Part 12
On a grey November morning, Dormer went to his billet in the suburb of a manufacturing town. It was the most English place he had set eyes on in all his three years. It was not really suburban, very nearly, not quite. There was no garden before the door, it was close to the factories and workshops where the wealth that had built it was made, instead of being removed a decent mile or so. In fact, it just lacked the proper pretentiousness. Its owner had made money and was not in the least ashamed of admitting it, was rather prone to display the fact and his house looked like it. It was a villa, not a château. It was the home of a successful manufacturer who did not want in the least to be taken for a country gentleman. He, poor fellow, had been called up and promptly killed, and his home, with its stained-glass windows, expensive draping and papering, clumsy if efficient sanitation, was inhabited only by his widow.
Dormer thought there could not be in the world any person so utterly beaten. Broken-hearted, exposed during four years to considerable bodily privation, being in the occupied area, she was no Mademoiselle Vanderlynden of the Army zone that Dormer knew, making a bold front against things. She was a delicate--had been probably a pretty woman--but it was not from any of her half-audible monosyllabic replies that Dormer was able to discover to what sort of a country he had come. A little farther down the street was the factory, long gutted by the Germans and used as a forage store, where his company were billeted. The old caretaker in the time-keeper’s cottage told Dormer all that was necessary, and left him astonished at the moderation of tone and statement, compared with the accounts of German occupation given by the Propagandist Press. Possibly, it was because he addressed the old man in French--or because he had never parted with his English middle-class manners--or because the old fellow was nearly wild with delight at being liberated. This was what Dormer heard:
“Enter, my Captain. It is a Captain, is it not, with three stars? The insignia of Charles Martell!” (Here wife and daughter joined in the laugh at what was obviously one of the best jokes in father’s repertory.) “You will find that the Bosches removed everything, but that makes less difficulty in the workshop. You have only to divide the floor space between your men. I know. I was a corporal in the War of ’Seventy. Ah! a bad business, that, but nothing to what we have now supported. You will do well to make a recommendation to your men not to drink the water of the cistern. The Bosches have made beastliness therein. Ah! You have your own watercart? That is well done, much better than we others used to have, in Algeria. It is always wise to provide against the simple soldier, his thoughts have no connection. You say you are accustomed to Germans and their mannerisms? I do not wonder. We too, as you may judge, have had cause to study them. I will tell you this, my Captain, the German is no worse than any other man, but he has this mania for Deutschland über Alles. It comes from having been a little people and weak, and so often conquered by us others. So that to give him some idea of himself, since he cannot invent a culture like us other French, he must go to put all above below, and make a glory of having a worse one. That shows itself in his three great faults--he has no sentiment of private property--what is others’, is his. He must be dirtier than a dog in his habits--witness our court-yard--and he has to make himself more brute than he really is. You see, therefore, he has stripped the factory, and even our little lodging, down to my daughter’s sewing-machine, and the conjugal bed of mother and myself. You see also, that we had our grandchildren, our dog Azor, our cat Titi. Now many of the Bosches who lodged here were certainly married and had their little ones and domestic animals. Yet if they found a child or a beast playing in the entry when they entered or left, they must give a kick of the foot, a cut with the riding-whip. Not from bad thoughts, I assure you. It is in their code, as it is in that of us others, English and French, to lift the hat, to make a salutation. The officers are the worst, because in them the code is stronger. For the German simple soldier, I have respect. They sang like angels!” (Here the old man quavered out the first bars of:
“Ein feste Bourg ist unser Gott.”)
Dormer wanted to get away, but could scarcely forbear to listen when the daughter broke in:
“But, Papa, recount to the officer the droll trick you played upon those who came to demolish the factory!”
“Ah, yes. Place yourself upon a chair, my officer, and I will tell you that. Figure to yourself that these Bosches, as I have explained, were not so bad as one says in the papers. They had orders to do it. I know what it is. I have had orders, in Algeria, to shoot Arabs. It was not my dream, but I did it. I will explain to you this.
“It was the day on which they lost the ridge. One heard the English guns, nearer and nearer. Already there were no troops in the factory, nothing but machine gunners, always retreating. A party of three came here with machinery in a box. One knew them slightly, since they also had billeted here. They were not dirty types; on the contrary, honest people. Sapper-miners, they were; but this time one saw well that they had something they did not wish to say. They deposit their box and proceed to render account of the place. They spoke low, and since we have found it better to avoid all appearance of wishing to know their affairs, we did not follow them. Only, my daughter had a presentiment. Woman, you know, my officer, it is sometimes very subtle. She put it in her head that these would blow up the factory. She was so sure that I lifted the cover of their box and looked in. It was an electric battery and some liquids in phials. I had no time to lose. I placed myself at the gate and ran as fast as I can to where they were, in the big workshop. I am already aged more than sixty. My days for the race are over. Given also that I was experiencing terrible sentiments--for you see, while we keep the factory there is some hope we may be able to work when the War is finished, but if it is blown up, what shall we others go and do--I was all in a palpitation, by the time I reached them. I cried: ‘There they go!’
“‘Who goes?’ they asked.
“‘The cavalry,’ I cried.
“They ran to the entry, and seeing no one, they feared that they were already surrounded. I saw them serpentine themselves from one doorway to another all down the street. The moment they were lost to sight I flung their box into the big sewer!”
* * * * *
Dormer billeted his company in the factory. He did not fear shell-fire that night. He himself slept in a bed at the villa. It was the first time he had left the night guard to a junior officer. In the morning, he paraded his company, and proceeded, according to plan, to await the order to move. The days were long gone by when a battalion was a recognizable entity, with a Mess at which all the officers saw each other once a day. Depleted to form Machine Gun Companies, the truncated battalions of the end of the War usually worked by separate companies, moving independently. There was some desultory firing in front, but his own posts had seen and heard nothing of the enemy. About nine he sent a runner to see if his orders had miscarried. Reply came, stand to, and await developments. He let his men sit on the pavement, and himself stood at the head of the column, talking with the two youngsters who commanded platoons under him. Nothing happened. He let the men smoke. At last came the order: “Cease fire.”
When he read out the pink slip to his subordinates, they almost groaned. Late products of the at last up-to-date O.T.C.’s of England, they had only been out a few months and although they had seen shell-fire and heavy casualties, yet there had always been a retreating enemy, and fresh ground won every week. The endless-seeming years of Trench Warfare they had missed entirely. The slow attrition that left one alone, with all one’s friends wounded or killed, dispersed to distant commands or remote jobs, meant nothing to them. They had been schoolboys when Paschendaele was being contested, Cadets when the Germans burst through the Fifth Army. They wanted a victorious march to Berlin.
Dormer read the message out to the company. The men received the news with ironical silence. He had the guards changed, and the parade dismissed, but confined to billets. He heard one of his N.C.O.’s say to another: “Cease fire! We’ve got the same amount of stuff on us as we had two days ago!”
It made him thoughtful. Ought he to crime the chap? Why should he? Had the Armistice come just in time? If it hadn’t come, would he have been faced with the spectacle of two armies making peace by themselves, without orders, against orders, sections and platoons and companies simply not reloading their rifles, machine gunners and Trench Mortars not unpacking their gear, finally even the artillery keeping teams by the guns, and the inertia gradually spreading upwards, until the few at the top who really wanted to go on, would have found the dead weight of unwillingness impossible to drag? The prospect, though curious, was not alarming. In a country so denuded and starved, one could keep discipline by the simple expedient of withholding rations. He had already seen, a year before at Étaples, the leaderless plight of all those millions of armed men, once they were unofficered. He was not stampeded by panic, and his inherited, inbred honesty bade him ask himself: “Why shouldn’t they make Peace themselves?” The object that had drawn all these men together was achieved. The invasion of France was at an end, that of Belgium a matter of evacuation only. “Cease fire.” It almost began to look like an attempt to save face. Was it the same on the German side too?
In the afternoon he proposed to walk over to Battalion H.Q. and have a word with the Colonel. He knew quite well he should find the other company commanders there. Naturally every one would want to get some idea of what was to be expected under these totally unprecedented circumstances. He was met at the door of his billet by a message from the youngster he had left in charge. He had got a hundred and forty prisoners.
Dormer went at once. He could see it all before he got there. All along the opposite side of the street, faultlessly aligned and properly “at ease” were men in field grey. At either end of the line stood a guard of his own company, and not all Dormer’s pride in the men he had led with very fair success, with whose training and appearance he had taken great pains, could prevent his admitting to himself that the only point at which his lot could claim superiority was in a sort of grumpy humour. The machinery of War had conquered them less entirely than it had conquered the Germans.
In the little time-keeper’s box, turned into the company office, he found a tall, good-looking man, who immediately addressed him in perfect English, giving the rank of Feld Webel, the quantity and regiment of his party and adding: “I surrender to you, sir.” Dormer gave instructions that the party should be marched to Brigade Head-quarters. He wanted to send some report as to the capture, but his subordinate replied: “We didn’t capture ’em. They just marched up the street. The post at the bridge let ’em through.” Dormer let it go at that, and having seen the street cleared, he walked over to see his Colonel, who was billeted in a big school in a public park. His story was heard with that sort of amusement that goes with the last bottle of whisky, and the doubt as to when any more will be obtainable. The Adjutant said: “Simply gave ’emselves up, did they?”
But the Captain commanding C Company, a man of about Dormer’s own sort and service, voiced Dormer’s thought.
“I believe, in another week, we’d have had both sides simply laying down their arms.”
“Oh, nonsense, soon stop that!” The Colonel spoke without real conviction. He had to say that officially.
With regard to the object for which he had come, Dormer found every one in his own difficulty. No one knew what was to happen, except that arrangements were already on foot for enormous demobilization camps. But the immediate steps were not even known at Brigade. Every one, of course, aired some pet idea, and were interrupted by noise outside, shouts and cries, the sound of marching, and orders given in German. The room emptied in a moment. The park was at one end of the town, and abutted on the smaller streets of artisans’ dwellings that, in every town of the sort, goes by the name of Le Nouveau Monde. This quarter had apparently emptied itself into the park, to the number of some hundreds, mostly people of over military age, or children, but one and all with those thin white faces that showed the long years of insufficient and unsuitable food, and the spiritual oppression that lay on “occupied” territory. They were shouting and shaking their fists round the compact formation of Dormer’s prisoners, who had just been halted, in front of the house. The N.C.O. in charge had been ordered by Brigade to bring them back. A chit explained the matter: “Prisoners taken after 11.0 a.m. to be sent back to their own units, on the line of retreat.”
The Feld Webel enlightened the Colonel’s mystification: “We refuse to obey the order, sir. Our regiment is twenty miles away. All the peasants have arms concealed. We shall just be shot down.”
It was a dilemma. Dormer could not help thinking how much better the Feld Webel showed up, than his own Colonel. The latter could not shoot the men where they stood. Nor could he leave them to the mercies of the natives. How difficult War became with the burden of civilization clogging its heels. The first thing to do was obviously to telephone to the A.P.M. for police. In the meantime a French Liaison Officer made a speech, and Dormer grinned to hear him. Fancying apologizing for the War. But what else could the fellow do. He did it well, considering. The crowd quieted, thinned, dispersed. The police arrived, and had a discussion with the Adjutant. Still no conclusion. The Feld Webel strode up and down in front of his men, master of the situation. At length, some one had an idea. Six lorries rolled up in the dark, an interpreter was put on board, and the party moved off in the November dusk. The Commander of C Company and Dormer left H.Q. together. Parting at the corner that separated their scattered companies, they both exclaimed together:
“What a War!” and burst out laughing.
* * * * *
It was perhaps, to a certain degree, Dormer’s fault, that during the remainder of November he became conscious of a dreary sense of anti-climax. No doubt he was that sort of person. The emergencies of the War had considerably overstrained his normal powers, which he had forced to meet the need. The need had ceased, and he had great difficulty in goading himself up to doing the bare necessary routine of Company office parades. He managed to avoid being sent up to the Rhine, and even secured a reasonable priority in demobilization, but beyond this there was nothing for it but to “continue the motion” of waiting for the next thing to happen.
His principal job was to extract from an unwilling peasantry, enough ground for football. How often did he go to this farm and that village shop, with his best manner, his most indirect approach, liberal orders for any of the many commodities that could be bought, and in the last resort, cheerful payment of ready money out of his own pocket in order to obtain a grudging leave to use this or that unsuitable meadow, not to the extent that the game of football demanded, but to the extent that the small proprietors considered to be the least they could make him accept for the most money that he could possibly be made to pay.
Then, in the long dark evenings, there was the job of keeping the men away from the worse sorts of estaminet. His own abilities, limited to singing correctly the baritone part of Mendelssohn’s Sacred Works, or Sullivan’s humorous ones, was not of any practical service. What was wanted was the real star comic, the red-nosed man with improbable umbrella, the stage clergyman with his stage double-life and voice that recalled with such unintentional faithfulness, the affected mock-culture of the closed and stereotyped mind. Any deformity was welcome, not, Dormer observed, that they wanted to laugh at the helplessness of the bandy leg or the stutterer, the dwarf or the feeble-minded. On the contrary, the sentimentality of the poorer English had never stood out in brighter relief than on the edge of those devastated battlefields, where in their useless khaki, the men who had perpetuated the social system that had so blindly and wantonly used so many of them, waited patiently enough for the order of release from the servitude that few of them had chosen or any of them deserved. No, they liked to see the cunning and prowess of the old lady, or the innocent boy, applauded the way in which all those characters portrayed as having been born with less than normal capabilities showed more than normal acquisitiveness or perspicacity.
Dormer could not help reflecting how different they were from the New Army in which he had enlisted. In the squad of which, at the end of three months’ violent training and keenly contested examinations, he had become the Corporal, there had been one or two labourers, several clerks from the humbler warehouses and railways, others in ascending scale from Insurance Offices and Banks, one gorgeous individual who signed himself a Civil Servant, three persons of private means, who drove up to the parade ground in motor-cars. He well remembered one of these latter going surreptitiously to the Colonel and applying for a commission, and being indignantly refused, on the grounds that the Colonel didn’t know who (socially) he (the applicant) was. But when the news got out, the section were even more disrespectful to that unfortunate individual because they considered he had committed a breach of some sort of unwritten code that they had undertaken to observe. So they went on together, the immense disparity of taste and outlook cloaked by shoddy blue uniforms and dummy rifles, equal rations and common fatigues.
But the first offensive of the spring of 1915 had brought new conditions. The loss in infantry officers had been nothing short of catastrophic. Very soon hints, and then public recommendation to take commissions reached them. The section meanwhile had altered. Two of the more skilled labourers had got themselves “asked for” by munition works. Of the remainder Dormer and four others applied and got commissions. He could see nothing like it now. There was more of a mix-up than ever. For some men had been exempted from the earlier “combings out” of the unenlisted for skill, and others for ill-health. There was now only one really common bond, the imperative necessity to forget the War and all that had to do with it. This was the general impetus that had replaced the volunteering spirit, and it was this that Dormer had to contend with. He mastered the business of amusing the men pretty well, and his subordinates helped him. A more serious difficulty was with the skilled mechanics. Fortunately, an infantry battalion demanded little skill, and except for a few miners who had been out no time at all, and were at present making no fuss, there was plenty of grumbling but no organized obstruction.
He found a more advanced state of affairs when he went at the appointed time, to supervise a football match between a team representing his own Brigade and that of a neighbouring Brigade of Heavy Artillery. Crossing the Grand’ Place of the village to call on the Gunner Mess he found a khaki crowd, but it took him some minutes to realize that a full-dress protest meeting was in progress. Senior N.C.O.’s were mounted upon a G.S. wagon. These, he gathered, were the Chairman and speakers. Another soldier, whose rank he could not see, was addressing the meeting. More shocked than he had ever been in his life, he hastily circled the square, and got to the Mess. He found most of the officers in; there was silence, they were all reading and writing. After the usual politenesses came a pause. He felt obliged to mention the object of his visit. Silence again. Eventually the Captain with whom he had arranged the preliminaries of the match said rather reluctantly:
“I’m afraid we shan’t be able to meet you this afternoon.”
Dormer forebore to ask the reason, but not knowing what else to do, rose and prepared to take his leave. Possibly he spoke brusquely, he was nervous in the atmosphere of constraint, but whatever may have prompted the Gunner Captain, what he said was a confession:
“Our fellows are airing their views about demob.”
“Really!”
“Yes, perhaps you noticed it, as you came along?”
“Well, I did see a bit of a crowd.”
“You didn’t hear the speeches?” The other smiled.
“I heard nothing definitely objectionable, but it’s rather out of order, isn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose so, but we get no help from up-atop!” The Captain nodded in the direction of the Local Command.
“No, I suppose not,” Dormer sympathized.
The young Colonel interposed. “It’s very difficult to deal with the matter. There’s a high percentage of skilled men in our formation. They want to be getting back to their jobs.”
“It’s really rather natural,” agreed the Captain.
Dormer tried to help him. “We all do, don’t we?”
There was a sympathetic murmur in the Mess which evidently displeased the Colonel.
“I’m not accustomed to all this going home after the battle. Time-expired men I understand, but the New Army enlistments----” He left it at that, and Dormer felt for him, probably, with the exception of a few servants and N.C.O.’s, the only pre-War soldier in the Mess, uncertain of himself and trying not to see the ill-suppressed sympathy if not envy with which most of the officers around him regarded the affair.
“Awfully sorry, Dormer,” the Captain concluded, “we simply can’t get our crowd together. You see how it is. When this has blown over I’ll come across and see you, and we will fix something up.”
Dormer went.
The Gunner Captain came that evening. In Dormer’s smaller Mess, it needed only a hint to the youngsters to clear out for a few minutes. Dormer admired the good humour with which the other approached him. It was obviously the only thing to do.
Over drinks he asked, modelling himself on the other’s attitude:
“So that business blew over, did it?”
“It did, thank goodness. Awfully decent of you to take it as you did. I hated letting you down.”
“Don’t mention it. I saw how you were placed.”
“The Colonel very much appreciated the way you spoke. I hope you had no trouble with your chaps?”
“They were all right. I pitched them a yarn. They didn’t believe it, of course. Some of them were at the--er----”
“The bloomin’ Parliament. Don’t mind saying it. It’s a dreadful shock to a regular like our old man.”
“Naturally.”
“He spoke the plain unvarnished truth when he said he was unused to all this demobbing.”
“Well, well, you can comfort him, I suppose, by pointing out that it isn’t likely to occur again.”
“He’s a good old tough ’un. Splendid man in action, that’s what makes one so sorry about it. Otherwise, of course, one knows what the men mean. It’s only natural.”
“Perfectly.”
“His trouble is not only the newness of it. It’s his utter helplessness.”
“Quite so. Absolutely nothing to be done. The--er--meeting was as orderly as possible. I walked right through it. They simply ignored me.”
“Oh yes, there’s no personal feeling. They all paraded this morning complete and regular.”
“That’s the end of it, I hope.”