Part 16

"She couldn't stand Papa's peaceful principles, so ran away from home and came to London. I employed her to drive my car for some time; but she left me. Said the work wasn't hard enough. She now supports herself on the stage, so as to have her days free for some sort of drudgery in a canteen."

"And you think that she and Roy still--

"Married, last August!" replied his lordship simply.

"_What?_"

"On the quiet--registry office! Wonderful, heavenly secret, and all that! How the young love a clandestine romance! And some of us never grow up!" added the old man complacently.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*THE LAST THROW*

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," said the Divisional Commander, "but I can't possibly let any unit proceed to rest areas at present. Our orders are to stand by, day and night, and be ready to move in any direction at an hour's notice. By the way, this is quite an informal meeting, so ask any questions you like."

"What is the latest news of the tactical situation, sir?" inquired the senior Brigadier, articulating the question that was on every one's lips.

We were gathered together at a Commanding Officers' Meeting. The Division had just emerged from four months of winter trench-warfare in the north--only to be diverted from its search for well-earned repose by an urgent summons to repair southward without delay to its ancient stamping-ground behind Albert. We had marched all night, to be intercepted at dawn by orders to bivouac where we stood. I myself was summoned to the meeting, hastily convened in a village school five miles farther on.

"It's a pretty sticky business all round," said the General frankly. "The situation appears to be this. As you know, it has been obvious for months that the Boche has been meditating a tremendous offensive against some part of the British front. The Commander-in-Chief, not having sufficient troops to give adequate protection to the whole of his line--

"Why _hasn't_ he sufficient troops?" inquired a voice--the voice of the C.R.A., a fiery old gentleman with a monocle. He was a coeval of the General's, so was qualified to act as cross-examiner for us lesser lights.

"It's not my business to explain, or ours to wonder. I can only give you the facts. Last year the British Army had, roughly speaking, one million casualties. This year the British Army is fighting in France, Belgium, Italy, Saloniki, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indian frontier, and East Africa; so you can imagine the clamour for reinforcements that is going on all over the globe. Thirdly, the French, not long ago, asked us to take over another twenty-eight miles of line. We did so; with the result that the C.-in-C. found himself in the position of having to decide, since he hadn't enough men to hold all the line securely, where he must hold on at all costs, and where he could afford to take chances. Obviously, he had to make the Straits of Dover impregnable; so the northern part of the line got the lion's share of troops. Down here, the Fifth Army were strung out to a beggarly bayonet per yard. North of them, the Third Army had about three bayonets to two yards. Opposite this line, during the past few weeks, the Boche was known to have accumulated a force averaging seven bayonets per yard--" A low murmur ran round the crowded little school-room. It was fully light now, and we could see one another's startled faces. "In other words, sixty or seventy divisions. Against that force we had available twenty-two divisions in the line, with twelve infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions in reserve. The attack opened six days ago. The Boches, as usual, had the Devil's own luck with the weather--thick mist--and were on us in a solid phalanx before we saw them at all. I may add that they were backed by the most terrific concentration of artillery fire on record, and raised unexpected Sheol in our back areas by a new very long range gas-shell. By all the rules they ought to have wiped us right out. But they didn't. We were bowled over again and again; but we always managed to re-form some sort of line--until the want of reserves began to tell, and brigades and divisions, thinned out to nothing, began to draw in upon themselves and leave gaps on their flanks. The cavalry worked like heroes to cover the intervals; but they couldn't be everywhere, and one position after another was outflanked and had to be given up. Noyon has gone; Peronne has gone; Monchy has gone; the whole Somme battle-field of Nineteen-Sixteen has gone. Even Albert"--there came a groan here from all of us who had fought in the Somme battle--"has fallen into Boche hands. Yes, I know! But things might be worse. Arras is holding fast; and the good old Vimy Ridge is still standing right up to them. It's tolerably certain now that the Boche was booked to get Amiens in three days. He hasn't got it; and if we can continue to make him pay his present price he will never get it at all."

There was small comfort in this. The very fact that Amiens had become a Boche possibility was a staggerer in itself. We thought of the Hotel du Rhin, and other haunts of ancient peace, and sighed.

"How is morale?" asked the C.R.A.

The General held up a paper.

"Here is the Commander-in-Chief's latest dispatch," he said. "Listen to this, gentlemen!"

_At no time was there anything approaching a breakdown of command or a failure of morale. Under conditions that made rest and sleep impossible for days together, officers and men remained undismayed, realising that for the time being they must play a waiting game, and determined to make the enemy pay the full price for the advantage which, for the moment, was his._

We broke into applause. We could not help it.

"Naturally," continued the General, "the strain has been awful, because we are employing tired men, fighting without reinforcements against ever fresh bodies of troops. However, more divisions are coming down from the north--you are one of the first arrivals--and Foch has taken supreme command, which means that hereafter the Allied forces will be more evenly distributed and the line stabilised. The long and short of it all is that the enemy has been frustrated, for the time being, in his amiable attempt to drive a wedge between the British and French armies."

"Still," said the voice of the C.R.A., "I suppose the situation is pretty critical?"

"Critical isn't the word! But the line is still intact, though badly bent, and we have beaten all our previous records for Boche-killing, which is saying something. And if they fail to break through--good-bye Germany! It's their last throw. A German who knows he cannot win is a German beaten. Now, gentlemen, you will understand why it is that you cannot go into retirement at present. That's all, I think! To your tents, O Israel--and breakfast! But be ready to move at an hour's notice."

Roy and I jogged wearily back across country to the field where the men were bivouacking. Roy was my senior company commander, and I had brought him to the meeting in preference to the adjutant, who was very young and already bowed down with regimental routine. Roy, a seasoned Ironside of twenty-two, with two-and-a-half years continuous active service to his record, was now my shield and buckler and right-hand man.

We had little to say to one another. We were both dog-tired, and were suffering in addition from that unpleasant form of reaction which comes from hope deferred. We were thinking, too, of the men. They had completed four months of exhausting and expensive trench duty, working by "internal reliefs," which really means no relief at all; each man staying his dour dogged heart with the only two consolations available in those days--the humdrum certainty of ultimate relief by another division, and the ever present possibility of a "Blighty" wound. And now, when they had actually packed up and removed out of the shell area, with a spell of rest and relaxation well within their grasp, they found themselves pulled back into the line. That sort of experience is a severer test of morale than an intensive bombardment. The danger was that they might go stale--just as I had once seen a highly-trained college crew go, when the races were postponed for a week owing to ice on the river.

"We will call a pow-wow when we get back," I said to Roy, "and tell the officers to explain matters to the men as well as they can. They must sing the usual song about our trusty old indispensable Division, the prop and stay of the weaker brethren, proudly filling the breach and saving the situation, and so forth."

"They'll respond all right," said Roy confidently. "They are a wonderful crowd."

"They certainly are; but it will break their hearts if they are shoved back for another spell of trench duty. Of course, if we go right into the scrap, with a fair chance to get above ground and grab the Boche by the ears, they won't mind at all--quite the reverse. It will be a perfect tonic."

"If half of what His Nibs said is true, they'll get all the tonic they want!" remarked my sage young companion. "We're for it, this time!"

He was right. Even at that moment our task had been assigned to us; for when we reached Battalion Headquarters--a G.S. waggon in the corner of a field, in the middle of which certain incurable greathearts were playing football--we found that the telephone had outstripped us, and that our orders were waiting.

We gobbled breakfast, with that curious mingling of sentiment and satisfaction which comes to men who are not sure if they will ever see a poached egg again. Then I summoned my officers. I passed on to them the substance of the General's statement, and spoke of the gaps that were being created in the line by lack of reinforcements.

"Such a gap," I explained, "has occurred almost directly in front of us, along the crest of a low ridge called Primrose Hill. (The Adjutant will give you the map reference in a minute.) The gap is being filled at present by a rather raw battalion of newly-arrived Territorials, rushed up from Corps Reserve. It is a very important point, and we are to go in and stiffen them. Written orders will be issued to you immediately; but it may save time if I mention that I propose to march the battalion direct to the back of Primrose Hill, deploy, and advance in lines of companies until we strike the trench system which the Royal Loyals are holding. In that way we ought to be able to plug any possible gap in the shortest possible time. We may have to advance through a barrage; but that, of course, is all in the day's work. Company commanders will take such precautions as are possible to ensure the safety of their men, but they must not waste time on this occasion looking for covered lines of advance. In other words, the situation is critical, and must be tackled bald-headed. The point of deployment, as at present fixed, is a blacksmith's forge on the road running direct from here to Primrose Hill. It is marked in the map, _Michelin Forge_; there's a big motor-tyre advertisement on the western gable, the Brigade Major tells me. I shall go there now myself, and establish temporary headquarters. Companies will move off independently in succession, A Company leading. Company commanders will report at Michelin Forge for further instructions. Later, after we have deployed and advanced up the reverse slope of Primrose Hill--it is a mere swelling in the ground, as a matter of fact--Battalion Headquarters will be established, if possible, in a _point d'appui_ just behind the crest, called Fountain Keep. It is a ruined ornamental garden, I believe, with the wreck of a fountain in the middle. I hope you'll all arrive there in due course--and find me there! That's all! Good luck to you!"

My officers saluted in a manner that warmed my heart, and hurried off to their duties. I felt sorry I had not been able to give them a more stirring harangue: I felt sure that Eric would have done so. Still, harangue or no harangue, I knew they would lead their men to the crest of Primrose Hill. I looked after them affectionately. Most of them I never saw again from that hour. But I remember them all to-day--their faces, their voices, their characteristics. They were of many types--the variegated types of a whole nation at last in arms. There were Public School and Sandhurst products, like Roy; there were promoted rankers, with permanently squared shoulders and little waxed moustaches; there were professional and business men verging on middle-age, who had long shed their stomachs and acquired a genuine passion for army forms and regimental routine. The last two figures that caught my eye were those of my machine-gun officer, a Mathematical Fellow of an ancient Cambridge college, and Adams, second-in-command of B Company, who in a previous existence had officiated as under gate-porter in the same foundation. The British Army in those days was one great ladder, up which all men, gentle or simple, might climb if they had the character and the will. In that army at the end of the war there was a Divisional General who had been editor of a newspaper; there was a Brigadier-General who had been a taxi-cab driver; another who had been a school-teacher. Numbered among that exclusive hierarchy, the General Staff, were an insurance clerk, an architect's assistant, and a college cook. A coal miner, a railway signalman, a market gardener, and countless promoted private soldiers commanded battalions.

A few minutes later I rode off with my adjutant, young Hume-Logan, in the direction of Michelin Forge. My faithful orderly--a gigantic, inarticulate Lowland hind named Herriott--jogged along in rear of us. It was a distressing ride. A badly mangled terrain, restored to France and cultivation by Hindenburg's operatic retirement to the Siegfried line, was being overrun once more: and the plucky, industrious peasant population, which had been so busily employed for the past twelve months in rebuilding their villages and re-ploughing their emancipated soil behind the traditionally sure shield of a British trench line, found itself uprooted and cast forth for the second time. The panic-stricken flood of refugees had now subsided; but along the road we encountered sights which wrung the heart and tweaked the conscience--here, a pitiful little cart loaded with worldly possessions which hardly seemed worth salving; there, a tired woman struggling along a muddy roadside with her children

_Respiciens frustra rura laresque sua_

--as Ovid used to say in the Repetition Book. I felt somehow, perhaps unjustifiably, but none the less poignantly, that for once the British Army had failed in a trust.

But presently I saw something which inspired me. Down the road came a big elderly peasant woman wheeling a barrow, piled high with household furniture. (You have to invade French peasant territory very suddenly and very early in the morning indeed, if you expect to find so much as an orange-box left to sit down upon.) We looked down on the barrow as it passed.

"She doesn't seem to have forgotten anything, sir," observed Master Hume-Logan.

I gave Madame a respectful salute as we rode past. Her hard features never relaxed. Instead, she set down her barrow by the roadside, turned round, and started back in the same direction as ourselves: in fact, she outstripped our two horses, which were walking delicately amid the puddles.

"She seems to have forgotten something, after all," I said.

But I was wrong. She had forgotten nothing. Two hundred yards along the road stood another wheelbarrow. In it--mute, helpless, patient--lay a very old man. The old woman seized the shafts of this barrow and began to wheel it after the first. In so doing she met us again--and again I saluted her. We turned in our saddles and looked after her. At her original halting-place she deposited the second barrow as close to the side of the road as possible, turned again to the first, and trundled it forward, without a moment's rest, another hundred yards or so. When last we saw her she was coming back--grim, resolute, invincible--for the old man. She _was_ France--La Patrie, incarnate!

At last we penetrated beyond what we may call the refugee zone, and arrived at Michelin Forge. There was little of it left save the western gable, which was still decorated by a tattered presentment of two pre-war friends, the Bibendum Twins. The low ridge of Primrose Hill defined the horizon about a mile or two ahead of us. It was nothing of a hill; it looked no higher than its namesake in distant "N.W." A quarter-of-a-mile away from us enemy shells were falling with Teutonic regularity of interval into a group of poor houses, clustered round a cross-roads. Over the ridge itself shrapnel was bursting intermittently. Away to our left a large canteen hut was burning fiercely: probably it had been cleared and set alight to save it from falling into enemy hands. To the right of the forge a battery of our Four-point-Five Howitzers was firing salvoes--securely dug in, and screened from aeroplane view by nets interwoven with leaves and twigs. When, to the great content of our horses, this performance ceased, I rode over and sought out the young officer in command. He had not shaved for a week, and his quite creditable beard was encrusted with mud.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I can tell you a little. The enemy are in force just beyond that low ridge--Primrose Hill. We are strafing them now. Our F.O.O. is somewhere in Fountain Keep, which is a strong point just behind the crest, with one or two observation posts stretching over it. He has direct observation; his last telephone-message said that the enemy were massing again behind their own second line. I haven't heard from him since: that's why I stopped firing. Something gone wrong with the works, I expect."

"What's the distance from here to the ridge?" I asked.

"Well, we are firing at a range of four thousand three hundred; but that, of course, reaches Boche territory. The range to the crest is about three thousand five hundred."

"I see; a brisk country walk of about two miles? I shall deploy here. Has the Boche been shelling the reverse slope of the hill at all?"

"Not lately. But yesterday afternoon, during a big attack, he put down a heavy barrage from end to end of it."

"Hum! That means that when he attacks again he will put down another heavy barrage. The sooner we get to the crest of that hill the better."

I was turning away, when the gunner said:

"There's a sunken road over there, sir, behind that hedge. It runs straight towards Primrose Hill for nearly a mile, and ends where the gradient really begins. If you followed that you could get shelter for a bit, and need not take open order quite so soon."

"That's good advice," I said. "I will have a look at it. Is there much going on in the air at present?"

"They set one of our sausage-balloons on fire early this morning. The observer got down all right in his parachute; but I fancy the heavies behind us are a bit in the dark about things, in consequence."

"How are the gas-works?"

"They put mustard down with their last barrage."

"Any aeroplanes been over?"

"One Boche machine came over at dawn, but our Archies hunted him back. This battery hasn't been spotted so far; but I expect we shall have to limber up and do another Hindenburg act presently; we have been doing nothing else for a week. A fortnight ago we were in rest billets about here, running about and playing football and going to the pictures! It's a bit thick!" he grunted ruefully, through his mask of dirt.

"We are to go in and stiffen the line ahead of us," I said. "You stay where you are, and back us! Here's my leading company coming up now. Good-morning!"

"Good-morning, sir, and good luck!"

The gunner hurried back to his camouflaged emplacements, and I turned to find Roy at my elbow.

"A message came through from brigade, sir," he said, "just after you left, to say that the enemy were massing heavily opposite Primrose Hill, and that we were to get up as soon as possible."

"Right! Let us have a look at a covered approach I have just heard about."

We crossed a meadow and looked over a hedge. Sure enough, at our very feet lay a deep cutting, following the line of the hedge towards Primrose Hill.

"Bring your company over here," I said, "and start them up this thoroughfare for all they're worth. Have the signallers arrived?"

"Yes, sir; they came with me."

"Tell the signal sergeant to establish telephone communication with Brigade Headquarters as quickly as he can." I turned to that faithful shadow, my adjutant. "Notify the other companies as they arrive--to this effect." I scribbled an order. "Explain to Major Wylie"--Major Wylie was my second in command--"that I have gone ahead with A Company. He will take charge of affairs here and maintain communication as far as possible from front to rear. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good! Ah! here is Captain Birnie, with A Company. Now, Roy, young fellow-my-lad, what about it?"

Five minutes later Roy and I were heading up the sunken lane, followed by A Company, with steel helmets adjusted and gas-masks at the ready.

"By rights," I grunted, "I suppose I ought to be sitting in Michelin Forge maintaining touch with Brigade Headquarters. But I think this is going to be one of those occasions upon which a C.O. is justified in leading his regiment from the front. I am fed up with this Duke of Plaza Toro business."

Roy did not reply. He struck me as a little _distrait_, which did not altogether surprise me, considering that we were both going, in all probability, straight to an early demise. In fact, I was feeling a little _distrait_ myself. But this was no time for preoccupation. Progress along the lane was not too easy. There was a good deal of traffic coming the other way--stragglers, stretcher-cases, walking wounded, and dispatch-riders urging their reluctant motor-cycles through a river of mud. Phlegmatic cave-dwellers in dug-outs in the banks of the lane, mainly signallers, looked out upon us, exchanging grisly jests with my followers. Sappers, imperturbable as ever, were running out wire across an open space to the right. A water-party met us, jangling empty petrol-cans. At one point we passed a row of our dead, awaiting removal. On nearly every sleeve I noticed one, two, or even three gold stripes. It seemed desperately hard that The Willing Horse, healed three times of his wounds, should have gone down for good so near the end--as the event proved it to be--when others had never left the stable.

Presently we overtook a slow-moving procession, advancing with that injured bearing and gait which mark Thomas Atkins when employed upon an uncongenial job. They were a fatigue party, carrying enormous trench-mortar bombs.

"We can never get past this crowd," I said to Roy. "We'll climb out here, and deploy to the left."

Roy gave the order, and soon A Company were advancing in extended formation with their faces set towards Fountain Keep. Roy and I tramped ahead of them: the ridge of Primrose Hill was barely a thousand yards away now. The morning mists had cleared away, and we could see it quite distinctly.

Suddenly Roy turned to me.

"Uncle Alan," he began--

But he got no further. There came a roar and a shock that shook the ground. Five hundred yards ahead of us the brown face of Primrose Hill broke into a spouting row of earth-fountains, intermingled with the smoke of shrapnel and whizz-bangs. The evening's barrage had begun. The line of men behind us recoiled for a moment, then pressed stolidly forward.

"We have got to get through that," I announced--a little superfluously.

Roy replied--somewhat unexpectedly--right in my left ear, at the top of his voice:

"Uncle Alan, I want to tell you that I am married!"