THE LIEUTENANT
A FORTNIGHT IN FRANCE
MAY 10 TO MAY 24, 1915
I
Gerald Ainsworth was the only son of his parents—and they made something in tins. He had lots of money, as the sons of people who dabble in tins frequently do. He was a prominent member of several dull night-clubs, where he was in the habit of seeing life while other people saw his money. He did nothing and was generally rather bored with the process. In fact, he was a typical product of the twentieth century—with his father’s house in the country full of footmen and ancestors, both types guaranteed by the best references—and his own rooms in London full of clothes and photographs. He was a very fair sample of that dread disease, “the Nut,” and it was not altogether his own fault. Given an income that enabled him to do what he liked, certain that he would never be called on to work for his living, he had degenerated into a drifter through the pleasant paths of life—a man who had never done one single thing of the very slightest use to himself or anybody else. Then came the war, and our hero, who was not by any means a bad fellow at heart, obtained a commission. It was a bit of an event in the family of Ainsworth—née Blobbs—and the soldier-ancestor of Charles I.’s reign smiled approval from the walls of the family dining-room: as I have said, it was guaranteed to behave as all well-brought-up ancestors are reputed to do.
Gerald was becomingly modest about it all, and, to do him credit, did not suffer from uniformitis as badly as some I wot of. It is possible that a small episode which occurred in the drawing-room of the baronial hall had something to do with it—for, I will repeat, he was not a bad fellow at heart. And this was the episode. •••• Coming in one Saturday afternoon on week-end leave in the full glory of his new uniform, he found the room full of girls—his income would in time be over five figures, his return for the week-end had not been kept secret, and there may or may not be a connection. Also there were his mother and father and one very bored man of about thirty in plain clothes.
“This is my son, Gerald,” cooed the old lady. “So splendid of him, you know, joining the Army. This dreadful war, you know. More tea, my dear. Poor things, out there—how I pity them. Quite terrible. But don’t you think it’s splendid, the way they’re all joining?”
The bored man in mufti looked more bored. “Why?” he asked resignedly.
“Why!” echoed a creation on his right indignantly. “How can you ask such a thing? Think of all the hardship and suffering they’ll have to endure. Isn’t that enough?” and she glanced tenderly at Gerald, while six other creations bit savagely at muffins because she’d got it out first.
“I don’t quite follow the argument,” answered the bored man patiently. “If a man has no ties, I don’t see that there is any credit in his joining the Army. It is his plain duty, and the gravest discredit attaches to him if he doesn’t. Don’t you agree with me?” and he turned to Gerald.
“Certainly,” answered Gerald, with the faintest hesitation. The line of argument was a little new.
“And what regiment are you going to join?” remarked another creation, with dangerous sweetness.
The bored man smiled slightly. “The one I’ve been in for ten years. I’ve just come back from Central Africa and cross the day after to-morrow.”
As I have said, it is possible that this small incident tended to make the disease of uniformitis a mild one in our hero’s case, and to bring home to him exactly what the pukka soldier does think of it all.
Time went on as time will do, and over his doings in the winter I will not linger. Bar the fact that he’d been worked till he was just about as fit as a man can be, I really know nothing about them. My story is of his coming to France and what happened to him while he was there till, stopping one in the shoulder, he went back to England feet first—a man, where before he had been an ass. He was only in France a fortnight, from the time he landed at Havre till the time they put him on a hospital ship at Boulogne; but in that fortnight he lived and, not to put too fine a point on it, deuced nearly died as well; so he got his money’s worth. ••••• And now, for I have lingered too much on the introduction of my hero, I will get to business. ••••• The train crept on through the night—now pulling up with a series of nerve-shattering jolts, then on again at its apparently maximum speed of twenty miles an hour. In the corner of a so-called first-class carriage Gerald Ainsworth stared into the darkness with unseeing eyes. The dim shapes that flashed past him seemed like the phantasmagoria of a dream. For the first time for three days he had the time to think. He recalled the lunch in Southampton when he had said good-bye to various people who seemed to have a slight difficulty in speaking. He remembered dining in the hotel whose sacred portals are barred to the civilian, still in ignorance of where he was going—to France, the Dardanelles, or even farther afield. Then all the bustle of embarking the regiment and, later, disembarking. And now he was actually under way, starting on the Great Adventure. There were others in the carriage with him, but only one was asleep and he did not belong to the regiment. To him the Adventure had ceased to be great; it was old and stale, and he had spent most of his time cursing at not being able to raise a motor-car. For when you know the ropes—be it whispered—it is generally your own fault if you travel by supply train. But of that the man who sat staring out of the window knew nothing. All he knew was that every minute carried him nearer the unknown—the unknown of which he had read so much and knew so little.
His equipment was very new and beautiful—and very bulky. Prominent among it was that abomination of desolation the fitted mess-tin. Inside it reposed little receptacles for salt and pepper and plates and dinner napkins and spirit lamps that explode like bombs. Aunts are aunts, and there was none to tell him that the roads of Flanders are paved with fitted mess-tins. His revolver was loaded—in fact, five of those dangerous weapons reposed in the racks. The gentleman who slept was armed only with a walking-stick.…
Gerald Ainsworth muttered impatiently under his breath as the train stopped for the twelfth time in an hour.
“Putrid journey, isn’t it?” said the man opposite him, and he grunted in acquiescence.
Somehow he did not feel very much like talking. He recalled that little episode in the drawing-room of months ago; he recalled the man in mufti’s cool, quiet face—his calm assumption that there was no credit in coming to fight, but merely disgrace if you did not. He realised that he and his like were on trial, and that the judge and jury were those same quiet-faced men who for centuries—from father to son—have carried the name of England into the four corners of the world, without hope of reward—just because it was their job; those men who for years have realised that the old country was slipping, sliding down from the place that is hers by right of blood; those men who were hanging on, waiting for him and his like to come and do their bit. He realised that the trial for which he had trained so hard was approaching; that every minute carried him nearer the final test, from which he might or might not come alive. ••••• And how many of those others—his judges—lay quiet and still in unmarked graves?…
In the dim light he looked critically at his hand. It was perfectly steady; shamefacedly—unseen—he felt his pulse, it was normal: he was not afraid, that he knew—and yet, somehow, in the pit of his stomach there was a curious sort of feeling. He recalled the first time he had batted at school before a large crowd: he recalled the time when, lying on an operating table, he had seen the doctor fiddling with his instruments: he recalled those horrible ancient newspapers in the waiting-room at his dentist’s: and grimly he realised that the feeling was much the same. It was fear of the unknown, he told himself savagely; moreover, he was right. Yet he envied fiercely, furiously, the man sleeping in the opposite corner who came to war with a walking-stick.… But the man who came to war with a walking-stick, who slept so easily in his corner, who swore because he could not get a motor-car, had had just that same sinking sensation one night eight or nine months ago.
He recalled the girls whose photographs adorned his rooms in London; he recalled the night-clubs where women, of a type, always kind to him, had been even kinder since he had put on a uniform; he recalled the home his father had bought—the home of a family, finished and done with, wiped out in the market of money, wiped out by something in tins; and somehow the hollowness of the whole thing struck him for the first time. He saw himself for what he really was—the progeny of an uneducated man with a business instinct, and yet the welcome guest of people who would have ignored him utterly had the tins proved bad. And suddenly he found himself face to face with the realities of life—because in that slow-going, bumping train his imagination had shown him the realities of death. So far the only shells he had ever heard had been fired at a practice camp in England; so far he had never seen a man who had died a violent death; but that train, crawling through the still summer night, and his imagination supplied the deficiencies. He was face to face with realities, and the chains of England seemed a bit misty.… And yet a week ago they had seemed so real. Can Bernhardi have been right, after all, in some of the things he said? Is war necessary for a nation? Does it show up life in its true colours—when money ceases to be the only criterion? ••••• Bernhardi may have been right, but, anyway, he is a horrible fellow.
When Gerald Ainsworth woke up the train had grunted to a final halt at a biggish station, and the early morning sun was shining in a cloudless sky.
II
Ainsworth fell out of the train endeavouring to buckle the various straps that held together his Christmas tree of equipment. In the intervals of getting his platoon sorted out he looked about him with a vague sort of feeling of surprise. Somehow he’d expected things would look different—and behold! everything was just normal. A French sentry with his long-pointed bayonet at the crossing just outside the station seemed the only thing alive besides himself and his men. The man opposite, who had slept so soundly, had disappeared, swearing volubly, to lie in wait for a motor-car. And then happening to look at the colonel he found him in earnest consultation with an officer, who sported a red band on his arm. This extremely crusty individual he subsequently discovered boasted the mystic letters R. T. O. on his band—which for the benefit of the uninitiated may be translated Railway Transport Officer. And though as a rule their duties do not carry them within range of the festive obus, or shell, yet their crustiness—the few who are crusty—may be forgiven them. For to them come wandering at all hours of the twenty-four men of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, bleating for information and help. The type of individual who has lost his warrant, his equipment, and his head, and doesn’t know where he is bound for, but it is somewhere beginning with a B, is particularly popular with them early in the morning. However, that is all by the way. •••••
They filed out of the station and the battalion sat down beside the road, while the cooks got busy over breakfast. Periodically a Staff officer hacked by on a rustic morning liver-shaker, and a couple of aeroplanes, flying low, passed over their heads bound on an early reconnaissance. They were still many miles from the firing line and, save for a low but insistent muttering, coming sullenly through the still morning air, they might have been in England. In fact, it was a great deal more peaceful than training in England. The inhabitants passing by scarcely turned their heads to look at them—and, save for the inevitable crowd of small children who alternately sucked their dirty thumbs and demanded, “Cigarette, souvenir,” no one seemed at all interested in their existence. Everything was very different from the tin-god atmosphere of England.
At last a whistle blew and there was a general tightening of belts and straps. The battalion fell in, and with its head to the east swung off along the dusty road towards the distant muttering guns. As a route march it was much like other route marches—except that they were actually in Flanders. The country was flat and uninteresting. The roads were pavé and very unpleasant to march on. Ainsworth’s pack felt confoundedly heavy, and the top had come off the pepper receptacle in the fitted mess-tin. They passed some Indians squatting in a field by the roadside, and occasionally a party of cavalry horses out on exercise—for the cavalry were up in the trenches, and when they’re up there they leave the horses behind. Also gilded beings in motor-cars went past periodically, to the accompaniment of curses and much dust. The battalion was singing as it swung along, and in front a band of a sort gave forth martial music—the principal result of which was to bring those auditors not connected with the regiment cursing from their bivouacs at the unseemly noise. ••••• And then miles away in the distance they saw a line of little white puffs up in the blue of the sky—a new one appearing every second. It was Archibald—or the anti-aircraft gun—“doing the dirty,” that fruitful source of stiff necks to those who see him for the first time.
But I will not dwell on that route march. It was, as I have said, much like others, only more so. That evening a very hot, tired, and dusty battalion came to rest in some wooden huts beside the road—their home for the next two or three days. The guns were much louder now, though everything else was still very quiet. Away about four or five miles in front of them a great pall of smoke hung lazily in the air—marking the funeral pyre of ill-fated “Wipers.” For that was their destination in the near future, as Ainsworth had already found out from the adjutant.
Opposite them, on the other side of the road, a cavalry regiment just out of the trenches was resting. Everything seemed perfectly normal—no one seemed to feel the slightest excitement at being within half a dozen miles of the firing line. The officers over the way were ragging—much as they did at home. After a cursory glance at his battalion, to size it up, none of them had paid the slightest attention to them. The arrival of some new men was too common a sight for anyone to get excited about—but Ainsworth could not be expected to know that.
He had strolled out just before dinner, and as he reached a bend in the road the evening frightfulness in Ypres started. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour a furious shelling went on, gradually dying away to comparative quiet again.
“Is anything happening?” he asked of a passing cavalry subaltern.
“Not that I know of,” returned the other in some surprise.
“But they’re shelling very hard, aren’t they?”
“That! That’s nothing—they do that most nights. Are you just out? Where are you going?”
“Wipers, I think. What’s it like?”
“Damnable,” rejoined the other tersely, and with that the conversation languished.
For all that, when Gerald pulled the blankets up to his chin that night the feeling in the pit of his stomach had gone. He felt that he’d started to bat—that he was actually in the dentist’s chair. ••••• Three days of complete quiet passed—three days that seemed to give the lie to his laconic cavalry acquaintance. Occasionally a burst of shelling proclaimed that neither side was actually asleep, and at night, towards the south, the green German flares could be seen like brilliant stars in the sky. In the main, however, peace was the order of the day. Those who knew were not deceived, however, for there were many lulls before the storm in the second battle of Ypres—that long-drawn-out struggle round the salient. But to the battalion—just arrived—the whole thing seemed rather disappointing. They were tired of Archies and aeroplanes: they were tired of the red glow they could see through the trees at night—where Ypres lay burning; above all, they were tired of getting smothered with dust from passing motor-lorries and ambulances which crashed up and down the road at all hours of the day and night. Like everyone when they first arrived, they wanted to be up and at it. The men had all been issued with respirators, and nightly did breathing exercises—in through the mouth and out through the nose—to the accompaniment of facetious remarks from the onlookers. They had not dabbled in Hun gas as yet, nor appreciated its delights, so the parade was not a popular one. Comments on “ ’Im with the Iron Mask,” and requests of a personal nature to your friends always to wear a pad owing to their improved appearance, enlivened what otherwise would have been a somewhat boring performance. A week later—but I will not anticipate.
Ainsworth himself, to pass the time, had tried a little bomb-throwing with his platoon. This also had not been an unqualified success. As far as the jam tins and hand grenades were concerned, everything in the garden was lovely. Quite a number went off, and all would have been well had not the tempter tempted. Reposing on the ground—brought up by an imbecile sergeant—lay a rifle grenade, that infernal invention which, on leaving the rifle, puts a boomerang to shame and generally winds up in the commanding officer’s dug-out, there exploding with great force. However, as I have remarked before, Ainsworth could not be expected to know that. Knowledge on the avoidance of supply trains, and boredom, and the devilry that lies latent in a rifle grenade comes only with many weary weeks. So he fired it. Away it went, soaring into space, and at length a great explosion announced that all was over.
“It seemed to go some way, sir,” said the sergeant.
“It did,” answered Ainsworth, “farther than I thought.” His face expressed a little uneasiness, when suddenly an apparition appeared. Hopping over a ploughed field towards him, brandishing his arms, came an infuriated figure in carpet slippers. The platoon paused in silent dismay, while a bull-like bellow came floating through the air.
“You blithering ass,” roared an excited voice, as a purple-faced gunner-major came to a standstill in front of him. “You fat-headed, splay-footed idiot. I have been shelled and gassed and shot at for two months without a pause by the Germans, and when I come back here to rest you plaster my picket line with lumps of steel, and burst lyddite bombs on my bed!”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” said Ainsworth. “I’d no idea”
“Then, damn it, go away and get one. Go away and make noises and explosions in your own bed, or apply to go to the Dardanelles, or something. You’re a menace, sir, a pest, and you ought to be locked up.”
So that, all things being considered, it came as a distinct relief to our somewhat ruffed and misunderstood hero when, on returning to lunch, he found the battalion was going up into the reserve trenches that night.
III
And so it came to pass that at six o’clock that evening Gerald Ainsworth, with a few other officers of his battalion, jogged slowly along in a bone-shaking wagon toward Ypres. He was going up early to take over the trenches from the battalion they were relieving, which in turn was going up to the front line. Past the station with its twisted rails and splintered sleepers, past the water-tower, almost untouched at that time amid the general devastation, on down the road, and then right-handed into the square. Some blackened half-burned carcases lying under the ruins of the Cloth Hall—the first actual trace of war he had seen—held him fascinated. Down a side street a house was burning fiercely, but of life there was none, except one military policeman watching for looters. A very young subaltern on the box-seat was being entertained by the A.S.C. driver—one of the good old sort. Six officers fresh from home—thirsting for blood—should they not have it? Every shell-hole held a story, and the driver was an artist. “You can take it from me, sir, and I knows. This ’ere place weren’t no blooming picnic three weeks ago. The major, he says to me, ‘Jones,’ he says, ‘the ration limbers have gone off and have forgotten the tea. I looks to you to get the tea to them lads in the trenches. Also, there’s an allowance of pepper been sent out in a parcel by the League of Beauty in Tooting for our gallant defenders in France—put that in too.’
“ ‘Very good, sir.’ I says. ‘They shall have their tea and their pepper, or my name’s not Alf Jones.’
“With that, sir, I harnesses up the old horses and I gallops. Through ’ere I comes, the old horses going like two-year-olds. And then they was shelling it, no blooming error. As I was going through, the cathedral fell down and one of the tiles hit me on the napper. But what did I care? Just as I gets here I meets a party of officers—three generals and their Staff blokes. Says they to me, they says, ‘Stop, for the generals are gassed and you must take us away.’
“I says to ’em, I says, ‘And what about the pepper, gentlemen, for the men in the trenches?’
“ ‘Pepper!’ cries a Staff officer, and as he spoke we took it, sir. Right into the back of the wagon they put a seventeen-inch shell, and the gift from the League of Beauty was all over the square. Sneeze!—you should have ’eard us. The Commander-in-Chief—’e sneezed the gas right out of ’im, and the Linseed Lancer ’e says to me, ’e says, ‘Jones, you’ve saved our lives.’
“ ‘Yus,’ I says, ‘you’re welcome to any little thing like that; but what about them poor trusting girls and their pepper?’ ”
It was at this moment, I subsequently gathered, that my subaltern hove in sight carrying two large mirrors under his arm and, finding where they were going, demanded a lift.
“Very quiet to-night,” he remarked, when he was stowed inside. “I’ve just been looting mirrors for periscopes.” ••••• Now, I’ve brought him into the story, because he was the first man to tell them that the reserve trenches they were occupying were not all honey and strawberry jam. He’s a useless young blighter, and unless he’s watched very carefully he always drinks more than his fair share of port. But, in view of the fact that other people will arrive in time and go and sit—if not in those particular trenches, at any rate in trenches like them—I would like to point out that the man on the spot knows what he’s talking about. Also that, because for three days on end you do a thing with perfect safety, it does not follow that you won’t be killed doing it the fourth. And I would like it to be clearly established that my port-drinking looter of mirrors told the officers in the wagon that the line they were going into was habitually shelled. Remember, everything was quiet. Those who may happen to read these words and who know Ypres will bear me witness as to how quiet it can be, and will agree with me that it can frequently be—otherwise.
Now, they dropped him half way, at a place where there are cellars in which a man may live in safety, and there they disembarked from the wagon and walked: and all was peace. One dead horse—a very dead horse—raised its voice to heaven in mute protest; but otherwise all was perfectly peaceful. Two or three shells passed overhead as they walked down the road, but these were quite obviously harmless. And suddenly one of our own batteries let drive from close by with a deafening bang. Nothing untoward occurred, and yet they were quite near enough to hear individual rifle shots. ••••• And so they came to the trenches which they were to occupy, and found them full of a regiment which had been in them for two days and was going up to the front line that night. The right flank rested on a railway line and the left on no special mark in particular. Away in front of them on the left a dull brownish smudge could be seen on the ground—in a place where the country was open. The German trenches! Who does not remember the feelings with which he first contemplated the German front trench and realised that there actually reposed the Huns? And, in passing, it’s a strange fact, but nevertheless a true one, that quite a number of men have been out to the trenches, survived two or three days, been wounded, and gone home without so much as seeing a Boche.
That night the battalion made their first acquaintance with trenches as a bed. Luckily they were dry, as trenches go, though they suffered, in common with all other trenches, from an eruption of small pools of water occurring exactly where you wanted to put your head. And now the time has come for me to justify my subaltern’s existence and entry into this story. As I said before, he had warned that party of officers that the trench was not healthy at all times, but his voice was as the voice of the Tishbite, or Job, or whoever it was who cried in vain. For the next morning—a beautiful warm morning—the men woke up a bit cramped and stiff, and getting up to stretch themselves found that everything was still quiet and peaceful. And one by one they got out of the trenches and strolled about discussing life in general and breakfast in particular. Also several of the officers did the same. It came without warning—like a bolt from the blue. A screaming sort of whizz—and then bang, bang, bang all along the line: for the range was known by the Germans to twenty yards. The officer Gerald was talking to gave a funny little throaty cough and collapsed like a pricked bladder. And he lay very still with his eyes staring—a sentence cut short on his lips—with a crimson stream spreading slowly from his head. For a moment Gerald stood dazed, and then with a gasp fell into the trench, pulling the officer after him. Crump, crump came two high-explosive shells—plump on the parapet—burying about ten men in the débris. And for a space the battalion ceased to discuss things in general and breakfast in particular.
Four hours later they were still sitting remarkably tight in the trenches. Airings on the ground had ceased to be popular—for behind the trench lay a dozen still forms with covered faces. Suddenly there came a voice from above Gerald, enquiring, to the accompaniment of much unparliamentary language, who was in charge of that bit of trench. Looking up, he encountered the fierce gaze of a Staff officer and with him a crusty-looking sapper captain.
“I say, look out!” he cried, getting up. “It’s awful up there. We lost about thirty men this morning.”
“So I see,” answered the Staff officer. “What the deuce were they doing up here? Are you aware that this is under direct observation from the Germans? Some of you fellows seem to think that because things are quiet for five minutes you can dance pastoral dances in front of your trenches.” He grunted dispassionately. ••••• The sapper captain took up the ball.
“What do you propose to do where the parapet has collapsed?” he enquired.
“I really hadn’t thought about it,” answered Ainsworth, looking at the collapsed trench. “I haven’t had any orders.”
“Orders! On matters of that sort you don’t receive them; you give them. On the road are hundreds of sandbags, thousands of sandbags, millions of” The Staff officer caught his eye. Daily they quarrelled over sandbags. “At any rate,” he went on firmly, “there are lots of sandbags. Go and get them. Fill them. Build up the bally trench, and don’t leave it like that for the next poor blighters. Work on trenches is never finished. You can go on for days and weeks and months” But the Staff officer was leading him away. “Years, I tell you, can you work on these d trenches: and he waits for orders!”
“Peter, you’re feverish.” The Staff officer gently drew him on and they suddenly paused. “What,” he cried, in a voice of concentrated fury, gazing at a trench full of faces upturned to the sky, “what are you looking at? Turn your faces down, you fat-headed dolts. I know it’s a German aeroplane—I saw it three minutes ago—and there you sit with a row of white faces gazing up at him, so as to leave him in no doubt that the trenches are occupied. Keep down and don’t move, and above all don’t show him a great line of white blotches. They’re bad enough for us to bear as it is, but”
“James, you’re feverish now.” It was the sapper officer’s turn to draw him away. “But I admit,” he remarked sadly as they faded away, “that it’s all quite dreadful. They learn in time, but, to begin with, they want nurses.”
And, lest the morning perambulation of these two weary officers may seem inconsistent in any way with their words, I would point out that what two or three may do in perfect safety a body of men may not. They don’t as a rule waste shells on an isolated man in khaki, and these particular trenches were out of rifle range.
For the time, therefore, we will leave Gerald building up his trench with those twelve silent bodies behind—eloquent testimony that appearances are deceitful and that the man on the spot knows best
IV
“Is that the guide? What, you’re the general’s cook! Well, where the devil is the guide? All right, lead on.” The battalion was moving up into the front line trenches, after two uneventful days in reserve. Their lesson well learnt, they had kept under cover, and the only diversion had been the sudden appearance out of heaven of an enormous piece of steel which had descended from the skies with great rapidity and an unpleasant zogging sort of noise. The mystery was unearthed from the parapet where it had embedded itself, and completely defeated everyone; till a stray gunner, passing, told them that it was merely part of a German Archie shell—which had burst up at a great height and literally fallen like manna from the heavens.
“Slow in front—for Heaven’s sake.” Agitated mutterings from the rear came bursting up to the front of the column, mingled with crashes and stifled oaths as men fell into shell-holes they couldn’t see, probably half-full of water.
“Keep still—duck.” An insistent order muttered from every officer as a great green flare shot up into the night and, falling on the ground near them, burnt fiercely and then went out, leaving everything blacker than ever. On their left a working party furiously deepened a communication trench that already resembled a young river. Coming on their right, as they crept and stumbled along in single file, a small party of men loomed out of the night. More agitated mutterings: “Who are you?” and from a medley of answers, comprising everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Kaiser, the fact emerges that they are the ration party of the regiment on their right. ••••• At last a halt. The head of the battalion has reached the trenches and the men begin getting in. Not used to the game, there is a lot of unnecessary delay before the men are settled and the other regiment away. They have left behind two or three officers to introduce the new men to the trenches, explain exactly what places are healthy and what are not—where the ammunition is kept, and the bombs, and the flares.
“A sniper with a fixed rifle has the other side of this traverse marked,” said one of the officers to Gerald. “He’s up in a tree somewhere—so don’t keep any men on the other side of it. He’s killed a lot of ours. Listen to him.” And from the other side came a ping—thud, as the bullet hit the earth. Merely a rifle set on a certain mark during the day, and loosed off ten or eleven times every hour during the night—hoping to bag something.
“They’re pretty quiet here at present,” he was told, “but I don’t trust ’em a yard. They’re too quiet. Bavarians. If you want to, there’s an officer out in front about fifty yards away with a good helmet on. Thought of going out myself last night—but they were too bally busy with their flares. Still—the helmet’s worth getting. Well, so long, I think I’ve shown you everything. Bye-bye. Oh! while I think of it, they’ve got a bit of this communication trench, about forty yards down, marked. I’d get it deepened.”
And with that he went, and Ainsworth was alone. Stray rifle shots cracking through the night—flares going up with steady persistency. He tested his telephone to Headquarters—it was working. He went along his length of trench—one man watching in each little length, the rest lying down with rifles by their sides. Occasionally the watching man gave them one round to show the Hun he wasn’t forgotten; while without intermission the ping—thud from the fixed rifle came into the earth of the traverse. It formed a sort of lullaby to Gerald. The awakening was drastic. ••••• Just as the dawn was faintly streaking the sky, and the men all awake were gripping their rifles in anticipation of any possible attack, the first shells burst along the line. From then on, for what seemed an eternity and was in reality two hours, the shells poured in without cessation. Shrapnel, high explosive, and sometimes a great sausage-shaped fellow, came twisting and hurtling through the air, exploding, with a most deafening roar. That was the Minenwerfer (trench howitzer). The fumes from the shells got into their eyes, the parapet collapsed, traverses broke down, men gasping, twisting, buried. And still they came. Men, those who still lived, lay dazed and helpless. Whole sections of the front of the trench were torn away in great craters. In some places men, their reason almost gone, got blindly out of the trench—their one idea to get away from the ghastly living death. But if death was probable in the trench, it was certain outside. The deadly rain of shrapnel searched them out, and one by one they fell. Some, perhaps, dragged on a space with shattered legs, muttering and moaning till another tearing explosion gave them peace.
“Keep down, keep down!” Ainsworth tried to shout. His lips, trembling with the fearful nerve-shattering inferno, could hardly frame the words. When they came it was only a whisper, but had he shouted through a megaphone none would have heard. The din was too incredible.
And still they came. His eyes were fixed stupidly on a man kneeling down behind a traverse, who was muttering foolishly to himself. He saw his lips moving, he cursed him foolishly, childishly, when, with a roar that seemed to split his whole head open, a high-explosive shell burst on the traverse itself. The man who had been muttering fell forward, was hurled forward, and his head stuck out of the earth which had fallen on him. Gerald laughed. It was deuced funny; he started to howl with mirth, when suddenly the head rolled towards him. But he could not stop laughing. ••••• At last he pulled himself together. So this was what he had read about so often in the papers at home, was it?—“a furious bombardment of our trenches.” Perhaps, though, he reflected, this was not a furious bombardment; perhaps this was only “a slight artillery activity upon our front.” And then he very nearly started laughing again. It was all so frightfully funny; the actual thing was so utterly different. And so far he had not seen a German. Everything had been so completely peaceful—until that morning—and then, without warning—this. Most amazing of all, he was not touched, and as that realisation first took hold of him so his dulled faculties first grasped the fact that the fire was slackening. It was, and, just like a tropical storm, suddenly it seemed to die away. Shells still passed screaming overhead, but those devastating explosions on the trenches—on his trenches—had ceased. Like the sudden cessation of bad toothache, he could hardly believe it at first. His mind, his brain were still dazed; he seemed to be waking from a nightmare, but only half-awake. How long he lay there no one will ever know, trying to steady his hand, to still the twitching of his muscles; but suddenly he was recalled to his senses by seeing a figure coming crawling round the shattered traverse. It was his captain.
“Thank Heaven, you’ve not stopped one, old boy!” he said. “Good God! You’ve had it bad here.”
Gerald nodded; he could not speak. His captain looked at him and so did the sapper officer who came behind; and, being men of understanding, for a space there was silence.
“Worst bit of the whole line,” said the sapper. “We must hold it where we can to-day and get it patched up to-night.”
“How many men have you got left, Gerald, in your platoon?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, and his voice sounded strange. He looked to see if the others noticed it, but they made no sign. As a matter of fact, his voice was quavering like an old man’s—but, as I have said, they were men of understanding. “I’ll go and see.”
And so the three crawled on, and in various odd corners they pulled out white-faced men. One in a corner was mad. He was playing a game by himself with another man’s boot—a boot that contained its original owner’s foot. One man was sobbing quietly, but most of them were just staring dazedly in front of them. ••••• Suddenly Gerald clutched his captain’s arm. “Heavens! sir,” he croaked, “they can get through here.”
“Not by day,” answered the sapper. “The ground in front is enfiladed from higher up, and, as a matter of fact, they show no signs of advancing. The bombardment has failed.”
“Failed! Failed!” croaked Ainsworth, and he laughed hideously. “Rather—I noticed the failure.”
“Nevertheless, old chap, what I say is right. They’ve failed because they can’t advance.” He put his hand on Gerald’s arm for a moment. “They may try to make a small local advance to-night under cover of dark, but I don’t think we’ll be troubled till then. They won’t renew the bombardment, from what I know of ’em.” And with that he was gone.
And so Gerald gathered together the remnants of his platoon, and there were fifteen all told. He put them where he could and waited for the night, when, with another working party, the trenches could be built up to their proper shape again. And then he went and sat down again and wondered at life. Overhead the shells still screamed on their way. In the distance the dull boom of their explosion still came reverberating through the air.
He was getting fairly skilled now in estimating where they would burst, for a desultory shelling of the trenches was still going on, though not in his section of the line. And it was then that I think the ass period emerged from the chrysalis stage and the man appeared. For as he listened to the rushing noise through the air, saw the great cloud of blackish white smoke, and later heard the roar of the explosion somewhere down the line, it was borne in on him that there were other things in the world besides night clubs, that there were other things besides cocktails and whisky sours and amusing women, and that a new force was at work—the force of Death—which made them all seem very petty. The ancestors seemed a bit petty, the money that came from things in tins seemed a bit petty; he only remembered a head rolling towards him with gaping mouth and staring eyes. It struck him that his might have been the head.
V
Now, in reading over what I have written concerning the commencement of Gerald Ainsworth’s pilgrimage in the smiling fields of Flanders, I feel that I too have merited the rebuke so quietly given him in those words, “They have failed.” He had lost his sense of proportion—about which another and a worthier pen than mine has written in connection with this same game of war—and I too have perhaps given those who may read these pages an unfair impression.
That bombardment of which I have told was not an ordinary one, it is true, but at the same time it was not anything very extraordinary. Considered by the men who occupied those trenches, it was the nearest approach to a complete cataclysm of the universe that can be conceived of; considered by the men who sit behind and move the pawns on the board, it was a furious bombardment of one five-hundredth of what they were responsible for. Moreover, it had failed. But it is not to be wondered at that when, some time later, Gerald was attempting to give his father some impression of what that morning had been like that worthy old gentleman should have expressed great surprise and indignation that it was not reported in the papers, and stated with some freedom his opinion on the muzzling of the English Press. And yet, would it not have been making a mountain out of a mole-hill—a great battle out of nothing at all? Yes, nothing at all; for in this struggle what are fifty, a hundred men—provided the enemy does not get what it wants? Much to the relatives of the fifty, but nothing to the result. Hard, but true. A somewhat bitter fact. However, all this is a digression.
We left Gerald, I think, with the remnants of his platoon scattered along what once were trenches, holding them till under cover of night a fresh working party could come up and rebuild them. The wire in front of him had been destroyed by the shell fire, and nothing but a piece of field, pitted and torn up by explosions, separated him from the Germans fifty yards away. The Germans facing him had established a superiority of rifle fire. Secure in practically undamaged trenches, did a man but show his hat opposite them it was riddled with bullets.
Wherefore, after a couple of the remnants of the platoon had ill-advisedly shown their hats with their heads inside them, and a second later had subsided with a choking grunt and a final kick, the survivors confined their attention to the bottom of the trench, and from it sorted out the bombs and the flares and the reserve ammunition. Also they sorted out other things, which we need not specify, and threw them out behind, where in time perhaps they might be decently buried. And then, having done all they could, they sat down with their backs to the parapet and hoped for the best. It was not till half-past eight that night that the German artillery condescended to notice them again, and then for about ten minutes they put a desultory fire of shrapnel on to the trenches. Then the range lengthened. ••••• Now Gerald was no fool, and suddenly the words of the sapper captain in the morning rang through his brain. “They may make a small local advance under cover of dark.” It was almost dark: they had shelled the trenches—apparently aimlessly—and now were shooting behind on the support trenches. Why? He grovelled in the bottom of the trench and found a Very pistol and flare. Up it shot into the air, and as it did he saw them—the whole line saw them—and the fun started. The mad minute started in earnest all along the trench. The trench that enfiladed the ground in front of him got going with a Maxim, flares flew up into the air from all along the line, falling behind the advancing Germans. For about ten minutes the most glorious pandemonium reigned: everyone was mixed up endways. In places the English had come out of their trenches and were going for them grunting and snarling in the open with bayonets. In places they were fighting in our trenches—in places we were in theirs. The Maxim had ceased for fear of hitting its own men, and without intermission flares went up from both sides. Suddenly, on top of Gerald as he stood blazing away into the dusk, there loomed a Bavarian officer. It was touch and go, and if a sergeant beside him had shot a second later this yarn might have had to close here. As it was, the bullet from the Bavarian officer’s revolver found a home in the earth, and the Bavarian himself fell with a crash to the bottom of the trench.
But it could not go on. In places they were breaking; in places they were broken; but, unfortunately, in one place they had got through. At the extreme left of Gerald’s trench, which he had been unable to reach during the day owing to a huge hole blown out of the parapet, the Germans had scrambled in. Elsewhere they had fallen back to their own lines, pursued the whole way by men stabbing and hacking at them, their eyes red with the lust of killing, getting a bit of their own back after the unspeakable hell of the morning. And what but a quarter of an hour previously had been bare, open ground was now covered with motionless bodies, from which, later, a few wounded would drag themselves back to their own people. ••••• It was when comparative quiet again reigned that one of his sergeants came to Gerald and reported the uninvited appearance of the Germans away down on the left. Now the presence of the enemy in your own trench in small parties is, I understand, a thing that has frequently puzzled those who read about it at home. It is, however, a thing of fairly common occurrence, and a small hostile party on the offensive may prove extremely unpleasant. The whole thing becomes a question of bombs and rapidity of action. Also, I will willingly lay two to one on the side that gets off the mark first. A traverse, as everyone knows, is a great lump of the original soil left standing when the trench is dug, and round which the trench is cut. Its object is to localise the bursts of high-explosive shell. As you cannot see round a corner or through solid earth, it is, therefore, obvious that you cannot see from one bit of fire trench into the next, though you can get there by walking round the traverse. If, however, there is a man sitting waiting for you with a rifle this process is not to be recommended, as he will certainly get in the first shot at a range of about five yards.
Now all that Gerald knew, and, to his credit be it said, he acted with promptitude and without hesitation, and the man who does that in war, as in other things, generally acts with success.
“Bombs!” he cried to the sergeant who had told him. “Bombs of all sorts—plum and apple, hair-brush, any damn thing you can get, and all the men at once!” They scrabbled them out of the débris and searched for them in the mud, where they had been buried, and at last the party was ready—ten in all.
“What’s the jest?” said the sapper officer, dropping into the trench as they were being mustered.
“Boches lower down. We’re bombing them out,” answered Gerald.
“Then, for Heaven’s sake, see the fuse isn’t too long,” he replied. “Just over an inch is enough for traverse work, or they’ll bung ’em back.” (An inch of the fuse used will burn about a second and a half.)
With that the party was off, led by Gerald. And they crept on till, suddenly, the sergeant gripped his arm and muttered: “They’re behind the next traverse.” And from behind the earth in front came a guttural exclamation in German.
Gerald, gripping a rifle, was quivering with excitement. He stole forward to where the trench bent back behind the traverse, while the two front men came up each with a bomb in his hand to throw, when lighted, over the top. It was at the precise moment that Gerald gave them the signal to light that he met his first German face to face. For, finding all was silent, the enemy had decided to make a little tour of inspection on his own, and just as the two bombs were lit and propelled over the traverse a stout and perspiring Bavarian bumped his head almost on to Gerald’s rifle. For a moment Gerald was as surprised as the crouching German, but only for a moment, for the Bavarian’s death-grunt, the crack of the rifle, and the roar of the two bombs were almost simultaneous. ••••• “On ’em, boys!” he shouted, jerking out his empty cartridge, and they scrambled round, over the body, into the next bit of trench. Four Germans lay stiff, and two were struggling to get round the next traverse. One did and one did not. The sergeant got him first. Up to the next traverse, and the same process over again; but “Move, move, for Heaven’s sake move!” is the motto if you want to keep ’em on the run. And if a German, wounded, tries to trip you—well, halt, everyone, and send for the doctor and a motor-ambulance for the poor chap—I don’t think! For three traverses they went on, and then a voice came from the other side, “We surrender.” Oh! Gerald, Gerald, would that one who knew the sweeps had been there with you! After all that’s been written, why, oh! why did you not tell them to come to you instead of going to them? Surely you have read of their callous swinishness, and your sergeant’s life was in your keeping?
There were three of them when he rounded the traverse, and three shots rang out at the same moment. One hit his sergeant in the head and one hit his sergeant in the heart, and one passed between his own left arm and his body, cutting his coat. It was then he saw red, and so did the men who streamed after him.
“Let’s stick ’em, sir,” said the men, though the Germans had now thrown down their rifles.
“Nothing of the sort,” he snarled. “Which of you said ‘We surrender?’ ” and with the veins in his forehead standing out he glared at the Germans.
“I did,” answered one of them, smiling. “We really thought you would not be such fools as to be taken in.”
“Extraordinary, wasn’t it?” laughed Gerald. Yes, the ass period had quite passed. His laugh caused the smiling German to stop smiling.
“As you avoided our bombs entirely owing to an unwarrantable mistake on my part—which cost me the life”—he swallowed once or twice and his hands clenched—“the life of a valued man, I can only remedy this loss on your part to the best of my ability.”
“Ah, well,” answered the German, “we shall no doubt meet after the war and laugh over the episode. All is fair in love and——” He shrugged his shoulders. “And now we are your prisoners.”
“Quite so,” drawled Gerald. “All ready for a first-class ticket to Donington Hall. You shall now have it. Bring, my lads, three hair-brush grenades and put in four inches of fuse. That’s about eight seconds, my dear friends,” and he smiled on the Germans, who were now grovelling on their knees.
“Gott in Himmel!” screamed the one who had spoken, “you would murder us after we have surrendered?”
Gerald pointed to the dead sergeant lying huddled in the corner. “You had surrendered before you murdered him,” he remarked quietly.
VI
And now I come to the last day that our friend was privileged to spend in the lotus land of Ypres. When he returns let us hope we shall have moved on—the place is a good deal too lotussy for most of us, if the heavily scented air is any criterion. He had had most of the excitements which those who come over to this entertainment can expect to get, and on this last day he got the bonne bouche—the cream of the side shows. His battalion had come to the reserve trenches, as I have said, and from there they had gone to an abode of cellars, where the men could wash and rest, for nothing save a direct hit with a seventeen-inch shell could damage them. It was at three o’clock in the morning that Gerald was violently roused from his slumbers by his captain. “Get to the men at once!” he ordered. “Respirators to be put on. They’re making the hell of a gas attack. It seems to have missed these cellars, but one never knows. Then go and see what’s happening.” Upstairs a confused babel of sound was going on, and upstairs Gerald sprinted after he had seen his men. A strange smell hung about in the summer air; the peculiar stench of chlorine, luckily only mild, made him cough and his eyes smart and finally shut. The water poured out of them as eddies of wind made the gas stronger, and for a time he stood there utterly helpless. All around him men grunted and coughed, and lurched about helpless as he was, deprived of sight for the time. He heard odd fragments of conversation: “The front line has broken—gassed out. They’re through in thousands—We’re done for—Let’s go.” And then clear above the shelling, which had now started furiously, he heard a voice which he recognised as belonging to one of the Staff officers of his brigade. “The first man who does go I shoot. Sit down! Keep your pads on, and wait for orders.” ••••• Down the road came a few stragglers—men who had broken from the front line and from the reserve trenches. One or two were slightly gassed; one or two were wounded; several were neither.
“And what are you doing?” asked the same officer, planting himself in the middle of the road. “Wounded men in there! The remainder join that party and wait for orders!”
“But they’re through us,” muttered a man, pushing past the officer. “I’m off.”
“Did you hear my order?” said the officer sternly catching his arm. “Get in there—or I’ll shoot you.”
“Lemme go, curse you,” howled the man, shaking off his hand and lurching on—while the others paused in hesitation. There was a sharp crack, and with a grunt the man subsided in the road twitching. The Staff officer, turned round, and with his revolver still in his hand pointed to the party sitting down by Gerald. Without a word the men went there.
“I am going up to see what’s happening,” he told Gerald. “Get these men below in the cellars and keep them there. It’s the shelling will do the damage now—the gas is over.”
“Was it a bad attack?” asked Gerald.
“One of the worst we’ve had. One part of the line has been pierced, but the men have stuck it well everywhere else. Mercifully we’ve almost avoided it here.” And with that he was gone. ••••• Two hours later the wounded started to come down the road, and with them men who had really been gassed badly—probably through having mislaid their pads and not being able to find them in time. Some were on stretchers and some were walking. Some ran a few steps and then collapsed, panting and gasping on the road; some lurched into the ditch and lay there vomiting, and on them all impartially there rained down a hail of shrapnel. In the dressing station they arranged them in rows; and that day two sweating doctors handled over seven hundred cases. For the gassed men, wheezing, gasping, fighting for breath, with their faces green and their foreheads dripping, they could do next to nothing. In ambulances they got them away as fast as they could down the shell-swept road—and still they came pouring in without cessation. Gerald, watching the poor, struggling crowd, swore softly under his breath. He hadn’t seen gas and its effects before, and the first time you see it you generally feel like killing something German to ease the strain. And it was at this moment that a bursting shell scattered a bunch of staggering men and almost blew an officer coming down the road into his arms.
The officer smiled at him feebly and then wiped some froth from his lips with the back of his hand. He stood there swaying, his breath coming and going like a horse that’s touched in the wind after being galloped. Out of one sleeve the blood was pouring, and with his hand he’d made a great smear of blood across his mouth. His face was green, and the gas sweat was all over him.
“Good God!” muttered Gerald. “Sit down, my dear fellow.”
“No,” he answered; “I must get on.” He spoke slowly and with terrible difficulty, passing his tongue over his lips from time to time and staring fixedly at Gerald. “Where is the general? I have been sent to give him a message.” With a dreadful tearing noise in his throat, he started to try to be sick. The paroxysm lasted about five minutes, and then he pulled himself together again. ••••• “Give me the message. I’ll take it,” said Gerald quietly.
“Listen,” said the officer, sitting down and heaving backwards and forwards. “Listen, for I’m done in. They’ve broken through on our left. There aren’t many of them, but our left has had to give.” Another paroxysm came on, and the poor lad rolled in the gutter, twisting and squirming. “The gas caught me in my dug-out,” he croaked, “and I couldn’t find my pad. Just like me, always lose everything.” Gerald supported his head, and again wiped the froth from his mouth. “Our men,” and the wheezing voice continued at intervals, “our men are gassed to blazes, but they’re all up there. They’ve not fallen back except on the left, where they were up in the air. Poor chaps! Lying in heaps being sick. Noise in trenches like bellows out of work. It’s a swine’s game, this gas.” Again the tearing and gasping. “Tell the gunners to fire. For God’s sake get ’em to fire. Their infantry all over the place, and we’re getting about one shell of ours to twenty of theirs. Oh, God, this is awful!” and he tore at his collar.
“I’ll go and find the general at once,” said Gerald.
The officer nodded. “Good. I’ll stop here till I’m better, and then I suppose I must go back to the boys. Poor devils! and I’m away out of it.” He croaked hideously. “My men never budged, and now they’re being shelled to bits—and they’re helpless. Get reserves, man; get reinforcements. For Heaven’s sake, hurry. No one seems to know what’s happening—and it’s been awful up there.” ••••• And so Gerald left him sitting by the side of the road, his eyes staring fixedly at nothing, periodically wiping the froth from his lips with a hand that left a crimson smear wherever it touched. And there the stretcher-bearers found him ten minutes later—one of hundreds of similar cases reported so tersely as “suffering from gas poisoning.” And here—having staggered across our horizon—he passes out again. Whether he lived or died I know not—that man with the shattered arm and wet green face, who had brought back the message from the men whose left flank was surrounded.
All I know is that a quarter of an hour later Gerald was giving the report to the general—a report which confirmed the opinion of the situation which the Staff had already formed. Half an hour later Gerald’s battalion was ordered to counter-attack and, if they could get as far, fill the gap. Exactly five minutes from the time when the battalion passed the reserve trenches and, in extended order, pressed forward, my hero took it. He took it in the leg, and he took it in the arm from a high-explosive shrapnel, and went down for the count. They didn’t get back all the ground lost, but they did very nearly—though of this Gerald knew nothing. He was bad—distinctly bad. He remembers dimly the agony the ambulance gave his arm that night, and has hazy recollections of a dear woman in a hospital train. He had landed at Havre on a Tuesday; that day fortnight he left Boulogne in a hospital ship. Back up the ancestral home founded on something in tins he will go in due course; back to those same beautiful things—creations was the word—who graced the ancestral drawing-room some months ago.
The situation is fraught with peril. As I have whispered, his income will be something over five figures one day, and the creations have taken up nursing.
But, somehow or other, his views on life have changed, and I think the creations may have their work cut out.