Part 5

“Yes, sir. The order of battle will give their position.”

“I’ll see to that. I’ll have it looked up and let you know in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.” He went back to his hut, delighted.

Escape. Escape. Even the illusion of escape for a few hours, it must be at least that, for if the 469 Trench Mortar Battery were in the same Division, the same Corps even, he would have heard of them. They must be at least a day’s journey away, and he would be able to get away from the blasting and withering boredom for at least that. Colonel Birchin, a regular, who had been on various Staff appointments since the very early days, had no conception how personnel changed and units shifted, and unless he (Dormer) were very much mistaken, it would be a jolly old hunt. So much the better. He would have his mind off the War for a bit.

The reply came from Corps that, according to the order of battle, 469 Trench Mortar Battery was not in existence, but try Trench Mortar School at Bertezeele. It was all one to Dormer. He might simply be exchanging one cold hut for another, he might travel by rail and lorry instead of on horse or foot. But at any rate it would be a different hut that he was cold in and a different mode of conveyance that jolted him, and that was something, one must not be too particular in war-time. So he jumped on a lorry that took him into Doullens and at Doullens he took train and went through Abbeville and the endless dumps and camps by the sea, up to Étaples, where the dumps and camps, the enormous reinforcement depôts and mile-long hospitals stretched beside the line almost into Boulogne, where was a little pocket, as it were, of French civilian life, going on undisturbed amid the general swamping of French by English, on that coast, and of civilian life by military. Here he got a meal and changed and went off again up the hill, past Marquise, and down a long hill to Calais, in the dark, and then on, in the flat, where the country smelled different from the Somme, and where the people spoke differently and the names of the stations sounded English, and where there were French and Belgian police on the platforms.

He slept and woke at St. Omer, and slept again and woke to find all the lights out and a general scurry and scatteration, with the drone of aeroplanes and the continual pop-popping of anti-aircraft fire. Then came the shrieking whirr and sharp crash of the first bomb, with its echo of tinkling glass, barking of dogs, and rumour of frightened humanity.

Like most people accustomed to the line, Dormer regarded the bombing of back billets as a spectacle rather than as one of the serious parts of warfare, and got out to stroll about the platform with officers going up as reinforcements. They exchanged cigarettes and news and hardly stopped to laugh at the horrified whisper of the R.T.O., “Don’t light matches here!” It was soon over, like all bombing. If you were hit you were hit, but if you weren’t hit in the first minute or two, you wouldn’t be, because no plane could stay circling up there for very long, and the bomber was always more frightened than you were. Then the train moved on, and Dormer could feel on each side of him again the real camp life of units just behind the line, mule standings, gun parks, and tents and huts of infantry, and services. It was midnight before he got out at Bailleul. He had left the camp on the Arras road in the morning, had made a great loop on the map and reached a railhead as near the line as he had been twenty-four hours before. He stumbled up the stony street to the Officers’ Rest House, drank some cocoa out of a mug and fell asleep, his head on his valise.

In the morning he got a lift out to Bertezeele, and found the Trench Mortar School. He reflected that it would really be more correct to say that he took a lift to the Trench Mortar School, and incidentally touched the village of Bertezeele. For the fact was that the English population of the parish exceeded the French native one. Men of all sorts and conditions from every unit known to the Army List (and a good many that had never graced the pages of that swollen periodical) were drawn into this new device for improved killing. Dormer himself, one of those who, since the elementary home camp training of 1915, had been in or just behind the trenches, wondered at the complicated ramifications with which the War was running. Apparently those curious little brass instruments, the bane of his life as an infantry platoon commander, which used to come up behind his line and there, while totally ineffective in the vital matter of beating the Germans, were just sufficiently annoying to make those methodical enemies take great pains to rob him of his food and sleep for many ensuing days, were all done away with.

Stokes, whoever he was, but he was certainly a genius, had effected a revolution. Owing to him, neat tubes, like enlarged pencil-guards, with a nail inside the blind end, upon which the cap-end of the cartridge automatically fell, were being used, as a hosier might say, in all sizes from youths’ to large men’s. Stokes was branded with genius, because his invention combined the two essentials--simplicity with certainty. He had brought the blunderbuss up to date.

What else were these short-range, muzzle-loading, old-iron scattering devices? Just blunderbusses. History was not merely repeating itself. As the War went on it was moving backwards. Tin helmets of the days of Cromwell, bludgeons such as Cœur de Lion used upon Saladin, and for mere modernity, grenades like the original British Grenadiers of the song. He had never had any head for poetry, but he could remember some of the stuff Kavanagh had sung in the dug-out. Not tow-row-row. That was the chorus. Ah! he remembered.

“Our leaders march with fusees, And we with hand-grenades, We throw them from the glacis About the enemy’s ears. With a tow-row-row,” etc.

Well, now we didn’t. If we had grenades we carried them in aprons, like a market woman, with a skirt full of apples. And if we had a blunderbuss, like the guard of the coach in the “Pickwick Papers,” we kept it, and all the ironmongery that belonged to it, on a hand-barrow, and pushed it in front of us like fish-hawkers on a Saturday night. What a War! Kavanagh was quite right of course. There was neither decency nor dignity left in it. Wouldn’t do to admit that though! And putting on his very best “Good-mornin’-Sah-I-have-been-sent-by-Divisional-Head-quarters” expression, he asked his way to the “office” as they were beginning to call the orderly room in most detachments, and inquired for 469 Battery. Yes. They were to be seen. Orderly room, as a Corps formation, was distant and slightly patronizing, but the information was correct. He could see the Officer commanding the battery. Certainly he could, as soon as morning practice was over. That would do. He made himself as inconspicuous as possible until he saw the various parties being “fallen in” on the range, and heard the uncanny ear-tickling silence that succeeded the ceaseless pop-pop of practice and then drifted casually into the wooden-chair-and-table furnished ante-room, where the month-old English magazines gave one a tremulous home-sickness, and men who had been mildly occupied all the morning were drinking all the vermouth or whisky they could, in the fear of being bored to the point of mutiny in the afternoon.

There was, of course, the usual springtime curiosity as to what the year might bring forth, for every one always hoped against hope that the next offensive would really be the last. An orderly wandering among the tables appeared to be looking for him, and he found himself summoned before the Officer commanding the School.

Although his appointment was new, Colonel Burgess was of the oldest type of soldier, the sort who tell the other fellows how to do it. The particular sort of war in which he found himself suited him exactly. He had the true Indian view of life, drill, breakfast, less drill, lunch, siesta, sport, dinner, cards. So he ruled the mess cook with a rod of iron, took disciplinary action if the stones that lined the path leading to the door of the ante-room and office were not properly white, and left the technical side of the business to Sergeant-instructors who, having recently escaped from the trenches, were really keen on it.

He received Dormer with that mixture of flattery due to anyone from Divisional Head-quarters and suspicion naturally aroused as to what he (Dormer) might be after. He was annoyed that he had not heard of Dormer’s arrival, and hastened to add:

“Not a very full parade this morning, units come and go, y’know. We can never be quite sure what we are going to get! What did you think of our show?”

Dormer realized that the old gentleman was under the impression he was being spied on:

“I really didn’t notice, sir. I have been sent to see the Officer commanding 469 Trench Mortar Battery. Matter of discipline arising out of a claim for compensation.”

“Oh, ah! Yes indeed. Certainly. See him now. Sergeant Innes!”

The efficient Scotch Sergeant to be found in all such places appeared from the outer office.

“Have we anyone here from 469 T.M.B.?”

The officer required was duly produced, and the Colonel retired to the Mess, leaving them together. Dormer sized up this fellow with whom he was thus brought into momentary contact. This became by necessity almost a fine art, during years of war. Dormer was fairly proficient. The fellow opposite to him was of the same sort as himself. Probably in insurance or stockbroking, not quite the examination look of the Civil Service, not the dead certainty of banking. He had obviously enlisted, been gradually squeezed up to the point of a Commission, had had his months in the line and had taken to Trench Mortars because they offered the feeling of really doing something, together with slightly improved conditions (hand-carts could be made to hold more food, drink and blankets than mere packs) and was getting along as well as he could. He heard what Dormer wanted and his face cleared.

“Why, that’s last April. I couldn’t tell you anything about that. I was in Egypt!”

“You don’t know of any officer in your unit who could give some information about the occurrence?”

“No. There’s only young Sands, beside myself. He couldn’t have been there.”

“Some N.C.O. then?”

“Heavens, man, where d’you think we’ve been? All the N.C.O.’s are new since I was with the crowd!”

“But surely there must be some record of men who were with your unit?”

“Well, of course, the pay rolls go back to Base somewhere. But I suppose you can pick the name and number up from the conduct sheet.”

“You see, I don’t know the man’s name. His number was given as 6494.”

“That’s a joke, of course. It’s the number that the cooks sing out, when we hold the last Sick Parade, before going up the line.”

“Of course it is. You’re right. I ought to have remembered that, but I’ve been away from my regiment for some time.” Dormer pondered a moment, relieved. Then the thought of going back to the Q. office with nothing settled, and the queries of the French Mission and the whole beastly affair hanging over his head, drove him on again. He made his air a little heavier, more Divisional, less friendly.

“Well, I’m afraid this won’t do, you know. This matter has got to be cleared up. It will be very awkward if I have to go back and inform Head-quarters that you can’t furnish any information. In fact, they will probably think it’s a case of not wanting to know, and make a regular Court of Inquiry of it.”

He watched the face of the other, and saw in a moment how well he had calculated. The fellow was frightened. A mere unit commander, and a small unit at that! To such a one, of course, Divisional Head-quarters were something pretty near omniscient, certainly omnipotent. Dormer watched the fellow shift in the chair without a qualm. Let some one else be worried too. He himself had had worry enough. The face before him darkened, smirked deferentially, and then brightened.

“Oh, there was old Chirnside. He might know.”

“Who was he?”

“Chirnside? He was a sort of a quarter bloke. It was before we were properly formed, and he used to look after all our stores and orderly room business. He had been with the battery since its formation. We were just anybody, got together anyhow, chiefly from the infantry, you remember?”

Dormer saw the other glance at his shoulder straps and just refrain from calling him sir, poor wretch. He took down the information and thanked his friend. Chirnside had apparently gone to some stunt Corps, to do something about equipment. That was all right. He wouldn’t be killed.

Having got thus far, Dormer felt that he had done a good deal, and went to take his leave of Colonel Burgess. But he soon found that he was not to be allowed to get away like that. He was bidden to stay to lunch. There was no train from Bailleul until the evening and he was willing enough. The lunch was good. Food remained one of the things in which one could take an interest. He did so. After lunch the Colonel took him for a walk over the golf course. This was the margin of land around the range, on which no cultivation was allowed, and from which civilians were rigidly excluded, for safety’s sake. At least during range practice, which took place every day more or less, in the morning. After that, of course, they could be without difficulty excluded for the remainder of the day for a different, if not for so laudable a purpose.

The Colonel was a fine example of those qualities which have made an island Empire what it is. Having spent most of his life from sixteen years old at Sandhurst, then in India or Egypt, and finally at Eastbourne, he knew better than most men how to impose those institutions which he and his sort considered the only ones that made civilization possible, in the most unlikely places and upon the most disinclined of people. Dormer had seen it being done before, but marvelled more and more. Just as the Colonel, backed of course by a sufficient number of his like, and the right sort of faithful underling, had introduced tennis into India, duck-shooting into Egypt, and exclusiveness into Eastbourne, against every condition of climate or geographical position, native religion or custom, so now he had introduced golf into Flanders, and that in the height of a European War.

At the topmost point of the golf course, the Colonel stopped, and began to point out the beauties of the spot to Dormer. They were standing on one of those low gravelly hills that separate the valley of the Yser from that of the Lys. Northward, beyond Poperinghe, was a yet lower and greener ridge that shelved away out of sight toward Dunkirk. East lay Ypres, in an endless rumour of war. Southward, the Spanish towers of Bailleul showed where the road wound towards Lille, by Armentières. Westward, Cassel rose above those hillocks and plains, among the most fertile in the world. But the Colonel was most concerned with a big square old farmhouse, that lay amid its barns and meadows, at a crook in the Bailleul road.

The Colonel’s eyes took on a brighter blue and his moustache puffed out like fine white smoke.

“I had a lot of trouble with that fellow.” He pointed to the farm. “Wanted to come and cultivate the range. I had to get an interpreter to see him. Said he could grow--er--vegetables in between the shell-holes. At last we had to order afternoon practice to keep him off. Then he wanted this part of the land. Had to move the guns up and make some new bunkers. Four rounds makes a bunker, y’know. Come and have tea?”

It was very nice weather for walking, dry and clear. The Mess had seemed tolerable at lunch, but Dormer had not been long at tea before he recollected what he seldom forgot for more than an hour or so, that it was not tea, one of the fixed occasions of his safe and comfortable life. It was a meal taken under all the exigencies of a campaign--chlorinated water, condensed milk, army chair, boots and puttees on one, and on this particular afternoon a temperature below zero, in an army hut.

The Colonel, of course, occupied the place of warmth next the stove. The remainder of the Mess got as near to it as they could. The result was, that when the Colonel began to question him as to the object of his visit, and how he had progressed towards attaining it, everybody necessarily heard the whole of the conversation. He now realized that he was telling the tale for the fourth time. He had told it to Kavanagh, then to Colonel Birchin. Now he had told it to the Officer commanding 469 T.M.B. and finally here he was going over it again. He resented it as a mere nuisance, but was far from seeing at that moment the true implication of what he was doing. The matter was not a State secret. It was an ordinary piece of routine discipline, slightly swollen by its reactions in the French Mission, and by the enormous size and length of the War.

If he had refused to say why he was there the Colonel would certainly have put him down as having been sent by the Division, or some one even higher, to spy on the activities of the School. He didn’t want to be labelled as that, so told what he knew glibly enough. The Colonel waxed very voluble over it, gave good advice that was no earthly use, and dwelt at length on various aspects of the case. The French were grasping and difficult and superstitious, but on the other hand, drivers were a rough lot and must be kept in check. They were always doing damage. The fellow was quite right of course to look after his mules. The animals were in a shocking state, etc., etc., but quite wrong, of course, to damage civilian property, tradition of the British Army, since Wellington all the other way, the French naturally expected proper treatment, etc., etc.

Dormer had heard it all before, from Colonel Birchin, Major Stevenage and others, with exactly the same well-meant condescension, and the same grotesque ineffectiveness. This old Colonel, like all his sort, couldn’t solve the difficulty nor shut the French up, nor appease G.H.Q.

Presently, the old man went off to the orderly room to sign the day’s correspondence, the Mess thinned and Dormer dozed discreetly, he had had a poor night and was desperately sleepy. Some one came to wake him up and offered him a wash, and he was glad to move, stiff with cold, and only anxious to pass the time until he could get the midnight train from Bailleul. They were very hospitable, made much of him at dinner, and he ate and drank all he could get, being ravenous and hoping to sleep through the discomforts of the long train journey in the dark. He was getting fairly cheerful by the time the Colonel left the hut, and only became conscious, in the intervals of a learned and interesting discussion of the relative theories of wire-cutting, that a “rag” was in progress at the other end of the room.

A gunner officer, a young and happy boy who was still in the stage of thinking the War the greatest fun out, was holding a mock Court of Inquiry. Gradually, the “rag” got the better of the argument and Dormer found himself being addressed as “Gentlemen of the jury.” A target frame was brought in by some one to act as a witness-box, but the gunner genius who presided, soon had it erected into a sort of Punch and Judy Proscenium. Then only did it dawn on Dormer that the play was not Punch and Judy. It was the Mayor of Hondebecq being derided by the troops, with a Scotch officer in a kilt impersonating Madeleine Vanderlynden, and receiving with the greatest equanimity, various suggestions that ranged from the feebly funny to the strongly obscene. O.C. 469 T.M.B. found a willing column formed behind him which he had to lead round the table, an infantryman brought a wastepaper basket to make the Mayor’s top hat, and in the midst of other improvisations, Dormer discovered the gunner standing in front of him with a mock salute.

“Do you mind coming out of the Jury and taking your proper part?”

It was cheek, of course, but Dormer was not wearing red tabs, and beside, what was the use of standing on one’s dignity. He asked:

“What part do I play?”

“You’re Jack Ketch. You come on in the fourth Act, and land Nobby one on the nob!”

“I see. What are you?”

“Me? I’m the Devil. Watch me devilling,” and with a long map-roller he caught the players in turn resounding cracks upon their several heads.

They turned on him with common consent, and in the resulting struggle, the table broke and subsided with the whole company in an ignominious mass. The dust rose between the grey canvas-covered walls and the tin suspension lamp rocked like that of a ship at sea. Everybody picked themselves up, slightly sobered, and began to discuss how to get the damage repaired before the Colonel saw it in the morning.

O.C. 469 T.M.B. stood at Dormer’s elbow:

“We’ve just got time to catch your train.”

“Come on.” Dormer had no intention of being marooned in this place another day. Outside a cycle and side-car stood panting. Dormer did wonder as they whizzed down the rutted road how long such a vehicle had been upon the strength of a Trench Mortar School, but after all, could you blame fellows? They were existing under War conditions, what more could one ask?

* * * * *

He woke to the slow jolting of the train as it slowed up in smoky twilight at Boulogne. He bought some food, and sitting with it in his hands and his thermos between his knees, he watched the grey Picard day strengthen over those endless camps and hospitals, dumps and training grounds.

He was retracing his steps of the day before, but he was a step farther on. As he looked at the hundreds of thousands of khaki-clad figures, he realized something of what he had to do. With no name or number he had to find one of them, who could be proved to have been at a certain place a year ago. He didn’t want to, but if he didn’t, would he ever get rid of the business?

The “rag” of the previous evening stuck in his head. How true it was. The man who did the thing was “Nobby” with the number 6494 that was beginning to be folk-lore. Of course he was. He was any or every soldier. Madeleine Vanderlynden was the heroine. O.C. 469 T.M.B. was the hero. The Mayor of Hondebecq was the comic relief, and he, Dormer, was the villain. He was indeed Jack Ketch, the spoiler of the fun, the impotent figure-head of detested “Justice,” or “Law and Order.” And finally, as in all properly conducted Punch and Judy shows, the Devil came and took the lot. What had Dendrecourt said: “The Devil had taken the whole generation.” Well, it was all in the play. And when he realized this, as he slid on from Étaples down to Abbeville, he began to feel it was not he who was pursuing some unknown soldier in all that nation-in-arms that had grown from the British Expeditionary Force, but the Army--no, the War--that was pursuing him.

When he got out at Doullens, and scrounged a lift from a passing car, he found himself looking at the driver, at the endless transport on either side of the road, at the sentry on guard over the parked heavies in the yard of the jam factory, at the military policeman at the cross-roads. One or other of all these hundreds of thousands knew all about the beastly business that was engaging more and more of his mind. One or other of them could point to the man who was wanted.

He found himself furtively examining their faces, prepared for covert ridicule and suspicion, open ignorance or stupidity. He had, by now, travelled a long way from the first feelings he had about the affair, when he had thought of the perpetrator of the damage at Vanderlynden’s as a poor devil to be screened if possible. He wouldn’t screen him now. This was the effect of the new possibility that had arisen. He, Dormer, did not intend to be ridiculous.