PART THIRTEEN

PREPARE FOR ACTION!

§ 1

After a fortnight’s inactivity at the Base, the Southdown Artillery, split into half Brigades for war-training, marched three days till they came by Aire and Lambres and Mazinghem, and long-streeted Lilliers and the railway-tangles of Chocques to their last rest-billets behind that section of the firing-line which lay between the Double Crassier, the spider-tower Pylons of Loos, and the fall pit-shaft buildings of Fosse Eight.

“Well,” said Torrington, “what do you think of it so far, P.J.?”

The three blond women of La Jaudrie farm had spread mattresses on the stone floor of the churn-room; and on these, curled up in their valises, candle guttering between them, the two were lying.

“Can’t quite make up my mind,” reflected Peter. “It all seems so extraordinarily casual. We’ve had no post, our rations have been twenty-four hours late all the way up, our own staff threw most of the officers’ valises off the G.S. waggons the day we started. . . .”

“Oh, that!” Torrington laughed. “You’ll get used to the Staff when you’ve been out a bit longer, P.J. Mustn’t take ’em too seriously you know. These Seventh Division birds don’t seem too bad.”

“No,” admitted our Mr. Jameson. “I must say that Staff Captain man knows his job. I’ve got quite a decent shanty for H.Q.”

“That little house behind the battery-positions?”

“Yes.”

Torrington fumbled under his canvas pillow; found his cigarette-case; stretched arm and shoulder out of blankets to light a “Gold-flake.” He looked very ill: black eyes bright with fever; pale hair damp on damp brow. The anaemic lips over the prominent teeth quivered as he drew in the smoke.

“Feeling pretty rotten,” he announced.

“You never ought to have come out.”

“No. . . . I don’t suppose I’ll last very long. But I had to have another cut at the Boche. Besides, it doesn’t look well for a B.C.[4] to hand his battery over to some one else as soon as it’s ordered abroad.”

“Well, I think you’re a damn fool,” said Peter. Every one in the Divisional Artillery, from General Blacklock to his own Battery Sergeant Major, had tried—and tried in vain—to keep Torrington at home.

“Possibly. It’s this marching that does me in. I’m as stiff as the devil tonight.” He turned over uneasily in his “flea-bag.” “You don’t want to go to sleep yet, do you?”

“No. Give me one of those filthy gaspers. All right, don’t you move; I’ll get them.”

They lay smoking for a few minutes. There are few reticences on active service; and soon both felt the need for intimate talk.

“Does it hurt much—being wounded?” asked Peter.

“Like hell. At least, mine did.”

“Where were you hit?”

“Oh, about sixteen places. Like to hear about it?”

“Rather.”

This is how Torrington told his own story: “It was right at the beginning, you know. Second day of the retreat. Our infantry—Buffs—were entrenched on the forward slope of a hill. I was doing F.O.O.;[5] and like a fool I tried to observe from the crest. Boches! My hat, you should have seen ’em. Millions of ’em. Like—like gray ants. Stark was with the guns. I got in some topping bursts; must have knocked out hundreds. The Infanteers were simply mowing ’em down. Pity we hadn’t any Emma G’s.[6] Then their guns go to work. First shell landed over the trench; got me in the head; killed one of my signallers.”

“What were you using”—asked Peter—“visual or the telephone?”

“Telephone. My other signaller kept on sending down the orders all right. . . . I managed to get the blood out of my eyes and we gave ’em gun-fire. That kept the devils back a bit. Then they spotted _me_. Turned a machine gun on me. First bullet got me in the calf of the leg. Next one in the shoulder.”

“How long was that after the first shell hit you?”

“Dunno. Must have been about an hour. I should think. . . . Then they got my signaller, and I had to do the telephoning myself. . . . I don’t remember much else; except crawling round and round in a ring. You know—like a rabbit when you shoot too far behind. Then some one started singing ‘God Save the King.’ God, how I cursed that fellow. I remember saying to myself, ‘What’s the bally fool singing for? There’s nothing to sing about.’”

He paused a minute, eyes curiously bright, cigarette singeing stubby moustache.

“Just before I went off altogether, I found out who’d been singing. It was myself! Funny, isn’t it? Fancy crawling round and round on one’s elbows, singing ‘God save the King,’ in the middle of a battle.”

“Very funny,” said Peter, sorry for present sickness, but imagination only vaguely stirred by bare recital of the past. “How did you get away?”

“Oh, that was where the Weasel got his D.S.O.”[7] Now that he told another’s story, Torrington grew a little more explicit. “He came up, under direct rifle and machine-gun fire, _on his horse_ mark you, as soon as I stopped telephoning. They killed his horse for him, and he got a bullet through his ankle: but he managed to get us both away somehow—he’s as strong as a mule you know. Damned if I understand how he managed it: we only had one leg between the pair of us. . . .”

He leaned forward, stretched a hand to the candle: as he blew it out, his pajama slipped from his neck and Peter saw the sullen weal of a bullet-wound on the shrunken shoulder.

“Wonder you’ve got the nerve to go into action again,” commented Peter across the darkness.

“As a matter of fact, the mere idea of marching up to those gun-pits tomorrow night, scares me to death,” said Torrington, V.C.

[4] Battery Commander.

[5] Forward observing officer.

[6] Machine guns.

[7] Distinguished Service Order.

§ 2

Next morning,—Stark pre-occupied, Peter rather sleepy, Purves and the Doctor swapping jokes with Horrocks the newly-joined veterinary officer (a horsy over-toothed young man in white breeches and enormous spurs)—the Headquarters breakfasted in sunshine at a trestle-table under the vine-leaves: and at half-past ten, rode out across the vast cobbled yard, through the red gates, right-handed towards Hinges, left-handed towards Béthune.

Behind them—Mr. Black prancing proudly on a thin chestnut mare, Lodden cursing as usual, Torrington drooping in his saddle, the men smoking at ease—came the horses and carts of the Headquarters Staff, the guns and ammunition waggons of Batteries A and B.

“This is hardly the conventional idea of going into action for the first time,” drawled Purves, trotting up beside Peter and the Colonel.

The Weasel jerked up red head from the map on his saddle-peak: “What did you expect, young man?” he asked crisply.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. Gun-fire on the skyline, I suppose; and patrols riding forward to scout the way. . . .”

“Well, suppose you trot on; and see if the level-crossing’s blocked or not.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Can’t ride for toffee,” commented the Colonel, as his Orderly Officer clattered forward.

They rode on, through clean sunshine, past clean white houses, across the railway lines; emerged on the main road; swung left. Soon they could see the roofs of Béthune in front of them.

A long train backed slowly across the road. The column halted. The train went on; likewise the column. Now they were in the outskirts of the town.

Down the untidy street, trotting slowly towards them over the greasy pavé, came a young Staff officer, very gorgeous of boot and tab, rifled groom trotting behind him: a Staff officer who saluted the Weasel with a fine flourish, and said:

“Excuse me, sir, but this is the fourth Southdown Brigade, isn’t it?”

“It is. Half of it anyway. What do _you_ want with it?”

“Can I speak to your Adjutant, sir?”

“Certainly. Speak to the whole damn column if you like. Here, Mr. Black, pass down the word for the Adjutant.”

“Colonel wants the Adjutant. Colonel wants the Adjutant.” The words went dwindling down the line.

A minute or two later our Mr. Jameson clattered up on Little Willie, looked at the face under the black-peaked hat, and said, “Good God, it’s Francis. Where on earth did you spring from?”

Peter introduced his cousin, a little gaunter, a little browner, but immaculate as ever, to the Colonel. The three rode on, talking together. Soldiers and rare civilians stared incuriously at them from the narrow pavements; lorries rumbled by; an occasional dispatch-rider, phutting past, disturbed the horses.

“How did you find me so quickly?” asked Peter, preliminary greetings over.

“You wrote me when you sent on,” imperceptible pause, “those letters, that you were transferring to the R.A. And of course _we_ knew the moment you landed in France.”

“Who’s _we_?”

“G.H.Q.,” said Francis casually.

“My aunt, you are a swell. Why didn’t you write and tell me where you were? I haven’t heard from you for months.”

Francis explained that he had only just officially joined Intelligence, that his uniform had been bought a week since in Paris, that he was attached to the First Corps. . . .

“What have you been doing since March?” asked Peter.

“Oh, various jobs I’m not supposed to talk about. . . .”

“Then don’t talk about ’em, young man,” put in the Weasel.

“And why are you attached to the First Corps?”

“To interrogate prisoners after this new show.”

Purves, very _affairé_, came trotting up to the Colonel. “Don’t we turn off to the right here, sir?”

“We do, my Purves, we do.” They rolled off the main street into a quiet square; threaded their way southwards out of the town, through market gardens, into flat cultivated country.

“Where are you bound for?” asked Francis.

Peter pulled out his map, pointed to a little green patch, “Batteries are going to that wood. We’re marching up by daylight to Annequin. See that little house at the end of the railway, just under Fosse Nine? That’s us.”

“Square F 25?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I must be getting back,” said Francis. “I’ll come and look you up one afternoon.”

“Why not come to dinner the day after tomorrow,” invited the Colonel.

“I’d like to very much, sir. About half-past seven. Very good, sir. Good-bye, sir. So long, Peter”; and Captain Francis Gordon, wheeling his horse, trotted back into the town.

Headquarters marched on, dropping the batteries outside Verquigneul; till they came to the hundred-foot slag-cone of Fosse Six; and on, across yet another railway. Now they saw, for the first time, their own sausage balloons, hanging directly above them, and—very far away and tiny—the flash and slow puff of anti-aircraft shell bursting round an invisible ’plane. The men, newcomers all, pointed to the marvel, chattered about it. “Wonder if they got him. Not they. There he goes.” The few old soldiers by the roadside took no notice.

And so they came, down a rutty road black with slag, past a shattered wall of red-brick, under the vast shadow of Fosse Nine. The Weasel held up his whip, and the column halted.

“It’s quite all right, sir. The position’s well under cover,” said Peter.

“I know that,” snapped Stark, “but it’s no use letting these fellows get into careless habits. Tell ’em to dismount, Purves. And then go along and explain the danger of halting at a cross-roads. Have ’em come up two at a time. You’ve selected your forward wagon-line, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir. Just behind the Fosse.”

“Good lad. Don’t keep more than six horses there, though. Now you, Jameson, come along with me. Never mind your precious Little Willie. Jelks’ll look after him.”

They dismounted; walked forward. On their left stood the half of a red house, riven with shell-fire. (“Cross-roads!” commented the Colonel): three hundred yards in front, screened by a fold in the ground from enemy observation, rose a few tall trees; thereunder, heaps of white clay, the disused French gun-pits already echoing to the tools of battery fatigue parties.

From a sunken hedge on their right, came a double report, the flash and smoke of a piece discharging. Involuntarily, P.J. started.

“Four point seven,” explained Stark. “Used to call ’em Long Toms in South Africa. Let’s go and see if your pal Caroline’s got that omelette she promised us.”

They turned off to their left—Stark casting a quick eye across the field below the Fosse at the men already unlimbering the telephone-waggon—came to a low shuttered house,—first of three on the road; knocked on a white door in the wall.

“_Bon jour, mon Colonel. Vous arrivez tôt._” A thick-set peasant-wench, neither uncomely nor over-cleanly, led them through a draggled garden under a rusty iron-work arbour towards the house.

“_Et l’omelette, ma petite?_” The Weasel spoke French perfectly, with only the slightest trace of accent.

“_Sere prête dans dix minutes, mon Colonel._”

They passed through the bare narrow hall into a shuttered room, empty of furniture save for a huge table. Through one wall, heavily shored with great balks of timber, a narrow doorway led to the cellars below.

“If we were Germans,” remarked Stark, unbuckling his belt, throwing it crashing on the table, “_we_ should sleep down there; the family upstairs. As it is. . . .” He left the sentence unfinished, implying the Englishman’s usual contempt for his own chivalry.

_Monsieur le patron_, a stubble-cheeked gaffer in shirt and trousers, shambled in; hoped they would be comfortable; shambled out again. Followed, hilariously, Doctor Carson.

“Well,” he said, in broadest Belfast, “I’m a proud man this day. We’re in action at last.”

Purves arrived; and the mess-box; Gunner Horne the cook, looking rather less cleanly than usual; Peter’s batman, Garton; and the Colonel’s Bombardier Michael, a nervous little fellow, clean-shaven, who had been a footman in private life; finally Caroline with an enormous omelette, a bottle of nameless wine. . . .

* * * * *

“Make ’emselves damn comfortable, I notice,” growled Lodden that evening, as he left Headquarters for the gun-pits at the foot of the field below the house.

“Wish I were on the ruddy Headquarters,” groused Gunner Mucksweat, heaving against the reluctant wheel of “B” Battery’s No. 2 gun. “Me too,” answered his mate, as the axles jammed in the narrow doorway of the pit.

But Mr. Stanley Purves, as he watched from his upstairs window, the endless upsoaring of Véry candles; as he heard the occasional crackle of a two-miles distant machine-gun; wished by the Lord Apollo and many other classical deities that he were back at Balliol. For it seemed to Mr. Stanley Purves’ imagination that every lurid flash on the far horizon must be a gun directed unerringly at his personal self: and he envied P.J., who slept soundly and unimaginatively on his camp-bed in the corner of their bare and unprotected sleeping-room.

Which paragraph may serve to explain Stanley Purves’ subsequent vogue—among elderly civilians—as a soldier-poet of the let-me-like-a-hero-fall category!

§ 3

Two evenings later, when Francis Gordon arrived—in a purloined Vauxhall car—to dinner, he found the half-Brigade settled down to desultory action.

Already the little house at Annequin, was linked by black “D. 5.” telephone-wires to 7th Artillery Headquarters way back in Sailly-La-Bourse, to the as-yet-unoccupied battle-headquarters at the château of Noyelles a mile on their right. Forward to the gun-pits, and backward to the top of the great Fosse where Straker had established an observation-post in one of the many tunnels burrowed through the slag, ran other wires—very red and new on their supporting poles. Already Lodden and Torrington had spied out the dun plain, the white chalk-furrows; talked learnedly of Hun strong-points—the Pope’s Nose, the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

The first “post” had arrived, been sorted eagerly on the bare floor of the Mess-room; Mr. Black had discovered whence to draw rations; guns had barked away enough ammunition to necessitate fresh supplies from Billy Williams’ subaltern Murphy, in charge of the Ammunition Column Section behind Fosse Six; men had seen their first shells crash to ground on the Vermelles road.

But as yet—though nominally attached to another Brigade for “training in trench-warfare”—Stark and his two batteries were nobody’s children. No infantry asked them for retaliation; no General panicked round their ammunition-dumps. And they were too far behind the trenches to attract hostile shell-fire.

“So far”—as Peter explained to his cousin, in the draggled garden—“a picnic!”

“You wait till September the twenty-fifth!” said Francis.

“Oh, is that the date?”

“Didn’t you know? Why every housemaid in Béthune can tell you that much.”

It was then September the eleventh!

The two cousins passed into the Mess-room. M. de Morency, a tall French interpreter, black-moustachioed, the bronze sphinx of his calling on the lapel of his khaki tunic, had arrived the day before; stood superintending the lighting of the lamp, Bombardier Michael’s arrangement of the dinner-table.

Peter introduced his cousin, and the two began a voluble conversation in slangy French. Stark stamped down from his upstairs bed-room; Purves and the Doctor arrived together.

“Lodden and Torrington are late.” The Weasel looked at his watch. “Phone down for them, will you, Purves?”

The Balliol man stepped to a tiny, black telephone on a shelf in the corner, began buzzing on the key. “Is that you, Beer Battery. . . . Oh, is Captain Torrington there? Just left for H.Q.—with Major Lodden. Thanks.”

Shortly afterwards, the two arrived; and dinner began with “Gong” soups served in enamel mugs. Followed tinned salmon, mayonnaise sauce and lettuce salad prepared by Caroline, a large ration joint of beef, baked potatoes, rice-pudding. They drank sparingly, from newly-bought glasses, of white wine. Talk ran steadily on the forthcoming operations.

“I hear we shall use gas for the first time,” announced the interpreter.

“And a damned mess we shall probably make of it.” Lodden wiped black moustaches contemptuously with his paper napkin. “Don’t you think so, Gordon?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about actual warfare,” remarked Francis, “you see I’m on the Staff.”

Everybody laughed.

Said Colonel Stark: “If you ex-civilians had been willing to pay for a decent-sized Army in peace-time, you might have had officers capable of managing large bodies of troops in war.”

“Then you admit, Colonel” . . . began Lodden.

“My dear Major, I admit nothing. Let’s have some port. Any coffee, Morency?”

“_Mais oui, mon Colonel._”

Peter produced a newly arrived box of cigars; the bare room soon grew hazy with smoke. The gaffer and Caroline, dragging a scrofulous boy by the hand, dived down through the timbered doorway to their bedroom in the cellars. Outside, it was very still—only, every now and then, a gun boomed faintly.

Torrington had drawn his chair towards the two cousins; Purves joined them, and Morency. Stark, Lodden and the Doctor kept to the head of the table.

“Damn good fighter, the Boche,” remarked Torrington, _á propos_ of nothing in particular.

“Damned swines!” The remark seemed to burst from Francis’ lips. “If you knew as much about them as I do. . . .”

“What do you know about them, young man?” put in the Weasel from the head of the table.

“Well, sir”—an undercurrent of emotion rippled the controlled voice—“I don’t claim to know _much_; but I’ve spent six of the last twelve months in their country.”

“You’ve what!” A simultaneous gasp ran round the room. Francis repeated his preposterous assertion: “I was staying at the Bristol in Berlin just after they beat the Russians at Tannenberg. I saw the crowds round the huge war-maps in Unter den Linden. I’ve seen the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern. And I’ve seen the camps where they keep our prisoners.” His voice dominated the room: nobody else spoke, wanted to speak. “I don’t pretend to be a fighting soldier. It isn’t my job. But when I hear people talk about the Hun as a clean fighter; when I think of the things I’ve seen him do. . . .” He bit off the words, fell silent.

“Then you were in Germany when war broke out,” said the Weasel, after a pause.

“No, sir. I got in afterwards. . . .”

Peter looked at his cousin; remembered old days, remembered the tango-dancing, night-club-haunting Francis of Curzon Street; marvelled that this should be the same man. For the tale Francis told that night—in half sentences, not boastingly but as a soldier discloses his job—carried conviction. Of himself, of how he had been hidden for three weeks in Amsterdam, coached in his part, smuggled not once but many times and in varied disguises across the frontier—Francis told nothing. He contented himself with bare statements. At Essen, in January, he had worked for a month. . . .

“What on?” interrupted Stark, still doubtful if this young Staff officer were not joking.

“A new patent carriage for the 77 field-gun, sir.”

“What part of it?”

“Principally the cradle for the buffer. ‘_Rück-rohr-lafetten-auflauf_,’ they call it.”

Stark, technical expert, asked no more doubting questions that evening: and Francis went on talking for nearly half-an-hour.

“But how the devil did you get into the prison-camps?” asked Lodden.

“As a priest,” said Francis simply, “an Austrian priest. That was my last trip. I’m not going back again if I can help it.”

“I should think not,” from Torrington, “you must have been scared stiff.”

“Scared. Lord, I should think so. But the worst moment I ever had was in the Winter Garden at Berlin. You don’t know it of course. It’s a kind of theatre with stalls in front, and behind—on a big raised daïs—tables for dinner-parties. I was in the promenade, right at the back. And they sang their old Hymn of Hate. Phew! It made me sweat, absolutely sweat with funk. Five thousand of them—on their feet—roaring like, like hyenas. . . .”

At half-past ten, the party broke up; Lodden, and Torrington (who had refused to desert his battery dug-out for a comfortable room at Headquarters) returning across the fields to their gun-pits: Purves, the Doctor and Morency retiring to bed.

“Do you mind if Peter drives home with me, sir?” asked Francis, “I’ll send him back in the car.”

“All right,”—the little red-headed soldier looked up from his newspaper—“I’ll hold the fort till my Adjutant comes back.”

The two cousins strolled out, found the car waiting. “All quiet on the Beuvry road?” asked Francis of the chauffeur.

“There were a few shells while you were at dinner, sir.”

“Well, don’t switch on your headlights till we’re through Beuvry.”

They climbed into the comfortable limousine; and purred off through Annequin village, shuttered and asleep; swung to the west.

“Heard from Pat?” asked Francis.

“Yesterday. She’s with her father.”

“Let me see, that’s Harley Street, isn’t it? I’ll drop her a line myself tomorrow. One can’t write much on these ‘hush’ jobs. I’ve been in Spain, the last three months. By the way, Peter, you’re grown very silent since I saw you last. . . .”

Peter lit a cigar, and his cousin saw, in the light of the match, new lines on the firm face, a trace of gray in the dark hair: “Oh, I’ve been having a pretty thin time, one way and the other.”

“Money?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s Arthur?”

“Arthur came home. He’s in the R.F.C.[8] somewhere or other. Rummy devil. Rather like you. Never writes letters.”

They came without mishap into the great Place of Béthune; and Peter saw, black by moonlight, round holes in the shining roofs—sole sign of long-range bombardment.

The car stopped. “This is my billet. Come in and have a drink, old man.”

They passed up a flight of stairs; Francis drew matches from his pocket; lit candles on the mantelpiece. Between them—like a saint’s picture on a shrine—stood a photograph, a brand-new photograph of Beatrice Cochrane!

[8] Royal Flying Corps.