Pass Guard at Ypres Read online

  Private Beard nodded approvingly.

  “You’re right there. Pity to spoil a bit o’ quiet when yer’ve got it. ’Tain’t too easy not to get a bit o’ quiet in life. But I suppose—”

  He looked round.

  “Some of us was volunteers, you know. This ain’t our job. Me, for example. Shopkeeper I am, same as I’ve often told you—little shop down Bethnal Green. Suppose I came out—to ’elp to win the war. That’s what ’appened with most of us. Look at Brains ’ere. Look at the officers. ’Ardly one of ’em knew a rifle from a walkin’ stick a year ago. Sammy, ’e’s a singer, and Duff, ’e’s an artist, and—”

  Private Bamford in his turn nodded agreement.

  “That’s what it is, old cock, and it makes it ’ard for soldiering. Excitable sort of ideas, these fellers get. If yer go about singing and painting and such, yer bound to get excited. Spreads, too. Same as my officer. Nice quiet little chap ’e is, but look at ’im yesterday after stand-to. Started when I brought ’is rations. Started talking just like them others, worse if anything—winning the war for ’umanity, and the glory of Yeeper. Glory of Yeeper—I asks yer”—as Private Bamford lifted a baleful eye. “What can yer make o’ that?”

  “Glory of Yeeper—ah, ’e ain’t the only one at that game. There’s Brains ’ere. Come on Brains, let’s show ’em,” as Private Bartlett darted up and seized a paper from Rossiter’s side. “Look at this,” as he thrust it into the other’s hand. “Brains wrote this. Last week ’e wrote it and sent it ’ome, and ’ere it is in print, and ’is initials, too. You read that, granddad. That’ll do yer good. Make yer think.”

  Slightly puzzled, Private Bamford took the paper, looked at the title of a poem, at the initials “D. R.” beneath, crossed his legs, put a pipe into the corner of his mouth, laid his forefinger carefully upon the first line and read:

  “Fair was your City, old and fair,

  And fair the Hall where the kings abode;

  And you speak to us in your despair—

  To us, who see but ruins bare,

  A shattered wall, a broken stair,

  And graves on the Menin Road.

  “It was sweet, you say, from the city wall

  To watch the fields where the horsemen rode;

  It was sweet to hear at evenfall

  Across the moat the voices call;

  It was good to see the stately hall

  From the fields by the Menin Road.

  “Yea, citizens of the City Dead,

  Whose souls are torn by memory’s goad;

  But now there are stones in the old Hall’s stead,

  And the moat that you loved is sometimes red,

  And echoes are stilled and laughter sped,

  And torn is the Menin Road.

  “And by the farms and the House of White,

  And the shrine where the little candles glowed,

  There is silence now by day and night,

  Or the sudden crash and the blinding light,

  For the guns smite ever as thunders smite,

  And there’s Death on the Menin Road”

  He looked up and out of the dug-out entrance to a haze of smoke that lay above the bare stumps of trees behind them, then back at Rossiter, apparently indifferent, clear-cut of face, athletic of body, one who had already proved in action those qualities which one felt instinctively in his case there was no need to prove, then back to the page again.

  “Fair was your City, old and fair.”

  “You wrote that, Mr. Rossiter?”

  “I’m afraid I did.”

  “Then yer knows ’ow to put these ’ere words into poetry same as this.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And—yer in the ranks.”

  “Apparently.”

  Private Bamford remained thoughtful for a full fifteen seconds. At last he opened his mouth and spoke.

  “It’s a rum thing, this ’ere war, and there’s rum things in it.” He looked at the page again. “And yer tell me yer wrote them words?”

  “I was the servant of the Muse: the spirit moved me and I wrote.”

  “Whaffor—yer ain’t enjoyin’ it by any chance?”

  “Can’t say that I am—and yet—”

  “ ’Tain’t natural not to talk like that. But it’s all of a piece, me lad, same as what I tell yer. Took the Army quiet like, we did, same as it ought to be took. But soldiering, it ain’t what it used to be.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Freddy Mann spoke little as he led his platoon out of the Lille Gate, across the bridge and along the railway embankment to the south of Ypres. He had indeed sufficient reason for reflection. The R.E. Major had no doubt meant well enough: he was a jovial sort, and it was just his way; but it did seem that to send him and his party forth from the ramparts with a cheery final remark to the effect that the Boche had been shelling the site of the machine gun emplacement which they had to build all day, and “he didn’t suppose that any of them would return alive” was not on the whole in the best of taste. It was all very well to joke about it when he was going off to a cheery dinner at the Goldfish Château, but what about the fellow who with this parting blessing in his ears had to do the job? The R.E. Corporal, too, didn’t make things any easier. Though Freddy Mann did not yet realise it, the lordly air of an R.E. corporal has been known to subdue even junior staff officers and regimental officers under field rank. Corporal Bonner held himself and his profession in due regard, and had sound views upon the correct relationship between the R.E. and the infantry, more particularly between “K.1” and a time-serving out-since-Mons N.C.O. like himself. He spoke at intervals, but his remarks were hardly calculated to dissipate the prevailing gloom. He quite agreed that it was a nasty spot that they were going to, and he bore out the Major’s statement by observing in more general terms that it was shelled all day and most of the night. No, it wasn’t a particularly easy place to find, because once you passed Birr Cross Roads it was just as easy to wander into the Boche lines as your own; they would have to note the way rather carefully, as he was afraid that he wouldn’t be there to guide them back, since he had various other jobs to do, after he had got them settled down. Well, it was a bit difficult to say exactly what one ought to do if casualties occurred. You couldn’t leave them alone, of course, as a man didn’t have a dog’s chance there when once he was hit; you couldn’t, on the other hand, spare men to look after them. This machine gun emplacement had to be built tonight at any cost, as the Corps Commander himself demanded to know that it was completed by the following day; it would be a five-hours’ job at least, and they wouldn’t be there till 10. On the other hand, if they didn’t get away by 3 they wouldn’t get away at all, as a fly couldn’t move there without being seen by daylight. After half an hour of this sort of thing, Freddy Mann gave up fruitless attempts to derive consolation from Corporal Bonner, and began to reflect for himself upon the brighter aspects of the situation. After all, he’d had three or four working parties before this during the last ten days. This was in rather a sticky sector, but it made no real difference; things hardly ever did go wrong on working parties, even in sticky sectors, simply because the Hun was always at the same game as well. So far, nobody could reasonably find fault with the night. Oxford Street seemed a very reasonably adequate sort of trench, and, most important, he had his own fellows with him as well, which was a damned sight better than taking out Bill’s or Sammy’s crowd, or those paralytics of “B” Company, as he had had to do last week. They were all there, all the Badajos Barracks fellows, except poor Leader and Downton. They were shoving apparently happy enough along the trench behind him, Bamford, just in his rear, breathing as usual like a steam engine and growling to himself, Beard tugging at his unkempt little sandy moustache and probably discussing his hopeful’s whooping cough or mumps with any who would listen, hard nuts like Bettson or the ex-navvy Scrott, Brains, almost certainly pouring forth epigrams and carrying somebody else’s sandbags as well as his own, pale-faced little Barton, Cor
poral Sugger—near enough to the side of the trench and knees well bent, if he knew anything of Corporal Sugger—and bringing up the rear the fatherly, mild-voiced Sergeant Mitchell. Then again, and this in itself made up for a multitude of ills, behind his contingent there was Robbie with most of the rest of the company. On the whole, then—be damned to this R.E. fool, as Freddy Mann looked with a sudden access of confidence towards Corporal Bonner: Birr Cross Roads, was it, and it was tricky going after this? He’d better get on with it, then, and not talk quite so much, and be damned to all his croaking for an old wives’ tale.

  “This is where they’ve been getting on to it—all round ’ere,” Corporal Bonner nodded towards a welter of new shell holes, from which a strong earthy smell arose, and lines of broken sandbags facing them in the moonlight along the ridge past the culvert. “All about ’ere; it’s a twisty bit, and, as I say, you’ll need to mark yer way.”

  “Right: shove on.” Now that Oxford Street was left behind them Freddy Mann was experiencing a strong feeling that he was embarking upon an enchanted sea, but he was giving nothing away. Occasionally, from some tumbled dug-out, a head or two appeared, but otherwise nothing moved save grass and rats. After a time signs of other inhabitants ceased to appear, and they crept alone, and very stealthily, through a maze of wire, shell-holes and ruined trenches to their destination. Lucky it was a quiet night. They were near the plateau at last, and just over there, behind the wire, was the Boche: here were the tapes all ready laid for the embankment, so now tunics off and down to it, and for God’s sake see that nobody makes a noise. Nothing to worry about, of course, but it’s a bit on the near side, and there’s nobody else about, and—it was a damned silly remark for the Major to have made.

  Pity about this. The Major had done his best for them, and it wasn’t his fault that no shell had fallen and hardly a rifle or machine gun had been heard since ten o’clock, that the men had got started without any trouble, and that now, at 2.30, the job was practically done. They’d done it pretty well on their own, too: an R.E. corporal in attendance upon an infantry working party usually has about as many other jobs as a porter at a terminus on a Bank Holiday, and as far as they were concerned Corporal Bonner hadn’t done as much as Private Bamford. Not that on this occasion such a comparison conveyed as much as would usually have been the case, for Private Bamford had got into the job tonight. Freddy Mann for once had taken no chances: he had turned a deaf ear to Bamford’s representations as to the importance of an officer’s comfort, and his batman had dug his little sector with the rest of them; furthermore, he and his comrades, knowing exactly where they were in relation to the enemy, had not tarried in the digging. No, it wasn’t the R.E.’s fault that things had gone well that night, that they had had no casualties, that in four hours a machine gun emplacement had been completed that would satisfy the most exacting of corps commanders; no fault of theirs that at about 1 p.m. he and Robbie, knowing that the situation was now in hand, had had an unforgettable moment during the midway easy, lying on their backs concealed in the rank grasses of untilled fields, and watching the starlights flicker and fall against the clear sky of the summer night, till suddenly, here at Hooge, on the roof of an unknown world, a strange spirit of utter and elemental peace had touched them. No fault, all this, of the Major’s, and, by Jove! they’d let him know. Back now, tails up, down past the Culvert to the Birr Cross Roads, past Gordon Farm and the Halfway House, back to the embankment and the gates of Ypres. Mitchell and Baines could take the men up those few hundred yards to the Prison, while he and Robbie dug out the Major to tell him all about it; it was high time he was about at 5 a.m. and they were certain he would like to know that the job was done. The Major looked at them with interest. Full of it, weren’t they, this curly-headed boy and this quietly elated sober-faced young man; thought they’d won the war to all intents and purposes, if one could judge from the way they talked. Well, well—the Major stuck his hands deeper into the pockets of his British warm, looked at them and smiled.

  “Think you’ve done down Hooge, eh? Think you’re top dog over Wipers? Think again, young feller-me-lads. All right this time, I grant you, but—have a drink and think again.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  This was as it should be: there was peace in Ypres tonight. Major Baggallay walked contentedly, humming to himself as he smoked a cigarette and strolled along the middle of the road. He was a wily old war-dog, and he knew his Ypres. They wouldn’t shell Ypres again tonight. Funny thing, that, about Ypres: you might have hell let loose the whole day long, and then about six or seven o’clock it would all die down and you could shove along the Menin Road with the reliefs, or stroll about by the Cloth Hall, as if you were in Piccadilly. Today was a case in point—nothing but 8.9s all the morning, and Jack Johnsons from 2 to 5; beast of a day it had been, but it had all stopped at 7, and he’d got along to the “C” Company Mess without hearing a crump from the Ramparts to the Lille Gate. Jolly good thing it was so, as it was only that that made Ypres possible. Ypres—he knew a bit about war, he did, after the Sudan and South Africa, but he’d never struck anything quite like this. It was no use pretending even with these kids in “K.1” that he was used to it; he felt the strain as much as anybody, even if he knew too much about the game to show it. He wasn’t sure really that he didn’t feel it rather more. They were good chaps in this battalion, O.K. so far in the line, but God, they weren’t half kids! That “C” Company mess this evening, for example. They’d done him well enough, no complaints on that score, in spite of old Toler’s sideways looks as the whisky went round, but they were just like a party of schoolboys who’d suddenly struck casualties on a field day on Salisbury Plain. Well, not Harry perhaps. Harry was a tough nut who didn’t talk much in the line except to damn his sergeant-major, and didn’t buck too much about the war. But the rest, except old go-to-prayer-meeting Toler, were kids enough—that young blighter Jack, with his tales of windjamming round Cape Horn, and that cheery Scotch giant Malcolm, and Robbie, and Freddy Mann. Good pair, that pair, all the same; sort of—who were the Johnnies—oh, yes, Achilles and Patroclus they seemed to be. Lucky swine, Freddy Mann, to have a friend like Robbie. He’d told Townroe more than once that he was the one absolute thoroughbred in the battalion. Pale, quiet fellow he was, but he’d never seen him wilt. Always out and about at the hottest corner, pulling away at his pipe, doing stunts that he never said anything about, knew his men backwards, hard as nails—there wasn’t much the matter with Oxford if it still turned out chaps like that. And Freddy Mann, the “Cherub,” he had the right stuff in him, but he was green to a degree, the “Cherub.” Everything seemed to surprise him—an old soldier’s wish for a Blighty, the effects of rum, the morals of majors at the base, that poor swine Garton’s death from heart failure, Army sergeants and their pretty little ways—he seemed to have come from the cradle straight to Ypres. Rum thing, life, for a fellow like the “Cherub.” Little country grammar school, vicar’s tea parties, a day excursion or two to London, which seemed to have been his greatest delight this time last year, leaves school, goes into the local bank, just starts smoking and having a latchkey of his own, then this.

  The Major paused as he turned at the corner of the Rue de Lille, opposite the Cloth Hall, to the right towards the Ramparts. Peaceful enough—just that one house blazing away behind the cathedral—but, God, how big! They didn’t know, poor kids, how big. Perhaps they believed all wars were the same as this. But he—he’d soldiered for thirty years, and this was something that he’d never known before. Any one of these nights and days would have meant a battle and a medal upon the sands of Egypt. What was Roorke’s Drift compared to an outpost show at Hooge, with trench mortars and minnies raising living hell, and gas for all they knew coming down upon the wind? They’d thought a lot of themselves when they’d managed to hold Ladysmith, but what was Ladysmith to Ypres? A few potty guns a mile or two away, a few odd snipers, fifty casualties a week or so, and here in layer on layer around them were a thousa
nd guns, divisions massed upon divisions, hungry to advance and thrust them from Ypres to Poperinghe, Pop to Hazebrouck, Hazebrouck to the sea, while as for casualties—that, if any, was the part of his job at B.H.Q. he mostly loathed. It got on his nerves, that daily toll. “Killed in action and struck off strength”; section by section, company by company, they’d paid their price, and nothing to show for it but Ypres. Ypres—yes, by God, he hated Ypres. Talk about human sacrifice—why that Cloth Hall itself was like a jagged tooth, looking as if it might belong to some beast that just wanted to go on swallowing flesh and blood. What were the casualties now within the Salient—10,000, 20,000, 30,000—what did it matter? It seemed as if it would go on like this for ever now, in and out Vlamertinghe, Ypres, Railway Wood, Hooge—it was only a few weeks, but it had been long enough.

  Well, war was his job, he supposed, as he stumped across the square. He’d chosen it, and it wasn’t up to him to grizzle, but he was 58 and he was tired. He felt a bit past this sort of thing. Game for the young, this game. He’d laughed at his wife, when she’d tried to stop one more old dug-out joining up at York, and he’d managed to carry through so far, but he was tired. He was an old man, and it was a bit beyond him; it was big and new. Freddy Mann—why his younger son was older than Freddy Mann—more like his grandson almost, with his cheeks and mop of curly hair; it was their show, after all, not his. The garden at Ilkley, that’s where he ought to be; it came to his mind, that garden on a peaceful night like this. Keep safe, she’d said, when he packed up and shoved along. He’d never shown the feather in thirty years, nor asked for safety, but he couldn’t help just thinking of it now. He was ready for it still, ready as Tom with the Grand Seas Fleet, or Derek at the Dardanelles, but he was old, damned old, and he was glad that just tonight he would sleep in peace. Here was his tunnel in the ramparts. He looked into the black mouth and up to the solid earth above. Forty feet of soil above his head; the shell was not yet made that would break through forty feet. Tomorrow he’d be ready for it all again, ready with the best, but tonight he’d just forget and sleep in peace. Damned dark, this tunnel, and deep. Here was old Parker; better not wake him. Hard on a dark night to find his way about inside. So much the better—there would be peace tonight.