to be held, and Tommy and I were two of a party detailed to assist the preparations. We had to carry tables and benches from engineers’ quarters, over a mile away, and set them up in a marquee. By the time we had made the last trip the dinner was under way. Only a company could be fed at a time and we had to wait our turn, as the others went first. We had been carrying tables since seven o’clock and we did not get into the dining tent until four in the afternoon. A lump of cold pudding, a mug of cold tea and a few biscuits were shoved at me, the same kind of dinner we had had in a leaky hut at Mount St. Eloi the previous year. “Where’s the Christmas dinner?” blared Tommy. “What’s the bloody joke?”
“That’s all that’s left,” growled the cook. “What …”
Tommy drove his lump of cold duff at the fellow’s head, and his mug of cold, greasy tea followed. I got him quieted enough to get him outside and almost all our platoon followed us. “Hi,” yelled the cook from a safe vantage. “You guys can’t beat it – you’ve got to stay and help wash up these dishes.”
They had got enamel plates and mugs for the occasion and we were actually supposed to wash them, after doing all the work that was done that day and not getting any dinner. It took all my persuasion to keep Tommy sane and “Old Bill’ was ready to help him. We went up the valley to a Y.M.C.A. canteen and there got lukewarm cocoa and dry biscuits. We filled up on them, forced to do so, as we had no extra money, and “Old Bill” glared at the clerk as he eyed the tins of peaches on the shelves. We had asked for credit and of course it was not allowed. “I hope,” he growled, “that one of them heavies comes over and blows the blinkin’ ‘Y’ loose from its triangle.”
Our next trip in was to Cite St. Theodore, a place of underground passages and concrete chambers. We were in a room that the Germans had made waterproof and almost shell proof. A good stove was in it and just outside in the passage there was a store of coal. Our mail came and brought us Christmas parcels and we had a splendid time. Tommy and I roamed up the street we were on and explored. Passages crossed the street, from cellar to cellar, and other tunnels opened from strong points. The Hun had used concrete lavishly. We found a place partially destroyed that contained German blankets, ground sheets and shrapnel helmets as well as two German rifles. A passage led from it and we went along it for a considerable distance, then up steps until we were blocked by wreckage that had fallen over the stairway. It was well we stopped. After we found openings through which we could look, we saw, about ten yards in front of us, four Germans. They were leaning against a wall, smoking and talking, as if they were waiting for someone. After a time two of them went away and then the other pair called out to someone we could not see. They were answered by a voice that was almost above us. A footway ran alongside the wreckage and another German was walking along it. Had we dislodged anything, spoken, had we been smoking, we must have been discovered. We stole back softly the way we had come and in our own quarters tried to formulate some plan whereby we could capture one of the Heinies and surprise the troops.
At dark we were called to do a ration party. It was raining and we tried a short cut coming back. It led us into a mud hole that was knee deep and we were sorry figures when we returned. The stove was red-hot in a short time. We made our beds and stripped all our wet clothing and hung it on wires we had strung. Shortly everything was steaming. The door opened and in came our officer. “Men,” he squeaked, “the orders are that no man is to take off his boots, and have your rifle and equipment where you can get it at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, sir,” we chorused. He had looked at us through the steam from wet socks and trousers and he nodded and went away.
The 87th Battalion relieved us and we went back to Fosse 10. Tommy and I had not gone in our tunnel again and we left the sector without telling anyone of our discovery. From Fosse 10 we went to Noulles mines and were billeted in the town. The Hun shelled it the next day and killed a few of the civilians, one a little girl from the house where we were staying. I helped the mother pick her from the street. Her eyes were open, looking up, her hair thrown back from frightened, pinched features, a frail little elf, who had smiled at me and shyly called me “Canada.”
That evening I was ordered to go with Eddie to Ferfay and report to the school there. Eddie had been a corporal and Davies told me that I would have to take a stripe. I warned him that I did not want one and told him about what had happened in Canada. The boys chaffed me as I took my pack and left them, but I had the last laugh on them. I found that there were other 42nd men at the school, men from the other battalions of the brigade, and we had a good time together, despite the fact that we were coralled by a 116th sergeant, who unfolded to our weary ears the mysteries of sighting, aiming, rapid fire, and triangles of errors. I chummed with Siddall, from one of our other companies, and Turner, a big South African who was with the 49th.
It was just before we finished our Course that I had the laugh on the boys. They had not been back to the front line, a fact which Tommy mourned, as he had wanted to kill a Hun, he said, on the Kaiser’s birthday, and had had considerable drilling, and now “D” Company came to Ferfay. They were shined and cleaned so that I hardly recognized them and they drilled on the School parade ground in a way that made me proud that I belonged to them; they were shown as a model company. Our scouts went to Pernes and in competition there carried off all honours in sniping and observing. The 85th came to Rainbert, nearby, and I at once went to see them, for my brother had come to France. He had just arrived that night, had no rations, and was not issued any at the battalion.
I brought him back to Ferfay with me and took my blankets to madame next door to our billet and she gave us a regular banquet of eggs and chips and coffee and French bread; also an extra loaf for my brother. It was easy to draw more blankets from the stores. “How long,” asked my brother, “does a battalion do in the front lines?”
“About six days,” I said. “Sometimes more, sometimes less, never more than seven or eight.”
On March 6th we relieved the 116 Battalion, taking over a part of the line on the left of Avion, near the embankment. Part of no man’s “land” was under water, flooded by the Hun, and wire had been thrown near the shore so that anyone trying to wade across would get entangled. On the left flank the line ran out to a listening post. Its garrison stayed in a cellar there, a squalid little hole with a makeshift roof, and could not show itself in daylight as the place was in plain view of the big slag heap on the German side. Six of us were posted out there. Two men were in a shallow crater blasted in the chalky rim of the bank near where a bridge had existed. It had been blown up by explosives and no one could cross to the other side.
Opposite us, continuing our line, was an imperial battalion. They had no post at the canal bank, but used a flying patrol that came once every two hours during the night. A heavy wire had been thrown to the other bank and it was used as a signalling line. The Imperials tugged on it. If all was quiet we tugged twice in reply, if we had heard or seen the Germans near their part we pulled the wire three times. Barron had come back to us and he and I were the first two on post. Sambro and Tommy were to relieve us. We lay and gazed toward the Hun lines. It was not a cold night and spring was in the air. On the way up we had smelled buds and green things and had hated the front line again. It was hard to force to the background all fear of death at that most hopeful season of the year when men care most for life.
Suddenly we heard the “flying patrol” coming. They were making plenty of noise and when they reached the bank they gave the signal wire a tug that almost jerked Barron from our crater. “0-ky, Canada?” shrilled a cockney voice. “I sye, o-ky.”
“Shut your trap and get out of that or I’ll ‘o-ky’ you,” flared Barron, so fiercely that the patrol did not come again that night.
It was dreadful in the daytime. The weather continued balmy and we were cooped in a small space. The cellar was foul with slime from the canal and stank dreadfully as the days got warmer. Big blue flies buzzed about. We were lousy and the air made our heads ache. The water in our bottles got stale and unfit to drink. We had no warm food, only bread and cheese and the tea we boiled at night. It took all of the corporal’s cautioning to keep us under cover during the day.
During the third night we heard a German patrol. They came to the other side of the canal and we were able to make out two of them, but the corporal, Hoskins would not let us shoot as it would give away our position. The Huns came within feet of our signal wire and every moment we expected to hear the Imperials coming, but they did not until the enemy had gone to their own line. Six awful days we endured in that cellar, and six nights we enjoyed the cool air, every man going outside as soon as it was dark. Then we moved back to support. Hoskins had a few lines he used to recite about that post.
When the war is o’er
And I’m home once more
To the land I love the most,
When the sewers stink
I’ll always think
Of the Isolation Post.
I cursed my luck
When that place I struck,
And I cursed the Kaiser’s host
As I waded through
That bloody glue
To the Isolation Post.
I sat by the cesspool of disease
While the sun my back did roast,
With your cover the sky
And a wall three feet high,
The Isolation Post.
If ever I get the drop on Bill
I’ll make him drink a toast
From a dead man’s shoes,
Filled with slimy ooze
From the Isolation Post.
To one who’s been and smelt and seen
This will seem no idle boast.
I’ve been to hell
For a six days’ spell
At the Isolation Post.
The La Coulette brewery was the support quarters. It was a large place covered with sod reinforced by concrete. The Hun was supposed to be contemplating a big attack and orders came for us to hold ourselves in readiness for anything. Each man tensed accordingly and when there came an alarm we were outside in jig time. We lined a fire trench and waited there a long time, but nothing happened. Tempers were once more finely drawn. Then the Germans shelled the brewery and our batteries replied. The clamour throbbed and beat down to our underground retreat and quaking told of the near ones. Next day there was a shelling of the area just in our rear. We watched it for a long time. Every now and then there would come a great rushing noise followed by the roar of explosions, and from the dead, brick-strewn slopes there would shoot up a cloud of black and yellow fumes.
Instead of going back to billets we moved into the front line again, and the men groused wholeheartedly. An officer swam across the water to the German side and located one of their posts, returning unseen. The Hun shelled us spasmodically, as if he, too, had his wind up, and everyone was more or less jumpy. I was sent in daytime with a message to our support line and took a ramble around the brewery route before returning. Some impish impulse urged me to do so, and had I been questioned I would have had an awkward time, but it seemed as if it were fated that I should go as I did. A long-disused German gun pit drew my attention. An old sap had led to it and one could easily mistake his way and wander there.
As I went in to the emplacement I met an officer, and one glance told me that once more I had met with the peacock of Boulogne. He was different now, however, looked less than ever like a soldier, for fear was written large on his sallow visage. There had been a few salvos quite near where we were, but only the usual strafing. “Ah – my good fellow,” he blurted. “Just where – what part of the line is this?”
It was easy to see that he was lost, completely bewildered and craven, and something seemed to give way within me, some control snapped. I was suddenly seeing as red as I had in Boulogne. “How about some snappy saluting?” I said sharply. “Isn’t this as good a place as Boulogne?”
He stared at me, and mopped his face with a dainty handerkerchief. “Come – come, fellow,” he said, trying to bluff, though his eyes were furtive. “I’m an officer and I want you to tell me where I am.”
“You’re almost up to where the soldiers are,” I said, “and where none of your blasted monkey tricks will work. You were fine with a lovely lady hanging on your arm, how do you feel now?”
He drew back hastily and muttered that he would have me court-martialled and then snatched at his revolver. I had it from him in an instant, and I hurled it far over the trench side, then thrust him back into the emplacement. “If you were half a man I would give you what’s due you,” I raved on and then recovered myself. The head-splitting hours in that foul cellar, the tense atmosphere about the trenches, the heat, all had combined to make me forget what I was doing and I knew that I had made myself liable to serious accusation. I stopped my silly blustering, but talked very grimly and cooly for five minutes, telling him just what his kind were doing to hurt the army, and just what would happen to him at the front.
Instead of regaining his composure he seemed to get more frightened, staring at me in an odd manner, and when I showed him a trench to the rear he almost ran away. He had never asked my name or number and as I had on shorts I hoped that he had not noticed my badges. For several days I expected a summons, but none came. It was a most absurd thing for me to do, and I never saw a more spineless creature than that shaking, fear-stricken lieutenant. Tommy was the only one I told about him.
The men were savage when we did not leave the trenches when relieved, but stayed in reserve. Each night we worked, cleaning trenches and strengthening defenses, and then one morning there came sounds of a terrific bombardment on the Somme area. Rumours began to circulate and soon we forgot our grievances. The Hun was attacking, had broken through. We went about with questions on our lips, waiting orders, expecting almost any move. But nothing happened. We were told that the Canadians were to defend the Ridge at all costs, and we got to know that we were stretched across an immense frontage. Every available unit was being hurried to stem the German advance and reports came of reserve lines being constructed on Vimy and of Chinese labour battalions digging trenches farther in the rear. The air was tense with excitement and expectancy.