of handing over had been observed, but as there would be up one to receive the relieving party, manners demanded some sort of “Salve”; and so, tearing from a notebook a sheet of paper, I scrawled across it in large letters, CHEERIOH, and pinned it over the entrance of my deserted home.
§ 2
March 28th, 1918.
Of course the limbers never turned up. For two months without the least inconvenience from German artillery they had come up to the ration dump every night, but on this particular night they felt sure it would arouse suspicions, and so a guide was sent instead. And in France there are only two sorts of guides. There is the guide who does not know the way and owns up to it, and there is the guide who does not know the way and pretends he does. There are no others. Luckily ours came under the former category.
“You see, Sir, I’ve only bin from Headquarters once and that was by day, and I’m not too sure of the way. … I’ve only been ’ere once and that. …”
Which was a pretty clear sign that a compass bearing would be hardly less reliable. We dumped most of our spare kit in the river, and set off. It is wonderful how disorderly any movement of troops appears by night. Actually it was a most methodical withdrawal, but in its progress it looked pitifully like a rout. The road seemed littered with cast-off equipment, ammunition, packs and bombs; dumps were going up all round. Innumerable Highlanders had lost their companies; nobody seemed to know where he was going or to care particularly whether he ever arrived. A subsection of fifteen men straggled into an echelon formation covering as many yards. It appeared an absolute certainty that dawn and the Germans would find us still trailing helplessly along the road.
At last, however, came the loved jingle of harness, and the sound of restive mules. We heaved packs and baggages on a limber, and more cheerfully resumed our odyssey.
This cheerfulness considerably diminished when the section found that our new positions were two hundred yards from the road, and that a hundred boxes of S.A.A. had to be stacked in half an hour. But eventually peace was restored to Israel, and by the time that the morning broke, the section was fairly comfortably lodged in some disused German dugouts.
There followed four very lazy days. The two subsections had been amalgamated, and with my section officer Evans, I spent most of the day working out elaborate barrage charts in case of a break through. Evans had recently been on a course at Camières where they had given him an enormous blue sheet which was warranted proof against geography. Evans regarded it as a sort of charm.
“You see, with this,” he said, “you can get on to any target you like within thirty seconds.”
And it was certainly an ingenious toy, but as far as we were concerned, it did not accelerate the conclusion of the war. It required a level table, numerous drawing-pins, carbon papers, faultless draughtsmanship and much else with which we were unequipped: finally, when occasion demanded we resorted to the obsolete method of aiming at the required target.
Of the actual war little information was gleaned. The limber corporal brought each evening the account of wondrous sallies and excursions. Lens was purported to have fallen, and an enveloping attack was in progress further North. Lille was only a matter of days. And then on the night of the 27th there arrived the mail and papers of the preceding seven days. It came in an enormous burst of epistolary shrapnel. Personally I received thirty letters and five parcels. We sat up reading them till midnight, and then in a contented frame of mind we turned to the papers. It was a bit of a shock. We had hardly imagined that there was a war on any front except our own. We had expected to see headlines talking of nothing but the Fall of Bullecourt and our masterly evacuation of Monchy. We had expected to see our exploits extolled by Philip Gibbs; instead of that they filled a very insignificant corner. It was all Bapaume, Ham, Peronne. We were merely a false splash of a wave that already had gone home. It was a blow to our self-respect. There was also no news of any enveloping manœuvres round Lille. The Germans appeared to be doing all that.
Evans looked across at me dolefully.
“Do you think the men had better know anything about that?” he said.
“Shouldn’t think so. By the way, when are we being relieved?”
“The sooner the better. There is going to be a war on soon.”
And the memory of the thirty letters and five parcels thinned.
“Oh, well,” I said, “I’m going to bed.”
My sleep did not last long. Within an hour Evans was shouting in my ear.
“Hell of a strafe upstairs. I think they’re coming over.”
And indeed there was a strafe. Verey lights were going up all along the front. Three dumps were hit in as many minutes, from the right came the continual crump of “minnies.” Luckily we were in the shelter between the barrage on the eighteen-pounders and the barrage on the front lines. The only shells that came disconcertingly close were those from one of our own heavies that was dropping short, like a man out of breath.
At seven o’clock the Germans came over, and by twelve we were being escorted to Berlin.
Our actual engagement resembles so closely that of every other unfortunate during those sorry days that it deserves no detailed description. The only original incident came at about nine o’clock when I discovered the perfidy of the section cook. I had sent him down to fetch some breakfast, and he returned smoking triumphantly a gold-tipped cigarette that he could have obtained from only one source. Perhaps this is what those mean who maintain that in the moment of action one sees the naked truth of the human soul. At any rate it stripped Private Hawkins pretty effectively. No doubt this kleptomania had been a practice with him for a long time, and at this critical moment I suppose he saw no reason why he should conceal it: “much is forgiven to a man condemned.” He literally flaunted theft.
“Hawkins,” I said quietly, “you’ll go back to the gun-team to-morrow. We’ll find another cook.”
“Very good, Sir.”
And almost instantly the order was given a divine confirmation in the form of the cushiest of flesh wounds in Private Hawkins’s right arm.
After a second’s gasp he bounded down the trench.
“A blighty, Sir,” he cried, “a blighty. No, Sir, don’t want to be bound up or anything. They’ll do that at the dressing station. I’m orf.”
Visions had risen before him of white sheets and whiter nurses. He saw himself being petted and made much of, the hero of the village; and as the Germans slowly filtered round the flank, Private Hawkins rushed down the communication trench, resolved to put at all cost the dressing station between them and him. He succeeded. Probably it was the one time he had ever tried to do anything in his life.
CHAPTER II
