Chapter 2

Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. ---- Wiltshires.

I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply upwards on the chart.

"So you're a Wiltshireman?" I said. "So am I." And I held out my hand. He drew his own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in an iron grip.

"What might be your parts, sir?"

"W---- B----."

His eyes lighted up with pleasure. "Why, zur, it be nex' parish; I come from B----. I be main pleased to zee ye, zur."

"The pleasure is mine," I said. "When did you join?"

"I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist."

"You have been out a long time, then?"

"Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I han't seen B---- since. I mind how parson, 'e came to me and axed, 'What! bist gwine to fight for King and Country, Jarge?' And I zed, 'Yes, sur, that I be--for King and Country and ould Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two Gloster men any day though they do call us 'Moon-rakers.' Not but what the Glosters ain't very good fellers," he added indulgently. "Parson, he be mortal good to I; 'e gied I his blessing and 'e write and give I all the news of the parish. He warnt much of a preacher though a did say 'Dearly beloved' in church in a very taking way as though he were a-courting."

"What was I a-doin', zur? Oh, I wur with Varmer Twine, head labr'er I was. Strong? Oh yes, zur, pretty fair. I mind I could throw a zack o' vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy o' vourteen. Why! I wur stronger then than I be now. 'Twas India that done me."

"Is it a large farm?" I asked, seeking to beguile him with homely thoughts.

"Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to do, and I could turn me hands to most things, though I do say it. There weren't a man in the parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a hackle on a rick, though I do say it. And I could drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were. The soil be stiff clay, as ye knows, zur. This Vlemish clay be very loike it. Lord, what a mint o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to be sure. And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes."

"Are your parents alive?" I asked.

"No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom come. Poor old feyther," he said after a pause. "I mind 'un now in his white smock all plaited in vront and mother in her cotton bonnet--you never zee 'em in Wiltshire now. They brought us all up on nine shillin' a week--ten on us we was."

"I suppose you sometimes wish you were back in Wiltshire now?" I said.

"Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. "It'll be about over with lambing season, now," he added reflectively. "Many's the tiddling lamb I've a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the may'll soon be out in blossom. And the childern makin' daisy-chains."

"Yes," I said. "And think of the woods--the bluebells and anemones! You remember Folly Wood?"

He smiled. "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there, when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many a toime we childern went moochin' in thuck wood--nutting and bird-nesting. Though I never did hold wi' taking more'n one egg out of a nest, and I allus did wet my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's nest. They do say as the little bird 'ull never go back if ye doant."

His mind went roaming among childhood's memories and his eyes took on a dreaming look.

"Mother, she were a good woman--no better woman in the parish, parson did say. She taught us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in heaven'--I often used to think on it at night in the trenches. Them nights--they do make you think a lot. It be mortal queer up there--you veels as if you were on the edge of the world. I used to look up at the sky and mind me o' them words in the Bible, 'When I conzider the heavens, the work o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast made, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' One do feel oncommon small in them trenches at night."

"I suppose you've had a hot time up there?"

"Ah that I have. And I zeed some bad things."

"Bad?"

"Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur dree weeks come Monday.[6] We wur in an advance near Wypers--'bout as far as 'tis from our village to Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a house. We knowed 'twould be hot work, and Jacob Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e zed, 'if I be took write to my wife and tell 'er it be the Lard's will and she be not to grieve.' And I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the same for I.' Our Officer, Capt'n S---- T----, d'you know 'en, sir? No? 'E com from Devizes way, he wur a grand man, never thinking of hisself but only of us humble chaps--he said, 'Now for it, lads,' and we advances in 'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there house--you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a good man, wur Scaplehorn"--he added musingly--"and 'e did good things. And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs as if they did'n b'long to 'em. I sort o' saw all that wi'out seeing it, in a manner o' spaking; 'twere only arterwards it did come back to me. There warn't no time to think. And by the toime we got to thic house there were only 'bout vifteen on us left. We had to scrouge our way in through the buttry winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside, sort o' scuffling; 'twere the Germans makin' for the cellar. And our Capt'n posted some on us at top of cellar steps and led the rest on us up the stairs to a kind o' tallet where thuck machine-gun was. And what d'ye think we found, sir?" he said, raising himself on his elbow.

"What?"

"There was a poor girl there--half daft she wur--wi' nothing on but a man's overcoat. And she rushed out avore us on the landing and began hammering with her hands against a bedroom door and it wur locked. We smashed 'en in wi' our rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we found a poor woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast all bloody an' her clothes torn. I could'n mak' out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told us as the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used our field-dressings and tried to make the poor soul comfortable and Capt'n 'e sent a volunteer back for stretcher-bearers."

"And what about the Germans?" I asked.

"Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to reckon with those devils down below.' And we went downstairs and he stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up out o' that there.' And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear 'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar steps were main narrow, as narrow as th' opening in that tent over there. So Capt'n 'e says, 'Fetch me some straw, Hunt.' 'Twere a kind o' farmhouse and I went out into the backside and vetched some. And Capt'n and us put a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more vurther down, using our rifles like pitchforks and then 'e blew on his tinder and set it alight. 'Stand back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'em with the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no manner o' use shooting; 'twere too close in there and our bullets might ha' ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'em a-coughing. There wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there wur we a-waiting at top of them stairs for 'em to come up like rats out of a hole. And two on 'em made a rush for it and we caught 'em just like's we was terriers by an oat-rick; we had to be main quick. 'Twere like pitching hay. And then three more, and then more. And none on us uttered a word.

"An' when it wur done and we had claned our bay'nets in the straw, Capt'n 'e said, 'Men, you ha' done your work as you ought to ha' done.'"

He paused for a moment. "They be bad fellows," he mused. "O Christ! they be rotten bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good 'ull come to men what abuses wimmen and childern. But I'm afeard they be nation strong--there be so many on 'em."

His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the telling of it had been too much for him. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it was time for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind away from the contemplation of these tragic things.

"Are you married?" I asked. The eyes brightened in the flushed face. "Yes, that I be, and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap."

"And what are you going to make of him?"

"I'm gwine to bring un up to be a soldjer," he said solemnly. "To fight them Germans," he added. He saw the great War in an endless perspective of time; for him it had no end. "You will soon be home in Wiltshire again," I said encouragingly. He mused. "Reckon the Sweet Williams 'ull be out in the garden now; they do smell oncommon sweet. And mother-o'-thousands on the wall. Oh-h-h." A spasm of pain contracted his face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw my time was up. "My dear fellow," I said lamely, "I fear you are in great pain."

"Ah!" he said, "but it wur worth it."

* * * * *

The next day I called to have news of him. The bed was empty. He was dead.

FOOTNOTE:

[6] This story is here given as nearly as possible in the exact words of the narrator.--J.H.M.

IV

THE BASE

If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart. For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses, supplies, and ordnance.

The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage. If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the _patois_ of the littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the Military Police are on point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two amphibious petty officers darning their socks.

In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables, and indents, what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is _litera scripta manet_--which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant, instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one." For an A.S.C. court of inquiry has as impassioned a preference for written over oral evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that if your way-bill testifies:

Truck No. Contents 19414 Jam 36 x 50

and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot of jam is missing on arrival at rail-head, then, though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your labels undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Officer unless you can produce that pot.

For the feeding of the Army is a delicate business and complicated. It is not enough to secure that there be sufficient "caloric units" in the men's rations; there are questions of taste. The Brahmin will not touch beef; the Mahomedan turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vegetarian; the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the goat. And every Indian must have his ginger, garlic, red chilli, and turmeric, and his chupattis of unleavened bread. One such warehouse we entered and beheld with stupefaction mountainous boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, rice, dried apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. Storekeepers in turbans stood round us, who, being asked whether it was well with the Indian and his food, answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians, "Yea, the exalted Government hath done great things and praised be its name." To which we replied "Victory to the Holy Ganges water." Their lustrous eyes beamed at the salutation.

Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies manna in the wilderness, and like the manna of the Israelites it has never been known to fail. It is of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in the words of the prophet, "He hath filled my belly with his delicates." And his caravans cover the face of the earth. You meet them everywhere, each Supply Column a self-contained unit like a fleet. It has its O.C., its cooks, its seventy-two motor lorries, with three men to each, and its "mobiles" or travelling workshops with dynamo, lathe, drilling machine, and a crew of skilled artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is put out of action. I take off my hat to those handy-men; many times have they helped me out of a tight place and performed delicate operations on the internal organs of my military car in the inhospitable night. It is a brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out between the poplars on the perilously arched _pavé_ of the long sinuous roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it. It is his caravan. Many a time, on long and lonely journeys from the Base to the Front, have I been cheered to find a Supply Column drawn up on the roadside in a wooded valley, on a bare undulating down, or in a chalk quarry, while the men were making tea over a blue wood fire. If you love a gipsy life join the A.S.C.

Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. headquarters at the Base are some twenty military hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses, and railway waiting-rooms. For the Base is the great Clearing House for the sick and wounded, and its register of patients is a kind of barometer of the state of affairs at the Front. When that register sinks very low, it means that the atmospheric conditions at the Front are getting stormy, and that an order has come down to evacuate and prepare four thousand beds. Then you watch the newspapers, for you know something is going to happen up there. And in those same hospitals men are working night and day; the bacteriologists studying "smears" under microscopes, while the surgeons are classifying, operating, "dressing," marking temperature-charts, and annotating case-sheets. And in every hospital there is a faint mysterious incense, compounded not disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised catgut, which intensifies the dim religious atmosphere of the shaded wards. If G.H.Q. is the greatest of military academies, the Base hospitals are indubitably the wisest of medical schools. Never have the sciences of bacteriology and surgery been studied with such devotion as under these urgent clinical impulses. Here are men of European reputation who have left their laboratories and consulting-rooms at home to wage a never-ending scientific contest with death and corruption. They have slain "frostbite" with lanoline, turpentine, and a change of socks; they have fought septic wounds with chloride of sodium and the ministries of unlimited oxygen; they have defied "shock" after amputation by "blocking" the nerves of the limb by spinal injection, as a signalman blocks traffic. They have called in Nature to the aid of science and have summoned the oxygen of the air and the lymph of the body to the self-help of wounds.

High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp. Here the O.C. has turned what was a swamp last December into a Garden City, draining, planting, building, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, disinfectors, laundries, and shower-baths, constructing turf incinerators and laying down pavements of brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass sown, and shrubs and trees put up--all this with the labour of the convalescents. There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose, for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache and temperature he is segregated there, preparatory to being sent down to No. 14 Stationary to have his spinal fluid examined by the bacteriologists. Here, in fact, the man and his kit, instead of being thrown on the scrap-heap, are renewed and made whole, restored in mind, body, and estate, his clothes disinfected and mended, the "snipers" treated to a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced.

For true it is that at the Base they study loving-kindness, and chaplains and doctors and nurses are busy with delicate ministries seeking to cure, to assuage, and to console. Alas! on what tragic errands do so many come and go; parents like Joseph and Mary seeking their child, and wives their husbands, in hope, in fear, in joy, in anguish, too often finding that the bright spirit has returned to God Who gave it, and that nothing is left but to follow him behind the bier draped with the Union Jack to the little cemetery on the hill.... But for one that is buried here a thousand lie where they fell. Those stricken fields of Flanders! nevermore will they be for us the scene of an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of prayer. I well remember--I can never forget--a journey I made in the company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden cross. By each cross was a soldier's képi, and sometimes a coat, bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind us muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by share or sickle. They are holy ground.

So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram, they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price--youth, health, life--too high to pay for the country of their birth and their devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away.

* * * * *

The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping cinque-foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south, their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and diastole of the Base.

V

A COUNCIL OF INDIA

"And I said, 'Nay, I who have eaten the King's salt cannot do this thing.' And the _German-log_ said to me, 'But we will give you both money and land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this thing, and bring sorrow and shame upon my people?'"

It was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his words were exceeding clear as Holy Writ.

"And what did they do then?"

"They took my _chupattis_, sahib, and offered me of their bread in return. But I said, 'Nay, I am a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they said thrice unto me, 'We will give you money and land.' And I thrice said, 'Nay.' Then said they, 'Thou art a fool. Go to, but if thou comest against us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my comrades."

"Yea, to me also they said these things." It was a jemindar of the 129th who spoke. "Yes, a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, '_Ham dost hein_--_Hamari pas ao_--_Ham tum Ko Nahn Marenge_.'" Which being translated is, "We are friends, come to us, we won't kill you."

"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?"

The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war, since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought Pandu."

Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of the Sikh freemasonry--nay, he had taken the _kangha_ out of his hair and shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were friends. "All wars are but _shikkar_ to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?" "Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war."