On the King's Service Part 3

_'I hate war: that is why I am fighting'_

There is a garden in Vlamertynghe with a marble seat overturned beside a smashed tree, a corner just made for lovers, once. An enormous crump hole fills the greater part of the garden, and the wall has fallen outwards in one ma.s.s leaving the fruit trees standing in a line, their arms outstretched. Across on the other side of the road Captain Norman Stewart lies buried. But his memory lives in the hearts of men, and wherever the 2nd battalion gathers round its braziers and in the glow of them the stories of the heroes of the regiment are pa.s.sed on from the veterans to the younger men, Stewart will be remembered with reverence as one who not only upheld but created regimental tradition.

It was a bombing affair in which he died, detachments of Suffolks, Middles.e.x, and Royal Scots, under his leadership, being ordered to drive the enemy out of the tip of the salient. Barricades made progress almost impossible in face of a murderous machine-gun fire. Owing to the confused nature of the fighting no quarter could be given, and desperate fighting ensued with bombs, bayonets and hand to hand. Finally ten yards were gained and the ground consolidated.

At one point of the fight, finding progress otherwise impossible, Captain Stewart mounted to the top of the barricade in full view of the enemy, with sh.e.l.ls and bombs bursting all round and under machine-gun and rifle fire. Though wounded he remained there in face of certain death for over ten minutes. From bucket after bucket handed up to him he still hurled bombs at the thronging enemy beneath, until a sniper crept round to his flank, and this heroic Scotsman fell.

'They pa.s.s, they pa.s.s, but cannot pa.s.s away, For _Scotland_ feels them in her blood like wine.'

The night before he died Stewart said to a friend, 'I hate war: that is why I am fighting.'

III

_Billets and Camps_

The camps to which the battalion returned after each tour of the trenches were for the most part out of danger except for an occasional sh.e.l.l, but it was only when we were withdrawn to the 'rest area' that we felt any sense of freedom to settle down and take stock of ourselves.

Both Colonel Duncan and Colonel Dyson, to whom I owe countless kindnesses, were keen disciplinarians, and Major Everingham, the Quartermaster, imperturbable, efficient, could really perform almost superhuman feats. A man can only know his own department, and in mine the standard of a battalion is shown by its att.i.tude to religious observances. A bad battalion finds too many engagements to turn out in any strength on Sunday. I used to feel so proud as the old Royals, every available man on parade, would march up behind their pipes and drums, alert, well-groomed, punctilious in all the minor forms that are so important an evidence of a battalion's condition. In rest billets we all got to work; there were marches and manoeuvres, cinematographs and cross-country runs, football matches and boxing compet.i.tions. These men when stripped were so much more beautiful than in their clothes. Of how many in civilian occupations could that be said? The battalion would be refitted; a brewer's great vat was commandeered for a bathing-place; the village school was turned, every evening, into a recreation room; and a communicants' cla.s.s was started. Not for the first time I longed for a brief, clear statement of our Church's faith. The c.u.mbrous complicated Catechisms and Confessions are magnificent monuments, but they are worse than useless under such conditions. A _Credo_ which could be written on a blackboard and pointed to as the Church member's essential Confession of Faith, to be developed and expanded according to the need and circ.u.mstances, would be a real power in a chaplain's hands.

The men's behaviour in billets--ramshackle barns for the most part--was almost exemplary. Only once or twice small episodes occurred in connection with hen-roosts, and on one occasion a sucking-pig was slaughtered amid its brethren at the dead of night. It must have been a temporary madness that possessed the author of this escapade, for he had no possible chance of escape. It was pleaded on his behalf, on his appearance before the Colonel, that he had recently done a gallant deed, but as some one said, 'If every man who did a gallant deed was allowed to kill a pig there would not be a pig left in Flanders.'

It was the cleanness of the air and of the soil that made a rest back among the far-stretching forests of the Pas de Calais so different from one nearer the line. To get on bridle-paths and roads free from lorry traffic and let your horse out at full stretch over the fallen leaves down some long grey-purple vista of bare trees, and feel the clean wind whistling past your ears and smell the fresh odours of the great woods, to see the blue smoke drifting up from some forester's cottage, or for a moment in pa.s.sing catch a glimpse of a fairy-story scene of charcoal burners grouped together in a glade, was to ride into another world of thought and feeling. My little horse John, one of the five horses left of those who crossed with the battalion, felt it too--thought perhaps he was in old England again. But the British soldier hates manoeuvres and marches and drills and inspections. He would rather be left in peace in his trenches, in a 'quiet' part of the line at least, than bothered about those things. Movement, too, has an exhilarating effect on him, and so when orders come to go back into action he tramps off with remarkable goodwill. I remember one battalion of Royal Welsh Fusiliers, suddenly rushed up from rest, pulled out of the station singing a song of which the refrain is something like 'Ai, ai! Vot a game it is!' at the top of their voices. And it really is by no means a game. As the Colonel used to say (very moderately), 'Life out here is not all joy!'

One November evening I was picking my way cautiously through the mud camp near Reninghelst, and hearing the tune of a famous hymn, drew near to listen, for Jock sometimes sings to hymn tunes words that certainly never appeared in any hymn-book, and I wanted to make sure that it _was_ the greatest hymn in the English language which was being sung. It was a quiet night. Now and again a heavy gun fired a round, and infrequently, on a gentle wind blowing from the trenches, was borne the rattle of a machine-gun. From all the camp arose the subdued confused noise of an army settling to rest for the night. Some tents were in darkness, in others a candle burned, and here and there braziers still glowed redly.

It was from one of the lighted tents that the singing came, each part being taken, and a sweet clear tenor voice leading. The tune was old 'Communion,' and they had just come to this verse:

'Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ, my G.o.d: All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood.'

How often have we sung that, perhaps thoughtlessly, in comfort at home, but these lads had in truth sacrificed the 'vain things.' With a lump in my throat I waited for the last verse:

'Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my life, my soul, my all.'

HOW THE ROYALS HELD THE BLUFF: AN EPISODE OF TRENCH WARFARE

CHAPTER VII

HOW THE ROYALS HELD THE BLUFF: AN EPISODE OF TRENCH WARFARE

I

_Waiting_

The beginning of March found me with a battalion of The Royals in a rather battered Belgian town. Its centre received a good deal of attention from enemy artillery, but it offered two attractions which brought in officers from divisions all around. After all, to men accustomed to living in the trenches, the atmosphere was one of almost Sabbath peace. The hall where 'The Fancies' made much of the humours of trench life to uproariously delighted audiences was crowded out night after night. You could not find anywhere greater zest and enjoyment. The striking comradeship of soldiering, the common experience of audience and actors, and the abandonment of all thought for the morrow, gave that impression of cheerful carelessness the root of which is not happiness but the conviction that the future is so uncertain and the possibilities so dreadful that he is wise who lives for the hour only, even as the hour may s.n.a.t.c.h life from him. I thought I knew the head in front of me, and, leaning forward, saw it was my brother-in-law. It has always struck me as quaint that he, who had been with his battery for a year and a half, and I, who had been out for nine months, should have met again under such circ.u.mstances. I had pictured a stricken field and much coolness exhibited in an admittedly dramatic moment--something in line with Stanley's 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume.' It was comforting to find it otherwise, but, as Smee says in _Peter Pan_, it was 'galling too.'

First when looking into a shop window, and now in a concert hall, in all these months of war! We said, 'Not a bad show, is it?' 'Not half bad.'

But there have been some strange meetings in this war. A private in our battalion discovered his son, a boy of seventeen, in a new draft which had just come up to the line. He had run away from home and been lost to sight. The father set matters on a proper footing by thrashing his son there and then in the front trench!

War was not very far off after all. Two days later we were having lunch in the comfortable warm restaurant which is this tedious town's other attraction. We drank our coffee to the accompaniment of the nasty sound of arriving sh.e.l.ls. Every time a sh.e.l.l screamed towards us the stout lady behind the counter dropped on hands and knees, emerging flushed and trembling after each had burst. We were rather amused; but when we went out and round the corner of the street, the body of a man was being swiftly carried away wrapped in a brown blanket. Forty soldiers, it was said, had been killed and wounded. Distracted women stood in little groups in the pa.s.sages of the houses, and there was much blood in the gutters.

Only a country invaded by the enemy drinks to its dregs the cup of war, but the narrow belt a few miles behind the friendly army's trenches enjoys great prosperity. The love of home or the love of money keeps the population in many places where it would be better away. One beautiful spring day I took shelter behind a farmhouse in the Hallebast-Vierstraat area until some sh.e.l.ling on the path ahead had died down. The farmer's wife came out and we got into conversation. A rise in the ground gave some shelter from the German lines, but she told me that any movement on horseback was immediately sniped with whizbangs. The day before all her cows had been killed by sh.e.l.l-fire in the paddock behind the farmhouse, but if she and her elderly husband let their land go out of cultivation, how were they to live, and if they left, where could they go? When high-explosives blew great holes in their sown land they just filled in the holes and ploughed and sowed the place over again. The settled sadness of her face and voice haunts me still. Others, however, stay in danger because they are making so much money. Several shopkeepers in this town admitted they had never known such prosperity. The estaminets make enormous profits from the sale of very weak beer. A friend of mine, having drawn battalion pay in notes of too large amounts, was told to return to the paymaster and draw it in smaller sums. He found the office closed, and turned into a little village shop to see if they could change a part of it. To his amazement they changed the whole of it from the till. The total amount was ten thousand francs. But how many Belgians have lost their all?

Our billets were clean and very airy. For some reason, though all furniture had been removed, the presses, which were all open, were full of beautiful bed and table linen. It was very tempting, but fortunately we resisted the temptation. The morning after we arrived, about seven o'clock, a disturbance arose below. Angry women's voices were heard in altercation with the servants, there were hurried footsteps on the stair, and a moment later our door was thrust violently open. Two strapping Belgian women strode in and demanded answers to many questions. We adopted our friend the Major's plan, and feigned to know even less French than we did. We were anxious to be very inoffensive as we lay on the floor and watched these determined individuals throwing open the presses and wardrobes. Inside the linen lay untouched, folded neatly; we felt thankful we had left it so. They stamped out again, and we heard the Colonel's voice raised in protest next door. The doctor and I looked at one another. He seemed rather pale, and I noticed for the first time that his head rested on an enormous soft pillow covered with a spotless linen pillow-slip edged with beautiful lace.

But next morning we had a different awakening. Dawn was rising wanly from the east to another day on the Salient. The broken windows were rattling and the floor trembling under the dull continuous thudding of a concentrated bombardment. We lay and listened, and for the thousandth time hated war. We knew that men, some of whom we knew and loved, were going over the parapet, many never to return.

That night, as dusk fell, the old steeple with its rent side looked down on cobbled streets thronging with ordered ranks of men standing ready to move. Here and there a few officers spoke together, or a man gave his chum a light from his f.a.g, or straps were tightened. A rifle b.u.t.t rang on the pavement, and the adjutant's horse moved his feet restlessly.

These men had no illusions as to what they would probably have to face; but none guessed that there lay ahead the most dreadful test of physical endurance which the old battalion, since the great retreat, had ever known.

II

_The Bluff_

What had happened was this. Soon after our division had been moved back to the rest area, part of the line which it had been holding was strongly attacked and lost to the enemy. Several counter-attacks failed, and finally our own Division was brought back from rest to recapture the lost trenches. One brigade attacked with great dash and success. The lost trenches were re-occupied, and our own brigade, which had been lying in support, was ordered to take over and hold them against the expected counter-attacks. The Bluff, which was the main feature of the position and the worst part of which The Royals, as the senior battalion, were given to hold, was a low hill jutting out at the re-entrant to the Salient, south-east of Ypres. It was a strong tactical position commanding the approaches to our trenches, as the enemy well knew. Seen from our front line farther south it had the dead, bleak appearance of all ground that is much sh.e.l.led. Pitted by high explosive, burned yellow by fumes of gas and sh.e.l.ls, and stripped of every living thing, with blackened stumps of trees spa.r.s.ely scattered on its summit, this muddy hillock dominated the flat lands, and, on the sunny morning when I first saw it, seemed indescribably sinister and menacing. It said to me, 'I am war, the antagonist of everything clean and comely, of everything fresh and young: misery of mind and body, torment of kindly earth and all its little growing things, lover of all that is foul and dead.'

III

_'We've keepit up the reputation o' the auld mob, onyway'_

That night the weather suddenly changed. There had been a hint of spring in the air, but in an hour that was wiped out by a bitter north wind sweeping the bare fields with icy rain and snow. The transport, pitched in the filthy mora.s.s known as 'Scottish Lines,' saw its labour of three weeks thrown away in a couple of nights. For the human beings there were a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become mere chains of sh.e.l.l holes in which the men stood up to their thighs in liquid mud. When the C.O. arrived to take over the headquarters' dug-out he found it blown to pieces. Within lay the bodies of the previous occupants--four officers. Another dug-out was finally found. It was deep in a bank at the end of a narrow pa.s.sage twenty feet long. Within was a chamber six feet long, four broad and four high, and in this place, so horribly like a grave, the C.O., second-in-command, and adjutant lived for three days and four nights. A candle gave light, and whenever a sh.e.l.l burst above the flame jerked out. The sergeant-major and the orderlies and servants lived in the tunnel, squatting on their haunches in the mud. Outside there were no other dug-outs at all. The sh.e.l.ling was continuous, but the cold was far worse. Men sank in the mud and remained motionless for hours. Many fell into sh.e.l.l holes and had to be hauled out with twisted telephone wires. The wounded suffered horribly.

Owing to the mud and the German barrage no supplies could be brought up, and it was impossible to light braziers. On the fourth night relief came, but it was daylight before the last company sucked itself out of its mudholes and waded back in full view of the enemy. Fortunately a blinding snowstorm swept down from the north and hid all movement just when it seemed certain that disaster would occur. Every available vehicle was sent up to meet the battalion, but there was a long walk before these could be reached. The men crept along on sodden, swollen feet--no gumboots had been obtainable. They came along in groups, now of two or three, now of six or seven, or one by one. They were bent like old men, and staggered as they walked, their faces set and grey. The most terrible thing of all was the utter silence. Snow m.u.f.fled the fall of the dragging feet; it lay thick on the ma.s.ses of ruins in the shattered empty villages; and when the brigade major's greeting rang out men shrank and looked fearful at the sudden sound. Yet when I spoke to any, as they staggered through the snow past the point whither I had gone to meet them, life flickered up for a moment from the depths of that final exhaustion. 'What price Charlie Chaplin now, sir!' said one man whose wavering footsteps led him hither and thither. And another in simple words summed up the heroic simple spirit of them all: 'Well, we've keepit up the reputation o' the auld mob, onyway.' Indomitable men! Who could ever vanquish you?

Rest meant tent boards under frozen canvas, but it was rest. On that weary morning even the uninviting outline of Reninghelst village seemed like home.

THE HISTORIC TRIANGLE

CHAPTER VIII

THE HISTORIC TRIANGLE

The last time I saw the Ypres salient was from the shoulder of the Scherpenberg. The torn church tower of d.i.c.kebusch stood up darkly near a leaden gleam of water. From St. Eloi in front of it trenches ran curving up to Hooge and back again to within, on the north, a mile and a half of Ypres, enclosing the level, sodden farmland four miles across its base, two from base to nose, which is the Ypres salient. A reluctant dawn was turning the darkness to a dull and threatening day, and as it grew lighter the famous miles slowly came into view. It was the hour of 'Stand-to.' All round the Salient, and north and south of it far beyond the horizon, the trenches were filled with watching men, weary from the night's toil at digging or wiring or 'carrying' fatigues, but standing ready until the dangerous hour of dawn should pa.s.s. It had been an anxious week, for the wind was blowing from the enemy's lines, and night after night the long warning call of the gas-gongs, followed in a moment by the awakening of all the Salient into a ring of darting flames and tremendous concussions as the guns were called into action, had brought all ranks to their feet. But this morning no sound broke the strange silence. It was hard to believe that hidden beneath the soil tens of thousands of men were silently standing face to face. As the dawn lifted I knew that everywhere in the ten-mile ring the British soldier was boiling the water for his tea, very strong and very sweet, the first of half a dozen tea brewings he would make that day. Another day of the war had begun.

Surely so long as great deeds appeal to the British race those weary miles will be always sacred. Within them lie the unnumbered British dead, 'the dear, pitiful, august dead.' Comrades of the dauntless warriors of Gallipoli, comrades of the sailors who have gone down fighting in the cold waters of the North Sea, brothers of all brave men suffering for a clean cause, they leave the issue with us. As long as the British Empire endures, and it will endure so long as it works for G.o.d and no longer, the memory of the heroes of the Ypres salient will live and glow.

'I hate war: that is why I am fighting,' said one of them. They fought not merely for their country, but because they believed they were fighting war itself. We shall not be true to their memory unless we remember that. 'Slavery will always be,' said the defenders of slavery.