CHAPTER X

AN INTERLUDE

_... As many ways meet in one town; As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial's centre; So may a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat._

There is something more than magic in the poetry of Shakespeare's _Henry V._ when it is read to illustrate the stirring events of these opening phases of the War. To set it side by side with the recital of the story is to listen to the voice of a singer supported by the gravely-sounding, deep-toned brass instruments of an orchestra.

There is more than beauty of accompaniment, there is the magic of prophecy. I can hardly find an incident of those August days which was not mirrored three centuries ago in the verse of this play. Thus, I have sought in no other for the musical preludes of my chapters; and I confess often to have rubbed my eyes in astonishment at the aptness of the poetry to the incidents of the moment.

Now those few bars of introduction suggest another _motif_; let me try to expand the theme a little.

In reading the cold, semi-official language which states that the British Force halted at such and such an hour along a line extending from So-and-So to Somewhere, one is apt to gain an impression which is far removed from reality.

You picture, perhaps, the various units retiring along routes carefully assigned by gilded Staff officers, and duly arriving at the scheduled times in various villages and hamlets. That there they are met by courteous billeting parties, who proceed to allot the men to more or less unwilling householders. That at the hour specified in the report you find the Dorsets in one place, the Irish Guards next to them, the batteries with their guns neatly parked, and so on all down the line. The various H.Q.'s of Brigades, Divisions or Corps all in readily accessible spots, and everybody connected up with everybody else by telegraph or telephone, so that any unit can be set in motion at any minute.

That is the ideal. Well, that delightful ideal first assumed definite shape after the Battle of the Marne and not before. Here is a little sketch of a tiny village on the line of retreat on the evening of Tuesday, August 25th:

M. le maire, old Pierre Godolphin, sat slowly pulling at a new clay pipe as he looked with unseeing eyes up the long dusty road which led out of the village away over the northern uplands. A trimly kept hedge of privet bordered his rose-garden and the road, and his favourite seat was set in a little niche of the greenery whence he could command all that went on in his tiny kingdom and, without moving, could see exactly what Madame la Femme du Maire was about in the stone-flagged kitchen.

That afternoon an avalanche of three-ton motor lorries had descended upon the village, weird vehicles which announced in blatant language the superiority over all others of Mayflower's margarine or the outstanding merits of Pulltite's corsets. The men in authority were obviously, from their uniforms, English officers, and not travellers for the firms in question. But, frankly, old Pierre was puzzled. They had come from the south, and why did they not continue their journey? Two of the officers were actually proposing to stay with him, for an indefinite period.

M. le boulanger walked slowly across the road to confer with him about the baking of more bread. "But these English are like a locust swarm, and I have no more flour," he explained.

"A glass of cider for monsieur, Henriette."

"I do not understand," Pierre went on, "what it is ces braves garçons do here. It is the third week of war, and by now surely ces bêtes de Boches should have been driven back into their own pigsties---- Mais, nom de Dieu, qu'est ce que c'est?"

Down the village street a four-seater car came lurching from side to side like a drunken man. Crash! It has caught a stone post and turned over. In an instant the road is full of people running.

Two men lay dazed as they had been thrown out. Both in the yellow-green uniform of the British, one, certainly, an officer. Willing hands lift them tenderly, and someone dashes a jug of water over their heads. Then one sees what has happened.

Between the shoulders on the officer's tunic there is spreading a great dark stain. Very carefully they take off the coat and shirt and try to stanch the blood. But it is too late; there is a bullet through the lungs, and, with a little gasp, the officer lies still.

In a few minutes the other man recovers sufficiently to tell how they were taking a dispatch through to the rear. The officer was driving the car when they ran straight into a patrol of enemy cavalry. They had got through, but the enemy opened fire, and now his officer lies dead. Things are going badly up there--and the man vaguely indicates the country up north: our men are retiring as hard as they can; whole regiments are getting wiped out; and "Gawd knows where the French are." Can he get a motor-bike to take on the message?

An A.S.C. officer runs for his car, the man is put in, and off they start again.

Only the A.S.C. lorry drivers understood the story, but the villagers were quick to realise that something serious was happening. Old Pierre remembered 1870, and he knew what war meant; but to the rest it was a new, hideous thing, dimly realised, but now, at last, with this mute witness before them, very real.

Then things began to happen. No one ever knows how a crowd will spring up in a city street, apparently by magic, and here suddenly the village began to fill with men.

Four soldiers--two Scots, a Dorset and a Bedford man--black with grime, three days' growth of beard, hollow-eyed and limping painfully, appeared in front of Pierre and asked where they were to go. A captain of the Guards, riding a tired farm-horse, with a colonel walking by his side, one hand on the horse's flank, came behind, and, tackling the A.S.C. captain, asked for something to eat.

"We've been on the trudge for twelve hours," said the colonel, "and could get nothing. No one knows where anyone is. The regiment? Badly cut up last night and all scattered, heaven knows where."

"Is the mayor about anywhere?" And a young Staff officer, with a French interpreter, pushes his way through the crowd.

"A cavalry brigade (or what's left of it"--he adds in an undertone) "will be here to-night. What barns and houses have you available? How much hay can you get?"

Old Pierre is beginning to lose his wits in the amazing turn of events.

"If monsieur will come into the house I will try to arrange."

The officer follows, with a shrug of the shoulders which might have meant many things.

The long summer's day is closing, but there is no hint of the evening's cool in the heavy air. All over the little village green, where the church tower has thrown a grateful shadow, lie groups of men worn with exhaustion and sleeping with gulping breaths. In one corner Henriette is busy with water and clean linen, bathing and bandaging horrible, staring wounds. And the men lie patiently, with now and then a moan of pain, gazing up at her with the great round eyes of a hurt collie dog.

And now the vanguard of the retiring army begins to stream in and through--all arms, all regiments. Overhead a flight of aeroplanes circle, like homing pigeons, seeking where they may alight. It is incredible that these are the regiments which a little ten days ago swung gaily down the Aldershot roads.

At the head of the column there marches a field battery. Two days ago the major took it into action six guns and wagons strong, with perhaps a couple of hundred men; so proud in his command, his men, his horses.

Now, stand by the path and watch the battery pass! And, as it passes, uncover your head, for it has returned from the very gates of Death.

Two guns--with three horses each to draw them. There are still four drivers left, and there are still half a dozen gunners. On the first limber ride a subaltern and the sergeant-major, and by the gun walk another sergeant and the quartermaster-sergeant. That is the battery.

On the second limber three men sit, swaying dizzily. A captain of a cavalry regiment and two privates of a Scottish regiment.

Here marches a battalion of the Guards. Two days ago it went into action perhaps 1,100 strong. Uncover your head once again as it passes, for these men too have looked Death in the face.

At the head there paces slowly an ammunition mule. On it, wearing a peasant's slouch hat, with breeches cut off above the knees, and with left arm held close by a rough bandage, there rides the colonel. Count the men as they march past in fours: 80, 120, 160, 180, 220. No, that is the next regiment you are counting in. Just 200! That is the tale of them.

Blackened by dust and powder, bearded, breeches cut short like those of their commanding officer, the few puttees that are left to them wrapped round their feet for boots--otherwise bits of sacking or cloth, bloody bandages round heads or arms, some with hats like the colonel's, most with none at all slowly they limp by. And, as they pass, the A.S.C. drivers silently offer such biscuits or bread as they have. God, how they wolf the food!

The colonel turns round on his "charger," and in a hoarse shout:

"Battalion! 'Tention! Pull yourselves together, lads; a French village!"

Ah, the pride of them! The glory of race and blood! This is not the Mons country, with its blood-soaked memories; 'tis the Horse Guards Parade, and we're Trooping the Colour!

The click of rifles coming to the slope runs down the ranks. The fours line by magic as the men straighten themselves; it is a new regiment, marching into action, which the French villagers see pass before them.

"Defeat? Why, this is part of the joke! Just to draw the Germans on into the trap." And at a word they would have turned to charge an army corps.

And so the regiments pass. And as the last of the Division goes through, lights twinkle from the tiny windows of the cottages and the great yellow moon climbs slowly over the poplar trees. An A.S.C. sergeant mounts a lorry with a copy of the Paris _Daily Mail_ in his hand, and entertains an ever-growing audience with the news that the Russians have invaded Germany and are marching on Berlin.

"It will be all over by Christmas--but I'd 'ave liked just one slap at them Germans, so as I could tell the missis," says a late bus-driver.

But on the outskirts of the crowd the Staff officer is talking to the A.S.C. captain:

"I've no orders for you, but you've evidently been forgotten. You ought to have had your park fifteen miles farther south by now. Things are bad, and there will be the hell of a scrap round here to-morrow morning. I should clear out if I were you."

Away up to the north there is a blinding electric glare coming fast down the road. Nearer, and it is the headlight on the first of a long train of R.F.C. light motor-lorries, slipping silently down on rubber tires. The dust rises in clouds above and about them. Half-way through the village a motor-cyclist rides, meeting them. The dust takes his shadow, and as he approaches the headlight the silhouette rises higher and higher until it mounts to the sky and disappears. Just as when children play a shadow pantomime and vanish by jumping over the lamp.

The lorries pass, and the dust slowly settles once more. The little lights twinkle clearly again, and the moon now floods the countryside in a sheen of silver.

But the A.S.C. captain talks earnestly with his sergeant-major and M. le maire.

"We must move, but how can we possibly carry all those wounded and stragglers?"

M. le maire is of opinion that as _les Boches_ are being driven back into Germany, the wounded might well remain until ambulances can be got.

The O.C. looks at his sergeant-major. They have both guessed the meaning of that retirement, and they guess also something that they dare not tell the mayor.

A few minutes suffice to rouse all the men and to get the wounded made as comfortable as possible in the lorries. Lights are switched on the cars, and within half an hour the column is clear of the village on its way south.

An hour later the advance patrols of a German cavalry division ride in from the north; and old Pierre finds that the hay he had collected for _les anglais_ does not go very far with his new visitors.

Poor old Pierre, and Madame the mayoress, and the pretty little rose-garden!

Such is a little pen-picture, not one whit exaggerated, of an evening of the Retreat. And perhaps those few lines will serve to convey some trifling idea of the wonder of the achievement.

Everywhere regiments and units forgotten, or lost, or acting on their own initiative. And yet, somehow or other, making a composite whole to turn and repel the attacking hordes. Staff work practically ceased to exist, and yet the threads of communication held fast, though only by a little.

Now you have had a glimpse of the men who, the very next day, fought _and won_ perhaps the most glorious fight a British Army has ever shared in.

So may a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat.