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Pass Guard at Ypres Page 10


  “Be damned to the lot of them. I don’t want their talk or sympathy. There’s only one thing I care about, that’s——”

  Hot with passion, he seized her, and covered her face and neck with kisses.

  “You.”

  He went on kissing. The more he kissed, the more he wanted to. Go on—her eyes now, and her throat, and——

  “FRED!” as she finally wrenched herself away. “Oh——”

  She burst into copious tears. “Oh, Fred, I didn’t believe you could—behave like that.”

  “But damn it, Muriel, what the——”

  “We aren’t engaged, you know, Fred. Father says we’re too young. And, even if we were, that isn’t the way to kiss.”

  Freddy Mann stood for a moment in unfeigned astonishment. “You don’t mean to say, Muriel, you’re angry.”

  “No, Fred, not angry, but very hurt. I did believe in you so. I—it makes me all hot. I——”

  The tears flowed freely.

  “I didn’t think you could ever have been like that. You were never like that before. It must be the war that’s done it. To think that you ever thought that I was that sort of girl.”

  “Oh, God! Oh, my giddy aunt!” Freddy Mann groaned.

  “I’ll try to forget it, Fred. But please, please, oh please—I thought it was ideals you fought for, and the protection of the weak and women. You don’t seem yourself any longer. Just a brute. It’s such bad manners to kiss a girl like that.”

  Uncle Wal was at Victoria Station to see him off. This was the last thing in the world that Freddy Mann expected, as he had most carefully explained that he had suddenly found that he had to leave the night before. It was a great pity, he agreed, but it just couldn’t be helped, and he particularly didn’t want anybody to bother to come to London with him. Yet there was Uncle Wal, standing at the entrance to the platform, wiping his moustache as usual. Freddy Mann stopped short. The situation was a little difficult.

  “That’s all right. It’s only me. It’s only old Uncle.”

  “But what——?”

  “That’s all right. Not opening time yet, you know,” with the usual snigger. “But, Uncle——”

  Freddy Mann looked at his companion.

  “Thought you might be mistaken, you know. In the railway line meself, and I happen to know about these ’ere leave trains, so I guessed somehow that you might be mistaken.”

  The three stood silent. Uncle Wal glanced from his nephew to the pretty girl by his side.

  “Good morning, miss. Never you mind me. It’s only old Uncle Wal. Thought I’d like, somehow, just to see him off. He said nobody was to come, but I just thought——”

  He turned to Freddy Mann and took him by the arm aside a moment.

  “You’re right, lad. That lot there, they’re enough to do you down. Wouldn’t listen to me, of course. And that gal Muriel, she came the icicle, eh what?”

  “Well?”

  “I knowed her. She would. I knows ’em all. You’re right.”

  He looked again to the companion.

  “He’s leaving us, missy. We’ll wish him luck.”

  “We—I do. You’ll come, Freddy, soon?”

  “That’s it. You tell him to come and he’ll come. Ah well.” He wiped his moustache again. “Getting near openin’ time now, and I mustn’t keep yer. But ’ope yer didn’t mind me just comin’ for a moment. And—if yer’ll just accept this in memory of yer old uncle.” He pressed a cigarette case into his hand. “All these ’ere stories about cigarette cases and such stoppin’ bullets. Well, glad to ’ave seen yer, me dear. Good-bye, lad—God—bless——”

  Opening time had apparently come quickly. Freddy Mann watched the insignificant form shuffling away. He turned to one who had not denied him kisses. Time for a few more—just a few.

  “Thank Bill, dear, for telling you of me.”

  “I will.”

  “You were happy, dear, last night?”

  A kiss in answer.

  “You’ll write?”

  Another kiss.

  “You must go now, dear. But I shall be here when you come back. I’ll—you know what I am, but——”

  “Be damned to that.”

  “No use pretending”—with a forced and sudden laugh. “You know all right, but—I’m glad you came—goodbye—goodbye.”

  Back to the unknown. But he went as a soldier, not ill-content. He was as good as the next man, whoever he might be, speeding across the seas to war. He, too, for that last night had found companionship.

  CHAPTER XIX

  There are more cheerful experiences than that of returning to mess on a dull November day, after a long walk during which the Adjutant has explained in the greatest detail the arrangements which are being made to recall all winter clothing and equipment, and to issue khaki drill, sun helmets and shorts, and of discovering after all that the Division is not going to Egypt. Harry’s beak nose and dirty briar pipe had never looked more ugly than when he passed the formal communication stating that all previous orders were cancelled and that the battalion would be prepared to return to the Ypres sector in two days. It was a damned uncomfortable mess, as Freddy Mann had always said. The tea was cold and the stove wasn’t working. The rain hadn’t stopped for a week, and there was no reason now to think that it would ever stop. The whisky had run out and he was sick of the lot of them: Bill with his swagger, Harry with his filthy temper, and Chips, who thought he’d known all about it and wasn’t so damned clever after all. However, there was no point in grizzling, and as they had to go back to the northern sector Freddy Mann was rather glad that he was detailed next day to make the preliminary tour with Robbie. It happened to be fine, and they decided to start in the early hours so as to get a drink or two at Proven on the way. Impressions by 2 p.m. were favourable. They raised a lunch out of Toler, who was now at Corps and rather gave them to understand that he had bought the Château and no small part of the surrounding countryside.

  They continued their journey in the afternoon through little lanes and unscarred woods to Brielen, and even after that through comparatively civilised country to Salvation Corner. By this time the northern sector of Ypres seemed well worth a visit. The dug-outs between the Yper and the Yperlette, which had never yet been shelled, were distinctly to be preferred to the filthy line of burrows by the ramparts. Coney Street was a very reasonable trench, and there seemed nothing to complain of when Robbie and Freddy Mann finally arrived, just as dusk was setting in, at the little circle of closely screened dug-outs which marked B.H.Q. at La Belle Alliance Farm. It promised to be an interesting sector. There were farms about, such as Frascati Farm and Wilson’s Farm, which were still quite habitable, although they were practically within the lines. The Hun, to all accounts, was quiet, and the only matter for regret was that it was not possible to get to the front line past Forward Cottage by daylight. The main point was that they seemed at last to have got clear of Ypres: they approached to the north of it, and they wouldn’t have to go on dodging Jack Johnsons and 5.9s in the square for the rest of their days.

  Finally, after a dinner with Brigade near Essex Farm, Robbie and Freddy Mann started back, lorry-jumping to the Château des Trois Trois and getting a lift in a divisional car from there to St. Jan-ter-Biezen. Robbie, who for a latter-day saint could do himself quite well on occasion, was rather inclined to be philosophical and chatty. Freddy Mann quietly read a letter from Irene Terry, which he had thrust into his pocket just before they started, enjoyed the night, and concluded that all was for the best, that in all probability Egypt would have been a stinking mass of flies, and that one could find a reasonably decent war here without going further afield to look for it.

  The mess was empty when they returned at midnight, except for Harry and one of the new arrivals, Guy Cadell, a well-intentioned young man who had been at pains to explain for the last few days that he was “public school,” that he had joined the Southshires because it was a gentleman’s regiment, and that the one thing
he was living for was “to have a whack at the Boche.” Robbie, after a final blow in the bowl of his pipe, announced that he was full of good whisky, and he thought the best thing to do was to make the best of it by going to bed and letting it go nicely to his head. Freddy Mann felt sleepy, but disinclined to turn in. He sat in the one vacant chair in the little room, idly sipping a whisky and soda and looking round him. Pity now that it had come to an end, that they had to leave this place. For six weeks, ever since the division had been taken out to refit, Watou had been their home, and there had been peace in Watou: parade drill which in its unreality almost reminded him of the far-gone days in Aldershot, walks with Robbie, Harry or Bill through little country lanes, past wayside shrines to small towns and villages where few, if any, echoes of war had to all appearance penetrated, long evening hours in the café at the corner of the square, dinners with the Yeomanry and with neighbouring companies and battalions, and at night sleep—sleep, above all, sleep—no fitful dozing broken by thoughts of “gas alert” or of the sudden crash of some midnight shell, but a sinking of one’s body upon a pillow and a feather bed, and oblivion till day. This very room, which bore signs of something more than the usual fleeting occupation, was associated in his mind with the best days that the war had brought them since they left their kindly home at Eperlecques. Between the crude oleographs of saints upon the walls, interspersed with the inevitable pages of La Vie Parisienne, Robbie and himself had hung one or two pictures of their own—photographs of groups, an engraving of Oxford and another of Edenhurst Castle, even a copy of Dante and Beatrice to please Bill’s sentimental tastes. The table in the corner was even more heaped than usual with map cases, field-glasses, smoke helmets, literature of all sorts and kinds, old tobacco tins, pipes, packs of cards, ink, writing pads and bottles of Johnnie Walker. He had grown accustomed to seeing Harry, head sunk deep down between his shoulders, glowering genially in his arm-chair, or Bill playing interminable games of patience and cursing softly to himself the while. Yes, damned sorry to go. He got up, shook himself, grunted goodnight to Harry, and made his way to bed. Two days. And then, with a look of kindly scorn at Guy Cadell as he paused a moment at the door, “You’ll have your whack at the Boche all right, you blighter, and I hope you get your bellyful.”

  CHAPTER XX

  The bell of the Monastery St. Sixte tolls at midnight, and the monks of St. Sixte go to pray. At 3 in the morning the bell tolls, and they pass to their prayers again. It is their bell to which they hearken, their bell, their priest’s voice, and no other sounds but these. Guns may be ranged round their monastery and shells pass overhead; soldiers may come and live for days or weeks within their walls, rejoicing in the comfort of their barns and beds, but to them these things are nothing. This war is no war of theirs; these matters for which men fight are matters which they have put far from them in the purification of their hearts. They pass, each on his way from cell to chapel, chapel to refectory, refectory back to cell, in silent communion and silent prayer. There is one among them who must speak with the outside world to satisfy their carnal needs, and he, whether the stranger be beggar or wandering penitent or soldier, will care for his needs as well as theirs. With him let these strangers speak: for themselves they speak to no man, they owe allegiance under God to one alone, their Abbot; they move, not to a trumpet, but to the tolling of a bell. These soldiers who come from the west today to pass to the east tomorrow, who have passed so far a winter and a summer and a winter, will pass to whatever destiny they may. But to themselves, to those of the silent brotherhood, these destinies are nothing. For them the bell, the watches at midnight, the via dolorosa and the peace unspeakable: what is it to them if their bell calls to other hearts besides their own, if a peace falls sometimes within their walls upon others, who, carnal perhaps and unregenerate, nevertheless must make offering, they too, of their bodies, and tread like them the way of pain?

  As to others, so to the 6th Battalion Southshires the Monastery St. Sixte was the gateway to the east, to a life the nature of which they knew. It was impossible for them to remain long at St. Sixte, removed by fields and woods from war and even from their fellow men, the guests of a community which held no intercourse with them or with any of the outside world, but which moved day and night through gardens and corridors like ghosts in shrouds of russet brown. There was peace, indeed, for a day or two more, peace in secluded hutments among woods, or in tents on the road to Brielen: peace of a kind even in that line of dug-outs between the Yper and the Yperlette, where one could stand in perfect safety at the doorway and watch the shelling of Essex or Talana Farm fifty yards away across the road. But once over the canvas-screened bridges, and the road ended as all roads to the east must end, as elsewhere, so here, in a waterlogged trench in the middle of a foetid field. For those who defend Ypres, whether from north or east or south, the lot is equal. Forward Cottage for Bellewarde Farm, the Willows for Railway Wood—there is not much in it when you take over a sector in the Salient on a moonless night in driving rain.

  “Think you’ve done Wipers down, do you? Have a drink and think again.”

  Why the devil, thought Freddy Mann, just now of all times, when he was staggering blindly round unknown sapheads with Robbie, must a picture of a pleasantly grinning officer dance suddenly before his eyes, or that other picture, of a peasant woman sitting in the sunlight, talking to him as to a child that had much to learn.

  “It is always Ypres, mon Bébé. Always at the end is Ypres.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  You will not escape, in the northern sector of the Ypres Salient, the High Command Redoubt. Stand upon the sloping bank to the east of the Yper, and you will see the solid wall of sandbags which compose it stand huge and menacing, from the Pilkem Ridge to Wieltje, dominating in its entirety the low ground between the German position and the mud-soaked British lines. Make your way across the fields to La Brique or Friscate Farm, creep up a broken stairway and look through the rafters of the attic, or stand in the front-line trenches beyond Forward Cottage, periscope in hand, and its sinister mass will fill the landscape. C.R.A.s will plot its course upon squared maps, and direct shoots upon C. 15, A. 33, or C. 14, B. 47; Stokes Mortar officers will select some machine-gun emplacement or noted dugout for their daily ration; an aeroplane flying low will bomb it along its length, but the next day it will be restored and remain impregnable, crowned with its fringe of stakes and wire, as the Germans intended when they built it that it should remain. Elsewhere, at Zillebeke perhaps or Hooge, the trenches opposite may, if at a cost, be taken. Here you may plaster the ridge from end to end with high explosive, and send men forward as you will, but your living waves will break upon unyielding rock, and at the end of the day those who built the High Command Redoubt will be masters of the ridge. You will, if you are wise, keep quiet within your trenches here. They will shell you on most days between 11 and 12, and 3 and 4, and you will bury your dead and send your casualties down in the daily convoy past Essex Farm to the dressing station at Salvation Corner; they will watch your goings and comings and smile from their fastness upon your impotence, but you are there to do no more than hold the Salient, and so long as you are at Mortaldje Estaminet and Turco Farm there will still be two good miles between the High Command Redoubt and Ypres. Issue your sheepskin coats, your cardigans and your smoke helmets, take over and give up your thigh-boots, keeping strict tally of them as you enter or leave your sector, wrest from the mud what dry places you can for trenches and dug-outs, repair your revetments as they collapse, guard your men from lice and frost-bite—do all these things yourself, but leave your situation report to your sergeant or sergeant-major to compose: he will do it as well as you, for there will be nothing new to say.

  You may last May have dreamt of an early advance, and have written to say that you expect with luck to be home by Christmas; but now, if you have a soul left, guard it in patience, for it is Christmas now, and now you know. Winter will turn again to summer, and the days will lengthen and shorten
to another Christmas, and still another summer will follow before you take the Pilkem Ridge. Only some of your company will be there to see it: for yourself, you may be there, or there may be some other in your place. You thought, when you joined, you could do something: you know now that you can do nothing worth the doing. It was to Ypres, good fool, that you were glad to come last summer: here, at Ypres, where the High Command Redoubt is master, in bondage you will perforce remain.

  CHAPTER XXII

  “But, Bill, for God’s sake——”

  “I can’t. Do what you like, I can’t.”

  Freddy Mann looked at Bill, cowering furtively within the darkness of the dug-out.

  “But, Bill, old chap, I say——”

  Bill came grovelling a little forward. He stretched out his hand and pulled Freddy Mann towards him.

  “Tell you——” His hands and head were shaking. “Something’s gone—my head or legs. Can’t you understand? I can’t. Why don’t they come and shoot me? God, these shells. I can’t——”

  Freddy Mann looked quickly along the trench. The men were all ready for patrol. The order had gone out for sentries not to fire. Townroe would be along at any moment now, to see them off. Then what the hell——

  “I say, Bill, old chap, remember that first merry raid of ours? Up at Y Wood, you remember. Damned sight worse than this—you remember, old chap, eh?”

  “Tell you——” Bill’s voice rose to a hysterical note, then sank to a moan. “I can’t—what’s the use of trying?”

  “Oh, Bill, for God’s sake, Bill—the men are looking-What the devil do you want, Cadell?”

  “Just came to say that——” Guy Cadell looked at the huddled officer with a puzzled expression. “Anything up?”

  “Nothing. Just giddy a moment, that’s all. Better get—no don’t—oh, go to Hell, it’s nothing.”