CHAPTER V

MARCHING

The good French girls will cook brown loaves above the oven fire, And while they do the daily toil of barn and bench and byre, They'll think of hearty fellows gone and sigh for them in vain-- The billet boys, the London lads who won't return again.

(_From "Soldier Songs."_)

The men moved wearily, grunting and stumbling, their uniforms muddy and dirty, their rifles held at all angles. Now and again one would stand still for a moment, look round, readjust his equipment braces and continue marching. On all faces was a sluggish indifferent look: the march from Y---- Farm had begun centuries ago and would never end. They kept walking and walking, drowsily heedless of all that went on around them.

Although midwinter the day had seemed very close, the night seemed closer still. The men sweated as they marched. The silence was profound, hopeless and oppressive. The crunching boots were part of the eternal monotonous silence; when the column halted the cessation of movement came like a blow and almost stunned them as they stood. Where was the battalion going to? Nobody seemed to know and nobody cared now. Weariness had killed the men's curiosity.

Sergeant Snogger came along on the right flank of his company during one of these stoppages; his feet moving ponderously, his back crooked like an old man's.

"What's up?" somebody asked.

"Feel to the left or you'll be damned unlucky," he said. "Reinforcements!"

His voice was almost incoherent and his tones were charged with impatience.

Dark bulks took shape on their right, creaked and thundered for a moment, then vanished.

"Reinforcements!" someone muttered, and added: "On buses, London buses. Same as we came on t'other day. And we've been marching nearly all the time since then!"

Again the living body crawled forward step by step. Bubb leant forward on Fitzgerald's arm, fell asleep but still continued his march. Fitz could feel Bubb's hand on his own; it was soft and warm but very heavy. He tried to shake it off but it clung tighter.... Why was it done to him? The Irishman was not conscious of having done any wrong. But to press his hand with pincers and crush him down with a steam hammer--it was too much.... He was falling through space with a monstrous load on his shoulders. Down, down, ever so far down and no bottom. The fall was endless. A branch of a tree stretched out towards his hand and he strove to grip it. It evaded him and he still fell.... Fitzgerald suddenly bounced into conscious life to see figures moving forward right in front of him. Then he knew that he was still marching, marching up to battle. "What battle?" he asked himself, and then became annoyed at his own curiosity. "I don't know," he muttered. "What the hell does it matter, anyway?"

"Are you sleepy?" asked Bubb, who had woke up.

"No," the Irishman answered unconcernedly. "Please take your hand away! Take it away at once."

Bubb paid no heed but his hand gripped tighter still. Fitz tried to shake it off, but the effort was monstrously futile. But what did it matter? He was living in a confused and muddled nightmare and his mind was a great vacant chamber filled with spectres more impalpable than air.

"The lights!" somebody said. "Look at them!"

The starshells seemed very near, blazing in the heavens, green, red and white. The green was restful to look upon, the white hard and cold; the red starshells were lurid wounds dripping with blood. Fitz shuddered and his eyes sought the ground again....

* * * * *

"On the left of the road, fall out!"

The command was given in a weak voice and the men dropped down on the withered grass. It was now almost dawn; the ambulance waggons were tearing along the road and the wounded could be heard groaning and cursing as the vehicles were jolted from side to side on the cobbled way.

The battle to which the London Boys were going was at an end now. The soldiers were dimly conscious of this but all were indifferent to the result of the conflict.... Most of the men were already asleep. A cold breeze was blowing and high up in the air the starshells were still blazing merrily over the firing line.... Soldiers came tottering back from battle in platoons, in squads, in pairs. They were all war-worn and dejected, they straggled by, their heads sunk on their breasts. Now and again the men spoke to them, but they seldom made answer and when they replied their answers were ever the same.

"The Boche attacked," they said. "Christ! he didn't half send some stuff across 'fore he came over. We chased him back. But 'twas a fight."

Fitzgerald lay close to the earth and he could smell the moist clay and dead grass. It was very cold too. He turned over on his side and stretched out his legs to their full extent. It was now on the fringe of dawn....

The earth grew pale and objects in the near distance took on definite form....

Fitzgerald woke with a start and got to his feet. He had been asleep for a few minutes only. His mates were buckling their belts and grumbling at their lot. What was going to happen now? Going back again and all that damned trek for nothing. Not one of them could march another hundred yards....

"We're not going far back," Snogger said. "Just a mile or so and we'll billet at a village. Then you can all 'ave a kip. That's if ye're lucky."

"And the attack?" Fitz asked. "Was it beaten off?"

"Yes," said the sergeant. "The Germans got as far as our trench and there they stopped; some of them for good. We're lucky we weren't in it, I'm thinking.... Come on, boys, and pull yourselves together," he shouted. "We've got to get out of this before it gets too clear. It'll soon be broad daylight, and we'll be damned unlucky if we're 'ere then."

Wounded men who were able to walk straggled along the road. When they fell they fell silently and got up mutely. But many fell and did not rise.

The men were well on their way when dawn broke, and the rim of the sky flushed crimson. Dead mules lay on the cobbled ways, torn with ghastly wounds; drivers in khaki, helplessly impotent, lay huddled amidst their broken limbers. The roadway was gutted by shells and the poplars that lined the path were scarred and peeled by many a projectile. Behind, the shells were bursting and the sound of explosions quivered through the crisp clear air.

If the men looked back they could see the hills behind, rising out of the dawn, the white mists in the Zouave valley--the valley of Death, the Cabaret Rouge, the inn on the Souchez Road, and Souchez itself which is now a heap of powdered dust. War had rent and riven many a village but Souchez it had powdered to dust. Not the fragment of a single wall remained standing and not a whole brick remained of the village of Souchez.

Higher than any of the hills of Lorrette rose "The Pimple," the highest peak in the district. From the top mile after mile of the surrounding country was visible--woods, roads, towns, villages and canals. The French were supposed to be holding it.

Sergeant Snogger, who had been marching in front, came back and kept in step with Bowdy Benners and his mates.

"The French lost 'The Pimple' last night," he said. "There were two thousand 'oldin' the place and the Germans turned every damned gun they'd got on it. Blew it to blazes, they did. Not one Frenchman came back; and they say none was taken prisoners. They were damned unlucky."

Half-an-hour's march brought the men to a little village, broken, ruined, untenanted. There they halted while the officers inspected the cellars, seeking shelter where their men might sleep. Snogger's friends were lucky and found a cellar, the floor of which was littered with hay, and here they lay down, but not before they lit a candle to frighten the rats away. Holding himself erect, Snogger tried to unbuckle his equipment, but his fingers were unable to perform the task. "Damn it!" he shouted in a petulant voice and collapsed in a heap on the straw where he lay crumpled up. He might have been hit in the head by a bullet so sudden was his fall.

The men lay near the bottom of the cellar stairs; the apartment lost itself in unfathomable corners, and there the rats were scurrying backwards and forwards. Bowdy was just dropping off to sleep when a hoarse sepulchral yell echoed through the cellar and a strange unearthly figure rushed into the circle of candle-light, waving his arms in the air and shouting in a strange incoherent voice. The men were looking at a French soldier.

He came to a halt at the foot of the stairs; his eyelids slowly opened, the eyes took in the apartment--the dim candle, the forms lying on the floor.

"Who are you?" he asked in a steady voice. Then as if collecting his scattered wits he muttered: "You are billeted here. I have just come down from the 'Pimple'.... I'm the only man left.... Who has a drop of water to spare?"

Thus did Fitzgerald, who woke up, translate the man's remarks. Bowdy gave him a drink of water. He lay down again in one of the men's overcoats and was soon asleep. As the men dozed off one by one the rats drew closer, peering curiously out from the darkness of the remote corners of the cellar.... Fitzgerald fell asleep to awake suddenly with a start. A rat had run over his face.

"The damned pests," he muttered getting to his feet. "I can't stand them. I'll get outside and sleep on the ground. God! it's strange how a little thing like a rat disturbs me," he muttered.

He went outside, lay down on the cobbles and slept the sleep of a weary man.

In the evening the battalion marched away from the neighbourhood of Souchez and entered the Loos Salient just in time for the Christmas season.