Chapter 5

Somewhere in England, they tell me, is a little old lady who was once a great figure in Brussels society. She is nearly eighty now, and alone, but she clings on tenaciously to life till the day shall come when she can go back to her Château at Ypres, where she has lived for forty years. One can picture her--feeble, wizened, and small, her eyes bright with the determination to live until she has seen her home again.

I, who have seen her Château, pray that death may come to close those bright eyes, so that they may never look upon the destruction of her home, for it is a desolate sight, even though the sky was blue and the leaves glistened in the sun on the morning when, two years ago, I tramped up the winding drive.

The lodge was nothing more than a tumbled pile of broken bricks, but, by some odd chance, the Château itself had never suffered a direct hit. In front of the big white house there had once been an asphalt tennis court--there was now a plain pitted at every few yards by huge shell holes. The summer-house at the edge of the wood--once the scene of delightful little flirtations in between the games of tennis--was now a weird wreck, consisting of three tottering walls and a broken seat. Oddest of all, there lay near the white marble steps an old, tyreless De Dion motor-car.

I have often wondered what the history of that battered thing could be. One can almost see the owner packing herself in it with her most precious belongings, to flee from the oncoming Germans. The engine refuses to start, there is no time for repairs, there is the hurried flight on foot, and the car is left to the mercy of the invading troops. Perhaps, again, it belonged to the staff of some army, and was left at the Château when it had run its last possible mile. At all events, there it stood, half-way between Ypres and the Germans, with everything of any possible value stripped off it as thoroughly as though it had been left to the white ants.

By the side of the tennis court, where had once been flower beds, there was now a row of little, rough wooden crosses, and here and there the narcissi and daffodils had sprung up. What a strange little cemetery! Here a khaki cap and a bunch of dead flowers, there a cross erected to "An unknown British hero, found near Verbrandenmolen and buried here on March 3rd, 1915," there an empty shell case balanced at a comical angle on a grave, and everywhere between the mounds waved the flowers in the fresh breeze of the morning, while away in the distance loomed the tower of the Cloth Hall of Ypres, like a gigantic arm pointing one finger up to heaven.

The Château itself, I have said, had never had a direct hit; but do you think the hand of war had passed it by, and that the little old lady would find in it something of home?

Every window on the ground floor had been choked by sandbags, and no glass remained in those upstairs. In a room that had once been a kitchen and was now labelled in chalk "Officers' Mess" were an old bedstead, two mattresses, a wooden table, and three rickety chairs; but for these, and a piano in the dining-room upstairs, the house was absolutely devoid of furniture. Even the piano, which must have twanged out the tunes of at least three nations since the war began, had sacrificed its cover for firewood.

Rooms where once ladies had powdered and perfumed themselves to attract the fickle male were now bare and empty, and pungent with the smell of chloride of lime. In the dining-hall, where fine old wines had circulated, were a hundred weary, dirty men. In the kitchen, where the fat _cuisinière_ had prepared her dinners, were now a dozen officers, some sprawling asleep on the floor, some squatting round the table playing "vingt-et-un."

For this is war.

* * * * *

There is one more memory of Ypres--a very different one--that comes back to me. It is the recollection of our regimental dinner.

The first thing that I heard of it came from Lytton's servant.

"Please, sir," he said one morning, "Mr. Lytton sends his compliments, and can you tell 'im where the Hôtel Delepiroyle is?"

"The Hôtel de what?"

"The Hôtel Delepiroyle, sir. That's what 'e said."

"Ask Mr. Lytton to write it down--no, wait a minute. Tell him I'm coming over to see him about it." So I strolled across to the other side of the infantry barracks to find him.

"What, haven't you heard about it?" asked Lytton. "The new C.O., Major Eadie, is giving a dinner to-night to all the officers of the regiment as a farewell to Major Barton before he goes off to take command of his new crowd. It's at the Hôtel de l'Epée Royale, wherever that may be. Let's go and track it down."

So we wandered down the Rue de Lille, as yet relatively free from the ravages of war, for the shops were open and the inhabitants stood talking and gossiping at the doors of their houses. Here and there rubble lay across the pavement, and what had once been a home was now an amorphous pile of bricks and beams. Just by the church was a ruined restaurant, and a host of little children played hide and seek behind the remnants of its walls.

On our way down the street we came across Reynolds, who had only joined the regiment the night before, while we, who had been nearly three weeks at the front, felt ourselves war-beaten veterans compared to him. He was standing on the pavement, gazing excitedly up at an aeroplane, around which were bursting little white puffs of smoke.

"Come along with us," said Lytton. "You'll get sick to death of seeing aeroplanes shelled when you've been out here as long as we have. Come and discover the scene of to-night's orgy."

In the Grande Place, at the side of the Cloth Hall, we discovered the Hôtel de l'Epée Royale. A "Jack Johnson" had made an enormous hole in the pavement just in front of it, and a large corner of the building had gone.

"By Jove," said Reynolds in an awed voice. "What a hole! It must have taken some shell to do that."

Lytton smiled patronisingly. "My dear fellow," he said, "that's nothing at all. It's hardly any bigger than the hole that a spent bullet makes. Let's go inside and get some lunch to see what sort of a place it is."

But Reynolds and I were firm. "Rot!" we said. "Let's go home and fast. Otherwise we shall be no good for this evening; we've got our duty to do to the dinner."

So we went back to the Company Mess in the infantry barracks, past a house that had been destroyed that morning. Hunting in and out of the ruins were a man and a woman, and another woman, very old, with eyes swollen by weeping, sat on what was left of the wall of her house, a broken photograph frame in her hands.

There are many fellows who have laid down their lives since that little dinner in the Hôtel de l'Epée Royale; he who gave it died of wounds six weeks later, as gallant a commanding officer as one could wish to have. If the dinner were to take place again, there would be many gaps round the table, and even the building must long since have been pounded to dust.

If this should meet the eyes of any of you that were there, let your minds run back for a moment, and smile at your recollections. Do you remember how we dosed Wilson's glass so that he left us before the sweets were on the table? Do you remember how we found him later sitting on the stairs, poor fellow, clasping his head in a vain effort to stop the world from whirling round? Do you remember the toasts that we drank, and the plans we made for that dim period, "after the war"? I confess that I have completely forgotten everything that we ate--beyond the whisky, I forget even what we drank; but I know that the daintiest little dinner in London could not have pleased us nearly so much. And then, when it was all over and we broke up to go home to bed, do you remember how young Carter stood in the middle of the Grande Place and made rhapsodies to the moon--though, to the rest of us, it seemed much like any other moon--until we took him up and carried him home by force?

It does you good to look back sometimes. You may find it sad because so many are gone that were our companions then. But this is the way of war; they must die sooner or later, and they could not have chosen better graves. If one must die, why not die fighting for England and Ypres?

* * * * *

There is one street in Ypres that I knew in peace time. It wound in and out between the stiff, white houses, and the little Flemish children would make it echo to their shouts and laughter, until you could scarcely hear the rumble and the rattle of the carts on the cobbles of the main street, near by. And I passed along the same winding way during the second battle of Ypres. The shattered houses stretched jagged edges of brickwork towards the sky, the road was torn up, and the paving stones were piled up grotesquely against each other. Outside the convent, where I seemed to catch the dim echo of children's laughter, lay a smashed limber--the horse was on its back, with its legs stuck up stiffly; and, just touching the broken stone cross that had fallen from above the convent door, lay the figure of the dead driver.

And, of all that I remember of Ypres, it is of this that I think most often, for it is a symbol of the place itself--the dead man lying by the cross, sign of suffering that leads to another life. The agony of Ypres will render it immortal; for if ever a town deserved immortality, it is surely this old, ruined city on the plains of Flanders.

XII

"PONGO" SIMPSON ON GRUMBLERS

I was in my dug-out, trying to write a letter by the intermittent light of a candle which was extinguished from time to time by the rain drops that came through the roof, when I suddenly heard the squelching of mud, the sound of slipping, and an appalling splash. Someone had fallen into the shell hole just outside.

I waited a moment, and I heard the well-known voice of "Pongo" Simpson. "Strike me pink!" he spluttered, as he scrambled up the steep bank out of the water. "An' I gone an' forgot me soap. The first bath as I've 'ad for six weeks, too." And he blundered into my dug-out, a terrible object covered in slimy mud from head to foot, and when he breathed little showers of mud flew off his moustache.

"Hullo," I said, "you seem to be wet."

"Sorry, sir," said "Pongo," "I thought as 'ow this was my dug-out. Wet, sir? Gawd! Yes, I should think I was wet," and he doubled up to show me, while a thin stream of muddy water trickled from his hair on to my letter. "'Owever, it ain't no good to grumble, an' it's better to fall in a shell hole than to 'ave a shell fall on me. I've got some 'ot tea in me own dug-out, too."

When he had gone, I crumpled up my muddy letter, and I confess that I purposely listened to his conversation, for his dug-out was only separated from mine by a few horizontal logs piled up on each other.

"Well, you see, it ain't no good to grouse," he was saying to someone. "I've got mud up me nose an' in me eyes, and all down me neck, but it won't go away 'owever much I grumbles. Now, there's some blokes as grouses all the time--'ere, Bert, you might 'and over your knife a moment to scrape the mud off me face, it all cracks, like, when I talk--if they've got a Maconochie ration they wants bully beef, an' if they've got bully beef they carn't abear nothink but Maconochie. If you told 'em as 'ow the war was goin' to end to-morrow they'd either call you a bloomin' liar, or grouse like 'ell becos they 'adn't 'ad the time to win the V.C.

"There was young Alf Cobb. 'E wasn't arf a grouser, an' 'e 'ad good luck all the bloomin' time. When 'e came to the front they put 'im along o' the transport becos 'e'd been a jockey before the war, an' 'e groused all the time that 'e didn't 'ave none of the fun of the fightin'. Fun of the fightin', indeed, when 'e'd got that little gal what we used to call Gertie less than ten minutes from the stables! She was a nice little bit of stuff, was Gertie, an', if only she'd spoke English instead of this bloomin' lingo what sounds like swearin' ..." and here "Pongo" wandered off into a series of reminiscences of Gertie that have little to do with war and nothing to do with grumbling.

"'Owever, as I was sayin'," he continued at last, "that there Alf Cobb used to fair aggryvate me with 'is grousin'. When 'e got sent up for a spell in the trenches, and 'ad all 'the fun of the fightin',' 'e groused because 'e couldn't go off to some ole estaminet an' order 'is glass o' bitters like a dook. 'E groused becos 'e 'adn't got a feather bed, 'e groused becos 'e 'ad to cook 'is own food, an' 'e groused becos 'e didn't like the 'Uns. An' then when a whizz-bang landed on the parapet an' gave 'im a nice Blighty one in the arm, 'e groused becos 'e was afraid the sea'd be rough when 'e crossed over, an' 'e groused becos 'e couldn't light 'is own pipe. 'E's the sort of bloke what I don't like.

"What I like is a bloke like ole Lewis, who was always chirpy. 'E 'ad the rheumatics something fearful, but 'e never grumbled. Then 'e'd jest gone an' got spliced afore the war, an' 'is missis got 'im into debt an' then ran off with a fellow what works in the munitions. 'No good grousin',' says ole Joe Lewis, an' 'e still stayed cheerful, an' the night 'e 'eard as 'ow 'is young woman 'ad gone off 'e played away on 'is ole mouth-organ as 'appily as a fellow what's on 'is way to the Green Dragon with five bob in 'is pocket. The other blokes what knew about it thought as 'ow Joe didn't care at all, but I was 'is mate an' I knew as 'ow it 'urt a lot. When 'e got knocked over in that attack down Lee Bassey way, I jest stopped by 'im for a minute. 'Don't you worry about me, Pongo,' says 'e, 'I couldn't stand 'ome without 'er'--meanin' 'is missis, you see--'an' I'd rather 'op it like this. If I 'ad me ole mouth-organ 'ere, I'd give you chaps a tune to 'elp you on like.' That's the sort of bloke 'e was, chirpy up to the end. I 'ad to go on to the 'Un trenches, an' I never saw 'im again, for a big shell came along an' buried 'im.

"After all," continued "Pongo" after a pause, "it's a life what 'as its advantages. I ain't got to put on a 'ard collar o' Sundays out 'ere like me ole woman makes me do at 'ome. Then, I might 'ave stuck in that shell 'ole and 'ave been drowned; I might not 'ave 'ad a clean shirt to dry meself with; I might 'ave been 'it by a 'crump' yesterday. Yes, it might be worse, an' I ain't never a one to grouse."

Then someone who knew "Pongo" well made an apparently irrelevant remark. "There's plum and apple jam for rations again," he said.

"Pongo" rose to the fly at once. "Gawd!" he said, "if that ain't the bloomin' limit. I'd like to get me 'and round the neck of the bloke what gets all the raspberry an' apricot an' marmalade. 'Ere 'ave I been two years in the trenches, an' what 'ave I seen but plum an' apple? If it ain't plum an' apple, it's damson an' apple, which is jest the same only there's more stones in it. It do make me fair wild...."

"Pongo," insinuated someone at this moment, "I thought as 'ow you never grumbled."

"Pongo's" voice sank to its ordinary level. "That ain't grumblin'," he said. "I ain't a one to grumble."

But for the better part of an hour I heard him growling away to himself, and "plum and apple" was the burden of his growl. For even "Pongo" Simpson cannot always practise what he preaches.

XIII

THE CONVERT

John North, of the Non-Combatant Corps, leaned over the counter and smiled lovingly up into the shop girl's face. By an apparent accident, his hand slid across between the apple basket and the tins of biscuits, and came into gentle contact with hers. Knowing no French, his conversation was strictly limited, and he had to make amends for this by talking with his hand--by gently stroking her palm with his earth-stained thumb.

Mademoiselle Thérèse smiled shyly at him and her hand remained on the counter.

Private John North, thus encouraged, grew still bolder. He clasped her fingers in his fist, and was just wondering if he dared kiss them, when a gruff voice behind him caused him to stiffen, and to pretend he wanted nothing but a penny bar of chocolate.

"Now then, come orf it," said the newcomer, a private with the trench mud still caked on his clothes. "She's my young laidy, ain't yer, Thérèse?"

Thérèse smiled rather vaguely, for she knew no more Cockney than John North knew French.

"You clear out of 'ere," continued the linesman. "I don't want none o' you objector blokes 'anging around this shop, and if you come 'ere again I won't arf biff you one."

Unfortunately, it is the nature of woman to enjoy the sight of two men quarrelling for her favours, and Thérèse, guessing what was happening, was so unwise as to smile sweet encouragement at John North.

Even a Conscientious Objector loses his conscience when there is a woman in the case. John North turned up his sleeves as though he had been a boxer all his life, and proceeded to trounce his opponent with such vigour that the biscuit tins were hurled to the ground and the contents of a box of chocolates were scattered all over the floor.

As far as we are concerned, Mademoiselle Thérèse passes out of existence from this moment, but the little incident in her shop was not without consequences. In the first place, the Military Police cast the two miscreants into the same guard room, where, from bitter rivals, they became the best of friends. In the second place, John North, having once drawn blood, was no longer content with his former life, and wanted to draw more.

In the end he joined the Westfords, and fired his first shot over the parapet under direct tuition from his new friend. It matters little that his first shot flew several yards above the German parapet; the intention was good, and it is always possible that the bullet may have stung into activity some corpulent Hun whose duty called on him to lead pack horses about behind the firing line.

* * * * *

For weeks Holy John, as his company called him, passed out of my life. There were many other things to think of--bombs and grenades, attacks and counter-attacks, "barrages" and trench mortars, and all the other things about which we love to discourse learnedly when we come home on leave. John North was, for the time, completely forgotten.

But one day when the Great Push was in full swing, I met him again. From his former point of view he had sadly degenerated; from ours he had become a useful fellow with a useful conscience that told him England wanted him to "do in" as many Huns as he could.

I was supervising some work on a trench that had been German, but was now ours--the red stains on the white chalk told of the fight for it--when a voice I knew sounded from farther up the trench.

"If you don't bloomin' well march better, I won't arf biff you one, I won't," I heard, as the head of a strange little procession came round the traverse. At the rear of six burly but downcast Germans, came Private John North, late Conscientious Objector, driving his prisoners along with resounding oaths and the blood-chilling manoeuvres of a bayonet that he brandished in his left hand.

"They'll all mine, sir, the beauties," he said as he passed me. "Got 'em all meself, and paid me little finger for 'em, too," and he held up a bandaged right arm for my inspection.

And, far down the trench, I heard him encouraging his prisoners with threats that would delight a pirate or a Chinaman.

How he, single-handed, captured six of the enemy I do not know, but he was the first man to reach the German wire, they tell me, and he brought in two wounded men from No Man's Land.

Personally, then, it hardly seems to me that six Germans are enough to pay for the little finger of Holy John, erstwhile Conscientious Objector.

XIV

DAVID AND JONATHAN

I

Strangely different though they were, they had been friends ever since they first met at school, eleven years before. Jonathan--for what other names are necessary than the obvious David and Jonathan?--was then a fat, sandy-haired boy, with a deep love of the country, and hands that, however often he washed them, always seemed to be stained with ink. He had a deep admiration, an adoration almost, for his dark-haired, dark-eyed David, wild and musical.

The love of the country it was that first made them friends, and David became, so to speak, Jonathan's means of expression, for David could put into words, and, later on, into music, what Jonathan could only feel dimly and vaguely. Jonathan was the typical British public-schoolboy with a twist of artistic sense hidden away in him, while David was possessed of a soul, and knew it. A soul is an awkward thing to possess at school in England, for it brings much "ragging" and no little contempt on its owner, and Jonathan fought many battles in defence of his less-understood friend.

Eleven years had wrought but little material change in them. Jonathan, after a few minor rebellions, had settled down in his father's office and was learning to forget the call of the open road and the half-formed dreams of his youth. David, on the other hand, was wandering over the Continent nominally studying languages for the Consular Service, really picking up a smattering of poetry, a number of friends, and a deep knowledge of music. From Jonathan, he had learned to hide his sentiments in the presence of those who would not understand, and to make his reason conquer the wilder of the whims that ran through his brain. Jonathan, in turn, had gained a power, which he scarcely realised, of appreciating music and scenery, and which no amount of office life would ever diminish.

Then the war broke out, and brought them together again.

At the beginning of it, David, who had been amusing himself in Madrid by teaching the elements of grammar and a large vocabulary of English slang to any Spaniard who would pay for it, came home and enlisted with Jonathan in a line regiment. For two months they drilled and exercised themselves in the so-called "arts of war." Then, chiefly on account of a soulless section commander, they applied for, and obtained, commissions in the same regiment.

In the same billet, they re-lived their schooldays, and over the fire in the evenings would call up old memories, or David would tell of his adventures abroad, until late in the night.

When the time came for them to go to the front, the Fates still favoured them; they went out together to the same regiment in France, and were drafted to the same company. Together they went up to the trenches for the first time, together they worked, together they crouched under the parapet when the German shells came unpleasantly close, and, all the time, Jonathan, calm and stolid, unconsciously helped the other, who, being cursed with a vivid imagination, secretly envied his friend's calm.

Now, nothing has more power to cement or break friendships than war. The enforced company, the sharing of danger, the common bearing of all imaginable discomforts combine to make comrades or enemies. There are so many things to tax one's patience, that a real friend in whom one may confide becomes doubly dear, while you end by hating a man who has the misfortune to irritate you day after day. War made David and Jonathan realise how much their friendship meant, and how necessary each was to the other, the one because of his continued calm, the other because of the relief his love of music and of Nature brought with it.

II

Near the end of April 1915 they came back to billets near Ypres. To the north a terrific battle was in progress, the last inhabitants were fleeing from the town, and huge shells screamed on their way, and burst with appalling clouds of smoke among the already shattered houses. Occasionally a motor cyclist would come racing down the road, and, once or twice, an ambulance came by with its load of gassed and wounded from the fighting to the north.