Book: Contemptible

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The heat, although they were in the first week in September, was greater
than ever. The blue atmosphere seemed to quiver with the shock of guns.

General Headquarters had been established in a house near by, a
middle-class, flamboyant, jerry-built affair. How its owner would have
gasped if he could have seen the Field-Marshal conducting the British
share of the great battle in his immodest "salle a manger!"

Aeroplanes were continually ascending from and descending to a ploughed
field adjacent to the orchard. Motors were ceaselessly dashing up and
down. Assuredly they were near to the heart of things.

That afternoon some one procured a page of the _Daily Mirror_, which
printed the first casualty list of the war. Perhaps you can remember
reading it. One was not used to the sensation. One felt that "it brought
things home to one." Not that this was by any means necessary at that
time and place. Still it was very depressing to think that in God's
beautiful sunlight, brave, strong men were being maimed and laid low for
ever. One had a vague feeling that it was blasphemous, and ought to be
stopped.

It was not until dusk that a start was made, and the Regiment halted
again about a mile further on and settled down for the night in a
stubble field opposite a very imposing chateau.

Evidently the fight had gone well, for they passed at least two lines of
hasty trenches quite deserted.

The Germans had at last been driven back!

Any joy that this discovery might have occasioned was sobered and
tempered by the sight of small bodies of men bent double over their work
in the purple twilight. They were burying-parties. Two twigs tied
together and stuck in the brown mounds of earth was all the evidence
there was of each little tragedy. During the retreat the Subaltern had
naturally had little opportunity to realise this most pitiable side of
war, the cold Aftermath of Battle.

I will tell you of the inglorious way in which one man spent this
momentous day, the wonderful hours in which the tide turned, and a
Continent was saved--in chasing chickens! He was the Mess Sergeant, and
it was his duty. Anyway, the Mess dined gloriously off the chickens he
caught, and as a couple of hayricks had been dismantled and distributed,
everybody spent a tolerably comfortable night.




CHAPTER XVII

THE ADVANCE BEGINS


Although they stood to arms at the first flush of daylight on the
following day, they did not march off until nearly eleven o'clock. The
men were moved into the leafy grounds of the chateau to keep them out of
the sun, and beyond the observation of hostile aircraft.

The regimental butchers slew one or two sheep during the wait; but the
meat subsequently proved to be abominably tough, and the fat collected
to oil the bolts of the men's rifles only served to make them stiffer
than ever.

The Subaltern had entertained fond hopes that owing to his recent
unusually long hours of sleep he would not be attacked by the same
nauseating sensations of fatigue; but his hopes were vain. The sleep
seemed to have made things worse. A little rest had developed an
overwhelming desire for more, and he felt worse than ever.

He longed as he had never longed before for long cool drinks and clean
white sheets. He imagined himself at home. What would he do? He pictured
himself in the bathroom eagerly peeling off his puttees as the water
splashed into the pale blue bath. How he would wallow in it! He could
feel how the water would caress his body, tepid and soothing.

On the table in the dining-room, green and cool with its view of the
sombre pine wood, stood a long cold drink of what? Cider, perhaps, or
lime-juice and soda, something you could drink and drink and drink. Last
of all--culminating pleasure of heaven--his red bedroom, with the sheets
ready turned down for him, soft and white and alluring. That would have
been heaven.

But this heaven of his was very far away from the hard dusty road and
the eternal poplars! With a painful jolt his thoughts would return to
the realities of life; he would feel dazed and annoyed, and in his heart
of hearts he wanted to cry.

* * * * *

Sir Archibald Murray passed in a car, holding an animated conversation
with a much-beribboned and distinguished-looking French General. He
looked very pleased with himself, as well he might, for the greatest
work of his career had begun the day before with astounding success.

The Subaltern must have felt very tired and dissatisfied that afternoon.
Having exhausted the painful thoughts of home, he began to tell himself
what an awful life Active Service was. It never occurred to him to be
thankful that a youth so young should have the luck to play his part in
such tremendous events. He did not at the time realise that there were
thousands of adventurous souls at home who would have given an arm to
have been where he had been.

He did not realise that in after days the memory of every weary hour of
trudging, of every bullet that had hummed by, and of every shell that
had burst, would be a joy for ever. The thought had never struck any of
them, unsentimental souls!

At this point his memory confessedly breaks down. He remembers perfectly
a certain "ten minutes' halt" spent in the shade of a sheaf of corn. He
remembers plunging into a pine forest; but thenceforward there is a
blank. His memory snaps. He cannot recollect passing through that wood,
much less passing out of it. A link in the chain of his memory must have
snapped.

When next he recollects anything clearly it may have been that night,
the next night, or the night after that. Anyway, it was very dark, and
the Battalion was eventually halted in an open field. Somehow or other,
straw was procured for the rest, but his own Platoon was sent forward to
hold an outpost position along the banks of a small stream.

Although in the daytime the sun shone with undiminished fervour, the
nights were getting certainly far more chilly than they had been in
August. But when one has to get up at daybreak, having never had more
than four hours sleep, one does not notice it much.

During the night a fresh draft arrived.

The next morning they very soon encountered an entirely new sight, a
French village hastily evacuated by the enemy. At least half of the
houses had been broken into, and all the shops and inns. The Germans had
dragged chairs and tables to the roadside, and they must have been
sitting there drinking and smoking when the news of the British advance,
and orders to retire had come upon them. Everything seemed to show that
the enemy had left at the shortest notice. He had not had time to
perpetrate any of his well-known barbarities on the few inhabitants who
had remained in their houses, and no attempt had apparently been made
even to burn the village!

A little further on, the abstemious Hun had obviously made a halt. The
litter of bottles was appalling. There was a perfect wall of them for
about a quarter of a mile. The proportion of bottles to the number of
men estimated to occupy four hundred yards (1000) was alarming. There
must have been enough drink to upset a British Army Corps. Most
certainly the Germans in front must have been out of hand, and very
drunk. The men were vastly amused.

The day dragged on very wearily, and no deployment was made. Apparently
the enemy had taken about as much as he could comfortably endure on the
previous two days. He was not waiting to be pushed back; he was speeding
north-east as fast as his legs could carry him.

In the afternoon a heavy shower rather damped the excitement evoked by
the enemy's dramatic failure to hold his own. Sounds of a fierce
encounter were heard in front, and the Brigade was hurried down a steep
and wooded decline to the scene of action. They arrived too late to
share in the actual infliction of defeat upon the enemy, but they were
immediately sent in pursuit, as the other Brigade was very tired and
rather shaken.

A man told the Subaltern that some unfortunate company, marching in
fours up a village street, had been fired upon by a machine-gun
controlled by a few men left behind by the enemy to inflict the greatest
possible damage before discovery and capture. They had done their work
well, for, concealed in the roof of a house, they had swept the street
at point-blank range and literally mown down a whole company before they
had been located, and "put out of action." Still they must have been
brave men, for the personal result of such an exploit is certain death.

The state of that street had better not be described. The Aftermath of
Battle! It is depressing, cold and passionless, dirty and bloody; the
electricity of life has gone from the air, and the wine of life-blood is
spilt, it seems, so needlessly upon the ground. Perhaps the spirits of
the dead linger over it. Their presence is instinctively felt. As,
overpowered with the sorrow of it, you pass by, the thought steals into
your mind, "When will my turn come?" This Aftermath of Battle is
assuredly the most awful thing in war.

As soon as the men began to scale the steep incline opposite, they saw
that the costs had not been paid by the British alone. Figures, covered
in most cases by their own grey overcoats, lay out upon the ground.
Leaning up against a wall a body was still lolling. It was a sight that
no one who saw it will ever forget. There was no head; it had been shorn
oft as cleanly as if the man had been guillotined. An unburst shell had
probably swept the man's head from his shoulders as he looked over the
wall, and the aimless-looking trunk was still leaning against the wall
as if "waiting for further orders."

The pursuit was continued until it was quite dark. The Companies wheeled
into the fields, and slept where they stood. The Colonel delivered a
short address, which showed that all was not as well as it looked. But
what really _did_ worry them was lack of straw. The Colonel was of the
opinion that the enemy would take his stand on the opposite bank of the
Marne, which, he told them, was only half a mile ahead. To-morrow there
would be a fight, the like of which neither they nor any one else had
seen before.

They were disturbed that night, not indeed by the fear of what to-morrow
might hold in store, but by a small stampede of escaped horses, who
careered madly over the sleeping lines, injuring one man very severely.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE CROSSING OF THE MARNE


As soon as dawn broke--a dawn exceptionally cold and cheerless--the
cavalry pushed forward to effect some sort of reconnaissance. Meanwhile
the infantry had nothing better to do than to conceal themselves behind
the copses that covered the slope, and await their turn. In about an
hour's time they were deployed and moved cautiously forward to the
attack, the Batteries being already placed in readiness for the
beginning of the "show."

No army in the world can execute this movement as scientifically or as
safely as the British Army. Memories of South Africa and Indian frontier
fights have left us undoubtedly the finest scouting army in Europe. We
were, of course, hopelessly outmatched in artillery and numbers. But
artillery being equal, there was not a Brigade in any army in the world
that could have held its own against a British Brigade. That, however,
is by the way.

They pressed steadily forward, and, having breasted the slope, the
valley of the Marne burst suddenly upon their view. It was at least
three miles in breadth, and the opposite heights were screened by
woods. A small town marked the bridge. The country was "open"--painfully
open; there was not an atom of real cover between them and the heights
opposite.

But no shells came whistling towards them. No doubt the enemy was
holding his fire until they were within closer range. (Not a pleasant
thought, this, by any means.) But no, they went on scrambling down the
deep slope, and still no sound of firing disturbed the morning silence.
As each moment fled by the Subaltern thought to himself, "Not yet! Well,
the next minute will bring things about our heads!" But the next minute
kept on passing as uneventfully as its predecessors.

At last they reached the bridge and found it absolutely undamaged. Even
then the Subaltern could not repress the thought that all this was only
a trick, and that they were being lured on to destruction. But his
sanguinary forebodings were not justified, and the opposite heights were
scaled without opposition.

He afterwards learnt, that, however much the Germans might have wanted
to hold this magnificent line, the strategical situation had become so
pressing that on this sector nothing could save them from disaster
except a complete and hurried retreat. They were all but outflanked on
their right, which was already very seriously bent back; while in the
centre General Foch had driven in a wedge which bade fair to crumple up
the whole line.

There was nothing in any way remarkable about the little town on the
other side of the river. It had the air of a neglected gutter-child,
dirty and disconsolate. There were the usual signs of German
occupation--broken windows, ravaged shops, and, of course, the
inevitable bottles.

Here it was that the Subaltern noticed for the first time that the Huns
had a distinctive smell of their own. It was a curious smell, completely
baffling description. If it is true that certain odours suggest certain
colours, one would have described this as a brown smell, preferably a
reddish-brown smell. Certain it was that the enemy left it behind him
wherever he had been, as sure a clue to his passing as broken
wine-bottles!

The Subaltern always associates the climbing of the opposite slope with
pangs of a thirst so intense that he almost forgot to wonder why the
Germans had evacuated so excellent a position without firing a single
shot. But Headquarters were evidently not going to allow them to push
forward into some previously arranged trap. Having by three o'clock in
the afternoon firmly established themselves on the wooded crests of the
slope, they were "pulled up" while a further reconnaissance was being
made. Meanwhile, a sort of outpost position was taken up.

The Subaltern's Platoon was to guard the back edge of a wood, and as he
established his supports in a farm, most of his men were able to fill
their water-bottles, have a wash and brush up, and generally prepare
themselves for whatever the next move might be. The farmer and his
wife, who had remained in their home, did everything that was required
of them; but he could not help noticing that the old couple did not seem
as pleased at their Allies' success as one would have naturally
expected. The reason was soon forthcoming. Following his usual plan of
getting as much information as possible out of the French, he heard the
old man, who seemed unaccountably shy and diffident, mutter casually--

"J'ai pense que vous etiez tous partis hier soir."

"Comment?" said he, "tous partis? Mais, Monsieur, nous sommes les
premiers Anglais qui sont arrives ici."

"Mais, Monsieur! Anglais? Ce n'est pas possible!"

"C'est vrai, assurement."

"Mais, L'Armee Anglaise porte toujours les habits rouges!"

The Subaltern laughed outright. This simple fellow actually believed
that the English fought in scarlet. Even now he was not thoroughly
convinced that they really were English. Ignorance goes hand in hand
with obstinacy, and these simple old peasant folk defended their
stupidity with a veritable wall of impenetrable incredulity.

The Subaltern was still laboriously engaged in explaining matters to the
man, when part of the Headquarter's Staff trotted up the road with a
clatter and a swing and scurry that looked as if they were wanted very
urgently on the left. It was the first time during the campaign that he
had seen the Corps Commander and the Chief of the General Staff on
horseback.

It must have been about five o'clock when he received a message to
concentrate on the main road. On the way he was accosted by a woman
perfectly distraught with grief, who explained that two days ago her
little son had disappeared into "ce bois la" never to come out again.

"Si votre fils vive encore, il reviendra, bien sur, Madame. S'il est
mort, moi, je ne peux pas vous aider." Terrible to relate, the sight of
such grief annoyed rather than saddened him.

The advance was continued until it was quite dark, when the Battalion
denuded the usual hayrick, and "dossed down" in the usual stubble
field.




CHAPTER XIX

AN ADVANCED-GUARD ACTION


At about eleven o'clock the next morning his Company Commander--the
Captain was leading as the Major was now second in command of the
Battalion--told the Subaltern to ride back to the transport wagons and
get some fresh maps and some chocolate which he had left in one of the
carts. It was pleasant to get a ride, and to rest one's feet for awhile,
so he took his time in getting back to the transport.

No sooner had he reached the wagons than a gun boomed. He thought
nothing of that, however. Guns were always going off, at the oddest
times, and without any apparent reason. Four seconds later another
rolled out, followed closely by a third, fourth and fifth. Soon a
regular cannonade broke out. There was obviously mischief in the air, so
he crammed the maps hastily into his haversack and the chocolate into
his pocket and regained the Battalion as soon as he could on the
exhausted animal. Even as he was pressing forward, he heard the crackle
of musketry somewhere out of sight on the left.

Of course, the very thing that he had feared had happened. His Company
had been rapidly deployed and had already disappeared over the crest. He
explained matters to the Major who was in command of the remainder
during the Colonel's absence; dismounted, and set off on foot towards
the sounds of the firing. He ran against the Company Sergeant-Major in
charge of the ammunition, who told him where his Platoon was.

The next thing was to cross the fire-swept crest. Now, crossing
fire-swept crests is manifestly unpleasant--especially if you are alone.
If you are leading fifty men at least one and half times as old as you
are, who look to you for guidance and control, it is not so bad. Bravery
is very closely allied to "conspicuous gallantry," and "conspicuous
gallantry" in the field is almost impossible when there is no one to
look on. But he was too tired to worry much whether he was hit or not,
and his Platoon had to be reached as soon as possible.

He found them lined up behind a small bank, waiting for orders to
reinforce the first line. Taking his glasses out of their case, he
crawled forward to have a look at the position for himself. The Platoon
in front was established behind a mud bank, firing occasional shots at
the enemy, who appeared to have dug himself in behind a railway cutting
at least five hundred yards distant. Although bullets were humming
pretty thickly through the air, the casualties on the British side so
far were only two or three men slightly wounded. They had orders to
"hang on" to that position until the centre and right should be
sufficiently strengthened for the main attack to materialise, when they
were to push on as best they might. Having learnt this, the Subaltern
crawled back, and sent out three men "to establish touch" with the front
Platoon.

An hour passed before anything further happened. During that time the
Platoon Sergeant told him of the great difficulty they had had in
reaching this advanced position at all, as they had been shelled from
the front by the enemy, and from the left by their own batteries.
Accidents such as this often happened, and the artillery were not really
as culpable as would at first sight appear. Advanced-guard actions
materialised so suddenly, and situations changed so quickly, that it was
not always possible to circulate precise orders. The gunners' ideas of
the relative positions seemed to be, during the opening stages of the
attack, rather hazy--a fact that was very much resented by the men. "We
ain't come out 'ere to be targets to them ruddy gunners," one fellow
grumbled.

Soon, however, things straightened out, and in an hour's time the
various movements preparatory to the attack had been completed. The
enemy, seeing that he was almost surrounded, and that it would be
impossible to extricate the greater part of his command from the battle,
resolved at least to save his guns, which were accordingly withdrawn.

When at length the Subaltern's Platoon pushed forward in the wake of
the leading Platoon, no less a personage appeared unaccountably on the
scene than the Colonel. He had thrown off the worried look that had been
growing on him of late. Some of the officers, too junior to understand
how uneasy lies the head that is crowned with the responsibility for
many lives, had been heard to say that the Colonel's manner and general
outlook upon the campaign was tinged with unnecessary anxiety, and that
he had no right to allow the Germans to disturb his peace of mind. If
this were so, the presence of actual and tangible danger completely
obliterated all traces of nerves. He stood up in the firing-line. He
drew himself up to the full of his height, and seemed to inhale with
pleasure the dangerous air. All the time bullets were humming overhead
like swift and malignant insects, or striking the ground with a spatter
of brown earth.

The Adjutant, following him, suddenly bent double as if he had been
struck below the belt; but the Colonel merely straightened himself, and
not a nerve in his phlegmatic face twitched.

"What's the matter?" asked the Colonel.

"Only a bullet struck my revolver hilt, sir," replied the Adjutant. It
had splintered the woodwork and been deflected between his arm and ribs.

Near by a man rose on his knees to get a better shot at the enemy.

"What's that man doing? Get down there this moment!" roared the Colonel.

Then, as he recognised an old soldier of the regiment, "Atkins, how
dare you expose yourself unnecessarily? Your wife used to do my washing
in Tidshot. Me? Oh, I'm only an old bachelor. It doesn't matter about
me. There's nobody to care what happens to me." And, well pleased with
his joke, the Colonel passed down the line, proud of his magnificent
bravery.

There is something about the rough-and-tumble of battle that lifts one
above one's self. One's legs and arms are not the same listless limbs
that were crying for rest only a short hour ago. One is envigoured; the
excitement stimulates. One feels great, magnanimous, superb. The
difficulty lies not in forcing oneself to be brave, but in curbing
ridiculous impulses, and in forcing the brain to work slowly and
smoothly. The smallest natures rise to great heights. An ordinary
self-centred creature performs acts of dazzling generosity towards
fellows he does not even know--with everything to lose and nothing to
gain. He will rescue a wounded man under heavy fire, to whom an hour
previously he would have refused to lend sixpence.

Why is it?

If the enemy were a roaring brazen beast, such as the knights of the
fairy tales used to fight, one could understand it. But he is not. You
cannot even see him. Three-quarters of a mile ahead there is a dark
brown line, and that is all. Whence comes the love of battle? Is it
roused by the little messengers of death that whizz invisibly by? No one
can say; the whole feeling is most probably the result of imagination
and desire to do great things.

On they swept. The leading Platoon was now covering the ground at such a
pace that it was impossible to catch up with them. As the ground was
open the whole line could be seen sweeping forward to engulf the enemy.
The long dotted lines of brown advanced steadily and inexorably. Line
upon line of them breasted the crest, and followed in the wake of the
leading wave. It was scarcely a spectacular sight, yet it was the
vindication of the British methods of attack.

The wild firing of the Germans had little effect. Curiously enough, the
line that suffered least was the first, and even in the others the
casualties were negligible. And all the time they were nearing the
railway bank.

But the end was in sight, and the enemy realised that further resistance
would be useless. They were caught. About half a dozen men sprang on to
the railway bank and began furiously to wag white sheets of paper or
rag--anything white. They must have been brave men to do such a thing.
The British gunners either did not see their signs, or perhaps refused
to accept them on account of various "jokes" that the enemy had at other
times played with the white flag. Anyway the firing continued with
unabated fury. They stood there to the end without flinching, and when
they fell other men took their places. It is mean and untruthful to say
that the Germans are cowards. Certain it was that their pathetic
bravery--there is always something sad about bravery--so touched the
British that they accepted the surrender without reserve or suspicion.
Even the artillery ceased fire.

At this point the leading Platoon broke clean away. They could not be
held in. The orderly advance degenerated into a wild dash. Men bent
double and rushed. Determination was written on each flushed face. The
Germans must have been terrified; it looked as if they were to be
bayoneted as they stood, with their arms raised in surrender. It must
have been a very trying moment for them, indeed, as the British raced
towards them up the incline. The leading men were soon clambering up the
embankment. What would happen? Was a disgraceful and bloody massacre
about to begin? The excitement was intense. The Subaltern ran on harder
than ever, with some vague idea of "stopping a scene," but he need not
have bothered. The men were not out for blood or scalps. All they wanted
was souvenirs or helmets! They got them with such success that there was
little left for the other platoons.

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