Adventures of a Despatch Rider Part 6

[9] It must have been Guiscard.

[10] August 29th.

[11] Stray bullets that, fired too high, miss their mark, and occasionally hit men well behind the actual firing line.

[12] Foret de Crecy.

CHAPTER VI.

OVER THE MARNE TO THE AISNE

The morning of September 5th was very hot, but the brigades could easily be found, and the roads to them were good. There was cheerfulness in the air. A rumour went round--it was quite incredible, and we scoffed--that instead of further retreating either beyond or into the fortifications of Paris, there was a possibility of an advance. The Germans, we were told, had at last been outflanked. Joffre's vaunted plan that had inspired us through the dolorous startled days of retirement was, it appeared, a fact, and not one of those bright fancies that the Staff invents for our tactical delectation.

Spuggy returned. He had left us at Bouleurs to find a bicycle in Paris.

Coming back he had no idea that we had moved. So he rode too far north.

He escaped luckily. He was riding along about three hundred yards behind two motor-cyclists. Suddenly he saw them stop abruptly and put up their hands. He fled. A little farther on he came to a village and asked for coffee. He heard that Uhlans had been there a few hours before, and was taken to see a woman who had been shot through the breast. Then he went south through Villeneuve, and following a fortunate instinct, ran into our outposts the other side of Tournan.

We all slept grandly on mattresses. It was the first time we had been two nights in the same place since Dour.

We awoke early to a gorgeous day. We were actually going to advance. The news put us in marvellous good temper. For the first time in my recollection we offered each other our bacon, and one at the end of breakfast said he had had enough. The Staff was almost giggling, and a battalion (the Cheshires, I think) that we saw pa.s.s, was absolutely shouting with joy. You would have thought we had just gained a famous victory.

Half of us went forward with the column. The rest remained for a slaughterous hour. First we went to the hen-house, and in ten minutes had placed ten dripping victims in the French gendarme captain's car.

Then George and I went in pursuit of a turkey for the Skipper. It was an elusive bird with a perfectly Poultonian swerve, but with a bagful of curses, a bleeding hand, and a large stick, I did it to death.

We set out merrily and picked up Spuggy, Cecil, and George in the big forest that stretches practically from the Marne to Tournan. They thought they had heard a Uhlan, but nothing came of it (he turned out to be a deer), so we went on to Villeneuve. There I bought some biscuits and George scrounged some b.u.t.ter. A job to the 3rd Division on our right and another in pursuit of an errant officer, and then a sweaty and exiguous lunch--it was a sweltering noon--seated on a blistering pavement. Soon after lunch three of us were sent on to Mortcerf, a village on a hill to the north of the forest. We were the first English there--the Germans had left it in the morning--and the whole population, including one strikingly pretty flapper, turned out to welcome us in their best clean clothes,--it may have been Sunday.

We accepted any quant.i.ty of gorgeous, luscious fruit, retiring modestly to a shady log to eat it, and smoke a delectable pipe. In a quarter of an hour Major Hildebrand of the 2nd Corps turned up in his car, and later the company.

Pollers had had a little adventure. He was with some of our men when he saw a grey figure coming down one of the glades to the road. We knew there were many stray Uhlans in the forest who had been left behind by our advance. The grey figure was stalked, unconscious of his danger.

Pollers had a shot with his revolver, luckily without effect, for the figure turned out to be our blasphemous farrier, who had gone into the forest, clad only in regulation grey shirt and trousers, to find some water.

Later in the afternoon I was sent off to find the North Irish Horse. I discovered them four miles away in the first flush of victory. They had had a bit of a sc.r.a.p with Uhlans, and were proudly displaying to an admiring brigade that was marching past a small but select collection of horses, lances, and saddles.

This afternoon George smashed up his bicycle, the steering head giving at a corner.

We bivouacked on the drive, but the hardness of our bed didn't matter, as we were out all night--all of us, including the two, Grimers and Cecil. It was nervous riding in the forest. All the roads looked exactly alike, and down every glade we expected a shot from derelict Uhlans.

That night I thought out plots for at least four stories. It would have been three, but I lost my way, and was only put right by striking a wandering convoy. I was in search of the Division Train. I looked for it at Tournan and at Villeneuve and right through the forest, but couldn't find it. I was out from ten to two, and then again from two to five, with messages for miscellaneous ammunition columns. I collared an hour's sleep and, by mistake, a chauffeur's overcoat, which led to recriminations in the morning. But the chauffeur had an unfair advantage. I was too tired to reply.

Grimers, who cannot see well at night, was terrified when he had to take a despatch through the forest. He rode with a loaded revolver in one hand, and was only saved from shooting a wretched transport officer by a wild cry, "For G.o.d's sake, look what you're doing."

The eldest Cecil reported a distinct smell of dead horses at the obelisk in the forest. At least he rather thought they were dead donkeys. The smell was a little different--more acrid and unpleasant. We told him that there were eight dead Germans piled at the side of the road, and we reminded him that it had been a sweltering day.

We were terribly tired in the morning. Spuggy, George, and Orr went off to Paris for new bicycles, and we were left short-handed again. Another tropical day.

The Skipper rode the spare bike with great dash, the elder Cecil and I attendant. We sprinted along a good straight road to the cobbled, crowded little town of Faremoutiers. Then we decided to advance to Mouroux, our proposed headquarters. It was a haggard village, just off the road. We arrived there about twelve: the Germans had departed at six, leaving behind them a souvenir in the dead body of a fellow from the East Lancs. crumpled in a ditch. He had been shot while eating. It was my first corpse. I am afraid I was not overwhelmed with thoughts of the fleetingness of life or the horror of death. If I remember my feelings aright, they consisted of a pinch of sympathy mixed with a trifle of disgust, and a very considerable hunger, which some apples by the roadside did something to allay.

I shall never forget Mouroux. It was just a little square of old houses.

Before the Mairie was placed a collection of bottles from which the Sales Boches had very properly drunk. French proclamations were scribbled over with coa.r.s.e, heavy jests. The women were almost hysterical with relieved anxiety. The men were still sullen, and, though they looked well fed, begged for bread. A German knapsack that I had picked up and left in charge of some villagers was torn to shreds in fierce hatred when my back was turned.

It was very lonely there in the sun. We had outstripped the advance-guard by mistake and were relieved when it came up.

We made prisoner of a German who had overslept himself because he had had a bath.

I rushed back with Grimers on my carrier to fetch another bicycle. On my return my engine suddenly produced an unearthly metallic noise. It was only an aeroplane coming down just over my head.

In the late afternoon we marched into Coulommiers. The people crowded into the streets and cheered us. The girls, with tears in their eyes, handed us flowers.

Three of us went to the Mairie. The Maire, a courtly little fellow in top-hat and frock-coat, welcomed us in charming terms. Two fat old women rushed up to us and besought us to allow them to do something for us. We set one to make us tea, and the other to bring us hot water and soap.

A small girl of about eight brought me her kitten and wanted to give it me. I explained to her that it would not be very comfortable tied with pink ribbons to my carrier. She gravely a.s.sented, sat on my knee, told me I was very dirty, and commanded me to kill heaps and heaps of Germans. She didn't like them; they had beards!

You know those fierce middle-aged Frenchwomen of the _bourgeois_ cla.s.s, hard as Scotsmen, close as Jews, and with feelings about as fine as those of a motor-bus. She was one of them, and she was the foremost of a largish crowd that collected round me. With her was a pretty girl of about twenty-two.

The mother began with a rhetorical outburst against all Germans, anathematising in particular those who had spent the last fortnight in Coulommiers, in which town her uncle had set up his business, which, though it had proved successful, as they all knew, &c., &c. The crowd murmured that they did all know. Then the old harridan chanted the wrongs which the Germans had wrought until, when she had worked the crowd and herself up to a heat of furious excitement, she lowered her voice, suddenly lowered her tone. In a grating whisper she narrated, in more detail than I cared to hear, the full story of how her daughter--to whom she pointed--had been shamefully treated by the Germans. The crowd growled. The daughter was, I think, more pleased at being the object of my sympathy and the centre of the crowd's interest than agonised at the remembrance of her misfortune.

Some of the company coming up saved me from the recital of further outrages. The hag told them of a house where the Germans had left a rifle or two and some of our messages which they had intercepted. The girl hesitated a moment, and then followed. I started hastily to go on, but the girl, hearing the noise of my engine, ran back to bid me an unembarra.s.sed farewell.

I rode through Coulommiers, a jolly rambling old town, to our billet in a suburban villa on the Rebais road. The Division was marching past in the very best of spirits. We, who were very tired, endeavoured to make ourselves comfortable--we were then blanketless--on the abhorrent surface of a narrow garden path.

That night a 2nd Corps despatch rider called in half an hour before his death. We have heard many explanations of how he died. He crashed into a German barricade, and we discovered him the next morning with his eyes closed, neatly covered with a sheet, in a quaint little house at the entrance to the village of Doue.

At dawn (Sept. 8th) the others went on with the column. I was sent back with a despatch for Faremoutiers, and then was detailed to remain for an hour with Cecil. Ten minutes after my return the Fat Boy rode in, greatly excited. He had gone out along the Aulnoy road with a message, and round a corner had run into a patrol of Uhlans. He kept his head, turned quickly, and rode off in a shower of bullets. He was tremendously indignant, and besought some cavalry who were pa.s.sing to go in pursuit.

We heard the rumble of guns and started in a hurry after the column.

Sergeant Merchant's bicycle--our spare, a Rudge--burnt out its clutch, and we left it in exchange for some pears at a cottage with a delicious garden in Champbreton. Doue was a couple of miles farther on.

Colonel Sawyer, D.D.M.S., stopped me anxiously, and asked me to go and see if I could recognise the despatch rider's corpse. I meditated over it for a few minutes, then ran on to the signal-office by the roadside.

There I exchanged my old bike for a new one which had been discovered in a cottage. Nothing was wrong with my ancient grid except a buckled back rim, due to collision with a brick when riding without a lamp. One of the company rode it quietly to Serches, then it went on the side-car, and was eventually discarded at Beuvry.

I found the Division very much in action. The object of the Germans was, by an obstinate rearguard action, to hold first the line of the Pet.i.t Morin and second the line La Ferte to the hills north of Mery, so that their main body might get back across the Marne and continue northward their retreat, necessitated by our pressure on their flank. This retreat again was to be as slow as possible, to prevent an outflanking of the whole.

Our object was obviously to prevent them achieving theirs.

Look at the map and grasp these three things:--

1. The two rivers--the Pet.i.t Morin debouching so as to cover the German left centre.

2. From La Ferte westwards the rivers run in deep ravines, hemmed in by precipitous thickly-wooded hills.

3. Only two bridges across the Marne remained--one large one at La Ferte and one small one at Saacy.

When I arrived at Doue the Germans were holding the Forest of Jouarre in force. They were in moderate force on the south bank of the Pet.i.t Morin, and had some guns, but not many, on the north bank.

Here is a tale of how glory may be forced upon the unwilling.