Part 7

For the next five hours the firing continued, sometimes dying down, sometimes swelling to a sharp volley. Ammunition boxes arrived and were emptied. There were moments of acute anxiety when the supply seemed running short. Each man was told to keep fifteen rounds by him at all costs to meet a charge. Sergeant X bent steadily over his rifle, pumping lead into the dark patch where the enemy appeared to be. Sometimes I could hear guttural voices and harsh words of command, somewhere away there in the blackness the enemy were lying. I could see clearly for about forty yards. Would masses of dark shapes suddenly appear? They should have ten rounds from the rifle, then six from the revolver, and then the bayonet would be left. Furtively under cover of the parapet I lit a cigarette, and holding it well screened from the front, puffed big satisfying gasps. All the while the rifles rattled like the sharp ticking of a clock.

The firing grew quieter, and from the front there was now only an occasional shot. I suddenly felt sleepy, as though lulled by the rattle of the rifle fire. I sat down a moment on the edge of my dug-out.

"Mr. Mulligan's compliments, and could you tell him the time, sir?" I pulled myself together with a start. By Jove, I had nearly been asleep. "What's the time, sergeant?" I asked. There was no reply. Sergeant X was nodding as he stood, arms folded over his rifle. He, too, as the firing died down had been overcome by sleep. I sent back the time to Mulligan, each man passing the message to the man next him.

"Mr. Mulligan's compliments, and would you like a biscuit, sir?" A biscuit was pressed into my hand which had come the same way as the message.

"Mr. ----'s compliments to Mr. Mulligan, and would he care for a piece of cheese?" I wrapped a piece of cheese in a piece of paper and sent it back.

So we kept passing messages to one another all through the night, and no man slept. With the enemy a hundred yards away it was advisable they should not; but, like Sergeant X and myself, each, once the fierce strain of firing had passed, found the inclination wellnigh irresistible.

At last the dawn broke, and we saw the ground clear in front of us.

XII. THE FARM IN THE FIRING-LINE

A farm lay behind our trench. Just in front of the farm there ran a wooden fence. This fence had been loopholed and banked with earth, and was now held by a platoon of infantry. Trenches ran to the right and left in continuation of the fence, and were manned by the remaining platoons of the company. For two days now the enemy had attacked the farm, and all through the past night bullets had come smack-smack against the walls, like heavy hailstones. It was a fair-sized farm built round a yard, three sides grain lofts and cattle sheds and the remaining side a dwelling-place. The company commander, the company sergeant-major, the stretcher-bearers, and others who were attached to company headquarters were standing about in the yard. One or two of the men had their coats off and were shaving and washing in buckets of water.

As there had been no firing since dawn, and the enemy had evidently withdrawn after their unsuccessful attack during the night, Evans and I left our platoons and came into the farm.

Goyle, like the wise company commander he was, made no comment on our having left our trenches, relying on us to know when we ought to go back, and said that there was a room in the farm which the farmer's wife had set apart for the officers, and that we should find some food inside. This room, which was evidently the best parlour, was approached through the kitchen which opened on the front door.

Never shall I forget the sight as I opened the front door and looked into the kitchen. The small stone-flagged room was filled with civilians. These were evidently peasants from outlying cottages who had left their homes when the fighting began and flocked to the farm as a central place of refuge. At a wooden table sat a party of four women, two with children. One woman was weeping bitterly. The others were trying to console her. All were drinking from bowls of soup. The farmer's wife was stirring a fresh pot of soup over the stove. She was a fine-looking woman, with proud, sad eyes. Seeing Evans and me standing at the door, she beckoned to us to come in, and gave us each a cup of soup. Beside the stove sat an old, old man, his head resting against his hand, staring fixedly before him.

Sometimes he moaned gently. He sat like this all day, refusing to talk to anybody, or to eat anything, or to be comforted. The farmer's wife told us that the day before a shell had hit his cottage and killed his horse. He was the village carrier. The horse was perhaps as old as himself--as horses' years are measured--still it had been his companion and means of livelihood, and now it was taken from him. He could not understand it all--why the shell had come to wreck his home and kill his horse. He just sat there moaning and staring before him. We turned away. Neither we nor the farmer's wife could do anything. But with the weeping woman at the table it might be different. The farmer's wife thought that we, being British officers, could do something. She brought the woman up to us and she told us her tale. Her husband, it seemed, had been hit by a bullet while working in his field. He now lay out there wounded. She could not say she was sure if he was dead, but could we go and get him in. They had fired at her when she tried to go out to him. It was terrible to feel he was still lying there. We asked where the field was and then looked at each other helplessly. It lay in no man's land, between ours and the German lines. Perhaps at night, but for the rest of the day, no--we could do nothing. While we were drinking our soup two more refugees came in: a broken-looking middle-aged peasant, with red-rimmed eyes and thin shambling legs, and his wife. He was clinging round his wife's neck, tears pouring from the red-rimmed eyes. He, too, like the old peasant by the stove, was speechless; his wife told us that the Germans had taken him and made him march in front of them for three days.

She repeated the words "_trois jours_," her voice shaking with passion. The farmer's wife set the couple at the table and gave them soup from the pot. I wondered that she, too, did not join in the general weeping; but she went quietly and sadly about her work, saying little, giving food and drink to the afflicted people who had come to her kitchen, tending her pots and pans and fire. She asked no questions about the enemy, where they were or when we should drive them from the farm. She showed no signs of the night of terror she must have passed as the fight raged about her house. It was as though she stood for the spirit of France, proud to suffer for her country, confident in the prowess of her men, and patient and undoubting that they would succeed.

Later, when Goyle came, she ushered us all into the parlour she had reserved for our use. She watched us for a moment as we opened a tin of bully beef and pulled some biscuits from our pockets, and then, motioning to us to put these things away, began to dust the table and lay a cloth. In a short while she had put before us a dainty lunch, soup, boiled chicken, a stew of vegetables, coffee, and cheese. We would have preferred our servants to have done the cooking and waited on ourselves, so that she could look after her own people, but she insisted on doing everything herself, bringing each dish in. We asked her if we could do anything for her, and she drew up a methodical list of things she wanted from a neighbouring village--coffee, rice, flour, and oil for her lamp. I got up to get these things, and at the door she stopped me and pressed her well-worn purse into my hand to buy the things. I had difficulty in making her take the money back.

Outside the farm I found a party of men burying one of the company who had been killed in the night. They had wrapped him in his coat, and were digging a rough grave by the roadside. One of the men was at work on a wooden cross made of two bits of board from the lid of a ration-box. He had scrawled R.I.P. and the date in large letters, and was laboriously tracing out the dead man's name and number.

The village where I was to get the provisions lay about half a mile away along an open, desolate road. All along the road men lay entrenched. The word had gone round that the enemy had withdrawn, and most of the men were sleeping beside their rifles. Some of the inhabitants of the village were coming back after the attack, and I found a tiny store open where I could get the things the farmer's wife required. On my way back I passed a wine shop, which was crowded with peasants, all talking and drinking coffee and little glasses of rum.

I wondered what they thought of it all, and imagined they were too bewildered to have any opinions. On all their faces were evident signs of satisfaction at being able to return to the village. They thought that the "_boches_" were by now probably running back hard to Germany, and all would be over in a few days.

As I stood in the doorway three civilian youths approached, two of them supporting a third between them. The lad in the middle looked white and scarcely able to stand. I went up to see if I could do anything. The two with him told me that they had found the boy lying in a field; he had been hit in five places by shrapnel. They thought he must have been lying there unattended for three days. The boy himself watched me with dumb, pain-ridden eyes. Very weakly and slowly he raised his hand to his mouth and pointed to his tongue, which was black and swollen. "_Soif_," he whispered. Of course, he had had no water all the time. I had him taken into a cottage and laid on a table. I got a glass of water from a well and held it to his lips. He was too weak to raise his head, but his friends supported him, and he drank the water slowly and steadily. As he drank a little smile played about his lips, and when the glass was empty, before they laid him down, he nodded his head and smiled at me as only those smile for whom one has done some last service and whose life is nearly done.

I made my way back to the farm with sickness in my heart. Not all the fighting nor the strain of war had affected me as the sight of those suffering, helpless people whose ground we were using for our battlefield.

That night we said good-bye to the farmer's wife and pushed on beyond the farm. We were all happy to feel we were leaving her behind the security of our lines. As she stood at the door and watched us go there was still the same look in her eyes as when we came--a look of sadness, resignation, and infinite courage.

XIII. PUSHING FORWARD

An hour before dawn the men stood to their arms in the trenches, but as the daylight grew and there was no sound or sight of the enemy, first one man and then another got out of the trench. These being allowed to walk about with impunity the others soon followed their example. Fires were lit for cooking, and men spread themselves on the ground behind the trench reading old copies of newspapers, or mending their clothes, or cleaning their rifles. Here and there parties could be seen carrying away corpses which had been stiff and cold behind the trench for the last forty-eight hours. Goyle, my company commander, walked across from his headquarters. The day before it had been impossible for him to get to us, and messages were brought by orderlies, who crawled up on their stomachs along a narrow ditch.

"Morning," said Goyle; "looks as though they had cleared."

"Yes, sir," I answered, "there has been no sign of anything ahead this morning."

"I reckon that was their transport we heard, sir--they was rumbling along a road there, sir, all the night," said my platoon-sergeant.

The man was probably right, for all through the night a rumbling of wagons had been plainly audible along a road behind the enemy's lines. The night before we had been attacked fiercely, but though they had come very near us they had not been able to break through. During the day the enemy had remained quiet, contenting themselves with sniping, and now evidently, under cover of darkness, they had withdrawn to another position.

"Well, I suppose we shall push on now," I said to Goyle.

"Yes, I expect so," he answered.

Our orders to advance came at four o'clock. Goyle came down to give the necessary instructions to platoon commanders. We were to push forward straight to our front, keeping under cover as much as possible. He said he believed that the ground was all clear in front of us, but that it would be as well to take precautions.

Evans and I therefore led our platoons down a ditch which led direct to the front. We eventually came out by a large farm building which a day or two ago had been in the hands of the Germans. It had been known to the British troops as "the hospital," because the Germans had hoisted a Red Cross flag on a pole on the roof. But "the hospital" had also been used by the enemy as an observing station, and our guns had been obliged to shell it on two or three occasions. We examined the building with interest. The place was evidently a dairy farm on a large scale, for three sides were cowsheds, and there was a big store of hay. At the far end was the dwelling-house, over which the Red Cross had been hoisted. The place had perhaps been used as a hospital, for in the bottom room we found a long riding boot, which had been cut off a wounded man, and a blood-soaked pair of the well-known blue-grey breeches. However, on going up on to the roof we found the facilities for seeing over our lines so remarkable that the shells from our guns were evidently justly placed.

I made the tour of the farm with the doctor of the Dorchesters, who was thinking of taking it over as a hospital himself. When we came down from the roof we found two farm girls outside. They asked us anxiously if it would be safe for them to stay there that night, and we assured them it would. They said they had gone off a mile or two for two or three days, but now they had come back to look after the cows. They were a pair of very cool young ladies, who seemed to regard the German occupation of their farm as no more than a heavy rainstorm, to be avoided while it lasted, but not to be worried about once it was over. The doctor and I went round to look at the cowsheds. The beasts were all in their stalls, some evidently suffering a good deal from want of milking. In the first shed we came to there was a most appalling stench. The doctor sniffed and said he thought it was something dead. We examined the cows that were lying down, but they were all alive. Then the doctor made an orderly rake over all the straw. He said that the Germans had a habit of hiding dead men under straw, if they were vacating a place, just by way of providing a pleasant surprise for any tired British soldiers who might make the straw their bed. However, there were no corpses in the cowshed, and we never discovered the cause of the smell, though it was strong and nasty enough to prevent my ever forgetting it.

On coming out of the farm I found the Dorchester Regiment passing by. After lying about in a trench, hardly seeing more than the men in one's own platoon, it was quite a change to see another regiment and have a talk to the officers about their experiences in the past few days. It was interesting to hear how the next-door regiment had fared in the night attack, and if they had met much opposition in gaining the village they had been told to take. One subaltern, with a scrubby ten days' growth of beard on his chin, grinned as though he thought he knew me as he went by, and said: "Who'd have thought we were being brought up to do this?"

I looked at him, and suddenly recognized a fellow who had been a cadet with me at Sandhurst. It did, indeed, seem droll to look back on the days when we had drilled in the same squad together and studied tactics in the same class, without ever, I am afraid, any serious thoughts of war. Well, anyway, now our learning was being put to the test, and as I watched the boy now become a man march by with his company, all muddy from the trenches, with his few worldly possessions slung from his belt, I thought that he, at any rate, was a good advertisement for Sandhurst.

"Where are you going--do you know?" I called.

He shrugged his shoulders and pointed away across the fields. It was growing dusk, and I began to wonder where we were going. We had been halted by the farm some time now. I turned back to my platoon, who were lying on some straw against a wall. I thought I would go and find some of the other platoon commanders and hear if there was any news. But this plan was frustrated, Evans and the others were nowhere to be found. I asked my sergeant if he knew where the rest of the company was. He said he did not. It was my business, of course, not his, to know, and he--wretched man--having been asleep, knew this perfectly well. After a search round the farm I came to the conclusion that the company had gone off somewhere and that I was left. Here was a pretty kettle of fish. Goyle would not thank me for losing a whole platoon. The company must be found again at once. The difficulty was they might have gone off in any direction. I questioned the men. Some thought they had seen the captain going back the way we had come; others had seen nothing. To go back the way we had come would probably be putting oneself too far back if wanted. I eventually decided to cut straight across a field and reach a road which would take me to the same village as the Dorchesters were going to. In this way I should have them between myself and the enemy, and so eliminate the risk of being cut off, and also should be moving along towards the enemy in the same direction as presumably my company was moving.

It was by now quite dark, and, crossing the field, we nearly fell into an empty trench which the Germans had held. The most noticeable thing about the trench was the murderous field of fire it afforded. The trench had evidently been sighted by a past master in the art of war.

On reaching the road I decided to stay there for a while until some one came along from whom I could ask questions. It was rather jumpy work to be isolated by oneself with a platoon without quite knowing where one was. To my great relief, after a few minutes a company from my regiment came along, followed by Goyle at the head of my own company, and I was able to join up. It appeared that in the interval since we had parted the company had been ordered to entrench themselves in three different places, and then moved on again, and so, as Goyle did not seem to mind once I had joined up again safely, I was very glad I had missed all the unnecessary excitement. It was characteristic of Goyle that he never found fault with anything his subalterns did unless it led to trouble. As I had got there all right somehow, and not been wanted in the meantime, he did not blame me for getting lost.

We marched along for a little way down the road, and then swung to the right down another road, which led through a straggling village. The cottages were all in darkness, but they looked very inviting, and I think each man wished heartily that he was going to sleep in one instead of marching on into the night.

After passing through the village we came out on to a straight road flanked by two deep ditches. After going a few hundred yards along this road we were told to halt, climb over the ditch, and entrench. This we did.

When all was snug and compact for the night Goyle and I went back to the village to let the Dorchesters know what we had done. We found several of the officers in the kitchen of a small wine shop. They had got a fire going, and were making coffee, and this, with a bottle of rum found in the cellar, and the remains of the day's rations, promised an excellent supper. I had some bread and cheese left in my haversack, and shared this with Goyle; we were given a mug of coffee each, and joined the others at the table. After the excitements of the evening the coffee and rum were welcome. As we were having supper I heard some groans, and suddenly noticed a huge Uhlan lying flat on his back in the corner. He was breathing with difficulty, and every now and then seemed to be trying to wriggle along the floor. One of the Dorchester officers told me that the man had been found in a ditch and brought in by our men. He was shot straight through the stomach. They had sent up for the doctor, but the latter was unable to come down that night. Supper proceeded smoothly, uninterrupted by the groans of the Uhlan, who was only half-conscious, but at times evidently in great pain.

"I say," said one of the Dorchesters' officers, "I propose sleeping here. I don't much fancy having that fellow in the room all night."

It was then decided to move the Uhlan to an empty house opposite, where he died by himself, and was found on his knees, with his head contorted between them in a last effort to rise, in the morning.

XIV. IN FRONT OF LA BASSÉE

At daybreak the order came to advance. A and C Companies were to form the firing-line, B and D Companies were to be in support. We formed the right of the brigade, and had to get in touch with the Westshires, who were on the left of the --th Brigade, on our right. The initiative of the attack rested with A and C Companies; our task was to follow behind over the ground they had gained and be ready to come up into line with them should they lose many men or find themselves hard pressed. The enemy we knew to be holding a group of houses about 700 yards away. The ground sloped gently back from these houses to the outskirts of the town. My company, B Company, under Goyle, had been extended during the night, in a field to the right of the road, and had thrown up a low earthwork parapet. We now lay behind this while A and C Companies pushed through us to the front. The parapet proved none too high, for as soon as the men in front showed themselves a brisk fire came from the enemy in the houses. We all lay flat on the ground, and the bullets came phzz-phzz over us, missing us, as it seemed, by an inch or two. There is an old military adage that the man who thinks each bullet he hears is going to hit him is making active service a torture to himself. Now, it is all very well to preach the value of being philosophical in warfare and to recommend the man under fire not to think about being hit, but that peculiar sharp little whistle which a bullet makes as it passes one's ear takes a good deal of getting used to, and one's first instinct as one hears it is to slide as deep and far into the ground as possible. We all lay there with our noses flat in the earth, wondering how the fellows in front were getting on and when it would be our turn to get up. The opportunity came pretty soon, for, as the company in front seemed to be held up by the enemy in the houses, Goyle decided to send round a flanking party, and sent off No. 7 and 8 platoons to work their way round on the right. This plan proved successful, and A Company was able to get ahead. Goyle now signalled for the two platoons, which had remained with him, to advance. We rose and moved forward in extended order for 300 yards and then lay down again.

After a few minutes Goyle exclaimed: