Green Balls Part 15

We turn to the left and enter the town. Here is evident a little more animation. Soldiers saunter up and down, as though on the promenade listening to the band, the straw hat of English summer being subst.i.tuted by the yellow-painted shrapnel helmet. Sh.e.l.ls are now whistling in the town, and give a slightly more credible impression of artillery fire as the hollow bang of the explosion is followed in each case, a few seconds later, by the clatter and tinkle of the roofs and walls of Nieuport returning in pieces to ground level.

We ask the officer the way to the front lines, as if asking the way to the pier at Margate.

"First to the left--across a ca.n.a.l--turn right--and across the Yser!" he says obligingly; and adds, "You better get gas-masks and shrapnel helmets at the Salvage Dump over there!" ("Towels and bathing costumes at the little hut on the left," he might be saying!)

We enter the salvage dump--an empty front room littered with all kinds of implements, and ask for the apparently necessary gas-mask and helmet, which are carefully dusted by a whistling sergeant. Carrying these helmets in one hand and the masks slung over our necks, we proceed towards the front. Now here for one moment we realise that we really are near a real war, for round the corner walk a couple of nonchalant Tommies carrying a stretcher, covered with a blanket, from beneath which protrude two heavy boots, toes towards the ground.

We hurry on and turn to the left and come out into the open, across which we move erratically, for, at the whistle of each sh.e.l.l, we sit in a crater until the noise of its explosion encourages us to proceed.

"I feel sure we should not be out here!" says my friend. I feel inclined to agree with him.

We reach a bank in which soldiers are hiding like rabbits in a warren.

In little square holes the stolid, cheerful-looking men sit; here one smokes, there one cooks bacon, in another place one reads. Outside some of the cave doors a pair of socks or a shirt hangs out to dry. The existence seems to them the normal one, and returning to the life of the remote past they seem to have found a rough contentment.

At last we enter a trench and wander along it for five or six minutes, till through a turning on the left we see a narrow ditch leading to a wide muddy ca.n.a.l. We turn down this side trench and walk to the side of the water, over which is slung a narrow suspension-bridge about four feet wide, made of boards laid side by side.

We walk across this, and half-way over to the other side we meet an officer, and ask where the front is.

He laughs, and inquires who we are, and offers to take us to the mess, and suggests that we should wear the shrapnel helmet instead of our soft naval caps. We cross the bridge and walk down another trench to a farmhouse, covered with little white boards with D.A.Q.M.G.'s and D.A.D.O.'s, and other incomprehensible mysteries of staff hieroglyphics.

I do not know quite what I have expected a staff mess to be like, but I know when I descend a damp ladder to a dim cellar lit by candles, and see a cheerful crowd of officers eating bread and b.u.t.ter and tea at a broken-down table, I am very surprised. I realise rapidly that a sub-lieutenant in the Air Service has a better time of it, as far as mere material comfort goes, than a colonel on his Majesty's staff.

"Found these two lads crossing the bridge with their shrapnel helmets swinging from their hands; may I introduce you to Major Smith and Captain So-and-so...." We are introduced all round and are given tea. No one questions our right to be there at all. Our story of being curious airmen from Dunkerque is believed. They are amused to hear of our big sh.e.l.l experiences. They have heard the sh.e.l.ls pa.s.sing overhead like express trains, although we had no indication of their approach at all.

After we have received some friendly blame for keeping them awake at night with our engines when we pa.s.s over the Nieuport floods, the colonel who met us details an officer to take us to an observation post.

We move down more trenches--Nose Alley, Nasal Avenue, Nostril Road, and others--till we reach a little broken-down building, inside which we penetrate through a small door. A pair of rickety staircases lead us up to a loft where an officer and a sergeant gaze through a narrow slit towards the east. On the ledge before them lies a map. They are keeping a particular sector of German trench under constant observation for the benefit of their own particular battalion.

Taking a pair of binoculars, I look and see the three British barricades of sandbags, for the ground here is too wet to permit of the digging of trenches. Men are seen sitting down or walking up and down behind these breastworks, and beyond can be seen the spiky curls and haphazard pegs of the barbed-wire entanglements. In the centre, a grey huddle of stone indicates the site of Lombartsyde Church. Now and again a cloud of smoke from a sh.e.l.l rises up behind the German trench. On the left are the sand-dunes on which the tall, red, broken houses of Westende stand desolate and fantastically suburban against the sky. I can see through the gla.s.ses the great painted advertis.e.m.e.nts on them, and notice here and there the missing roof, the shattered wall; but on the whole, save for the blank square of the gla.s.sless windows, they look untouched enough. It seems strange to think that the bare lifeless buildings of that watering town are full of an unseen life, that up in those roofs Germans are watching us only a few hundred yards away, as we are watching them. It is strange and uncanny. This, then, is the line--bleak, dead, full of a sense of ever-menacing danger, haunted by the hovering phantom of Death. We take a last look and start back to the car. The farther we go, the easier grows my heart. When at last we turn the corner of the town and see the old grey tender with its driver smoking beside it, I want to hail it as a welcome friend. Gladly we hear its engine throb--gladly we feel the thrill of movement--gladly we move down the eerie desolate road, by the canvas screens, the broken trees, where sounds the wail and bang of the sh.e.l.ls, like doors in a great frightening empty house being shut and shut by some unseen and terrifying phantom hand.

Swiftly we leave the desolate loneliness of war behind, and welcome is the thought of the trim camp at the aerodrome with its flower-decked mess and fire-lit cabins. When at last we sweep across the little white bridge over the ca.n.a.l and stop beside the lawns of the quarter-deck, over which flaps the White Ensign, I realise keenly the comfort and the tranquillity of my life.

Now it is the twilight of dusk. Though day still reigns supreme in untarnished brightness, there is a feeling in the air that the end is coming, and night surely must vanquish soon. Out from the aerodrome are being wheeled the Handley-Page machines, and I hurry through my task of synchronising the watches. To-night I raid not, and from the beginning my feelings are mixed. I am glad I am not going, and I am bitterly sorry too, because I know when, in the late hours of starlight, one by one the huge machines glide whistling to earth, and into the mess the furred and helmeted airmen tramp on great fleece-lined boots, I will envy the glorious sense of achievement, of well-earned rest, which will then be theirs.

Now I am told to take over the task of the duty officer who is going on a raid. At once I proceed to the monotonous job of censoring letters, because it has to be done, and it had better be finished early. How weary a job it is, and how full of temptation! When you sit alone in a little room with the pile of two or three hundred letters in front of you, how easy it is to read but one in ten. It is then that a conscience is a really great disadvantage. The letters are all the same, and as they are read through it is very apparent what a race of bad letter-writers we are. Seventy-five per cent read like this:--

DEAR MUM,--Tell Alf that Sid has got my blue sweater; if he gives it to Joe he will bring it over to his squadron and Stan can bring it here. Give Em and Gert my love; I met Bob yesterday, he says Tom and Jack are fine....

The one splendid line in all is the splendid prayer written beneath the signature:--

_Roll on, Blighty_, or _Roll on, three months_, with all the pa.s.sion of loneliness and nostalgia throbbing in it.

It must be confessed that the description of a typical sailor's letter is not far from the truth.

_Dear Mother, How are you? So am I. f.a.gs. George._

Letter after letter is read through and initialled, and I get no nearer to the soul of such of the writers as I know personally. Then I hear a bugle blow the Rum call, and I proceed to the Ship's Steward's office to superintend the issue of Rum. When the representative of each mess has been served, it is the duty of the officer of the Watch to witness the pouring out of the rum upon the ground, a proceeding watched with grief by any casual spectators.

The preservation of the naval traditions in the Royal Naval Air Service was of real value, and welded the service into a very loyal and proud body. To some it may seem ridiculous that, even at air stations in the heart of France, hundreds of miles from the sea, the "liberty men paraded on the quarter-deck to go ash.o.r.e in the liberty boat," when they proceeded to Nancy by lorry. No one concerned, however, treated it as anything but a matter of course, which is one of the greatest a.s.sets of any tradition. The "ship's company" would be summoned from the "mess decks" to hear the "orders of the day" read by the "First Lieutenant,"

and "the starboard watch had a make and mend." The whole service was "navy" and felt "navy." Naturally the sea-going navy looked on it with a little contempt and a great deal of scorn, but I doubt if it realised with what pride and admiration we of the new service looked up to our big brothers on the high seas. We watched them as a new boy at school watches the _blase_ young gentleman of two years' scholastic experience, and furtively draws his hands out of his pockets if he finds that such an att.i.tude is not considered correct.

With the formation of the Royal Air Force, the naval branch of the air service, at any rate, lost a possession so cherished and so sacred that it scarcely dared talk about it. It was like being made to change a religion and to throw up in a moment the faith and the ceremonial habits of a lifetime. Underneath the khaki and the pale blue, to an officer and a man, we wore, and still wear, the dark blue and gold b.u.t.tons of those splendid days.

Meanwhile the rum has been doled out in the mess with care and argument, and I return to my letters. From the east now marches night with swift advance, while the west shines scarlet and orange over the chimneys of the huts of Dunkerque. The first primrose star of the evening burns with a lucent glory in the forehead of the sunset, and the whole evening is pregnant with coming events. Too beautiful is the hour for work, and as I walk alone over the rose-tinted aerodrome I can hear in the tranquil night the m.u.f.fled beating of innumerable engines, and I can see the l.u.s.trous flares dropping from the skies as on the ground a thousand signals glow, a thousand lights are born and die. To the darkening east I look, and I can picture thirty, forty, fifty miles away the anti-aircraft guns, whose tarpaulin sheets are even now being removed. I can picture the lean-nosed sh.e.l.ls in their numbered racks--the great gla.s.s lenses of the searchlights, the "green-ball"

machines loaded with long belts of cartridges. I look to my right at the waiting machines, and it seems strange to think that those heavy structures of steel and wood are destined in scarcely two hours to set in furious action those silent lifeless weapons so far away across the shadowy fields. The noise of an engine under trial sweeps over the ground in surging waves of sound and dies away. The giants are awakening, are stretching themselves, and are eagerly meditating the time to come.

Soon I am dining in the lamp-lit mess, where at flower-decked tables the laughing pilots sit, and I feel sorry I am not going onward with them to the hidden dangers and exhilarations of flight in the darkness beyond the lines; yet I feel glad also that my to-morrow is certain, but feel a hanger-on among heroes, a useless camp-follower of legioned G.o.ds.

One after one the cheerful youths glance casually at their watches and leave the mess for their cabins in order to prepare for the cold heights to which they will soon climb. Heavily m.u.f.fled and coated I go out on to the dark aerodrome. Out roar the engines of the first machine as it sweeps across the gra.s.s, and I have one momentary glance of the resolute, preoccupied faces of the pilot and observer who are going to ride through the flaming avenues of Bruges and Ostend on their swift lean charger of steel and wood.

Machine after machine leaves, and, as ground officer, I shout instructions upwards to the pilots through the clamour of the engines, and as the pilot waves his hand as a sign of his imminent departure, I cry--

"Cheero, Jack! Good luck!"

"Cheero, Paul!" comes the answer, and the engine leaps out into deafening thunder, and with a beating throb the machine slips by, going ever faster into the night.

Soon the last machine has left, and for a time we see the red and green lights moving above us through the stars, and we hear the murmur of the engines, and then at length silence reigns in the quiet uneasy night!

To the side of the ca.n.a.l I walk and peer out across the silent plain to the dim east. A pallid star-sh.e.l.l gleams, and quivers, and sinks: a gun flashes to the south near Ypres: then remote, remote, yet glittering clearly, rises a tiny chain of green b.a.l.l.s which climbs up, up, up into the night. Near it can just be seen the pale arms of moving searchlights, seeming scarce lighter than the darkness. Already the great night-birds have pierced the frontiers of the enemy: already has the battle of the night skies begun.

Then with an unexpected suddenness wails the panic-stricken appealing cry of "Mournful Mary" at Dunkerque docks. Again and again it wails, and its dying echo is taken up by a chorus of shrill and undignified hooters and syrens in the district. What a sense of utter terror there is in the sound! The town seems to have a corporate existence, and seems to be screaming piteously, like some animal faced with a terrible and unavoidable death. Again moans the chilling sound of the great voice of Dunkerque, and down the coast the blue-white beams of the French searchlights begin to wave nervously in an uncertain sweep. Three or four anti-aircraft guns sound dully in the distance, and a few red and futile sh.e.l.ls burst high up in the star-strewn sky.

More and more searchlights come into action; nearer and louder guns bark out their stupid blind anger. There is little movement in the crowd of watchers on the aerodrome. Every one listens. Faintly yet surely can be heard now the menacing chant of the enemy--bavoom, bavoom, bavoom--steady, unaltering, ever progressing forwards.

"Huh! That's old Oberleutnant Finkelbaum from Ghistelles. He's always first!" says a wit. "Come on, Finky ... you won't be found. That's right--keep up the coast. You're after the docks, I suppose. Look out; throttle, man--throttle, or you will get caught!"

_Bavoom--bavoom_, throb the two engines of the bold attacker, and our sympathies and interest somehow seem to be with him.

"Turn in now, old man, turn in! Stop your engine--that's good--glide and keep throttled--you'll be all right!"

Suddenly the droning above ceases, and the silence is more threatening and sinister than the clamour. We do not feel quite so a.s.sured about the unseen enemy, since we can no longer locate his position by sound.

However, we know that he is almost certain to be attacking the docks, which lie some two miles away, so we do not altogether lose the sense of being spectators.

A long minute pa.s.ses slowly, then a wide fan-shaped flash of red light appears beyond the town, whose roofs are for a moment silhouetted black against its glare. It dies slowly, and another leaps up near it.

Some one begins to count--

"One, two, three ..."

Then rises up with an awful splendour and a strange deliberation a tall, coiling column of fire, which, like a swiftly-growing tree, opens and expands until it is nearly five hundred feet high--a huge fountain of flame. Some oil dump has been struck. It is an amazing sight. Every face, with open mouth and wondering eye, is lit for a moment in its red light, and then it slowly fades and dies away, leaving a steady glow behind the dark houses to show that a great conflagration is now in progress.

"Nine ... ten ... eleven ... twelve!" ends the count.

Then crash after crash of ear-splitting noise sounds on our ears as the noise of the twelve bursting bombs comes to our ears. The anti-aircraft guns bark and crash stupidly round us, and among the stars appear the quick and random spurts of the bursting sh.e.l.ls. Aimless searchlights, pale and puerile, move irregularly over the sky. Still there is no sound above us.

"Keep throttled, Finkelbaum! Jolly good shooting. You push off to dinner at Ghistelles; you've done your bit to-night," comments the wit.

Bavoom--_bavoom_--suddenly sounds the engine right above us, as the machine opens out its engines as it escapes southwards from the Dunkerque defences. Some of us stroll over towards the edge of the ca.n.a.l. Of course there is no danger--he has dropped all his bombs--yet there may be a "hang-up," and the back gunlayer may only just now be finding it out.

Crack, crack--crack, crack, crack, clamours the machine-gun over by our mess. Up rush the red sparks of the tracer-bullets.

"There he is--there--_there_--to the left of those two searchlights.