Raismes Forest
The Student talked about an officer. “He’s a decent chap,” he said. “He’s clean and intelligent, and probably has applied himself conscientiously to his business of killing the Hun, but I felt sorry for him when we were lined up out at billets and he was examining our iron rations and field dressings. Gregory, that tall, blonde, easy-moving fellow smiled at him when he came along. He was inches taller than the officer, so much more man beside him, and when the officer tried to make some pleasantry Gregory made such a swift rejoinder that he was nonplussed. He flushed and stammered and took refuge behind sharp orders. Every man in the platoon could see that Gregory should have been wearing the Sam Browne. I believe he could handle a company without effort.”
The Student had made correct observation. Gregory was a graduate of Edinburgh University, and of good birth, yet he stayed in the ranks, easy-going, quizzical, observing, as if he really enjoyed seeing the futility of assumed rank. He had a splendid carriage, the confidence of the men, and would have made an ideal leader, yet I never heard him speak either scathingly or pityingly of those who ordered his existence and were, usually, much his inferior.
“What does it matter anyway?” said the Student, as we huddled together. “This whole ghastly business is futile in the extreme, and that’s what makes it so illimitably cruel. It doesn’t matter who wins, the underdogs will remain in their places, the top ones will be at the top, and after a few years there’ll be more wars, just as senseless. Our leaders know it, all history is full of lessons on its futility, yet we go on.”
“… and – we – go – on.”
I remembered poor little Mickey gasping, with his last breath, his protest of such a rule. So I told the Student about him, of the white tunic that had meant purity, the red one as a token of the spilling of blood, and how Mickey cried out that he had never worn them, never wanted to, so why should he be drawn in the maw of the insatiable, monstrous machine of war.
Two figures came out of the dripping darkness and crouched beside us, Tommy, shivering, bitter-voiced, and Giger, who was again with the company.
“Not a drop of rum for us on a night like this,” said Tommy, “and yesterday a bunch of transport drivers were so drunk they couldn’t keep on the road. They have all they want all the time, and so much bread that they peddle it to the estaminets for beer.” He was in his usual mood and the Student seemed to sympathize with him. They talked of the cycles in history that seemed to chain mankind. Every period had its wars, now one nation, now another, getting its life blood drained without hope of betterment. Why did our statesmen, other statesmen, allow such things? Why was there war?
“If they’d only take them that made it, and wanted it, and give them bayonets and put them in trenches, in mud and rain, and say, ‘There you are, have your fill. Kill the other chap, and we’ll get rations to you day after to-morrow,’ how much war would there be?” rasped Tommy. “It’s not them that fight, the ones who start it, they’re always safe and have plenty, it’s the poor devils who never know what it’s all about and can’t see for flags waving or hear anything but drums and patriotic speeches. They join up, or the big boys in the safe places make laws and force them out in front of the guns and see them blown to shambles. I wish that every person responsible, on both sides, could be dragged by the heels around Passchendale and then shelled by high velocity guns till they died of sheer fright.”
Giger got so excited that he could not stay quiet. He had filled out, grown stout, and was a walking testimony to the nutritive value of bully, bacon and army biscuits. “I’d like to smash the Kaiser,” he grunted. “I’d like to stick him with my bayonet, and listen, I’m not going to take no prisoners. Every Fritz I get near is going to get his.”
No one checked him and he grew more confident. “I got back to the platoon,” he boasted. “Binks, him that went down sick, give me a charm. He took it off a Heinie, it’s a wrist ring of hair, and Binks said it was sure good luck. The Heinie was killed by a shell after Binks took it from him, but Binks put it on and went all through the scrap at Parvillers and at Jigsaw Wood and was never touched. We got the Germans runnin’ now and I got this charm, so I come back to get a crack at some of them. I ain’t never killed one yet and I’d hate to go back to Canada and have to say that.”
There was a sincerity in his speech that made me shiver. It was Tommy who stopped his tongue. “Shut up,” he ordered. “You’re no better than the Heinies yourself. Who wants to kill people?”
Then he turned to us and raved about the unfairness of the way the army was handled. “They sent two more guys to the rest camp,” he grated. “Both of them come to us last spring, after we’d been with the battalion more than a year. Yet we stayed in for everything and that pair goes to the seashore.”
“But they’re no good in the line, Tommy,” I said, “and you know it.”
“Which doesn’t alter things one iota. It’s the rotten injustice that gets me.” Tommy was wound up. “They can send a certain number of men out on rest, so they pick out chaps that need officers over them all the time, and they keep the men who’ve been two years in this mess, never mind how much they need to relax. They know that when a bunch of us old fellows are in front it doesn’t make any odds where the officers are. And look at the whole blasted game – about five men back of every one that’s up front, five men who don’t know what it is to face machine guns, getting the same pay as us and ten times the privileges, and all the glory. Hell …”
“It used to be,” said the Student, “that the fighters did the fighting and the rest stayed on the land. Now it‘s the amateurs that fight, and the professional soldiers are in the rear at headquarters or Base jobs.”
“I’d like a job tendin’ them squareheads in the cages,” said Giger. “I’d make them step. They wouldn’t go round with their heads up if I was over them.”
“Will you shut up,” snapped Tommy. “You make me sick.”
“Where’s the padre?” asked the Student. “Before I came over I fancied that they were always with the soldiers, helping the wounded ones and having little services every chance they got.”
“Don’t,” said Tommy, “start that argument. I was a member of the Methodist Church when I enlisted. Now I don’t know or care about anything connected with it. Preachers and padres are not any better than brass hats. They’re out of touch with the men, and they’ve lost their hold.”
“Don’t you believe in God?” asked the Student.
“I do” said Tommy gravely and reverently. “If I didn’t I’d quit everything. But I’m going to have my own belief in my own way. It’s all going to be between Him and me, and no preacher is going to have anything to do with it. They tell you it’s wrong to hate another man, wrong to kill a man, and that’s a commandment, and yet they get up in pulpits and out on church parades and tell you that we’re fighting for the Lord and talk as if the Germans were devils and that it’s all right to kill them. Bah – padres, I’m sick of them. They say just what the brass hats want them to say, there’s not a sincere man among them. If there was he’d be out between the lines trying to stop both sides from killing each other.”
“He’d get killed himself,” said Giger. “Them Heinies’d shoot anybody.”
We pushed Giger outside and he went, muttering to himself, to shiver elsewhere.
“I don’t believe,” said Tommy, “that God is on either side of this war, but I believe that He’s with the poor chaps like little Mickey – on both sides. If there’s a hell the big bugs will surely get there.”
I got tired of hearing his bitterness and gradually he quieted. At dawn we were stiff with cold and ate cold rations, then started down a road in the forest. It had once been a grand old Wood where French nobles had great bear hunts, but now it was a place where sudden death lurked among the bushes. We saw Germans about ten o’clock, two of them near the road. The captain had just come up to speak to us when they rose and fired down the clearing. He moved as rapidly as we did. For the next hour we tried our best stalking methods but did not glimpse our quarry.
All that day we went through the wet Wood and watched on every side. It was an experience we would not forget. Not a sound could be heard, save low voices when two men came together. We had a long extended line that kept well in advance of the main party, and we had to work forward as if every thicket held an enemy. The Germans were retreating and had plenty of time to shoot and get away, all the advantages being with them. Night found us at a wood-cutter’s cabin and there we bivouacked, a few sentries remaining on duty some distance in front so as to prevent a surprise attack.
The Student and I slept together again and I told him about the 7th Battalion man’s theory that we are greater than we realize and Spike’s belief that we take our memories and affections with us when we go on. “I don’t like to think that,” said the Student. “If that’s so we’ll always have visions with us that we abhor. Do you want to keep your memory of this war?”
His question startled me. I had not thought of it before, and I could not answer. I told him of the German wriggling, sliding, on my bayonet at Passchendale, of the sniping I had done at Vimy, the three Germans I had killed with a bomb from behind; I didn’t want to remember such things. Then I told him of the officer asking for a drink, and how I had got it for him, of Siddall wanting me to stay while he went “to sleep,” of the German I had surprised in the old sap in front of Avion, and had let go; there were so many things I wanted to remember.
“I’ll never know,” I said. “This chaos has wrecked all my senses of value. Do you?”
“No,” he said quickly, sharply. “I hate it all, it’s so utterly insane.”
He made me think of the Professor and I told him of the talks we had on our way to the Salient, and of Freddy’s premonitions.
“If I thought,” he said, “that it’s true we can’t escape a cyclometry form of existence I’d find some quiet brookside or nook among the hills and live there on berries and nuts and simply watch the clouds and sunrise and sunset. What’s the use of building or learning new things if we are carried mercilessly into another era of destruction. Far better to just sit and watch the birds and squirrels.”
The conversation was too melancholy for me, and so I switched to a lighter vein and told him there was humour even in the trenches. He looked at me despairingly, and I told him of little Joe, our Cockney runner, who had been shot through both legs at Passchendale and had lain two days beside a group of dead Germans. When we found him he pointed at the nearest corpse, a bloated figure, and whispered. “Turn ’im over, will yer mytes? ’E as an ’orrible fice.”
The Student did not relax his glumness and I told him of the new officer that came to us at Lieven. He was taking two of his draft to a post in some ruined buildings on the outskirts of Lens, and got mixed in his turnings. No one was in sight. All the wreckage looked alike, and there were no trenches, yet he knew that the post must be nearby, perhaps in one of the ruins. So he led the way around one of them and called in at openings on each side to know if there were any of “D” Company there. As he got no response his voice grew bolder. After a complete circuit of the building, a rather long one, he got more mixed and made the same circle, calling as before. His heroes plodded around him without comment, until he started the third round. Then the man in the rear complained.
“Shut up, Bill,” said his mate. “This here’s Joshua and we’re on a seven-day tramp around Jericho.”
The sun shone the next afternoon and our spirits grew lighter. I walked with Sambro in the morning, finding him always the same. In the afternoon the Student came with me again and as we prowled through the underbrush, or halted at some point to wait for the line to grow even, he told me that he had a girl in Canada whom he was going to marry as soon as he returned. “I’d never have enlisted if it wasn’t for her,” he said. “She never said anything outright but I knew she thought I ought to go – women will never understand what a futile mess this is.”
“I think they do,” I said. “Perhaps better than we.”
“Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind if I knew for sure I’d get back all right, but if this war’s going to last another winter I’ll go crazy.”
“You won’t,” I said, “You’ll just carry on like the rest of us. One never knows how much he can stand until he has to. After you’ve been here a year you’ll get so you just go on and on and on, as if you were on a great long slide and couldn’t stop if you wanted to. We all get that way.”
Ahead of us we saw a clearing and a small farm. A little cottage stood on a knoll with a shed close by. There was a fence about the place and a few apple trees near the house. We hurried toward them when I saw Steve step from the cottage door and hold up his hand. I stood, spell-bound, a moment, unable to move. It was clear and bright and I could see the very buttons on his tunic, the way his belt was loosely hooked. Never had I had such a clear picture of him and I was sure he would speak.
The Student walked by me right towards him. I watched to see if he would notice the soldier that wore trues instead of kilts, and then – too late – I realized the danger.
“Come back,” I shouted, in such a voice that the Student turned, but even as he did it seemed as if Steve had simply changed into a tall German who aimed a rifle.
Crack! A sharp report and the Student fell without speaking, crumbling in a heap. I fired from the hip without raising my rifle but the sniper had ducked back into the cottage. Jones and Mills and Tommy and I ran back into the trees and started to surround the place so that he could not escape but he got through a window at the rear and ran for cover. It was useless. The range was not sixty yards and he went down under our first fire.
I hurried back to the Student. He was plucking feebly at one of his tunic pockets and I unfastened it for him. In it, protected by his paybook, was a photo of a lovely girl. I held it so he could look at it and saw his lips move in thanks. He gazed at the picture until his eyes dimmed, then smiled as though he thought the face so near his would understand, and the smile stayed when we left him.
Tommy looked at the dead German, and at the house. “What earthly use was it for that Heinie to pull such a stunt?” he demanded. “He hadn’t any chance to get away afterwards and what good did it do him to kill poor Linder?”
“There’s one more dead on each side,” answered Jones, who was looking at the two still forms, “and that means we’re so much nearer the end of the war.”
I looked at him. Jones was a big, placid-appearing man, but there was a tinge of bitterness in his tone. “When there has been enough of us killed the folks at home will begin to protest and this whole business will collapse,” he said as we moved on. “Then each side will blame the other and them that’s left will go back and carry on.”
A short distance ahead we saw a road that curved among the trees. On the left there was a pile of short logs that had been recently cut. Seated on them was a German soldier, a rather slight man, his grotesque steel helmet looking like a shell. We were treading on moss and old leaves, and the dampness had softened everything so that we made no sound. The German never heard us. Someone pushed by me, breathing with short, eager intakes. It was Giger. He was creeping up behind the unsuspecting Hun like a great, blood-thirsty tiger.
The fellow never saw him until he was at the end of the logs, and then he surrendered at once, shooting his arms into the air and whining “Kamerad.”
Giger walked up to him softly, easily, watching, until he was around the heap, then he tensed and thrust with all his strength, driving his bayonet with all the brutal savagery of a killer. It was a ghastly, merciless thing, and I shuddered. Tommy stood, white-faced, and looked around for an officer. Giger grinned back at us. How’s that?” he called. “I …”
A second German shot up from some hiding place at the far end of the logs. He had not his bayonet but the woodman’s axe that had been left there, and before Giger could jump from danger or withdraw his bayonet he was cut down by a fearful blow on the neck and shoulder. Then the German ran like a deer – and no one fired a shot at him.
There was nothing we could do for Giger. Everything had happened so quickly, so strangely, that we had simply been inert witnesses. His eyes sought his wrist and I saw the hair ring on it, the “charm” Blinks had given him. He died with startled incredulity in his gaze.
When we reached the end of the forest it was night, just dusk, and Tommy and I were in the lead. A new officer was with us, and was another good one, a very silent man, but without frills or foolishness. I had my binoculars with me and scanned the village at the top of a slope leading from the Wood edge. Only French people were in sight. I looked along the trees to the left and saw two Germans standing beside lone trees. At first glance I had thought them labourers, as they were talking and not watching the Forest.
Barron had returned to us and he was with the officer. A few yards out in the open was a brick building that might be used as a shelter. They moved out to inspect it. I called to them and pointed out the Germans, but after a look at them they shouted that they were Frenchmen, and went on toward the building. When almost to it the Germans saw them, and at once started running up the slope toward the village. They were quite a distance away and had a chance. Barron started shooting at them and at each shot the runners increased their pace. Tommy and I had our first good laugh in several weeks.
As darkness came we filed from the Wood and into the building. We placed two groups of men in hollows at the foot of the slope, having them as posts to prevent any possible surprise. Barron was a corporal and for the first half of the night visited them each hour. Then it was my turn and I strolled out and located both parties and talked with them. I had hardly reached the building when crack-crack-crack, machine gun bullets knocked tiles down on us and pattered on the bricks. Our Lewis gun outside loosed a pan and instantly there came a crackling of rifles. It sounded as though the Hun were in force and closing in on us. Our sentries came plunging in.
They had routed their first assailants, who had come along a road towards them, but they had been almost caught by fire from a second gun, and had been forced to retire. We waited a time, and were ready with bombs in case they came close, but nothing happened. Then two of us ventured outside with the officer and found the way clear into the Wood. We stole out as silent as Indians and reached cover in time to hear our visitors shooting more tiles off the rafters. Our Lewis gun rattled its defiance from the rear of a big stump and there was silence at once. The Hun did not fire another shot, evidently thinking that reinforcements had arrived. In daylight we advanced into the village but found that, as usual, the enemy had flown.
At night it was raining again, a cold drizzle. We had not sighted Huns in the afternoon and were quite near another village. Orders came that we were to line a hedge and dig in for the night. Sambro and Tommy and Kennedy and I were disgusted. Just ahead were houses that would provide shelter and beds. Why not go to them? We waited until all was quiet and then crept away and into the murk. We went to the third house, arriving from the rear, hoping we would not alarm the folks so as to let the sentries back at the hedge know who we were. I tried the door and it opened easily. A clock was ticking in the room but no one answered my soft call. We struck a match and saw that the place was empty, vacated, and in an inner room found a big bed. We hung blankets over the windows before striking a light and in a short time had stripped our boots and kilts and were under sheets, lying crossways the mattress which we had dragged to the floor.
We slept warm and comfortably but I woke with a start. Something seemed wrong, though the others were not stirring. I rose up in my bare feet and padded to the window to take down the blanket. Something held me back, made me peep out one corner, and for a moment I held my breath.
On the street, not ten feet from me, two Germans were standing, resting from carrying a dixie of soup or tea. One had his back to me, the other’s face was towards me but he was looking up at an aeroplane otherwise he must have noticed me at the window I slipped back to the door but found that I could not lock it, tip-toed in again and wakened the boys. We dressed more quickly than we had ever dressed before and then took stock. We only had two bombs with us, we could not tell how many Germans there were, and whether or not our men had retired. For some time we stood by the door, listening. Several times we heard harsh guttural voices and heavy feet on the cobbles, and then a man came along close to the houses. He entered the next home to ours and we heard him tramping about in a way that told us the building was empty. When he came out he walked toward the very door at which we were standing. He had his hand on the latch and his foot on the step when someone called to him. I had my rifle barrel level with his head and my finger on the trigger. Had the door moved inward a few inches he would had died very suddenly, but he hesitated, then answered grumpily and went back down the street.
We all drew a long breath. I was bathed in perspiration. For long minutes we stood there, looking at each other, listening, then the suspense grew too great. “I’m going out that back door,” I said, “and make a run for it. I can’t stick here like this.”
The others agreed heartily. We opened the door and peered out, ready to shoot. Not a German was in sight. We ducked out and in between buildings, watching the next house. No one was in it. Tommy looked down the street. At the far end a squad of men in gray were hurrying away from the village. We turned and grinned at each other, then sobered. A party of our men had just come to the first house and were exploring cautiously. When they saw us they stared, open-mouthed.
“We nearly bagged a couple of Heinies,” I said carelessly, “but the beggars got away.”
The officer did not say anything. He watched us for a time and then seemed to forget the incident. Before night we heard rumours of a C.M.R. party being captured in bed as we had been, and also of a Trench Mortar limber driving into the German lines with a corporal and his gun on board.
We were in a village again at nightfall and Sambro and I were ordered to take position in a field as an outpost. It was drizzling again, and cold, and we were sure no Germans were near, so decided to take another chance – to the rear this time. We waited until nearly ten o’clock and then went back to a cottage somewhat apart from the others. A queer old crone was there. She was a shrivelled old woman with a huge blue birthmark on her left cheek that gave her a peculiarly witch-like appearance, and her half-wit son lolled on a chair in one corner.
The old woman gave us bowls of coffee that cheered us immensely and made us very sleepy. We told her we wanted to sleep there the rest of the night and she nodded assent and pointed to “beds,” rolls of straw that were against the wall. They were simply rolled out flat and used as mattresses by the poor. We rolled out one each and lay down, leaving our rifles and equipment by the door. In a few moments we were sound asleep as the room was warm.
I was wakened by an old hag clearing her throat and was very much awake as I glanced around. Other refugees had come in after we were asleep and had rolled out beds like ours. Seven old women were sleeping along the room and the eighth was on the other side of Sambro. She had scanty gray hair and the features of a vulture. A single dirty blanket constituted her bed and she was sitting up and scratching industriously, her claws making a noise similar to the use of sandpaper. Her principle garment was a soldier’s shirt.
Fortunately I had lain down at the end of the room so as to be as far as possible from the stove. I got my boots on and then lay back, after nudging Sambro. He opened his eyes – and was facing the crone. There was a long moment of heavy silence and then I received a poke in the ribs.
“Bill,” said Sambro huskily. “Let’s drag out of here.”
We did, strolling up and down a wet field path until it was light. Then we went back to the house and found our party broken up, all the old women had flown. We got more hot coffee and then the old blue-cheeked witch asked us to look in her cellar. We went down with her to humour her. It had been fitted with four good beds and furniture, but on the floor was the body of a German officer, with the head chopped from the shoulders.
It was a sickening sight and we hurried out. “I did it,” cackled the old woman, “I and my son, with a big axe. He was drunk, the foul bull.”
We passed through Valenciennes soon after it was ridded of the enemy and everywhere were hailed with joy. The new men thought they were having a wonderful time, that the war was a great adventure. On we went to Quivrechem, and there I heard a soldier tell that he had seen a German major killed in the street by infuriated women. He had been captured by the Fourth Division and was being escorted through the village where he had been a Commandant. It seemed that he had ruled harshly, being an arrogant, bull-headed type who elbowed old women from his path and kicked dogs and children. When he was seen a howl went up from the watching villagers and they closed in on him and his escort, screaming their hate. The soldiers, not knowing just what was wrong, slipped into the crowd. Instantly the German was seized. He went down in a melee of clubs, trying to strike, to fight, shouting in an agonized voice for his late enemies to rescue him, but they, understanding the situation, did not interfere, and the formless pulp that was dragged from the Square was hideous to see.
Thelien, and then we dragged wearily into Jemappes. It was Saturday night and we were footsore and very hungry. Sambro and Jones and I were together. All the afternoon we had heard shelling and it seemed as if we were nearing the fighting again. Rumours had come that an armistice would be signed, that the war was nearly over, and had caused rough comment; bitter, cynical speeches from the older men, eager speculation by the newly-joined. Jones was not impressed at all. “I’ve heard all that dope before,” he said. “It’s just another false hope. You can hear the guns, can’t you? Does that say war’s over? No, Heinie has gone back and will go further yet, to save his transport system, and then he’ll dig in, likely has trenches all ready now, and we’ll be there for the winter.”
“If we’re that near Germany,” I said, “our airmen ought to reach Berlin with their bombs.”
“They won’t do it,” said Sambro. “We never do things until we’ve lost all we can stand. We let him use gas first and never come back at him until he had his gas masks ready. Then he had to bomb women and children and get to London itself before the old brass hats would send our planes over at him. Now they’re letting him starve his prisoners to death, boot them to death, anything, while they fatten ours and tend them like babies.”
“Sure,” said Tommy from the file behind. “It’s the poor ‘other ranks’ that gets it in the neck over in Germany. The officers he takes prisoners are looked after all right, so it doesn’t matter what they do to the other poor beggars.”
Tommy was beginning to get on my nerves, or perhaps the war had tightened them and made me mind him more. And now as we went into Jemappes I hated the thought that we were going into the fighting again. If only I could go back to England and see that kind-faced old man who envied me “my day.” He could have it and welcome; I loathed “my day.” I’d have to get a change, a rest, somewhere, for I was weakening, and so was Tommy. Twice in Raismes Forest I had been close to Germans, young lads, frightened-looking fellows, and could easily have shot them, and instead just let them know I was there. And then I had caught Tommy doing the same thing, hot-headed, fire-eating old Tommy, watching a Hun waddle from sight and only firing a shot in the trees above him to give him speed. He had turned, then, and seen that I knew, and he had reddened and went on without explanation. I didn’t know what he longed for, but I wanted to be back in the dusk listening to the crooning of that little waterfall, to hear the murmur of children’s voices, with the knowledge that after a time I would go to sleep on clean linen in the clean, big-timbered bedroom in the “Black Boar.” It would all be healing, wonderful, only I wouldn’t want to see the people going into the little church to pray for “victory.” It seemed sacrilege to me.
No rations had “come up” when we fell out in the street and scattered to find places in which to rest overnight, and so Sambro and Tommy and Jones and I wandered around until we found an old couple in a kitchen who could let us have some hot coffee and fried potatoes and bread. We sat there and ate like wolves and the old Belgian kept chattering in his tongue, trying to tell us what some Hun shells had done in his town. Sambro mentioned the “war over” rumours and Jones cut him off sharply. “We’d heard all that guff when Heinie pulled back off the Somme,” he said. “The war isn’t over and I won’t believe it’s over till we’re on our way back home.” It was only then that I understood Jones. His words were only to camouflage the fierce hope that had gripped him. He had been thirty-five months in France, and half that time up at the front. “I feel sometimes,” he had told me, “as if I didn’t know anything else but war, as if I had been born here. It’s hard for me to remember anything at home.”
I thought of his words as we sat at the Belgian table. Home seemed a thing remote, something we had once known. It was to me but a hazy picture, vague, indistinct, something like childhood, passed out of our reckoning; I could not grasp the fact that it still existed. Mills came in. He had seen our lighted windows and he brought his brother with him. The brother had been in France since ’14 with a veterinary bunch, and had transferred to us. We shared our good luck with them, and they brought fresh rumours. A runner from brigade had told them that the war was almost over, that he had heard his officer say so.
Jones almost grew violent; he ordered them to stop such nonsense, and cursed all runners and their rumours. We finished our meal in an awkward silence and went outside. One of our headquarter’s corporals came along the street. “Boy,” he said, “have you heard the news?”
We looked at him sullenly. “The battalion’s going to stay here to-morrow and rest up, and on Monday morning the armistice is going to be signed – and everything’s finished.”
He spoke so enthusiastically, so sincerely, that we were forced to believe him. The Mills brothers shook hands. Tommy and Sambro did the same. I looked at Jones, but he had turned on his heels and was walking away. We followed him and found a house where we could stay. We made our beds in an empty room, and slept on the floor.
Church bells roused me in the morning and I dressed hurriedly; all the others had gone out. It was a beautiful Sabbath. The sun had flooded a yard at the rear of our billet and there I discovered Jones seated on the door step with two little girls on his knees, trying to talk Flemish to them. Tommy and Sambro were lounged comfortably against a wall, smoking. Mills and his brother were out at the front of the house. “There’s your breakfast on that window sill,” said Tommy, pointing. “You think now that the war’s over you can lie in in the mornings like a gentleman.”
He was grinning, sour Tommy was grinning again. “Boy,” he continued, “I’m thinking of buying this place and settling here. Then when the tourists come I’ll tell them that this is just where I was when it finished and I’m waiting till they start up again.” He sobered then. “I’ll bet,” he added, “that there will be another war inside of twenty years. There was the Civil War and the Spanish War, and the Japs and Russians, and the Boer War, and now this mess. There’ll always be wars just as long as the sheep are ready to jump around when the big fellows give the word. You’d better go on shares with me, Jones, and stay here. We won’t have to come overseas when she starts again. They’ll have their submarines a lot better then and there’ll be twice the chance of getting sunk.”
“I wouldn’t want to stay here,” said Jones. “I’ll go up in the Salient, in one of those wrecks up there, with sandbag walls and corrugated iron roof, rats running free, a manure heap in the front yard, a gas alarm by the door, and all I’ll read will be the speeches of the Brass Hats in the Daily Mail, telling how they won the war.”
“You darned old pessimist,” said Sambro. “You make me …”
“Bird!” It was the harsh voice of the sergeant who was temporarily in charge of our platoon, and there was something in his tone that made me get to my feet. “Get your section ready at once – battle order. Leave all your other stuff in your billets. We’ll get it after.”
Mills had come in the yard. The cigarette in his fingers dropped to the flagged walk and showered sparks. His face was set and white. “What’s up?” I heard myself ask the question, and had not known I wanted to speak.
“Mons.” The sergeant’s voice was a snarl “Get your men ready.”
“But – wait, sergeant.” Mills had thrust off his daze. “We’re not going into a scrap, are we? The war’s over to-morrow, I got it straight. There’ll be no fighting now, will there? What are we to do?”
“You’re going to do just what you’re told to do,” came the rough answer. The sergeant’s face was pale and set. The harshness in his voice was unusual. “You don’t know anything about the war being over. That’s all from the horse lines. Go on, get ready.”
Jones put the little girls off his knee, then coaxed one for a kiss, and she gave it to him shyly. “That’s my luck,” he smiled. “See you later, mademoiselle.” The little girl laughed at him.
When the platoon formed up every man was irritable. They swore over trivial matters, they hitched and changed position, they looked at their watches. One or two were cursing, with frightful emphasis, the ones responsible for the new orders.
I said nothing but looked away on the left where I could see a few long-range crumps leaving black smoke trails. The war was going on the same; we had been fools to think anything different. We fell in and marched down the road and after a distance entered a field.
The Hun began to shell with shrapnel and gas. No one was hurt as nothing came very near and we crossed a deep ditch by using a stretcher as a bridge. An hour later we were in a brewery. A shell, or the soldiers, had started one vat leaking and there were many jests as some of the lad’s sampled the beverage. But the shells that came near sounded very alarming within the building and several H.E.’s came very near the entrance. Jones filled his mess-tin with the beer and raised to his lips. “Here’s to the day when we go home,” he said as he drank.
Mills swore at him. The lad was tense and white and his brother kept close to him. We left the place and went on, the platoons separating, and finally the advance was by sections. We were near a road embankment advancing toward houses when we saw our officer and the sergeant with a few men of their section scramble over the road to the other side where more shelter could be obtained. We hurried forward to where they had crossed intending to do the same. Jones and the two Mills brothers were with me, and “Old Bill” and Johnson, who had returned to the battalion. Tommy and Sambro and Kennedy were over on our right, working in under cover of rough ground.
Just as we rose to go up the embankment a German machine gun opened fire, sweeping the road with a perfect hail of bullets making it impossible to cross, and at the same time shells began to fall in the stretch of open ground between us and the nearest houses. They were quite near and bits of earth fell about us and shrapnel whined and sang. A small outbuilding was just a few yards from us and we hurried to it but found the door fastened. A plank lay there and Jones and I picked it up and rammed the entrance. An old barrel on its side was by the door, and there was nothing else of importance in the shed. Jones sat on the barrel as I said we would wait for a lull in the firing of either machine gun or battery. The Mills brothers were at the rear of the building. Johnson was outside, just in front of me. “Old Bill” stood at my shoulder and I was framed in the doorway, looking back over the way we had come.
Wheeee-crash! A smashing explosion. A shell had dropped right in front of the shed and exploded in the air. Johnson was knocked over by the concussion. I was driven back against “Old Bill” so that we both fell. We scrambled up. The smoke and fumes were stifling. I looked at Jones. “That was too close,” I said.
He never answered. He was still seated as he had had been, his chin in his hands, but blood was pouring from a hole in his temple; he had been instantly killed. There was a cry just behind me. I turned in time to see Mills tumbling into the arms of his brother. He was ghastly white. “I’m hit,” he said and tried to hold out his arm. His wrist was almost severed and I also saw that he had a dreadful wound in his stomach. His brother, who had been transferred to be with him, lowered him to the floor but the boy was dead before we could do a thing.
The brother would not believe it. He sobbed and fumbled with field dressings and begged us to get a stretcher bearer. I was sure that Mills was dead but I could not stand the pleading, and I ran across the field to a stretcher bearer of another platoon. I told him what had happened and he refused to go back with me. “You’ll get hit by some of them shells,” he said, “and you can’t do anything for a dead man.”
I ran back again. When I started out from Jemappes I had had for the first time a sickening sense of fear. All the long endless months of fighting I had been spared the feeling, so clinging to my thoughts of Steve and depending on his touch that I was never greatly worried. Now it was different. I felt that I had glimpsed safety and had been snatched back again; and I was now more determined than ever to carry on.
The brother was still trying to get the others to help him when I reached the shed. “Old Bill” had tried in vain to soothe him. I told him that the stretcher bearer could not come and that we would have to get on with the fighting as machine guns were firing fiercely. Then I thought of a test I had seen applied and took my steel mirror from my pocket. “If there’s a breath on this he’s still alive,” I said. “If there isn’t, he’s dead. Watch.”
I held it over Mill’s nostrils and there was not a trace of breath. The brother got up, sobbed again, and followed us out and over the field. We had narrow escapes as the shells were falling fast and then we had reached the first houses. We entered the cellar of the nearest and found it filled with frightened Belgians. Men and women and children were crowded in the narrow space and near the door a young fellow sat with a girl on his knee. An old man caught my arm and pointed at them. “They’re just married,” he said. “Just married.”
I tore away from him. Just married! I hated them. Jones, seated on that barrel, stiff in death, almost within sight of home, was all I could think of. We made a wild dash across the road. Snipers and machine guns shot too late. On the other side we found that we could work through gardens. Sambro and Kennedy were there and told me that the officer had been caught by the machine gun and had gone back wounded. A sergeant called us to keep low, that the Germans were hiding in the houses and that there was to be no further advance until dark.
For a time we stayed in a cellar and then I saw a man from thirteen platoon with rifle grenades in his belt. I waved to him to come and gave him my rifle in exchange for his. Then I went into the gardens and worked forward. A Belgian beckoned to me from a cellar door and whispered in his fright, saying that one of the machine gun posts that had been holding us up was just ahead and near a house, but he begged me not to peer from his doors or windows as the Germans would kill him afterwards.
I went on, and saw the bomber following at a distance. Sambro was out in the garden to the left as a sort of outpost, and Kennedy was with him. I squirmed under a gate and got to a corner of wall that protected me. Rising, bareheaded, I got a glimpse of two Germans in a yard near the street. They had their machine gun there. I set the rifle as carefully as I had in the old crater line at Vimy, and fired. It was a perfect aim and I saw the boots of one German, as his legs were on the cobble, beating, drumming on the stones; then he quieted. I sent another grenade in the same direction, at an angle that allowed a higher burst, and then ran along the wall, keeping stooped, until I was near an open space. I hoped to be able to get a look into the street from there and see if I had cleared the way. Instead, I almost bumped into a German who had evidently been reconnoitering the gardens. He was watching the other way as he hurried and never saw me.
I stared at the windows and brick walls of the house beside me but saw no faces and worked forward on the path the German had used. Just ahead, by a post and tree, a machine gun was mounted, and the Hun who passed me was standing there with his back to me, talking to two gunners. In a moment I had my rifle adjusted and for the second time that afternoon made a beautiful aim. The grenade exploded just at the height of their heads and two of the Germans were killed. The third man staggered and then dodged from view; the machine gun was knocked to the road stones.
I had no more grenades and did not know how far I had come. Going back to a cellar I found it full of Belgians, all talking together and preparing for the night. It was getting dusk. The sergeant in charge of our platoon came and told me that we would have to get out and get moving. I simply looked at him, never telling him of what had happened or where I had been. When he had gone I went out and found Sambro and Kennedy, and the three of us located an officer in a bigger house that was nicely furnished. He made a slight flurry and pretense of getting ready for action, but was alone and too drunk to talk straight, so we slipped away and went on. Suddenly, as we were near a bridge, we saw a dark group of figures in kilts. Hurrying over we found the captain leading a party he had gathered; we were glad to join it.
We reached the big station of Mons and were greeted by a spray of bullets that hummed and sang down the wide way, the last salute of fleeing gunners, then shortly we were on our own, in sections, scouting up the streets and lanes. We were in Mons.