Letters to Helen Part 13

They are awfully nice fellows. The only two I knew before were Eric and Bill Vivian. Bill I have known for a very long time, and during the war I've seen a great deal of him, and was very fond of him. He was brought down by Archie yesterday in our lines. Burnt to death. Dead when they reached him. Yesterday night at mess we were all quite gay. Only one man showed that his heart was as heavy as lead. And it seemed bad form.

Heaviness of heart is bad form. No gentleman should have a heavy heart.

A sign of weakness, of ill breeding.

_February 17._

To-day has been one of the jumpy, anxious days again, because something is to happen shortly, and those concerned are ringing up all the time asking me this and that about the Boche trenches, etc. And they want maps of this and plans of that and t'other. It's these times before some event that are so wearing. The smaller the event, the more wearing very often, because it's just some one or two officers, perhaps, who are doing the show, and, of course, half their success or failure depends on whether an unhappy intelligence officer can tell them exactly what they are up against, and exactly where it is and so on. I always go on the principle of a.s.suming the worst. If I think there _may_ be a minny to meet them, I tell them there _is_ a minny, and probably two. It may not be very cheering to them. But if the minny is there, well, then I've put them on their guard; and if it isn't there, well, they can laugh at the work of the staff, and there's no harm done. People don't realize the awful strain and responsibility and hard work of staffs. It's sometimes a nightmare. Think of it in this way: I make a slip. A dozen men get killed. When the Push comes, I make another slip, and a hundred men get killed. Perhaps more. All the work of the lazy and incompetent staff!

But if the staffs are lazy and incompetent, then, for goodness' sake, let's put more energetic and more competent people in their places. But where are these more competent people? In the divisions? in the battalions? But that is exactly where the present staffs came from! And they are the very people who originally jibed at the staffs! Well, anyhow, the war will end some day.

_February 21._

[Sidenote: THE WILD DUCK]

_Re_ America. It doesn't look much as if they were coming in now, does it? However, one of the Scots Guards gave me June as the end of the war.

He offered me 10 to 1 in francs; but, as I am always rather muddled as to whether that means that he gives me 10 francs if I win, or I give him 1 franc if I lose, or what, I declined to bet. I expect he thinks I don't bet on principle. But, anyway, let's hope he wins.

Leave is off at present.

The worst of this game is that now I feel I want to do it all myself. I really do know a fair amount about the Boche lines, and I long to spend a day wandering about there taking notes!

I was up yesterday afternoon trying to find out a certain T.M. battery, and what should fly by quite close and quite unconcerned but a duck! We were not very high, and it was very misty. The duck just appeared, with his neck stretched out, eager and oblivious. And then vanished into the mist again. I was thinking about that duck too much to find out what I wanted. Anyway, it was a fruitless journey. But flying amongst clouds is very beautiful. Sometimes we got above the clouds, to where the sun was functioning away as efficiently as ever. The clouds looked like millions of feather beds.

_March 2._

I have been doing some drawings of R.F.C. officers. They love being "took" out here, and my office is rapidly degenerating into a club, which makes work no easier.

Well, you see from the papers what is happening. The Boche retires to the Hindenburg Line, and we follow.

I should so love to tell you all about it, but Mum's the word. A great moral defeat for poor Fritz, anyway.

The cavalry are sharpening their swords.

The aeroplanes sail high up in the blue, like hungry hawks.

_March 5._

I am probably going off to-morrow. Now, where do you think? Paris?

Madrid? Anything of that sort?

Wrong again. Shall I tell you?

VICTORIA.

I'll send you a telegram directly I get across the briny.

And I plead for no "back from the war tea-parties," please!

[Ill.u.s.tration: PERONNE From BIACHES A few days after the evacuation. From a distance the place looked almost intact, as some of the outside walls had been left standing. That white building in the centre of the town was once the cathedral. MONT ST.

QUENTIN on the left. The thin white lines on the slopes beyond are trenches.]

_March 22._

[Sidenote: THE HUN RETREAT]

The Hun rearguards are now well beyond ----. I knew the place so intimately from photographs, and from high up in the air, that a view of it from terra-firma promised to be quite interesting.

So with great eagerness, some sandwiches, and the faithful sketchbook, I sallied forth. Harry came, too. A glorious day of brilliant sun and brief snowstorms.

From the aerodrome through all this devastated country, past wrecked villages, orchards laid waste, dug-out camps, bivouac camps, R.E. dumps, light railways, battered trollies lying on their sides, and all the ugly confusion of old wire rusted a red-hot colour, bits of corrugated iron, bits of netting screens, more wire, dead horses, dead men in all stages of decomposition, legs, hands, heads scattered anywhere, dead trees, mud, broken rifles, gas-bags, tin helmets, bully-beef tins, derelict trenches, derelict telephone wires, grenades, aerial torpedoes, all the toys of war, broken and useless. Tommy, the dear hairies, and the R.E.

dumps, to remind you what vast stores of everything are still being acc.u.mulated.

The ground becomes more and more like boiling porridge as you approach no-man's-land. Of no-man's-land itself, perhaps, the less said the better. No-beast's-land--call it that rather. And yet men have been very brave, very tender, in no-man's-land. Next we come to those Hun trenches that I have peered at from a distance so long and mapped so often. It all seems rather futile now.

Past the support trenches. Past the second line. d.a.m.n it! how much larger and deeper that old emplacement is than I thought! The country is less pitted, too. Of course, it hasn't been fought over like our back areas. Why; here are trees scarcely knocked about at all. A recognizable field there. How real that stream looks! And, oh Jemima! a blue t.i.t.

A little distance farther. Over that gentle rise, and there behold ----.

Surely one of the loveliest towns in France, on its low hill surrounded by the quiet waters of the Somme. From a distance it looks all right; though somehow, the smoke still ascending from it doesn't look natural.

As you approach you realize that what looks so charming is just empty, sh.e.l.led, charred, and broken. The Huns have destroyed every single house, all the bridges, and the cathedral, too. The cathedral that once crowned the town now stands a pale crushed ghost in the deserted market-place.

[Sidenote: PERONNE]

Some of the streets are almost amusing. Imagine Rye with the pretty alleys so enc.u.mbered and piled up with roofs, sofas, the contents of wardrobes, dormer-windows, smashed mirrors, rubble, and dust, that it's quite impossible to proceed. Very well, that's ----.

Go into the houses, and there it's just as it is in the streets.

Everything crushed to atoms. Images of saints have been hurled out on to garbage-heaps, and in the cathedral huge pillars are lying about in clumsy confusion amongst chairs, organ pipes, and gilded flowers.

On a huge notice board in the Grande Place the Hun has written:

NICHT ARGERN: NUR WUNDERN!

(Don't argue: only wonder! We the Huns did this. Why discuss what we have done? We have destroyed your city. Gape and stare, stupid fools!

What does it matter to us? We took your precious town from you, because we wanted it. Now we don't want it any more. Here it is back again.

With our love.) Some merry soldier wrote that up, I suppose. It was a pity.

There were French officers in ---- to-day. I spoke to one. He answered with a quiet, simple bitterness and determination that would have turned even a Hohenzollern pale, I think. Unhappy Emperor! he must be feeling decidedly uneasy nowadays.

Another odd sight was a tub full of water, with a little dog trying to get out. But the little dog was dead. A crump evidently landed somewhere near, and just petrified him, as it were. You often see men like that, struck dead in the middle of some act. Men are usually turned a dull purplish or greenish black. So was this little dog. We ate a delicious lunch on the battlements, our legs dangling 50 feet above the reedy water. Lots of moorhen and coot swimming about.

The sun was warm. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. What a heavenly world it is!