Part 7 (2/2)

Doubtless every man who was in the Army and took a chance of death and yet escaped, must have reflected on his good fortune, the strange light of Providence which fell upon his destiny and spared him whilst on all hands his friends and neighbours and fellow-countrymen had fallen. As the soldier left the Army and became civilian again he inevitably thought to himself--”Whereas I might have been dead I am alive; whereas I might be bond I am free.” And some indeed could add ”Whereas I might have been a cripple, or blind, or lamed, or a neurasthenic or a sh.e.l.l-shocked broken man I am sound and fit and have a whole life and freedom to give to the new time which comes with the blessing of peace.”

The Frenchman came back to a glorified and magnified France; to a proved capacity to defeat and hold in check a deadly and historical enemy. The Englishman came back to a free England, to a nation who was queen of the nations, to a larger and more untrammelled world-empire; the Belgian to a justified and safeguarded Belgium; the American to an America which had achieved for the first time in history a complete sense of nationhood and unity. The Serbian returned to a resurrected Serbia and a prospective future of Southern Slav greatness. Of the Italian, who joined in the war as a bargain with the others and did not fight primarily for our ideals, we will say nothing. But how near we all were to being beaten, and to realising the very opposite of the present happy potentialities. But a turn in the wheel or a hair in the scale, and the French would have been slaves, the Englishman beaten on land if not on sea would have returned cowering to his little island, empire falling from his grasp and almost the whole bill of the war to defray by the efforts of his restive working-cla.s.s population; the Belgian a German subject; the American flouted and anxious with the shadow of a terrible new war to fight all by himself in the years to come; the Serbian a peon of Bulgaria or shackled in the heavy rusty Austrian irons. When we are in despair in 1920, 1921, 1922 we should all say to ourselves--”Whereas we might have been slaves we are free; whereas we might have been dead we are alive----” It is what the graveyards of France tell those who look at them. The dead are all pointing mutely to themselves. Their crosses are the direction-posts of new life.

Our enemy came nearer to overthrowing us by the result of the Russian Revolution than by anything else. The defection of Russia, the liberation of the German and Austrian Eastern armies, nearly took victory away from us, and we have G.o.d and our cause to thank for salvation. In the late summer and autumn of 1917 the tide of victory turned and began to roll the other way. At the battle for Pa.s.schendaele commenced the last year of the war. In that year we experienced every emotion of victory and defeat. The year opened inauspiciously at Pa.s.schendaele where so many fell trying to traverse an infernal area of wire and pits and mud, facing the reinforced machine-gunners, facing the new gas, facing the fire of a vastly increased artillery. Many a cheery boy with muddy uniform and bright morning face stood up for the last time at Pa.s.schendaele, and unexpectedly--died for England. You may seek their bodies in the Flemish earth to-day. Perhaps one of them is the unknown soldier in the Abbey. But their spirits are far away from here.

They are watchful and radiant and celestial now--not so lovable perhaps in their immortality, for how can mortals feel for the immortals, but enormously more lovable in our mortal conception of them than ever they were when alive--the dead of the last year of the war.

Pa.s.schendaele was followed by the sudden triumph of the Austrian armies in the Italian Alps, and the surrender of a hundred thousand Italians and a thousand guns. Revolutionary propaganda was said to have been ravaging the Italian soldier's mind. Others said the Italians sold the day to the enemy. But the prime cause of Austrian victory was to be sought in the great accession of strength due to the Russian lapse from war. No more offensives of Brusilof; no Grand Duke Nicholas any more to terrify Vienna; not even a Kornilof! Austria naturally rounded upon her Southern foe with double might. Vienna bells rang forth and Berlin floated in military joy. Wilhelmstra.s.se, the street of the Kaiser, reflected deeply and sucked in the significance of the new victory.

After a desperate summer of peace-seeking suddenly a last hope of triumph dawned like a fiery star late in the night and nigh unto morning. The thought of coming with a white flag to the Council of Europe was banished. Instead the stern decree of war to the uttermost bound the German mind to the old choice of ”complete victory or downfall.” Despite our opinion of the enemy conveyed in sneers at concrete dug-outs and funk-holes and the ”Kamerad” cry, the Germans decided to come all out and win or lose on a gambler's throw. It was perhaps more calculated and more calculable than the cast of the dice, but if the Allies won, Germany had no second chance and would know that she had lost.

Teutonic preparations went ahead. The Allies took little stock of these preparations, not believing that the enemy had much kick left in him.

Instead of organising our defence we planned a new attack upon the Germans, and to the astonishment and chagrin of the latter the Byng Boys carried off the laurels of the Battle of Cambrai. Fritz was taken by surprise in late November, and we nearly went all the way to Cambrai.

Fleet Street wished to have joy-bells rung in London, but the Church wisely bade us wait, while wrathful Germany averred that we had gone into a trap in which we should presently be terribly caught. Then in the break-through of Gouzeaucourt we learned the lesson that a new and more dangerous enemy was in front of us.

As you walk now along the Byng Boys way on a November afternoon and the sun goes down in greyness and gloom you can feel the mystery of the battle as if it had occurred hundreds of years ago. Reality has become remote, remote as the last songs and shouts of the men who went through.

Sadness has covered the earth. It is all incredibly empty and desolate.

On a post on the road you discern through the evening mist ICI BOURSIES and then after much plodding you pa.s.s the grey empty Ca.n.a.l du Nord with its crumpled rusty bridges, and skirt the naked bones of Bourlon Wood.

Then by the side of the road all the dead of Anneux are lined up to see you pa.s.s. You go on, but _they_ remain. It seems as if when you have pa.s.sed some spectral sergeant must say to all those pallid ranks ”Fall out!” and the order is broken up, and the dead mingle and commingle till another comes past upon the broad highway. Night settles like a curtain shutting off Cambrai from the view, and no light on any hand tells of a return to home or of happiness restored. Suddenly the silence is broken by three blundering lorries--old lorries of the war tearing past you back on the road to Bapaume--ghostly lorries laden with doors, doors only, to be dumped at some wilderness somewhere which was once a town.

They pa.s.s, and the night-silence resumes its sway, and there are no stars but it is utter peace. Again a spectral post--ICI FONTAINE, ICI FONTAINE NOTRE DAME, and you have reached the end of the fight, and the bridge where life met death and both stood at last immobile, unyielding.

A happier-looking place is the wood of Havrincourt where a Brigade of Guards was sleeping, waiting and resting after the ordeal of Bourlon and Fontaine. They had been relieved on the 26th November and marched back in snow to this wood where in the umbrage of the forest and on the carpet of withered leaves and snow they set up many tents. And whiles they rested the enemy put into action a bold plan of encirclement which might have caused the complete loss of Sir Julian Byng's army and guns and of everything else in the pocket of Cambrai. One of the most remarkable moments of the whole war occurred. Of many impressions of what took place the story which one of the Guards' quartermasters tells is most pictorial. He had set off early in the morning of the 30th November for Villers au Flos to get money to pay his men. They had just come out of action. He rode through Metz and Bertingcourt, where the other Brigades were billeted, and no one was stirring. There was no hint of coming trouble when he pa.s.sed through Ruyaulcourt, where lay the Divisional Headquarters Staff. On all roads were the usual road-carts, plodding along in humdrum style. But by the time he reached Villers au Flos, however, an alarm of some kind had evidently come, for the cas.h.i.+er was busy packing up his cash and his papers, and flatly refused to pay out any money whatever. Though not wis.h.i.+ng to confess fright, he was evidently extremely perturbed.

”But I must have money for the men,” cried the visiting officer. ”The coffee-bars and canteens will soon be arriving up there and opening; the men are tired after the fighting. They have won a great victory and must have some relaxation now, so you'll have to give me some money.”

”It isn't a victory, it's a retreat,” said the cas.h.i.+er. ”They say the Germans have broken through.”

”Rot,” said the Guardsman. ”I have just come from the line and all is quiet. You get wind up easily, you folk.”

He gained his point, and was happy to turn about his horse with a full 16,000 francs to pay out. On his return, however, the German break-through became apparent and he realised that the cas.h.i.+er had been right. He sampled all the adventures of the situation. First he saw soldiers without rifle or equipment running intently, and he, not suspecting the significance of their flight, thought there was a paper-chase on, arranged by some regiment that was resting in the neighbourhood. But at Bertingcourt, to his great astonishment, he met a battalion of Guards in fighting order marching to action in the opposite direction from that in which he understood the enemy to be. It was incredible that it could have happened, but he realised that the enemy had somehow s.h.i.+fted his ground. This regiment had been fighting at Bourlon and Fontaine in the north--and now they were marching south to fight again. South and not north--what could have happened! He ”pa.s.sed the time of day” to the commander and learned that the worst was true, the enemy had broken through at Gouzeaucourt. The further he rode along the way to Havrincourt Wood the stranger became the sights which confronted his eyes. The roads, which had now been cleared by order, began to have troops going up to stem the German advance, and every now and then a car plunging the other way. Out of Bertingcourt he met the 2nd Brigade Machine-Gun transport, saddled up and under orders. The water in the jackets of the machine-guns was frozen and they wondered how they'd thaw them. There were still many fugitives on the road, and at cross-roads he overheard two of them who were contradicting one another in the most violent language as to which was the way. He could tell that their nerves had got the better of them by their high falsetto tones. They were as unlike characteristic British soldiers as it is possible to imagine. At Metz-en-Couture there was a complete jam of traffic, which lasted all the way along the high-road towards Gouzeaucourt. The retiring ma.s.ses were greatly in excess of those going up. They were mostly the transport of those who belonged to the rear--railway-men, A.S.C., ambulance, canteen, Y.M.C.A. and what-not. A pained expression was on the chauffeurs' faces, every one of whom seemed to desire to say what a terrific speed he would make if he could only get clear of the deadlock. He saw the ranks of the Guards broken and made uneven by the struggle to get through. Outside Metz was a Colonel of Grenadiers on horseback, enraged past belief at the obstruction of his Guardsmen, and addressing the chauffeurs and wagon-men in every imaginable blend of language. His aspect so terrified our officer with the cash that he decided to make a detour and get to his quarters at Havrincourt Wood by a cross-country route. But the Germans had a high-velocity gun on Metz and sh.e.l.led it methodically, and he had not taken many steps when an exploding sh.e.l.l wounded his horse in the head. He did not want anything to happen to him with 16,000 francs on his person, so he decided to brave the presence of the justifiably enraged Grenadier and proceed along the roadway as best he could. This he did, but when at last he got to Havrincourt Wood his battalion was gone and he was not able to get abreast of his men and pay them till they came out of action some days afterwards and the Germans had been stopped.

The alarm had come about breakfast-time. Nothing was doing in camp; no parades. Both officers and men were taking things easy in order to shake off the Bourlon Wood exhaustion. Some were sleeping, some were shaving, one Brigadier was in his bath, when the order came for the Guards to stand-to and be in readiness, as the position east of Gouzeaucourt was considered ”obscure.”

The Headquarters of the 1st Brigade was at Metz, and a great deal was due, no doubt, to the Brigadier who discovered that the Germans had broken through and promptly decided to push on and occupy the high ground east of Gouzeaucourt. The General of the 1st Brigade of Guards was a fine figure of a soldier, with bold eyes, ma.s.sive shoulders and brows, and finely-curved smiling lips. Mounted on his white horse at the cross-roads of Metz he was in charge of the situation. It was he who saw the first fugitives come in, green, trembling, speechless with panic, and as others followed breathless the same way, he deflected their course into a great courtyard, lately the courtyard of the Army Corps Headquarters. With that the Brigadier rode out along the Gouzeaucourt road, and presently beyond Gouzeaucourt Wood he came into contact with German patrols, and he rode back to Metz and called out the Guards.

Meanwhile the extraordinary stampede continued--Labour men, gunners with breech-blocks in their hands, riflemen with or without rifles and equipment, transport, some men half-dressed. And those who could speak called out to those whom they met that the Germans were coming. There were officers as well as men, and even chaplains, in the throng, and a German aeroplane hovered overhead and followed with machine-gun fire, methodically stirring up the panic to a higher and higher pitch. The Guards debouched from Metz in close column and deployed in artillery formation under cover of Gouzeaucourt Wood. As they hurried up the road they pa.s.sed the fugitive streams going the other way. The look on the Guards' faces as they encountered the others was one of astonishment and bewilderment. It would have been difficult to agree that the two streams of troops belonged to the same nation. Two different conditions of soldiery. With one there was discipline, with the others discipline had gone.

The road from Gouzeaucourt to Metz is a sort of gully, a deep-dug way between high banks, and along the sides one still sees shards of old rifles, rusty helmets, bits of equipment, and mess-tins. The peasants in farming the ditches have unearthed not a few Mills' bombs which now repose in piles by the side of the road. Here also reposes a dug-up Lewis gun and various parts and bits of war's attire thrown away possibly in the stampede, perhaps however, despite an inevitable a.s.sociation of ideas, belonging to another moment of the war. For although the Guards re-established the line once more it broke again in the succeeding March, when once more the Germans pursued their foes through the jetsam-covered streets of Gouzeaucourt.

Gouzeaucourt was evidently greatly smitten by the war. It is a very extensive village raked by the devil from end to end. It swarms now on housetop and in yard with builders and joiners. A widespread clatter ascends from every road so that the very sparrows cannot hear themselves chirp. Hundreds of white barrack-like shelters have sprung into being.

But as if the villagers had not had time for small amenities, every street and alley is strewn with brickbats. The scenery of the war still holds, and November 30th could be played over again without loss of reality from the scene.

The road out to Metz is quiet enough now with carts of turnips jolting along where three Novembers ago the lorries were fleeing. On the top of the bank stretches the view of a war moorland becoming once more grain-productive. To the north lies a pleasant boscage, the verdure of Havrincourt. Along the south goes the straight line and the tree-stumps which mark the Cambrai-Peronne road.

Metz-en-Couture looks like a great rubbish-heap from which ma.s.ses of decaying brickwork are projecting. It is much less alive than Gouzeaucourt. Its returned French peasants are however at work. Like all desolated places which are off the railway it has to depend on motor transport for the materials of reconstruction, and it is characteristically behindhand compared with towns on the railway. And Gouzeaucourt is well served by a railway from Cambrai.

At Metz-en-Couture is a roadside cemetery. How good that most of the cemeteries are actually close to the highways, and even automobilists speeding past will see them, though it be only a blur on the consciousness. All the crosses will fade into one another as a car pa.s.ses them. Here at Metz the Chinese and the Germans are put together as outcasts from the pens of decency if not from G.o.d's grace. But it will be all one to the man who pa.s.ses by and does not pause to see. The pilgrim however will find the graves of the stalwart Guardsmen, and remember that they met their end saving the day and marching the right way when the foe had broken through. The whole winter of 1917-18 might have been very terrible had the Germans gained a great victory here, and bad as it was the rout of March 1918 might have been complete. As you walk back from Metz to Gouzeaucourt you figure again the way the enemy was stopped and his grand potential victory robbed of its crown. In Gouzeaucourt the Guards took back a hundred and fifty guns. Beyond Gouzeaucourt Wood they cleared out the machine-gunners. Next day at dawn the Grenadiers made good the line and together with the Indian cavalry closed the gap and dug in. The Indians were most happy in their a.s.sociation with the Guards in victory, and averred that henceforth December First would always be known as Grenadiers' Day.

Back at Metz the low-flying German airman who with his machine-gun had been whipping up the panic of the men who had fled was shot down. He was a young officer of the fearless angry type, terribly mortified at being taken prisoner. He was put in a cage by himself till one of our runaways came into the courtyard and began to strike a Charlie Chaplin pose, and the officer in charge lost his patience and thrust him in with the German. The German was striding up and down like a lion or tiger, and the sudden depression of the erstwhile Charlie Chaplin gave to the latter the gait of an Androcles thrown to a wild beast to be destroyed.

Later in the day German prisoners began to flow along the road from Gouzeaucourt to Metz in considerable numbers. What was the astonishment of the ”Jerries” to find when they were put into the barbed-wire enclosures that their neighbours, also enclosed, were British and not German, and to see the mixed crowd of Old Bills, Labour-men, artillerymen, infantry, engineers, and even padres and officers mixed with men. Presently however these were marched out of the cages and lined up in miscellaneous squads derived from varying units with no distinction of rank. Rifles were put into their hands and an attempt was made to use them as a reserve defence in the trenches outside Metz. This however proved impossible. The disease of panic had gripped their minds, and at the idea of being sent to fight once more many threw their rifles down.

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