Letters from France Part 11

CHAPTER XXV

ON LEAVE TO A NEW ENGLAND

_Back in France._

It was after seven weeks of very heavy fighting. Even those whose duty took them rarely up amongst the sh.e.l.ls were almost worn out with the prolonged strain. Those who had been fighting their turns up in the powdered trenches came out from time to time tired well nigh to death in body, mind and soul. The battle of the Somme still grumbled night and day behind them. But for those who emerged a certain amount of leave was opened.

It was like a plunge into forgotten days. War seemed to end at the French quayside. Staff officers, brigadier-generals, captains, privates and lance-corporals--they were all just Englishmen off to their homes.

They jostled one another up the gangway--I never heard a rough word in that dense crowd. They lay side by side outside the saloon of the Channel turbine steamer. A corporal with his head half in the doorway, too seasick to know that it was fair in the path of a major-general's boots; a general Staff officer and a French captain with their backs propped against the oak panelling and their ribs against somebody else's baggage; a subaltern of engineers with his head upon their feet; a hundred others packed on the stairs and up to the deck; and a horrible groaning from the direction of the lavatories--it was truly the happiest moment in all their lives.

The crossing pa.s.sed like a dream--scarcely noticed. Seven weeks of strain can leave you too tired almost to think. A journey in a comfortable railway compartment through prim, hazy English fields, the carriage blue with smoke from the pipes of its inhabitants (a Canadian, three or four Englishmen and a couple of Australians), has gone almost unremembered. As the custom is in England, they were mostly ensconced behind their newspapers, although there is more geniality in an English railway carriage to-day than was usual before the war. But most people in that train, I think, were too tired for conversation.

It was the coming into London that left such an impression as some of us will never forget. Some of us knew London well before the war. It is the one great city in the world where you never saw the least trace of corporate emotion. It divides itself off into districts for the rich and districts for the poor, and districts for all the grades in between the two, which are the separate layers in the big, frowning edifice of British society; they may have had some sort of feeling for their cla.s.s or their profession--the lawyer proud of his Inns of Court and of the tradition of the London Bar, the doctor proud of London schools of medicine, and the Thames engineer even proud of the work that is turned out upon the Thames. But there was no more common feeling or activity in the people of London than there would be common energy in a heap of sand grains. They would have looked upon it as sheer weakness to exhibit any interest in the doings even of their neighbours.

The battle of the Somme had begun about nine weeks before when this particular train, carrying the daily instalment of men on leave from it, began to wind its way in past the endless back-gardens and yellow brick houses, every one the replica of the next, and the numberless villa chimneys and chimney-pots which fence the southern approaches of the great capital. They are tight, compact little fortresses, those English villas, each jealously defended against its neighbour and the whole world by the sentiment within, even more than by the high brick wall around it. But if they were all rigidly separate from each other, there was one thing that bound them all together just for that moment.

It happened in every cottage garden, in every street that rattled past underneath the railway bridges, in every slum-yard, from every window, upper and lower. As the leave train pa.s.sed the people all for the moment dropped whatever they were doing and ran to wave a hand at it. The children in every garden dropped their games and ran to the fence and clambered up to wave these tired men out of sight. The servant at the upper window let her work go and waved; the mother of the family and the girls in the sitting-room downstairs came to the window and waved; the woman washing in the tub in the back-yard straightened herself up and waved; the little grocer out with his wife and the perambulator waved, and the wife waved, and the infant in the perambulator waved; the boys playing pitch-and-toss on the pavement ran towards the railway bridge and waved; the young lady out for a walk with her young man waved--not at all a suppressed welcome, quite the reverse of half-hearted; the young man waved, much more demurely, but still he did wave. The flapper on the lawn threw down her tennis-racket and simply flung kisses; and her two young brothers expressed themselves quite as emphatically in their own manner; the old man at the corner and the grocer-boy from his cart waved. For a quarter of an hour, while that train wound in through the London suburbs, every human being that was near dropped his work and gave it a welcome.

I have seen many great ceremonies in England, and they have left me as cold as ice. There have been big set pieces even in this war, with bra.s.s bands and lines of policemen and cheering crowds and long accounts of it afterwards in the newspapers. But I have never seen any demonstration that could compare with this simple spontaneous welcome by the families of London. It was quite unrehea.r.s.ed and quite unreported. No one had arranged it, and no one was going to write big headlines about it next day. The people in one garden did not even know what the people in the next garden were doing--or want to know. The servant at the upper window did not know that the mistress was at the lower window doing exactly as she was, and vice versa. For the first time in one's experience one had experienced a genuine, whole-hearted, common feeling running through all the English people--every man, woman and child, without distinction, bound in one common interest which, for the time being, was moving the whole nation. And I shall never forget it.

It was the most wonderful welcome--I am not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the most wonderful and most inspiriting sights that I have ever seen. I do not know whether the rulers of the country are aware of it. But I do not believe for a moment that this people can go back after the war to the att.i.tude by which each of those families was to all the others only so much prospective monetary gain or loss.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE NEW ENTRY

_France, November 13th._

Last week an Australian force made its attack in quite a different area of the Somme battle.

The sky was blue in patches, with cold white clouds between. The wind drove icily. There had been practically no rain for two days.

We were in a new corner. The New Zealanders had pushed right through to the comparatively green country just here--and so had the British to north and south of it. We were well over the slope of the main ridge, up which the Somme battle raged for the first three months. Pozieres, the highest point, where Australians first peeped over it, lay miles away to our left rear. From the top of the ridge behind you, looking back over your left shoulder, you could just see a few distant broken tree stumps.

I think they marked the site of that old nightmare.

We were looking down a long even slope to a long up-slope beyond. The country around us was mostly brown-mud sh.e.l.l-holes. Not like the sh.e.l.l-holes of that blasted hill-top of two months back--I have never seen anything quite like that, though they say that Guillemont, which I have not seen, is as devastated. In this present area there is green gra.s.s between the rims of the craters. But not enough green gra.s.s to matter. The general colour of the country on the British side is brown--all gradations of it--from thin, sloppy, grey-brown mud, trampled liquid with the feet of men and horses, to dull, putty-like brown mud so thick that, when you get your foot into it, you have a constant problem of getting it out again.

For it is the country over which the fight has pa.s.sed. As we advance, we advance always on to the area which has been torn with sh.e.l.ls--where the villages and the trenches and the surface of the green country have been battered and shattered, first by our guns and then by the German guns, until they have made a h.e.l.l out of heaven.

And always just ahead of us, a mile or so behind the German lines, there is heaven smiling--you can see it clearly; in this part, up the opposite slope of the wide, open valley. There is the green country on which the Germans are always being driven back, and up which this monstrous engine of war has not yet begun its slow, gruesome climb.

There are the beautiful green woods fading to soft autumn brown and yellow--the little red roofs in the trees, an empty village in the foreground--you can see the wet mud shining in its street and the white trickle of water down the centre of the road.

Down our long muddy hill-slope, near where the knuckles of it dip out of sight into the bottom of the valley, one notices a line of heads. In some places they are clear and in others they cannot be seen. But we guess that it is the line ready to go out.

At the top of the opposite up-slope the tower of Bapaume town hall showed up behind the trees. We made out that the hands of the clock were at the hour--but I have heard others say that they were permanently at half-past five, and others a quarter past four--it is one of those matters which become very important on these long dark evenings, and friendships are apt to be broken over it. The clock tower, unfortunately, disappeared finally at eighteen minutes past eleven yesterday morning, so the controversy is never likely to be settled.

The bombardment broke out suddenly from behind us. We saw the long line of men below clamber on to the surface, a bayonet gleaming here and there, and begin to walk steadily between the sh.e.l.l-holes towards the edge of the hill. From where we were you could not see the enemy's trench in the valley--only the brown mud of crater rims down to the hill's edge. And I think the line could not see it either, in most parts at any rate. They would start from their muddy parapet, and over the wet gra.s.s, with one idea above all others in the back of every man's head--when shall we begin to catch sight of the enemy?

It is curious how in this country of sh.e.l.l craters you can look at a trench without realising that it is a trench. A mud-heap parapet is not so different from the mud-heap round a crater's rim, except that it is more regular. Even to discover your own trench is often like finding a bush road. You are told that there is a trench over there and you cannot miss it. But, once you have left your starting-point, it looks as if there were nothing else in the world but a wilderness of sh.e.l.l craters.

Then you realise that there is a certain regularity in the irregular mud-heaps some way ahead of you--the top of a muddy steel helmet moves between two earth-heaps on the ground's surface--then another helmet and another; and you have found your bearings. That is clearly the trench they spoke about.

Well, finding the German trench seems to be much the same experience, varied by a mult.i.tude of bullets singing past like bees, and with the additional thought ever present to the mind--when will the enemy's barrage burst on you? When it does come, you do not hear it coming--there is too much racket in the air for your ears to catch the sh.e.l.l whistling down as you are accustomed to. There are big black crashes and splashes near by, without warning--scarcely noticed at first. In the charge itself men often do not notice other men hit--we, looking on from far behind, did not notice that. A man may be slipping in a sh.e.l.l-hole, or in the mud, or in some wire--often he gets up again and runs on. It is only afterwards that you realise....

Across the mud s.p.a.ce there were suddenly noticed a few grey helmets watching--a long, long distance away. Then the grey helmets moved, and other helmets moved, and bunched themselves up, and hurried about like a disturbed hive, and settled into a line of men firing fast and coolly.

That was the German trench.

It was fairly packed already in one part. The rattle of fire grew quickly. The chatter of one machine-gun--then another, and another, were added to it. Our sh.e.l.ls were bursting occasionally flat in the face of the Germans--one big bearded fellow--they are close enough for those details to be seen now--takes a low burst of our shrapnel full in his eyes. A high-explosive sh.e.l.l bursts on the parapet, and down go three others. But they are firing calmly through all this.

Three or four Germans suddenly get up from some hole in No Man's Land, and bolt for their trench like rabbits. Within forty yards of the German parapet the leading men in our line find themselves alone. The line has dwindled to a few scanty groups. These are dropping suddenly--their comrades cannot say whether they are taking cover in sh.e.l.l-holes, or whether they have been hit. The Germans are getting up a machine-gun on the parapet straight opposite. The first two men fall back shot. Two or three others struggle up to it--they are shot too; our men are making desperate shooting to keep down that machine-gun. But the Germans get it up. It cracks overhead. In this part of the line the attack is clearly finished.

One remembers a day, some months back, when a Western Australian battalion, after a heavy bombardment of its trench, found a German line coming up over the crest of the hill about two hundred yards away. The Western Australians stood up well over the parapet, and fired until the remnant of that line sank to the ground within forty or fifty yards of them. That line was a line of the Prussian Guard Reserve. We have had that opportunity three or four times in the Somme battle. This time it was the Germans who had it. The Germans were of the Prussian Foot Guards--and it was Western Australians who were attacking.

In another part, where the South Australians attacked, they found fewer Germans in the trench. They could see the Germans in small groups getting their bombs ready to throw--but they were into the trench before the Germans had time to hold them up. They killed or captured all the German garrison, and destroyed a machine-gun, and set steadily to improve the trench for holding it.

Everything seemed to go well in this part, except that they could get no touch with any other of our troops in the trench. As far as they knew the other portions of the attack had succeeded, as well as theirs. And then things changed suddenly. After an hour a message did come from Australians farther along in the same trench--a message for urgent help.

At the same time a similar message came from the other flank as well. A shower of stick-bombs burst with a formidable crash from one side. A line of Germans was seen, coming steadily along in single file against the other end of the trench. A similar shower of crashes descended from that direction. A machine-gun began to crackle down the trench. Our men fought till their bombs, and all the German bombs they could find, were gone. Finally the Germans began to gain on them from both ends, and the attack here, too, was over. They were driven from the trench.

CHAPTER XXVII

A HARD TIME

_France, November 28th._

He is having a hard time. I do not see that there is any reason to make light of it. If you do, you rob him of the credit which, if ever man deserved it, he ought to be getting now--the credit for putting a good face upon it under conditions which, to him, especially at the beginning, were sheer undiluted misery. Some people think that to tell the truth in these matters would hinder recruiting. Well, if it did, it would only mean that the young Australians who stay at home are guilty of greater meanness than one has ever thought. For the Australian here has plunged straight into an existence more like that of a duck in a farmyard drain than to any other condition known or dreamed of in his own sunny land. He is resisting it not only pa.s.sably but well. And if you want to know the reason--as far as any general reason can be given--the motive, which keeps him trying day after day, is the desire that no man shall say a word against Australia. I don't know if his country is thinking of him--a good part of it must be--but he is thinking of his country all the time. Australia has made her name in the world during this war--the world knows her now. It is these men--not the men who shout at stadiums and race meetings at home, but the simple, willing men who are described in this letter--who are making Australia's name for her--and just at present holding on to it like grim death.

Even the life of a duck in a farmyard drain becomes in a wonderful way supportable when you tackle it as cheerfully as that. It comes to the Australian as a shock, at the first introduction--the Manning River country after the Manning River flood has subsided is, as a New South Welshman suggested, the nearest imitation that he has ever seen. But then there was blue sky and dazzling sun over that; whereas here the whole grey sky seems to drip off his hatbrim and nose and chilled fingers and the shiny oil sheet tied around his neck, and to ooze into his back and his boots. It is all fairly comfortable in the green country from which he starts. There has been a fairly warm billet in the half dark of a big barn, where the morning light comes through in strange shafts and triangles up in the blackness amongst the gaunt roof beams. There was a canteen--which is really an officially managed shop for good, cheap groceries--in an outhouse at the end of the village; there were three or four estaminets and cafes, with cheerful and pa.s.sably pretty mademoiselles, and good coffee, and very vile wine, labelled temporarily as champagne. There was also--for some who obtained leave--a visit to a neighbouring town.

The battalion moved off early--its much-prized bra.s.s band at its head--and the men who didn't obtain leave at the tail. The battalion is to be carried to the front in the same string of groaning autobuses which brought out its weary predecessors. The buses are a great help immensely valued--but the battalion has to march four miles to them--to warm it, I suppose. The men who did not obtain leave are carrying the iron cooking dixies for those four miles. In the nature of things military, there will be another four miles to march at the other end.

The platoon at the tail thoroughly appreciates this. Its philosophy of life is wasted, unfortunately, on four miles of stately, dripping French elm trees which cannot understand, and one richly appreciative Australian subaltern who can.

The battalion was not disappointed. The motor-buses brought it to a most comfortable-looking village--pretty well as good as the one it had left.

It climbed out, and straightaway marched to another village five miles distant. The darkness had come down--huge motor-wagons shouldered them off the road into gutters, where they found themselves ankle deep in the mud-heaps sc.r.a.ped by the road gangs. Every second wagon blinded them with its two glaring gig-lamps, and slapped up the mud on to their cheeks. A mule wagon, trotting up behind, splashed it into their back hair, where they found it in dry beads of a.s.sorted sizes next morning.

It was raining dismally. The head of the column was commenting richly on its surroundings--the platoon at the tail had ceased to comment at all.

The last couple were a pair who, I will swear, must have tramped together many a long road over the Old Man Plains towards the evening sun--old felt hats slightly battered; grim, set lips, knees and backs a little bent with the act of carrying; and pack, oil sheet, mess tin rising heavenwards in one mighty hump above their spines. At the gap in a hedge, where the column turned off into a sort of mud lake, stood an officer whose kindly eyes were puckered from the glare of the central Australian sun. You could have told they were Australians at a mile's distance. He looked at them with a queer smile.

"Are you the Scottish Horse?" he asked inquiringly.

"We are the blanky camel corps," was the answer.