of a programme of trench routine.
“Seems as if Jerry weren’t coming over after all,” said the section corporal.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Then I suppose as we’d better clean things up a bit, Sir.”
“It would be as well.”
And the half-section settled down to the usual work of cleaning themselves, their guns, and their position. The infantry on the right were even more resigned to the uneventful.
“This ’ere offensive was all wind up, Sir,” said the man at the strombos form, “they thought we was gettin’ a bit slack, I suppose, so they thought this scare ’ud smarten us up a bit; but I knew it all along, Sir; I’m too old a soldier to be taken in by that.”
The runner from Battalion, however, brought quite a different story.
“Been an attack all along the line, Arras to St. Quentin, but it’s been broken up absolutely; never even got the front line.”
The man at the strombos form shifted suspiciously.
“They not bin trying to come over ’ere. I never seen no Germans,” which was not surprising considering that from where he stood he could not see the front line at all.
“No,” he went on, “there’s bin no offensive, and there won’t be one neither. It’s all a wind up.”
At any rate, whether there had been an attempted attack or not, it seemed quite clear that it had not got very far. With that comforting certainty, I returned to the position, and having seen that the guns were clean, descended into the dugout and went to sleep.
About two hours later a perspiring runner arrived. He was quite out of breath from dodging whizzbangs, and was in consequence incapable of logical statement. He said something about “Bullecourt.” The chit he brought explained.
“Bullecourt, Ecoust, Noreil are in the
Hands of the Enemy”
It took at least five minutes to realise what this meant. To think that they had got as far as that. It had seemed so delightfully safe. One had walked along the Ecoust road in daylight, and there was a canteen at Noreil. And then that glorious dugout in Railway Reserve that we had covered with green canvas and festooned with semi-nudities from the Tatler, to think of some lordly Prussian straddling across the table, swigging champagne. It was an unspeakable liberty. …
And then a little tardily followed the thought that Ecoust was not so many miles from Monchy, and that if the Germans had got as far as that on the right, there was very little reason why they should not do the same to us—an unpleasant consideration. But still everything seemed so delightfully quiet. Only an occasional whizzbang, or four—five—no one would have thought there was a war on. Still Ecoust was not so very far off; our parish had provided funds for a church army hut at St. Leger. They had been collecting for it hard when I had been on leave. Well, that must have gone west by now. …
And at the top of the dugout I could hear the runner gradually recovering his breath and explaining the strategic situation in spasms.
“You see, I heard the captin say to the adjutant, ‘Jones,’ he says, ‘the Jerrys’ got as far as Bullecourt,’ and when I heard that … well … I said to myself … thank ’eavens I wasn’t there.”
“And you was there two months ago, Kid.”
“Where I was two months ago, as you say, and then I heard the captin say. …”
The remaining reflection was inaudible.
The next morning passed very quietly, so quietly that we had almost forgotten the rumours of the preceding day. The limber corporal had assured the ration party that there had been a counter-attack with tanks, and that not only had Bullecourt been retaken, but Hendecourt and Riencourt as well. There seemed no cause for panic. The rum had come up as usual, and that was the main thing. After an afternoon of belt-cleaning the subsection arranged itself as usual into night reliefs, and then just before midnight came the news that the Division was evacuating to the “third” line.
Whenever the military decide on a sudden action, they impart the information in a delightfully inconsequent way. For instance, on the eve of the Cambrai show, orders were sent round that in the case of an enemy withdrawal limbers would proceed to Hendecourt along the road in the map square U 29 B, and this request was then qualified by the statement, “It is no good looking for roads; there are none.”
On this occasion the message was equally vague. It stated that the front system would be evacuated at 3 a.m., and ordered that all guns, tripods, belt-boxes, and ammunition would be immediately moved and stacked at the ration dump pending the arrival of limbers. The chit then added, “Secrecy is absolutely essential. On no account must the men know anything of this.” The reasons on which the authorities based their expectations that the men would move all their impedimenta to a ration dump, and yet remain in complete ignorance of the operation, are unfathomable. At any rate their hopes were unrealised. At the first mention of dismounted guns, Private Hawkins had sniffed the secret.
“Got to shift, ’ave we, Sir? Then I suppose we’re going to have a war too, aren’t we, Sir?”
“I should not be surprised,” I told him, and went below to superintend the packing of my kit. It was no easy matter. Things accumulate in the line; I always went up the line with a modestly filled pack, but by the time I came down, it needed a mailbag to hold the books and magazines that had gradually gathered round me, and after a fortnight in the same dugout my kit was in no condition for emergency transportation.
My batman was examining it with a sorrowful face.
“You’ll ’ave to dump most of these books, Sir.”
“Oh, but surely we can get some of them down?”
“Then you’ll have to dump those boots, Sir, and that blanket. Can’t take the lot, Sir.”
It was no use to argue with him. The batman’s orders are far more law than a mandate from Brigade. The Brigadier is merely content to issue orders; batmen see that theirs are carried out. There was nothing for it but to dump the books, and I looked sadly at the considerable collection that the mails of the last fourteen days had brought.
“Have they all got to go?”
“’Fraid so, Sir.”
“What, all my pretty chickens, at one fell swoop?”
Private Warren eyed me stolidly.
“Well, Sir, I might manage two, Sir, but no more.”
I ran a pathetic eye over them. There were several I particularly wanted to save; there were two novels by Hardy, Robert Graves’s new book of Poems, Regiment of Women, a battered copy of La Terre, The Oxford Book of Verse, The Stucco House. After a moment’s hesitation, the last two were saved for further odysseys; there was just room in a spare pocket for Fairies and Fusiliers; the rest would have to stay to welcome the Teuton.
At last all the equipment of a machine-gun section had been carted away. I took one turn round
