Part 5 (1/2)
On the further side of the town the Brigade Transport, with steaming cookers, was ma.s.sed ready to give the troops a midday meal. This was an innovation greatly appreciated. Such a thing as a meal in the middle of the day had not occurred since the days of Iron.
CHAPTER XII
VILLIERS-COTTERETS
Twenty minutes later the Column was again on the move, but this time not for long. Having reached the edge of another forest, a fresh halt was made while the Transport was hauled past them into the wood. The Transport, known technically as ”second line” of a Brigade, is a very large, c.u.mbersome, and slow-moving affair, and it must be protected at all costs, for without it the Brigade is lost.
A swift deployment was then made, and the edge of the wood was held astride of the road. After everything had been arranged, there was a wait of thirty to forty minutes. Nothing could be seen, as the position was on the ”reverse slope” of the incline, but the field of fire was absolutely clear for at least two hundred yards in front. It is the most trying time of all, this waiting for the approach of an enemy you cannot see, and it tells on the most phlegmatic disposition. The men occupy the heavy moments by working the bolts of their rifles, and seeing that they work easily. The success or failure of the defence depends mainly on the speed and accuracy with which the defenders ”get their rounds off.” The Officers pace about, making sure of ”keeping touch” with the units on their flank, discovering the best way to retire, and so on. There is at such moments an odd desire to give way to the temptation of saying to oneself, ”Where shall I be in an hour's time?” One gazes with a subtle feeling of affection on one's limbs, and wonders, ”Where shall I get it?” Subconsciously one is amused and a little ashamed of such concessions to sentimentality. The best thing to do under the circ.u.mstances is to go and check the range-finders' figures, or prepare the headlines of a message or two.
A Taube, like some huge insect with a buzz of whirring wings, flew overhead, dropping multi-coloured stars from its tail. Then our guns ”opened the ball.”
There was something blatant and repulsive about that first burst of sound. The ferns of the forest s.h.i.+vered, as if awakened from a sunny dream to face terrible calamities. The trees seemed to shake with a delicate fear of what was in store for them. The enemy's fire burst upon them with a startling intensity.
There was no point in holding the advanced edge of the wood under such a bombardment until the actual appearance of the enemy infantry made it necessary, so the whole line was retired some fifty yards into the wood.
By this manoeuvre the Colonel lost no advantage, and must have saved many lives.
Although artillery fire had been a pretty frequent occurrence, this was the heaviest the men had yet experienced. The noise was ear-splitting; the explosions filled the quivering air; the ground seemed to shudder beneath them. Branches fell cras.h.i.+ng to the ground; it seemed as if a G.o.d was flogging the tree-tops with a huge scourge. The din was awful, petrifying, numbing.
And in the middle of all this inferno, with the sight of men with ashen faces limping, crawling, or being dragged to the rear, with the leaves on the ground smoking from the hot, jagged sh.e.l.l-casings buried among them, the Subaltern suddenly discovered that he was not afraid. The discovery struck him as curious. He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel ”queer.” He said to himself, ”Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ought to feel pains in the pit of your stomach, and you're not. Devil a bit! You know, you're missing all the sensations that the writers told you about. You're not playing the game. Come, buck up, fall down and grovel on the ground!” But he did not. He did not want to. He felt absolutely normal.
A man sheltering behind the same tree suddenly spun round, and, grasping his left arm, fell with a thud to the ground. He reeled over, with knees raised and rounded back, and staggered immediately to his feet. ”Oh, my arm, my arm!” he moaned plaintively, and turned away towards the rear, whimpering a little as he went, and tenderly holding the wet, dark-stained sleeve as he went. The Subaltern felt that he ought to have winced with horror at the mutilation of the poor stricken thing, but beyond a slight sinking sensation between the lungs and the stomach, the incident left him with no emotion. He picked up the man's rifle, leant it against the tree, and continued to scan the skyline with his gla.s.ses, feeling all the while a bit of a brute.
At the same time he experienced a sensation of pleasure at the immunity from mental sufferings that are generally supposed to afflict men under these conditions. He felt like a man who unexpectedly finds a five-pound note, the very existence of which he had forgotten, hidden away in some unusual pocket. It was something of the same sensation that he used to have at school, when by chance he saw other boys working at impositions which he had himself escaped.
The time came when it was no longer expedient to remain in the wood, so they advanced, flitting from tree to tree, back to the edge of the forest. The view was rather restricted from where the Subaltern was, apparently on the right of where the full force of the attack was breaking.
”Plop-plop-plop,” the machine-gun spluttered with an amazing air of detached insistence. The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of their own. Sh.e.l.ls, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an impression of pa.s.sion, of untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard in the ”tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp” of its crescendos and diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes a higher note, and can be heard above the roar of the bursting sh.e.l.ls. It is mechanical, there is nothing about it of human pa.s.sion; it is a machine, and a most deadly one at that.
The Colonel dashed out into the open and dragged a wounded gunner into the comparative shelter of the wood. Many more acts scarcely less heroic were performed.
At last the moment came to retire. The guns had already rattled through the line, and the companies drew away from the edge of the wood, re-formed with great speed, and were soon marching once more in column of route along the road.
The Subaltern felt exhausted in a way that he had never felt so badly before. The withdrawal from the actual scene of battle seemed to leave a gulf in his inside that positively yawned. It was not only the apparent uselessness of trying to stem the German tide that depressed him. There was something more than that. He felt like a man who wakes after a heavy, drug-induced slumber. The sudden cessation of the intense excitement of battles leaves the brain empty and weary. At such moments the hopelessness of the whole thing appalled and depressed him. The uncertainty of the future hurt him. Nor was he alone in this state of mind. Not a voice was raised to break the throbbing monotony of the march. Heads were bent low.
On they went. Night came down upon them and seemed to crush the spirit out of them. As they emerged from the wood, the moon rose and flooded the broad plain with weird, phosph.o.r.escent light. They struggled on, swaying with sleep, past the ghostly outlines of poplars and hayricks, past quiet, deserted cottages and empty stables. There was something almost unearthly about that march in the moonlight. The acc.u.mulated fatigue of a long and hot day, the want of food and the repressing influence of a summer night, all these things joined in producing a state of mental listlessness that destroyed the impression of reality which things have in the daytime. They were drifting down a slow-moving stream; the scenery glided by, but the sensation was by no means pleasant. The brain was constantly at war with the lazy feet, striving to keep them from stumbling and the eyelids from closing. Sound was peculiarly m.u.f.fled, as if darkness repressed and shut it in. The brain was not commanding the limbs with the instantaneous co-ordination of the daytime. The sensation that this produced--it is very difficult to give any definite idea of it--was an impression of physical and mental incompetence and uncertainty. And all the time every ounce of the body was crying out to the mind to let it lie down and rest.
That night many men were lost.
It was not until ten o'clock that they arrived at a village where they found the ”cookers” and regimental transport. The Subaltern could not help admiring the skill which was constantly being shown by the Staff not only in the strategical dispositions of the retreat, but in comparatively minute details such as this. The Brigade transport had been guided and collected to a spot where it could safely be of service to the battalions. Moreover, when the men arrived they found tea waiting for them already brewed. Apparently the hour of the men's arrival had been timed to such a nicety that the meal was just ready for them.
a.s.suming the truth of Napoleon's maxim about an army marching on its belly, one can easily see from these pages that if Staff work had in any way failed, or if the Army Service Corps had broken down, the Great Retreat would have ended in disaster. It was these faultless arrangements of the Army Service Corps that served to keep the sorely tried army at any rate on its legs.
A fire had been lighted, and, grateful for its warmth, the five Officers of the Company were soon cl.u.s.tering round it, sipping out of their mess tins filled with strong, sweet tea, without milk but very strongly flavoured with rum. Soon the worries and painful memories of the day were dispelled. A feeling almost of contentment stole over them. There is something so particularly adventurous and at the same time soothing about a camp fire. They had all read books at school full of camp fires and fighting and prairies, and they had all more or less envied such a life. Here it was. But the adventure part of it was so minute, and the drudgery and nerve strain so great that the most adventurous soul among them had long since admitted that ”if _this_ was Active Service, it was not the life for him!”