Part 18 (1/2)
And this impression of secret and collusive agencies was heightened by the vibration of the air above us, in which the sh.e.l.ls from the batteries made furrows that were audible without being visible, as though the whole firmament were populated with disembodied spirits. The pa.s.sivity of the toilers in the field below us, who, absorbed in their husbandry, regarded not the air above them, and the dreaming beauty of the distant city almost persuaded us that we were the victims of a gigantic illusion. But even as we gazed the city acquired a desperate and tragic reality. Voices of thunder awoke behind the ridge, the air was rent like a garment, and first one cloud and then another and another rose above the city of Ypres, till the white towers were blotted out of sight. A black pall floated over the doomed city, and from that moment the air was never still, as a rhythm of German sh.e.l.ls rained upon it. The storm spread until other villages were involved, and a fierce red glow appeared above the roofs of Vlamertinge.
Yet the clouds and flame that rose above the white towers had at that distance a flagrant beauty of their own, and it was hard to believe that they stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men. Beyond the voluminous smoke and darting tongues of fire, our field-gla.s.ses could show us nothing. But we knew--for we had seen but yesterday--that behind that haze there was being perpetrated a destruction as mournful and capricious as that which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives overtook Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one was even now being taken and the other left; he who was upon the housetop would not come down to take anything out of his house, neither would he who was in the field return to take away his clothes. The great cathedral was crumbling to dust, and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper pans, and stumbling under the weight of feather-beds, while whimpering children fumbled among their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies each of the sh.e.l.ls, whose trajectory we heard ever and anon in the skies overhead, were making in that living stream were to us a subject of poignant speculation.
But as I looked immediately around me I found it ever more difficult to believe that such things were being done upon the earth. The carpenter went on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade his eyes with his hand and gaze out over the plain, the peasants in the field continued to hoe, a woman came out of a cottage with a child clinging to her skirts, and said, ”La guerre, quand finira-t-elle, M'sieu'?” From far above us the song of the lark, now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated down upon the drowsy air.
XXV
THE DAY'S WORK
It was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some dozen of us all told--the Camp Commandant, the Deputy-a.s.sistant-Adjutant-General, the a.s.sistant-Provost-Marshal, the a.s.sistant-Director of Medical Services, the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective has nothing to do with his personal habits), the Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a _padre_, and myself. Most of us were known by our initials--our official initials--for the use of them saves time and avoids pomposity. Our duties were both extensive and peculiar, as will presently appear, for we were in the habit of talking shop. There was, indeed, little else to talk about. When you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with no amus.e.m.e.nts and few amenities--neither theatres, nor sport, nor books--and with little prospect of getting a move on, you can but chronicle the small beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be engaging enough at times.
As we sat down to the stew which our orderly had compounded with the a.s.sistance of the ingenious Mr. Maconochie, the Camp Commandant sighed heavily. ”I am a kind of receptacle for the waste products of everybody's mind,” he exclaimed petulantly. ”This morning I was rung up on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done.
Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier--_un soldat discret_--to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant, who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act.”
The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence.
Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much may legitimately be expected. ”Well, you may think yourself lucky you haven't my job,” said the Deputy-a.s.sistant-Adjutant-General at length.
”I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading Bradshaw, except that I don't boast of it and it isn't a recreation--it's d.a.m.ned hard work. I have to read the Army List for about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having died of heart failure on the 22nd inst.”
”Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?” asked the Camp Commandant.
”He is the regimental goat,” replied the D.A.A.G. ”I suppose they thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species.”
”Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets,” said the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. ”I've been on the trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the Downs.h.i.+res are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was spreading like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. At last I tracked it down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about five years ago and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a carrier.”
”What did you do with him?” said the A.D.M.S.
”He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy.”
”Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more honourable than cure,” said he whom we know as ”Smells,” and who has a nose like a fox-terrier's. ”I am the _avant-garde_ of the Staff, and you fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue parties, where would you all be?”
”We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it,” said the A.P.M. ungratefully.
”The _maire_ thinks I'm mad, of course,” continued 'Smells,' ”and I can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street are not conducive to health.”
”I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our phylacteries,” said the a.s.sistant Provost Marshal. ”Now I'm a sort of licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and the _estaminet_ proprietors think I'm a Temperance fanatic,” he said, as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. ”One of them told me the other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my loins any day.”
”Yes,” said the Camp Commandant, ”it's our melancholy duty to be impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again at the Base or somewhere else _en route_; it would relieve me of any compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably.”
”I'm something of a handwriting expert myself,” said the A.P.M., ignoring the aspersion. ”They have changed the colour of the pa.s.ses again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour of the pa.s.s. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance,” he murmured dreamily; ”I believe I could now forge his signature very artistically.”
”I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.,” said the A.D.M.S. ”I believe I receive more chits than any man on the staff.” ”Chits,” it should be explained, are the billets-doux of the Army wherein officers send tender messages to one another and make a.s.signations.
”Did you hear about that chit the Camp Commandant at the Headquarters of the ----th Corps sent to the A.Q.M.G.?” asked the A.P.M. ”No? Well, the A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to Ferrers asking if they had made use of any Ammonal and, if so, whether the results were satisfactory.
Ferrers sent it on to the Camp Commandant for report and the Camp Commandant wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is not understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used--is it a drug or an explosive?' Ferrers told him to ask the Medical Officer attached to Corps headquarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back another chit to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had informed him that 'Ammonal' was a compound drug extensively used in America in cases of abnormal neurotic excitement, and that, so far as he knew, it was not a medical issue to Corps H.Q. He therefore regretted that he was unable to report results, but promised that if occasion should arise to administer it to any of the Corps H.Q. _personnel_ he would faithfully observe the effects and report the same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he betrayed a quite abnormal degree of neurotic excitement; in fact, he was quite nasty about it.”
”What the devil did he mean?” asked the A.D.M.S.
”Well, that points the moral of your remarks about handwriting,” said the A.P.M. encouragingly. ”The Camp Commandant had written what looked like an 'o' in place of an 'a.' Ammonol is a drug; ammonal is an explosive.”