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The next morning, this time well before dawn, the retreat was continued,
apparently on Soissons. Precisely the same thing happened on this day as
on the march to La Fere. Soissons was no great distance from Coucy, only
some eight or ten miles, and just when they reached the northern heights
of the Aisne, and the whole town was visible, the Brigade sheered off to
the right, and clung to the river bank.

Soissons looked so particularly inviting, the whites and greys and
primroses of its walls flashing in the sun. The sight of a French town
(in the distance) is very pleasing to any one used to the terra-cotta
reds of England. The cobbles give the streets such a medieval air, the
green shutters seem so queer, and there is such a disdain of geometry.
But when one gets right into the town, a violent change comes over the
scene. The cobbles that were so pleasantly medieval in the distance
become, under one's feet, nothing but an ankle-turning plague. The
stuccoed walls look very clean in the distance, but near to, the filth
of the streets modifies one's admiration. A small French town generally
reminds one of the outhouses and styes of a farm. The air is diffuse
with the scent of manure. England, with all thy drainage system, I love
thee still!

The road now clung to the river, which was not actually crossed until
two or three o'clock in the afternoon. The bridge was a large and
substantial structure, and a section of Engineers were preparing to blow
it up. Before the hour's halt was over, the inevitable alarm occurred,
and two companies were detached to fight the usual rear-guard action,
under the Major, who was now second-in-command.

The remainder of the Battalion continued the march, this time along the
south bank of the river.

The heat was as usual intense, and to-day they missed the shady trees
that had so well protected them the day before. A couple of hours later
they turned abruptly to the left, that is to say, southwards, and the
Aisne disappeared in a cleft of the hills. Winding tortuously at the
feet of more or less steep slopes--for the country was quite
changed--progress was not as easy as it had been. At last, close on
seven o'clock, a halt was made on a hillside.

Men fell to the ground with a grunt, thanking God that another of those
Hell-days was over. Too tired to move, even if the position was an
uncomfortable one; too tired to pray for rest; too tired to think!

The average man is, I am sure, quite ignorant of the effect which
extreme exhaustion has on the brain. As the weary hours drag by, it
seems as if a deadness, a sort of paralysis, creeps up the limbs,
upwards towards the head. The bones of the feet ache with a very
positive pain. It needs a concentration of mind that a stupefied brain
can ill afford to give to force the knees to keep from doubling under
the weight of the body. The hands feel as if they were swelling until
the boiling blood would ooze from the finger-tips. The lungs seem too
exhausted to expand; the neck too weary to support the heavy head. The
shoulders ache under the galling weight of sword and haversack, and
every inch of clammy skin on the body seems ten times as sensitive as it
normally is. The nerves in the face and hands feel like swelled veins
that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails. The tongue and eyes
seem to expand to twice their usual size. Sound itself loses its sharp
conciseness, and reaches the brain only as a blurred and indistinct
impression.

But perhaps the reader may say that he has once done twenty-five or
thirty miles in a day, and did not feel half as bad as that. He must
remember, however, that these men had been doing over twenty-five miles
every day for the last ten days, and that, in addition to the physical
fatigue, they had suffered the mental fatigue caused by fighting. Their
few hours of halting were generally occupied by trench digging. They
were not having a fifth of the sleep that such a life requires. They
were protected neither from the heat of noon nor from the chill of dawn.
The food they got was not fresh food, and their equipment weighed ninety
pounds! Lesser men would have died; men imbued with a feebler
determination would have fainted. As it was, the transport was crowded
with men whose feet had failed them, and many must have fallen behind,
to be killed or made prisoner. The majority "stuck it" manfully, and
faced every fresh effort with a cool, gruff determination that was
wonderful. This spirit saved the Allies from the first frenzied blow of
Germany, in just the same way that it had saved England from the Armada
and from Napoleon.

The Subaltern realised the value of his men; indeed, he felt a wholesome
trust and faith in them that individual outbursts of bad temper or lack
of discipline could not shake. They occupied, more than they had ever
done before, the greater part of his thoughts and attention. He made
their safety and comfort his first care, and protected them from
ridiculous orders and unnecessary fatigue. He found himself watching and
playing upon their moods. He tried very hard and earnestly to make them
a good officer. He thought that they were the salt of the earth, that
there never had been men like them, nor would be again.

No sooner had a scanty meal been rammed down their throats than they
were paraded once more, and hurried away to the crest of another ridge.
One of the Aisne bridges had been left standing, and apparently the
enemy was across it, and already threatening to envelop their position.
Having reached higher ground they stopped for what was left of the
night, since it was impossible for the enemy cavalry to attack them in
that country.




CHAPTER XI

A REAR-GUARD ACTION


In a couple of hours' time the march was continued in the darkness. The
men lurched from side to side, with brains too fagged to control their
feet. The Company was sent out to act as flank-guard on the top of the
crest beneath which the column was moving. This movement was very
tiresome, as they had to move over broken country in an _extended_
formation, and to keep up with the column which was moving in _close_
formation along the road. To compensate for this they were able to fill
their haversacks with a peculiarly sweet kind of apple.

Later in the morning they emerged from the close country into the
typical open plains of France, covered with corn and vegetables. About
five or six miles of this, and then the darker greens of pine and fir
forests appeared in view.

The General Staff had selected this as the site of yet another
rear-guard action. One of the other Brigades in the Division was already
busily engaged in constructing a line of trenches not more than a
hundred yards in front of the woods. To their front the view was
uninterrupted, offering a field of fire unbroken by the least suspicion
of cover from view or fire.

The artillery was no doubt concealed in the woods behind. The men were
doing their work with a quick, noiseless efficiency that would have made
you very proud if you could have seen them.

Soon after the Column had passed into the woods, the noise of the guns
was heard. The Subaltern could imagine the whole scene as vividly as if
he could see it: the van-guard of the German Advanced Guard suddenly
"held up" by the bursting of the British shells; the hasty deployment of
the German cavalry; the further "holding up" of the main-guard of the
Advanced Guard while a reconnaissance was being carried out with the
help, perhaps, of a "Taube." Remember that the Germans must have been
daily, almost hourly, expecting the Allies to make a determined attempt
to check their continued advance, and must have been very nervous of
walking into some trap. Therefore the Commander of the German Advanced
Guard would have to discover very exactly the nature of the resistance
in front of him before the Officer commanding the main body--some miles
behind, of course--could decide what force it would be necessary to
deploy in order to dislodge the enemy from his position.

This is no easy matter. What the retreating army is fighting for is
time--time to get clean away. Consequently, if the Officer commanding
the advancing army deploys a larger force than is necessary, he grants
his opponent the very thing that he wants--time, since the deployment
of, say, a Division is a very lengthy operation, occupying at least
three hours. On the other hand, if he details too small a force for the
work, his attack is held in check, and more time than ever is wasted in
reinforcing it in a measure sufficient to press home the attack.

The Subaltern imagined the long wait while the shells shrieked over the
heads of the infantry towards an enemy as yet unseen. Then the enemy
shells would begin to feel their way to the thin brown line of trenches,
and under cover of their fire the infantry, now deployed into fighting
formations, would "advance." Then our men would begin firing, firing
with cool precision. The landscape would soon be dotted with grey ants.
Machine-guns would cut down whole lines of grey ants with their
"plop-plop-plop." Shrapnel would burst about whole clouds of grey ants,
burying them in brown clouds of dust. Finally, the directing brain would
decide that it was time to cut and run. The artillery fire would be
increased tenfold, and under cover of it the brown ants would scamper
from the trenches and disappear into the green depths of the woods. Soon
the firing would cease. The retreating party would have got safely,
cleanly away, having gained many precious hours for the main body, and
having incidentally inflicted severe losses on the enemy. The latter,
have nothing left to do but to re-form (thus losing still more time),
would then continue his pursuit weaker and further from his opponent
than he had been before.

At last, striking a clearing, the town of Villiers Cotterets was
reached. There was nothing to distinguish it from a score of other small
agricultural centres through which the Column had passed. The only thing
the Subaltern remembers about this town is that he handed a French
peasant woman there a couple of francs on the odd chance that she would
bring back some chocolate. She did not.

On the further side of the town the Brigade Transport, with steaming
cookers, was massed ready to give the troops a midday meal. This was an
innovation greatly appreciated. Such a thing as a meal in the middle of
the day had not occurred since the days of Iron.




CHAPTER XII

VILLIERS-COTTERETS


Twenty minutes later the Column was again on the move, but this time not
for long. Having reached the edge of another forest, a fresh halt was
made while the Transport was hauled past them into the wood. The
Transport, known technically as "second line" of a Brigade, is a very
large, cumbersome, and slow-moving affair, and it must be protected at
all costs, for without it the Brigade is lost.

A swift deployment was then made, and the edge of the wood was held
astride of the road. After everything had been arranged, there was a
wait of thirty to forty minutes. Nothing could be seen, as the position
was on the "reverse slope" of the incline, but the field of fire was
absolutely clear for at least two hundred yards in front. It is the most
trying time of all, this waiting for the approach of an enemy you cannot
see, and it tells on the most phlegmatic disposition. The men occupy the
heavy moments by working the bolts of their rifles, and seeing that they
work easily. The success or failure of the defence depends mainly on the
speed and accuracy with which the defenders "get their rounds off." The
Officers pace about, making sure of "keeping touch" with the units on
their flank, discovering the best way to retire, and so on. There is at
such moments an odd desire to give way to the temptation of saying to
oneself, "Where shall I be in an hour's time?" One gazes with a subtle
feeling of affection on one's limbs, and wonders, "Where shall I get
it?" Subconsciously one is amused and a little ashamed of such
concessions to sentimentality. The best thing to do under the
circumstances is to go and check the range-finders' figures, or prepare
the headlines of a message or two.

* * * * *

A Taube, like some huge insect with a buzz of whirring wings, flew
overhead, dropping multi-coloured stars from its tail. Then our guns
"opened the ball."

There was something blatant and repulsive about that first burst of
sound. The ferns of the forest shivered, as if awakened from a sunny
dream to face terrible calamities. The trees seemed to shake with a
delicate fear of what was in store for them. The enemy's fire burst upon
them with a startling intensity.

There was no point in holding the advanced edge of the wood under such a
bombardment until the actual appearance of the enemy infantry made it
necessary, so the whole line was retired some fifty yards into the wood.
By this manoeuvre the Colonel lost no advantage, and must have saved
many lives.

Although artillery fire had been a pretty frequent occurrence, this was
the heaviest the men had yet experienced. The noise was ear-splitting;
the explosions filled the quivering air; the ground seemed to shudder
beneath them. Branches fell crashing to the ground; it seemed as if a
god was flogging the tree-tops with a huge scourge. The din was awful,
petrifying, numbing.

And in the middle of all this inferno, with the sight of men with ashen
faces limping, crawling, or being dragged to the rear, with the leaves
on the ground smoking from the hot, jagged shell-casings buried among
them, the Subaltern suddenly discovered that he was not afraid. The
discovery struck him as curious. He argued with himself that he had
every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to
himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever
stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the
deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to
be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are
looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the
roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ought to feel pains in the pit of
your stomach, and you're not. Devil a bit! You know, you're missing all
the sensations that the writers told you about. You're not playing the
game. Come, buck up, fall down and grovel on the ground!" But he did
not. He did not want to. He felt absolutely normal.

A man sheltering behind the same tree suddenly spun round, and, grasping
his left arm, fell with a thud to the ground. He reeled over, with knees
raised and rounded back, and staggered immediately to his feet. "Oh, my
arm, my arm!" he moaned plaintively, and turned away towards the rear,
whimpering a little as he went, and tenderly holding the wet,
dark-stained sleeve as he went. The Subaltern felt that he ought to have
winced with horror at the mutilation of the poor stricken thing, but
beyond a slight sinking sensation between the lungs and the stomach, the
incident left him with no emotion. He picked up the man's rifle, leant
it against the tree, and continued to scan the skyline with his glasses,
feeling all the while a bit of a brute.

At the same time he experienced a sensation of pleasure at the immunity
from mental sufferings that are generally supposed to afflict men under
these conditions. He felt like a man who unexpectedly finds a five-pound
note, the very existence of which he had forgotten, hidden away in some
unusual pocket. It was something of the same sensation that he used to
have at school, when by chance he saw other boys working at impositions
which he had himself escaped.

The time came when it was no longer expedient to remain in the wood, so
they advanced, flitting from tree to tree, back to the edge of the
forest. The view was rather restricted from where the Subaltern was,
apparently on the right of where the full force of the attack was
breaking.

"Plop-plop-plop," the machine-gun spluttered with an amazing air of
detached insistence. The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of
their own. Shells, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an
impression of passion, of untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant
in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard
in the "tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp" of its crescendos and
diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes a
higher note, and can be heard above the roar of the bursting shells. It
is mechanical, there is nothing about it of human passion; it is a
machine, and a most deadly one at that.

The Colonel dashed out into the open and dragged a wounded gunner into
the comparative shelter of the wood. Many more acts scarcely less heroic
were performed.

At last the moment came to retire. The guns had already rattled through
the line, and the companies drew away from the edge of the wood,
re-formed with great speed, and were soon marching once more in column
of route along the road.

The Subaltern felt exhausted in a way that he had never felt so badly
before. The withdrawal from the actual scene of battle seemed to leave a
gulf in his inside that positively yawned. It was not only the apparent
uselessness of trying to stem the German tide that depressed him. There
was something more than that. He felt like a man who wakes after a
heavy, drug-induced slumber. The sudden cessation of the intense
excitement of battles leaves the brain empty and weary. At such moments
the hopelessness of the whole thing appalled and depressed him. The
uncertainty of the future hurt him. Nor was he alone in this state of
mind. Not a voice was raised to break the throbbing monotony of the
march. Heads were bent low.

On they went. Night came down upon them and seemed to crush the spirit
out of them. As they emerged from the wood, the moon rose and flooded
the broad plain with weird, phosphorescent light. They struggled on,
swaying with sleep, past the ghostly outlines of poplars and hayricks,
past quiet, deserted cottages and empty stables. There was something
almost unearthly about that march in the moonlight. The accumulated
fatigue of a long and hot day, the want of food and the repressing
influence of a summer night, all these things joined in producing a
state of mental listlessness that destroyed the impression of reality
which things have in the daytime. They were drifting down a slow-moving
stream; the scenery glided by, but the sensation was by no means
pleasant. The brain was constantly at war with the lazy feet, striving
to keep them from stumbling and the eyelids from closing. Sound was
peculiarly muffled, as if darkness repressed and shut it in. The brain
was not commanding the limbs with the instantaneous co-ordination of the
daytime. The sensation that this produced--it is very difficult to give
any definite idea of it--was an impression of physical and mental
incompetence and uncertainty. And all the time every ounce of the body
was crying out to the mind to let it lie down and rest.

That night many men were lost.

* * * * *

It was not until ten o'clock that they arrived at a village where they
found the "cookers" and regimental transport. The Subaltern could not
help admiring the skill which was constantly being shown by the Staff
not only in the strategical dispositions of the retreat, but in
comparatively minute details such as this. The Brigade transport had
been guided and collected to a spot where it could safely be of service
to the battalions. Moreover, when the men arrived they found tea waiting
for them already brewed. Apparently the hour of the men's arrival had
been timed to such a nicety that the meal was just ready for them.
Assuming the truth of Napoleon's maxim about an army marching on its
belly, one can easily see from these pages that if Staff work had in any
way failed, or if the Army Service Corps had broken down, the Great
Retreat would have ended in disaster. It was these faultless
arrangements of the Army Service Corps that served to keep the sorely
tried army at any rate on its legs.

A fire had been lighted, and, grateful for its warmth, the five Officers
of the Company were soon clustering round it, sipping out of their mess
tins filled with strong, sweet tea, without milk but very strongly
flavoured with rum. Soon the worries and painful memories of the day
were dispelled. A feeling almost of contentment stole over them. There
is something so particularly adventurous and at the same time soothing
about a camp fire. They had all read books at school full of camp fires
and fighting and prairies, and they had all more or less envied such a
life. Here it was. But the adventure part of it was so minute, and the
drudgery and nerve strain so great that the most adventurous soul among
them had long since admitted that "if _this_ was Active Service, it was
not the life for him!"




CHAPTER XIII

HEAT AND DUST


The Subaltern did not get to sleep until twelve, and the Regiment made
another start as early as half-past two. It seemed to him that when
necessity drives there is no limit to the nerve force that we have in
us! They marched some miles in a westerly direction before they rejoined
the main road southwards.

To describe in detail the sufferings of that day would be to repeat
almost word for word some of the preceding paragraphs. It was just as
hot as usual, just as dusty as usual. An order had come from somewhere
that there was to be no looting. Men were to be forbidden to snatch an
apple from a fruit-strewn orchard, or an egg from a deserted barn! The
owners had already fled from their homes, and here Mr. Thomas Atkins was
solemnly asked to go hungry and thirsty and to relieve the enemy of one
of his greatest difficulties--feeding himself. The Platoon having halted
for the usual hourly halt outside an orchard, some of the men broke into
it and began to throw apples over the hedge to the others. Seeing the
Colonel approaching, the Subaltern realised that something must be done
instantly to avert disaster. "What the deuce are you men doing? Come out
of it!" he cried. The men came, looking very dejected. The Colonel,
pacified, passed by. A second later, the glad work of refreshing the
troops was being carried on by a fresh couple of men.

It must have been a very similar situation that gave birth to a story
that has already become famous. A Tommy was caught by a "brass hat" in
the very act of strangling a chicken. Tommy looked up. Was he abashed?
Not a bit of it! He did what Mr. Thomas Atkins generally does in a tight
corner. He kept his head: he rose magnificently to the occasion. He did
not loose the chicken and endeavour to stammer an apology. On the
contrary, he continued to strangle it. He took no notice of the "brass
hat." As he gave a final twist to the bird's throat he said menacingly,
"So you'd try to bite me, would you, you little brute!"

Towards the end of the afternoon the men were so obviously exhausted,
and the number forced to fall out was so great, that a halt had to be
ordered in spite of previous plans. The men threw themselves utterly
exhausted on the ground on their backs, and lay like so many corpses
until the march was continued, in the cool of the evening.

The Subaltern, consulting a fresh map--for they had been walking across
the ground covered by one map every day--learnt to his surprise that
they were within a few miles of Paris. And so also, he thought, were the
Germans! It rather looked as if they were heading straight towards the
city, and that would mean a siege. It was no use worrying about things,
but that depressing idea was in the minds of most of the Officers that
evening. Not that the Subaltern cared much at the time--it would mean a
stop to this everlasting marching, and perhaps the forts of Paris could
stand it; anyhow the German Fleet had been rounded up. (That wicked
rumour spread by the sensational section of the Press had not yet been
denied.)

While he was thinking of these things, they were moving through a
country far more thickly populated. Villages began to crowd upon each
other's heels, and all the villages--cheering sight--were full of
British soldiers settling down to their billets for the night. This was
the first they had seen of any other Division except their own, and the
sight rather dispelled the illusion that, for all these days, they had
been alone and unaided in a land of "frightfulness."

More marching in the darkness!

At last, at about nine o'clock, they reached their billets, but the word
scarcely conveys a correct impression of the palatial chateau in which
they were quartered. There was considerable delay in settling the men
(which must, of course, be done before an officer thinks of his own
comfort) and in detailing the quarters. At length the officers of the
company found themselves in a little bedroom overlooking a river which
they supposed to be the Seine. The Captain, who had been sent on in
front of the Battalion to allot billets, produced with pride some
chocolate, sardines, and bottled mushrooms.

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