Pass Guard at Ypres Page 9

  He was, it was recognised, getting on, was Vicke, and probably it was too late to change him now, but the Corps Commander didn’t like it and it was rumoured that it was this defect alone that kept him from greater things than a divisional command. If he had dropped 10,000 in the Salient since April, well, so had others, that and more, and he would probably drop a damned sight more before he’d finished, so he’d better just make up his mind to it and cease to worry. Which was just what Archie Vicke refused to do. He would pore over casualty lists, ask who 24,218 of the Redjackets or 44,317 of the Southshires was, and whether he was married or single, and what sort of a wound he had had, and whether he had died in pain, and who had written to his relatives, and get hold of the A.D.M.S. and ask him whether it wasn’t possible to save more lives, and criticise tactical plans submitted to him on the ground that they involved undue exposure to the men, and turn his R.E.s on to the building of shell-proof shelters for O.P.s even if it meant taking them away from their other work. As the Army Commander once remarked, the thing seemed always on his mind.

  Some hoped that matters would improve after the flame attack, in which two of his brigades had practically been wiped out. But although he was always cheerful enough, as he stumped round the line in his blue reefer coat, or sat at the head of his mess-table in the evening, watching the port go round, August saw no real change, and this defect in his composition prevented his appreciating the beauty of the plan which involved the holding attack on September 25th at Ypres. Though he failed to realise it, his division really didn’t fare so badly: their casualties were, of course, in excess of those estimated, but as this invariably proved to be the case there was nothing to be surprised at there. The division didn’t gain any ground, but, as General Vicke guessed, it wasn’t really expected to, and, more important, it didn’t lose any, which, in view of the situation as it had appeared at 3.30 that afternoon behind Bellewarde Farm, was rather lucky. His own regiment did not disgrace itself again. The subaltern in whom he had been interested came through, after hanging on throughout the day and the greater part of the night with a little squad of men to a few sandbags and bits of timber which he called a trench by Witteport Farm, trying to keep a Lewis gun going with half the team knocked out, scrambling round the dead and wounded for ammunition, and praying that the death which seemed each moment more inevitable would be merciful and sudden when it came.

  CHAPTER XVII

  This was a Blighty all right. Private Beard lay in the shell-hole, waiting for the stretcher bearers, unable to believe his luck. Blighty, after all this time, and on a night like this. Those other poor swine, who’d been there when the shell burst in the middle of them, they hadn’t got Blighties. Bartlett had just told him it had done them in. Lucky, he was, just now to get it, when he needed it most of all. He reached for the letter in his tunic pocket, which had told him of the new arrival. Boy this time, too—he’d see it before it was a fortnight old. Want a bit more light than this to see it by; couldn’t see a yard ahead on a night like this. It had been as dark as pitch when they set out to build this emplacement, and it was even darker now. Day would be along soon, however; he supposed they’d take him in soon after daybreak. Mitchell had said as he tucked him away out of the way that they’d be along soon after daybreak. They’d have been along before, only after this attack they’d got so much to do. However, a bit of a wait didn’t make any odds as far as he was concerned. What did a bit of pain matter, and a dull feeling in his forehead, when he’d clicked for home? Home, and those kids again.

  Bit of a row going on, although from where he was he couldn’t see any flashes. Day was a long time coming, but it would be, of course, after a night like this. Never known such a night: it didn’t seem to matter whether he opened his eyes or shut them he couldn’t see a thing. Pity the stretcher bearers were quite so busy; he couldn’t help being a bit impatient; after all there was a new arrival waiting for him at home. Bit close, that last one, but a shell never dropped in the same hole twice: he was safe enough, even if he couldn’t move and couldn’t see a thing.

  “Go on, Bett, you tell ’im.”

  “Rather you did, mate; ’tain’t my line. Suppose you’re sure?” as if by an afterthought.

  Bartlett nodded. He was sure enough: so, for that matter, was Bettson. They had wondered at four o’clock, when first the day was breaking; wondered more as the light grew clearer, and they had known at 5. And from then till now they had waited by the shell-hole, tending him as best they could, listening to his stories of home and the kids he was going to see so soon, and of this new young ’un, who was hardly a week old and was supposed to be so like his father. They had agreed that it wouldn’t half be a bit of all right to see the kids again; that the kids wouldn’t half be glad to see him, even if a bit was chipped out of his face and his arm was in a sling. They’d know him, and wouldn’t he know them, too; even this new kid, he’d know him at once, though he was only about the size of a foot rule and he hadn’t ever seen him; never mind that, he’d see him now soon enough. For two hours off and on he had talked, and they had sat there and agreed, praying all the time for the stretcher bearers to come. It couldn’t last much longer; it couldn’t go on for ever.

  “Get longer, these ’ere nights, now summer’s closing in, or p’raps it’s longer when it’s dark. ’Bout four o’clock now, suppose it’ll be?”

  “ ’Bout that, mate. You lie still. They’ll fetch yer soon.”

  “Been dozin’ a bit; don’t quite remember; ’ow long have I been ’ere in this ’ere ’ole?”

  “Hour or two, p’raps; don’t you bother yourself—not to talk too much.”

  “Aye, that’s it. Difficult to tell the time, yer know, when you’ve ’ad a crack on the ’ead like me. Gawd, it wasn’t half a burst, that shell; fair knocked me silly. Like lightning, it was, all round me ’ead. Made me eyes smart a bit, too, yer know.”

  “Better tell ’im, Bett. ’E’s got to know. Thank Gawd, ’ere’s the M.O. ’Ere y’are, sir, ’ere he is, all ready. Better take ’im quick.”

  The M.O. still retained something of a bedside manner. He was a stout fellow, done to the world himself after eighteen hours of duty on end; a day in the trenches followed by a night devoted to doing what he could to help those who had been done in when the German heavies got in to the “C” Company working party at Hooge. Casualties equal to twice the number of the battalion had already passed through his hands since May, but he still believed in keeping cheerful and in seeing that his patients shared his cheer. He came with his stretcher to the shell-hole, and bent over the wounded man.

  “This him, is it? Sorry I’m late, but there’s the devil of a mess at Hooge. Now get this bandage off, old son, and let’s have a look at you; time to get up, you know.”

  “Bit early, ain’t it?” Private Beard felt ready for a joke. “Who wants to get out o’ bed at four o’clock?”

  “Four o’—what in the world are you talking about? Six o’clock on a bright summer morning, that’s what it is, me lad; quite long enough of sleep you’ve——Hullo, what’s up?”

  “Six o’clock?” Beard’s voice was cracked and ghastly. He put his hand quickly to his forehead.

  “Yes, six. The sun’s shining. Hullo——” The doctor bent down quickly.

  Bettson and Bartlett moved away. There is no need for more than one to be at his side when a man has dreamed for months of his children’s faces, and suddenly learns that night has given place to the full blaze of day, and still he cannot see.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Freddy Mann’s own sympathies were all with Uncle Wal. Uncle Wal had on more than one occasion in the past few days expressed the opinion that the youngster “would have had about enough of this ’ere war, and wouldn’t want all this talk about it while on leave.” Nice quiet day or so in the country, with a pub or two nearby, then p’raps a show or so in Town to finish up with and send him back cheerful-like—that was the best medicine for him, according to Uncle Wal. The diffi
culty was that no opinion expressed by Uncle Wal was likely to go down in the Mann household, as Uncle Wal was suspect. He was a rather excitable thin-faced man, with a reddish nose and eyelids, who spent a good deal of his time, when staying with his brother-in-law, in walking in and out between the living-rooms and the shop, rubbing his hands or wiping his moustache with a multicoloured handkerchief, and asking every now and then with a snigger whether there was long to wait till six o’clock. Not even now, when their prayers had been answered and their dear son and his nephew had been restored to them for a few days from the horrors of war, could Uncle Wal be induced to behave with fitting seriousness. He seemed to imagine that the one thing their brave soldier wanted was to hang about with him half the morning and most of the evening in the parlour of the “Spotted Boar” or listen to the vulgarest jokes that could be picked up from the music-halls. It was a pity that his visit happened to coincide with Freddy Mann’s arrival in October. However, they couldn’t very well turn him out, and the others would see that Freddy Mann was treated more in the manner in which he deserved to be. The chief characteristic of this treatment consisted to all appearance in the manifestation of an overwhelming interest in everything that their poor boy had suffered, and from his arrival on Tuesday evening until the last day but one of his leave Freddy Mann had been kept steadily at it.

  His father was not so difficult to deal with. All that was needed in his case was a large-scale map of Ypres with the British and German lines marked in pencils of various colours to illustrate the various changes of position. He would lean over this in an evening, after the table had been cleared, nodding his head in approval and remarking, “Yes, you’re right, me boy, we’re winning. Business as usual and the British bulldog spirit, that’s what’ll see us through.” But the ladies of the household, the drove of aunts and cousins, whom he could always count on finding at Edenhurst, were more insistent in their demands for information. Aunt Jane, from Peckham, in particular was almost ghoulish. His dear mother had told her about some of the things he’d told her about in letters, apparently, but she couldn’t believe such things could happen, she couldn’t indeed, and it all went to show that as the dear minister was saying in chapel last Sunday evening, it was a world given over to the works of iniquity and wickedness. But now he was here at last she’d be able to hear for herself and judge. Never mind about her feelings, she could bear it, she hoped, as well as any other good Christian woman; let him just go on and tell her exactly what it had been like in the trenches, that night when they had that awful raid, and something dreadful happened to that poor man’s back and leg—or that day when so many men were burnt with that dreadful fire, and was that other poor man ever found, who’d been buried beneath a wall in Ypres, and would that man who had been struck blind that night never be able to see again?

  Not that she always had things entirely in her own way, for Cousin Helen saw to that. Cousin Helen, not without reason, tended to regard Aunt Jane as a bit of an old humbug and a sentimentalist. Sitting there in the corner lapping up the horrors like a cat laps cream wasn’t doing her or anybody else much good. Freddy Mann didn’t want that sort of conversation; he wanted good sensible discussion upon the war as it was and upon what was likely to happen. Sensible conversation with Cousin Helen usually consisted in culling the maximum number of rumours or confidential information from any one source in a given time. She worked in a Government department in Whitehall where one’s social value was to a large extent determined by the war stories and scandal which one could recount upon authority which one could vouch for. A live cousin, back on leave after five months in the Salient was too good an opportunity to be missed, and Cousin Helen made the most of her time. It was true, then, that the Division was off to Egypt. She had heard something about it, as that Nora Thompson’s brother was in the Gunners, but you could never depend, of course, on anything that Nora Thompson said. She was glad to know for certain. Of course, she wouldn’t breathe a word about it, but it was nice to know for certain. That was pretty true, she supposed, about the casualties: it was true, wasn’t it, that they had lost 70,000 since May; it was said at the office that the losses at Loos had been so appalling that no reserves were left, and G.H.Q. were terrified of a break-through afterwards. Were those stories true, by the way, that they heard about G.H.Q.? She’d heard—well, she didn’t like to repeat it, but Freddy Mann would know the stories that she meant. And what was the truth about these attacks? Was it the case that the men had to be made dead drunk on rum before they would go over the top?

  The collection of information in this last head usually defeated its own ends, as it brought Aunt Emma on to the scene. It was extraordinary to Aunt Emma that dear Helen could talk dispassionately of such dreadful things as making the men drunk on rum. Surely she knew that that was just the sort of thing that the W.T.P.L. was trying to combat. The W.T.P.L. (Women’s Temperance and Purity League, she snapped, in reply to Mr. Mann’s very natural question) was just inquiring into this very matter; it was difficult to believe all that one was told about this and other things, but for dear Helen to sit there and talk about them all as natural was really too much. Surely she didn’t imagine that that dear boy of theirs, with all the ideals for which he fought, would lend himself to anything so dreadful as making men drunk on rum. The Germans might do that sort of thing, but the idea that Englishmen fighting for liberty and all that was fine and noble—whence would follow the eternal argument between the idealist and the realist, not unadorned with personalities, during which Freddy Mann would slip off to see what his mother or Uncle Wal were about. He was at peace when with his mother, but she was rather eclipsed by the horde of relatives, and had little to say when they were alone except that she hoped they would send him to Egypt if it was safer there, and that she was glad that blow on the head in July hadn’t done him any lasting harm, and that he must remember always to write to her, as his letters were all she had, and that Muriel was coming round that evening.

  Yes, there were always the evenings to look forward to, when Muriel, sweet and demure as ever, would come round with her father. If only he could get her alone sometimes, without that father of hers always being about. On this Thursday evening, for example, when the special dinner in his honour was arranged, what the devil did he want to come round for, slapping him on the back and yapping about the heroism of the troops and the war of attrition. If you wanted heroes, you didn’t want attrition, as Freddy Mann told him forcibly enough over dessert, in language inspired by a sudden memory of Kaye in a mess at Watou. John Farrant was no doubt somewhat taken aback, but he’d started it and he’d have to lump it.

  “Come on, Muriel,” Freddy Mann said almost roughly, as he left the room. “Come into the garden. I want to talk to you.”

  How sweet she looked as she slipped her scarf round her shoulders and tripped by his side down the steps.

  “You know, Muriel, I’m sorry if I was rude to your father, but he doesn’t know what this war is.”

  “Oh, Fred!”

  “Well, he doesn’t, and what’s more, there doesn’t seem to be anybody in this bl——in Edenhurst who does.”

  Muriel’s eyes gleamed in sympathy, as she looked at him in the moonlight.

  “Oh, Fred, what you must have suffered!”

  “ ’Tisn’t anything to do with what I’ve suffered.” Freddy Mann made a quick gesture of impatience. “It’s all this footling talk. Either we’re ninepins, millions of us on either side, to be knocked down to see which side has the last one left, or we’re stained-glass heroes with haloes round our heads.”

  “But aren’t you heroes? We all think——”

  “Dunno—if heroes curse the Staff and the A.S.C. and the day they were born or were fools enough to join the Army, and leap with joy when they get Blighties, and drink like fishes out of water when they get a chance, and—God, what’s the use of talking?”

  He stopped a moment, and pulled fiercely at his pipe.

  “Everybody’s so nice a
bout it here. Your father’s so nice about the way we’ve all got to stand up on both sides and allow ourselves to be killed, and Aunt Emma’s so nice about our morals and ideals, and Helen fits us all into nice little pigeon-holes according to whether we’re good, useful soldiers or bad, and——Suppose we ought to be sitting up all night, according to them, thinking about whether we’ve said our prayers and who’s going to win the war. I don’t know who’s going to win the war. Don’t suppose anybody ever will win the war. Don’t suppose it’ll ever stop. And I don’t care either, about that or anything else, so long as——”

  “Oh, Fred!”

  “Well, I don’t. What’s the use of telling lies. I don’t. Nor would your father, nor would any of the whole pack of ’em, if they’d had six months at Wipers. Does you in, does Wipers. Done our crowd in, anyway. Damned few of us left now, and those that are don’t care. Different before Loos or July, perhaps—but now——”

  He suddenly looked at Muriel. She was beautiful indeed—gold hair, gleaming eyes——