The Challenge of the Dead Part 8

Up in the lines there were many comical scenes and disputes. The men made themselves at home in the abandoned dug-outs which they found, and where the dinner had been left cooking they finished it and ate it.

Drummers and pipers found superb quarters, and such original owners as turned up were much annoyed. Disputes were settled by neutral soldiers as a rule and went in favour of those who had not lost guns or abandoned their posts.

Where the railway intersects the Gouzeaucourt-Cambrai road was a wonderful supply train, better than any golden wreck in desert-island story. This was stacked with every imaginable kind of food. The Germans had been through it, but had devoted their attention almost exclusively to the letters and the despatch-bags. They had taken away a few t.i.t-bits but what was left sufficed the Guards for days. The transport was warned not to send up their rations for three days but to send up limbers instead to cart the food. At the disposal of the victors were also a number of abandoned motor-cars. There is a lively impression of a Sergeant-major going to and fro in a Ford car to this wonderful train.

Authorities asked afterwards who had pillaged the train--the culprits ought to be brought to justice. But those in charge of that section of the line felt that the action was possibly excusable under the circ.u.mstances. Had they condemned it they had condemned themselves. The following lines by an unknown author appeared some months after the incident at Gouzeaucourt and men in the ranks copied it into their notebooks and diaries.

The Guards' Division were out to rest They wanted it; They'd "popped it"--"as on parade."

(What a jest!) Then they'd held the line and had done their best And were out.

Twenty-four hours had scarcely pa.s.sed; They were resting.

When an orderly--bearing a message fast-- "The Germans have broken through at last, You're wanted."

And wanted they were--without a doubt-- At Gouzeaucourt.

The Huns had turned a lot of us out-- (A lot of us, mind you--supposed to be stout) "Help wanted!"

Weary and footsore and stiff with cold-- Weren't shirking, The Guards' Division, demeanour bold, With drummers playing (so I'm told) Went at 'em.

Said an A.P.M. as they marched along-- "Stand back there!"

Get out of the way, you funking throng, They'll put to rights what you've done wrong, THE GUARDS DIVISION.

(And they did.)

After Gouzeaucourt it was slowly borne in upon the military mind that the "initiative," as it is called, had pa.s.sed to the enemy, and that the role of attack would not be ours for a while. There was a great disparity between the forward mind and the rear mind. The forward mind registering all the buffets and "sticking it" was getting very sick of the war. The rear mind, making plenty of profit, playing men across the map like chess pieces, preserved all its zest. The rear mind had great patience and little imagination. It dreamed of a year, be it 1919 or 1920 or 1921, when America would be affording her maximum strength.

America had to be played into the war. She had started late, and it would take years to commit her fully and make her spend according to her means. The Tommy and the poilu would hold on till then. The Hun, as the red hats loved to call the foe, would also play the game. 1918 was never intended as the final year of the war--as far as the rear mind was concerned, even though the men of fifty be called up and drilled with youths of eighteen. Fortunately for us all, the Germans had decided to win or lose and put all things to the test that year. Theirs had been the supreme crime of starting the war, but let us acknowledge that they at least had the grace at last to "hands up" when they saw their game was lost and did not keep us at it for five years more. Germany at least saved us at last from what may be called the blood l.u.s.t of the rear.

March 21st came with its never-to-be-forgotten bid for all or nothing, with the Kaiser in command and all Germany on the march. The largest numbers of men involved and the broadest front of action in the war.

"_Nach Paris_" was the cry--"Paris, Paris," the exultant yell of the Goth bearing down upon the new Rome.

On the 19th and 20th there were suspicions that something new was in preparation on the German side. "From Headquarters to Headquarters," as one officer puts it, "throbbed the order to man the battle-stations."

The night of the 20th was of intense darkness, and the watchful sentries at their posts stared into a deep and silent curtain of fog. The vague light that comes before dawn revealed only the mist.

Then suddenly on a mighty breadth of line spoke the guns, came the swift chasing sh.e.l.ls through the sky, and the chorus of their sighs and their cat-calls and yells and the hubbub of disruption in their explosion.

Trench mortars of all calibres and field-guns had been brought up to closest range under cover of mist and darkness, and pounded into all our trenches thick and warm with khaki and live flesh and blood, and from behind the field-guns, but not far behind, in serried ranks spoke the heavy guns, the Russian heavies, the Italian heavies, the grand Austrian heavies, heaving death and destruction in the paths of retreat.

Accommodated with the heavies in fiendish fraternal task were the light guns in vast numbers which flung the gas-bombs in tens of thousands to the spots where of a certainty there must be congestion of traffic in the British rear. It was ten minutes to five in the morning of the 21st March--_der Tag_ had come, the hour of German fate had struck.

Our guns replied at once in mighty salvos from accustomed points on the horizon, but also many hitherto silent guns and batteries spoke for the first time. A steady and perhaps unimaginative confidence was expressed by our artillery, but it was quickly realised that we were out-gunned and out-manned. Our battery positions were soon drenched with mustard gas. The enemy firing was remarkably accurate and scored direct hits on many headquarters, billets, and ammunition dumps which had never been a.s.sailed before. The roads all received a great deal of attention and at many vital points deep craters threatened to hold up traffic for hours.

Daylight streamed through the mist. The guardians of the line with strained nerves and brain stood on the alert expecting grey Fritz momentarily to emerge from the mist with lowering brows and bayonet at the port. Our machine-guns chattered at the unknown, and meanwhile the enemy wire-cutters were at work clearing the way. It was not until half-past nine that the anonymous artillery gave way to the deadly personality of the foe. On the same lavish scale as that in which the guns were firing, stick-bombs showered into the front lines, exploding with their deafening and would-be-terrifying concussion of high explosive. The enemy soldiers got rid of all the bombs they had right away, and then very soon they were themselves to be seen. Tommy faced forward. But Fritz, though he came steadily across no-man's land offering an easy target, came also from the flanks and was soon to be seen in the rear. British troops were ma.s.sed here and there and posted in cl.u.s.ters of defence, but the enemy with his vastly extended waves broke through at the thin places and the empty places. The alarm went to the flanks and the rear, but the runners found their various headquarters and destinations full of the men in grey. Surrenders were rapid on all hands. It was a puzzle what had happened. Brave units fought it out against fearful odds. Some reserve battalions led by their Colonels rushed in to counter-attack, and the Colonels fell and the battalions fell. Other reserve battalions received orders to retire and they retired. Others received no orders of any kind and remained where they were and were overtaken. All day of the 21st and all night long our lines were confusion worse confounded. On the 22nd there were Generals in the fray encouraging the defence in person and trying to re-establish lost contact right and left. But towards nightfall the last lines were over-run and the enemy was through.

The British menace was lifted from St. Quentin and Cambrai, from La Fere and Laon. The enemy plunged for Arras, Peronne and Ham, and for the far-flung hope of Albert, Doullens, Amiens, Compiegne. They rolled our legions back, they set Divisions marching, fleeing; they captured front-line men in tens of thousands, captured second-line men in tens of thousands, captured artillerymen, captured their guns, captured the Old Bills and Charlie Chaplins a-mending the roads, captured Red-cross men, captured Chinamen, captured the Y.M.C.A., captured an infinite array of stores and sh.e.l.ls. If they were doubtful of themselves at first, their faith soon lit up, as how could it fail to light. The banner of a victorious end of the war and a crown of all German privations and sufferings was raised. "I heard nothing more dreadful in the war," said an English captain, "than the yell of the German cheers as their first men entered Ham and they knew they had broken the line and had us running. _Paris_, _Paris_ was the watchword, and many a Teutonic soldier mortally wounded in the moment of victory, sank joyfully to the rest of death in the belief that the Vaterland and the Kaiser were winning through at last."

And the embattled hosts swept onward toward Amiens, where at last the onrush was stabilised. A greater victory had been won than the German dreamed of when he planned. The offensive paused at last as it must, but a staggering blow had been dealt at the forces of George the Fifth. The King was down, and even if he were not counted out this time it was doubtful if he could survive many such rounds if the German could repeat such blows.

What a time that was for England! The war staff tried to keep the consternation to themselves but it could hardly be done. The whole nation trembled with anxiety and apprehension. In France, as we now know, screened from public view, the leaders of France and England met in a grave mood. There was Milner and Haig and Foch and Clemenceau.

Haig, with a terribly pallid and drawn face looked as if he had not slept for three nights. Foch was nervous and excitable, and carried in his hand a small wooden wand on the k.n.o.b of which was carved a poilu's head.

"I will do my best," said Haig pathetically, "to stop them before Amiens," and it seemed he doubted whether it could be done.

"We can always stop the Boche," said Foch, "we must stop him where he is, not at Amiens."

"But how?"

"Well, I could do it," said Foch. "Seal up the centre. The Boche has broken through the British and the French armies. His forces are pushing against the wings of folding-doors; each door gives a little, making a gap between, and through the gap the enemy is pouring. Seal up the gap, seal it up!"

There was only one way of sealing it up, and that was by uniting French and British forces under one single commander. Lord Milner saw it. He started up and pointed dramatically with his finger to Foch standing there with his wooden wand, and he cried out:

"There is the man."

Haig, endowed by G.o.d and nature with a fine character, at once came forward and agreed. No littleness stood in his way at that moment of destiny. Foch was the man, let Foch take the supreme command. Foch took it and poured French troops to our aid and stopped the tide and saved the great city, the railway-key of Calais and of Paris.

The great German effort had resulted first in German victory, then in a dramatic change in the leadership of the war. Doubtless the German took little stock of Foch. It seemed of good augury to our foe that the enemy should have been forced to make a change in command. Changes of the kind are seldom good in the midst of a strenuous campaign. But the sway of Foch nevertheless gave a new faith to the whole army of the Allies.

The famous S.O.S. was sent to Wilson: _We have our backs to the wall but send your army quickly or we perish_. And Wilson speeded up the transport of his army in a marvellous way. He also saved us.

Amiens, whose fate was in the balance for so many days, became baptised as a shrine of the war as the enemy long-range guns sent to it fire and death unintermittently.

What new fields and cities the enemy had opened for destruction! Had the Germans stayed before the city, the Cathedral of St. Firmin might have become as remarkable a ruin as the shrine of St. Vaast. St. Firmin is the patron saint of Amiens and is supposed to hold the city in his protection, and the pious of Amiens prayed to St. Firmin and to G.o.d in March 1918 as never before. That their prayers availed whereas other cities had fallen despite all prayer is not a fact on which to lay much stress. But it was just six months to the festival of St. Firmin, and ere that happy day came round the dreadful menacing demon had fled far from their walls.

Two years later behold the procession of the relics of St. Firmin at Amiens. The Church parades in praise and mediaeval glory--cherubic boys in crimson and white lace, young tonsured monks with health and life throbbing from their close-cropped skulls, aged ecclesiastics with Latinised faces, beautiful youths carrying emblems and banners, and then supported on either hand by wise and reverend fathers comes the Bishop, crowned with a gilded mitre crimson within and golden without, and streaming with two golden streamers hanging behind. He bears his golden crook, and before his arrested step and hand held up in blessing the people sway like reeds when the wind which bloweth where it listeth pa.s.ses over them. From his uplifted hand and his arrested pose there flung out mysterious power. You felt it; it was the blessing of the Church imparted with all the consciousness of true succession even from Peter and from Christ.

So they bear what is left of the memory and the dust of St. Firmin, nodding as they go, looking like an ecclesiastical picture on a vast canvas, and singing to their measured steps--_Salve, Salve_.

The second round of 1918 was fought on the Lys when the Germans 'twixt Ypres on the north and Bethune in the south plunged towards Hazebrouck and St. Omer. Bailleul and Merville fell, the eminence of Kemmel was taken and Locre, and it seemed likely that the enemy would do with the sanctuary of Ypres what he had done with that of Albert.

The smashed centre of Bethune and the wilderness of its Grande Place testifies to the violence of the onset, and Hazebrouck still bears the marks of a great trembling and nervous shock. Hazebrouck had its three days of anguish when all its people fled, and the town, like a victim in a dungeon, awaited the coming of the persecutor. The cross-roads at Vieux Berquin are almost as sinister in the after-the-war light as they were then, and in all the waste fields which ran with destiny and khaki that April the rusty wire still lies in tangles. Rain streams on the choked cemeteries once but spa.r.s.e with graves, now full and overflowing with the dead and their crosses. But you seek in vain for hundreds and thousands of defenders, names of V.C.'s, names of the brave undecorated--all lost now in the unknown, the plenitude of unknown soldiers.

The German won his second round, though not too well, not shaping very well. There were hammer-blows, but not the dreadful death-dealing weight of the March fighting. French troops had been hurried to Belgium by Foch, and once more they stopped the rot and possibly saved our now rather nervy army. Certainly the enemy was now having matters his own way. But Arras fortunately held, and that was our centre of defence. All expected that the next attack would be upon the city, an attempt at encirclement from the north and from the south. A wet spring wore on to early summer and all the army waited.

The third attack was of an entirely unexpected kind, being an almost overwhelming blow at France and France alone--an attempt to put her entirely out of gear and make it impossible for Foch to send more troops to help the British army, an attempt to destroy the spirit and the mobility of the army of France. The enemy advanced on a front broader even than that of March 21st, and found an even thinner, weaker line of defenders. Once more Germany was able to do even more than she dreamed, and plunged towards Paris, making the sky drone and tremble with the ominous thunder of her approaching guns.

As we all know now the enemy went too far, and had not the men to man his greatly extended lines or the labour to reorganise the new rear. He had spent his energy too lavishly, and Foch had all that was necessary, the one extra punch which sent the German reeling even in the moment which should have held his greatest pride. The fourth round was won by Foch and the Americans. The fifth by the British when they rolled the foe back from Amiens. After that Fritz was a lost man and floundered backward homeward, playing only for time, and only on his defensive, with all the triumph gone, hope gone, faith gone, and only punishment and humiliation ahead of him. In but a short while after the most terrible defeats it could be said that the Allies had won the war.

The land o'er which the great advance was made is quiet enough now. To the towns and cities of the back areas the circus is coming for the first time since the war. After the leaping from trapeze to trapeze in mid-air, after the walking the tight rope, and the facing wild beasts in their cages, and other feats of daring, the clowns come tumbling into the arena. So it is also in life. There is one all in Turkey-red riding backward on an a.s.s, telling all and sundry how much more clever he is than the genuine heroes they have been clapping. He gains in the long run more applause than the tight-rope dancer. Then two funny Columbines with air-blown bladders pretend to fight and whack at one another with resounding boshes, clumps and raps, laying one another out, panting for breath, exhausting themselves, almost expiring, and yet weakly hitting out with their quaint weapons. And the populace forgets the thrill of the spectacle of the man in the lions' cage making wild beasts jump through hoops of fire. The clowns are to its taste. The scene-shifters are quietly preparing the arena for the next heroic item--"A Roman spectacle when the gladiators meet"--and the clowns divert public attention from the carpentering of such a show until all is ready for the heroes to come out. A fourth clown all the while strikes heroic att.i.tudes and mimics the after-the-war celebrities with apt buffoonery--now he is Wilson with the fourteen points, now he is D'Annunzio in mock heroic pose saying "J'y suis, j'y reste," now Lloyd George making the Germans pay by letting the Germans off paying. The malice of the buffoons provokes great mirth and takes the attention of the crowd so well that the heroes are almost forgotten, Tom Wildwest glowering from one of the exits and handling his rope and running noose as if he'd like to la.s.so the whole bunch of clowns and pull them out of the arena and the public gaze.

In the summer of 1918 there was a waiting time. The enemy was held and his utter defeat was manifest, but Time paused and the denouement paused. The French and Americans carried on. The British reorganised.

The Germans began the knight's tour of the board with the right move first. The British army was bored with the war and looked homeward.

Special wires conveyed the Derby result and the verdict of the Pemberton-Billing case. Pemberton-Billing became a great hero of the rank and file. The book of the 47,000 names of people who could be blackmailed was a popular idea--such is the readiness to believe evil.

At a battalion Sports near Saulty the Duke of Connaught watched the battalion clowns arrange a race for the tiniest tots of the French village. One clown had printed on his back "Breezy Bacchus" and the other "One of the 47,000," which was thought a most amusing and up-to-date cognomen. "One of the 47,000" won the obstacle race by and by. He had won the obstacle race each annual Sports of his battalion, an unwounded Tipperary man who had come right through, not only the hazards of so many races, but of the great race itself. Fate however claimed him at last when the war was nearly over, and a lone cringing gas sh.e.l.l sneaking through the air came and took his leg off. The French villagers, whose children he had guided in the baby race, shrugged their shoulders and had nothing to say.

The war-sun which was now setting did not sink in a grey haze or in mere cloud, but in blood. To take the final victory-march of even one Division, from Arras to Maubeuge--is it not marked by fresh graves all the way? The old and the new laid down their lives prodigally.

There is an extra sorrow for their death now because the pathos of being so near to deliverance and yet missing it was not known then. Though the German was beaten the war might last for years. A common gag used to be--

"Heard the news?"

"What's that? The war over?"

"All over bar the shouting."

But it was ironical, and there were few who saw the faint gleam of the new hope which came with the German retreat.