All in It : K(1) Carries On Part 16

At first glance, the contest was a draw. But subsequent investigation elicited the fact that Jimmy in his backward fall had bitten his tongue to the effusion of blood. The verdict was therefore awarded, on points, to Wullie, and the spectators dispersed in an orderly manner just as the platoon sergeant came round the traverse to change the sentry.

II

We have occupied our own present trenches since January. There was a time when this sector of the line was regarded as a Vale of Rest.

Bishops were conducted round with impunity. Members of Parliament came out for the week-end, and returned to their const.i.tuents with first-hand information about the horrors of war. Foreign journalists, and sight-seeing parties of munition-workers, picnicked in Bunghole Wood. In the village behind the line, if a chance sh.e.l.l removed tiles from the roof of a house, the owner, greatly incensed, mounted a ladder and put in some fresh ones.

But that is all over now. "K(1)"--hard-headed men of business, bountifully endowed with munitions--have arrived upon the scene, and the sylvan peace of the surrounding district is gone. Pan has dug himself in.

The trouble began two months ago, when our Divisional Artillery arrived. Unversed in local etiquette, they commenced operations by "sending up"--to employ a vulgar but convenient catch-phrase--a strongly fortified farmhouse in the enemy's support line. The Boche, by way of gentle reproof, deposited four or five small "whizz-bangs"

in our front-line trenches. The tenants thereof promptly telephoned to "Mother," and Mother came to the a.s.sistance of her offspring with a salvo of twelve-inch sh.e.l.ls. After that. Brother Boche, realising that the golden age was past, sent north to the Salient for a couple of heavy batteries, and settled down to sh.e.l.l Bunghole village to pieces.

Within a week he had brought down the church tower: within a fortnight the population had migrated farther back, leaving behind a few patriots, too deeply interested in the sale of small beer and picture postcards to uproot themselves. Company Headquarters in Bunghole Wood ceased to grow primroses and began to fill sandbags.

A month ago the village was practically intact. The face of the church tower was badly scarred, but the houses were undamaged. The little shops were open; children played in the streets. Now, if you stand at the cross-roads where the church rears its roofless walls, you will understand what the Abomination of Desolation means. Occasionally a body of troops, moving in small detachments at generous intervals, trudges by, on its way to or from the trenches. Occasionally a big howitzer sh.e.l.l swings lazily out of the blue and drops with a crash or a dull thud--according to the degree of resistance encountered--among the crumbling cottages. All is solitude.

But stay! Right on the cross-roads, in the centre of the village, just below the fingers of a sign-post which indicates the distance to four French townships, whose names you never heard of until a year ago, and now will never forget, there hangs a large, white, newly painted board, bearing a notice in black letters six inches high. Exactly underneath the board, rubbing their noses appreciatively against the sign-post, stand two mules, attached to a limbered waggon, the property of the A.S.C. Their charioteers are sitting adjacent, in a convenient sh.e.l.l-hole, partaking of luncheon.

"That was a rotten place we' ad to wait in yesterday, Sammy," observes Number One. "The draught was somethink cruel."

The rec.u.mbent Samuel agrees. "This little 'oiler is a bit of all right," he remarks. "When you've done strarfin' that bully-beef, 'and it over, ole man!"

He leans his head back upon the lip of the sh.e.l.l-hole, and gazes pensively at the notice-board six feet away. It says:--

VERY DANGEROUS.

DO NOT LOITER HERE.

III

Here is another cross-roads, a good mile farther forward--and less than a hundred yards behind the fire-trench. It is dawn.

The roads themselves are not so distinct as they were. They are becoming gra.s.s-grown: for more than a year--in daylight at least--no human foot has trodden them. The place is like hundreds of others that you may see scattered up and down this countryside--two straight, flat, metalled country roads, running north and south and east and west, crossing one another at a faultless right angle.

Of the four corners thus created, one is--or was--occupied by an estaminet: you can still see the sign, _Estaminet au Commerce_, over the door. Two others contain cottages,--the remains of cottages. At the fourth, facing south and east, stands what is locally known as a "Calvaire,"--bank of stone, a lofty cross, and a life-size figure of Christ, facing east, towards the German lines.

This spot is sh.e.l.led every day--has been sh.e.l.led every day for months.

Possibly the enemy suspects a machine-gun or an observation post amid the tumble-down buildings. Hardly one brick remains upon another.

And yet--the sorrowful Figure is unbroken. The Body is riddled with bullets--in the glowing dawn you may Count not five but fifty wounds--but the Face is untouched. It is the standing miracle of this most materialistic war. Throughout the length of France you will see the same thing.

Agnostics ought to come out here, for a "cure."

IV

With spring comes also the thought of the Next Push.

But we do not talk quite so glibly of pushes as we did. Neither, for that matter, does Brother Boche. He has just completed six weeks'

pushing at Verdun, and is beginning to be a little uncertain as to which direction the pushing is coming from.

No; once more the military textbooks are being rewritten. We started this war under one or two rather fallacious premises. One was that Artillery was more noisy than dangerous. When Antwerp fell, we rescinded that theory. Then the Boche set out to demonstrate that an Attack, provided your Artillery preparation is sufficiently thorough, and you are prepared to set _no_ limit to your expenditure of Infantry, must ultimately succeed. To do him justice, the Boche supported his a.s.sertions very plausibly. His phalanx bundled the Russians all the way from Tannenburg to Riga. The Austrians adopted similar tactics, with similar results.

We were duly impressed. The world last summer did not quite realize how far the results of the campaign were due to German efficiency and how far to Russian unpreparedness. (Russia, we realise now, found herself in the position of the historic Mrs. Partington, who endeavoured to repel the Atlantic with a mop. This year, we understand, she is in a position to discard the mop in favour of something far, far better.)

Then came--Verdun. Military science turned over yet another page, and noted that against consummate generalship, unlimited munitions, and selfless devotion on the part of the defence, the most spectacular and highly-doped phalanx can spend itself in vain. Military science also noted that, under modern conditions, the capture of this position or that signifies nothing: the only method of computing victory is to count the dead on either side. On that reckoning, the French at Verdun have already gained one of the great victories of all time.

"In fact," said Colonel Kemp, "this war will end when the Boche has lost so many men as to be unable to man his present trench-line, and not before."

"You don't think, sir, that we shall make another Push?" suggested Angus M'Lachlan eagerly. The others were silent: they had experienced a Push already.

"Not so long as the Boche continues to play our game for us, by attacking. If he tumbles to the error he is making, and digs himself in again--well, it may become necessary to draw him. In that case, M'Lachlan, you shall have first chop at the Victoria Crosses. Afraid I can't recommend you for your last exploit, though I admit it must have required some nerve!"

There was unseemly laughter at this allusion. Four nights previously Angus had been sent out in charge of a wiring-party. He had duly crawled forth with his satellites, under cover of darkness, on to No Man's Land; and, there selecting a row of "knife-rests" which struck him as being badly in need of repair, had well and truly reinforced the same with many strands of the most barbarous brand of barbed wire.

This, despite more than usually fractious behaviour upon the part of the Boche.

Next morning, through a sniper's loophole, he exhibited the result of his labours to Major Wagstaffe. The Major gazed long and silently upon his subordinate's handiwork. There was no mistaking it. It stood out bright and gleaming in the rays of the rising sun, amid its dingy surroundings of rusty ironmongery. Angus M'Lachlan waited anxiously for a little praise.

"Jolly good piece of work," said Major Wagstaffe at last. "But tell me, why have you repaired the Boche wire instead of your own?"

"The only enemy we have to fear," continued Colonel Kemp, rubbing his spectacles savagely, "is the free and independent British voter--I mean, the variety of the species that we have left at home. Like the gentleman in Jack Point's song, 'He likes to get value for money'; and he is quite capable of asking us, about June or July, 'if we know that we are paid to be funny?'--before we are ready. What's your view of the situation at home, Wagstaffe? You're the last off leave."

Wagstaffe shook his head.

"The British Nation," he said, "is quite mad. That fact, of course, has been common property on the Continent of Europe ever since Cook's Tours were invented. But what irritates the orderly Boche is that there is no method in its madness. Nothing you can go upon, or take hold of, or wring any advantage from."

"As how?"

"Well, take compulsory service. For generations the electorate of our country has been trained by a certain breed of politician--the _Bandar-log_ of the British Const.i.tution--to howl down such a low and degrading business as National Defence. A nasty Continental custom, they called it. Then came the War, and the glorious Voluntary System got to work."

"Aided," the Colonel interpolated, "by a campaign of mural advertis.e.m.e.nt which a cinema star's press agent would have boggled at!"

"Quite so," agreed Wagstaffe. "Next, when the Voluntary System had done its d.a.m.nedest--in other words, when the willing horse had been worked to his last ounce--we tried the Derby Scheme. The manhood of the nation was divided into groups, and a fresh method of touting for troops was adopted. Married shysters, knowing that at least twenty groups stood between them and a job of work, attested in comparatively large numbers. The single shysters were less reckless--so much less reckless, in fact, that compulsion began to materialise at last."

"But only for single shysters," said Bobby Little regretfully.

"Yes; and the married shyster rejoiced accordingly. But the single shyster is a most subtle reptile. On examination, it was found that the single members of this n.o.ble army of martyrs were all 'starred,'

or 'reserved', or 'ear-marked'--or whatever it is that they do to these careful fellows. So the poor old married shyster, who had only attested to show his blooming patriotism and encourage the others, suddenly found himself confronted with the awful prospect of having to defend his country personally, instead of by letter to the halfpenny press. Then the fat was fairly in the fire! The married martyr--"

"Come, come, old man! Not all of them!" said Colonel Kemp. "I have a married brother of my own, a solicitor of thirty-eight, who is simply clamouring for active service!"

"I know that, sir," admitted Wagstaffe quickly. "Thank G.o.d, these fellows are only a minority, and a freak minority at that; but freak minorities seem to get the monopoly of the limelight in our unhappy country."

"The whole affair," mused the Colonel, "can hardly be described as a frenzied rally round the Old Flag. By G.o.d," he broke out suddenly, "it fairly makes one's blood boil! When I think of the countless good fellows, married and single, but mainly married, who left _all_ and followed the call of common decency and duty the moment the War broke out--most of them now dead or crippled; and when I see this miserable handful of shirkers, holding up vital public business while the pros and cons of their wretched claims to exemption are considered--well, I almost wish I had been born a Boche!"

"I don't think you need apply for naturalisation papers yet, Colonel,"

said Wagstaffe. "The country is perfectly sound at heart over this question, and always was. The present agitation, as I say, is being engineered by the more verminous section of our incomparable daily Press, for its own ends. It makes our Allies lift their eyebrows a bit; but they are sensible people, and they realise that although we are a nation of lunatics, we usually deliver the goods in the end. As for the Boche, poor fellow, the whole business makes him perfectly rabid. Here he is, with all his splendid organisation and brutal efficiency, and he can't even knock a dent into our undisciplined, back-chatting, fool-ridden, self-depreciating old country! I, for one, sympathise with the Boche profoundly. On paper, we don't _deserve_ to win!"

"But we shall!" remarked that single-minded paladin, Bobby Little.