Pushed and the Return Push Part 1

Pushed and the Return Push.

by George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex).

PUSHED

I. BEFORE THE ATTACK.

By means of a lorry lift from railhead, and a horse borrowed from the Divisional Ammunition Column, I found Brigade Headquarters in a village that the Germans had occupied before their retreat in the spring of 1917.

The huge, red-faced, grey-haired adjutant, best of ex-ranker officers, welcomed me on the farmhouse steps with a hard handshake and a bellowing "Cheerio!" followed by, "Now that you're back, I can go on leave."

In the mess the colonel gave me kindly greeting, and told me something of the Brigade's ups and downs since I had left France in August 1917, wounded at Zillebeke: how all the old and well-tried battery commanders became casualties before 1917 was out, but how, under young, keen, and patiently selected leaders, the batteries were working up towards real efficiency again. Then old "Swiffy," the veterinary officer, came in, and the new American doctor, who appeared armed with two copies of the 'Sat.u.r.day Evening Post.' It was all very pleasant; and the feeling that men who had got to know you properly in the filthy turmoil and strain of Flanders were genuinely pleased to see you again, produced a glow of real happiness. I had, of course, to go out and inspect the adjutant's new charger--a big rattling chestnut, conceded to him by an A.S.C.

major. A mystery gift, if ever there was one: for he was a handsome beast, and chargers are getting very rare in France. "They say he bucks," explained the adjutant. "He'll go for weeks as quiet as a lamb, and then put it across you when you don't expect it. I'm going to put him under treatment."

"Where's my groom?" he roared. Following which there was elaborate preparation of a weighted saddle--not up to the adjutant's 15 stone 5, but enough to make the horse realise he was carrying something; then an improvised lunging-rope was fashioned, and for twenty minutes the new charger had to do a circus trot and canter, with the adjutant as a critical and hopeful ringmaster. In the end the adjutant mounted and rode off, shouting that he would be back in half an hour to report on the mystery horse's preliminary behaviour.

Then the regimental sergeant-major manoeuvred me towards the horse lines to look at the newly made-up telephone cart team.

"You remember the doctor's fat mare, sir--the wheeler, you used to call her? Well, she is a wheeler now, and a splendid worker too. We got the hand-wheeler from B Battery, and they make a perfect pair. And you remember the little horse who strayed into our lines at Thiepval--'Punch' we used to call him--as fat as b.u.t.ter, and didn't like his head touched? Well, he's in the lead; and another bay, a twin to him, that the adjutant got from the --th Division. Changed 'Rabbits'

for him. You remember 'Rabbits,' sir?--nice-looking horse, but inclined to stumble. All bays now, and not a better-looking telephone team in France."

And then an anxious moment. Nearest the wall in the shed which sheltered the officers' horses stood my own horse--dear old Silvertail, always a gentleman among horses, but marked in his likes and dislikes.

Would he know me after my six months' absence? The grey ears went back as I approached, but my voice seemed to awake recognition. Before long a silver-grey nose was nozzling in the old confiding way from the fourth b.u.t.ton towards the jacket pocket where the biscuits used to be kept. All was well with the world.

A rataplan on a side-drum feebly played in the street outside!--the village crier announcing that a calf had committed hari-kari on one of the flag-poles put up to warn hors.e.m.e.n that they mustn't take short cuts over sown land. The aged crier, in the brown velveteen and the stained white corduroys, took a fresh breath and went on to warn the half-dozen villagers who had come to their doorways that uprooting the red flags would be in defiance of the express orders of Monsieur le Maire (who owned many fields in the neighbourhood). The veal resulting from the accident would be shared out among the villagers that evening.

My camp-bed was put up in a room occupied by the adjutant; and during and after dinner there was much talk about the programme of intensive training with which the Brigade was going to occupy itself while out at rest. For the morrow the colonel had arranged a scheme--defence and counter-attack--which meant that skeleton batteries would have to be brought up to upset and demolish the remorseless plans of an imaginary German host; and there was diligent studying of F.A.T. and the latest pamphlets on Battery Staff Training, and other points of knowledge rusted by too much trench warfare.

It was exactly 2 P.M. on the morrow. We were mounted and moving off to partic.i.p.ate in this theoretical battle, when the "chug-chug-chug" of a motor-cycle caused us to look towards the hill at the end of the village street: a despatch-rider, wearing the blue-and-white band of the Signal Service. The envelope he drew from his leather wallet was marked "urgent."

"It's real war, gentlemen," said the colonel quietly, having read the contents; "we move at once. Corps say that the enemy are ma.s.sing for an attack."

Then he gave quick, very definite orders in the alert confident manner so well known to all his officers and men.

"Send a cycle orderly to stop Fentiman bringing up his teams! You can be ready to march by 3 P.M. ... Stone. Townsend, you'd better send off your groom to warn your battery! Times and order of march will be sent out by the adjutant within a quarter of an hour! One hundred yards'

distance between every six vehicles on the march! No motor-lorries for us this time, so all extra kit and things you can't carry will have to be dumped, and a guard left behind!"

A clatter of hors.e.m.e.n spreading the news followed.

I stood at the door of the village's one cafe and watched two of our batteries pa.s.s. The good woman who kept it asked if I thought the Germans would come there again. "They took my husband with them a prisoner when they went a year ago," she said slowly. My trust in our strength as I had seen it six months before helped me to rea.s.sure her; but to change the subject, I turned to the penny-in-the-slot music machine inside, the biggest, most gaudily painted musical box I've ever seen. "Did the Boches ever try this?" I asked. "No, only once," she replied, brightening. "They had a mess in the next room, and never came in here."

"Well, I'll have a pen'orth for luck," said I, and avoiding "Norma"

and "Poet and Peasant," moved the pointer towards a chansonette, something about a good time coming. Such a monstrous wheezing and gurgling, such a deafening clang of cracked cymbals, such a Puck-like concatenation of flat notes and sudden thuds that told of broken strings! And so much of it for a ten-centime piece. When the tumult began a third time I made off. No wonder the Germans only tried the instrument once!

By 8 P.M. we found ourselves in a sort of junction village, its two main roads alive with long lines of moving batteries and lorries and transport waggons. Inky blackness everywhere, for the Hun bombed the place nightly, and "No lights" was a standing order. Odd shouts and curses from drivers in difficulties with their steeds; the continuous cry of "Keep to the right!" from the military police; from a garden close by, the howl of an abandoned dog; and from some dilapidated house c.o.c.kney voices harmonising: "It's a Long, Long Trail." There would be no moon that night, and a moaning wind was rising.

A halt had been called in front of our column, and there was talk of the batteries watering their horses before completing the further three miles to their roadside encampments. The Headquarters party had resigned themselves to a good hour's wait, when I heard the adjutant's voice calling my name.

"Headquarters will go up to Rouez to-night, and we shall mess with the General," he shouted at me from out of the darkness. "Traffic isn't supposed to go this way to the right; but you come with me, and we'll talk to the A.P., at the Corps Commandant's office. They ought to let our little lot through."

Headquarters mess cart and G.S. waggon, Maltese cart and telephone waggon did indeed get through, and by 9.15 P.M. the horses were watered and fed, the men housed, and we ourselves were at dinner in the cottage that had become Divisional R.A. Headquarters.

A cheerful dinner with plenty of talk. It wasn't believed now that the Hun would attack next morning; but, in any case, we were going up to relieve a R.H.A. unit. The brigade-major was very comforting about the conveniences of our new positions. Then some one carried the conversation away and beyond, and, quoting an "Ole Luk-Oie" story, submitted that the higher realms of generalship should include the closer study of the personal history and characteristics--mental and moral--of enemy commanders. Some one else noted that the supposed speciality of the General immediately opposite us was that of making fierce attacks across impa.s.sable marshes. "Good," put in a third some one. "Let's puzzle the German staff by persuading him that we have an Etonian General in this part of the line, a very celebrated 'wet-bob.'"

Which sprightly suggestion made the Brigadier-General smile. But it was my good fortune to go one better. I had to partner him at bridge, and brought off a grand slam.

Next morning snow; and the colonel, the adjutant, and myself had a seven-miles' ride before us. The Germans had not attacked, but the general move-up of fresh divisions was continuing, and our brigade had to take over the part of the line we were told off to defend by 5 P.M.

All the talk on the way up was of the beautiful quietude of the area we were riding through: no weed-choked houses with the windows all blown in; no sound of guns, no line of filled-up ambulances; few lorries on the main thoroughfares; only the khaki-clad road-repairers and the "Gas Alert" notice-boards to remind us we were in a British area. As we reached the quarry that was to become Brigade Headquarters, we marvelled still more. A veritable quarry _de luxe_. A mess fashioned out of stone-blocks hewn from the quarry, perfectly cut and perfectly laid. Six-inch girders to support the concrete roof, and an underground pa.s.sage as a funk-hole from bombs, sh.e.l.ls, and gas. Separate strong-room bedrooms for the officers; and some one had had time to paint on the doors, "O.C., R.F.A. Brigade," "Adjutant," "Intelligence Officer, R.F.A.," and "Signal Officer, R.F.A.," with proper professional skill. Electric light laid on to all these quarters, and to the Brigade office and the signallers' underground chamber. Aladdin didn't enjoy a more gorgeous eye-opener on his first tour of his palace.

"Never seen such headquarters," grinned the adjutant. "Wonder why there's no place for the Divisional Band."

I shall never forget the content of the next week. The way from Brigade H.Q., past the batteries and up to the front line, was over a wide rolling country of ploughed and fallow lands, of the first wild flowers, of budding hedgerows, of woods in which birds lilted their spring songs. The atmosphere was fresh and redolent of clean earth; odd sh.e.l.l-holes you came across were, miracle of miracles, gra.s.s-grown--a sight for eyes tired with the drab stinking desolation of Flanders. A more than spring warmth quickened growing things. White tendrils of fluff floated strangely in the air, and spread thousands of soft clinging threads over telephone-wires, tree-tops, and across miles of growing fields--the curious output of myriads of spinning-spiders.

There were quaintly restful visits to the front line. The Boche was a mile away at least; and when you were weary of staring through binoculars, trying to spot enemy movement, you could sit and lounge, and hum the rag-time "Wait and See the Ducks go by," with a new and very thorough meaning. The signal officer was away doing a course, and I took on his duties: plenty of long walks and a good deal of labelling to do, but the task was not onerous. "We've only had one wire down through sh.e.l.l-fire since we've been here," the signalling officer of the outgoing brigade had told me: and indeed, until March 21, the telephone-wires to batteries and "O.P.'s" remained as undisturbed as if they had skirted Devonshire fields and lanes. The colonel was quite happy, spending two or three hours a day at O.P.'s, watching our guns register, or do a bit of sniping on the very very rare occasions when a Hun was spotted.

"I can see how the subalterns shoot on a big open front like this--and teach them something," he said. "This is an admirable part of the line for instruction purposes."

Whether the Boche would attack in force on our part of the front was argued upon and considered from every point of view. There were certain natural features that made such an attempt exceedingly improbable.

Nevertheless infantry and artillery kept hard at it, strengthening our means of defence. One day I did a tour with the machine-gun commander in order to know the exact whereabouts of the machine-gun posts. They were superlatively well hidden, and the major-general himself had to laugh when one battalion commander, saying, "There's one just about here, sir," was startled by a corporal's voice near his very boot-toes calling out, "Yes, sir, it's here, sir." Gunners had the rare experience of circling their battery positions with barbed wire, and siting machine-guns for hand-to-hand protection of the 18 pdrs. and 45 hows.; and special instruction in musketry and Lewis-gun manipulation was given by infantry instructors. There was memorable jubilation one morning at our Brigade Headquarters, when one of the orderlies, a Manchester man who fired with his left hand, and held the rifle-b.u.t.t to his left shoulder, beat the infantry crack shot who came to instruct the H.Q. staff.

Camouflaging is now, of course, a studied science, and our colonel, who issued special guiding notes to his batteries, had a few sharp words to say one afternoon. The British soldier, old and new, is always happy when he is demolishing something; and a sergeant sent to prepare a pit for a forward gun had collected wood and corrugated iron for it by pulling to pieces a near-by dummy gun, placed specially to draw enemy fire. "Bad as some Pioneers I noticed yesterday," said the colonel tersely. "They shifted a couple of trees to a place where there had been no trees before and thought that that was camouflage."

Happy confident days! The doctor, noting the almost summery heat that had set in, talked of the mosquito headquarters that would develop in the pond near our quarry. "I'll oil that pond," he gave forth, and prepared accordingly. Each mail brought him additional copies of the 'Sat.u.r.day Evening Post,' which he devoured every moment he was off duty.

I made the joyful discovery that the thick stone blocks kept the mess so dry and at such an even temperature that the hundred decent-quality cigars I had brought from England could be kept in condition as perfect as if they were at the Stores. The adjutant learnt that his new steed could indeed buck; but as the afternoon which saw him take a toss preceded the day on which he left for leave to England, he forgot to be furious, and went off promising to bring back all sorts of things for the mess.

Our companion infantry battalion were as gorgeously housed as ourselves in an adjoining quarry, and at the dinner parties arranged between their mess and ours reminiscences of Thiepval and Schwaben Redoubt, and July 1st, 1916, and St Pierre Divion and the Hindenburg Line, brought out many a new and many an old story.

On the night of March 19th our chief guest was the youthful lieutenant-colonel who a very few weeks before had succeeded to the command of the ----. Tall, properly handsome, with his crisp curling hair and his chin that was firm but not markedly so; eyes that were reflective rather than compelling; earnest to the point of an absorbed seriousness--we did right to note him well. He was destined to win great glory in the vortex of flame and smoke and agony and panic into which we were to be swept within the next thirty-six hours. My chief recollection of him that night was of his careful attentiveness to everything said by our own colonel on the science of present-day war--the understanding deference paid by a splendid young leader to the knowledge and grasp and fine character of a very complete gunner.

II. "THE BOCHE IS THROUGH!"

At 5.10 P.M. on March 20 I was in the mess, casting an appraising eye upon the coloured study of a girl in pink--dark-haired, hazel-eyed, _tres soignee_, but not too sophisticated, one would say; her beauty of the kind that glows and tells of abundant vitality and a fresh happy mind. The little American doctor had sacrificed the cover of one of his beloved 'Sat.u.r.day Evening Posts' for this portrait, and with extreme neatness had scissored it out and fastened it on the wall--a pleasant change from the cocaine and chocolate-box suggestiveness of the languorous Kirchner type that in 1916 and 1917 lent a pinchbeck Montmartre atmosphere to so many English messes in France and Flanders.

The day had been hot and peaceful, the only sound of gun-fire a six-inch how. registering, and, during a morning tour with the second lieutenant who had come from one of the batteries to act as temporary signalling officer, I remembered noting again a weather-beaten civilian boot and a decayed bowler hat that for weeks had lain neglected and undisturbed in one of the rough tracks leading to the front line--typical of the unchanging restfulness of this part of the front.

Suddenly the door opened, to admit Colonel ----, C.O. of the Infantry Battalion who were our near neighbours in the quarry.

"Have you had the 'PREPARE FOR ATTACK'?" he asked abruptly as we held ourselves to attention.

"No, sir," I replied, and moved to the telephone to ring up Divisional Artillery Headquarters.

"Just come in," he said; and even as I asked exchange to put me through to "D.A.," the brigade clerk came in with the telephoned warning that we had talked about, expected, or refused to believe in ever since the alarm order to move into the line a fortnight before.