Part 2 (1/2)

”I thought you might prefer the short cut, sir.”

We explored the ruins of Vermelles, where many young Frenchmen had fallen in fighting through the walls and gardens. One could see the track of their strife, in trampled bushes and broken walls. Bits of red rag-the red pantaloons of the first French soldiers-were still fastened to brambles and barbed wire. Broken rifles, cartouches, water-bottles, torn letters, twisted bayonets, and German stick-bombs littered the ditches which had been dug as trenches across streets of burned-out houses.

V

A young gunner officer whom we met was very civil, and stopped in front of the chateau of Vermelles, a big red villa with the outer walls still standing, and told us the story of its capture.

”It was a wild sc.r.a.p. I was told all about it by a French sergeant who was in it. They were under the cover of that wall over there, about a hundred yards away, and fixing up a charge of high explosives to knock a breach in the wall. The chateau was a machine-gun fortress, with the Germans on the top floor, the ground floor, and in the bas.e.m.e.nt, protected by sand-bags, through which they fired. A German officer made a bad mistake. He opened the front door and came out with some of his machine-gunners from the ground floor to hold a trench across the square in front of the house. Instantly a French lieutenant called to his men. They climbed over the wall and made a dash for the chateau, bayoneting the Germans who tried to stop them. Then they swarmed into the chateau-a platoon of them with the lieutenant. They were in the drawing-room, quite an elegant place, you know, with the usual gilt furniture and long mirrors. In one corner was a pedestal, with a statue of Venus standing on it. Rather charming, I expect. A few Germans were killed in the room, easily. But upstairs there was a mob who fired down through the ceiling when they found what had happened. The French soldiers prodded the ceiling with their bayonets, and all the plaster broke, falling on them. A German, fat and heavy, fell half-way through the rafters, and a bayonet was poked into him as he stuck there. The whole ceiling gave way, and the Germans upstairs came downstairs, in a heap. They fought like wolves-wild beasts-with fear and rage. French and Germans clawed at one another's throats, grabbed hold of noses, rolled over each other. The French sergeant told me he had his teeth into a German's neck. The man was all over him, pinning his arms, trying to choke him. It was the French lieutenant who did most damage. He fired his last shot and smashed a German's face with his empty revolver. Then he caught hold of the marble Venus by the legs and swung it above his head, in the old Berserker style, and laid out Germans like ninepins... The fellows in the bas.e.m.e.nt surrendered.”

VI

The chateau of Vermelles, where that had happened, was an empty ruin, and there was no sign of the gilt furniture, or the long mirrors, or the marble Venus when I looked through the charred window-frames upon piles of bricks and timber churned up by sh.e.l.l-fire. The gunner officer took us to the cemetery, to meet some friends of his who had their battery nearby. We stumbled over broken walls and pushed through undergrowth to get to the graveyard, where some broken crosses and wire frames with immortelles remained as relics of that garden where the people of Vermelles had laid their dead to rest. New dead had followed old dead. I stumbled over something soft, like a ball of clay, and saw that it was the head of a faceless man, in a battered kepi. From a ditch close by came a sickly stench of half-buried flesh.

”The whole place is a pest-house,” said the gunner.

Another voice spoke from some hiding-place.

”Salvo!”

The earth shook and there was a flash of red flame, and a shock of noise which hurt one's ear-drums.

”That's my battery,” said the gunner officer. ”It's the very devil when one doesn't expect it.”

I was introduced to the gentleman who had said ”Salvo!” He was the gunner-major, and a charming fellow, recently from civil life. All the battery was made up of New Army men learning their job, and learning it very well, I should say. There was no arrogance about them.

”It's sporting of you to come along to a spot like this,” said one of them. ”I wouldn't unless I had to. Of course you'll take tea in our mess?”

I was glad to take tea-in a little house at the end of the ruined high-street of Vermelles which had by some miracle escaped destruction, though a sh.e.l.l had pierced through the brick wall of the parlor and had failed to burst. It was there still, firmly wedged, like a huge nail. The tea was good, in tin mugs. Better still was the company of the gunner officers. They told me how often they were ”scared stiff.” They had been very frightened an hour before I came, when the German gunners had ranged up and down the street, smas.h.i.+ng up ruined houses into greater ruin.

”They're so methodical!” said one of the officers.

”Wonderful shooting!” said another.

”I will say they're topping gunners,” said the major. ”But we're learning; my men are very keen. Put in a good word for the new artillery. It would buck them up no end.”

We went back before sunset, down the long straight road, and past the chateau which we had visited in the afternoon. It looked very peaceful there among the trees.

It is curious that I remember the details of that day so vividly, as though they happened yesterday. On hundreds of other days I had adventures like that, which I remember more dimly.

”That brigade major was a trifle haughty, don't you think?” said my companion. ”And the others didn't seem very friendly. Not like those gunner boys.”

”We called at an awkward time. They were rather fussed.”

”One expects good manners. Especially from Regulars who pride themselves on being different in that way from the New Army.”